Mind Bomb should be restored to what it was before, and it should not replace an existing skill. Psychic Horror being baseline and Final Word as well.
Our utility wouldn’t be bad if vampiric blood were reduced to a 1 min cd, it’s actually a pretty useful spell, just not available enough.
Mass dispel could use an enrage dispel feature and a reduction in cd. That would help shadow viability a lot, by opening up an enrage dispel slot to them.
Dispersion should have its original DR restored, revert that dumb nerf they did to all survival spells. All those nerfs did was widen the gap between rogue/mage/paladin and the rest.
I feel like theres so many convos about what people want, that is unclear on the main pain points are with the class. My personal pain points are:
AOE feels bad to play. Youre forced to play searing nightmare or do nothing to packs. Theres no way to keep up dots because the refresh duration of dots effect from void bolt is balanced around void form not being a cd and instead being like bfa/legion.
Homoginzation of the class now feels like a bad version of fire mage. Combust=VF but better. Combust can be extended, VF cant. Combust window is more mobile as all spells are insta cast, VF window has 2 of 3 that are insta, but not all. Both have interactions with dots on the target that are crucial to do good damage. Fire mages is passive, SP isnt. I could keep going, but its ultimately just a worse fire mage thats going to be left in the dust further when mechagon wrists are reintroduced.
There is no room for miss play and its not intuitive at all. One cast out of place and the damage is below the meters. Conversely, played precisely perfect, and were still not top of meters. We have a niche of single target, but dont do that any better than anyone else. Add in, we dont have much utility either, and the question becomes why bring an SP when you can just bring a Hpriest and cover everything the SP was going to bring?
Not a dot class anymore. Our damage profile is not centered around dots anymore. Its more about the VF burst window as opposed to the sustained ramping damage we have been for so many expansions. This ties into the comment regarding homoginization, but essentially its the same as every other class now too.
Its just not fun anymore. I used to get excited with the voidform juggle in trying to keep my void form up as long as i could and dominate bosses when i played well. It allowed for measurable skill expression with rewards of high damage and was intuitive on how you were intended to play it. Now it feels like trying to put a puzzle together with pieces that are all wet soaked and soggy. Sure, theyre the same pieces, but the dont fit together anymore and the final picture is unrecognizable from what it once was.
I think all of these are fixed by reverting the changes from bfa to Shadowlands and building on the concept that VF is still a minigame and not a CD, and that all dots are brought back to full power and not the weak versions they are now.
VF would be fine if we trimmed out Power Infusion and baked that damage into dots. Having to hold VF for every PI is stupid.
Sure, old VF from Legion was far more original gameplay. Ideally, we’d go back to that and be given a couple of abilities that immediately put us in voidform every 30 secs to give the spec control over its damage profile in M+
The end effect of Devouring Plague and putting VF+PI together is that we have a window that eats up all of our damage profile and outside it we are a wet noodle.
Neither Mindblast or the dots are doing appreciable damage because of DP and how PI interacts with VF+Voidbolt.
Mindsear also needs to be a much longer channel, or Searing Nightmare needs to trigger automatically while casting Mindsear.
These are my ideas for Shadow talents in the new tree coming in 10.0
Table of Contents:
1. My philosophy towards Shadow Priest talent choices 2. Baseline abilities moved into talent choices 3. Shadow Talents - Old/Past abilities/talents coming back as talent choices 4. Shadow Talents - Current talents as talent choices 5. Class Talents 6. Additional Ideas that could become talents 7. My current take on how I might build the tree (WIP)
1. My philosophy towards Shadow Priest talent choices:
Shadow Talent Tree Goal:
I envision a Shadow Specialization Talent tree to have 2 primary paths going downward (Shadow and Void) with a mix/cross of abilities in the middle (Shadow/Void).
Playstyles:
My Goal was to have 3 very distinct playstyles…
Classic Shadow Priest playstyle (Vanila-Wrath) but with Dark Archangel as your primary “power up”.
Shadow Orb playstyle (Cata-Wod) but with the primary focus on using Clairty of Power for Dot Weaving/ Dotless Burst play.
Void / Insanity Drain Mechanic (Legion-Shadowlands) with the primary focus on getting into and maintaining your Void Form.
I don’t have many ideas on this type of playstyle because I never really enjoyed the entire conception/implementation of it.
I do think it would prove beneficial to take a page out of the WoD Demo lock book and instead of insanity being drained constantly and therefore having a slow ramp up in order to get into Void Form, I think it would be better to enter Void Form at any point and your entire insanity resource only THEN becomes active and it builds over time faster and faster. Your goal is to spend the insanity on your abilities faster then it passively generates insanity. Therefore you get upfront damage boost without having to build up insanity first beforehand. Its like the steam mechanic many talked about over the years where your trying to let off steam before you overheat… only with insanity. Outside Void form, you only use mana for abilities until void form is up again.
Resource Generation: The idea is that everything costs mana, with the exception of once your enter Voidform, then everything costs/generates Insanity (pending if its a builder/spender type of mechanic).
Mastery: I think the current “Dark Thoughts Mastery” will work well enough with all playstyles.
Dark Thoughts
For each of your Shadow damage over time effects on the target, your Mind Flay and Mind Sear have a 3% chance to trigger a Dark Thought. Dark Thought
Increases the number of charges of Mind Blast by 1, Mind Blast can be cast instantly, and can be cast while channelling Mind Flay or Mind Sear.
Shadow Mend (Transforms Flash Heal into Shadow Mend)
3. Shadow Talents - Old/Past abilities/talents coming back as talent choices
3a. Shadow Path Talents:
(Active)
Spectral Guise
Your shadow blurs into the darkness, leaving your true form behind. As a shadow you are stealthed, but remain in combat. Lasts 6 sec or until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks.
Dark Archangel (Altered from original)
Increases the damage done by your non-periodic Shadow damage abilities by 20%. Lasts for 18 sec. 90 sec cooldown.
Mind Spike
Blasts the target with Shadowfrost damage, but extinguishes your Shadow damage-over-time effects from the target in the process.
Mind Spike also increases the critical strike chance of your next Mind Blast on the target by 30%. Stacks up to 3 times.
(Passive)
Shadow Power (2pt)
Increases the critical damage of your Shadow spells by 10/20%.
Pain and Suffering (3pt)
Your Mind Flay has a 33% chance to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain on the target, and reduces the damage you take from your own Shadow Word: Death by 10%.
Mind Melt (3pt)
Increases your Mind spells critically strike chance by 3/6/9%.
Masochism (3pt) (Cataclysm version)
When you take a damaging attack equal to or greater than 10% of your total health or damage yourself with your Shadow Word: Death, you instantly gain 5/10/15% of your total mana.
Surge of Darkness
Your Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch have a 10% chance to make your next Mind Spike instant, deal 50% more damage, and not consume your damage-over-time effects. Up to 3 charges.
Clarity of Power
Your Mind Spike, Mind Sear, and Shadow Word: Death deal 40% additional damage to targets not affected by your Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch. Also reduces the cooldown on Mind Blast by 3 sec and makes it instant cast.
Shadow Orbs (Altered from original)
Mind Blast & Shadow Word: Death now generate Shadow Orbs (max 5). Each Orb empowers your next Devouring Plague to increase its damage and duration by 25%.
Harnessed Shadows (2pt) (Altered from original)
You have a 50/100% chance to gain a Shadow Orb when critically hit by any attack.
3b. Shadow/Void Talents:
(Passive)
Insanity (Altered from previous version)
Casting Devouring Plague your Mind Flay spell into Insanity for 5 seconds. Insanity’s damage is double that of Mind Flay.
3c. Legion Artifact Traits
Call to the Void
Mind Flay and Mind Sear have a chance to spawn a Void Tendril or Void Lasher that channels at your target for 15 sec, generating 3 insanity every 1 sec.
Unleash the Shadows
Vampiric Touch critical strikes have a 15% chance to create a Shadowy Apparition.
Fiending Dark (Altered from previous version)
Increases the duration of Shadowfiend by 2 sec each time Mind Flay critically hits.
4. Shadow Talents - Current talents as talent choices
4a. Shadow Path Talents:
Death and Madness (Altered from current)
If your Shadow Word: Death fails to kill the target at or below 20% health, your Shadow Word: Death’s cooldown is instantly reset. Damage increased by 150% to targets below 20% health.
Unfurling Darkness
After casting Vampiric Touch on a target, your next Vampiric Touch within 8 sec is instant cast and deals Shadow damage immediately. This effect cannot occur more than once every 15 sec.
San’layn
Reduces the cooldown of Vampiric Embrace by 45 sec and increases its healing done by 25%.
Intangibility
Dispersion heals for 50% of your maximum health over its duration and has 30 sec reduced cooldown.
Misery
Vampiric Touch also applies Shadow Word: Pain to the target.
Auspicious Spirits
Your Shadowy Apparitions grant you a Shadow Orb instead of doing damage
Psychic Link
Mind Blast deals 60% of its damage to all other targets afflicted by your Vampiric Touch within 40 yards.
Shadow Crash
Hurl a bolt of slow-moving Shadow energy at the destination, dealing Shadow damage to all targets within 8 yards. 30 sec cooldown.
Damnation
Instantly afflicts the target with Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague. 45 sec cooldown.
4b. Void Path Talents
Void Torrent
Channel a torrent of void energy into the target, dealing Shadow damage over 3 sec.
Ancient Madness
Voidform increases your critical strike chance by 30% for 15 sec, reducing by 2% every sec.
Surrender to Madness
Deals Shadow damage to the target and activates Voidform.
For the next 30 sec, your Insanity-generating abilities generate 100% more Insanity and you can cast while moving.
If the target does not die within 30 sec of using Surrender to Madness, you die. 1.5 min cooldown
Hungering Void
Void Bolt causes the target to become vulnerable to the void, increasing their damage taken from you by 10% for 6 sec. This effect may only be active on one target at a time.
Casting Void Bolt on an enemy that is already vulnerable extends the duration of your Voidform by 1 sec, or 2 sec if Void Bolt critically strikes
4c. Shadow/Void Talents:
Searing Nightmare
Instantly deals Shadow damage to enemies around the target and afflicts them with Shadow Word: Pain. If the enemy is already afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain, Searing Nightmare’s damage is increased by 100%. Only usable while channeling Mind Sear.
Psychic Horror
Terrifies the target in place, stunning them for 4 sec. Instant 45 sec cooldown
4d. Tier Set Bonus:
Darkened Mind
Casting Devouring Plague has a 40% chance to grant Dark Thought. Casting Searing Nightmare has a 25% chance to grant Dark Thought.
4e. Legendary Effects:
Shadowflame Prism
Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death cause your Shadowfiend to teleport behind your target, slashing up to 5 nearby enemies for Shadowflame damage. Each time a rift is triggered, the duration of Shadowfiend is increased by 1.0 sec.
Talbadar’s Stratagem
While you have Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch active on the same target, your Mind Blast deals 55% more damage.
4f. New Talents:
Fiend Acceleration
Reduces the cooldown of Shadow Fiend by 3 sec each time Mind Flay Critically strikes.
5. Class Talents
(The following will now be class abilities and will show up in the class talents)
Twist of Fate
After dealing damage to or healing to a target with less than 35% health, increases your damage and healing by 15% for the next 10 seconds.
Dominate Mind
Mind-controls the target enemy for up to 30 seconds. Does not work on mechanical units; shares diminishing returns with Incapacitate effects. 30 yard range, 30 second cooldown, 1.8 second cast.
Void Tendrils
Tendrils come out of the ground under up to 5 enemies within 8 yards, immobilizing them for 20 seconds. Killing the tendril cancels the effect. 30 second cooldown.
Power Infusion
Increases the priest’s casting haste by 25% and reduces the mana cost of the target’s spells by 20%. Lasts 20 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.
Body and Soul
Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith increase your target’s movement speed by 40% for 3 sec.
Mindbender (Replaces Shadowfiend)
Summons a Mindbender to attack the target for 15 sec. Generates Mana each time the Mindbender attacks
6. Additional Ideas that could become talents
Devouring Plague can now be spread to additional targets.
Devouring Plague can be casted on additional targets (if it costs resource to cast like insanity/Shadow Orbs)
Shadow Orb Talent could be a 1/2 pt talent that increases max orb by 3/5.
Not sure how to give access to Halo, Cascade, Divine Star as Shadow… I was thinking those can be healing only abilities that Shadow Spec simply will not have access to.
I didn’t play much of shadowlands, so the idea of brining in those covenant abilities as talents or the legendries simply were not on my mind, but open to including the popular ones.
7. My current take on how I might build the tree (WIP)
I am not a fan of the void aesthetic at all, even though my main has been a shadow priest since vanilla. I am more a fan of the shadow orb playstyle and I would like that to return (which the current playstyle sort of barely half assedly which only makes it worse almost approximates).
Also, shadow ravens. I still have my toy on my hotbar.
I think for a start they need to trim some sht. I have like 4 cds, 2 dots, 3 main attacks that im constantly using and 3 fkn procs that are always popping. They’re DOING TOO MUCH!
I really hope the new tree gives me the option of simplifying a bit and empowering my base stuff so the rotation is less hectict. I love using mind flay, not playing whackamole
100 percent agreed. i hate how they force void form down our throats. i hate how shadow no longer feels like you are in a shadow theme spec. It’s pretty much Cthulhu spec as you stated.
If I may ask, what did you like about it? What was the standout feature that caught your interest?
Have you seen my up to date version?
I made some slight changes. Which do you like?
I am curious because I want to know / get a consensus on what people want for shadow… instead of just complaining about what we have right now, I would like a good idea on what we as a whole want so we can focus that message as feedback towards blizzard once the priest talent tree is revealed.
My favorite part is the fact that there’s all three flavors of shadows playstyle available for everyone who enjoys whichever version.
I loved that during WoD we had the option for a dotless playstyle with the Clarity of Power talent as well as the original Spriest playstyle of keeping dots up while Mind Flaying and spend orbs on Devouring Plague. In WoD If you really wanted to get a little sweaty, you could do the DoT Weaving playstyle of Mind Spiking and Mind Blasting until you had 5 orbs, then apply dots, dump a couple of Devouring Plagues while Mind Flaying and repeat. I’ve looked at your tree and it seems neat that you’ve split the three flavors of shadow. I wonder if DoT Weaving is possible with that tree.
To answer your question, yes you can have the dot weaving play style pretty easy with this tree example.
Dark Thoughts (our current passive) allowing for a Mind Blast cd reset and instant cast will help speed up the dot weaving.
But since Clarity of Power already provides a Mind Blast cd shorted by 3 sec and it always being instant cast, Dark thoughts is not much of a buff… but that’s intentional. I wanted dark thoughts to still be a big bonus to the non Clarity of Power play styles like… Auspicious Spirits, Void Form or just super powerful dots with Dark Archangel pumping up your Shadow Word: Deaths and Mind Blasts.
Now obviously I have no idea what blizzard plans and what level of balancing will be needed. But my main goal here is to illustrate the capableness of this new way approach to the talent system and how custom it can become to give birth to such differences in play style choice that we can have a focused message we can direct toward blizzard early on enough to hopefully get our wants implemented.
Also, it doesn’t hurt to have a visual aid to help get our point across lol.
Also, the fact that voidform has been propped up by the rest of our talents and other borrowed power systems in order to not fall flat all the while showing wild swings up and down in all areas of play be it m+, raiding, pvp or casual… helps give us ammo to drive the point home that if they once again build out an entire talent tree based around voidform, then it’s going to suffer greatly.
