Shadow Crash Alternatives

Classes Priest
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So I just got finished with Stormwind 8-Mask Horrific visions, and it has yet again reminded of how much I hate Shadow Crash. Having our entire AoE rotation use this spell as a foundation feels terrible. A ground targeted, delayed, attack on a 20 second cooldown is both really annoying to use, and also not sufficient to deal with the many, many instances of recent PvE content swarming players with waves of mobs that are either hard-hitting or have dangerous casts. In these situation, we have to choose one wave to be able to do damage to, and even then our efforts can be defeated by displacement from other players or unpredictable movement from the mobs themselves.

I want to be clear, I’m not saying Shadow Priests can’t do good AoE damage. I’m saying that, regardless of their spot on meters, Shadow Crash is a horrible pain to deal with, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. So hear are some ideas I’ve heard before.

-Expand Holy Nova functionality and give it a shadow variant. This has precedence with spells like Halo/Divine Star, and several discipline mechanics. Holy Nova could have different effects for each spec, and for shadow, maybe it could actually deal some damage, or apply some dots, I dunno.

-Bring back Mind Sear in some form. Some people will not like this, but I’d take anything over Shadow Crash at this point.

-Adding “charges” to Shadow Crash to make it less punishing to use. I feel this is a band-aid fix that doesn’t address that Shadow Crash still feels terrible, but that’s just me.

-Implementing other, more consistently available means of spreading dots in clustered groups.

At the end of the day, I just want an AoE rotation that is convenient to use and consistently available. I think every DPS spec should at least have the option to choose that.

2 Likes
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At this point… these are my levels of band-aids.
• 2 charges at minimum for a tiny bit of QoL. “FFS Blizzard, throw us a bone, please.”
• 3 charges “Wow Blizzard, more than I expect from your frugal booty.”
• 2 charges, reduce CD to 10sec. “Wow Blizzard, what a wonderful change, who knew they could be so giving and display benevolence?”
• No charges, reduce CD to 0sec. Reduced insanity generation from 6 to 1 tbf. “Amazing Blizzard has high IQ, they actually listened, anticipated, and went above and beyond, they really know the SP spec, and SP player base and are actually playing the game at high levels, I’m more than pleasantly surprised, thank you for doing this while you guys are probably working on a redesign in the background. I can actually do dmg now to the first packs and rooms like in DFC. I can actually do low/mid level keys with friends to help them out. Wow my DPS is no longer tied to a make or break 20s window if it misses bc tanks decided to move or pug tanks decided to pull more mobs in 10s into the pull. Like wow… actually big wow.”

Back to the OP. Holy Nova to Shadow Nova in a visual sense make sense.
The core problem is we are pathing through Holy Nova to take Spell Warding, which is silly rn. They should probably switch those two talents and move Rapsody to the outside, that way, Holy Nova isn’t even a worry for Shadow.

But… It’s also something I don’t want to press in the current iteration. It could make sense that Holy Nova applies VT and SW: Pain too but it’ll be two buttons that do the same thing. Might as well give SC more charges.

Holy Nova is also something I wouldn’t want to bring into the rotation. Imagine using Shadow Crash, then spamming Shadow Nova for AOE. It’s like a worst form of Arcane Explosion, but if it’s weak enough, maybe it’s really to finish off low health mobs? IDK.

2 Likes
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I agree, I wouldn’t want an AoE centered on myself to be a core part of our AoE rotation. Buffing/altering Holy Nova wouldn’t fix any issues with shadow’s primary AoE rotation, the main issue being shadow crash’s cooldown and its delay (Seriously, why does it have to have a delay!?).

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Instead of a Shadow Version of Holy Nova, just incorporate Unholy Nova from Shadow lands.

Unholy Nova is great because you can use it at range and it’s instant and can easily just be a choice node alongside Holy Nova so all priest specs and pick it up.

Mind Sear I always loved. But any version of it has come with its pros and cons.

I personally miss Cascade and would love that spell back as it was fantastic to use and really scaled well with more targets.

However each and every one of these options would all suffer based solely on Shadows Mastery as all damage dealt to targets without your dots on them are reduced per dot missing.

Which really means we need to address the mastery and change it. I personally think our mastery should be similar to WoD mastery where it will just flat out increase damage to all Shadows Mind Spells. If Mind Sear returned then Mastery will increase both single target and AOE as well as burst damage from Mind Spike and Mind Blast.

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From history

We’ve got Searing Nightmare from Shadowlands. Formerly a spender only usable during mind sear to apply SW:P to all targets and dealing increased damage to targets suffering from SW:P.

Probably not suitable for a modern setting without reworking it entirely.

We’ve got Dark Void, was just a cooldown that applied SW:P to enemies near your target. Like current shadow crash, but with no travel time.

Replacing shadow crash with this (and having it apply VT) would alleviate the travel time issue.

We’ve also got Cascade, which was removed after WoD i think. Didn’t apply dots and only bounced around, but imagine if applied your dots to everyone it struck. It would make spread aoe a lot easier. Had a cooldown between halo and divine star.

There’s also halo and divine star, which could be baked into Whispering Shadow’s functionality. One being big spread aoe on a cooldown, the other just being more sustained on a smaller group on a shorter cooldown.

There’s also giving shadow crash a shorter cooldown and/or two charges and a faster travel time.

1 Like
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Simply make VT to be applied to the target and 3 nearby enemies within 10 yards.

Tab now prioritize targets without any dots.

Shadow crash can be a choice node, as spender heavy AOE damage, with mind-sear as the other choice.

7

11.2 PTR potential change.
• 2 charges, reduce CD to 15sec. Reduced targets from 8 to 6.

Found that middle ground. Not quite 10sec. Not quite 8 targets, but yes, +2 charges.

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Still a horrible spell to attach a dot spreader onto.

So many better spells to use…

  • Cascade
  • Dark Void
  • Unholy Nova

Just to name a few.

They need to just rip Shadow Crash out entirely. People only use it because it spreads dots, they don’t use it because it’s fun to use.

2 Likes
9

Why are you trying to sugar coat the truth… were the worst AOE damage in the game as proven by the competitions they just completed in china.

We have the lowest mob limit caps, we have no viable burst, and we cannot quickly change targets in a large play area (like a large boss fight area).

You don’t have to lie to try and not hurt feelings, were the worst in the game at the moment and the large overall consensus is this is the worst shadow priest design in the history of the game.

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How quickly people forget early shadowlands

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From these changes I can conclude that with the removal of Deathspeaker making Shadow Word: Death a more pronounced ability within the gameplay loop, Unfurling Darkness to help with both dot spread and mini burst windows and with the loss of Mind Spike in conjunction with Dark Ascension with seemingly nothing interested or coherent at replacing what those leave behind leave me in a state of sadness as I enjoyed what those options had to offer at least somewhat over the rest of the options.

Seems like whenever they touch Shadow ever since the Legion Revamp, they just have no clear direction and continue to leave Shadow in a questionable state when it comes to its AOE, it’s Burst capability, it’s utility and it’s survival.

All they have done is trade out existing problems with the same ones only with a new coat of paint. The foundation is still in a state of rot and needs to be redone entirely. A simple coat of paint will only satisfy temporary with the new shiny bells and whistles but will quickly fall off and the same problems and complaints will resurface and then other classes will say stop complaining because we just got a rework and not understanding that all our core issues just got ignored… again. Just like the previous reworks.

It just goes around and around with our problems not addressed and ignored for multiple years and multiple expansions just for a new coat of paint and those lingering issues just become even more pronounced.

It’s honestly exhausting at this point because it really seems the devs have no idea what they are doing and refuse to communicate why they consistently treat Priest with a different set of design rules.

Instead of making things fun, they just add more ways to be frustrated. This is a horrible outlook when it comes to class and spec design.

Just sick of it all.

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you’d be a very small minority in thinking a viable meta spec with a less bloated rotation is worse than the current iteration of the spec.