Like the last I heard was Ion or someone saying they were aware of the issue. That was it. No explanation of why they’re ignoring all of the feedback on it. No real changes. Just makes me sad that Blizzard doesn’t communicate to the people who will have to play the spec as it is for the next 2 years.
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I think they are aware.
I think developers like their own idea of how SP should work, that’s why they don’t talk back to all complains.
They can’t just announce “We read all the whining but sorry, we like our version more”.
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I don’t think that’s it tbh. I think they just don’t know what they want to do with the spec right now. I also think their hands are tied by people higher up than them. Oh and I feel like whoever is designing shadow priests doesn’t actually play them regularly.
Or who knows, maybe I’m completely wrong and they are just ignoring everyone lol. Wouldn’t be the first time.
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This is pretty much it, they obviously like Void form and wanna keep it and just try to find a play style that works with that.
Personally I like Void Form visually, but people asking for a complete, massive overhaul to happen in 6 months are wishful thinking.
They are obviously trying to do their best in the circumstances given, let’s be honest working from home is a nightmare.
I think more changes will come, but at a slower pace, it’s not like some classes, like Demo Warlock where they can just give the Felguard a much needed interrupt and solve a lot of issues.
Much much more thought needs to go into Shadow Priest, everyone has said their concerns, they know this…
Plus the new Mindbender legendary/Playstyle is pumping insane numbers and Void Form is like a 36 sec cooldown rotation and looks interesting, AoE and Single target numbers are through the roof and great for M+.
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I agree and I sincerely want them to succeed and make it work.
Thank you for being positive.
Priest section needs it as never before.
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I’m starting to think that the Priest is just the 1st class of many to come that will slowly kill the game in hopes that everyone will just not want to play it so that they can release either a WoW 2.0 with an updated graphics engine since they have mentioned that its quite a struggle utilizing the current engine as they have pretty much pushed it as far as it can go.
OR
They come out with a Starcraft MMO. Though I would kill for a normal solo 3D game experience for that type of game like aka Starcraft Ghost or a more 3rd person view like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. I just want to explore the SC franchise in the 1st or 3rd POV.
One thing is for certain, I think its too difficult supporting more then 1 MMO at a time from the same company and sooner or later, WoW will have to go into support more or shutdown.
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As do I, I understand people’s frustrations, we all are passionate and love WoW and wanna see our classes shine 
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This hasn’t really been an excuse for a while, considering we’ve asked for a rework since it was implemented.
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I don’t know about you or all the other Priest players but I never got a survey from blizz asking what I like/hate about my class and what I would like / not like to see and if their Void Form / Ramping damage mechanic would be fun and interesting to see or not.
Nope, I just woke up one day and it was here without any warning. ffs blizz. At least drop a survey if you intent to make a radical change to how a class functions at a base level before you actually go through it ugg.
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The problem is while I do agree with you, trust me, I wish most specs and classes could go back to MoP style, that’s not the vision currently Blizzard sees shadow priest.
It’s a double edged blade, while they’ve even said like only 5% of the player base use forums, let’s say 50% enjoy Void Form and 50% dont, theirs more planning and thought has to be done, a middle ground that both parties will enjoy.
Like I said, I do think more changes are on their way, just needs to have more thought process, it’s not as easy as just giving or removing a skill… if they remove void form let’s say and go back to orbs, then they’ll have to complete overhaul and re tune everything. Just takes time.
I’ll be honest I think they prob were going to do a major overhaul but given circumstances and working from home, you gotta cut them a little slack, I know it sucks that changes might come through early/mid expansion but the important thing is we have given our feedback and they are aware of the issues.
As a fellow Priest, we just got gotta have a little faith 
Plus 36 sec Void Form Mind Bender play style is insane, numbers are solid, AoE and Single Target, it’s what we are lacking, less ramp too. Let’s give it a try.
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Well that’s because that’s not how it’s ever worked. Classes aren’t designed by committee, and they shouldn’t be.
It might surprise you to hear, but there are plenty of priests out there that like Voidform, who don’t struggle in world content with it, and who want to remain one of the most unique specs.
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Since they are doing the level squish, they have to retune everything anyway. What should have happened is they should have went back to Shadow Orbs at the beginning states of the level squish and retune around that. If they took WoD stats at a baseline level, then they would only need to account for Legion and BFA tweaking as WoD and prior would have already been factored into the WoD iteration of Shadow.
They were just lazy and trying to cut corners. They being lazy caused by pressure from higher ups or other reasons… who’s to say. But whats certain now is that they caused even more work if they actually plan to band-aid or fix it at this stage. Because of how problematic it is at this point, i’m leaning on the side of them doing as little as possible and just let the class be trash.
Often times I find that the decision makers wont listen to reason until it hits the bottom line. So to fix Priests, they have to fail spectacularly. Even more so then we have seen so far.
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Correct.
But classes were always “enhanced” and “tweaked” not completely removed/deleted. I’ve mentioned this before but if blizz plans on making such radical changes to a class as they did with Shadow Priest and to a lesser extend Survival Hunters and Demo Warlocks at a point in the game where people have spent 10+ years on these classes, then they should “change the way they do things” when they make such game changing changes.
It would be fine if they introduced these changes as a new class/spec or a new game entirely or even the option to “opt out” of said changes. But they removed the entire identity of how at least in Shadows case played entirely.
Sure at the end of the day, they can do what they want. That decision is indeed theirs to make. But I would argue that ignoring feedback and putting forth the results that Void Form has shown over the past 4 years is NOT a healthy metric for them to go by and for the general health of the game.
Its not about struggling. Its about how the gameplay of the priest plays counter to the majority of the game. The game is not a slow pace as it used to be and even if it was, its still vastly different from how it used to be compared to Void Form Ramping mechanic.
When your entire spec is designed around a ramping gimmick yet every fight be it PvE or PvP is designed counter to that design… It flat out simply does not work. Sure you brute force a round peg into a square hole. But it doesn’t make it ideal. A small nich of the player base might enjoy the backwards playstyle and if that’s blizzards goal is to retain a small nich player-base then they are achieving it in that respect. Just compare the priest max level population to itself over the past years. It has been dropping heavily sine Legion relative to every other class. It’s no accident that at that same time is when Void Form became a thing. Cause and effect is how it looks to me.
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To be honest I don’t know that I’ve ever seen any objective metrics regarding Shadow over the past 2 expansions other than that it’s been consistently one of the most dominant specs in raid.
So where are the “results” of the last 4 years that show that Voidform is unhealthy? For example, if a greater percent of players were playing Shadow during MoP/WoD than in Legion/BFA, I’d consider that strong evidence that people don’t like it. Is that what the stats say?
I want to be clear that I’m not saying to not give negative feedback. It’s important and good to do so. I’m just trying to get at some verifiable point that we can agree is a good way to measure how well Voidform works.
Yup.
Look up any wow population. Look up max level classes and compare different time periods.
What you will will find is priest declining at a faster rate then any other class. Also, should be noted that in WoD and prior, Priest was in the top 1/2 of classes played and i’d even seen it as #2 or #3 at times. But now its either dead last or right above dead last.
When compared to Monk, it didn’t get introduced till nearly 10 years of wow. It was always unpopular and you had to level it from level 1. No short-cuts as in with DK or DH and had now surpassed Priest.
Also, measuring Priest popularity by raiding is not a accurate measurement for a number of reasons…
- Its last major patch of expansion. Most people are leveling alts and gearing up / prepping for SL.
- Shadow in a raiding environment is the BEST CASE for them. Everything other then raiding they severally lack in as they are a handicap due to how fast everything dies and how long it takes for shadow to become anything of worth. They simply don’t have enough time to get to MAX potential before everything is dead.
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There is more parts to the game than just raiding though and the problem is, shadow in it’s current state isn’t designed for it. Yeah people make it work or force themselves through it. I don’t expect shadow to dominate every part of the game but it needs to at least function properly without being propped up by 3 different types of external powers.
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Can you point me somewhere? I’m on crappy internet for the next few days and limited to my phone.
At the bottom.
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What is kind of off putting to me is that once the expansion goes to Beta, that’s it. From the interview with Watcherdev the other day
There are no plans for another large drop of additional class changes. They wanted to drop large changes and revamps early so there is plenty of time to get feedback and change things.
It does not matter what we may complain about, what suggestions we may make, the most we might see is some tuning changes made. I gave up on the current expansion because of how the class plays currently. We were supposed to see some changes at the first major patch of BfA if I recall. As far as I know, that never happened. Yeah, I will buy Shadowlands, the cheap digital version, I will still log in once or twice a week and work on some things, but without an alternate form of playstyle that does not revolve around being in and out of Voidform every 40 odd seconds, with constant ramp up, I will just be working on things out in the world. The Maw and the Tower have no appeal to me, you won’t see me in anything more than a Normal Dungeon if I need to to advance the story, if it involves Mythic? That is a hard pass for me. I barely did LFR in this expansion, and only ran one wing of raids over two evenings where I spent the entire time dead from one shot mechanics. They can continue to design the game for players better than me. That’s fine, I just choose to not play the end game content in the manner they have designed, because I cannot play this class in a manner that I can grasp.
Oh and Qwaal, Realmpop which use to have the information you are looking for was broken with an update awhile back so the site no longer exists.
Just checked that out and I don’t find it particularly convincing. Both dates are in BFA, and the first is during BOD when Shadow was the best it was all expansion. Holy and Disc have also suffered from continued mediocrity outside of raid, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were a significant number of players who gave up their healing priests to play druids or paladins because, as you say, there’s more to the game than raid.
Not to say that you’re wrong, I just don’t think those census numbers prove your point.
For what it’s worth, I wish they’d give priests a 4th spec (call it Void) and bring back an old play style. More choice is always better than less.
1 Like