We did it once on nzoth, and once on zaqul. But both fights had weird first phases where damage was nearly irrelevant due to either the nature of the phase or a damage stop.
It’s not common, nor is it worth doing a majority of the time.
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Did it feel skillful and enjoyable?
Because you could have that multiple times per encounter in my proposal. Rather than once every 2 expansions.
If add waves are spawning every 30 seconds, you would want to do 20 second Voidforms (60 insanity), so you can get a fresh Void Eruption on each new wave.
If you are single targeting a boss, you would want to enter a long voidform to maximize uptime since it’s more efficient.
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thats why were suggesting they change it back to shadow orbs because we already know it works and the majority of the priest community enjoyed it.
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Yes, but I don’t want to be doing this constantly. The boss gives me enough to think about; I like shadow is mostly a flow and gcd spammy spec of for the most part and don’t desire complexity on top of complexity
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I like shadow is mostly a flow and gcd spammy spec of for the most part and don’t desire complexity
Do these positions not feel like a contradiction?
I must be misunderstanding and I genuinely want to get your perspective here.
To me, the top quote says you want to have an impact through skill expression; to feel that your result is a product of your performance. The second statement, to me, suggests you don’t want the complexity necessary to have an impact.
Is it the illusion of having an impact, then?
I know I’m missing something.
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sounds like he’s saying void form looks cool and floating is fun…otherwise than that its just numbers
While I agree more player control would be healthy for Shadow, I fear static Voidforms would cause Voidform to be less engaging than now, since there is no immediate punishment for failing to cast spells.
Can’t we achieve the same desired behavior, i.e. controlling when we Voidform in encounters, by having a way to dump insanity while in Voidform, while retaining the things that make Voidform engaging?
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shadow gameplay today isn’t complex, it rewards consistent play, tight gcds and good movement. It’s simple, yet rewards skill- and provides feedback through it’s gameplay rather than a dps meter or alt tabbing into logs to see how you did.
I should add the pressure to keep pushing aganist VF ties all this to it’s reward structure and why It’s not something found elsewhere in the game. It feeds back into the actual fantasy of fighting against insanity. You FEEL shadow’s fantasy AND its performance though it’s ramping haste and pressure to hang on to that VF.
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Those are the usual concerns I hear, and my proposed Voidform fix solves both - we still look cool, we still float, we even still mash the same 2.5 buttons all fight.
Nyelle seems to have an additional fantasy though, and I’m trying to understand it: then I could revise my proposal to adapt it.
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also; as a ex-healer main I’ve always appreciated the fact that shadow seems to teach how to play a caster dps organically in the game without a meter which also seems to fit in a class with two healer specs. Healing historically is CONSTANT, the PRESSURE to keep people alive. Shadow’s design is a dps version of the same FEELING which is another thing I’ve appreciated and felt appropriate for a priest.
This isn’t HUGE point I make often but thought I’d give it a mention since you seem to want to redesign it.
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I can’t be convinced I dislike your proposal until I try it. I’m going to model it and get back to you.
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Would you be happy if VF stacks were just shortening your gcd and your voidbolt cooldown? You could unbind the frantic feeling from haste so that it doesn’t taint the damage of the rest of our spells and you don’t gain that much damage from pushing stacks. You would simply feel faster with very minor increases to your damage dealt, but you could feel faster every second for 50 seconds.
Thanks! Here’s the most recent pitch:
Keep in mind haste is multiplicative so giving us 30% flat haste in Voidform, plus 20% gear haste, should bring us to 1s GCDs even by the end of the first tier. It should feel just as fast as current Voidform.
Legion and 8.2+ VF plays with peak/avg 0.85 and sometimes 0.75
I have a weak aura and track it since BFA beta and knew we would have pacing issues from testing. That’s also the range where the current design feels best. Just sharing since you mentioned 1 sec gcd as being current VF gcd.
now; all that said I cannot claim to know what is appropriate for your new design
Thanks I think we’re really close to something here. So how do you feel this exactly?
Is it a weakaura on your screen that’s telling you how many stacks you reached?
Or a counter that says, “New High Score! 80 stacks! Your previous best was 78!”?
What I’m getting is that instead of saying, “Last week I did 100K dps on this boss, this week I did 105K!”, you want a more customized metric for success.
It would still need to be a quantity, like “80 stacks”, right?
By contrast, we could do a grading system, “S Tier!” (League), “Stylish!” (Devil May Cry), but I’m guessing that feels cheap?
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I could play without any UI and tell how long I held my VF and my gameplay made that happen. The ramping haste looping into higher drain makes this a frantic and increasing more difficult thing; so these two things are connected.
It is an illusion of course; there is a practical limit on VF length and it’s design to make you drop. But the design tricks the brain into it, tricks you into caring in real time. Tricks you into trying harder.
It’s not about numbers or a score, it’s a feeling. The feeling is/must be tied to a number at the end of the day…or it doesn’t matter.
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I’ll have to think about that one for a bit, I’m sure there is a way to maintain that feeling of accomplishment without having a 2 Voidform ramp.
Voidform ramp has been greatly exaggerated by mass hysteria and COI+corruption, perhaps really consider naked voidform maybe isn’t a true culprit of taking the ramp to unacceptable levels. Like there’s rat poop in coffee…but people still drink and enjoy it; provided the levels are within acceptable limits. (gross example but hopefully can demonstrate the point)
Also; the harsh reality is the fastest and most reliable way to get a spec that’s fun baseline and make the most people happy is to try and tweak what we have rather than overhauling it. You seem to have a great mind; maybe try to think about how to polish the current version in smaller ways to solve it’s pitfalls so we can get the best version we can for 9.0. a rework…even if you can solve it would be too much time/resource investment for anyone to enjoy by shadowland’s release.
One of the things bothering me lately is why breath of the dying and iris beam haven’t solved allot of the issues people have with open world content or mythic+ or even a fight with fast dying adds. I keep getting this itching feeling that getting a talent with the iris beam (rebranded as vex beam) and considerations on how much overlap breath of the dying major is like sw:death-
Naked Voidform feels pretty terrible though without all the long ramping mechanics, but the point is taken: without quite so many ramps, the ones that exist wouldn’t draw such ire.
I figured my Voidform design was more of a tweaked Voidform, rather than a rework. If they are willing to do a full rework, I have a Shadow Orb pitch kicking around.
Breath of the Dying major is definitely how Shadow Word: Death should work. Getting Focusing Iris as a talent would be very cool too. That said, Shadow Crash functionally is decent burst AOE damage - and nobody likes it as a talent.
The difference between Focusing Iris and Shadow Crash is that Crash doesn’t kill trash, and Iris does. If the talent, whatever it is, doesn’t actually kill things - then we’re trapped back at DoTting them up, and that would suck. Which means, a Focusing Iris talent would need to have a decent cooldown - maybe not 90 seconds, but at least 60 seconds to ensure it actually kills trash in a single channel.
On a different note, Ryeshot made a sweet Voidform test for my model! 
He also has his own version which is very interesting too, we’re playing with that one now.
https://voidform-optimizer.com/
Go to Import/Export settings at the top, and switch it to Ryeshot’s Shadowlands, or Yvaelle’s Shadowlands, to give them a try.
I played it and like…it feelsbadman. like you are stuck in a cookie cutter VF battle you are definitely losing and have zero control over.
Current voidform makes you WANT to fight against losing it and earn your big dam (it’s motivating). Your design makes you want to give up and walkaway because there’s nothing you can do. There can be big numbers behind it; but I don’t feel my performance or see it. It lost the feedback which is unique to voidform and make it compelling over other specs in the game.
(sorry…I do appreciate you trying tho)
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