Naked voidform can work with the right amount of changes, whether that means integrating existing ‘borrowed power’ or revamping how voidform is balanced.
Voidform is simply an aura which gives you access to a temporary spell and a growing secondary stat for the duration of the aura.
Numbers can be moved around.
pushing stacks doesnt work. want to ramp into voidform? fine, ramp into voidform windows. x amount haste/crit/spell power for x amount of seconds. do it over again. that way they can balance it. apparently theyre not capable of balancing the scaling issues we have.
edit: and at the very least make it baseline instant case.
Nowhere in Voidform’s design is having a one minute ramp necessary.
Want proof? You can try out my attempt to make it work at:
https://voidform-optimizer.com/
Orbs are not coming back and Voidform is staying, as confirmed by Ion in the latest interview. This does not mean that we should be content with the current state of Shadow, however. Take this time to push for things the spec needs to be successful in Shadowlands.
There is still time to #savevoidform.
what it needs is to go back to orbs. ya know, when shadow was at its peak. and actually functioned.
Shadow peaked in either TBC or WotLK depending on your persective value of utility vs individual viability.
In no way has shadow orbs ever been the ‘peak’ shadow.
If you dont like haste stacking dot shadow priest, please, move on to another class/spec.
If you still want a dot class, affliction, otherwise destruction seems to be what you’re looking for.
I get your concerns, when you hear “dot focused” and “builder spender” you lean towards thinking it plays out like warlock. Especially when you read that builder spender is a dot.
The thing that made orbs so good, for so many people, is the mechanic didn’t try to take the spotlight. It played less like a builder spender, and more like a regular old school spec that had a variable cooldown (because the CD was dictated by the cd of mind blast / other elements). Because it didn’t take the spotlight, there was so much design space left that blizzard just filled to the brim with so many different ideas that you could mix and match. Did you want procs, did you want more cooldowns, did you want a completely different rotation, did you want buff management? You could have any number of those things, purely because Shadow Orbs was such a small component of the initial design.
If orbs was just orbs, it would have sucked. It’s a bland builder spender design that’s as basic as can be, and the visuals / naming scheme sounds like someone’s first draft that accidentally got pushed to release. But it never tried to make spec all about itself, it just existed, provided some small interaction to spice things up, and then left all other possibilities open.
Voidform doesn’t do that, it makes the spec all about itself, and leaves no space to really grow in any other direction design wise.
Not to mention your actual spells just hit hard baseline, because you weren’t tuned around some ramp up mechanic that affected every single one of your abilities. Devouring plague, despite being the “spender” was honestly a pretty modest part of the damage pattern too. Mind blast did more overall damage in most instances, and your dots weren’t relegated to resource machines or purely spread target niche.
If your comparison to warlock includes the “UA is everything” style damage pattern that it had throughout Legion and BFA, I hope that puts your mind at ease.
been playing a priest since vanilla…pretty sure i know what im looking for when it comes to priest. unfortunately they deleted shadow.
You don’t need orbs to get orb gameplay…
One Orb = 20 Insanity.
Mind Blast generates 20 Insanity.
DP exists, and can cost 60 Insanity.
Talents?
T15 still works, additionally SW:V wouldn’t be as mandatory (if we keep VF, SW:V should ideally be redesigned)
T45 still works
T75 SW:D talents needs a redesign regardless of VF or not.
T90 LI doesn’t work, but kind of should be redesigned for VF.
T100 doesn’t work, but at least LotV and S2M need redesign to improve VF.
Work that has to be done on talents seems about the same
Work on tuning either VF to actually be fun, or tune DP gameplay, seems equal?
Work to remove VF - depends how many hook ups it has - though doesn’t seem much (t100, some old set bonuses and azerite effects)
Going from what is on alpha to either Orb gameplay or hoping to fix VF gameplay, really doesn’t look that much different.
where did he confirm that VF is staying?
Probably this interview.
https://www.wowhead.com/news=316830/shadowlands-interview-with-pandatv-and-ion-hazzikostas
Problem Classes
- Because they’re moving into Beta, it doesn’t mean that they’re done with class design and they’re only doing numbers.
- However, don’t expect a fundamental overhaul.
- They can still change interactions between abilities, talents and adding abilities.
The “don’t expect a fundamental overhaul” bit. I’d say removing voidform would be considered a fundamental overhaul lol.
Yes I was there for the interview but what I’m going at and what Shot is trying to make it seem is that Ion confirms Vodiform is here to stay forever. which is not true
Ion said they cant make fundamental overhaul.THIS EXPANSION
doesn’t mean they aren’t considering removing it next expansion. So I will keep asking them to remove it because I don’t enjoy it and no one can force me to enjoy it. Until Ion himself says that Voidform is here to stay forever then I will just quit.
I don’t really think they were implying “forever” because really no one knows that, probably not even the devs at this moment in time. I’m sure they’d prefer to fix voidform before completely removing it because it seems they don’t ever want to admit when something has “failed” so they just keep tweaking it until they think they can get it right or change it to something totally different again. Even if the best thing to do is just revert it.
So at this point if we know it’s here to stay through Shadowlands at the least, might as well shift that focus into making it at least feel better to play until they can make changes. It sucks that it’s back to this cycle again and I’m upset by it too. I think you can ask for them to remove it while still asking them to at least make it feel somewhat decent to play through the coming expansion.
I’m personally not going to stress about it anymore because it’s out of my control for the next 2 years and I’m don’t want to be angry all the time about it. I will continue voicing my opinion on it and continue to voice that the spec felt much better before voidform. I think they know but I doubt they’re going to tell you what you want to hear that they’re removing it in the expansion after Shadowlands because I would be sure that anything about that expansion is under strict nda including class design.
No.
#removevoidform
Long live the revolution!
you just put this thread on top of the forums and totally threw all the work we tried to do to put the numerous thread with huge amount of people asking for VF to be removed below it.
Do you think the Devs read these threads…they dont but from to time they might scan them and you just gave them a reason to keep VF.
go revive the old #removevoidform threads rather then wasting time here.
I respect you. But I’m also allowed my opinion and to post where I please. I disagree with her and I’ve stated as much in this thread and others. You also bumped this to the top when you replied to me. wow… I’m pretty sure the Devs have seen the multitude of posts wanting void form removed.
If you respect me, then respect my ability to disagree with whom I choose. Please?
I do respect your freedom to express your opinion wherever you want…I guess my reply read rude and cold. What I tried to say is we can be more productive and i suggest we revive the old #removevoidfrom because the Devs definitely don’t read the forums but might just scan them.
We have two current #removevoidform threads in general that are going strong plus the many that are in this forum. I would be very surprised if the devs didn’t know how we feel. But, I will respect your request. 
I couldn’t care less about what happens in two years right now. I want Shadow to be fun in Shadowlands, and no matter how much the community that despises Voidform wants it gone, I would hope they follow the same sentiment.
I did not create this thread for them. By their actions I would not be surprised if they did not read any Priest threads.
I created this thread because I believe Shadow can be made better in Shadowlands, even if Voidform is staying. And I invite others who follow the same belief or simply want the spec to be in a better state than it is now.
It’s the second part that seems hard to accomplish and sadly it’s the most important thing for every shadow priest regardless of their position on spec design
I think all of us agree that we want the spec to be better. But they’ve had 4 years to make vf work and it just doesn’t. They even acknowledged it. That’s why we are pushing hard on this.