Hey Everyone, I know there are a lot of things being thrown around but I really love this class and any chance of throwing out ideas to make this class fun again would be nice. So chime in whatever and hopefully Blizzard sees some of this stuff and will make changes to it! Here’s a couple of my thoughts that I personally would love to see.
Void Form
Void Form is the most boring concept ever for PvE. It’s built around getting high crit and haste. Instead of anything playstyle wise to get more out of it. It’s a system I really don’t care for. Especially since there’s nothing to do except get into void form, spam your couple of abilities and stay in it as long as you can. There’s no real incentive to it other than secondary stats which give bigger numbers but have no other impact to make it fun.
So, if we are going to continue this system there needs to be more involvement while inside of void form. So here are a couple of ideas I think would make it more exciting to play.
1. An Actual CD
Void Form gives consistent damage for the most part. Due to high stacks of lingering insanity and chorus of insanity. It spikes up after first void form and then doesn’t feel like it goes anywhere. So the damage will stay pretty much the same throughout a fight with some changes currently due to essences, lust, or execute. The only CD that we really have is shadowfiend. Which is on a 3min CD and gives 3 insanity per attack and does low damage (considering it’s a 3min CD). It doesn’t really give you a whole lot of insanity, especially in later stages of a void form. So it feels like something you kind of just throw out on CD and it does damage with no flavor or impact. If we are going to continue void form, CDs should involve prolonging void form.
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Void Torrent: Giving void torrent baseline and providing actual DPS increase. Void torrent is a really cool spell. It is essentially a beefed up mind flay aesthetically and halts insanity drain. This would be what you think a CD for void form would be. Since the objective of void form is to build it up and stay in void form as long as possible.
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Mindbender: Since we are the experts of shadow magic in the priest class, we should probably be a little advanced with the void being that we call forth. Mind Bender adds a more updated look of shadowfiend, is on a 1min CD, does more damage AND generates 6 insanity opposed to shadowfiend’s 3 insanity per attack on a 3min CD. This is already a talent but even this would be a more exciting damage CD than what is already there. It may be the lazy way out but, it’s better than nothing. You could even expand upon it to increase damage while it’s available or some void explosion when it ends.
2. Void Form Incentives
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Devouring Plague: I think honestly this would be my favorite change for shadow priest while keeping void form. While at the same time bringing back a DoT to a DoT class. When I say Devouring Plague I don’t mean just throwing that extra DoT randomly and refresh it before it ends. The extra DoT would be nice but I think we could use past iterations of it to work in our advantage for void form.
I suggest we tie it in essentially to how lingering insanity works. Let’s say we make devouring plague only available after leaving void form. Now, when you cast void bolt, you gain a stacking buff that increases your devouring plague damage. So the concept would stay with prolonging void form but instead of secondary stats, we are trying to buff a finisher style move essentially that does a lot of damage. We then use devouring plague, and it consumes the buff. This is similar to to shadow orbs as well but, we get the best of both worlds out of it. I think people would enjoy this as Blizzard wants void form and literally everyone else wants shadow orbs. -
Void Tendrils: I always thought there was always a lot of potential for these for shadow priest. Which were given to us, then taken away in BFA only to be given to everyone in a corruption ability. Which fit the class fantasy and could provide something for void form. You could even make this function in a similar fashion to how I suggested for Devouring Plague where it summons a tendril at the end of void form for every 4 void bolts (just an example) or just make it generate 1 tendril everytime you use void bolt. It doesn’t have to do a lot of damage or stay up very long but we want excitement here not just numbers.
Talents
So there are a couple of talents that are in game currently or in the alpha that I find questionable. Numbers and tuning should be an afterthought to the talents rather than priority over fun or excitement.
1. Death and Madness (lvl75 Talent): I’ll start by saying a baseline shadow word death is a great idea. This talent I feel is questionable at best. It’s use is based off of a couple factors. One being “Will Shadow Word: Death hit like a truck?”. If so, then there could be uses for it in dungeons or bosses with small adds. The other is “Will I be able to land the killing blow for sure?” If you can’t reliably land the killing blow every time, then it’s a dead talent. Unless we can provide a short debuff (maybe 2 seconds) where we get a window of if the mob dies within it, we still benefit from Death and Madness.
This talent’s downfall is similar to Affliction Warlocks with their Drain Soul (before the damage was buffed significantly) ability and having to shard snipe to gain benefit. Otherwise, it was a DPS loss compared to not having a talent at all because shadowbolt just did more damage consistantly. So if it stays, we should have learned something from Drain Soul. Perhaps adding in increasing shadow word death damage on targets below 20% or something to that nature.
- Surrender to Madness: I can think of only a couple of occasions that this talent was actually good. I appreciate the thought process behind it. It’s a cool concept in theory. In actual game play though, it it just the worst thing. Shadow Priest already have no significant DPS cooldown. So to throw icing on the cake, we decided to make a big DPS cooldown a talent. Then it kills you. Even with the change to it not killing you if you kill the target, the other option of Legacy of the Void is just too good in comparison. Even on fights with adds that need to be burst down fast because void form needs to ramp regardless. There’s too much risk and not enough reward from this talent. I suggest reworking it, or removing it entirely. It could be changed to something like the Death Wish honor talent for warriors. You get a significant damage, insanity-generation, or haste (I’d prefer the damage increase) at the cost of taking 75%-100% additional damage from all sources during the duration. You could even make the benefit random out of those three. Similar to roll the bones for outlaw rogues but never have a chance of gaining more than 1. This would make it more exciting in PvE as you’d have to plan out when you’d want to use it and not get killed by the AoE on Orgozoa for example. It would really give the feel of surrendering to madness as you are rolling the dice for a decent, good or perfect incentive while at the same risking your life to gain it. Without the instant killing yourself mechanic of the talent. People don’t like killing themselves.
PVP
I haven’t done a significant amount of PvP on my priest this expansion. I think I went to 2000 rating in 3s and 2100 rating in 2s only. The reason behind it it simple. The class feels like a handicap to me. I know there are other people that find success with it such as Wizk and even he has said it’s the worst class in PvP. Which is a shared sentiment for most people who main Shadow.
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Damage over Time Effects: Priest revolves around DoTs to do the majority of their damage. Our DoTs in the long run will show as a huge amount of damage. There isn’t a huge negative effect for dispelling the DoTs. The person who dispels the DoT is horrified for 3 seconds. Our other abilities aren’t exactly chaos bolts, greater pyro blasts, or even starsurges. So the horrify is unpunished and we have to reapply the DoTs again anyway or else our pressure is 0. Which happens a lot because people just run around a pillar. In 2v2, a warrior healer team can essentially prevent your from ever doing significant damage. In 3v3, your teammates can potentially benefit from the healer horrified but, your pressure on the target is still 0. I think there should be more of an effect for dispelling the DoT. Perhaps damaging the target dispelled as well as the horrify would make it a little better.
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Defensives: Honestly Shadow has some of the best big CDs defensively in the game. Such as dispersion, life swap and even fade is very useful. I just think it still feels very squishy and could maybe use a inner fire effect. Nothing too OP. Nothing too major. This could also tie into PvE as well because although dispersion is a big defensive, you essentially silence yourself for the duration. Where other class defensives they can still function. Except for hunters. But this isn’t about them so that’s for a different post.
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Mana: Personally, one of my favorite iterations of shadow was Wrath of the Lich King. Granted, playing with a rogue could be entirely overpowered. Mana does tie into shadow priest utility a lot. Perhaps we just reduced mana cost on healing abilities across all non healer classes? Purges should still be expensive but I think a little more mana to play with for self healing or power word shield would be nice. This could also be better than inner fire on defensive level. This is just something I would like for 2v2 to allow you play double DPS a little more confidently. So take this one with a grain of salt.
Fin. For now. Thanks for taking the time to read this. As I said before, here’s just a couple of thoughts I’ve had for making shadow priest fun again. I’m a strong believer in making the class fun then worrying about damage and tuning later. So I posted my issues with the classes AND possible solutions to the issues. We don’t need all of these changes but one or two would be nice. So by all means, put your thoughts in here or even make your own post. A lot of people will complain and do nothing to fix it or add input. If we aren’t part of the solution, we are part of the problem. So please, make it known what your thoughts are. Or if you like any of my ideas or have a twist for them, by all means let it be known. Thanks again for your time and sorry if the layout isn’t perfect. My first big post on the forums like this and I’m not too creative when it comes to layouts on posts. I just hope it’s able to be read without too much of a headache.