Shadow Priest - Dragonflight Feedback

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

@Tradu-laughing-skull

I don’t see how that refutes anything I said. There’s absolutely no friction unless you remove Misery, at which point there’s friction which is a good thing.

Misery and spell interactions like Catharsis are at odds with one another… friction.

One does not benefit the other.

Casting Vampiric Touch on a target while having Misery means you will never benefit from Catharsis type of spell interaction because you would need to manually cast SW:P on the target that already got your SW:P from your Misery Vampiric Touch application.

This is the friction.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

The 18 seconds have nothing to do with initial damage either, it’s the duration of SW:P. So once every 18 seconds or so (per target), you get to spend 1 GCD moving because you’re refreshing SW:P.

So let me understand this…

We have to manually cast Vampiric Touch right? Doing so applies Shadow Word: Pain to the target (with Misery) so why does the duration of SW:P play a factor at all? Because you STILL need to cast VT when it’s duration runs out regardless if you have Misery or not.

So no matter what, we have to maintain Vampiric Touch on the targets which means in having Misery, you don’t ever manage SW:P… or you shouldn’t have too.

Yes, you can cast SW:P on the move, I get that. But now you just desynced your Vampiric Touch timer as you will still need to manually cast VT.

So instead of spending a GCD casting SW:P and then casting VT later anyway which will refresh SW:P regardless (with Misery) then why not cast SW:D or Instant cast Mind Spike or Void Bolt etc.

You save a GCD by casting VT and it applies SW:P with Misery, freeing you up to use another VT on another target or using a different instant cast spell on the move and you don’t have to think its a waste because you will just override that instant SW:P soon anyway when you refresh VT.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

There’s also no downside to SW:P doing a tiny bit of initial damage to tag mobs with in the open world or to kill totems in PvP. It’s a really weird thing to want removed. It doesn’t blur our spells together, it gives SW:P additional uses which allow players to show their knowledge of their spec.

For me, I just use SW:D for that honestly if I really want or need to tap / tag a mob or totem killing.
I’ve gotten used to play that way because I learned how to prior to them adding initial damage to Shadow Word: Pain. I have adapted to not rely on SW:P instant damage as you have said before, you have better spells to use your GCD’s on.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

That’s… a bad thing. At that point yes, they should just delete both Misery and SW:P, but that’s not a world we should ever want.

There is good reason Misery was not only carried over into the new talent trees, but was made an early talent and forced. Because the player base in mass took that talent over other options on the old talent tree. Because again, for a long time SW:P did no initial instant damage. So it saved a GCD because we STILL have to MANUALLY cast Vampiric Touch.

So it made sense to have a talent that makes our always needing to cast VT to just apply SW:P and now you don’t have odd ball situations where you missed a target with a VT or SW:P and if you apply the missing dot, now things are desynced and it’s a mess if the fight persists too long unless you let them drop off and start over again.

With Misery, it fixes any alignment issues and ensures both dots are always up. Meaning we can get the interactions for one or the other spells without fear of missing that interaction because of a lag moment or something else that caused you to not apply both dots on same target multiplied by how ever many targets.

[Tradu-laughing-skull]

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

Casting Vampiric Touch on a target while having Misery means you will never benefit from Catharsis type of spell interaction because you would need to manually cast SW:P on the target that already got your SW:P from your Misery Vampiric Touch application.

Right, you still believe that there is such a thing as a SW:P DoT in a Misery world. There isn’t. SW:P is currently only a tiny little initial hit and some insanity, there is no DoT (because it gets merged into VT). Catharsis turns that initial hit into a big hit, allowing you to use it for burst.

There would be friction if Misery didn’t exist, because then there would be a SW:P DoT you want to maintain, but then you also have Catharsis which you want to use for burst. Now you have to make a decision about which you value more at the current time. That’s friction, and it’s good.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

We have to manually cast Vampiric Touch right? Doing so applies Shadow Word: Pain to the target (with Misery) so why does the duration of SW:P play a factor at all? Because you STILL need to cast VT when it’s duration runs out regardless if you have Misery or not.

I’m talking about without Misery. Yes, with Misery there is no SW:P DoT at all, that’s correct. That’s why we need extra things like the tier set to make us cast SW:P.

Without Misery, we get to cast SW:P every ~18 seconds because that’s how often we need to refresh the DoT.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

You save a GCD by casting VT and it applies SW:P with Misery, freeing you up to use another VT on another target or using a different instant cast spell on the move and you don’t have to think its a waste because you will just override that instant SW:P soon anyway when you refresh VT.

Misery deprives us of the opportunity to use that SW:P refresh GCD (which we would have to do anyway without Misery) for movement.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

Because the player base in mass took that talent over other options on the old talent tree

Because it was stronger than the alternatives. Something being high pickrate is not the same as it being good design that should be carried forward.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

So it saved a GCD because we STILL have to MANUALLY cast Vampiric Touch.

Yes, saving a GCD was higher DPS than the alternative. That doesn’t mean Misery is a good thing, particularly on ST.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

So it made sense to have a talent that makes our always needing to cast VT to just apply SW:P

Following that same logic, why doesn’t VT also apply DP and cast a Mind Blast? Why have separate spells at all?

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

now you don’t have odd ball situations where you missed a target with a VT or SW:P and if you apply the missing dot, now things are desynced and it’s a mess if the fight persists too long unless you let them drop off and start over again.

That’s called DoT management. It should be something we do as a DoT spec.

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

@Tradu-laughing-skull

There would be friction if Misery didn’t exist, because then there would be a SW:P DoT you want to maintain, but then you also have Catharsis which you want to use for burst. Now you have to make a decision about which you value more at the current time. That’s friction, and it’s good.

Which imo just highlights Catharsis type of interaction as even more troublesome.

So it’s awkward with Misery because you are casting something that should already be applied and it’s near broken if misery didn’t exist because you will never have time to build it up because you have to manually cast SW:P.

Again, SW:P is a dot. That’s how it started out as, that’s how it should continue to be. These Catharsis type interactions pushing our dot spell to do burst damage is just stupid.

We have better spells to put more power into for more raw burst spells.

Mind Blast used to be our hard hitting spell. Alongside Mind Spike and Shadow Word: Death. Those should be the spells focused to do initial damage. With talents like Shadowy Insight and Deathspeaker and Surge of Darkness granting instant cast or resetting the cooldown or both is where our up front damage should come from.

Let’s relegate dots to do dot damage… over time and that’s all.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

Without Misery, we get to cast SW:P every ~18 seconds because that’s how often we need to refresh the DoT.

As I said above, Dots should be treated as dots and nothing more. Damage over time. Not burst damage, not damage on the move… damage over time. Meaning it takes time for the damage to fully be realized.

This awkward multiple purpose crap is not needed when once again we have other spells that are better suited for instant damage. But if we have to spend 2 GCD’s on applies dots per target, that leaves less time to use hard hitting spells that are designed to do upfront initial damage. Again, let’s keep Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain in the damage over time spell category, we have other initial damage spells to use when we need that initial damage.

I would said that if we were ONLY a dot spec in that we had no spells that did initial damage like Mind Blast, Mind Spike, Void Bolt, Shadow Word: Death then okay… you are on to something in making SW:P do initial upfront burst damage. But we just don’t need it because we have better designed spells to push that damage into.

I rather more power budget on fewer spells than all spells doing pitiful damage.

This is the current problem with Mind Blast as again that used to be our nuke spell as it chucked peoples health. Now it’s just a spell you weave in because you can. The damage is not anywhere close as noticable as it used to be.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

Misery deprives us of the opportunity to use that SW:P refresh GCD (which we would have to do anyway without Misery) for movement.

Again, we are not seeing eye to eye on this matter.

I simply disagree with SW:P being used during movement. I think we should have better spells to use instead… again, Mind Blast, Mind Spike, Shadow Word: Death Void Bolt.

Using SW:P for movement just highlights how both our lack of displacement capability is and how lacking the power and frequency our other actual initial damage designed spells perform.

You are focusing on the bandaid solution to deal damage on the move, I am talking about fixing the core underlying issue in making initial damage spells the go to spell to deal damage on the move… not dot spells.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

Because it was stronger than the alternatives. Something being high pickrate is not the same as it being good design that should be carried forward.

I already explained, it fixes a lot of issues with alignment and lag moments on top of granting a free GCD.

That is a good talent that makes the spec just flow easier. I don’t understand how you think it’s a bad interaction. All these problems would return if you remove Misery thus throwing off the flow of the spec once again.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

Yes, saving a GCD was higher DPS than the alternative. That doesn’t mean Misery is a good thing, particularly on ST.

You still save a GCD on single target fights. It just gets increasingly more value the more you cast VT be it the same target over time when you refresh it or on multiple targets.

Misery is good for both.

It seems like you think it’s a waste of a talent on single target fights? But every time you refresh your VT, you save a GCD.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

Following that same logic, why doesn’t VT also apply DP and cast a Mind Blast? Why have separate spells at all?

Because VT and SW:P are similar enough spells where they deal damage over time and don’t cost resources to use.

I mean sure I guess you can just reduce all dot classes down to a single dot spell.

But then does that make them a dot class?

So the solution is to add quality of life in combining the application of both dots into a single spell (Misery) to free up alignment and lag issues and giving back a GCD to do more non-Periodic damage with our other half of our spell toolkit.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

That’s called DoT management. It should be something we do as a DoT spec.

And we still do with Devouring Plague and to an extent Mind Flay.

Just because you lump together VT and SW:P with Misery doesn’t detract from being a dot spec and having to do dot management. It just makes it more simplified which again, that is a net positive imo.

[Sinsofmany-azshara]

Imagine the amazing gameplay where you have 3 mobs in a dungeon and you spend 6 GCDs to dot them up without misery. Once you are done applying your dots to enable your spec to work at all, the mobs are halfway dead. Good luck contributing to anything at that point.

Or in PVP where all your dots are removed with one dispel, spend 2 GCDs to re-apply them (to be removed instantly again). At its current state, our DOT protection is a joke and it would be quite impossible for you to do any reasonable damage if you needed to constantly spend 2 GCDs juust to re-apply dots, instead of 1 second with misery.

Misery makes the flow of dotting targets so much better. If our beloved Shadow Crash fails, you can at least quickly dot 4-5 targets to make up for it. The modern gameplay is way too fast for you to give room for manually casting SW:P, if you like it or not.

I personally would love to see 2 types of shadow priests:

• DOT spreading, more DOT management and boosting them in AoE (like Screams of the Void now)
• Direct damage and doing AoE via Psychic Link with easy-to-maintain dots.

But as for now, we have some mediocre dots without which our spec is not even working at all. Rework our Mastery or make the Ghosts more of a core of the spec or or or or… there are many suggestions and possibilities and I really don’t think Misery is the big bad here.

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

Well said, straight and to the point.

[Tradu-laughing-skull]

I’m not going to quote individual parts, just go over it all one more time.

I am well aware that Misery is strong. I know that it saving GCDs is powerful, so powerful that we picked it over the alternatives in the past. That’s not the point at all.

What I do care about is that Misery objectively makes the spec less mobile, by replacing a SW:P with a Mind Spike every 18 seconds. You can and should move during the SW:P GCD, you can’t move during Mind Spike.

Misery also removes the DoT management of actually having 2 DoTs (3 if you count DP and pretend Distorted Reality doesn’t exist). With Misery, we have 1 DoT that takes up 2 icons. This makes the spec less fun, because as a DoT spec I want to actually manage my DoTs instead of having the game do it for me.

You do not understand how movement works. It doesn’t matter if SW:P is a DoT or does initial damage or whatever. The only thing that matters for movement is that it’s instant and how strong (relative to other instant casts in our kit) it is. When the DoT refresh matters, it is incredibly powerful because DoTs do a lot of damage for the GCD investment. Moving during instants is not a bandaid, it’s good play.

@Sinsofmany-azshara

Imageine the amazing gameplay where you have 3 mobs in a dungeon and you spend 6 GCDs to dot them up without misery. Once you are done applying your dots to enable your spec to work at all, the mobs are halfway dead. Good luck contributing to anything at that point.

DoTs’ power level is tuned directly based on how easy they are to (mass) apply. If they’re harder to apply, they are allowed to do more damage. Yes, ramping up is a problem in lower levels of content, that’s just how it is. It clearly is not actually a problem in high keys, considering current Shadow also takes a while to get going and yet it’s at worst the 3rd best spec this season.

@Sinsofmany-azshara

Or in PVP where all your dots are removed with one dispel, spend 2 GCDs to re-apply them (to be removed instantly again). At its current state, our DOT protection is a joke and it would be quite impossible for you to do any reasonable damage if you needed to constantly spend 2 GCDs juust to re-apply dots, instead of 1 second with misery.

Improve dispel protection, make Misery a PvP talent or make Misery a choice node with something that’s actually better than it at low target counts in PvE.

@Sinsofmany-azshara

Misery makes the flow of dotting targets so much better.

It makes it faster, yes. It doesn’t make it flow better.

@Sinsofmany-azshara

The modern gameplay is way too fast for you to give room for manually casting SW:P, if you like it or not.

Yes, unfortunately that’s true on AoE. That’s why Misery on AoE is something I’m fine with, although I’d still rather see our AoE decoupled from DoTs entirely (or use different DoTs), because the current state is not tenable.

@Sinsofmany-azshara

I personally would love to see 2 types of shadow priests:

• DOT spreading, more DOT management and boosting them in AoE (like Screams of the Void now)
• Direct damage and doing AoE via Psychic Link with easy-to-maintain dots.

No, having multiple playstyles/subspecs share 1 talent tree is bad for a variety of reasons.

• It gives each of them less room to be fleshed out.
• It tricks people into playing the spec because they like playstyle A and then next season playstyle B is stronger and they now hate the spec.
• Sharing talents means it gets incredibly difficult to balance the talents for both playstyles/subspecs.

@Sinsofmany-azshara

we have some mediocre dots

In large part thanks to Misery and Shadow Crash making it so easy to mass apply them, yes.

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

I know what your saying, but I just don’t think it’s as big of a deal as your making it out to be.

So in classic, we didn’t have VT and as such, we often casted SW:P while moving because it was really our ONLY spell that was a damage spell and instant cast.

Once BC came out and since then, we have VT and that forced us to plant ourselves to cast it REGARDLESS.

To this day, we still have to do that. So we must work within that reality.

So with or without Misery, we have to spend a GCD to cast VT. So now you have the choice to either ALSO be forced to spend another GCD to cast SW:P separatly or combine VT and SW:P into a single GCD.

What you want is to just go back to classic where we need to cast SW:P separatly (no misery) and I would agree that without talents like Shadowy Insight (Instant cast Mind Blast) and Death Speaker (Shadow Word: Death reset) and Surge of Darkness (Instant cast Mind Spike) then sure, having to manually cast SW:P and it doing initial damage is a way to “optimize” your damage output because in that world, we lack any other options to deal damage on the move.

So yes, we no longer have Surge of Darkness, I think it should return, but in a state that makes it less powerful. The removal of it outright was no ot justified imo.

And beyond that, if no other options existed, then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use our utility spells like Power Word: Shield on the move.

We don’t need to ALWAYS be capable of dealing damage on the move. All that does is makes our damage less impactful because you always have access to it. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t. You as a player need to be able to adapt accordingly based on your availability to dealing damage on the move or not.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

Yes, ramping up is a problem in lower levels of content, that’s just how it is. It clearly is not actually a problem in high keys

This was a similar problem in legion where it took so long to ramp up damage in low content that you basically were worthless to bring at all.

That is not healthy design and should not be written off as “just how things are” because all or most other classes don’t experience this issue. This is just another issue that needs to be addressed for Shadow, not ignored and just say move along.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

Improve dispel protection

Yes, another issue that needs to be addressed. Misery existing or not doesn’t not address this concern. Those are 2 separate issues.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

It makes it faster, yes. It doesn’t make it flow better.

The flow aspect is that you spent less time setting up your spell interactions by applying dots so you can start triggering your procs and open up to rest of your spell toolkit.

That’s the flow between start up and execution. Dot application are a prelude to activate the rest of the spec. So we should spend as little time as possible to activate the rest of the spec.

Now I might be convinced that having a choice talent with Misery enable our dots deal more damage but now you have to manually cast VT and SW:P at the cost of your Non-Periodic damage damage reduced accordingly.

So in essence, you push more power into dot damage by removing power from non dot damage spells.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

No, having multiple playstyles/subspecs share 1 talent tree is bad for a variety of reasons.

• It gives each of them less room to be fleshed out.
• It tricks people into playing the spec because they like playstyle A and then next season playstyle B is stronger and they now hate the spec.
• Sharing talents means it gets incredibly difficult to balance the talents for both playstyles/subspecs.

I disagree.

Balancing has been and will always be an issue.

But the problem that plagues Shadow for a majority of it’s run is that it is either good in environment #1 or environment #2 etc.

Either it’s good in PvP and sucks in PvE or vice versa.

Because the only option of gameplay is built to work on one and fail or be miserable to deal with in the other.

This goes all the way back to classic where mana issues made Shadow struggle in PvE but in PvP where you rez all the time (battlegrounds) and power ups (leaf health and mana restore) filled those mana issues gaps.

But in Legion, Shadow could easily get locked down in PvP because most of it damage took forever to get going due to both ramping and getting CC and loosing Voidform all the time.

I would rather have an option of gameplay that works better in short fight situations (Non-Periodic) and an option of gameplay that works better in long fight situations (Periodic) where your damage ramps over time.

This explores both sides of Shadows toolkit with its use of spell damage types and would be similar to Elemental Shaman in having 2 types of damage profile options that can index into, with them having Lightning and Lava while Shadow having Periodic and Non-Periodic damage types.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

In large part thanks to Misery and Shadow Crash making it so easy to mass apply them, yes.

I would agree that having both Misery and an AOE dot application spell such as Shadow Crash seems a bit excessive.

I wouldn’t mind removing an AOE dot application spell and just keep Misery and make our dots do more damage because it takes so much longer to apply them to all targets.

I really liked the Auspicious Spirits build in WoD where basically you just turn into a purely DOT spec in just casting dots on each target and getting so many Shadow Orbs from your spirits that you were dumping your DP often enough to feel like you were a 3 dot spell spec and did nothing else but cast dots.

I personally enjoyed Clarity of Power more and especially so in PvP. But both playstyles existed and played well in WoD.

So I don’t think it’s impossible not to try and create separate and distinct playstyles once again within the new tent trees.

[Ritualist-hakkar]

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

We just need clean defined paths to choose from with a sprinkling of miscellaneous talent interactions mixed in.

IE more focused…

As far as shadows competing designs, it’s been 2 expansions and it still isn’t working. It’s still a patchwork spec, and still lackluster outside of the few moments it’s been overtuned before being nerfed.

They’ve had literal years to make it work and still can’t manage it. We’ve had thousands of suggestions on what could be done, some of it implemented, and still, here we sit. A pieced together Frankenstein of a spec that sits squarely at the bottom in terms of desirability.

Just glancing over your suggestion post, voidform build would most likely overtake dark ascension because it can be extended, on top of granting haste. VF will scale higher with more and more stats as the tiers go on. Higher stats means more insanity generation, more DP casts, and thus longer VF. It would require constant nerfs just like OG voidform.

Meanwhile DA will be static. We’d be right back where we are now. Throttling back one spec so the other doesn’t look bad by comparison.

Personally I think the whole idea of choosing to be a dot spec or direct damage spec within a dot spec is ridiculous and should be done away with for the overall health of Shadow. If you want direct damage specs we have plenty to choose from in this game.

[Tradu-laughing-skull]

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

What you want is to just go back to classic where we need to cast SW:P separatly

Even in Shadowlands on ST we didn’t play Misery a lot of the time. It’s not some Classic thing. Managing 2 DoTs is not a lot to ask.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

having to manually cast SW:P and it doing initial damage is a way to “optimize” your damage output

It doing initial damage or not does not matter for this.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

And beyond that, if no other options existed, then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use our utility spells like Power Word: Shield on the move.

Sure, but the problem is that PW:S isn’t a utility button in this situation. It’s a better damage button than SW:P.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

You as a player need to be able to adapt accordingly based on your availability to dealing damage on the move or not.

And part of that should be skillfully using SW:P refreshes to move around. Misery makes SW:P refreshes not exist.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

That is not healthy design and should not be written off as “just how things are” because all or most other classes don’t experience this issue.

It’s only an issue in low keys (and useless pad adds in raid). Yes, it should be addressed, but the fix is not “make DoT application even easier”. It’s to add some Mickey Mouse spammable direct damage AoE to be used instead for situations where targets won’t live long.

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

I personally enjoyed Clarity of Power more and especially so in PvP. But both playstyles existed and played well in WoD. So I don’t think it’s impossible not to try and create separate s d distinct playstyles once again within the new tent trees.

CoP is the perfect example of it not working. It was a completely different spec that people suddenly had to play because of HFC set bonuses.

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

Yes, Shadow design state has been in limbo for a while. But that is primarily because since going into Legion, we have had 4 developers leave midway through the the design process.

Meaning we never get the actual time and dedication and understand of what makes Shadow fun to begin with and expand from there.

As I just said though, we had 2 distinct playstyle options that were both fun and unique in focusing on Periodic and Non-Periodic damage in WoD. Both were useful in PvP and PvE. Sure some fights it would be better to play one vs the other, but they were both used throughout many different areas of the game.

My suggestions are concept oriented firstly, meaning they can adjust balancing as needed. If scaling over over time is an issue then just a flat damage boost ONLY to a single damage profile type would be fine as well.

The point is to offer a choice in gameplay style and it worked great in WoD and I see no reason we can’t follow that blueprint and expand upon it making it better and fully flushed out.

But again, we need a developer to not leave halfway through a d someone that actually understands Shadow and why it’s fun. Which is not what happened since the legion revamp.

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

I get what you mean. Casting SW:P to just apply or refresh the dot or for initial damage doesn’t really matter. You just want to cast SW:P manually, got it.

And that’s your stance on the matter. I simply don’t think it’s worth doubling the time it takes to apply dots.

@Tradu-laughing-skull

CoP is the perfect example of it not working. It was a completely different spec that people suddenly had to play because of HFC set bonuses.

I can’t recall the set bonuses for HFC.

But this is what I found online.
If this is accurate, this doesn’t force you into COP spec. But some fights that are single target oriented did lean to COP giving more value.

I don’t see an issue with this.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have multiple ways to play a spec and you pick what you want and if you want to squeeze the best you can out of the spec then sure, you might have to swap some talents that are better suited for that content environment.

I really don’t see that as a negative.

Personally, I would love to fully embrace everything my spec can do. But that means it needs to make sense and be fun regardless the built type. That I think is where Shadow falls short currently.

(2) Set (Discipline): Your Penance damage and healing is increased by 12% for 15 sec each time it deals damage or heals. This effect stacks up to 6 times.
(2) Set (Holy): You gain 2% haste for 15 sec when Prayer of Mending bounces. This effect can stack up to 3 times.
(2) Set (Shadow): Reduces the cooldown on Shadowfiend by 160 sec and the cooldown on Mindbender by 40 sec.
(4) Set (Discipline): Each time Penance heals, it has a 50% chance to heal another injured ally near your target.
(4) Set (Holy): Your Prayer of Mending has a 10% chance to split when it bounces, healing an additional target nearby.
(4) Set (Shadow): When your Shadowfiend or Mindbender expires, you gain Premonition, increasing your Multistrike chance by 20% for 15 sec.

[Rî-malganis]

I think misery may just come down to personal preference, the removal of SWP as an instant yeah stinks for movement, but even with it being back on an 18-second interval it doesn’t even remotely begin to solve those movement issues with spriest, considering its more displacement than anything that holds us back. Misery is just a QoL talent that I don’t think should go away at all. Even in lower target counts like a council of dreams, that’s 5 casts (SC, SWPx3, VTx1) at the start with lust. I’d rather take misery change that to two casts and pump with lust. I’d love to see our dots be more meaningful and changes happen to our movement but I don’t believe that starts with any removal to misery.

[Ritualist-hakkar]

@Aneurysm-nerzhul

The point is to offer a choice in gameplay style and it worked great in WoD and I see no reason we can’t follow that blueprint

I understand offering choice within a spec, but trying to offer entirely different designs, one of which nearly abandons part of shadows core identity is causing problems.

WoD playstyle is a relic of the past and imo I think trying to hold onto it while also moving shadow forward is why it’s having problems.

Imagine being a dev who’s placed in charge of this spec. They sit you down and tell you “Ok this is shadow, it’s a dot spec with a long history of being such, but there’s also this group that doesn’t want it to be so you also need to make it not a dot spec. But don’t let either side be better than the other, and also find a way to make both work in PvP, and don’t let them be OP in M+…”

It’s no wonder they can’t get it right. You’re asking for 2 specs to be fused into one just so that a relic of shadows past is preserved.

IMO it would be better to choose one path forward (not even the two we currently have, it could be something entirely different) and go with that. Stop trying to balance essentially 2 specs that directly compete with each other within one spec. It’s not working, and will always require this constant dance of nerfs and buffs to keep them both competitive.

We got rid of voidform because it was a balancing nightmare, this is the same. It’s more trouble than it’s worth and it’s holding shadow back from being a truly great spec because they always have to make sure this entirely separate playstyle is preserved. It sacrifices potential and freedom of design in favor of preserving the past.

[Bunzato-hyjal]

Honestly, the devs just have to create a fully new vision of what a shadow priest is, stop relying on old concepts, flavors, and mechanics, just fully forge ahead with a new vision and create a well designed spec that way.

[Crazymeow-malganis]

I agree, they should delete shadow word: pain, and move all of its interactions over to vampiric touch where they make sense. This way we can free a talent point (which is just better than taking the talent point). Essentially making misery baseline instead of making us spend a point on it.

[Crazymeow-malganis]

Shadow priest already has a clear-well defined theme. They are nebulous, ever-changing from patch-to-patch. Your enemies are mystified and confused by your adaptations, and constantly have to rethink their approach to defeating you in battle.

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

So how do you determine if a spec is considered a dot spec?
Is unholy death knight a dot spec? It has dots and also physical damage.

Shadow has dots and casted spells that deal damage without any dot component.

If you look at the begining, this is what we find…

Going from classic to MoP since you seem to be contentious on WoD.

• Classic
  • Periodic damage spells
    • Mind Flay
    • Shadow Word Pain
  • Non-Periodic damage spells
    • Mind Blast
• TBC
  • Periodic damage spells
    • Vampiric Touch
  • Non-Periodic damage spells
    • Shadow Word: Death
• Wrath
  • Periodic damage spells
    • Devouring Plague
    • Mind Sear
  • Non-Periodic damage spells
    • N/A
• Cata
  • Periodic damage spells
    • N/A
  • Non-Periodic damage spells
    • Mind Spike
• MoP
  • Periodic damage spells
    • N/A
  • Non-Periodic damage spells
    • Halo, Cascade, Divine Star trio talent choice

It’s a pretty even split on Periodic and Non-Periodic damage profile spells that we weave within each other. With Periodic edging out just slightly with 1 more spell over Non-Periodic.

But what we can see is that we have always had a healthy mix of both types of damage profiles. This just got more defined with each additional expansion until the entire spec got turned upside down going into Legion when coincidentally was when our consistent reworks and rebalancing issues started occuring more and more frequently.

The old design is not the problem, the problem is the new direction that has been wrought with issues with each passing expansion.

Which goes to show that an entirely new design from scratch is not necessarily a good idea as that’s how we got the Legion mess which we are still dealing with that fallout to this day.

If legion was so good, then they wouldn’t be needing and taking away everything revolving around Voidform. But the fact is that they have and there is good reason as going into both BFA and Shadowlands, Shadow was in an absolute mess and needed a lot of help in either borrowed powers or updates base toolkit and talents to just not be severely broken and borderline non-functional.

I would prefer to not repeat the new experiment route that legion took because that both aliened a lot of players and has caused nothing but headaches and lack of vision for what shadow is ever since.

Where as prior leading up to Legion, Shadow played very similarly with just extra bits and new features with each expansion with very little change to core gameplay.

[Crazymeow-malganis]

Who cares about classification as long the spells make sense together

generally when people refer to ‘dot class’ they simply mean the spec casts dot spells (automatic applications not counting)

[Aneurysm-nerzhul]

@Crazymeow-malganis

Who cares about classification as long the spells make sense together

I agree.
Which is why I don’t see an issue with having 2 damage profiles as options to index into not unlike Elemental Shaman with Lava and Lightning build options.

[Crazymeow-malganis]

I prefer the feral druid model, where your choice of options dont lock you out of other ones for the most part