That’s the core problem with balancing though.
You cant really believe that blizzard are going to be able to balance the varying degree at which Void Form scales. Still by itself, that is something they proved they cant overcome. Its either to broken or too OP. No middle ground.
IF Void Form is staying, it needs to change in some fashion that leads to it having a hard cap in scaling. Once you achieve that, you can add w/e you want in the spec as its much easier to balance Void Form and anything else.
The problem is not balancing around Void Form, the problem is balancing OF Void From.
That can be achieved with drain and not adding random BS insanity spikes from extension cooldowns like lucid dreams, or suddenly massively increasing insanity generation through SWV crits and whispers.
If VF drain is done in such a way that going from 15% base haste to 45% base haste, still only yields an extra 4-5 stacks. And then bliz make insanity generation purely a function of cast speed (Not crit, RNG, or cooldowns) I’d consider that effectively capped.
Like I’ve said to you before, I’m fine with them capping void form. But even if you cap it, you’re still effectively building it until you hit the cap of 50 stacks or whatever. Mystakai’s point was that he was saying we will constantly be in void form, so if we’re constantly in it with no down times what so ever, capping it won’t solve the issue that kind of Black and White design would introduce. My point is that Void Form as a talent is not going to work, it just won’t. And even if by some miracle stretch they did find a way to make it work as a talent, can you honestly say at this point in time they’d be able to balance both Void Form and Shadow Form? Do you think they’d even be willing to try that?
Given that the entirety of Voidform’s existence has had it be dependent on borrowed power, I would argue they have not proved anything regarding a naked Voidform.
I still only see the issues with Void Form to be Void Form itself. The “borrowed powers” are only symptoms of the core problems with Void Form and they only highlight the problem, not cause it.
I don’t see any indication that they will NOT be using borrowed powers in some fashion to cause more of a mess with Void Form and in how it functions with scaling / varying degree of power output.
The problem IS with Void Form itself. I still feel the issues without my artifact and without BFA borrowed powers. Everything indicates its Void Form that causing all the varying issues.
I was suggesting that if you opt into the voidform talent, you lis the ability to activate shadowform. So you have either shadowform all the time or normal/voidform ramping style. If Voidform us too strong and our base kit needs to be nerfed, shadow form can be buffed to compensate for the priests that don’t use voidform.
If i’m reading this right, you want to have Shadowform as well as Void Form?
I mean that can work as well. but really, whats the point? Its not like shadowform has damage reduction anymore. Its just a passive 10% damage buff. Just bake that into the base spec imo.
But if you still want that shadowform passive 10% damage buff while having Void Form then alright…
Make a talent that removes the ability to go into Void Form and it buffs the damage or w/e to Shadowform to the balanced levels needed.
I think its more that voidform undershoots, and then borrowed power systems we’ve seen overcompensate. I still fundamentally dislike the concept of what voidform wants the player to do / achieve, but I don’t think it’s impossible to push the mechanics of stacks as far from relevance as possible and focus on simply in / out being how you judge “am I at my strongest or not?”
From there its a case of making shadowform not suck, either be moving more power out of voidform into the base spells we have all the time (Mind blast), making voidform more readily accessible / usable in the wild or in pvp, or some combination of both.
But that in its self poses more problems than solutions. They would still be effectively having to balance for 3 different forms of the class. They’d need to balance your skills for when you were in Shadowform, then balance you for being in “normal mode”, then they would need to balance you for Void Form. I’m 100% for us having both Void Form and Shadowform, but having them both be separate playstyles is not going to work. It’s a nightmare to balance, and I can 100% guarantee you it would turn into “Void Form is meta everywhere” or “Shadowform is meta everywhere.” Keeping Void Form as the main mechanic and rather putting more talents in that increase your DP and Void Eruption (Heart of the void legendary?) damage and interaction would be a better method to give people who hate the ramp up of void form a different way to play and would work well in dungeons.
My point was make the “Passive” always have a damage buff be less then the peaks and valleys that Void Form brings.
W/e number it needs to be balanced I don’t care what it is.
By Balance I don’t mean balance Passive shadowform vs active shadowform/voidform peak/valley but balancing in that you should never do more overall damage or have more potential damage with a passive alternative.
That’s all.
I should note however that the 80% example was me thinking Void Form doesn’t also have that 80% passive shadowform. So if Void Form had access to shadowform outside of Void Form windows, then the passive always in shadowform alternative should be more powerful then the shadowform version of Void Forms.
Yes… but why not just make Shadowform stronger, reducing the difference in strength between Voidform and Shadowform, and allowing an out of Voidform playstyle via Devouring Plague for either content that does not support Voidform or for one that does not like Voidform?
Why must Shadowform be significantly weaker to Voidform? I cannot think of a valid reason.
Let my put this hypothetical out here.
What if Shadowform increased our damage by 10%, and Voidform replaced Shadowform and instead granted 10% haste.
Then effectively the damage inside Voidform is the same as Shadowform, except for access to Void Bolt and haste gains over its duration. Why is something like this not possible?
I don’t care what route you want to take.
But the endgoal for me personally is I don’t want to play this stupid wack a mole sprint and feel im wasting resources by the second game.
Shadow didn’t have that before Legion, I want a return to that in some manner. Let me opt out if you don’t want to opt in.
If you cant see that point and try and make that work then I and many other priests will be at an impasse as that is the main reason we want Void Form to go. At least imo. Balancing issues are bad yes, but until you get rid of the varying degree of Void Form, your not going to sell Void Form to the Void Form remover crowd.
Sure, as long as Void Form is not an option on my bar via a talent or w/e.
Because we both know that as long as the button exists on your bar, you will be forced to use it or you will be playing “subpar”.
Take the option out of my hands and make my playstyle work / competitive without Void Form.