Sensible Shadow Feedback

Classes Priest
1

Hey Shadow Priest community!

With Beta just around the corner I would like to make you all aware of a tool at our disposal for providing tangible, concrete feedback regarding Voidform and the baseline health of Shadow. We are all aware of the dire state that Shadow is in, and if we want any chance for it to be in a better one, we need to be able to come together with realistic feedback for small changes that can be done to the spec during the Beta cycle.

Voidform Optimizer places you in the role of the developer, allowing you to experience first-hand what (simple) changes you might make to Shadow feel like, as well as giving you the tools to understand what exactly it is you like (or dislike) about Shadow and Voidform. Templates are provided under Import/Export Settings panel should you wish to try out a pre-made template, or you can create a custom template and export it under Custom Settings panel and Import/Export Settings panel, respectively.

You can also find articles addressing certain topics regarding Shadow. The published articles right now are Design Philosophy, detailing the reasons behind the design of the Ryeshot’s Shadowlands template, as well as Ramp, which discusses how the pitfalls of ramp can (and should) be addressed going forward.

Start designing your ideal Shadowlands Shadow Priest at:
https://voidform-optimizer.com/

Cheers!
Ryeshot

30 Likes
2

Passive Haste: 30%

Devouring Plague - remove the Insanity cost; allow it to generate 3 Insanity per tick because it is such a short duration (6 seconds on the tooltip I read).

Void Eruption - Void Origins should be baseline, allowing for it to be instant cast.

Lingering Insanity - build into baseline Voidform, however halve the haste bonus.

Misery - update to apply SWP, VT, and DP.

Even though I couldn’t test all of the changes I mentioned here, I think with the updates to Lingering Insanity, Misery, and Devouring Plague, we would be entering Voidform more often. This means that our haste will continue to grow and grow. That is why I added halve the haste bonus for Lingering Insanity.

1 Like
3

I think this causes balance issues in the talent row and may be a little too OP.

I think Ryeshot’s build has already a huge increase to AOE just in the faster access to Void eruption itself, and how much cycles can be forced with a Devouring Plague dump effect.

4

You won’t be recasting VT when DP falls off, you’d recast DP, and use VF to regenerate the timer on VT and SWP.

5

I think getting into a world where DP has multi dot potential is dangerous territory; and infringes on affliction imo. I think the function of DP in Ryeshot’s template allow for some AOE much more frequently with void eruption at the sacrifice of a long voidform and has a good counter measure to that choice.

6

Not sure if you put it in there or not but does the insanity dumped on devouring plague have any effect on the debuff applied?

I’m a little worried about that mechanic, exiting a voidform without getting the devouring plague off to exit would feel like crap. It already feels horrible getting CC’d out of voidform in pvp. Or have nothing to attack in PvE.

This is using ryeshot’s model btw

7

That’s a balancing question, so I cannot answer it with confidence. I will start with this disclaimer: Desired gameplay should inform balance.

That being said, yes, Devouring Plague should deal more damage the more Insanity that is spent on it.

If you don’t want to get CC’d out of Voidform, don’t enter Voidform. This is one reason Devouring Plague exists.

As for failing to cast it at the end of Voidform… considering Devouring Plague should deal damage based on the Insanity cost, and you have very little Insanity at the end of your Voidform, Devouring Plague would do minimal damage should you be successful at casting it.

That only leads the “punishment” of not receiving the Insanity gen upon failing to cast it. But is that punishment, or a lack of reward? Why can’t a player who executes Voidform flawlessly get a small benefit over someone who does not?

8

I understand. I can’t really test the changes I wanted anyway due to UI limitation on the site. I think even if you take DP off Misery, you’d still be entering VF more because of the Insanity it would generate - even if you reduce DP Insanity generation to just 1 because of Mind Flay and Mind Blast being more lucrative first options for generation.

Let’s say Insanity generation is just 1 per tick of DP. Then, your max targets for spamming DP would be 6 because the first DP you cast would fall off at the 6th second.

Now let’s say you cast your 6th DP and not cast any other spells and wait for it to fall off. Then a total of 36 Insanity was generated in ~12 seconds. I think this is a nice upper limit on using DP exclusively for Insanity generation because it is not enough to get you into Voidform quickly, but just enough to move the bar along.

9

This really is such a cool tool, thank you so much for making it. Ryeshot, your settings were really compelling so I used a fair bit of them. But I still felt a little bit slower than I would like (not a huge nitpick, more haste gear would fix this issue.) So here’s what I came up with: https :// pastebin com/kc9bWJSN

Changes I made:

  • Lingering Insanity baseline and change its decay to 1.5 sec. This allows us to be rewarded for void form again, and it helps smooth out between void form windows. With these settings your lingering stack will usually cap out at around 30-35 which last you long enough to get through your next void form. The insanity drain rate, combo’d with the decay timing gave me that adrenaline rush I haven’t felt since Legion. I also wanted to avoid the back loading of our damage like Chorus is currently doing. Now in the long run I was worried about what happens when we get a lot of haste, how much lingering insanity will we acquire? Will it be too much? So I put a cap on Void Form of 50 stacks. This would allow Blizzard to be able to properly balance us in a “worst-case” scenario approach.

  • I changed Shadowfiend to a 60 second cooldown so it would line up every Power Infusion. It feels clunky to me to have to use Power Infusion and not also have Shadowfiend up as well.

  • I increased the sanity Mind Flay generated to 20, and increased Mind Sears up to 5. This lets us get into void form faster and it makes Mind Flay feel significantly less tedious to use.

  • I increased Void Bolt’s insanity to 20 as well. This was a personal thing really. I found without this, void form still felt sluggish in the later 20-30 stack phase.

  • I gave Shadow Word: Death 10 insanity to bring it closer to what it was in Legion. I also didn’t want to make it too powerful in the worry that we’ll have to keep hitting ourselves to use it (assuming they don’t change it on alpha) but I still wanted it to be satisfying and worth while to use.

  • I reverted Void Form’s sanity drain back to .66 like it was in Legion. I have never once understood why they made this change. We weren’t hitting 80-100 void form stacks in fights anymore, why was this necessary? It just felt like being kicked when you were down.

The other things are mainly just me including Legacy of the Void baseline in Void Eruption.

These are just what felt good to me. Now would it be balanced? I’m not sure, you theory crafters are a lot smarter and skilled than I am so I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts. Thanks again for making this!

1 Like
10

Oh, yeah I forgot to mention that in my build. Along with making Lingering Insanity baseline as well.

11

Any insanity dump that can be used during VF shares the same risk: dumping will be superior to extending.

The issue lies in the VF benefits: a passive damage(haste?) multplier, access to VB, and most importantly, the hard hitting AoE VER are always active, the bonus has always been the weakest.

There are so many variables in where the point of to-dump-or-not-to-dump is - that deciding it is virtually impossible by just playing the game. In my opinion, a dump should show clearly when it should be used, DP is incapable of doing that.

Setting a goal as simple as “DP should be used for quicker access to VER in AoE” is easy, actually achieving it is difficult.

Imo, here we are at the most underlying issue on why i think VF should be scrapped: It’s too complex - for players, and most likely for the devs.

Just look at the two talents we got in Shadowlands: Both primarily generate a large junk of Insanity. The basic assumption here seems to be, that Insanity (or extending VF for a few more seconds) has any sort of significant DPS value. Does it really? How do you even calculate the value of Insanity? VER? Haste? VB?..

That’s part of the underlying issues…

… then you have borrowed powers, what they are, and what they can be (for all specs).

For a Shadowpriest? Well, you really can’t give us more Insanity over the course of an expansion. Gear Haste already increases the duration enough.
Random procs to alter the rotation? Are very very likely increasing the Insanity generation…

It’s quite easy to see where this is going: You have an overly complex mechanic where virtually any change can have a huge underlying problems, and at the same time you have a mechanic, where your options of doing anything are highly restricted.

While the tool can give you a base state that might be enjoyable to play, there could be underlying numerical problems, and what talents/borrowed power can/will do to that state is also a huge questionmark.

2 Likes
14

First off, fear of balance is not a valid reason for a spec to be unfun.

Secondly, what about my design is so significantly different from the base version in the game that it is inherently unbalanceable? Is it Devouring Plague? Why is Devouring Plague as a dump unbalanceable? Devouring Plague would be an opportunity cost over some number of Void Bolts, since it would cancel Voidform, and therefore should be balanced around Void Bolt.

It is not our job to determine how a spec is to be balanced. It is not our responsibility to even care because balance, in the end, does not influence how we experience our character. I am not willing to accept Shadow in the state it is now for such a lazy argument such as balancing.

I said this before and I’ll say it again: Desired gameplay informs balance.

15

Clarity of Power would like to schedule of meeting with you.

16

I agree with both of you actually.

17

I suggest everyone taking a look at the feedback under the thread “finding a happy medium…”

It seems to correct a lot of issues while still being realistic, blizz isn’t scrapping voidform, lets be real here…so helping make it work to be smoother/fun seems to be the better route.

Certain talents are no longer mandatory, the ramp issue would be solved, and we would get a burst cd if talented.

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18

Nothing about this thread is about removing Voidform. Because it, no matter how much players might despise it, is not going away.

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19

Honest mistake, I’m caught up in all the commotion of the other threads lol.

I’m just worried that some of the changes people suggest are too grand scale and aren’t practical for blizz to implement in the short time we have. Those guys are probably crazy busy trying to balance every other aspect of the systems they’ve introduced

2 Likes
20

I dont think theres a sensible “fix”. The entire spec needs gutted and rebuilt.

4 Likes
21

Maybe in the long term, but for those who want the spec to be fun in the next expansion, anything that makes it better is a welcome change.

2 Likes
22

Remove void form? My class that spend 14 years playing would be balanced and fixed.

9 Likes