Pre Void Form Spriest nostalgia

Classes Priest
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So this vid from Preach showed up on my feed today.
It reminds me why I enjoyed Pre Void Form Shadow Priest.

The purpose of the vid is for him to decide on making Shadow his main going into WoD. During it, you can get the nostalgia feeling of what it was like to play Shadow back before Void Form / Insanity in that you are more then just DPS.

Compared to Void Form / Insanity now, you are PUNISHED for doing anything other then DPS with insanity being wasted if you use grip or Mass dispel or normal dispel etc. you get the idea.

As he states throughout the vid, you are always looking for opportunities to contribute to your group. This is consistent in all areas like Raids, 5 mans and PvP.
This is similar to the points I brought up in previous threads.

Have a look and enjoy.

Here you can see Preachā€™s first look at the WoD 100 talents and see his thoughts at the time.

Here is more in-depth vid with WoD mechanics.

Here is WoD Shadow in a raid setting. Showing off both playstyles.

Here is another I like for the PvP side of things in WoD that iā€™ve shared before in this forum.

Here is a long form (no jump cuts) RBG using AS build.

Whats interesting is you would think its a totally different person playing when you compare his vids using Void Form as its night and day in that you can clearly see the difference and how much he struggles with Void Form compared to Orbs.

I guess ill do a little shameless showing of the way I play (kinda).
I never bothered recording myself play as I was just enjoying the game as is (a regret of mine now that i cant stand the current version).
But I know of these 2 vids that show me in it.
Take what you will lol.

See vid at 6:00 & 12:00 min timestamps for when he is fighting me.

See vid at 4:00 min timestamp when fighting me.

What vids have you all seem to enjoy back before Legion revamp?

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Thankyou for sharing these, they are so cool

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what will it take to make blizz realize that they need to bring this back

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Anyone remember the video of the priest MCing people with the song im a bleep hole.

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WoD and MoP were some of the best times for classes.

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I watch that Anboni video all the time, and it makes me so sad I can never play my shadow priest that way again. I believe that just like demonology warlock and survival hunters, my spriest wonā€™t be going back to the way it used to be.

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I miss my wings and orbs!!! :sob: :broken_heart: And those halos! Cascade was so satisfying to use as well. Especially in bgs like Temple of Kotmogu.

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I miss shadow in LK. It was so fun to see shadowy apparitions all over the fight during the add phases and not be at the bottom for dps. AND we had the unique apparitions by race.

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GOD do I miss WoD Shadow priest and Mind Spike. Ugh some things are good, and donā€™t need to be changedā€¦ Oh Blizzā€¦

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While I miss WoD pve, the over reliance / existence of aspect of the fox meaning no caster could have any actual rotational mobility sucked.

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Iirc shadow had feathers back then as well so I personally feel like we had more mobility.

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Mobility can be split into two categories. The ability to travel from A to B quickly. And the ability to travel from A to B over time without losing damage. The second part is what I was referencing, your ability to move as a part of your rotation.

Shadow had basically zero rotational instants when running AS, and you relied heavily on aspect of the fox to keep your rotation up whilst doing damage. Right now weā€™re actually quite good at moving and not losing damage because of void bolt. In WoD we could move a little faster, but we always lost damage for doing so.

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I assume you mean AS with Insanity?
If so then yes, I agree. You are rooted for everything but SW:P and SW:D.

But if you take Surge of Darkness or Mind bender with AS then that opens up DP as well. So you would only be rooted for VT MB and Mind Flay/Sear.

Sure, optimal DPS could be lost but I think thatā€™s why you have the choice of being rooted and do more DPS or being mobile with slightly less.

I donā€™t see that as a problem.

Is there something im not factoring in?

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How focused on rotational mobility pve, especially from a ranged perspective, is now. The only reason it was acceptable back in wod was aspect of the fox existed, I remember recruiting 4 hunters in BRF just for aspect of the fox.

Blizzard removed aspect of the fox (Rightly so) in legion, and specs either gained rotational mobility or became focused around planting for cooldown windows to compensate for this.

If you were to try to play AS Insanity on any of the Nyalotha or EP raid encounters, it would feel terrible purely because of the movement. SoD wouldnā€™t be much better.

CoP would be about as mobile as BFA voidform, which would likely just make it the go to even outside of single target. Not something Iā€™d personally want to see happen again.

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I would agree. Thus why I would pick CoP & Insanity or AS with SoD or hell my PvP build with CoP and SoD.
I think its fine to pick a turret build but you should know that it is a turret build and you are sacrificing mobility to do ā€œin theoryā€ more DPS.

But I think thatā€™s the purpose of the choice. You are allowed to sacrifice some ā€œoptimalā€ DPS talents and still do more DPS because you are now a bit more mobile with the less ā€œoptimalā€ DPS talents.

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Having played tiers in all 3 expansions in question, I can just say for how the damage pattern worked in wod, the spec would need something to maintain more damage on the move. Right now shadow gets to move 1/3 of the time without losing any damage at all.

I also think CoP beating as in multi target because CoP is more mobile (Outside of PvP) is a terrible failing of game balance.

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Well thatā€™s the advantage of the WoD talent tree. You got choices to mix and match things.

Iā€™d say off the top of my head to remove mind-bender or move to different tier and place Void Bolt there. Do some balancing mechanics / numbers and you have a real choice on how you want to DPSā€¦

  1. Burst Proc DPS
  2. Rational on the move DPS
  3. Turret melting DPS.

If going this route and removing Void Form out right OR disconnecting all the specs interactions that are tightly woven into Void Form would then make Void Bolt an extra ability you can use all the time and keep the extending dots aspect of it and still reduced CD by haste.
Bam you got your rotational movement ability.

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Pretty sure we agree with eachother, wod shadow would not transplant 1:1 into BFA and work ā€˜out of the boxā€™ given the new context of raids dungeons. Weā€™ve said as much multiple times, and there is space to change things within what wod already was.

No matter how you slice it thereā€™s no quick fix.

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Indeed.

And yes I think we see each-others points.
I think we can also agree that WoD starting point has a lot more flexibility in adjusting how it can fit in current and ever changing WoW game-play scene.

That alone makes Void Form / Insanity worse by comparison. Let alone all the other issues.

I am truly curious how the end result of Shadow will play out in Torghast solo if the Void Form / Insanity is left as the core aspect of the spec in its current iteration. I foresee a LOT of upset player base priests that cant progress or goes at a snails pace and causing a massive uproar if this were to happen.

Edit:

Thinking about it more.

If you took Void Bolt and AS then you can do some pretty crazy dot upkeep / damage.

Lets say you have 5 targets.
You dot them up and void bolt on CD to extend dot duration and just keep rolling in the AS procs for more Devouring plagues.

Then lets say another talent option or baked in Void bolt etcā€¦ You get .5 sec CD on Void Bolt for x sec after casting Devouring plague (like night hold 4 set going into Void Form). So you can get some burst play which in turn feeds into each-other while giving you a lot more time to do mobile rational DPS.

Then added fluff. I say fit Void Eruption on the 90 talent tier and have it consume orbs as an AOE spender. That way you can choose to use your spender in more often and bursty option that can also extend dot duration.

Cool ideas can come from this.

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thanks for sharing

r#emovevoidform.

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