#savevoidform

Classes Priest
302

What’s the downside of lowering the required insanity to enter voidform? It solves ramping complaints without much issue. With the intent that we will be in voidform more often, it can be balanced around that idea. It also doesn’t completely wipe away the building/draining playstyle that some enjoy.

As others have suggested, final talent row can remain mostly the same. Dark Ascension can become a flat damage increase on your next void form, aka a burst cd. Surrender to Madness can either reduce insanity decay or provide a static insanity supply to allow more movement. Now you have a faster playstyle, burst cd, movement talent as our final row… As long as the modified talents equate to what legacy of the void would provide, it would be balanced and more so about preferred playstyle

Lingering insanity would need to remove the haste when entering your next voidform (as it’s purpose was to improve downtime between voidform, not buff the subsequent one), and now that talent row can see more action too.

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303

Can’t agree enough with Vampyral.

As much as I hate VF, I understand some people love it. This is why I wish they would turn it into a Talent and offer 3 distinct playstyles to players. Give players Clarity of Power, Traditional Shadow Priest (maybe with Shadow-weaving?), or Voidform Priest. Then let the player decide what feels good to them IMHO.

5 Likes
304

I don’t like the fantasy of it. Shadow priests used to be just that - shadow. I always interpreted it as a form of element bending, except that you’re bending light and/or shadow.

I have no idea what I’m doing now. I randomly sprout tentacles and go CrAaAaAzZzZyYyY!!!11!!!1 …? What happened to just. Yknow. Being one with the shadows? Why am I now Insanity Squid Woman? It doesn’t feel like the same spec, regardless of the name or the spell icons. It feels very much like shadow priest was replaced with void priest, which isn’t terribly surprising considering they’re messing with that light/shadow, life/death wheel thing they had (there’s a name for it, but I don’t remember it).

Like blood dps (and to a far lesser extent, since I love BM, ranged survival), its loss has simply cut out an entire class, for me. Holy isn’t interesting enough for me, and I’m not skilled enough to play disc (which is a bummer because i LOVE the idea, but its skill floor is beyond what I feel I’m capable of). But I did love old shadow. A lot. Very much. Now I have three priestly bank alts.

1 Like
305

I like that idea too. Maybe instead of generating insanity to keep VF up the insanity we “generate” increases something else and VF duration is static.

306

My question would be: How do you save void form? How do you make it so it doesn’t weigh the spec down in basically all forms of content? That’s not me being negative, that’s me legitimately asking, how can void form be saved? What could be changed to keep it the same but without the downsides?

307

Short answer?

Scrap the damage bonus, give it baseline haste and keep the haste per stack low. Also scrap LI, Chorus, Mass Hysteria, and any other thing that gives VF power. VF should be haste, bolt access, and maybe mind blast cooldown reduction.

Drastically reduce time taken to get into VF. Instant eruption is something people want but I could take or leave, the none lotv cast time is horrid though.

Remove cooldowns that extend voidform beyond base length baseline, longer VF is a playstyle choice, and talents that offer gain in the immediate should be a viable alternative for where that playstyle wouldn’t be optimal.

Tweak base drain down, but drain per stack up, so that shadow has a realistic stack cap (20-25 or so) that doesn’t go up much at all as people gain gear.

Remove AS, and dont add any way to gain insanity from other stats. Haste should be the only stat that increases insanity gen, so gear doesnt scale with it too well.

PUT COOL THINGS AT THE START OF VOIDFORM SO PEOPLE WANT TO BE IN IT, INSTEAD OF FEELING LIKE THEY NEED TO GET TONNES OF STACKS AND AREN’T SAD IF THEY DROP OUT EARLIER THAN EXPECTED.

NH 4set, and Legion Beta Sphere of Insanity (It never went live so if you dont know what it was it might be hard to find) are great examples of how to do that, which already have existed.

Rework basically every talent, but at least SWV, LI, AS, S2M, And the entire last row.

Yes this list is enormous, and it’s also just my opinion, but the point I want to make is shadow needs an absolute metric tonne of work no matter what playstyle you enjoy. Since blizzard took reworking shadows resource mechanic off the table, this is a laundry list of everything they by their own admission are still capable of doing.

4 Likes
308

Hm. I suppose something like that could work, but personally, I would rather see voidform not have any stacks at all - It having a stacking buff at all will always encourage longer void forms and always make dropping out early feel terrible. Maybe cut Void Eruption’s cost in half, buff the damage bonus but make sure voidform doesn’t have any sort of stacking, and probably a baseline 5-10%+ haste while in voidform. Your voidforms aren’t as powerful as a drawn-out voidform, but more powerful than an short-to-medium length voidform and happen more often.

309

I was thinking more like 15% flat for entering then 0.5% per stack.

0.5% haste per stack does not matter alone in the slightest, it’s utterly dwarfed by the base haste of VF and access to bolt. Voidform is already purely about uptime.

The psychological aspect I get, it sucks to lose something no matter how small it is if you “thought” you would get it. But it’s also why I advocate for putting powerful things people want at the start of voidform, so dropping out shifts away from what you potentially lost, and towards the cool thing you’re going to do when you get back in (Which is also significantly quicker to get back to).

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310

The unfortunate thing is that we’re probably not going to see any changes that’ll actually fix the problems with the spec. Everything we’re talking about seems unlikely to happen, because the only even potentially significant change Blizzard made to Shadow during the alpha was giving it Devouring Plague, and there’s a lot of doubt around whether or not that’s even going to do anything.

They’re either incredibly attached to how Shadow plays right now with void form in it’s current state, or they don’t want to spend the resources on changing Shadow at all. It’s really unfortunate.

311

Agreed and it’s an absolute travesty. But in amongst all the, frankly justified, hashtag spam and concern as we appear to be stuck on a runaway train with no brakes… it’s important to see no solution is quick and easy.

Shadow needs work, actual, genuine, serious development work, ideally with an iterative back and forth in the alpha beta feedback forums. Blizzard’s “own” ideas this development cycle amount of Void Bolt rank 2, and this new incarnation of Devouring plague, two utterly spectacular misses, so I’m not sure I trust them to get it right on their own no matter how much time or effort they allocate to it.

2 Likes
312

I agree, without substantial work on the spec nothing will change. I shouldn’t go into an arena and laugh when I see a shadow priest on the enemy team, but I do (albeit bitterly) because I know with the way the spec is designed currently, there’s no way that priest is going to be able to keep up with even my resto druid partner.

It’s telling that, in the current raid tier, even the one thing Shadow is supposed to be okay at, it’s gimped in. You’re just not able to get long, drawn out voidforms on Wrathion, Skitra, Drest’agath, Il’gynoth, or the first half of N’Zoth. And that’s alongside being gimped in M+ and PvP. It’s terrible, and I’d hoped Blizzard would recognize the problems and fix them for Shadowlands… but now it’s just seeming like they want to perpetuate the problem for another two years.

313

I honestly cannot believe this talent managed to become even worse than what it is live.

I don’t have alpha/beta access, but looking at its design I can only think it’s marginally useful during 1% of an encounter, and god forbid if you miscalculate and die before the boss drop dead.

The other 2 talents are useful throughout the whole encounter, and let’s be real. If the group is healthy up to that last 25s of boss fight… It’s likely that the group will win, right?

1 Like
314

They really need to just completely remove S2M. It’s been a dead talent for so long now. I’m also just kind of disappointed that shadow talent choices aren’t really changing much going into SL. That should be a clear sign they need to take a look at talents and making some of those effects baseline or tuning other talents so they actually become an option.

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315

At - best - given the “uptime” as a last minute execute ability, if S2M had to stay in its iteration, let it be a baseline spell on a 5min cooldown.

Also the rest of the talent tree… yeah.

  • At level 15, Shadow Word: Void should be gone and its effect baked into Mind Blast by default. It’s way too punishing not to take this talent in any circumstance.
  • At level 35, Last Word should be baked into the baseline silence, and Dominate Mind offered instead to spriests.
  • Level 40, I’m yet to see a spriest that takes Shadowcrash. It’s just… so awkward to use, god forbid the tank to move your targets away from the impact point. Maybe it can go for a more interesting AoE option?
  • Level 45, Lingering Insanity… If they are really making Voidform stay, at least make this baseline. Spriests won’t function without it, virtually making the other 2 talents useless.
  • Remove S2M or make it baseline 5min cooldown spell.
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316

iirc shadow crash was used a bit at the start of BFA but that was before we had the stats for AS to be good. More so in M+ and open world. Might end up the same in SL too at the start.

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317

You know, I hate this aspect that plagues many specs in this game.

Something not being viable just because you don’t have a % of a certain stat yet… And later in the expansion it becomes the opposite: that option is now the only viable option because the said stat inflated so much.

Hello fire mages.

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318

Shadow crash had a weird life span in BFA, but the main problem with it is the cooldown isnt hasted and it isnt affected by mastery. It starts off “fine” and quickly becomes garbage is everything overtakes it.

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319

Yeah I’m personally not a fan of shadow crash. It always felt out of place in the rotation.

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320

Plus the animation feels terrible. You keep that anxiety on what if the tank will move stuff out or not.

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321

I have yet to see any solid idea that counters what I said earlier in this thread…

  • Lower the insanity required to enter voidform to say something like 50 baseline to solve ramp complaints…now the spec can be balanced around dmge inside voidform and the small time outside can be used for utiltiy/healing/movement/etc

  • Rework final talents so dark ascension is a % dmge increase for a burst cd

  • Surrender to Madness can have whatever aesthetic you want, rework it so it just either increase insanity gain or decreases decay so you can move more often

  • Tune numbers so they all have the same rough dps increase as legacy of the void and now you choose between play styles you like

  • Lingering insanity must drop the haste when entering voidform to solve scaling issues with your subsequent voidforms, now that talent isn’t mandatory…especially with lower time outside voidforms…now mindbender and void torrent can see some action