just dropping by to add my own perspective. because i think its quite different from the general perspective one often gets here. but i can just make a list of a few points and that might make it easier for others to see where they agree or disagree with me:
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shadow apparitions are cool. if this was our AoE instead of psychic link, i wouldn’t mind, so i can say i agree with some others on the possibility of this
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easy DoT application with shadowcrash, possibly easiest DoT application for any caster (mainly thinking boomkins and aff locks here), yet bizarrely worse than say Arms Warrior (Warbreaker + Thunderclap + Dragon Roar) or Unholy Death Knight, making it clear with just a few minutes of thinking that the best DoT gameplay in the game belongs to easy to play melee classes who also tend to receive the most Legendaries, and the fewest heavy handed nerfs.
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i don’t hate SW:death proc gameplay like perhaps some others do, in fact it reminds me of free execute procs on my warrior, but the backlash damage is something no other spec has to deal with. i get the historical lore issue with this, but at the same time it feels incredibly bad that the more dps you do, the more likely you are to die in combat due to self owns, and that honestly seems like a failure of game design by this point in time.
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old god themed capstones are interesting conceptually, but so poorly implemented in practice that its no wonder people are clamoring for yet another shadow priest re-work (for this and many other reasons).
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i agree mind bender is pretty terrible. its not fun. i’d rather have some permanent pet honestly, something intimidating like the Faceless One summoned by Idol of Yogg-Saron (altho its called Thing from Beyond there, whatever). demo lock proves that a permanent pet can be both cool and still do decent damage, and honestly i’d prefer a shadow tree that was more like a pet vs no pet choice for gameplay, rather than shadow vs void, which we don’t even really have right now.
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losing new mind sear was a horrible mistake, and it is clear in retrospect that forcing everyone to use psychic link, instead of GIVING PLAYERS THE CHOICE to use mind sear or psychic link, has just limited priest to appeal to a much narrower audience now, and that this design decision must have been made on the basis of who currently has blizz’s ear on discord right now, and it is sad that people with such a lack of imagination are the ones exerting so much influence on the direction of shadow priest currently. people who play this game, any class and spec, deserve better than what shadow priests have received during dragonflight.
look no further than the paladin and demon hunter reworks to see changes that are generally all good, or far more positive than negative, its just night and day compared to the awful treatment shadow priest has received. arguably even disc and holy priest have been treated better.
i never liked the old mind sear much but the newer one, which channeled much faster, and allowed insanity to be expended strategically, and the random procs which gave you a full one sometimes, this all dramatically changed how shadow AoE felt to play, and was such a huge improvement, its mind boggling how quickly the devs gave up on that, its like they could not see what they had on their hands there, and just threw it away, and now we are left with something much more bland. boring passive AoE.
the biggest choice now in the shadow tree is void form or direct damage. direct damage is only competitive now due to the current tier set bonuses of amirdrassil. every other season of DF, void form has been the only real choice, meaning then, and now, there’s no real choice at all, the balance is completely out of whack, and your tier set decides what you have to play. so now i am running dark ascension and sw: death procs because i have to, not because its a preferred gameplay choice.
which is not the same as saying i hate sw:death proc style and would prefer void form, i’m just saying that generally speaking when your talent choices are dictated by whatever current tier sets are, or really bad tuning, or short-sighted and misguided devs thinking that “forcing players out of their comfort zone is clever,” that’s not ever going to be the kind of game design that creates a legacy people look back fondly on.
it just means those devs are selfish, and whatever the status quo in the game is, is food for thought for the next generation of games, something to give other people ideas on how it can be done better, because the way things are going, its clearly not WoW that’s going to allow players to make the choices they want to make, in order to enjoy the game the most.
or at very least, not shadow priest as it is right now. in fact you can look and see at the havoc DH rework they tried very hard to make sure the tuning of momentum and non-momentum playstyles was very close in damage, so that players could play whatever style they wanted.
if i’m just trying to say something positive about how shadow is now, for the current tier, i will say that dark asc + mindbender combo being 1 min cds, feels good to play with. i really like 1 min dps cooldowns. there’s pretty few classes that have this. havoc has ~40 sec with eyebeam and essence break. demo lock can have 1 min tyrants if it wants. but i just hate mindbender so much, it doesn’t feel like a shadow thing or a void thing, its just this dumb brain sucking vaguely cthulu reminiscent creature, that as far as i can tell has no real connection to what a shadow priest is, like why is it even there.
give me my own miniature c’thun, i’d at least be happy with that, an eye blasting a red laser beam of death, some real old god power up in here, that’s what shadow priests would like IMO if we’re going to do the old god route for capstones
