I think this can’t be emphasized enough.
I firmly believe that all of DF has masked any issues/imperfections Shadow had with just a pumped up damage tuning.
I think it’s at play now just as it was prior to the changes. The whole Mind Sear costing Insanity was only good because the tuning was enough to mask its clunky awkwardness.
People have to always keep in mind that blizzard is notorious for “easy to learn, hard to master” mantra. Meaning the barrier to entry plays a MASSIVE part in the entirety of their games and class design and by extension spec and spell design plays into that greatly.
So when things just don’t jive right and they have no time to make adjustments mechanically, they just pump up the numbers to mask a bad design.
After asking her. More intuitive and less bloated. Feels smoother
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Definitely an argument to be made for this, but I do think it glosses over how much the toolkit of rotational spells was capable of matching up to encounters and situations in both pve and PvP. And how much of that was lost with the recent changes.
I think the thing I dislike the most about the changes that were made is how often I now press the same button twice in a row, something shadow has through proper play been all about avoiding doing for 6 years at this point. Between spike procs, MFI, plague, blast procs, dp procs, mind blast, and void torrent I could pretty comfortably go for a full raid encounter without needing to press the same key twice in a row. That’s something which was also a major selling point for voidform from a raiding perspect for me too (Though I disliked the monotony).
This 10.1 version has a decent amount of time where I’m just pressing unboosted mind spikes one after the other, and not only is that not fun, when stacked up against the feedback loop created by the previous 6 years it actively feels like I’m doing something wrong.
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It’s not that we want instant everything but if your going to make us hard cast everything outside of a meh swd and catharsis that only works once we’ve been trained into the ground then give us mobility, or some way of making a gap so we can cast and precog isn’t it!!! I won’t be interrupting casters the first two times the try to get precog on my melee toon so I can let them interrupt themselves for me!!
I disagree with your whole statement
I’m making a blanket statement really.
I would lump Mind Sear costing Insanity into this barrier to entry alongside Void Eruption with that Void Bolt mini game as well. Just like how as much as you don’t think having Void Bolt is an issue, I also never saw and still don’t see an issue with Mind Flay and Mind Spike coexisting but playing different and separate roles as Mind Spike should never been viewed as a filler.
However I have since acquiesced to the recent changes and just accept that the direction is to have a choice of either periodic and non-periodic damage filler.
So with this newfound direction, I’ve taken upon myself to embrace the change as a core concept but still see that it’s not yet fully realized.
That’s what drove me to think of a way to make a clear choice between each filler and the only thing that can impact that choice is the DPS cooldown since you will pick one or the other no matter what and they already are now or have some history in one direction or the other. So all that was left was develop them into both an interesting cooldown but also separate enough to embrace periodic vs non-periodic damage.
As it stand right now, when someone new / fresh to the spec sees Void Eruption and Dark Ascension, it’s not clear cut to know which one is better doing what. This gets expanded to what talent choices in the rest of the tree is better for one or the other.
But if we simplify them and give them proper damage profile identity’s, it can then become very easy to understand what spells feed into your priority list. Then when seeing Psychic Link and Mind Flay vs Mind Spike, it would instantly click as to what your build will be and how to make it happen.
It’s not fun it’s current iteration, you can polish a turd but at the end of the day it’s still a turd
What are you specifically taking about?
Shadow as a whole?
DPS cooldowns?
Or my idea to fix them?
I’ll be honest I didn’t either. I just didn’t like the specific configuration of hard casted spike taking priority over flay. The MoP era surge gameplay has always made sense to me and with some slight tuning differences in the 10.0.7 tree we’d have had that instead.
Still I think the ‘Able to avoid pressing the same button twice in a row’ really underpins what irks me about 10.1. The thing I’ve actively been judging my performance on being able to avoid is now an inevitable fact of the rotation, and it feels icky.
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The It feeling better than 10.0.7 thing makes 1 of us that agree with you….you
From a PvP perspective, I also don’t want to just cast Mind Spike over and over.
I always wanted to bait an interrupt with Mind Flay, VT or MB to then swap to MS and go burst mode.
But since blizzard actively took a stance and made Mind Spike replace Mind Flay, I am working within those parameters.
I provide ideas on how I would like shadow to be and I provide ideas on how shadow can be better given the current direction they decide to take it.
If blizzard back tracks and removed the Mind Spike overriding Mind Flay and/or bring back Surge of Darkness, I will adjust my feedback accordingly.
I’m just doing my part in proving multiple options since I think we can all agree that blizzard needs the help based on multiple reworks at this point. Wether they choose to take community feedback under consideration or not is up to them. I just hope they can gleam some nuggets of carefully thought out feedback and the reasoning behind them before they go the way of a Legion level rework leading to a completely alien design that lost the core essence of what Shadow should be.
I’ve always said that shadow is not a DOT only spec. It had always had a roughly 50/50 periodic and non-periodic damage profiles. So I think in general they are heading in the right direction. They just need a little push and guidance to cross the finish line instead of fumbling out of the gate each and every time.
Shadow as a whole isn’t fun right now imo, the burst cd’s being cast suck booty and void bolt is super bad being tied to void eruption……and having to hard cast most of our damage with very little movement ability compared to other classes getting instant dots and gap openers while still getting instant procs that actually do damage versus us just turreting around in circles with our 30% movement bonus tied to our bubble that we can only cast 4-5 of before we oom or a feather that’s set on a reticle using up gcd’s I mean broham I can keep going on……void torrent needs to be removed or at the very least nerfed by 50% and I play shadow so I can say it stupid to deal half of a health bar with 1 cast
Shadow still has many issues. Some major, some not.
I’ve made detailed feedback and suggestions at length in the Priest forums and PTR Priest feedback forums that I think address all the issues as well as provide in-depth suggestions of changes that range from minor and major changes that I personally feel will fix all of Shadows issues.
But I’m not going to just repost over and over and flood every thread lol. I do more than I would like enough already. So I try to refrain as much as I can lol.
You might be right I do flood the forums a bit, but the spec that I’ve held dearest has been gutted and isn’t fun, I dont want to make the I’m quitting wow here’s my gold post so I’m venting and only a handful of people have said they like the changes. I’m only trying to highlight the negatives to the rework and not directly addressing the issue. I’ll try to summarize my position on this later after the season gone into full swing and I will continue to highlight the issues that a lot of pvp’ers in a more itemized fashion and less sporadic thank you for your input
Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking of your posts. I was merely just pointing out my own post history where I share my ideas and views.
I “try” not to duplicate them, but sometimes some moments just fall into place where it’s best to do just that.
I’ve come to realize many people come to the forums and say the same things over and over and start a new thread at that where a simple short trip browsing through the other similar threads will get the answer you want or at least keep all relevant information contained in concentrated threads instead of being duplicated over and over again.
But I also understand reading multiple hundreds of posts can be quite taxing on the mind and time.
It was a struggle for myself when I read each and every feedback post on the PTR Priest Feedback thread in both UA and EU in order to not miss any gems of ideas and suggestions. I found some stand outs, but the vast majority were just the repeated short sighted suggestions that were half baked reaction ideas over and over again like having 2 charges of Shadow Crash without considering that maybe Shadow Crash is just a spell with multiple points of failure on a mechanical level that should be tossed in the bin altogether for something better.
But I digress, I was referring to my own post history, not yours lol.
That’s fair. I just don’t like that my options were reduced and keeping dots up in AOE is now a pain in my big 'ol butt.
Glad your wife enjoys it more though, thanks for actually asking as well.
To each their own, Personally felt Shadow was perfect for my playstyle Legion- Shadowlands and never the buggy mess people call out. One target? Dot and Flay, 2 or more? Dot and sear. Get jumped in warmode? The instants were the only way to kill a class that could keep you stun locked. Mind spike only as an Instant? Perfect, casting causes wipes. Insanity generation to be able to cast a Devouring Plague without having to waste cooldowns? it was the easiest thing in the world for me, but I’m happy if the new rework has fit your play style better 
Gotta be some heavy sarcasm here, despite having more reworks than any other class the class is a complete mess.
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Shadow word Death and Mind Blast are so lackluster and deal no damage.
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We’re apparently built around Void Torrent damage now.
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Losing Mindspike because some people were overwhelmed with “choice” and losing an additional spell school was just so well thought out /s.
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Dark Ascension needs to be off the GCD same as any other non active damage dealing cooldown. Although it’s fairly lacklustre with the crit nerfs and our direct damage abilities doing nothing anyway.
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No AoE other than a 20 sec cooldown in Shadow Crash is just MADNESS.
All I all, whoever’s in charge of Shadow Priest has NFI, as evidenced by the what is it? Fourth rework?
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I love the rework, only gripe i have is how slow shadow crash travels.
More than a few times ive cast it only to have it miss due to the tank moving.
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It’s not a playstyle issue, it’s a game design issue.
Blizzard remade shadow in Legion, it was broken in Emerald Nightmare because of the insane scaling it can do which justified its massive nerf come Nighthold.
It had other issues where any time you get into short fight be it leveling, 5 man or PvP, it was designed where by the time you got enough insanity to get into Voidform, everything was basically dead and thus you entered Voidform right when you didn’t need it and by the time you got to the next group of mobs, your Voidform ended thus making you miss out on the entire portion of that ramping up damage phase. This was made even worse in PvP when you can get any type of CC effect placed on you and it would tank your insanity generation thus knocking you out of Voidform near instantly.
So it was not a choice of playstyle, it was a lack of functional spec design that only worked in long form fights which typically was reserved to raid boss’s.
Then going into BFA, Shadow felt extremely hollowed out because Legion Shadow was built around the artifact just as the demon Hunter was. So it literally didn’t have the spells and synergies needed to make Voidform function at a functional level until you started getting drowned in all the BfA borrowed power systems.
Only in Shadowlands did they finally make Voidform a controlled on demand cooldown thus allowing you the player to choose when to go into Voidform. But until that happened in beta, it was a jumbled broken mess once all the BfA borrowed powers no longer functioned.
So again, it’s not my opinion, it’s a fact that you can track the progress/evolution or rather devolution Shadow has been going through ever since Legion simply because how counter those mechanics fit into the way the rest of the game is built around.
It’s not a conspiracy as to why blizzard has been changing shadow so many times since legion, it’s because they are desperately trying to fix all the issues that came with Voidform and only when Voidform is a hollowed out husk do the issues finally subside into obscurity since it is no longer a dominant part of shadow where every talent picked needed to feed into making Voidform better by making it easily to get into and maintain for longer.
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