It’s so nice to see everyone coming together and being nice to each other now despite out unified frustration on the class. And I get there are a few of us that like shadow as it is, but get this, we are going into a new expansion, we are supposed to be gotten better, are classes are supposed to be evolving. So many other specs got stuff added to them, not just borrowed power. Even if shadow was unifiedly good now, we still deserve something considerably new and cool like everyone else. Leaving legion, we had stuff TAKEN away from us. And for those of us that played before legion, we had EVERYTHING taken from us. If we go into shadowlands with the exact same kit and a bonus spell that doesn’t work the way it was intended and against out playstyle, then we are going into ANOTHER expansion with stuff being taken away because we are losing borrowed power via essences and azerite AGAIN. This is why we need to keep posting feed back into the beta. Because weather you like voidform as is, want voidform as a cool down, or (like me) want to see a return of shadow orbs, we all as paying customers who enjoy this spec, this class, and this game DESERVE the feeling of going into a new expansion feeling like we are gaining something rather than having something taken away again. I am sad shadow waznt mentioned, but I am confident something will be done, because if I wasnt confident or hopeful, I’d just delete my priest now and play something else.
You always mention “legion” shadow, what do you mean by that? There have been three totally different playstyles during legion
The 7.0 to 7.1.5 Shadowpriests? When Voidbolt refreshed DoTs on a single target, and LI 8 seconds? And when S2M pretty much dominated everything?
The nighthold to mid-tomb gameplay, where you essentially had one big VF every two minutes with PI?
Or the one minute cycle? (i personally think the one minute cycle had too many issues, being highly suceptible to encounter mechanics, the weird state of losing haste for the first 30 seconds of VF…)
You have three vastly different playstyles, with only one common denominator: speed.
Over the course of it’s existence never had real consistent gameplay: From 7.0 to 7.1.5 to 7.2/3 to 8.0 to 8.2/8.3 to 9.0 (= 8.0) all played vastly different. That’s as broken of a spec you can have.
Shadow does good damage in M+. Not sure why some people are saying otherwise. Some people say that shadow only does good “in long raid fights or in chain pulling” as if that somehow leaves out M+. But chain pulling is literally most of M+ pulls at the 15 and above level.
Shadow does good damage if the environment scales for it to do good damage. It goes with M plus, word events, and raid activities. It’s a mechanical paradox: the more you outgear the ilevel bracket of said activity, the less of voidform you can use/extend.
As well, chain pulling is not the most popular activity in Mplus even above level 15. There are a lot of things to prevent that:
Affix combinations
Travel time between packs
Healer/tank cds/mana availability
Voidform falls short of anything outside of these situations. Since voidform can be useful when the content scales with you, take a 475 priest and a 475 of any other class to two dungeons: a 15 and a 5. Both will retain their dps at 80k to 100k at level 15. However, put the 475 priest and the same 475 dps in a 5 and the latter will most likely retain their 80k to 100k while the 475 priest’s dps will drop significantly…almost to the point where their numbers are no different from a 450 geared priest.
This is a a clear indication of where it falls short. Progression is important in any game. However, if content has to perpetually scale with you in order for a mechanic to be useful, then you won’t feel powerful. Granted, you will feel powerful in other ways, but it won’t be because of voidform.
Also DPS cooldowns. People wanna combine packs, not so much chain them, which means tanks spend a solid 10-15 seconds actually grabbing everything. In some cases you spend this time out of line of sight (Waycrest) or just waiting for the tank to get back (Tol Dagor)
I’ve dropped chorus almost completely in mythic plus now because of all this, and sure the damage is “Kind of” there in that I’m able to sustain across a dungeon in the same way a hunter is. I’m still lacking a solid interrupt, passive survivability, and valuable utility in keys which other classes also bring.
How would you fix shadow getting weaker in a given period of time as gear levels increase? Voidform is 3x longer in 8.3 than it was in 8.0, yet because ultimately everything has to be tuned we’re relatively no stronger, we just have to wait longer, jump through more hoops to get there, and have more opportunity to not get there at all for whatever reason, whilst also being significantly worse in those initial 20 seconds relative to our total output than we ever were.
Is feeling like you’re getting stronger worth more than actually getting stronger, or even getting relatively weaker?
This is a necessary evil of Voidform design, but it can still be mitigated. Here are a few ways to mitigate this pain point:
- Put more power budget into baseline Voidform, thereby making any increase in stacks less powerful relatively
- Make Voidform potential lengths shorter so that the average power of Voidform shifts slightly over an expansion
- Make Voidform’s scaling not exponential so that increasing duration has a lower damage increase than what we have experienced in previous expansions
I just don’t feel this problem the way you do in game. I feel the opposite; I feel growth through a slightly longer VF and more haste; so I feel stronger. Are we weaker in the first 15 or whatever seconds relative to other classes? sure…but that doesn’t bother me as I don’t focus on that nor care nor expect a dot class to have front loaded dmg so my thoughts don’t dwell or hang there.
I’ve mention allot lately that I think people really keep judging voidform too much under the effects of mass hysteria or COI/corruption. Corruption is broken; VERY BROKEN. We were never supposed to reach stats we are at right now nor should blizzard fix problems that came up over that issue. 8.2 I felt was ok-ish EVEN WITH COI; even in the context you are saying- it’s so minor and barely there when the game isn’t screwed up really bad by external systems…corruption being the biggest culprit lately but the ramp further amplifed by COI. All that is gone…go back to what we have baseline rather than hyper focusing on what ‘systems’ did to the spec.
I don’t want what blizz did in BFA…they over/double-corrected problems.
Our feedback should be based on the naked spec; and your focus is way too much about what borrowed power did to bring it to levels of pain for you.
I feel 8.0-8.2 it was ideal/good; would have been WAY BETTER without COI making ramp effects worse; so if COI is gone VF length during these periods was on-target imo
I didn’t play when Spriest had shadow orbs but from everything I’ve researched about it I’d be happy to have them back if it opened up the same sort of varied viable playstyles it did in WoD.
That being said, I think if they fixed naked void form, perhaps by doing some very obvious things like giving shadow word void, lingering insanity and legacy of the void baseline, then void form would at least have some baseline benefit to being extended. Those talents rows would be unshackled and hopefully given something interesting.
If void form is staying, I think those three talents baseline is the minimum that would need to be done for it to be okay.
What is worrying is that other specs and classes with similar issues have had some high impact changes and multiple iterations, while shadow priest, windwalker and survival hunter are for some reason the specs blizzard pretends do not exist.
#RemoveVoidform
So you are ok with getting relatively weaker in order to feel stronger. Ok.
I believe there is an acceptable tolerance to this when it’s not blown out of control with borrowed power systems playing on that which I already mentioned.
When goods are produced in manufacturing they cannot make anything work physically in this world without a +/- tolerance for specifications/dimensions. Why would the virtual design world be any different?
It’s not black and white to me. I believe there is SOME give/take required
Actually I feel the need to restate my initial point because on re reading I’ve either quoted the wrong section or you’ve misinterpreted me.
That was not what I was concerned by. I was concerned by the fact that I am relatively weaker in the first 15 seconds, compared to MYSELF at the start of the expansion. Shadow is never going to frontload or burst like the burstier dps, that is absolutely fine, it never has and never should do because sustain damage and lack of cooldown reliance are unique and interesting for shadow.
But the fact that as voidform gets longer, I am relatively getting weaker, is utterly baffling and indefensible to me. If you took uldir shadow’s stat values, drain, and mechanics, and scaled them up so their output was equal to 8.3 shadow, the spec would be better at everything (Sans no beam for M+) than its 8.3 counterpart. That makes no sense.
My point is without COI/corruption or mass hysteria before that you would not FEEL this virtually AT ALL. That is the tolerance I’m talking about. You are hyper focused on a problem that is blown out of proportion by borrowed power.
Did you not see my rat poop in coffee example? Should we stop drinking and loving coffee?
I was perfectly happy drinking tea before my tea was taken from me, replaced with coffee, and a rat pooped in it, but that’s besides the point.
You consider BFA voidform at base to be neutered, and I agree, except in order for what I’ve described to not happen, either voidform stacks have to have a negligible impact on performance, or insanity drain has to be engineered in such a way that stat progression across an expansion barely extends it.
Our stacks didn’t go crazy until 8.3 which was triple systems of crap on top; I think the drain is fine. And with COI gone VF already is negligible and frankly comes down to tuning more than design issues at that point. Do me a favor and try to entertain the thought I’m trying to offer. Try to forget your pain and think about it…what is the root issue- it’s borrowed power and bad tuning…and not voidform
p.s. sorry I don’t have a good analogy for tea I’m sure there is one tho
I mean… they went up by 50% by the end of 8.1.
Ramp as a damage concept and an unhealthy fixation on extension as the only meaningful or rewarding way to interact with voidform.
I agree with everything except lingering insanity. I think that effect should just be removed. It means we are balanced around raid encounters where we always have it active and during the opener on fights where it is not active we are essentially playing with -10% haste.
It’s not an ideal fix, but couldn’t they make it so our first void eruption when we’re out of combat costs no insanity and is instant cast? Shadow priest would have burst and get into void form fast for every pull. Would start pulls in mythic strong. And it wouldn’t overbalance us too much in sustained dps situations.
Could tune the numbers to compensate for any added dps.
Would this work?