Except, if that’s the only thing you do to voidform, then it won’t solve the problem. The problem is, your DPS heavily relies on being in really long void forms, which is rarely possible except on specific types of fights. Changing how often you get to go in won’t fix the issue.
Whats the average current length of voidforms where the content is meaningful? (excluding solo play/world quests because killing those mobs isn’t an issue, in fact its quite fast…) When I last played my priest in a mythic dungeon I vaguely remember stacks around 25-30. Balance the spec with the assumption that most players can reach those stacks. You would be in voidform much more often with the lower entry requirements so although it still takes you 15-20 seconds to be were blizz assumes you’d be (because they wouldn’t balance around 25-30, that’s when you’re exiting), its better than what we have now. I’m trying to be realistic because I doubt blizz will just scrap the idea. Other classes (not all) do still have “ramps” like buffs that they require to do their dps as well.
If you can exceed those stacks then congratulations, you’re a good player and you’ve reached a higher ceiling cap. The game shouldn’t be balanced around those players that can play their spec to the absolute best, it should be balanced for the general public and for general overall use.
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Just did a 15 last night, and I have about 43% base haste with corruption. I was hitting around 28-35 on pulls, and about 42-44 on bosses. In raids, you can hit 50+ stacks on the more stationary bosses.
Thanks for the input, I have yet to play since corruption was implemented so I have no idea what it provides in terms of stats/bonuses. For the purpose of shadowlands, I’m assuming everyone is comparing the core class without what people are calling “borrowed powers” to the alpha/beta.
I concede the fact that voidform does make balancing for different forms of content exceedingly challenging. Especially when you say numbers ranging from 28-50+ My suggestions don’t balance the spec across all forms of content. To that I say, does it matter?
If mobs are dying in solo play and you’re still entering voidform and having access to the class skills…does it matter that you’re not doing as much damage as a raider?
If you do more dps in a raid setting when the main factor is the fact that the mobs don’t die quite as fast…is that a bad thing?
Is it wrong that shadow does different levels of dps in different content and is that a terrible thing?
-If your answer is yes, then my suggestions don’t help you then. My suggestions ease the pain and make the class more enjoyable, but they don’t solve the dps differences.
The question is what do you consider to be fair? Shadow at BFA launch (no borrowed powers for the most part) could survive pulling one enemy, maybe two if you use some of your cooldowns, pull three or more and it was a fight for your life. Then you have Demon Hunters and Ret Paladins walking in and 2 shotting entire room full of enemies. Will we survive? Probably. Will it be slow and feel terrible? Probably. I’m pro void form, but I’m anti early expansion void form. It always feels horrid. So they definitely do need to tweak that part of the class at any rate.
Or maybe Dark Ascension actually making Void Eruption insta cast like in pvp on top of buffing its damage a little bit.
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Maybe make the exponential insanity decay increases at a higher rate beyond certain stacks. That way it doesn’t effect content where your stacks don’t get very high, but in a raid setting it’s impossible to reach stacks much higher than what you’d see in dungeons etc. Then you can balance around a certain expected stack size?
That would remove the allure of the other two talents on the row, especially legacy of the void. Pretty sure that would be too strong and become mandatory.
Ideally they’d make LotV baseline and just make it void eruption rank 2. I’d be okay with them putting more talents that beef up void eruption for a more nuke aoe damage build.
First I’m working with the assumption of the list of mandatory changes Ellipsis posted above (linked below). I agree they are necessary to make Voidform functional.
Final talent possibilities are below, just as an example of the fun things you could do with final talents, even limiting ourselves to tweaking the Voidform model (not replacing it, as I’d prefer). Also, I took all the names from Act 1/2/3 from Starcraft 2’s expansion (Legacy of the Void), which is where the LotV name came from originally.
General notes:
- Remove the 5% damage off current Legacy of the Void, buff Shadow accordingly regardless of final tier talent choice
- Reduce the base cast time of Void Eruption to 1 GCD (1.5s)
- Reduce the minimum Insanity to cast Void Eruption to 60, baseline
= Collectively this makes Shadow play like LotV, which is how the spec should feel
Whispers of Oblivion
- Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Death, and Void Bolt will strike an additional enemy in melee range of your target for full damage
Legacy of the Void
- When Voidform expires, gain bonus Critical strike chance equal to Voidform stacks for 5 seconds (ex. 25 stacks = +25% Critical strike chance)
- When Voidform expires, the spell damage and graphic of Void Eruption is recast (you do not enter a new Voidform however)
Into The Void
- 60 second cooldown
- On use: You instantly cast Void Eruption, entering Voidform
- Cooldown is reduced by gear haste, and by 1 second for every second you spend in Voidform
- Casting Into The Void while in Voidform will recast Void Eruption, entering a new Voidform, resetting your haste stacks and insanity decay acceleration
This is pretty much just making stuff up on the spot, to point out how easy it is to design fun stuff, even into Voidform, as opposed to the disappointing garbage they keep giving us.
So to explain the above, and how this changes gameplay in interesting ways.
Whispers of Oblivion gives Shadow the same sort of target-capped cleave damage that melee classes are getting in Shadowlands. Rather than hitting unlimited targets for reduced damage, your AOE hits a few targets for full damage.
Legacy of the Void gives us a big spike damage burst at the end of Voidforms, you not only ‘end with a big bang’, you likely get back into your next Voidform faster with the increased critical chance.
Into The Void is the “I just want to be in Voidform all the time” talent. You start combat with instant Void Eruption, if you have 20% gear haste the cooldown is reduced from 60 to 48 seconds, if Voidform lasts 25 seconds the cooldown is reduced to 23, which is less than 25 seconds you just spent in Voidform. So you just recast Into The Void to enter your next one: no downtime.
I posted this quote of Yvaelle’s suggested change of VF on a different thread.
Link: Talk me out of this - #28 by Zòn-area-52
Did you try it?
I don’t care if voidform stays or not, I just miss being a PRIEST in pvp. I miss renew, instant pom, flash/greater/regular heals, ve always up for pvp as a shadow priest. I miss having the party utility that made spriest fun and differentiated it a lot from locks for me. You did mostly damage but in a bind you could pump out massive heals at the expense of your mana to save your party from a wipe. I know this will never come back, but a man can dream.
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Exactly.
That’s the feeling I miss so much.
I want to have the option to go back to playing my Priest like this.
The version he posted is a little out of date from how I would tweak it now: it was the first pass. Notably I got a lot of early feedback from the Priest Discord that they didn’t like Face Melter making Mind Flay castable on the move, which surprised me a bit. Instead I swapped it so that Mind Flay added a much higher chance of spawning Mastery tentacles: making it a clear winner for single target DPS, but also very vulnerable to movement fights.
There were some other smaller tweaks I made since that first pitch too.
Anyway, I wanted to bring up a challenge I see with the Voidform-Optimizer experience. Much of the pay-off of my design isn’t tangible in the optimizer. I love the optimizer, thank you for it, but I think it’s also creating a slightly biased experience favoring haste ramping, because that’s the only way to make a visceral change: since you don’t see numbers or visuals.
Specifically:
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Mastery tentacles would feel cool to spawn, especcially since they have the full value of our Mastery stat embedded in them, it’s probably going to do T3 Twisted Appendage damage at minimum: which is noticeable. If you stack mastery, it probably get much stronger than that. Spawning a strong Twisted Appendage feels rewarding on Live, but it’s untracked in the optimizer experience.
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My Mind Blasts and Void Bolts are designed to devastate. Since my model doesn’t have any long ramps, spells individually would be balanced to do more base damage. Additionally, since Voidform would increase damage of insanity-generating spells during Voidform, and even further on critical hits - my version of Shadow would hit far harder than other builds. My voidform Void Bolts, Deaths, Mind Blasts would probably hit twice as hard as they do on Live (ex. 160k): not visceral in the optimizer.
I agree the persistent drain rate didn’t work out how I imagined it until I tried it in the optimizer. It just feels bad the whole time to watch your Insanity approach zero. That said, it feels the same on Live where you know Voidform is going to end in X GCDs with practice anyways. That sense of disappointment seems inherent to Voidform.
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While I agree the environment does tie into the experience of playing a spec, I do not agree that not having it introduces some bias to a rotation. In my mind, I should be able to hit on a dummy for and hour and have fun.
Do sound effects and animations enhance the gameplay? Sure, but I would be hard-pressed to believe they can rectify a rotation that is too boring to be fun.
Having a rotation that is both compelling and has complementary animations and sound effects is what I wish for Shadow to have.
Think of Twilight Devastation, part of the reason for its popularity is that it’s noticeable - it’s visually rewarding to have a giant death lazer spawn in front of you, it has all the ‘high’ of gambling when it procs. It’s also visceral in the numbers - it bursts so hard that small mobs die, and even fairly tough trash mobs are noticeably chunked down by it.
If you added Twilight Devastation to the optimizer, it would be intangible - you wouldn’t see it, and couldn’t measure it (no numbers), so the optimizer-experience of a design built to include it would feel lacking. By contrast, if the design were built in-game, it might feel really rewarding for some to have baseline Twilight Devastations. Same deal for my Twisted Appendage mastery: not visual or quantifiable in the optimizer. It’s an imperfect simulacra of the game experience.
The same is true for what I did to insanity generation during Voidform, increasing spell damage. Pathetic 70k critical Mind Blasts don’t feel rewarding on Live, but if you swap to something that hits harder - a 150-500k crit can feel awesome.
In the Voidform Optimizer, ramping haste has a tactile feel, and you can quantify Voidform stacks. So it’s going to encourage designs to provide those rewards - even though we know what those feel like on Live (widely disliked).
Sorry for pitching a problem without having a solution. Hitting a dummy on Live does feel more rewarding though than using the Optimizer: experience includes visual/aesthetic, quantifiable, and tactile/visceral feedback.
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I loved that idea of the build I linked. Their could be indeed tweaks to be made, but the whole thing seemed like it would be enjoyable rather than chasing VF stacks and getting really angry when you have to do mechanics and can’t get a long VF.
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I think my point was missed. It was not that other experiences cannot enhance gameplay. It was that the experience of gameplay alone is the most important aspect of what makes a spec fun.
To put it to your Twilight Devastation example. Sure it might be satisfying when you see it on your screen, but is it actually compelling?
I would rather have compelling gameplay, than uncompelling gameplay that is masked by flashy animations and insane damage numbers.
Thanks! 
Definitely try it on the Voidform-Optimizer if you haven’t yet. Watching your insanity helplessly drain hurt more than I thought it would, but otherwise I still like (and defend) the design direction. Tentacles and big nukes, no long ramps.
www.Voidform-Optimizer.com
Go to Import/Export at the top, and select Yvaelle’s Shadowlands from the dropdown. Also check out Ryeshot’s version!
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