I think there is still hope in making it work. I am not on alpha so I don’t really know the flow of how shadow priests feel on there, but playing one on live and wondering if I had devouring plague NOW, I could really see some nice changes. For example when our insanity is draining at the beginning of our voidform, it drains pretty slowly and so it tends to overflow. Devouring plague could be incorporated so that it’s something we spend when we have a little too much insanity you know? So we can use it right at the beginning of our voidform and maybe even reaching midway to the peak of insanity depletion. When voidform is reaching its end, then we can focus more on the insanity generating spells to keep us in that state. I could honestly see it being kind of fun for once.
They could also tweak DP a bit, maybe lower its insanity cost to 33 while in voidform and while out of voidform you can choose whether to spend a minimum 33 to 100 insanity. The amount of insanity you spend will of course affect the damage.
The only thing I mind about shadow priests right now is their horrid ramp up times to start doing some damage. This makes anything outside of dungeon content so freaking horrible. If they could make DP hit really hard depending on the amount of insanity you use OUTSIDE of voidform then this could remedy a lot of problems I’m having with it on live.
I only post this because apparently they really aren’t getting rid of voidform and so I’m trying to see if we can view voidform in a different perspective. It is already kind of like shadow orbs if you think about it now that we have DP.
TL;DR Mists of Pandaria Devouring Plague: Build up shadow orbs through mind blast and spend on DP
Shadowlands Devouring Plague: Build up insanity through casting MOST spells and spend on DP. Can choose to spend 33-100 insanity OUTSIDE of Voidform for max damage or 40 insanity while in voidform for minimum damage.
I can really see Devouring Plague work in Shadowlands if they can tweak it a little and make adjustments. I can also see it being really fun as we can learn how to manage our insanity bar in different ways. It spices up our rotation a bit as well while in voidform. Rather than just the regular 3 button rotation we have now, we also have Devouring Plague added to the functionality. \
This coming from someone who can’t stand shadow priests now, I just want to make them finally work whether doing world content or dungeon content.
I think DP inside VF is going to create awkward gameplay; play testing the simulator I was trapped into attempting to cast DP but I judged the drain poorly and didn’t have enough insanity by the time my gcd actually allowed it to cast. Some players will get past that and learn how to min/max that usage- but I think that will lead to more frustrating gameplay. (I got pretty tilted when I tried it myself)
Beyond that though; it’s use outside VF is a novel concept not sure how it will play out in real world situations until Beta invites go out.
I am a bit concerned about DP and PI as baseline spells and what that is going to cause with keybind constraints in general- (consider covenant abilities and borrowed power always needing one historically) for this reason I really selfishly don’t want DP to be used in our primary rotation.
In general I’d like to see emphasis on Breath of the Dying Major and how it overlaps allot with Shadow word death, how much can we use death to plug the hole from Breath of the Dying? Breath in open world and visions today is very helpful in that context.
I’d also like to see if vex beam can be added as a talent; iris was such a big help for us in mythic+ and would like to see that function carry forward with us.
Imagine playing right now with Breath major and Iris beam together? that alone does so much and doesn’t feel as awkward as DP does. Maybe there’s an answer for DP or maybe it has an open world niche and it ends there? idk DP has me perplexed and worried not only for myself but a new player to shadow since it’s so awkward.
Yes with that implentation. However if DP instead dumped all the insanity between two intervals, say 0 and 40 for sake of argument, then that pain point is removed.
I’m still not sold on the gameplay justifying a keybind for me personally, and I still feel it creates awkward VF gameplay that’s not intuitive to someone new to the spec.
yep I’m totally only able to cast 2.5 keybinds
and the rest I click out of my spellbook
mindblast
flay
sear
pain
touch
death
voidbolt
shadow fiend
embrace
shield
dispersion
pot
purge dispel
fear
grip
healthstone
healthpot
silence
mass dispel
fade
racial
essence major>becomes PI
cape cd >becomes covenant ability
set focus
interact on mouseover (for warlock gates)
when talented:
dark void
void torrent
surrender
mount (yes I bind it)
possible I’m forgetting one…OH but you know who binds “everything” gosh
there’s a difference between able to bind something and liking the how it feels on the binds available. If I’m going to add a bind to that list I’d rather it be a vex beam over DP.
Hey now, I have Shadow Form bound. Relic from when shifting in and out of shadow to spot heal in the good ol days… as a priest should. Also Cure disease (Wish it was Abolish Disease but nooooo that would be too OP ffs lol).
The datamined version of DP looks completely useless in almost every situation other than right after entering VF (after first void bolt), with early expansion scaling and the 12 sec dot it’s very hard to see a 2nd DP being cast in VF until a few patches in. Also if LotV is outright bis again then it will never be worth casting DP outside of VF.
I’ve said before the best way to solve the issue they are trying to solve with DP is to make it work somewhat like mind spike. There needs to be some sort of interaction where it hits a lot harder on a target with no dots. So for eg. at full ramp with a normal rotation I’d do 1k dps, a DP rotation should do like 900 dps but have no ramp, so not worth using on a long ST fight, potentially useful on low hp add fights, and really helps in low hp outdoor content and potentially pvp.
edit: had another idea for DP, only castable when not in VF (entering VF would cancel it), dot hits much harder (or maybe cause VT+SW:p to hit harder on the target), doesn’t have an initial insanity cost but drains insanity while its active. So essentially a reverse ramp mini voidform.
Turning SW:D into a similar version of Breath major would fix a lot of outdoor content problems, but the backlash dmg needs to be reduced/removed.
Also giving us a similar version of Focusing Iris / Vex Beam would solve a lot of our M+ issues, they should just turn Void Torrent into that since nobody picks it anyway, and would make that row a lot more competitive.
I can see the binds being an issue for myself also, I’ve got a whole bunch of abilities double bound for target and mouseover so I’d probably need to replace those binds with dp/pi…etc. But this is a minor issue and happens most expansion anyway.
Yes, correct; but the point I was trying to make was if I’m starting to hit my upper limits and starting to slide things into very obscure binds then I cannot imagine what the average or casual player may encounter. I just feel DP doesn’t SOLVE enough of the pain points for shadow to justify the space.
Maybe they can tweak DP to be worth something “to solve issues not just add a button for the sake of it” then I’d have less of a gripe about it.
Right now DP is a nostalgia bait marketing tool coming at the cost of shadowlands being in worse shape than 8.2-8.3 shadow.
When legion launched and I saw DP go away I was very very sad, but after I played Legion shadow I instantly understood why it went away. The spec didn’t feel like it had any holes in the gameplay and DP would have been just extra dot for the hell of it. So if DP returns it needs to DO something for our weak points which is open world and mythic+ (which is losing access to breath/beam in shadowlands) DP inside VF gameplay doesn’t solve anything and wastes time and space to put resources into making that more of a thing
It seems that most of your arguments are coming from the perspective that at least in Legion, the Void Form changes to Shadow are fine and work etc. like when you say this…
Are you referring to rotational abilities? Or how the spec generally functions / works in all situations its put into?
I’m curious, do you think Void Form is fine in PvP?
If not, how would you make it so that it would?
If you don’t have an answer, then consider that as a BIG reason why the demand for change is so loud and rightfully so.
I bring up PvP because it seems that’s an area that your not as experienced in and so perhaps overlooking / not considering as much as the content you spent most of your time in. But PvP is not the only area that I and many others think does not function well if not at all in.
This is why the argument is based around not numbers and raid fights and high keys etc. Its around the rest of the game that Void Form simply does not work and therefore its a waste of time and energy to even partake in and thus leads many to stop playing the priest or at least shadow because of its limiting nature and list of flaws.
It didn’t have holes in the core rotation; the DP dot had no place.
Perhaps I should have been more specific; but I did make plenty of references in my post about how DP solves nothing and things like breath/beam did solve. So it’s not like I was implying shadow didn’t have issues to solve; actually the entire post talked about DP was wasted spaced BECAUSE shadow has problems to solve in certain content/encounter situation.
I’m 2100 this past season; but I only play for the sake of gearing pve content which I’m done so I don’t continue to pvp. I’m not BIG on pvp, nor claim to be an expert at it- but don’t imply I’m not experienced when my armory shows my rating
did you not read my post? “So if DP returns it needs to DO something for our weak points which is open world and mythic+ (which is losing access to breath/beam in shadowlands) DP inside VF gameplay doesn’t solve anything and wastes time and space to put resources into making that more of a thing”
I am mainly referring to group battles (Battle Ground’s) etc.
Sure when your in a balanced team in arena and can coordinate with your team you can make plays and get each others back etc.
But I thrive in the chaos of the battle where there is no set goal, you are improvising as you go and busy playing mind games with your opponents as you are trying to figure out what they are doing and they you and looking for that moment where you can jump in and place a well timed fear bomb, cap a node, MC off a ledge, slow EFC etc. and set up for bursting down a healer in complete surprise and shock to turn the tide of the battle.
With the changes to Shadow into the Void Form spec, you are cut off from doing any of that because unless your in constant battle and not dying, you cant plan or do anything because you are instantly railroaded as your only value with Void Form is popping off dmg, stop that via silence, stun, target gets obscured or vanish etc and your only value just got reset.
To me, that’s something that cant be fixed when you tie our damage into a ramp up mechanic. No matter how short it is, I will never have access to my top damage potential when i want, when i need it. It only comes if I’m left alone after some time and usually after that time, I’m either dead or the targets dead before I can reach that moment.
You make allot of good points, and being more specific does help allot.
You are correct, a battle ground environment it’s a shadow priest wet dream to stay off at max range undetected as long as possible and dot the entire time and melt their faces off. It can and does happen and feels amazing when it does.
For the ramp mechanic; it’s really hard to get across to people how much mass hysteria and COI has blown our ramp out of control and blurs the line on how much stems from VF vs borrowed power. As we go forward into shadowlands consider these two nasty ramp borrowed power systems are gone. Next imagine that if we get a VF haste buff the spec needs so the gameplay isn’t totally screwed over- it’s far far minor in ramp impact.
A few of us are pushing VF to have base haste as soon as you enter it; like ~20%
Then we want 1% (up from 0.5%) to improve how VF responds to us at high drain (key to playing properly)
However, if we get these changes naked VF without borrowed power ramp added on top it shouldn’t feel much different than being a mage knocked out of your rune of power (actually FAR less punishing because generally shadow does consistent damage overall compared to a mage’s burst)
If the top end of VF is only a few more % haste then having your VF cut short is a very very small dps loss which won’t be nearly a punishing as the other example I gave you.
It really sucks that borrowed power makes it super difficult to provide blizzard feedback because we never play our specs baseline…just keep that in mind.
I said “press” as in pressing your keybind, not “click”. I thought you were smarter than this.
You argued that we have too many buttons, and I pointed out we have 2.5 buttons for nearly the entirety of a fight: Bolt, Blast, Flay. VT & Pain you press once, and that’s pretty much it for combat spells.
You then listed out a bunch of binds you use maybe once per fight (twice for potions!), maybe not at all.