Remove voidform

Classes Priest
43

Perhaps this is a matter of opinion. Damage numbers are easily tuned and changed but gameplay is a much more complex matter. Something that is fun to play but does low damage can be fixed in a day. Something that is un-fun to play but does massive damage, cannot.

If doing trucks of damage is what makes a spec/class fun for you, then you do you. I think damage dealt is a silly measure of fun.

I’m afraid my point might have been missed. I’m not suggesting damage is irrelevant. I’m suggesting the relevance, again, is in the gameplay. Fast-paced Voidforms are fun, slow ones are not.

Obviously, the damage needs to be competitive. What I suggested above is the method by which Voidform deals its damage.

2 Likes
44

the damage needs to be competitive.

You’re missing the point. The damage cannot be balanced to be competitive given the design drawbacks the spec currently is based upon.

From its very most basic idea, to the clear intent of the developers, the design for Voidform has involved very long ramps, and positive feedback loops.

The way the model is intended to function is that Shadow has no burst cooldowns, and multiple long ramping mechanics that take minutes for it to get going, but when it does get to full power it should do more damage than other specs who do not have those drawbacks.

The outcome should be that Shadow deals less damage than all other specs, on all fights which are shorter than the time it takes Shadow to fully ramp up, and then average out the ramp time. This describes ~95% of encounters in this game which are not raid bosses. This has always been true in Legion, BFA, and Shadowlands.

But, once fully ramped up - the upside of those long ramps should be that Shadow does more damage than every other spec in the game under those specific conditions: enough uninterrupted combat duration to fully ramp and average out.

That was the case in Emerald Nightmare when Voidform was originally implemented. Then it was nerfed, obviously, because it was unfair for Shadow to be the best raid boss DPS spec for all bosses - despite all the weaknesses borne in all other content.

Since they are unwilling to execute on the boon of this design (superlative boss DPS), they must remove the penalties associated with it: all the long ramps. That includes Mass Hysteria, Chorus of Insanity, Voidform Haste, Lingering Insanity, Shadowy Apparitions, Insanity decay acceleration, etc.

All of that must go.

They could keep Voidform the aesthetic spell. They could even keep the 2.5 button rotation - which I think is what you like about the spec currently (though personally I wish they wouldn’t).

But that’s a full redesign of the spec, while keeping the mechanic names the same. Asking for Shadow Orbs back seems like less of a burden on them, than asking them to give us something entirely fresh.

15 Likes
45

There is no resource managment. Resource managment would entail that you press your buttons based on the state of your resource. None of the buttons you mentioned are or were ever used based on your resource.

Memory of Lucid Dreams is about the only mechanic with a connection to the resource, but it’s usage condition is extremely simplified to “use at x stacks of Voidform”.

The ever increasing speed is currently broken due to LI.

Whenever LI works, it keeps your haste at a very consistent level all throughout the fight. You increase your speed once at the beginning for the reminder of the fight.
Whenever LI doesn’t work, you essentialy get the slow-part of Voidform, without ever getting to the exciting high speed parts, because fight length is too short.

Here you also run into the next dilemma: Every beginning of a fight the spec currently is not fun to play (for many people). Only once you are ramped up it is fun. The process you describe as being the “fun part” (=ramping up the speed) is the part of Voidform that is the least fun.

LI was also broken in Legion 7.3 with the one minute cycle. Your lowest point of haste was somewhere in the middle of a Voidform… For the first 30 seconds of each VF you were practically dropping a large junk of haste.

The “reward” you are praising here hasn’t worked properly for a very long time.

And again: A spec should be fun to play in it’s baseline state. “more fun” should at best be a minor reward for playing your spec properly.

9 Likes
46

Yikes. How rude. Very unbecoming.

1 Like
47

really? If you gonna quote me quote the whole thing please…

but you have read the whole quote and know what I’m talking about.

It’s so amusing how you are the first to cry “You are misquoting me and misconstruing my words” yet here we are…hypocrisy much?

good god you are bitter…get well soon. gods haste.

1 Like
48

The main reason i don’t like my priest is voidform, it fells awful and not thematic.

To me priests in wow were never void users with old gods shenanigans, there is no more “shadow”, i can’t be a troll witch doctor, or a tauren spirit walker, cause everything is tied now with the void and their precious void lore

I know shadow is a form of void magic, but now is too much, might as well just rename it to void priest or something like that.

mechanically, i hate anything that forces you enter in a “mode”, hate demon form in demonology, hate void form the same

11 Likes
49

As much as I hate how void form functions, its complete inflexibility with no way to turn up the heat with damage, with the longest ramp in the game without a substantial payoff, its not going anywhere.

The amount of time and work it would take to rework shadow without void form just isn’t feasible. You’re talking months of dev time which they simply do not have now.

The best we can hope for is some adjustments to Void Form. Ideally, a better relegated Void Form where you have more control of your damage and actual talent choice. Talents are just completely borked for shadow because of Void Form’s design being so heavily reliant on traits to smooth out the gameplay and extend void forms.

50

Must be fun being contrary. But sure, if we assume that these statistics are accurate: are you suggesting that Blizz will make things worse because ‘players made them do it’?

If you’re looking for a lengthy arguement against void form, there are so many made already. Videos too, talking about how priests are shaping up to look like one of the worst classes in shadowlands. Not every post needs to hand hold ya though a general known problem with shadow priests.

But go off on that 50/50 statistic. I’m sure everyone who has had something to criticize are just angry gamers with unfounded experiences or reviews.
Instead of throwing out arbitrary numbers, try arguing ‘why’ you want voidform to stay instead of ‘It could be worse’.

7 Likes
51

I think we’re talking about different things. To me, resource management in this context means the buttons you press to alter the delta (rate of change) of insanity during Voidform.

In Voidform, if you use any of the above mechanics/abilities I listed, you’ll increase the duration you stay in Voidform. Dispersion and Void Torrent pause your resource loss, Void Bolt means you don’t have to recast your DoTs on single target giving more room for Mind Flay ticks to bump your insanity while Shadowfiend passively adds insanity to keep you in Voidform longer. You already explained MoLD well.

Most of what you said here I agree with. My only quibble is that LI doesn’t break the “increasing speed” reward, it merely changes where and when in the rotation you get those rewards. With LI, the reward is a plateau after Voidform rather than the Voidform itself. However, staying in Voidform as long as possible is still tied to how powerful that LI is. The reward is still there, it’s just shifted into a different place.

Agree 100%. The tuning on Voidform damage/haste/scaling/talents has been broken for a long time. The reward doesn’t work like it should/did. The entire point of my original post was that just because the tuning of Voidform is off, doesn’t mean it is a bad concept - in fact, I think it’s quite fun.

It sounded like you enjoyed Voidform too, when it was tuned correctly.

Shouldn’t the level of reward be linked to the difficulty of play? We both agree Shadow Priests have to “work” harder to be competitive with other classes. Shouldn’t that additional effort come with an equivalent reward?

52

Make a 4th spec, name it void, give it voidform, revert shadow to prelegion.

Done.

8 Likes
53

Yes, that used to exist in legion. Then basically every progression guild in the game stacked shadow priests.

This formula will not ever work in this game.

6 Likes
54

If “rewards” only meant damage, I’d agree with you. Personally, I’d be fine with Shadow Priests doing similar damage for the extra work for the chance to play a spec that feels like it’s on 2x speed because Voidform grants massive haste.

55

Haste always pushes the limits of blizzards netcode for wow, as well YYMV with regards to connection. The rotation in Nyalotha very often just sort of “devolves” into a buttony mush because the games just not designed to accurately keep track of things / handle inputs at that speed.

8 Likes
56

As wonderful as that would be it will probably never happen. They would have to add so many things to the game to do that. Legion artifact weapons for example.

57

If they are not going to remove void form, then make it a damage CD. But really they just need to revert us back to before legion. Void form was never asked for and its never really worked out well since we got it. So please just scrap it.

8 Likes
58

That’s an easy one to solve, both specs use Xal’atath.

59

#removevoidform

5 Likes
60

#removevoidform

5 Likes
61

WOTLK Shadow Priest was best. Anyone who likes this sh*t show now is either new or Hard R

9 Likes
62

#Removevoidform
The current class plays like a 3 leg dog runs.
The long ramp up makes anything but raiding difficult. I personally do not raid.
All my other classes get chore quests done faster.
It looks like the smart thing to do is just retire my priests.
Blizz doesn’t care.

5 Likes