Imagine if Frozen orb or Liquid magma totem was attached to an enemy.
Better?
Probably not gonna be good enough for you though. The example doesn’t matter, the point I’m making should be pretty clear.
Your point is clear but its also meaningless because you balance with those in mind regardless. Shadow Crash is a direct Damage ability that isn’t enabling anything more than applying DoTs with VT isn’t doing on its own.
Side Note: If Shadow Crash had the benefits or functioned like Frozen Orb or Liquid Magma Totem than we wouldnt likely be having this conversation(SC wishes it was as fast as those abilities lol).
You have to cast VT, shadow crash is instant and AoE, that makes its use case different from just a normal VT cast and it also makes it much more potent.
Means you can’t get interrupted on it in PvP and it will apply to all enemies hit for both PvE and PvP, it’s a really powerful ability and deserves to be harder to use than just being auto targetted. Same reason why void volley doesn’t just hit everyone around you and can be avoided or why Ring of Frost can be played around, it offers opportunities for both side.
Shadow Crash also traces its origin from the faceless’ iconic ability, which as always been a ground targetted attack that’s avoidable. It’s the same reason why Meteor acts the exact same way for mages. Meteor is just as hard to use but when used well, its effective, so is Shadow Crash.
While abilities shouldn’t be balanced around how NPCs abilities work, Shadow Crash works from the player perspective.
I knew you were going to go with that angle i should of just added it in the original post. Add a cast time to it.
Rather than repeat myself ill just refer to my original post
Really saying we cant have a good spell because PvP is a very poor excuse and all its gonna do is make the PvE crowd despise the PvP crowd even more.
This isnt really a good excuse to have a bad spell, its slow moving, easily dodged because its iconic isnt really a good selling point for an ability.
This isnt a good thing, in fact its the core problem because if you miss Shadow Crash your only recourse is to manually apply DoTs to each target. Theres far to much “effectiveness” tied to an ability that is easily missed(a lot of which completely out of your control).
1 Like
Then don’t miss it.
There’s more than enough hand holding as it is in this game and we don’t need to constantly raise the floor because people don’t want impactful mistakes.
If they just dumb down everything, you end up with every classes being just like fury warriors, mindnumbingly easy with nothing interesting going for it mechanically.
/10characters
Shadow crash is just way too important in the rotation right now. If you miss shadow crash for any number of reasons it’s not like you just do a bit less damage or something you can recover from. It’s not like in a couple seconds you get another go or your other spells are impactful enough without it to let you at least hold your own. You do not do damage to targets without vampiric touch.
4 Likes
Don’t come with this “dumb down” crap in a shadow priest skill discussion, we have enough complexity already, lots of buttons and stuff, giving some QoL changes would be awesome.
Shadow crash animation doesn’t fit to modern wow anymore, everything is fast and the gameplay is very mobile.
3 Likes
I think that’s maybe a reductive interpretation. It can fit, but the spec would need to be less reliant on it.
Nah, I’ll give you an example, what ferals earned for this season’s aoe? Primal wrath.
Primal wrath alone does the same job as shadow crash, screams of the void and mind sear.
This is not about the damage btw, I’m giving an example of gameplay.
Shadow crash has 30 seconds cooldown, it makes no sense to keep the animation this slow at this point. Ofc we can land it, but it’s not fun gameplay wise.
Also I missed some shadow crashes due to Y axis (nokhud being an example, mobs that are above some hill), you click on the ground but the shadow crash is thrown all the way to the other side of the hill.
2 Likes
Just Life Grip your tank back into its impact zone 
Isn’t this a bad way to look at how a class is designed though?.
Currently Guardian Druids are the least represented spec in higher keys, so you’d just be saying “Tank better”??.
Clearly there’s an issue, I feel like any class, regardless of spec that’s performance is solely based on a skill that firstly has a slow travel time, easily be missed, bugs out occasionally aswell that’s needed to literally function properly is bad design?.
You previously mentioned liquid magma totem, but that instantly applies Flame Shock, theirs no delay, you place it down and instantly spreads it, which is the intended use for set up. Shadow Crash delay is the issue.
You also bring up mages Meteor, 80% of their dps isn’t reliant if Meteor hits or not, you’re really comparing apples to oranges.
I’ll be honest, I’d expect someone especially on the community council to have more of a open minded view, especially since this concern has been mentioned and was a hot topic all through Alpha and Beta and still going, just a little disappointed a player that soppose to represent the players has such a one dimensional biased view.
4 Likes
Real bad take IMHO.
What other class has their entire AOE DPS dependent on a 30 second cooldown skill shot?
Even assuming perfect accuracy, I still get pretty damn frustrated when I hit the pack and the tank decides to add another pack, or we get a pat, or we’re doing a raid boss that loves unleashing adds every 15-20 seconds.
Most other specs
A.) Do not require a successful skill shot of a very slow moving projectile on a 30 second cooldown to function properly.
B.) If they do have a cooldown tied to their AOE DPS, it often gets applied as a personal buff with a generous timer (IE: no skill shot AND tank can keep pulling OR pat can happen with no negative impact), or a means to decrease the cooldown of it so they can usually have the cooldown back before their buff even expires, just allowing constant AOE damage with no fuss.
“Git gud” shouldn’t be used to hand-wave unbalanced, clunky design choices.
Shadow Crash needs to go. Give us a reliable way to do AOE damage when we need to do AOE damage like nearly every other spec in the game… not just every 30 seconds.
8 Likes
I do agree if we are talking strictly design and balance it can(and has) existed in the past where it could fit and be less impactful. The crux of it is, that even in those worlds it wouldnt ever feel like a good button to press unless its completely redesigned and imagined.
If i were to use another spec in this game as an example what comes to mind as something similar but designed a lot better and in respect to the kit would be Vile Taint for Affliction. Has a cast time yet feels much better, much easier to land, and in a world that you somehow miss it, you arent heavily punished in AoE for it. Not to mention you dont take it for ST situations vs. shadow crash is forced into every possible build.
Having to run to the tank to use a range skill…whats the point of a range skills? Range skill means use from far away not wait for people to stop moving… Also, why do spriest have to play around RNG… whoever design this tree is horrible!!! Watch guys…let me play with rng procs to mind sear while monks/dh/rogue/shaman just zap zap multi hit across the map. Even with RNG procs your mind sear is doing almost or lower than every other classes 3 rotation skill aoe…
Are we even playing the same class at this point? Shadows cleave / aoe damage wasn’t a problem before the buffs, let alone now. Not to mention yet more AoE buffs coming in 10.0.5.
At keys that are 15+ of course shadow crash is available on every pull, i wasn’t talking about 15+ because last i checked your gear was pvp and you didn’t have anything above mythic 5 gear. In lower keys everything dies much quicker not giving us shadow crash on every pull. Silly Snozay
lol wut? You need to look again. I have two toons at almost 2k io and I haven’t even started pushing yet.
Games not balanced around low keys.
Silly Benny
Can i ask you specificaly how you play m+. And by that i mean - i use yogurt cthun sear PL mf:i sod build from our discord. The issue im having in dungeons is if i should focus more on PL cleaving or just mashing sear as much as possible like with old screams build? I was advised to just mash sear but then i dont really see the point of PL cleave. Idk what im missing, this build is confusing as hell.
PL cleave is mostly for lower target counts and to add movement gcds in the larger sear spam pulls. Being able to interrupt sear whilst still doing aoe damage constantly.
I’ve been running ysharrj yogg MFI this week, tried some cthun and I think with surge now there’s enough ‘good’ globals that the extra insanity gen is less necessary to avoid filler spam.