Shadow Priest - Dragonflight Feedback

I really don’t see value in removing misery and making us press SW:P again.

The obvious case study here is affliction, and it feels like total crap having to renew the 3-4 separate dots every 18-24 seconds.

DoT maintenance is an outdated gameplay loop most people don’t really want, especially now that spread council fights are rare and dots have been neutered as a cleave damage profile.

Burst profiles have been creeping up in strength and relevance evermore with each expansion, and clinging to outdated and subpar damage profiles for the sake of nostalgia will sink the spec into the purgatory affliction warlocks currently occupy.

Quite frankly, all I want is for Dark Ascension to be turned into a glyph for Void Eruption for those stuck with their dark archangel undead SP fantasies, and for void eruption to be the default cd. Void Torrent should be baseline and cleave arpund a target as it ticks while pausing the timers.

Then glyphs for returning shadowmend to flash of light because using light spells and bright angelic feathers and shields is so jarring to the theme of the spec.

I do not want my shadow priest farting out sparkles. Please use the void shield sfx from Nya’lotha raid’s Inquisitor boss for power word:shield.

Find shadow vfxs for Desperate Prayer amd Angelic Feathers and the mending spells.

We want our shadow/void cultist fantasy, you adjusted Shadowlands covenant spells in the spirit of thematic consistency, please stop undermining shadow players with bright sparkles.

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Honestly, I think the devs need to stop prioritizing side projects and put some effort in bringing all maner of spell cosmetic glyphs for every class. It’s been a longstanding wishlist but it seems they think we want “hero talents” as a substitute for class fantasy.

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I think hero talents are fine. DF has been a disaster of an expansion not only because of its pointless story that wasted characters and went nowhere (supposedly awakening the stones to give the aspects their powers back so we could fight the incarnates, but we killed the Incarnates anyways without aspectral powers and the powers came at the end magically granted out of a world tree), but because of the utter lack of new systems and talents being a glorified collection of former Legion+BfA+SL systems brought back after pruning. The expansion has been absolutely stale.

But instead of wasting time sending me fishing with talking walruses or taking pictures on a raft like an idiot, or making professions extra grindy or recycle the same mount skeletons for different skins, I’d rather they use that time to flesh out class fantasy instead.

For example, to this day, warlock’s Soulfire still uses a Vanilla mage’s pyroblast placeholder animation. Going about 5 expansions in, and still no finished spell update. Demonbolt and Tyrant don’t work with green fire quest, and the updated imps don’t use the updated felfire bolts of the demonology imps, while demonology’s spawned imps do’t use the updated imp models. Drain Soul still uses a classic vanilla ancient animation ever since they pruned out Malefic Grasp. They made a new animation for drain life, and then nuked drain life out of affliction’s rotation after Legion and forced shadowbolt or drain soul in. Wasted assets. Malefic Rapture isn’t even a proper animation, they literally grabbed the Implosion effect of the imps from demonology and copied the effect onto the affliction spell, absolutely lazy.

Then there are the cases of pruned visuals for no reason. Fire mages lost their awesome floating fireballs from the fire artifact that gave the Kaelthas fantasy, and never got them back via glyph.

Shamans lost their fire tornadoes and elemental spikes from the enhancement legion artifact, and elemental got Earthen Rage’s impressive earthen spike visuals also pruned. Meanwhile their tree has a boring avoidance % passive in place.

Balance druids at some point had glyph of stars affecting mounts, and Blizzard removed that interaction in one patch and didn’t care to explain.

Similarly with shadow priests, they went and erased shadow mend for no reason, shadow priests were begging them not to. Yet more visual pruning for no reason while saddling the spec with hideous angelic feathers and holy nova and power word:life.

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This Aneu guy has been one of the loudest screechers for years. And I if remember correctly he’s a PVP main but shares way too many opinions on PVE contents.
So yeah, screecher.

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Are you really that simple minded thinking you can’t possibly have such a level of class understanding that allows you to have a coherent opinion on either a PvP or a PvE related situation?

The majority of players might gravitate towards one side or the other, but you in fact can have a level of understanding that allows you to step foot in both aspects of the game. It’s not that difficult.

So I really don’t see what your purpose is on that post other than to highlight your own shortcomings as to take into consideration multiple facets of the game when it comes to class and spec topics.

Regarding your screecher comment, do we agree that this is what a screecher is?

Definitions of screecher. someone who communicates vocally in a very loud voice . synonyms: bawler, bellower, roarer, screamer, shouter, yeller. types: crier.

Just because I have my own thoughts to share of topics and subjects I find interest in doesn’t even begin to paint this screecher accusation you just decided to associate myself with.

Good job, pat yourself on the back for that one. Great use of everyone’s time.

I don’t main Shadow full time, but I hop on it to do heroic reclears, and world content.

Shadow (like Holy Priest) has had a lot of whiplash effect. It was redesigned twice this expansion, was S-tier mandatory and one of the most popular casters in S2, got smashed hard at the start of S3 with utility nerfs so it dropped down HARD in popularity, and had most of the S2 damage nerfs reverted mid-S3 which brought it back again.

Shadows single + aoe target damage in raid is quite frankly bad. There’s literally zero reason to bring a Shadow Priest if you have a Disc/Holy Priest in the raid to bring a fort buff. Locks and Mages do 20-40%+ more overall damage on a lot of the fights.

I enjoy the way Shadow plays after the rework, but I don’t like how rubber bandy Shadow has been this entire expansion. It’s either bad or S-tier. There’s literally no in-between.

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I just don’t believe you have that kind of understanding, that’s all.
And please stop screeching, I am very sensitive to dumb words.

Bravo, you’ve really solidified your argument.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

If your going to make any substantial claims, you should be prepared back those claims up.

So let’s hear it, let’s see how much you seem to think I lack, show me what apparently I don’t understand. Should be easy since your decree was used so broadly.

I would love to see the priest hero talents before Alpha releases so I could maybe provide feedback in time for a revision.

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I’m speaking specifically of the people who made posts on the forum asking people to go call out the devs on Twitter with #removevoidform

Or made multiple posts saying nothing but “Remove Voidform”

Zero feedback, zero thought as to what it should be replaced with. Just screeching to remove what they didn’t like with zero plan on how to go about the aftermath

And here we are. A broken Frankenstein spec that’s fractured right down the middle and has no clear direction

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To be fair, it already is a Frankenstein spec, so why not double down at this point?

Not as much as your transmog.

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This x100. Hell, where is the rest of the hero talents in general? Like 13 left. The wait is horrid.

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Extreme fix that I would absolutely love both for gameplay reasons and lore reasons:

Remove Shadow from Priest altogether, put it in a new class (Cultist?). Then we could get a more old school Shadow spec, a Legion Void spec, and a healing spec with spells like Shadow Mend. Give Priest a light based ranged dps spec.

I recognize there would be some level of outrage, so alternatively just give Priest a fourth spec to separate the two designs of Shadow. Is there a reason Druid has to be the only class with four?

The two playstyles are very different. I absolutely believe Shadow has seen enough abilities to support both of these specs independently and give them both variation within their own talent trees.

For example, the Shadow spec having some of the older cataclysm era playstyle with variations added through some of the playstyle options we had in WoD.

Ultimately, I’ll take any changes that give me original void form and surrender to madness playstyle back. I mained Resto Druid starting in TBC, and changed for the first time during the Legion beta when I got to experience that playstyle. I miss it dearly, as many do, while still respecting that many have zero interest in that being what Shadow is to them.

There are solutions to give us both!

or even praise the devs for their mad skills.