So, what do people feel about the changes coming in 12.1?
I’m just incredibly disappointed since this barely feels like a QoL update.
It’s another AoE source and a small improvement to Voidform. But that’s it?
We waited for 12.1, got no changes in 12.0.5 or 12.0.7, and now they make the issues with PL and Voidform slightly smaller. But the problems still exist.
We got no consolidation of the Apparition nodes in the tree.
We still have a ton of passive damage sources that could use some consolidation as well.
Idols are still small proc effects instead of something bigger and more impactful.
Shadowform is still just a purple fart cloud.
We still need to talent into 2 charges of Mind Blast.
Mastery still plays into the PL AoE profile.
Void Volley is still tied to Voidform, and Voidform still has a cast time.
Considering that Shadow got a very small amount of changes going into Midnight, and the lack of changes in 12.0.5 and 12.0.7, I kind of expected a bit more work to be put into Shadow.
Not necessarily a rework, but some sort of modernization to reduce the amount of systems they’ve been stacking on top of each other for a very long time.
6 Likes
I quit, I canceled my sub i’ll be playing Guild Wars 2 and I will be waiting for Guild Wars 3. This is a freaking joke at this point, Shadow received practically nothing in TWW, practically nothing beyond that Tentacle Slam in Midnight launch and now this…
The devs in charge of combat design have no idea what they are doing, I’m pretty sure they dont even play the game and any other player who really know the spec can do a better job than them, is a shame.
They didn’t touch the class talent tree, our utility, nothing, and if all of this is not nough Disc and Holy are just crap right now and it will be the same for 12.1, so you don’t even have the choice for another priest spec because all of them are basically useless compared to what the other classes can offer
A lot of feedback, really good ideas, expansion after expansion, patch after patch just to be ignored. They just give some love always to the same specs, I’m done, this is enough, at least for me.
6 Likes
Void Volley as charges looks like solid QoL. Sending on CD or losing a cast always felt bad. Especially when timings on fights were off by a few seconds, and it meant holding just long enough to lose a cast. Now we have charges and SW:M casts Void Volley too. Talents give us 5 charges. Then we get into a situation of spamming out Void Volley for instant burst AoE. Looks good to me.
Apparitions changes give us death-ball friendly cleave which is similar to how almost every other class operates for cleave damage. Seems positive for m+ potential balancing rather than relying on Psychic Link balancing through Tentacle Slam/Vampiric Touch.
Tentacle Slam damage increase is fine as well.
No changes for mobility. I tried shipping Divine Feather-like a utility being moved to the priest tree instead of just Oracle Hero Talents (making it like a mini-roar for the priest that we can also give out to individuals via feathers).
It’s really going to come down to the numbers, though. Too early in the cycle to make a call.
Shadow has a bad wrap right now in the community, so if we don’t come out swinging in 12.1.0 with damage and mobility correcting changes - its going to be another tier of low player engagement on the spec.
Fewer players mean fewer voices, fewer voices mean less attention from Blizzard. Then we get low representation in the RWF, and then fewer people play the class because that does sway people’s perceptions. We have RFW streamers verbally say “…because priests can’t move…” to their audience, and that matters to people.
4 Likes
No movement tools added for the spec is really dishearening.
Remove Fade’s last talent and bake it with the baseline Fade and give us Door of Shadow there.
5 Likes
I Like the 2 piece set bonus. Tentacle slam on 12s cd with 100% increased damage is where the spell should be at baseline. But i’ll take it as a set bonus.
The 4 piece feels… stupid. Why is it tentacle slam empowering a manual VT cast. Tentacle slam applies VT to targets along with SW:M. The thing we want to focus target is what we cast TS on. SO we will have to swap to random targets with this empowered VT every subsequent cast of TS (which is more now because of the 12s cd). And because we keep VT up with our abilities that increase their duration.
Its easy in Single Target but relatively worthless because the majority of what makes the 4piece good is just us reapplying it to the same enemy thus making it worthless. But in Multi-target situations were going to constantly be swapping targets to apply empowered VT then back to the focus target, which will make M+ annoying. It just feels really poorly designed and a really bad 4 piece set bonus especially in Single Target.
Shadeburst is great, and going to make a few people from forums extra happy.
Voidform giving 5 Void Volleys (with improved voidform) is cool, makes it a lot less worrisome to cast it in some M+ Situations where you just wouldn’t have the setup to get extra volley’s casted.
Ancient madness changes are cool but we already have sporadic haste buffs from Tentacle slam and stack haste, likely won’t have any meaningful change to the rotation or builds.
Power word shield +25% is a joke, very funny blizz, love the middle finger reminders that you don’t give a Fu** about shadow priest.
Nothing to address our major issues of Utility, Mobility, Survival is frustrating.
Feels overall lazy and underwhelming and tone deaf to what the classes issues are. But most classes major CD’s were getting nerfed while our underwhelming Major cd is getting minor buffs.
The 4 piece being so bad is very upsetting though.
2 Likes
I think the goal was to make it work for both PVP and PVE. By linking it to VT, it has a clear PVP use case: to ensure and reapply VT for rot cleave in a scenario where your dots are being purged and you need to avoid being kicked.
For both PVE and PVP is the apparitions trigger which is instant casts as proc bonus damage. In PVE the VT reapplication really isn’t the point. It’s a side effect that won’t have any value in most situations. However, in PVP it is valuable.
The problem I see is there are now so many procs and casts to get off in PvE. Between the extra globals the VTs will take and the void volley spam it looks like it’s going to be very difficult to not cap on resources/procs/changes during Void Form.
2 Likes
No hanges from a PvP persective unfortunately.. disapointing compared to all the other class changes
1 Like
- Focused Outburst has been redesigned – Void Volley deals 15% increased damage and Shadow Word: Madness casts during Voidform unleash a Void Volley at your target.
I saw a vid of somebody testing this and it looked insanely good with so many VV’s back to back from SW:M. Something that really made being in voidform worthy and can make Archon really desirable, even though VW is more interesting gameplay-wise.
Just feels like they’ve seen the issues that people have been complaining about.
But they didnt remove the issues, they just made them slightly less of a issue instead.
Ofcourse that is improvement but it just feels like change to little considering they knew about the issues according to the Dev comment.
Apparitons still has a ton of talent nodes, and are still passive procs besides TS and SW:M.
Void Apparitons is also just 45% random proc.
Mastery and Voidform still dont affect Apparitons, and it looks like they want Apparitons to be a very big part of Shadows kit. But they wont go the whole way with it.
The same thing goes for Idols, they are fun part of both lore and visualls (some of them), but they are just random procs that does damage or generate insanity.
Just feels like we have so many things that plays a little part or is passive damage. Instead of improving how it actually plays or consolidate some of the systems, like Fiend/Bender → Idols they all exist on their own.
Halo is also one of those spells thats very old, its changed a bit from its original state. But its basically the same. Sure it looks nice when you press it, but I dont really “feel” anything when I press it. Id much rather see it be integrated with Voidform and that Voidform instead is on a 1 min CD and spawns Halo like the spell currently does.
For Voidweaver, Void Torrent could “pause” the duration of Voidform for a bit when you channel it.
2 Likes
This is a constant issue for Shadow.
Limit/inhibit PVP because if we don’t PVE is too strong. But inverse to that, they also limit/inhibit PVE because if they didn’t PVP would be too strong.
Yet for everyone else they are allowed to be broken in both or get major tuning in separate situations.
2 Likes
I honestly wish at this rate every ability had its own PVP version other than just numbers. It wouldn’t solve the problem completely, but it would be easier to balance. But that requires an actual PVP developer who can oversee that done, as it’s defnitely more complex than just turning numbers.
Of course, It would also need PVP tooltips to stand out more (e.g. like a different background when the pvp flag was enabled).
1 Like
So in total between tier sets and changes we get Shadowy App AoE burst, increased damage on Tentacle Slam, and force proc of Shadowy App.
I will take every last little bit of anything they want to give us to gets us away from Psychic Link and to other forms of AoE.
1 Like
And much more void volleys in voidform.
Yeah, between Shadow getting more AoE sources focusing less on Psychic Link and Oracle getting more direct healing and being less atonement focus I am over all happy with the direction. It won’t be over night but I am hoping we will see both Atonement and Psychic Link eventually removed entirely.
I don’t mind psychic link staying, as i like the funnel aspect, but between psychic link, the apparition bombs and void volley palying a more central role, it would be cool to have a few different directions for our aoe.
The flat increase to absorbs and some heals is simply to keep up with the 25% player health and creature damage increase. So essentially there is no change. Doesn’t mean they have finished with all potential changes. There may be further increases but they did a blanket absorb increase
It looks a bit broken imho. Number-wise. If its like this i think voidweaver needs the same talent or its a dead hero spec.
True, but without anything else changing but them addin the Exploding Ghosts and more Void Volley in Archon, most of our AoE profile is still PL =/
Another issue is that our biggest problem areas in our damageprofile are ramping AoE not being good in low level content or against low health fodder mobs, and single target.
These changes may help with the aoe issues but atill require ramp and dotting everything and getting SW:M casts while other classes will be pushing 3 buttons to explode things. So my personal guess is, its not going to help with low level content viability as much.
Single target will still be something we are very under performing in, i would love for them to address that but seeing how they didnt even bother to acknowledge utility, mobility, survivability for the class as a whole i am not going to hold my breath on it.
Its funny that this has been a problem since Legion, the very introduction for M+ dungeons.
Yet we’re still giving feedback on the same thing. Its Insanity at this point.