First I want to say thank you to the devs for making major changes to Shadow! I think it’s a big step in the right direction.
Next I want to say that it’s some BIG changes, it’s going to take some time to process and get used to all the changes, and I want to encourage everyone to be patient and give themselves time to explore them.
It could be a processing issue (see above) but I think there’s some changes they have likely left out of the write-up, as it does not play correctly in my head yet. So be aware that I think we’re missing a couple things still.
The purpose of this post is both for me to consolidate my thoughts, and request feedback from the community, before sending that feedback to the Devs.
Feedback:
- The cast time of Void Eruption has been reduced by 40%.
Good change, matters somewhat less now that Void Eruption is a 90 second cooldown, but still a welcome improvement.
- Mind Blast reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 7.5 sec. (and not for 7 seconds, as before).
Excellent change, also matters less now that Voidform no longer has ~90% uptime and no longer reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast, but it still fixes the misaligned GCD issue.
- Shadow Word: Death no longer increases Insanity.
Good move. Removing the Insanity generation on baseline SW: Death makes it more of a situational execute spell, and makes Death & Madness talent more compelling.
- Shadowy Apparitions effect has been reworked: when you use Mind Blast, Devouring Plague, or Void Bolt, you create your own ghostly copies that move towards all enemies affected by your Vampiric Touch and deal damage to them from dark magic. On a critical strike, two Apparitions appear.
This makes ghosts much rarer, they don’t scale infinitely since they are cooldown-locked by Mind Blast, DP, and Void Bolt. This suggests they will need to hit much harder than on Live, which I think is a good choice - rarer, more controllable, and more impactful: all moves in the right direction.
This causes Crit scaling and Haste scaling still, since these cooldowns scale with haste, and they double proc on Crit increasing the value of Crit % for us. That’s neither good nor bad, just stating it for the record.
Voidform
Now has a 90 second cooldown and increases the damage done by 20%. Lasts 15 sec.
Voidform no longer reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast, but instantly restores the spell upon cast, and grants you 2 charges while in Voidform.
While in Voidform, you no longer gain a Haste bonus every 0.5 sec
There is a lot to unpack here. Let’s start from the big picture. Removing Voidform removes much of the broken elements of Shadow (detailed elsewhere): this is great news!
Today, Voidform sucks up an enormous amount of Shadow’s power budget. This change means all of Shadow’s base damage needs to be buffed significantly (like, +50% to all spells, even after the added power in this rework). This alone will make Shadow MUCH better for World Questing, PVP, Mythic+, and even all raid content where we couldn’t ramp fully, for a variety of reasons. Shadow is instantly better at ~all content, because of this rework!
As a cooldown, it’s a bit weird. Part of the uniqueness of Shadow has always been not relying on cooldowns, that said having a 90 second cooldown is good for modern WOW content, so maybe it’s time that changes.
First, I want to ask if it truly increases damage by 20%, or if it increases damage by 20% while replacing Shadowform’s 10% (as it does on Live)? If that’s the case, it’s pretty weak for a 90 second cooldown, I don’t want to be a cooldown class anyways - so that’s fine - just drawing attention to that overlap interaction.
It’s also going to be a bit weird to play, because I’m going to stick a 90 second cooldown on some key like F2: which will then become my Void Bolt key and I will need to mash 3 (Mind Blast) + F2 (Void Bolt) while it’s active.
Additionally, this gives Shadow a LOT of cooldowns, all of which want to be stacked up for burst phases, which means high downtime between their uses. We now have:
- Shadowfiend - 180 minutes, or
- Mindbender - 60 seconds
- Voidform - 90 seconds
- Power Infusion - 120 seconds
- Surrender To Madness - 90 seconds
- Boon of the Ascended - 180 seconds, or
- Fae Blessings - 90 seconds
Fae Blessings will need to be redesigned. My honest advice would be to remove most of these cooldowns: it’s just too much, and not of interest to Shadowpriests. Ex.
- Remove Shadowfiend
- Remove Power Infusion
- Remove Surrender To Madness
Make Voidform increase haste by ~20% instead of increasing damage, this will also feel a lot better to play with. Mindbender remains an option for those who like it. Covenant cooldowns remain too. Shift power budget from the lost cooldowns back into baseline Shadow.
Devouring Plague
Devouring Plague’s duration has been reduced to 6 seconds and damage dealt is increased by 50%.
Developer comment: Reducing the duration of the damage over time effect in order to make the damage from the spell sharper will help to avoid reapplication of the effect (taking into account the possible excess damage).
Devouring Plague can now critically hit.
Devouring Plague is now available at level 20.
All of this is good news thank you! Numbers will still be low I suspect, but that’s a tuning issue I’m sure the devs will get to eventually.
Dark Thoughts (Passive) (Level 16): For every damage over time you cast on the target, Mind Flay and Mind Sear have a 2% chance to gain a Mind Blast charge and make it instant cast. For the next 6 sec. Mind Blast can be cast while channeling Mind Flay or Mind Sear.
The effect of “Dark Thoughts” can stack up to 5 times if it procs several times in a row.
To our current understanding, Mind Blast has no charges, so “Gain a Mind Blast charge” is confusing. Presumably this means Mind Blast still has no charges, but Dark Thoughts can accumulate up to 5 stacks which allow us to press Mind Blast without invoking a cooldown. Is this correct?
That said, Dark Thoughts adds the ‘fun’ of Shadowy Insight to baseline Shadow, and that’s a great change - especially with the removal of rotational Void Bolt instant casts.
My only concern with Dark Thoughts is that it seems to heavily encourage synergy with Psychic Link, such that apart from a pure Patchwerk fight, I struggle to see when other talents will compete with Psychic Link now. Auspicious Spirits might be interesting for accelerated Insanity generation off high Crit %, but I can’t imagine it will ever compete with cleaving Mind Blasts everywhere. Similarly Shadow Crash needs to scale with Mastery, and have the cooldown scale with Haste, to even have a prayer of competition with Psychic Link + Dark Thought synergy.
Dark Thoughts is so good it likely makes Psychic Link mandatory. You could solve this by nerfing Psychic Link, that’s the simple tuning fix - but the better solution would be to make Shadow Crash scale, and make Auspicious Spirits do something more interesting now that Apparitions have been reworked.
Level 15
Shadowy Insight (Talent) removed.
Shadow Word: Void (Talent) removed.
The Death and Madness talent is now available at this level.
New Talent: Unfurling Darkness: After casting Vampiric Touch, your next Vampiric Touch is instant and deals 155% of your Shadow damage immediately. This effect can be triggered no more than once every 15 sec.
Good changes overall. This makes Death & Madness much more compelling. Fortress of the Mind remains too boring to ever consider unfortunately. The loss of Shadow Word: Void is hopefully resolved with the addition of Dark Thoughts procs.
Unfurling Darkness seems like it’s in a weird spot. The intent is to make multidotting easier, but it only procs once every 15 seconds and doesn’t reduce the GCDs to get DOTS setup. So it doesn’t actually make multidotting easier, it just slaps a small amount of damage on it?
In addition, given the ratio is higher than our filler DPET we will use it rotationally even on single targets - this would mean hardcasting VT to refresh the duration, then immediately insta-casting VT (via UD) for the 155% SP ratio. Intended?
Level 45
Lingering Insanity (Talent) removed.
Dark Void (Talent) removed.
New Talent Searing Nightmare: Instantly inflicts Shadow damage to all enemies near the target and applies Shadow Word: Pain to them. If the enemy is already affected by your Shadow Word: Pain, Searing Nightmare deals double damage. Can only be cast while channeling Mind Sear.
Does Searing Nightmares have a cooldown, or do we just spam this while channeling Mind Sear? Weird. Also, if we are multidotting adds, we will still need to hardcast VTs on all of them anyways - and if we’re doing that, we will likely take Misery, which will apply Pain.
The problem I think is actually Mind Sear. In the game you are designing in Shadowlands, infinite-target AOE damage like Mind Sear has been removed, but Shadow still has it. This was likely overlooked because Mind Sear is terrible anyways. But now you are designing talents around it.
A better solution, IMO, would be to delete Mind Sear. We won’t be casting Mind Sear anyways in Shadowlands, since we will need to manually multidot VT+Pain constantly (no VB extensions), and fill the rest with Dark Thought procs (likely with Psychic Link). So Mind Sear will already be dropped out of the rotation even if nothing changes.
Then you can redesign Searing Nightmares to do something better. I have tons of ideas if you need, but you will likely invent your own thing anyways. Let me know if you need help though.
New Talent Damnation: Instantly and at no resource cost, hits the target with Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Devouring Plague. 45 sec cooldown.
Void Torrent: No longer pauses Insanity Drain on cast, but now refreshes the duration of your Shadow damage over time effects when channeling.
Damnation is amazing and I love it. Good job.
Void Torrent is still in an awkward spot I think. Damnation, being 3 GCDs in 1, and a free DP, is likely always going to be better than Void Torrent for single target damage. So when do I care about Void Torrent?
Just to be clear, for Void Torrent to be equal, it would need to do more damage than DP, PLUS 5 extra GCDs worth of filler, all inside the 4 second channel. So off the top of my head, Void Torrent would need to do at least 1000% SP over 4 seconds to justify the channel time. Doing this would also create the problem that Damnation is now always worse than Void Torrent: unless we can never find time to channel VT.
Instead, maybe make Void Torrent do this:
Void Torrent - When you cast Devouring Plague, your next Mind Flay will be empowered to Void Torrent, dealing increased damage and extending your DOTs on the target. 3 second channeled spell (same as Mind Flay, also procs Dark Thoughts at the same rate as Mind Flay).
This gives Damnation and Void Torrent clear niches. Damnation is better for multidotting or short encounters like world questing or trash pulls. Void Torrent is better for single target fights, or empowering burst windows for raiding and PVP. Also, they should come out similar enough that people can play their preference - if you like empowered channels, its not a huge difference, if you like instant DOTs sometimes, thats fine too.
Level 50
Dark Ascension (Talent) removed.
The Legacy of the Void talent has been reworked: Voidform no longer has a duration, but while you assume Voidform, your madness will begin to decrease at an increasing rate. When it reaches 0, Voidform will expire. Spell damage in Voidform is increased by an additional 5%.
Surrender to Madness: Cooldown reduced to 90 seconds.
New Talent: Ancient Madness: When you cast Voidform, your critical strike chance is increased by 30% for 15 sec. This increase gradually decreases by 2% per second.
Legacy probably won’t satisfy the people who, bizarrely, like BFA Voidform. They want 100% crit and 200% haste all the time, and only 2 buttons to manage, and LOTV won’t do it. Kudos to you for offering them an olive branch, I’m sorry it’s unlikely to make them happy.
Surrender To Madness still sucks, even with the massive buff that this cooldown reduction represents. It doesn’t do anything fun, it’s a marginal DPS gain, and sometimes it kills us. Unless it is mandatory we will continue to avoid it.
Ancient Madness is good, though personally I’d rather have +15% crit during Voidform, rather than 30-0% crit during Voidform. I don’t get the point of the extra complexity here. Also, % crit is intangible. Ancient Madness is good, but it’s boring and needlessly complicated. It’s still the choice 99% of Spriests will take.