That was my argument from the beginning.
The choice of gameplay, then blizzard can balance around it.
But you were against this.
I would like to know your opinion on this hypothetical.
If Voidform were to be changed to be usable in all content in the game, would you still have a problem with it? If so, what would those problems be? What about 90% of content, 80%, when it is insufferable for you?
I’m not against this at all. Your opinion of desired gameplay differs from mine, that is what I disagree with.
Why is that a problem?
Why cant the spec revolve around “insanity” and not “Void Form”?
Why do you think they spec should be all focused around Void Form? That I don’t understand the need. In fact, I think that’s the reason the spec is in such dire situation that it finds itself in. We need to break off Void Form as a gameplay changing talent, not a core abilty.
2 Likes
Because I do not think it’s something blizzard are willing or capable of doing. Maybe it was on the table in early alpha, despite voidforms removal never being on the table at all, beta is in two days.
Regardless of my current position you can bet in 9.2 or whatever when bliz start internally looking at their plans for 10.0 I will firmly support removal, segmentation, or whatever of voidform. I still don’t think the mechanic had any place existing in the first place.
Void Form in its current form being used in raids, sure fine I don’t mind a change in the norm for those situations. Not ideal but I’ll bear it because it “works”.
Void Form in other areas in that situations where your moving alot and jumping in and out of combat really quickly then Void Form in its current situation is not something I want to see.
If lets say you make a talent that changes Void Form to be a passive damage / resource buff w/e but obviously scaled down to passive numbers then i’m fine with it.
My issue is not able to use Void Form for 50% of the game because as soon as I get into it, its being wasted as I am not able to fight anything cause its dead, or i’m silenced, or stunned or LOS etc. Then my Void Form time runs low fast and not only do I loose my damage buff, but I loose a mechanic of my spec which is Void Bolt.
I rather just give all that up for a passive damage buff.
Not something unlike edge of insanity.
1 Like
I think his point was if voidform could be made to work in that situation too, would you still hate it.
And my point was that it would have to meet that level of criteria that i laid out for it to not be hated by me. If they remove Void Form and put the power back into shadow form then i’m good. Obviously that wont happen. So instead, I would at least like a talent option that gives me that instead.
If your not thinking Void Form can exist as a talent, then give me a talent instead to opt out of Void Form.
Void Form simply will not work in that if you have to jump in and out of it and you have no control on the decaying nature of it then nope. It can’t work.
1 Like
You need to prove, or make a compelling argument, that it cannot work. All I am seeing are it cannot work based on unsupported assumptions.
I can’t understand how jumping in and out of Voidform causes it to not work. Is it unfun? Does it detract from the Voidform gameplay? Is jumping in and out a necessary way to play Voidform in the content it does not work in at the moment?
In order to create solutions, we first need to identify the fundamental pain points.
I’ve laid out numerous examples of why Void Form doesn’t work.
Here is a list I made.
- Any intermission phase of fights benefit all classes except for Priest because they have extra time that their DPS CD’s get to finish cooling down. Priest on the other hand, it just resets our ramp and we have to start all over again. Most times its resets right before we hit our max potential or just as we do.
Its like standing up for the first time and getting knocked down instantly while everyone else is running around having fun. - Any fights with movement causes Void Form to be reset at worse or cut severally short at best as any movement beyond a a single GCD causes the entire specs damage to plummet back down to zero and forced to start up again. This is because we can fit a GCD worth of instant cast Void Bolt. But everything else we need to hard cast in order to prolong the passive increasingly decaying nature of Insanity Drain and thus knock you out sooner then expected.
- Every GCD is used to build insanity be it to get into Void Form or to stay in Void form. Meaning if you use any priest utility spell (we have a lot) then you are punished for DPS efficiency for as not only does it cost a GCD but while in Void Form, it could cascade and cost you MASSIVE amounts of damage as it could lead to a short Void Form window and thus reset all your damage again.
- In PvP, as soon as you enter Void Form, you can easily be silenced, interrupted, feared, stunned and just any CC to force your Void Form to end prematurely and thus heavily cripple your damage potential and you loose access to half of your spec mechanics as for example, Void Bolt is only usable in Void Form. So you cant even cast some of your rotational abilities. This is really bad on Priest because we have no reliable way to Kite, CC, snare, Root etc. We are an easy target to tunnel into and shut down. So in doing so this flawed Void Form mechanic hit us massively when if you compare to Mage or Warlock, Mage can Kite and CC and blink and ice block out of CC. Locks can chain CC and get procs etc from being attacked. Priest get nothing but just have to face tank it.
- If your running a 5 man at the required gear level for the entire team, the priest will always be behind in meters because by the time he is able to start pumping numbers, the mobs are already dead by everyone else. So the priest looks bad by comparison and thus why it has a negative stigma.
And ill add another.
- Bloodlust / Heroism is popped often at beginning of fights when Priest needs to ramp up. By the time priest damage is going, lust is ended. So all the other classes got their on demand burst in, Shadow did not.
But personally the big reason It doesn’t work going in and out is that I have no control over what I want to do once i’m in Void Form or rather, other players and environments / situations dictate what I am able to do instead of me choosing what I want to do. Because of this fact, I cannot rely on Void Form as part of my gameplay.
3 Likes
I made this promise and I will hold true to it. Here it goes.
Shadowform and Voidform stacks are the only ramps that are necessary to Voidform’s design. Voidform stacks would not contribute to that much ramp if most of your power came from being in Voidform, instead of the stacks (examples of base power are Voidform’s spell damage aura, access to Void Bolt, Voidform base haste). Therefore the only ramp that is noticeable is Shadowform. If being unable to attack for some amount of time then entering Voidform from Shadowform within a tolerable amount of time were to exist, then ramp reset would be a non-issue.
The issue with ramp right now is 1) it takes an excessive amount of time to build it up 2) way too much of the power budget is at the end instead of being evenly spread. These being alleviated and Voidform existing are not mutually exclusive.
This is another concern with ramp. If having to leave Voidform only left you at, say 70% power, or the time to reach near-maximum power was reduced severely, is this such an issue? I think there should be some sort of punishment for failing to move properly in Voidform, but not the sort of excessive punishment we have experienced thus far.
I think the only utility spell we could use regularly that does not provide insanity is Shadow Mend. Maybe it should also generate the same amount of insanity as flay?
I believe there is a PvP talent for this, but baseline issues should not be fixed by talents so I will ignore its existence. I think, regrettably, that PvP is one scenario that Voidform cannot work in against a coordinated team. Thankfully we have Devouring Plague for this exact reason and I think it is the solution we need. You still have the choice to enter Voidform in PvP by means of the talent or if you are skillful enough to maintain it (like only entering when CC’s are DR’d), but you aren’t useless since you can still spend your resource and deal damage.
Again the concern here is ramp. Should Shadow be behind if a pack lasts less than 10sec? Probably, because that is how DoT specs work, ramp is inherent. The longevity of that ramp, however, can be altered. And should be for Voidform to ever be successful.
I remember doing Mythic+ in Uldir and Void Eruption hit so freaking hard, especially double with Dark Ascension. If a pack lasts long enough for the Priest to get into Voidform, due to requiring Void Eruption to get into Voidform, I do not think they should be so low on the meters anymore. And yet, in BfA we had damage transferred from Void Eruption to our DoTs via CoI/SA which brought… you guessed it: ramp.
Where is it written that Voidform, by its design, cannot benefit from Lust? In Nighthold when Voidform lengths were much shorter than now, we had pretty much full benefit. Why can’t we go back to that?
1 Like
You are trying to excuse / shoehorn in the “ramp” mechanic and try to make that passable. Cool for trying, but my core argument is…
Why do we need a ramp at all?
We didn’t have it for 10 years of the game. I see no reason we cant go back to that model. It worked then, it works for other classes now, it can work again.
Every single issue that I listed was not an issue before Void Form and I know in MoP our single target damage was lacking, but it WoD it was fine. This is why I want to return to a more WoD centric foundation and build and change from there
I would argue / question that you want ramping for??? what purpose? Why do you think “ramp” needs to be a part of shadow at all?
If you want “Ramp” then it should be a talent to opt into or a talent to opt out of. It should not be forced onto a spec that played completely different from its origins. If you want that, pick a new class or a new spec. Do not delete a previous version of a spec that many of us spent 10+ years playing for no reason other then for changes sake.
Its not fair that the ones that signed up for the spec years and years ago are told to deal with a new defining way to play your spec that is completely foreign and alien to what it was like when you started.
Now that that’s out of the way…
You may see that those “ramping” issues will either be “solved” or not really noticeable but I disagree whole heartedly and I don’t have any confidence in blizzard trying to make that work as we wouldn’t be in this mess if they thought about what they were doing between WoD and Legion to begin with.
6 Likes
Ramp is a necessary part of Voidform’s design. Now I believe people mistake what ramp means for what ramp has been in our experience.
Ramp simply means gaining damage over time until you reach a peak. Does it say anywhere that you need to start at zero, or the time it takes to reach the peak is one minute, or the gain from second to second needs to be exponential? No, and yet that is the only form of ramp we have experienced.
I don’t think ramp needs to be a part of Shadow, only that it is a necessary part of Voidform’s design, but I also do not think ramp is an inherently unhealthy damage pattern for the game.
Not when I made this character it wasn’t. I wonder if your love and attachment for Voidform is driven by aesthetics and and a thematic relationship with the overall being of your character.
6 Likes
Only a very small part of it.
The thing with Voidform ramping is it isn’t just ramping. It’s a weird mix of ramping+burn/bursting. STM would be pure ramping. But this cycle of entering and exiting Voidform causes us to have miniramp phases that if disrupted, dumpster our dps.
1 Like
It does not have to dumpster our dps. And the fact that it does is a problem.
Its current design yes. But it doesn’t have to be. It can be a DPS CD or a static buff for x amount that last for x seconds when you use Void Eruption etc.
I don’t like its current iteration, nor do I like the 2 examples I just gave, but those are “optional” directions Void Form can take.
Here are my gripe points.
-
Decaying nature: I don’t like the decaying nature of Void Form. It puts pressure on me to do x when I may want to do y and so I feel like I don’t have any agency on how I play my spec.
- With Pre Void Form design, I can choose to build up Orb’s and hold on to my burst for a bit and use some utility or set up burst targets. Then when I use y orbs, I have the option to use Mind Flay Insanity and burn the target down. Or I can use From Darkness comes Light and just follow up with w/e spell / proc I want be it DPS, Healing, Utility etc. I was not forced to tunnel and ignore my entire priest toolkit in order to prolong the decay and keep my DPS up.
I like to continue being a priest and drop in and out of shadow and pop off a flash heal, bubble, prom, SW:D bouncing prom, silence, mind spike burst down low health target, shackle, mind control, fear, grip etc. without any of those causing any more than a GCD interruption. In fact I can use those during my filler windows so my DPS doesn’t really take a hit. - I cant do the same with Void Form, any action I take that leads to a shorter Void Form means I have to play catch up even more and get further and further behind. You are constantly on edge and thus you start forgoing everything else that makes you a priest in the hopes of overcoming this endless decay that just starts up over and over again.
- With Pre Void Form design, I can choose to build up Orb’s and hold on to my burst for a bit and use some utility or set up burst targets. Then when I use y orbs, I have the option to use Mind Flay Insanity and burn the target down. Or I can use From Darkness comes Light and just follow up with w/e spell / proc I want be it DPS, Healing, Utility etc. I was not forced to tunnel and ignore my entire priest toolkit in order to prolong the decay and keep my DPS up.
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Tunneling: When you play with Void Form, you are basically tunneling every bit of focus in pushing a boulder up a hill and at any moment if you make 1 wrong move or if someone or something else steps in and forces you to take an inaction, that boulder starts rolling back down to the bottom and you have to start pushing it up again. There is no pay off of reaching the top and letting it roll down the other side. Its constantly pushing up and up and up until the fight is over or it eventually rolls back down and you have to start again.
That is not fun gameplay, that is frustrating and if you like it then fine, talent to opt in or opt out should be given. It should not be forced. That feeling did not exist prior to Void Form. You always knew what your Devouring Plague was going to do and can plan around it. You knew that if you did XYZ then the outcome will be relativity the same.
I don’t like playing a slot machine each time I go into Void Form and hope for big money. I want to play poker and calculate my odds based on the situation and with the cards in my hand. -
Mechanical shifts: I don’t like the fact that I don’t have access to abilities 1/2 the time. I don’t like that Void Bolt is a dead button when I have below enough insanity to go into Void Form and then once I use it and go into Void Form, its now a spammable ability that I need to mash ASAP faster and faster. I hate that I have to keybind it to a comfortable button but then its useless to press 1/2 the time. With devouring plague, I didn’t press as often as my rotational abilities but once I had to press it, it was press and forget until next time which would be a bit later. It wouldn’t become a spammable ability unless maybe an AS build with lots of targets and lots of crit. which at that point I knew and can expect that to which I would change my keybind for that build.
So yea,
- Decaying nature out of my control and thus feels awful when its wasted and there is nothing you can do about that (orbs didn’t decay in combat, only outside of combat and only then after a little bit of time not being in combat).
- Tunneling causing me to ignore my priest utility in order to keep my DPS up the ENTIRE fight, not just key moments. With Orbs, you just had to keep MB and SW:D off CD and then Mind Flay during Insanity if you took that talent, the rest of the time you can weave in and out utility spells and only suffering a GCD loss, not your entire DPS window forced closed.
- Mechanical Shifts causing awkwardness when using the specs rotational abilities. I can’t stress this enough how awkward it is to have a rational ability shifting back and forth between a useless button and a spammable button.
8 Likes
But the mechanic of ramping up is inherently counter intuitive in all aspects of the game, minus raiding. Surely you understand that correct?
I mean for crying out loud Blizzard said it themselves.
7 Likes
Point is the ship for removing ramp from shadow sailed when it was announced shadow wasn’t getting a resource or mechanics change like enhance ele or balance.
We’ve got what we’ve got, and we can either complain about the mechanic of the spec being antithetical what the game demands of us, or we can try and mitigate that as much as possible within the current system to make the short term bearable.
If only it was short term. This will be the fifth year running.
Also we’re paying customers, we don’t have to “take it as it is”. Make enough noise and it will be fixed. Look at the time when hunters got trap pruned. Or the high elf fiasco. Our voices can be heard, it if is large enough.
1 Like