Proposed Shadow Fix

Classes Priest
1

Hey all, I have played priest on and off since wrath so although I’m not an expert on the class I have played a few iterations of it.

The change I am looking at mixes both old and new play styles. Essentially keep both camps of those who like void form and those who don’t.

First proposed change is to bring back shadow orbs and keep them capped at 5 like in WoD. Have them built by using mind blast and SW:D. Then along with this bring back devouring plague as it was in WoD/MoP, big burst damage that puts on a dot that also heals the priest. This would also generate 40 insanity With the dot portion generating 3 per tick, this means you can use it either in void form to stay in it longer or you can hold the orbs to use it and get back into form essentially instantly with the right talents.

Second change is very simple and is to keep SW:D as they changed it to damage at all health percentages but give it a buff in damage if the target is below 20% Health and a make it generate 2 shadow orbs instead of one. The extra orb generation could be a bit OP, but that would have to be tested.

All feedback or any other suggestions is welcome thanks all!

1 Like
2

On the tragic realization that Blizzard won’t remove Voidform in their update, there are two things that can balance Voidform for Shadowlands, making it less hated.

  1. Cut Voidform’s haste gains by half.
  2. Turn Lingering Insanity’s decay into a bell curve.

You have to gut Voidform’s power. Each stack can only give 0.5% haste. It does a number of things:

  1. It guts our backend damage. Which allows the class as a whole to be buffed. Being made stronger across the board, we can participate in all modes of content much more readily. It does nothing to threaten participation in raids and high mythics either.

  2. It kills off the extreme scaling effect. We don’t scale out of control each and every patch, so Blizzard doesn’t need to nerf Shadow into the ground again and again. It also means we don’t depend on our gear so extremely either. The class feels better to play at lower gear levels.

Next, you have to decouple Voidforms from each other. Otherwise you have the extreme perfectionist class that is live, where you are dependent on two excellent Voidforms before you can sit on your max DPS. It’s also ties back in to the extreme nerfs each patch. Now, I haven’t found a way to decouple them yet, but I’ve found a good solution.

You change Lingering Insanity to increase its decay the higher stacks you sit on upon exiting Voidform. It’s decay heightens at higher stacks, whole slowing at lower stacks. Turn Lingering Insanity into a bell curve (well, more an exponent curve, but it doesn’t sound as pretty to say.).

This does three things:

  1. It makes it so that Voidform has a soft cap. Not a hard cap. It makes it so that you can’t beyond a certain point with Voidform. Voidform corrects itself inherently now. It actually feeds back into the scaling monstrosity argument. It cuts how badly we abuse stat increases. Because Blizzard now has an endpoint for Voidform to work with, the class can be balanced.

  2. It makes questing, dungeon pulls, and PvP less punishing. The heights of VF will decay very rapidly setting you to middle of the road in VF. This too will decay, putting you lower down on stacks. As you bottom out though, your stacks decay much more slowly. Letting you take some of Voidform’s power with you between pulls, all without pressuring your healer, or chasing quest mobs with low health, or sacrificing all of your power to heal up in Battlegrounds and Warmode. The very first pull still feels rotten, as will any resets the team needs to make, but the rest of the adventure will feel alright.

  3. It also makes Voidform less punishing. A poor Voidform doesn’t gut your Lingering Insanity to quite the same extent. You can still build back up. If the boss’s mechanics crush you, you aren’t ruined to the same extent. If a noob makes mistakes resulting in a shorter Voidform, they can still recover and come back to contribute to the group.

This is the cleanest way to make Voidform balance-able for Shadowlands.

This next change is a personal preference of mine. I don’t like missing out on my rotation for any length of time. So I would want Void Bolt to be made available outside of Voidform. It cuts down time outside of Voidform pretty drastically. It makes the class feel better mechanically at all points of combat. It’s a quality of life feature. Please do give this to us. It’s just plain fun.

I won’t address the Void Bolt rank 2, as there are other posts that cover that better than I could.

Or… you just get rid of Voidform and not have to code all this in.

Turn Void Bolt and Void Eruption into a capstone talent, sans Voidform, for those who want it.

3

Bringing back a Shadow Orb system is the smarter option, but if we must fix Voidform & Insanity, then this is my pitch to eliminate all the recurring issues of the Voidform model.

  • All long ramps and stacking mechanics removed: Mass Hysteria, Voidform Haste, Lingering Insanity, Chorus of Insanity, Auspicious Spirits
  • Mind Blast now has 2 charges, baseline
  • Void Bolt Rank 2 deleted

Mastery: Madness redesigned:

  • For each point of Insanity you generate and spend, you have an accumulating 0.5% chance to spawn a Void Tendril. Void Tendril channels Mind Flay on your current target, damage is increased with Mastery.

Notes: Accumulating means if it doesn’t proc, the % chance rises (additive) until it does proc: you can get lucky and have multiple tendrils at the same time, but you can’t get unlucky, they are guaranteed eventually. Think of bad luck protection. When you cast Mind Flay or Mind Sear, Madness Tendrils will switch targets to assist you.

Shadowform redesigned:

  • No longer increases spell damage by 10%
  • Grants 15% haste

Voidform redesigned:

  • No longer increases spell damage by 20%
  • No longer grants stacking % haste
  • Voidform grants 30% haste (replaces Shadowform’s 15%)
  • Maintaining Voidform drains Insanity at 5 Insanity per second (no acceleration)
  • While in Voidform your spells no longer increase your Insanity
  • Insanity generated during Voidform instead multiplies spell damage (1 + Insanity) * Spell Damage

Shadow Word Void redesigned: Deals 20% more damage than Mind Blast per cast, generates double Insanity on critical strikes (Whispers of the Damned azerite), does not grant an additional charge (this is now baseline, see top)

Auspicious Spirits Talent removed, replaced with:

  • Face Melter - New Talent - Mind Flay increases your Mastery proc chance by 5% per tick

Lingering Insanity removed, replaced with:

  • Tendrils from Beyond - New Talent - While in Voidform, your mastery proc chance is doubled from 0.5% per Insanity to 1% per Insanity interaction (both generate and spend)

Death and Madness redesigned: Shadow Word: Death can now be cast on targets above 80% health, and below 35% health

Void Torrent redesigned: When Voidform ends, your next Mind Flay becomes Void Torrent, dealing increased damage and generating lots of Insanity

Surrender To Madness redesigned: 3m cooldown, 30s duration. Allows you to cast while moving. Marks a single target for death, while a target is marked you generate 50% more Insanity from all sources. If the target dies during those 30 seconds, you retain increased insanity generation for up to 45 seconds (from cast), from all sources. If the target survives for 30 seconds, you die. Horribly.

2 Likes
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I feel like Surrender to Madness had it’s time but that has long passed and it is time to go. An ability that has the potential to kill you will only ever exist as “so strong it has to be taken or weak enough that it isn’t worth the risk”. While it might be possible to repurpose S2M as a M+ talent, the ability to cast while moving will always lend itself to longer segments with heavy movement so I’m coming from a mainly raiding-focused perspective with any of my criticism for S2M.

It wasn’t entirely clear to me if you meant that successfully killing the target would always result in a full 45 seconds of insanity increase and being able to cast while moving or if by “up to” you meant it would last 15 additional seconds after whenever that target died (making the total cap “up to 45”). I feel like either way it worked would feel cheap to me and not allow the player to “perfectly” play the talent because the optimal usage would either be too easy or too difficult. The first would make it too easy, where the best use of S2M would be right before an add dies so you can enjoy your 45 seconds of good rotation for 0 risk. The second option makes it too hard to get close to the full 45 seconds without risking death, because if you used it on a target that died too quickly, then you lose precious time of the buff and you have to always try to stretch the cast as best as you can to make the most of it’s strength without dying each time.

The talent was cool thematically when Shadow Priest was reworked, but in the end, a talent that either lets the player do the “correct” amount of damage if they play it optimally or kills them if they don’t just isn’t fun for an extended period of time. Every other DPS cooldown in the game can be boiled down to “use it correctly or your damage isn’t as good as it could be” but S2M is the only one that ends up being “play this perfectly or else your damage will be much lower than it should be because you died before the fight ended”.

This isn’t meant to be an insult to your suggested fix of the ability, I know your were suggesting this under the assumption of “no major revamp” and and you were trying to come up with something that could work for S2M. I just really, really have come to dislike S2M and just want it gone :frowning:

I do really like your suggestion for the Mastery and Void Torrent changes though! It would be very nice to have Void Tendrils help us once again!

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If you apply your suggestion to an orb system i would be so hyped for next expansion might even play live until it releases but rather than tendril we get Asupicous spirits as our mastery

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First for clarity, 30 seconds is the minimum duration, 45 seconds is the maximum duration. If you kill the target 20 seconds into the cooldown, the buff will last 35 seconds (20+15 > 30).

Also keep in mind because of the proposed change to how Insanity generation works during Voidform, it’s a +50% damage buff to Insanity generating spells during that time, which is pretty crazy. Your Voidform will end during it though, since I also made Voidform have a fixed duration - but then you will get back in quickly.

That said, yes absolutely - I only proposed a new version of S2M because it’s very clear they won’t just delete it. This is the 6th (7th?) version of S2M in only two expansions, which makes it the most reworked spell in WoW history to my knowledge.

All versions of S2M have the same inherent problem, ‘fatal risk, high reward’ is not balanced.