I think you’re either talking about something else entirely or you need to refer to the second half of my reply to you, which I added in post while you typed this.
I’ve also been playing shadow, especially in bgs for a very long time, though like you I’ve mostly wound that up after WoD.
Yea read it and I agree.
That consistency helps me plan out other things to do because I know x will happen when y happens so i’m not caught off guard and have to adjust.
I guess i’m not sure what part / aspect we are not understanding of one another?
I was talking about how the ambiguity / abstract value of insanity within voidform and nature of drain leaves you unable to feel like you can actively not do your rotation and keep what you had up to that point.
Shadows pve rotation rewards consistently pressing buttons, and actively punishes you for not doing so by wasting all your resource in voidform, creating that feeling of needing to be a bit spammy to keep things going.
Orbs didn’t do that, because the value of an orb was fixed (1/3 of a DP) and storable without fear of wasting or losing it. However if you were playing for maximising every GCD, between mass multi dotting, blasting on cd, spending your orbs, and not overcapping on mind spike procs, it was still incredibly spammy.
I mean sure, technically.
But I was in control of the direction I wanted to go.
Do I want to move forward ahead of the group during my CD on Mind Blast and not cast Mind Flay because as soon as the group of mobs are killed, I can just grip the tank and make him land right in front of my pre laid out feather so he gets a massive speed boost to get him to the next pull faster and start building threat so we can all start popping off.
Also with tank at the next mob group faster, we can set up interrupted with silence or w/e and get the death ball ready for AOE stun or AOE burst damage or w/e and the DPS don’t have to wait for that setup because by the time they arrive, its already setup for them to go ham etc.
Stuff like that.
Edit:
I would say that’s less “spammy” in that your just smashing the same abilities over and over and more just making each GCD count more then just DPS buttons.
I’d genuinely say if you’re good with voidform you’re actively better at these things than you were then, being Frank.
I think the stop start nature of low dungeons and shadows currently excessive ramp making gameplay never really work in them are the big problem. I’m always actively pushing to position ahead of the tank to either help him or just put myself in range of the next mob pack faster, void bolt is amazing movement tool for that sort of thing whilst keeping your damage up.
If you could get into voidform quicker, felt less compelled to stand still casting flay / sear (Because insanity gen either came from elsewhere or just wasn’t as important) and therefor had access to bolt earlier on to facilitate movement, it wouldn’t be as much a problem. If even a problem at all.
I can’t disagree more, sorry.
The fact that I feel forced to plant myself and make every GCD count when I use Void Form just kills the momentum and fun.
When I ran 5 mans and PvP in WoD, I ran with From Darkness Comes Light. Because I didn’t want to be glued to the floor with feeling like i’m wasting my DP if I don’t plant myself and cast Mind Flay Insanity for the duration.
The very core nature of my resources are just being used without me pressing anything is frustrating beyond belief. its just a constant waste that I cant control.
The very idea that I need Void Bolt on a easy to access keybind and spam the hell out of it during Void Form but its a useless button outside is awful.
The fact that I cant plan the flow of when i want to do X because my GCD is constantly changing via my prolonged Void Form up-time is clunky and awful.
Yet void bolt means that in voidform you can move 33% of the time at least without losing anything at all?
I’ve been running dungeons a lot on my priest these past few weeks and I feel incredibly mobile, not fast mind you (Rip 60% feathers) but mobile.
I don’t want to have to watch my insanity bar and have to constantly recalculate in my head that i have X time left to cast Void Bolt and to recast dots etc. as then sure enough I get knocked out of VF and I want to press VB buts its not available and I just wasted a moment pressing a button that doesn’t do anything.
That’s not fun, only frustrating.
I’ll be honest that’s not an experience you and I share, though I can certainly agree that does sound frustrating.
I think what the problem is, is that there’s a very real chunk of time spent outside of Voidform. It’s very jarring having to launch from the sluggard pre-Voidform state and launching into a high speed crack frenzy.
I’m growing accustomed to it on my new priest, but I still can’t stand the amount of downtime between mobs, open world and dungeons.
I think the cleanest solution is to just set us to 30 Insanity out of combat. We float back to 30 if we find ourselves below.
Furthermore, the Insanity drain and Voidform need to end at 30 Insanity when combat ends, and we’re still in Voidform. An immediate break point. Relying on Lingering Insanity as the in between fights mechanic just feels awful. I would rather just get to the next Void Eruption. A break point lets us, and our group, take their own pace between pulls.
All of our short fights depend on Void Eruption. So give us Void Eruption.The 30 Insanity drop off point gives us our most important spell, thus cleaning up the ramp up immensely.
You still have to let Insanity drain to zero IN combat, as the crack head has to come down after all. Lingering Insanity is great as a rotational smoother IN COMBAT.
Fundamentally, if we have to be in Voidform, THEN PUT US IN VOIDFORM.
By spending more of our time at high speeds, the class feels less like a user feebly stumbling from clumsy sluggard lows, to eye twitching octane frenzies. And more like a priest that many of us remember, circa Wrath of the Lich King, or Cataclysm. Fast and smooth.
#savevoidform gets their Voidform stacks, and #removevoidform gets their near constant uptime.
It’s the cleanest balance.
I agree. I included Insanity out of combat in my ideal Shadow design for this express purpose.
Now gain 30 Insanity while out of combat. This alleviates the pain point for having the first Voidform of a fight take longer than every other one. It also provides quick options for using Insanity in content where casting Void Eruption is not the only option.
Pretty much the same conclusion I came to on live. There’s a very real difference between entering VF with 1 swv crit with whispers, and entering with 0. Not getting a crit on your double blast suuuuuucks and it’s lead me to believe the longest we should go from stand still to eruption is 4 globals.
Blast, blast, dot, dot, erupt.
How you do that, be it altering threshold, adding base insanity, or increasing blast gen (Or some combination of all of them) doesn’t really matter.
I would be happy with if Void Form is made a talent so that I can chose not to play it while other people who like it can still play it.
I would probably go about it by having Shadow consume insanity via DP for ST or Void(Or Shadow) Explosion for AoE.
In the final row, I would then add a talent that casting Void Explosion will turn the SP into void form with all the functionality the void form priest currently have (maybe bake in lingering insanity too).
The final row then can have 2 other talents for different play styles (currently it is pretty terrible and boring row as everyone takes legacy anyway for nearly 2 expac). The penultimate row, which is also another pretty boring row, get to change void torrent and lingering insanity
I don’t find anything inherently wrong with your ideas, but there’s one central problem with making Void Form a talent, and it’s that they then have to balance the class with and without Void Form. They would need to create multiple new talents to make devouring plague a viable form of play, but then they’d also need to have talents that make Void Form rewarding and good to play. You’re asking Blizzard who have had trouble balancing Void Form, to then try to balance both it, and a non void form style of play and that’s asking for far too much sadly. In an ideal world I’d love for us to get both options, but I’m telling you right now that’s not going to happen.
They could just make it so that picking the voidform talent excludes you from use of shadowform. Shadowform would be the tuning knob for the non-vf playstyle.
Shadowform is a necessary part of Voidform’s design.
I think he meant our off state should just be regular. And then shadowform is something specific to the DP playstyle with its own modifier that’s their baseline.
I still don’t particularly like it, but I think it at least makes sense in that way.
@ryeshot just saw that you developed a website to optimize voidform and I really like your ideas. I hope you’re working on a post exclusively to point that out here in the forums.
Soon™
/10char
So are you proposing that if you played the Void Form build, you would just always be in Void Form? And if you went with the Shadow build you’d always go Shadow Form? I’m curious how exactly they would balance 100% Void Form up time. Because the only way Void Form works is if it’s something that you’re actively working to maintain and rewards you for doing so.