I’m actually really excited to see some of those, especially the Idol rework. I want to be happy for the 2-charge Shadow Crash but… Then they reduce the number of targets? They mentioned is due to tuning, but IDK how that will go.
(Dis)honorable mention to the lack of anything regarding Silence. 
These changes are probably a very hard nope for me. I despise channeling filler, so removing mindspike is hard to swallow, particularly when they admit it isn’t broken.
None of these are changes we asked for. Pathing is worse now, a lot of the new talents are DoA.
Idol of N’Zoth has been redesigned – You create Horrific Visions when casting harmful spells on enemies. At 50 stacks of Horrific Visions, your target sees a nightmare, dealing Shadow damage and granting you 4 Insanity over 3 seconds. At 100 stacks, your target witnesses a vision of N’Zoth, dealing high Shadow damage and granting you 12 Insanity over 3 seconds.
Current spriest CPM is around 55, so this only happens every 60s and 180s. Waiting 60s for 4 insanity over 3s seems pretty bad to me. The damage would have the be huge for it to be worth it, and I doubt it will be. Would be better if it made your next cast of DA/VF have an ultimate form or something you can plan better when to use it.
mediocre
Shadow Crash change is decent but only 6 per is awful
Dark Ascension still sucks, following their logic this should be removed for the same reason as Mind Spike
the idols aren’t more engaging at all
there’s still way too many utility nodes at the top, the class as a whole has a massive utility issue that they haven’t fixed
All of this, especially about Dark Ascension and the utility nodes.
In addition - we still have 6 2-point nodes for no apparent reason.
Every other caster is right there for you if Mind Flay, THE shadow priest spell, is a deal breaker for you.
Shadow gets it’s 8th redesign… sure it needs it but holy priest would like one too we’re stuck in vanilla.
Changes for changes sake. Half the stuff we didn’t ask for and didn’t need to change. Mind Spike removal is w/e, it wasn’t limiting the design of the tree and with it gone they didn’t expand the design of the tree. Just more filler talents we don’t want, and pathing changes to talents that will never be taken.
Yea I don’t see the vision here… I honestly don’t think the wow devs see a vision as well.
Just slapped some stuff together to shoot at the wall and hope for the best.
Whatever… I really don’t care anymore, got more important RL stuff that requires my attention these days.
Okay, so first of all, these changes are okay. HOWEVER, there are two major things here I do not like.
Was I ever crushed to see that Deathspeaker’s passive was removed.
Previously: Your Shadow Word: Pain damage has a chance to reset the cooldown of Shadow Word: Death increase its damage by 25%, and deal damage as if striking a target below 20% health.
Please, don’t do this. Add it back.
Imagine this. You’ve got your void tendrils going. Then you get a Deathspeaker proc, allowing you to use Shadow Word: Death on a target. Well, you’ve also taken Death’s Torment, repeating the cast 2 additional times at 15% effectiveness. Okay, sure.
But then you realize “Oh boy, I’m Voidweaver with Depth of Shadows!”, which means you just summoned a few extra Shadowfiends, and now they tear apart your enemies.
This was going to be a highlight for me, and I am extremely disappointed to see this opportunity gone just to have Deathspeaker be changed to “You can now use Shadow Word: Death on enemies below 35% HP instead of 20%.”
I know not many people like the idea of Shadow turning into a semi-pet class, but I like the idea of this highlight moment in particular, especially for Voidweaver.
Being able to tear open Void Rifts and pop out a bunch of void creatures to rip a target apart in both flesh and mind is literally peak class fantasy for this spec.
Please consider reverting Deathspeaker to allow the instant Shadow Word:Death procs again. This would have much such a fun gameplay loop.
Other than this, I am excited for these changes, though I would be more excited being able to summon a ton of void minions via Deathspeaker.
I particularly liked the fact that we’re getting some changes for good.
There’s a few weird design decisions but I thin in the long term they are trying to shape the way the spec feels to fit a specific theme and playstyle instead of being an amalgamation of many things (I may be wrong). But overall I like to see some action taken regardless. Some people are just complaining left and right without actually contributing to the conversation with what would in their minds be an acceptable talent/spell/change. They are free to express their dissapointment but complaining on something for the sake of complaining on something doesn’t really separates them from the thing they are complaining about.
Y’shaarj won’t be taken with a 10% penalty.
Wowhead has the trees up rn and it feels like there are way too many 2 point nodes on the new tree.
Looks like the spec won’t be bricked anymore by simply stacking Crit. I stack crit as Holy and Disc, run Oracle on both of them. Mastery is my lowest flat stat. Any time I would try to play Shadow my damage would be absolutely dumpster tier even if I executed my rotation flawlessly.
It’s like crit was turned off for this spec.
I liked the Depth of Shadows Voidweaver Talent + old Deathspeaker because you can spawn a lot of Mind Benders which then allow extra use of Inescapable Torment.
But with SW:D not getting its reset procs… that entire synergy just falls flat.
I replaced my keybind for Mind Flay for Void Torrent and then used Mind Spike with a mod macro as same button with Mind Blast.
But now I am forced to use Mind Flay and I still need Void Torrent with Voidweaver. So my Keybinds would be a mess and just annoying to deal with.
Yea, these changes seem to add nothing new with the idea of changing up how you want to play with actual gameplay changing talents. You just get to pick more passive damage in one or another ability which from a user perspective, you won’t notice. You actually loose the Mind Spike gameplay choice and the Shadow Word: Death reset gameplay choice. So in essence, you loose more options of gameplay choice and gain nothing back.
Losing choice so the crit stack finally won’t suck is what it low key looks like lol.
I dunno how I feel about losing Mind Spike until I try it. I also ran that with VW. Gonna be weird to channel, I can’t stand cancelling a channel and we’ll have 2. Yikes.
I kinda wish they would remove Mastery and replace it with Speed in the budget. Make it to where people can sacrifice throughput for movement speed lol. Sorry completely off topic.
What if we get to chanel MF whilst moving on VW? 
That’d be perfect.
I might actually play my priest next patch 
Some of these sound fun. I’m really curious about void volley.
Also glad mind spike finally got deleted
Yeah MF feels a bit outdated given the fact that more movement is required nowadays. but in the end both spells did the same. Making it a single one reduce a lot of variability when it came to balancing and switching more talents for a better rework.
Only reason I can think they wouldn’t do that is because of pvp.
Melee would lose their mind if you could slow them by 50% and run away at full speed simultaneously. Although I feel it would be hilarious and deserved for all the years of melee mindlessly zerging shadow
Fair. but they can add that modified “Only works in PVE” or sth. Beyond that it will feels odd to cast MF instead of MS to empower VB as VW but I reckon with Crit there is a better chance of inflicting more damage per GCD?
We just had a rework last patch.