Shadow needs a rework, not tuning

Classes Priest
1

I’ve posted this before on other threads but I figured I’d start my own.

Shadow is a Frankenstein of outdated talents and abilities that don’t fit in modern wow.

-Our talents have no synergy, Shadowy Apparition needs to go away forever, it’s visually cool but pointless.

-Our only source of AoE is locked outside a 20 second cd, just merge VT into SW:P and make it AoE baseline for shadow. There’s no reason for it to be 2 diferent spells anymore, it’s a relic from a time when dots were powerful and VT needed a cast time, now they exist only as a debuff to trigger procs, gain mastery and use psychic link. No other class with AoE dots has such restrictions and yet we are the only ones who require our enemies to have dots on them for our class to simply “function” at all…

-Turn Shadow Crash into an AoE spender that deals full mastery damage and can proc a free cast like mind sear used to but in this case it’s instant so no chance of getting interrupted. Put Shadow Crash on a choice node with Psychic Link.

-Void Weaver needs to be redesigned for Shadow so we get consistent damage, we don’t need another cooldown window that competes with Void Eruption.

-Remove cast time and GCD for Void Eruption and Dark Ascension.

-We have no mobility, pvp is a hellish turret punching bag, perma interrupted and locked out of shadow spells.

The Devs don’t understand that buffing our damage doesn’t fix our disastrous class mechanics, especially in short aoe fights and pvp. I’m tired of raid damage charts being used as a metric to argue that Shadow Priest is doing fine.

I’ve given up on my priest after 3 expansions, back to Frost DK for me.

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I’m not sure if it’s just you or others as well suggesting this but I guess I’ll be the one to bring it up…

How in the heck does something like this even remotely work? Can you even point to an example of any other ability that is channeled but can somehow also become instant cast?

I’m sorry but ideas like these really bother me because they make no practical sense and I can’t think of a single example where something like this is even possible.

The idea that a channeled spell becoming instant cast defeats the entire basis of the spell from the ground up because channeled spells are essentially a lot of the same thing happening over time… which means it cannot be an instant spell else it’s an entirely different spell. It just goes against logic.

Besides this very frustrating bit…

Some ideas I agree on and some I don’t. But I just can’t understand how this one in particular is supposed to garner any backing simply because it just defies physics lol.

You can reduce the channel time to be nearly instant where it does all its damage repeatedly extremely fast but it is impossible to make it truly instant cast.

Like you could make it instant cast so then the spell is just floating visually and it does it own thing while you do something else but again… that at that point becomes an entirely different spell.

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I agree Shadow needs a rework. I don’t PvP so I can’t comment from that side, but from a PvE side it feels like the only buttons that matter are Devouring Plague and Mind Flay: Insanity procs. Mind Spike is completely pointless in PvE now since Mind Flay: Insanity is strictly better. Dark Ascension is also pointless since our non-periodic shadow spells are wet noodles now. Idol of Y’Shaarj continues to be a nothingburger. All our capstones in general do virtually no damage and are extremely underwhelming. It feels like Disc cares more about Shadowfiend than Shadow does, which is bizarre.

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Our capstone talents are a perfect example of our non existent synergy. Most specs have builds that focuse on amplifying or adding new functionality to specific abilities. Shadow basically forces everyone to play the same build and using our remaining talent points on minor passive damage that don’t compliment each other in the slightest.

You could literally delete most of our talents and just give a flat buff to shadow’s overall damage and it would amount to the same thing. We’d still be using Shadow Crash, Mind Flay insanely and Void torrent.

I would like to believe blizzard is rethinking shadow priest, but I expect they will continue to just tune numbers to mask our deficiencies. It’s not like Fire Mage where the class plays smoothly but simply requires buffs to their damage.

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Yeah Shadow feels so bad right now. Trying to do high tier delves just highlights our issues in bright neon colors that spell “we suck.”

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Shadow needs a rework, synergy and simplification.

I think you’re on the right track with merging VT and SW:P baseline but I think It should be a hard cast VT followed by Unfurling Darkness. I think merging Whispering Shadow’s effect into VT is what’s needed. Remove Shadow Crash.

I think Psychic Link is fine, could add a wicked talent that echoes dot damage across the pack.

Insanity should be a non-expendable resource, but decays over time, and regulates our power and spells. (Like it was originally designed)

I think Shadowform needs replaced by Dark Ascension or Voidform. And the talent choice needs moved way down. Line 9~

Dark Ascension would be active full time and should work with Halo and Apparitions. Halo should collapse after expanding hitting everything twice. The talents that buff Apparitions should be reduced to 1 each. Idol of Yog, should have a 40%~ chance to double Apparitions to help feed Thing from Beyond. Archon should have Halo spawn Apparitions on every enemy hit, both times.

With Voidform you’d give up Shadowform. Voidform would auto-activate at 20+ Insanity inside Combat. Voidform would change Mindflay into Void Bolt, and Surge of Insanity would change Void Bolt into Void Eruption. Voidform will cause Insanity to decay faster but Void Bolt/Eruption will cause all Periodic damage to tick and double Insanity generated. Voidform will also double Insanity on Devouring Plague casts.

Idol of C’thun should interact with Voidform, spawning a tentacle every Void Bolt and both tentacles on Void Eruption.

Mind devourer should be baseline 10%, and it be upgraded additional 20/40%. Mind Devour procs, refresh the CD of Mind Blast. Voidform could synergize with Voidweaver granting full use of Void Blast as an instant cast.

Devouring Plague would be unsuable under 30 Insanity. But Spammable every 6 sec. And build a lot of Insanity. I also think it could creep across Psychic Link, when it does Periodic damage.

Void Torrent, should be a displaced channel. Like have us rip open a Void Tear for it to spill out of. A channel that doesn’t occupy the caster and is uninterruptable. No need for a movement talent.

Idol of N’Zoth needs to collapse the stack at 10 stacks for better Single Target.

Entropic Rift needs a Vacuum and slow baseline. Range should be 1 standard Blink from dead center.

Leap of Faith needs a “Friendly” Shadow Step choice.
Flash heal needs a Shadow Mend Choice.
Dispersion and Silence needs moved to Priest Talents instead of Spec.

Am I missing anything? I probably I am.

(Do note: Damage is not considered for this rework, there are 2 emergent playstyles and themes that arise from these changes and I think they are appropriate for the class fantasy that people play Shadow for)

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I think they are referring to season 1 of Dragonflight where shadow had mind sear as a channeled aoe spender, which would get a proc for a 0 insanity cost (ie free) cast that did still need to be fully channeled. Because of this you would often have to cancel channels to avoid incoming damage and lose the full potential of your insanity spender. The idea is that if shadow crash is used as the spender and had the same functionality as mind sear’s proc of getting a free shadow crash, it could possibly work better since shadow crash is an instant cast spell and thus you dont have the potential to lose out on damage due to having to cut a channel short. It would be similar to ele shams earthquakes.

2 Likes
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I find it questionable if the intent was to refer to DF version of Mind Sear as if that was the case then pointing out that example would have been much easier and less confusing as you have just illustrated above.

But since you brought up DF Mind Sear, here are my thoughts to that…

Because of the awkwardness of canceling a channeled spell that also costs resources, I can see why they removed it.

However, I think that option of gameplay should exist, but it should just not be the baseline version.

Just like how Throw Glaive for Demon Hunter doesn’t cost fury but with a talent option it does cost fury but deals more damage to compensate, I think Mind Sear should come back as its base not costing Insanity version. But then later talents can offer a choice to make it cost insanity but it’s damage is increased while its duration is decreased.

I think Mind Sear being a choice with Psychic Link would be the best location for you to pick between spread or Focused AOE.

Then have Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Void Torrent talents exist in a cluster of talents located near Idol of C’Thun talent so that all the channel spells can have varying degree of talents that effect a single particular or multiple channeled spells.

Can also affect the C’Thun tentacles that cast channeling spells as well.

Some ideas as to these talent offerings can be found in a previous post of mine from a bit ago…

But in short here are some ideas…

  • Void Ray (New / Choice with Void Torrent)
    Mind Flay deals 10% increased damage for each of your damage over time spells on the target.
  • Malediction (Redesign)
    Your damaging Channeled spells deals their damage 33.3333% faster.

Then perhaps in Voidweaver tree specifically…

  • Mind Sears damage is increased by 100% and costs 25 insanity each time its deals damage.
  • Mind Sear’s channel duration is reduced by 50% and its damage interval is reduced by 100%
  • Your damaging channeled spells can now always be cast while moving.

Other ideas…

Mind Sear base change:

  • Mind Sear deals 100% more damage when it hits 3 or more targets.

Void Torrent base change:

  • Applies and refreshes Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague to the enemy target.
    Or
  • Your periodic damage deal their damage 100% faster while channeling Void Torrent.
    Or
  • Devouring Plague is refreshed and spreads to a new target each time Void Torrent deals its damage.
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I like a lot of your ideas ryeshot. One nitpick I have is that VT should be separated from SWP. VT should be a strong dot that is not easily spread. I think the mastery should change to allow the return of strong DoT damage. If SWP and VT can both be easily applied to a full pack of enemies, neither can be strong and are their simply because of our mastery.

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That’s exactly it. And my idea of putting it on a choice node with Psychic Link is to allow players to chose between a stronger AoE build or a passive Single Target focus cleave build.

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Df s1 felt really good. I would give up these hero talents to have that back

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i say keep the hero talents, keep the Bloat tweaks (Mind spike/flay both trigger insanity, replacement instead of addition, and no mindgames) and i’d actually be kind of okay with S1 DF Shadow

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I agree. It needs a rework and not tuning.
I mained shadow priest in shadowlands and this shadow crash/psychic link meta is honestly making me miss the mind sear/searing nightmare spam gameplay. Sure it was boring and mindless, but atleast it had a potential for consistent burst aoe on back to back packs. M

Currently shadow feels way too rampy, with long cooldowns and zero damage outside of said cooldowns. Perhaps its because im doing mythic 0s with a ret paladin (ret vs spriest is probably the most extreme example of burst vs ramp), but i consistently do half or less damage on every aoe pack, despite if i blast every single cooldown or not. Half of the talents are useless in spriest, so blizz could give us a mindsear/searing nightmare talent path option and just make it only relevant on burst aoe packs, so we have some option for consistent burst aoe, this is mainly for low level/early patch gameplay where shadow’s ramp feels the worst.

Shadow priest is way too bloated with abilities that don’t do anything but feed psychic link currently in this psychic link meta. Psychic link is seriously not a fun way to deal aoe damage. There is zero visual indication which means it just doesnt translate to a cool visual feeling. The dopamine feedback between single target and aoe is virtually the same, aside from shadowy appiritions but they dont do any damage so i just get sad when i see my shadowy appritions. At least mindsear had a cool visual and whenever you pressed searing nightmare you could really feel the blast in the visual effects! Though honestly i hated the searing nightmare meta in shadowlands and wished we had the shadow crash applies dots talent back then. But now that i’ve played with it, im not so sure anymore.

The last thing i will rant about for spriest is, travel time and cast time. Why does void bolt take so long to reach a target. Shadow crash has to be used in tandem with tank coordination purely due to the travel time. I’d be lucky if my shadowy apparition ever reach the target before it dies because they’re as slow as molasses, but not really cuz shadowy apparitions doesn’t even do relevant damage.

Anyways, as a long time spriest main and lover of the class fantasy, its just not feeling good to play.

Sorry if im hijacking your thread but this seemed like a good place to post this.

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Maybe they could make apparitions do their damage instantly as they spawned but keep the visual?
Honestly I don’t even feel that they hit the target. It’s nice to have numbers matched with animations but as slow as they are and doing as low damage as they are you never see them hitting the target. At least they would actually WORK on aoe. At this point details don’t even show them most of the time because they don’t reach most of packs before the mobs are dead.

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Just needs shadow crash to be better, I feel OP otherwise.

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This all the way. Watch the ghost come out with a fully channeled mind sear was great. I would take that over pl any day.

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6% of nothing is still nothing ;-; (our aoe was nerfed hard also)

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Is this just not legion priest :smiley: except you can manually go into burst

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They’re not going to rework. I’d settle for them buffing it instead of nerfing other classes. Yet they refuse to do that too. I would love to see dots do something other than funnel aoe.

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The idea was to automate Voidform as an upgrade to Shadowform. (I didn’t play during Legion, so idk) I made this character in BFA. So I did get to mess with Surrender to Madness a little bit. But I hadn’t decided to main it until Dragonflight.

Going over it again I’d adjust Devouring Plague CD to every 12 seconds.

1 Like