Greetings fello dark side users! The purpose of this post is to give my thought out personal opinion of how to better develop the spec tree as well as give flavor to further iterations of Shadow.
I won’t pretend that I’m speaking for the community and I truly hope that other priest will also speak out about their wants. I’d like to say that no idea is a bad idea, but we should be ready to defend it. Civil discourse can be very constructive. And we should look to build off that.
I’d also like to go ahead and throw out “buff X/Y/Z so we do more damage.” That’s not the goal here and as I’ve said in another thread, at any point they can buff Devouring Plague by 1000% and we’d instantly be OP.
— The primary reason I’m starting this thread is because of an identity crisis.
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Archon: “Archons are highly devout and deeply connected to the Light and Shadow. Archons can be blessed by higher beings to enter into an ascended state, becoming an ultimate version of themselves.”
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Voidweaver: “Voidweavers have dedicated themselves to studying the origins of Void magic and have discovered a way to tear open a tenuous connection to the Void. This power is incredibly dangerous and volatile, consuming anything in its path.”
Now obviously we all should know which Hero talent should prefer Void Form and which one should prefer Dark Ascension. But we find ourselves in the current situation we’re in.
Making changes to something as new as Hero talents is difficult because we haven’t had a ton of time to play around with things. Though I do have some changes to be made.
Archon has many positives to it so far in my playing. And currently I’ve spent a majority of time in it because of how well it feels compared to its counterpart. If anything because of Perfected Form, you’ve given yourself a good tuning nob to bring Dark Ascension to similar levels as Void Form.
There’s possible synergies with apparitions, due to Energy Cycle. As well as my future suggestion Dark Teachings.
Voidweaver on the other hand needs a little love. I think that casting Void Torrent should put the Shadow priest in Void Form for 6-8 seconds. Refreshing the duration every time Void Torrent does damage similar to how the Void Rift works. (Or Adding 6-8 seconds to the current duration of Void Form.) Additionally, No Escape now draws enemies to its center. (It looks like a black hole and should act like one.) Thematically weaving in and out of a state of void should be what this is about. While also changing No Escape to how it should be.
— Shadow priest talents
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Silence is now baseline. Would seriously help with QoL of the spec as well as not feeling bad for taking utility / defensive in place of overall damage.
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Shadow Crash and Whispering Shadows is now 1 talent. After having it be one talent and for some reason broken into two is quite ridiculous. For what seems to be the only reason, is because you wanted us to use up a talent. Fix it, put it back.
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Mental Decay’s second part (DoT extension) now applies to all DoTs within 8 yards from the target. This would greatly improve Shadows ability to maintain DoT’s without requiring the use of Void Form.
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Dark Ascension now applies its damage bonus effect to all spells and abilities. (Probably at a reduced effectiveness). Shadow currently has a lot of different DoT effects, Dark Ascension builds would benefit from not feeling like you should be playing Mind Spike.
— DA vs VF
Void Forms play style allows the priest to have much better insanity generation while also giving the priest the ability to reliably extend its DoT’s. This Dark Ascension change still allows Void Form to have this style of play and instead just hammers home the “do more damage now” approach it currently has. -
Mind Spike Insanity is now instant cast. Assuming the nerf to Dark Ascension I preposed takes place you’d need to do something to incentivized Mind Spike otherwise it will never get chosen, especially with Mind Flay Insanity being 1 GCD.
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Ancient Madness no longer decays. Also adds back Void Origins causing Void Form and Dark Ascension to be instant cast. I’ve yet to hear any good reason as to why this cannot be the case. It won’t change the overall damage output at all because it’s still on the GCD. Instead this just helps PvPers be able to do a somewhat reliable burst, on a spec that we still have to cast all of our damage.
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Shadowy Insight now once again adds a charge to Mind Blast. We’ve already got a bunch of spells to manage, especially while in Void Form. Similar to the Surge of Insanity change we got last minute it would just be a QoL change.
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Mind Devour moved to Maddening Touch location and made a 1 point talent. Making space for my new ability. Also the tree could still value from getting rid of our insane amount of 2 point talents.
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Maddening Touch removed. Pretty dogwater of a talent. Another 2 pointer, unreliable insanity generation unless in mass AoE, hardly noticeable damage buff.
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New talent: Dark Teachings, enemies hit by Halo cause you’re DoT’s on that target to instantly deal an additional instance of damage.
Enemies hit by Divine Star cause your DoT’s on the Target to detonate, instantly dealing the remainder of their damage.
— This is my take on how to make Shadows DoT’s more threatening, while also giving it its own identity. Being able to add to the pad damage or giving Shadow a new way of Executing targets and getting the full value of their DoT’s. While Archon will be locked into Halo which is slightly unfortunate, it does 1. Still do something and 2. Give Voidweaver some very nice flavor.
— Priest Talent tree
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Cauterizing Shadows needs to be massively buffed. It’s very anti synergistic to our kit. And the heal we receive is a complete joke.
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Mass Dispel nerfs need to be reverted. Took a very great spell and made it very
niche because you made it required in dungeons. -
Phantom Reach. I’ve got a pretty love hate relationship with this spell. It seems like this is our alternative to getting a mobility spell like our whole class has been asking for. While it’s got its moments of greatness it also just adds to the factor of now, you can actually out range your healers and not notice. Also in arena this is no way going to allow you to make enough space to not be the punching bag.
Instead there’s been a few options thrown out there that personally I’d much rather. A Spell similar to the Void Elf Spacial Rift. Or Door of Shadows.
— PvP talents
- Psyfiend can now once again be shielded with Power Word: Shield.
— Spells and Abilities
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Vampiric Touch dispel protection has now been redesigned. Dispelling Vampiric Touch now leaves Malediction on the target. Malediction absorbs the next (x) amount of healing done to the target last for 8 seconds or until healed through the debuff.
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Mind Blast critical strike modifier increased by 100%. Another big complaint is that Mind Blast packs no punch. This gives synergy towards going the Mind Melt route, and make Apathy tempting.
— stats
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Mastery: Malediction added to the list of damage bonus. Still allows the Spriest minor Mastery bonus when Vampiric touch gets dispelled.
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Critical Strike: your DoT Critical strikes spawn a Shadowy Apparition. There’s a few talents in the tree that work with critical strike but yet it’s still one of our least valued stats. Just looking to make the stat somewhat considered.
— Glyphs
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Ghost form. Our feet don’t touch the ground while in shadow form. (Constantly floating)
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In the event we don’t get the prior glyph I would like one for Dark Ascension so we can be floating similar to Void Form.
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Void Volley. Void Torrent now takes the appearance of the Void Balls Xal’atath blasts Khadgar with.
— UI
- Surge of Insanity now properly displays all the charges.
— Closing argument
Shadow priest suffers from having many different iterations of it past self. I do believe there is a world where Dark Ascension and Void Form can co-exist. I’d also like to see actual changes made to make the class more fluid, rather than just see number changes. Currently Voidweaver has got nothing on Archon other than visuals. I think you’ve also missed the mark of expressing the Hero talent, bringing your character in and out of different void states would be much more immersive. Archon also just feels much more smooth the play, especially when doing the rotation properly you’re about able to carry Surge of Insanity procs to the next Halo window.
Our mobility at this point is just disgraceful. Currently theres a mobility war going on in PvP and shadow is being left behind. The game is full of different micro CC’s and warriors can straight up make you not play your character for 20 seconds straight. All the while doing their full DPS rotation.
And this goes even further into PvE. Mythic Razagath priest needed to be carried other wise they die to mechanics. Meaning even if the priest is playing 100% optimally, they will still die if we don’t get supported. We can’t pop a defensive. We can’t out damage that phase. We just died.
- I for one will 100% sellout and see if Dracthyr glide is able to crutch some of these issues.
Make our stats matter more. Right now it’s just maintain 15-20% haste, stack mastery. Later on we will start looking at crit / vers in low amounts. Make critical strikes feel good. Give Mind Blast a 250% modifier on Critical strikes. Just something to make it considered.
Give our DoT’s a chance to shine. This was my intent with my new talent Dark Teachings. They don’t have to be top damage but make them be respected.
Call me out if you disagree. State what you agree with. Hopefully we can see some real priest changes going further into TWW, because the lack of willingness to do anything with priest this last Beta cycle and the 0 communication on priest felt awful.