It is time to rise up!

Classes Priest
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Shadow Priests Unite: A Call for Change in World of Warcraft

Fellow Shadow Priests of Azeroth, the time has come for us to rise up, unite, and make our voices heard. For too long, we’ve languished in the shadows—not just in lore, but in gameplay viability, community perception, and developer attention. Changes in The War Within (Patch 11.1.5, as of May 2025) have left us with clunky mechanics, underwhelming damage, and a lack of meaningful utility, forcing many of us to reroll or shelve our beloved spec. But change is possible if we act together. Let’s explore why we must rise up, what issues we face, and how we can demand the improvements Shadow Priests deserve.

The State of Shadow Priests: A Dim Reality

Shadow Priests have always been the dark horse of World of Warcraft, weaving void magic with a unique playstyle that blends damage, healing absorption, and utility. Yet, recent expansions have eroded our strengths. In The War Within Season 2, our single-target damage lags behind top DPS specs like Outlaw Rogues and Arcane Mages, with logs from WarcraftLogs showing us consistently in the bottom third of raid parses (e.g., Undermined raid data, 2025). Our AoE potential, once a hallmark, is now overshadowed by simpler specs like Havoc DH, whose Chaos Nova and Sigil of Misery provide reliable crowd control we can’t match.

Our utility, while flavorful, feels outdated. Dispersion is a strong personal defensive, but it’s our only major cooldown, leaving us vulnerable compared to specs with multiple defensives (e.g., Fury Warrior’s Enraged Regeneration and Defensive Stance). Psychic Scream, our primary crowd control, breaks easily in Mythic+ due to incidental AoE, and Silence is too situational in PvE. In PvP, we lack the mobility and burst of meta specs—Vengeful Retreat and Fel Rush give Havoc DHs an edge we can’t counter with Void Shift or Leap of Faith. The community sentiment on forums like Wowhead echoes this frustration: “Shadow feels like a relic of 2010 design in a 2025 game.”

Why We Must Act Now

Blizzard has shown they respond to vocal, organized feedback. In 2023, Retribution Paladins rallied on Reddit and the official forums, leading to a mid-patch rework in 10.2 that boosted their damage by 15% and added utility like Blessing of Freedom enhancements. If they can do it, so can we. The current meta in The War Within favors specs with high burst, mobility, and group utility—qualities we lack. Without our collective voice, Shadow Priests risk being left behind for another expansion, relegated to meme status while others dominate leaderboards.

Moreover, Blizzard’s recent focus on accessibility (e.g., clearer telegraphs in Patch 11.1, as discussed earlier) shows they’re open to systemic changes. But class balance often takes a backseat unless players demand it. With Season 3 looming, now is the perfect window to push for buffs, quality-of-life improvements, and a modernized identity that respects our void-wielding legacy.

What We Need: A Shadow Priest Renaissance

Here’s what we should demand to restore Shadow Priests to glory:

  • Improved Damage Profile: Buff single-target damage by at least 10% to compete with top specs. Rework Devouring Plague to scale better with haste, ensuring our DoTs feel impactful. Data from WarcraftLogs (May 2025) shows our DPS at 120k on single-target, while Outlaw Rogues hit 140k—unacceptable.
  • Modernized Utility: Enhance Psychic Scream to have a shorter cooldown or resist incidental breaks in Mythic+. Add a new group utility spell, like a void shield absorbing damage for allies, to make us desirable in raids and dungeons.
  • Playstyle Fluidity: Fix the clunky Voidform rotation. The current Insanity generation feels punishing—missing one Mind Flay can tank our damage. Streamline the mechanic or reintroduce a Legion-style Voidform with shorter, more rewarding cycles.
  • PvP Viability: Increase mobility with a talent like “Void Dash” (a short-range teleport) and buff burst potential by making Shadow Word: Death hit harder below 20% health, giving us a fighting chance against meta specs.

How to Rise Up and Be Heard

We can’t sit idly in Orgrimmar or Stormwind hoping for change. Here’s how we can act:

  1. Unify on Forums and Social Media: Post constructive feedback on Blizzard’s official forums, Wowhead, and Reddit (e.g., r/wow). Use hashtags like #ShadowPriestRevamp on platforms like X to amplify our message. Blizzard monitors these spaces—consistent, loud feedback gets noticed.
  2. Submit In-Game Suggestions: Use the in-game suggestion tool to detail our pain points. Highlight specific issues like low DPS parses or Psychic Scream’s limitations in Mythic+.
  3. Organize Community Events: Host “Shadow Priest Solidarity” events in-game, gathering in major cities to show our numbers. Stream these on Twitch to draw attention—Blizzard has responded to viral community movements before (e.g., the 2022 “Save the Druids” campaign).
  4. Engage with Content Creators: Reach out to Shadow Priest mains like AutomaticJak or Preach, asking them to spotlight our struggles. Their platforms can pressure Blizzard for responses.

The Power of Our Collective Voice

History shows Blizzard listens when a community unites. In 2018, Survival Hunters were revamped after players flooded forums with feedback, transforming them into a melee spec with unique utility. We have that same power. Shadow Priests aren’t just a spec—we’re a community of players who love the shadowy, mind-bending fantasy of void magic. Our passion can drive change, but only if we act together.

Imagine a world where Shadow Priests are feared in battlegrounds, coveted in raid groups, and celebrated in Mythic+ keys. That future is within reach, but it starts with us. Rise up, fellow voidwalkers. Let’s make our voices heard, demand the changes we deserve, and bring Shadow Priests back into the light—or rather, the darkness—where we belong.

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Agree! Shadow is my main play spec right now, and I agree with everything. I would post on my priest but for some reason my browser won’t let me change characters.

I would even have this replacing PW:S… (Shadow Word: Shield?). Make it more expensive but more useful and put it instead of Dispersion, which in turn could be baseline.

Void Bolt is really a big part on why I dislike VF. It just doesn’t feel impactful to VF’s upkeeping, and honestly it feels really clunky to press because it replaces Void Eruption, which is not usually in the “spammy rotational hotkeys” for me.

Edit: Forgot to mention (remembered when I logged in my spriest tonight) that one of our hardest hitting spells, Void Torrent, has a design that actively clashes with Void Form’s. I wonder if would be too inbalanced to just make VF’s timer to hold while you channel Void Torrent.

I wish VF was like before, with the timer being the actual insanity meter, and then Void Bolt could replace DP and we just dealt with builders to extend VF’s time.

Agreed. One thing that could be really nice to have (again) is Door of Shadows. I’ve been also wondering if we could have a node choice with Angelic Feather to give an improved Levitate - a permanent 15% speed buff and not breaking with damage.

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If you stack a certain stat that Shadow doesn’t vibe with, the entire spec is bricked and you can’t play it. Case in point, I stack crit/vers because I ran Divine Aegis and then switched to Holy.

I also don’t understand the point of Shadow Crash. It’s basically German Engineering. It’s a clunky, over complicated thing that can be replaced by something more crude an simple, but still effective, but they don’t want to because of ego.

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Honestly I don’t really think this is gonna work but I am SO into a large gathering in game for shadow priests

Here’s the thing, someone has to start it.
So let’s set the date and start building on this. Take the event to social media like a Facebook event and we could if nothing else just do it for the memory and LOLs

Because blizz isn’t going to care either way.

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This is the exact job that Void Torrent originally had. It used to stall your insanity drain during Voidform for 4 seconds to allow you to build up more insanity and prolong your Voidform.

They removed that very specific job, made it a generic big damage button, and left the long (albeit slightly reduced) channel time, making it a very inconvenient button to press until they added voidweaver.

I will never, ever understand this argument. Just bind it to a rotational key and a cooldown key? Shadow doesn’t have a ton of abilities, you should have plenty of keybinding real estate.

As for the prolonging Voidform component - it lost much of this identity directly but retained it indirectly, which makes it feel far less impactful than it did previously because of the abstraction. It generates a lot of insanity, which used to directly translate to longer Voidform duration. Then it was changed to every cast increased Voidform duration. Now Voidform duration is related to Devouring Plague casts, which you can do more because Void Bolt gives you a lot more insanity.

Still, moving Voidbolt’s direct role in prolonging Voidform to an indirect one masks a lot of the ability’s value in service of giving Devouring Plague yet more limelight.

Were it up to me, I’d make Surge of Insanity give you a charge of Void Bolt. Change the method for getting MFI or remove it entirely, I don’t care for that ability and I’m agnostic as to what is done with it because I know a lot of people do like it, but reintegrating Void Bolt as a core part of the spec allows Blizzard to restore some of shadow’s stutterstepping capabilities and also broadens the number of skills Blizzard can use in the talent tree and maybe do something more interesting than the current gray sludge of impactless and invisible passive damage and random minor procs that currently compose the entire talent tree.

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Let’s try and talk about doing this seriously.

I’m down to work and plan on this with you. Alas if we don’t set it up and start it, it’s never going to get done and this will just become another lost scream of madness

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