After seeing all the cool stuff Xal’atath can do with void magic, it makes me wonder why shadow priest isn’t more.
Even just the fight scene with Khadgar, what are those void orbs she shoots him with? The levitation in combat… There’s so much inspiration to draw from if void is what we’re leaning into. Why isn’t shadow priest more?
The spec has the potential to be the coolest spec in this game and yet it feels so squandered
Maybe her Sphere of insanity?
Sphere of Insanity Artifact Trait
Rank 0/1 100 yd rangeRequires Priest (Shadow)
Requires [Xal’atath, Blade of the Black Empire]
PassiveNormal:
The Sphere of Insanity manifests for the duration of Voidform. Your Void Bolts, Mind Blasts, and Mind Flays cause the sphere to duplicate 5% their damage to all enemies affected by your Shadow Word: Pain.The Sphere of Insanity manifests for the duration of Voidform. Your Void Bolts, Mind Blasts, and Mind Spikes cause the sphere to duplicate 5% their damage to all enemies affected by your Shadow Word: Pain.
You know, I wonder how it would be if instead of Psychic Link being triggered by your dots on the target and we had a different mastery that didn’t require our dots on target to deal max potential damage. Have an instant cast spell being Sphere of insanity and all targets within the sphere get your Mind and Void Spell cleave.
That way you can cleave without having to dot up all targets, you just dot up the primary targets.
If you only needed to dot up the primary targets, we would have a lot less need to dot all targets and so a mass dot tool like Shadow Crash wouldn’t even be required.
Just dot up like maybe max 5 targets and cleave down those and the rest with Sphere of Insanity.
Just an idea I thought up. So since it’s a spur of the moment and I’m tired, haven’t taken the time to really think about all the potential issues that could arise. But it could be fun.
Would be very similar to Frost Mages Frozen Orb imo in that you cast on target(s) and start blasting away.
Definitely huge potential for future spells and mechanics. Loving the flavor of Voidweaver so far (especially love how Void Blast straight up sounds like a shotgun lmao).
I dont think it feels squandered at least in the visual department. It has some of the best animations in the game imo, and you can instantly tell whenever a shadow priest is around due to their abilities. Void torrent, voidform, mind flay insanity all look amazing, and then you have Voidweaver if you spec into it that just looks insanely good with void blast and entropic rift (voidweaver needs to be better for shadow though).
edit- also Voidform looks amazing and resembles Xal’atath a lot. You float around and have tentacles coming out of you+darker shadowform. Its really great visually. There is definitely more they could do, I just don’t think it is squandered.
I can’t belive blizard made an expension were the main vilain is a shadow priest without working on the actual Spriest spec.
Shadow should has been the coolest class of TWW.
I’m sure they are not even tapping into the extent of her powers and as such, I think they will have a much more clear understanding of what she can and will do and prepare for it for Midnight expansion.
It is for Midnight I think we will see a lot more void presence and as such a lot more inspiration can be borrowed and put into priest and Voidweaver specifically.
That might be a reason why they didn’t tackle priest and shadow that deeply now as they will have a lot more planned later.
It’s how I would do it if I had ultimate control if you want to deliver on the fantasy of this void theme that is.
I see TWW as just a prelude with others borrowing void magic theme. While Midnight is going all out in exploring void to its fullest extent.
She will be the main villain for the foreseeable future. There is plenty of time for shadow priests to have some time to shine in the story.
Personally I think MFI looks terrible. It’s a basic 2D texture. They could at least make it a cool void beam or something
…cool.
Tbh the constant negativity in the priest forums is such a bummer.
Personally im having a blast on my priest.
Can we take a moment to just… chill out? Enjoy the story, take a breath.
I think it looks pretty sweet personally. Maybe they can update it but it just looks like a really cool mind flay to me.
I wanna be clear there are always more things they can do with visuals for basically every class, they are super slow with anything regarding new visuals/animations. Glyphs are something ive been harping about constantly because we haven’t gotten any since legion and they can use those to get pretty creative while staying in the confines of class/spec fantasy but they aren’t utilizing them.
You’re welcome to chill and breathe all you want.
I would like to advocate for my favorite spec to be better
There is always more that can be improved.
But there’s a difference between discussing actionable change, and just crapping on someone else’s positive thought.
Not asking you to change, or expecting you to respect my feelings on this. You’re not even a main contributor to the negative discourse.
Its just exhausting seeing nothing else.
I try not to be super negative, although I will admit Blizzards total radio silence toward priests has been rather frustrating at times.
I at least try to bring suggestions with my complaints. I would really like all of shadows visuals to be on the same level as voidweaver. They look so polished and shiny 
Yeah, like I said, you aren’t a primary source. I’m sorry for targeting your post. It was just the most recent one I’d seen after a long day.
As for priests struggles with the devs, for me it’s the constant redesigns we seem to get.
Visually the class has come a long way from what it was. But they can’t seem to pick a design.
Voidweaver is a treat though. Visually stunning, and damn cool. I’m preferring archon, but looking forward to both.
I agree
Shadow/void probably has the most potential out of any schools of magic. You could easily create a wide variety of damage, healing, and utility spells using that school. Think of that void portal that Xal’atath used to pull Iridikron away for example. We could’ve had something similar, but for mobility rather than porting around.
Here’s hoping someone at blizz is reading these forums and keeping notes. Shadow still needs some love.
I also noticed when Xalatath shot khadgar with those void orbs, she formed 3 orbs first, 2 on her shoulders and one with the Dark Heart.
It matches the Voidweaver spec tree. Makes me wonder if maybe we’ll get more void things. I sure hope so
It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve iterated on what we can do. The legion artifact expanded trees come to mind.
I want that rapid fire void ball spell she hit him with. Badass.
That cinematic and the void Weaver icon makes me miss Shadow orbs.
Similar to the Mage class cosmetic transmog that looks akin to Kael’thas, it would be cool for priests to eventually get Xal’atath’s new TWW appearence as a transmog option… perhaps in the form of the Warlock green fire questline?
With that, it would also be cool to get our resource system changed back to Shadow Orbs merely because I think that is both more intuitive and visually more appealing and of course to satisfy my personal nostalgia.
Then to make it extra special, those Shadow/Void looking orbs she has would light up and glow when you get a Shadow Orb during gameplay. Not dissimilar to Frost Mages Ice crystals that appear and float above your head until you consume them.
At this point, I’d be happy with shadow orbs as a visual representation of surge procs.