Sensible Shadow Feedback

Classes Priest
24

Honestly great fluffy tool mate, nice job.

Coming from a PVP player, testing different templates and adjusting haste for early expansion values already makes me sad, I guess I got used to having 40+ haste.

Shadow Word: Death being baseline is very good, but it feels very bad if it doesn’t generate any insanity, at this point just cast something else unless you have to be mobile or in execute range.

Devouring Plague is weird right now, needs to be improved for sure, I can’t find a situation where I’d like to cast it unless I really need the healing aspect (pathetic healing tho) or people are about to LOS, the damage and healing needs to be tuned for sure, from the numbers it doesn’t look like it’s ever worth using it instead of VB but i could be wrong here.

PI is on the GCD? This is just fluffy, come on blizz.

Some requests\bug fixes:

Setting Insanity Treshold for Erruption doesn’t work.
Can we perhaps add Misery to VT?
Shadowcrash?

Unrelated to this post, just comments on the current discussion on Spriest in general.

I love shadow PVP, and I like having more baseline stuff, just wish they bring back fear ward. (more utility buttons = good)

I don’t hate voidform just wish our single target damage wasn’t fluffy. (this is pvp no Ghosts\COI)

Maybe replace Grater Fade with Spectal Guise. (wishful thiking)

I’d like to see a word where if you stun a guy behind a pillar, pop PI, Shadow Crash, Erruption, VB, MB Proc, DP?, Death he can die, this is not a reality today, unless essences\trinkets play a part in it.

This would be peak PVP shadow for me, ok spread, some burst and lots of utility ,WOD was good too, Legion was fluffy and boring for PVP, BFA is somewhere in the middle, lots of corruption\essences\gearing problems tho.

PS: First post got removed, so replace fluffy with desired insult.

25

Does now.

I will concern myself with talents as soon as the spec is fun to play without them. Any talents that exist in the tool either were, are, or should be, baseline.

26

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 top of what it already does, 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.

3 Likes
27

Got you man,

I just wanted to get a feel for bursty single target for PVP reasons, why I asked for Misery\Scrash.

I magine something like:

Cast VT \ MB \ Death (if generates insanity) \ Crash \ Errupt \ VB \ MB Procs \ DP \ Vbolt or Death (if execute)

Thank you for your time and great execution on the tool.

28

So looking at the update to our Mastery in the current Beta build, I like that they included DP in the Mastery, as well added healing us for 50% of DP’s damage. This is a welcome change methinks.

29

Mastery is glorified versatility. It should not exist as it does.

6 Likes
30

If Haste scaling is such a balance issue, why not instead have voidform grant casting speed. Cast speed only affects casts/channels, but does not affect DoTs or hots/energy gains/etc, and specifically having DoTs no longer be amped up by Voidform haste could be a solution to balance without slowing down the actual VF rotation. Cast speed increases still make you cast/channel faster, which is the supposed “fun” of voidform.

1 Like
31

Yeah you’re right. Do you think Mastery should only affect damage while in Voidform?

32

Mastery should make us better at what we are good at, hence “mastery”. In my mind this can only be one of two things: Twist of Fate or Shadowy Apparitions.

Naked Voidform has never existed in a state to prove that haste scaling is a balance issue.

2 Likes
33

I like that. I think having a %-chance to do extra DoT ticks from SWP, VT, and DP.

For a Mastery around Shadowy Apparitions, I’d say scale the damage they deal and/or a %-chance to send a buffed one doing double damage.

34

So some thought experiments here…

  1. Once you enter VF, your “pool” of insanity will be as much as it was when you entered correct? So if its low, then you have a short duration window of needing to pump it up before it falls off.

    • However, if it does fall off, wont it go back up to that base “low” level amount soon or instantly anyway? Then you can just get right back into it again.
    • If you can weave in and out so often, will that become the new meta? just shifting in and out as fast as possible to chain cast your Void Eruptions?

  2. What’s the purpose of Void Form if you can get in and out of it so fast and easy? It just seems pointless at that point imo. I rather just have a Passive Shadowform an then worry about doing everything else that the spec required for the previous 10 years before Legion.

Just my thoughts.

1 Like
35

Solid points…

-Say the insanity required is something like 50, untalented. Currently, when you first enter voidform, your insanity doesn’t drain at an alarming rate. This allows you to have a decent amount of time to start gaining insanity. You’d also ideally not use voidform until you’re ready to start doing dps anyway. This would also allow you to pause entering voidform without a loss of dps because your insanity can surpass 50 without any harm.
-If you chose to weave in and out then you’d literally have to stand there not doing damage just for the damage coming from void eruption. If the numbers were tuned so that void eruption wasn’t a massive damage boost then going in and out wouldn’t be as appealing.

You honestly have me here. I guess the point would be that you have essentially “removed voidform” because your normal state would be balanced around being in voidform. The mechanics outside of voidform are there just to give the class flair, for taking time to use your utility spells, off healing, etc.

Thanks for taking the time to bring these points up!

36

I really think OG Shadowform just “works” so well for a class that is supposed to have healing as part of its basic “kit” since we are a Priest class. IT works because it naturally balances the “shifting” aspect between in and out of Shadowform in the way that you cant heal in Shadowform so you have to sacrifice damage and defense for healing and sacrifice healing for damage and defense.
That aspect makes OG Shadowform feel impactful for the purpose your using it for, it puts controllable risk/reward in your hands instead of being at the mercy of needing a target in range, not being cc’d, being able to actual attack the target without it being an intermission phase or the target obscured.

This is the very core reason why I think Void Form will never work. It doesn’t work as a ramp mechanic compared to how the rest of the game mechanics work and it doesn’t work for a healer class as you have no inherent reliable defense in damage reduction, cc, kiting etc. We were built to face tank damage and risk healing up at the cost of loss of defense and dmg.

But with Void Form, we still have all those negatives and new ones piled on with no actual positive reason to being a Void Priest compared to any other class / spec. Anything else in the game brought something unique, the only unique thing about Void Form is it plays different, but it doesn’t bring anything different to the table where it matters.

Sorry, went a little ranty there.

37

Again, you make solid points here.

The old shadowform does, for the most part, the same thing I was describing. As long as it incorporated something more interesting than a few dots and mind flay/mindblast, then I’m game. Compensation would be needed for losing out on the haste gain as well.

The only reason I’ve been pulling for a voidform rework as opposed to removal is because,

  • I don’t think blizz has the time to fully rework the spec/doesn’t want to…especially with how deep they are into conduits and other systems involving insanity, and…

  • Some people legitimately like the class design of voidform

38

Wish that mindset was present when blizzard deleted Shadow as it existed in its relative same form of 10 yeas at the end of WoD.

4 Likes
39

I just wanted to note that this is a great way to offer high-effort feedback. Although I don’t anticipate the kinds of changes this tool makes obvious, I appreciate the follow-through and the discussion this tool provides.

40

I’m not sure if it’s been said yet, or was buried but I HIGHLY recommend reading Ryeshot’s article about “ramp” which can be found on the optimizer itself.

I’m a strong believer that pacing/sluggish issues in the spec should be addressed because voidform just feels like a losing battle without it. I think it’s critical and fundamental to the design to have more haste baked in. Buffing VF haste helps greatly and if VF can get 10% upfront then it further counters the ramp AND pacing issues the spec has. 1% per stack then properly counters the drain but is far healthier and safer than things like mass hysteria or COI. At current haste levels of 0.5% per stack we are TOO DEPENDENT on gear/borrowed power and what’s very alarming to me is this took crazy 8.2 systems to resolve (a full year of waiting in BFA) so it MUST be fixed this time around.

1 Like
41

I appreciate everyone’s feedback on this and hope you all come up with something that feels better, and have been watching Yvaelle’s, Ryeshot’s and Nyelle’s design discussions with great interest.

I felt like I wanted to throw my two cents in, as I think I dislike Voidform for some of the same reasons Nyelle seems to like it.

Particularly, for me Shadow used to have this nice, smooth almost Zen-like relaxing feeling to its rotation, which I thought felt thematically appropriate to priest in general. I absolutely do not like this switch to this high octane “fight to stay in void form” some of you find so compelling. I just find it frustrating and a complete about-face to the multidot playstyle I started with.

I found Yvaelle’s version closest to what I liked, personally. I agree it felt odd at first, but this feeling disappeared for me once I thought of insanity as a buff that I trigger appearing in my upper right corner instead of a resource bar.

I would be in support of talent choice or some implementation allowing for both the frenetic playstyle and the more soothing one, as it seems clear there are players on both sides of this divide.

5 Likes
42

Twist of Fate as mastery would be pretty cool actually.

Not only would that make Twist of Fate baseline, but it would up the power budget of Twist of Fate in a pretty interesting way: making Mastery tangible.

If you consider that current Mastery increases ~all spell damage by 20%, TOF would need to be balanced to provide about ~20% DPS on most content. Given the low uptime on something like a Patchwerk, Mastery: TOF would likely need to increase our DPS by up to 30% at least, even without stacking it.

The issue then becomes, Mastery stacking in PVP would potentially make Shadow do massive amounts of execute range burst damage (SW: Void, Death, etc +50% or more from Mastery: Twist of Fate). So I could see that being a PVP balance issue.

Shadowy Apparitions as a mastery sounds really dull to me though, I’d like to avoid that if at all possible.

My favorite idea for Mastery remains Twisted Appendage though (originally Void Tendril from Xalatath in Legion). That way Crit & Haste will continue to be our best multi-dot secondary stats, but Mastery will shine on single target fights, that makes itemizing way more enjoyable. Every item is good for something.

It does mean mix/maxxers are going to need to juggle 2+ sets of gear based on encounter type, but that’s already common and I doubt this will be the only reason this behaviour persists into SL: since it’s been true for all prior expansions for other reasons.

2 Likes
43

There are very few masteries which affect the mechanics of the rotation. The only one I can think of off the top of my mind is Elemental Shaman’s Overload.

Because of this, should there be any change to Shadow’s mastery, we must assume it would be a flat damage increase and nothing more. It is for that reason, and the theme of mastery, I suggested Twist of Fate and Shadowy Apparitions in the first place.