Except with covenants, your able to opt out and go to a different one in the event that you just don’t want to be in x covenant any longer.
Takes some effort / time, but the choice still remains.
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Each covenant will have it’s lows and highs; it’s not a grass greener thing. I want to be careful not to get too deep into covenants in this thread. but I wanted to draw attention to blizzards design philosophy and it’s a huge move in general to remove homogenization. Allot of the counter points to voidform is some players don’t feel the benefits of voidform outweigh the downsides- Allot of specs in the game give an illusion they can “do it all” …and this mileage varies greatly by player and content they do. Covenants…are a very very similar fate.
This comment is only to draw parallels and try to see into the minds of blizzard as best we can. I think the answer to both covenants AND voidform is implementations that are FAIR but don’t involve giving everyone access to everything or it really loses that magic. (p.s. covenants scare me - not saying it doesn’t)
I just wish the covenant abilities were not so useless and uninspiring.
Something I literally thought up just now is actually useful, presents choice and works for all specs.
Baseline: Mind Blast - all spec shave it. Now heals Priest and party for same damage done.
Covenant #1 - Mind Blast has 2 charges baseline
Covenant #2 - Mind Blast is instant cast
Covenant #3 - Mind Blast crits for 3x amount
Covenant #4 - Mind Blast reduces mana cost by half and doubles insanity generation for 3 sec.
This is what they should’ve been like. I understand they wanted to get creative and give something unique to every class, but that over complicates things and now we’re in the position where they’re either overpowered or in shadow’s case completely useless for the most part.
…perhaps…perhaps not?
Beta has only started just over a week ago; I think we may see iteration on covenants which could solve some problems. BUT OH WAIT…borrowed power solving problems again? hmmm well, as much as us players hate that concept; I do plan to look for covenant builds which may help shadow’s weakness in certain content which may actually bridge some gaps for people who are unhappy.
so perhaps…but perhaps not- it’s way too early to know
History is not on blizzards side.
When you can see all the unique and interesting interactions of covenant abilities for all the other classes and then you wait with great anticipation see what the 1st round they came up with for priests… its not very encouraging. Just like the specs themselves.
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Hopefully. I’m starting to come to terms with the idea we’re not getting fixed. So at this point I’m just hoping that they at least do that.
Awesome. I love your videos. I’ll keep my eye out.
I like this, but all Mind Blasts need 2 charges baseline.
Instead I would recommend switching that Covenant for Shadowy Insight, “Shadow Word: Pain has a chance to proc an instant Mind Blast”.
I really didn’t put much of any thought into that.
It was merely to prove a point that its not hard to actually come up with something half fast that’s better then the covenant abilities blizz came up with.
Ya I know, practically all the proposals I make are just to make the same point.
I was just throwing in a revision I wanted on this pipedream 
I don’t understand why people treat Shadow like it will infringe on Affliction. Affliction and Shadow have been the main two DoT specs since Vanilla, and more often than not they complemented each other as casters with things like Shadow Weaving/Mana Battery or Curse of Elements.
Avoiding good changes or moving us away from DoTs because it’s “too similar to Affliction” seems like a bad reason to change what has been a core element of our spec for like 13+ years.
Even if we removed our DoTs and focused solely on a more burst/caster oriented Void Form, we’d just get called “Shadow Mage” or “Shadow Destro”.
Personally, I dislike VF and think it should be removed for a more DoT and vampirism based Shadow Priest core spec. But since it seems like it’s here to stay, so it would be good if they’d at least fix the problems with VF.
Right now Shadow is underwhelming in just about every single aspect of what we’re seeing in SL. Same issues as Legion and BFA for VF, a nearly untouched/stagnant talent tree, boring or bad legendary effects, and mediocre covenant abilities outside of potentially broken Night Fae (which will likely not make it to live).
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Let’s tell a more accurate story…
Cataclysm Shadoworbs were never a builder/spender setup. They were 100% passive. They didn’t at all affect how you cast your spells. They simple buffed MB damage, which, regardless of number of Orbs, was cast on cooldown.
MoP had the Shadow Orb Resource bar, but as you only had one spender that cost 3, and had a cap of 3, it practically wasn’t much more then an artifical cooldown on Devouring Plague. You pretty much used DP when you hit 3 orbs, and before MB came of cooldown. Not much of a “builder/spender”-gameplay.
WoD was practically the only real “builder/spender” gameplay when you had 5 orbs and a 3 cost spender, that allowed some variance on the usage.
Shadow only ever had a somewhat builder/spender gameplay during WoD.
As far Affliction Warlocks…
At the same point during MoP came the guy called Xel’nath and redesigned all Warlock Specs, without any regards of what other specs in the game can do. And pretty much turned affliction into a better Shadowpriest (fun fact: up to MoP the stance was “Warlocks will not get a channelled filler, that’s for Shadowpriests” - paraphase of a bluepost by Ghostcrawler back in the days)
The story is that affliction became “better” Shadowpriests (after or at best at the same time), not that Shadow was ever turned into a cheap copy of affliction.
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Slight correction.
Mind Blast and Mind Spike consumed all your orbs for enhanced damage. Orb consumption affected by both spells in Cata.
Also worth emphasizing, we had Shadow Orbs long before Affliction had Soul Shards.
Affliction copied Shadow, not the other way around.
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Unless you count the actual physical item they hauled around in their bags 
I didn’t roll a warlock and hunter for the majority of WoW for 2 reasons…
- Pet management.
- Bag space because of shards and arrows/bolts lol.
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I will say, if we must keep voidform, I like the idea of devouring plague costing insanity, but also returning it over time. It sounds fun weaving between plague and void eruption. It also seems like it could be good in PvP, combined with Shadow word death, and power infusion
I just hope Blizzard at least listens to some of this feedback because if we go live with shadow like it is on beta, it’s going to suck
It still needs some polish and tuning.
I also think blizzard is sort of listening in the sense that voidform’s power is being reduced, which will allow shadow to hold more power outside of it. We could return to a real rot spec without Blizzard having to worry about us scaling out of control
I just really hope they do a bit more for us, because just tossing in devouring plague isn’t enough
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This. If I had Void Eruption up every pull, I wouldn’t need this half baked DP, and this half baked SW:D.
Increase our Insanity generation, and spike up out Insanity decay out of combat drastically.
Boom, Void Eruption is up every pull. No one’s angry.
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Its almost like Void Form doesn’t matter. But having a hard hitting ability that takes resources to use is actually FUN.
Shoooooocking lol.
Its not like we had a similar playstyle not too long ago… 4+ years that is lol.
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