So we’re nearing DF launch and I’ve seen plenty of complaints regarding Shadow’s lack of direction, I thought it’d be fun to just mess around in the theoretical design space of what Shadow could be and what people want it to be. I’ve had one idea in my back pocket for a while, but just go nuts, this isn’t a thread about my idea, I’ve just had a lot of fun thinking this over. Get as weird as you want, as minimal as you want. I’m going whole hog, since I just find that fun.
Back pre-SL, I was playing a lot of Monster Hunter and I mostly used Hunting Horn, cause if you’re gonna fight a fire-breathing T-Rex, you may as well fight them with a saxophone. For those not familiar, performing certain attacks with a Hunting Horn would add notes to a musical scale, playing notes in a specific order would create a song which gets stored in the weapon and consumed when you do a performance, that being a separate heavy attack that’s stronger if you’ve stored more songs. There’s also the secondary aspect of the songs being group buffs, but that’s not important.
Working that into WoW wouldn’t be too hard, and there’s a lot of directions you could take it. Personally, I think an interesting interpretation of it would be a kind of ‘build-your-spender’ mechanic. You have a number of abilities that generate a unique resource, and you have a single spender that spends that resource and adds additional effects based on the specific resources spent. In my world, it’d look something like this:
Dark Sermon - Deal moderate shadow damage and consume up to 3 Dark Words. For each Dark Word consumed, deal additional shadow damage and trigger an additional effect.
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Shadow Word: Pain - Costs X Insanity. Deals shadow damage over time.
- Sermon: Dark Word of Pain - Afflicts the target with Delusions, causing your Mind Blast and Shadow Words to summon Shadowy Apparitions, dealing damage to the target.
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Shadow Word: Death - Costs X Insanity. Deals shadow damage.
- Sermon: Dark Word of Death - Greatly increase the damage and insanity generation of your next Mind Blast.
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Shadow Word: Madness - Costs X Insanity. Deals minor shadow damage to all nearby targets and gain Maddening Spell, causing your next Vampiric Touch or Mind Blast spell to strike all nearby targets for reduced damage.
- Sermon: Dark Word of Madness - Dark Sermon strikes all nearby targets for reduced damage.
Words would stack with themselves in some fashion (ex. Pain would increase the number of apparitions summoned, Death would further increase damage/insanity generation, Madness would reduce the damage penalty or something) and with each other (so if you perform a sermon with Pain + Madness, every mob hit would also get Delusions, so more ghosts). I also envision it as a First In First Out system, so if you’ve got a full 3 Words stocked and cast a 4th, the first word in the sequence would get removed and everything else gets pushed down the line.
As far as Insanity itself is concerned, I would remove insanity generation from Flay to just have a passive generation rate with MB still providing its own chunks. VT could also provide a trickle of Insanity, such that SW:M could spread it for more resources in AoE. I’ve been imagining the Words costing about 30 Insanity each (so from full you can drop 3 words and a Dark Sermon from the jump) and the average Insanity generation before haste should probably be something like 5-6/s, so one word every 5-6 seconds, a full 3-word Dark Sermon every 15-18s.
Mechanically, I think it hits a nice balance of complexity versus activity. Assembling a Sermon is potentially complicated, but the structure of it gives you time to think about how you want to do that. You don’t have to spend Insanity/Words as soon as they come in, you’ve got some wiggle room. There’s a danger of the playstyle becoming centered around pooling for burst (like holding a full Sermon until near full Insanity, then going Sermon-Word-Word-Word-Sermon), but I think that can be mitigated through talents and making a conscious choice in the design phase to not tie short duration damage buffs to Sermon. I think pooling is fine in moderation, but too much focus on it and it turns into Sub.
Thematically, I think it’s neat that this version of Shadow would value its Shadow Words in a way similar to how Holy values its Holy Words, but as a literal dark reflection. It’s still uniquely Shadow in tone, but it’s now tied back more strongly to what it means to be a Priest. Not only do the dark forces you worship (or at least take power from) have a corrupting influence, causing the power they grant you to have lingering, ‘unexpected’ consequences, but you channel that power in a more specific way than just slangin’ shadow-stuff.
There’s a lot of room to experiment mechanically and the flavor provides a lot of direction. You can add new Words that offer different bonuses, give unique buffs for unique Sermons, or just add options to spruce up the filler time. I won’t go as far as building a whole talent tree, but I can at least pitch some talent concepts (just don’t take any of the numbers seriously):
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Shadow Word: Void - 3m CD. Costs 30 Insanity. Deals heavy AoE damage.
- Sermon: The Void - You enter Voidform for 8 seconds, gaining 5% haste and increasing the Insanity cost of all Shadow Words by 5. While in Voidform, performing a Dark Sermon refreshes Voidform’s duration, grants an additional 5% haste and increases the Insanity cost of all Shadow Words by an additional 5.
- Chorus of Insanity (alternative to SW:V) - 2m CD. For 15 seconds, performing a Dark Sermon will only consume the first Word in the sequence. (ex. DS with Pain-Death-Death would become Death-Death after cast)
- Dogma - 45s CD. Repeat your last Dark Sermon.
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Shadow Word: Frenzy - 10 Insanity. Deal low Shadow damage. Your next Dark Sermon can be cast while moving.
- Sermon: Dark Word of Frenzy - Allow your next spell cast to be cast while moving.
- The Final Word - The last Word in a Dark Sermon is triggered twice OR When you perform a Dark Sermon you have a chance to not consume the final Word.
- Ghastly Exhortation - Dark Sermon refreshes Vampiric Touch when it damages an enemy.
And for fun, instead of idols, how about quotes from the big four Old Gods? That none of them overlap is by design, the Old Gods hated each other and they’re not about to slip anyone any power if another one’s giving them a hand. Pretty much all of these would need an ICD, but whatever. I’m writing these for fun, balance comes later.
- Your Heart Will Explode (C’thun) - When you perform a Dark Sermon containing three Words of Death, a Tentacle of C’thun erupts from your target’s chest, dealing damage and attacking nearby targets for a few seconds.
- All Will Fade (Yogg-Saron) - When you perform a Dark Sermon containing only a single Word of Pain, Delusions become Reality. Shadowy Apparitions will mimic your spell casts as they float towards the target.
- The Way Opens (N’zoth) - When you perform a Dark Sermon containing three, unique Words, a portal to Ny’alotha opens. Nearby enemies are pulled toward the portal and briefly mind controlled when they enter it.
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The Cost of Greatness (Y’shaarj) - Gain Sha Word: Hatred, which deals minor Shadow damage and counts as three Words for a Sermon (i.e. it cannot be cast with any other Word).
- Sermon: Sha - Your Sha Word is triggered again, then upgraded to a new Sha Word, up to Pride. Each new word deals more damage and has some new secondary effect, the intent being it ‘costs’ damage at the start but pays off later.
And that’s about what I got. Was fun writing all that. Interested to see what other people have in mind.