The goal of this post is to outline what’s wrong with Shadow Priest Gameplay and how we can make it more fun and rewarding
The changes on PTR did very little to remedy the issues with shadow priest gameplay so here are what I see as the core issues and how we can fix them
Core issues with SOD Spriest:
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Rotation is extremely clunky with 3 dots, 3 pets, and VE. It’s 10 seconds into the fight by the time you have everything on the target and you’ve barely done any damage
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Pets feel AWFUL to use. Homunculi has terrible AI and if Eye of the Void’s curse resists then you might as well not be wearing a head rune
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Mind flay is useless in PVE outside of the T1 6p Bonus.
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Lack of scaling. If you look at TBC you will see shadow start of middle-bottomish on WCL and be dead last by the end of the expansion. Currently Shadow really only scales off of Shadow Damage, but adding additional scaling mechanisms can help prevent falling further behind other dps every tier
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No baseline aoe ability. Choosing between AOE runes and Single Target runes definitely makes sense but there is no baseline aoe ability for shadow priests which feels bad to constantly play around.
Potential Solutions for these issues
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a. When cast on an NPC only (so it doesn’t work in pvp), homunculi also applies Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to the target. This works nicely due to Homunculi’s 2 minute cooldown so it cant be abused while helping reduce ramp up time in PVE by combining 3 globals into 1
b. Remove Homunculi (my favorite suggestion TBH) and allow debuffs to be applied passively through different abilities. Homunculi could be changed to “Your Shadow Word: Pain applies the homunculi debuffs to the target. Can only be applied to a target once every 15 seconds”
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Eye of the Void - Allow eye of the void’s curse to be cast multiple times (or is guaranteed to be applied to the target)
Homunculi - Any solution from part 1.
OR… GET RID OF THE PETS and allow their abilities to be passively applied through our own spells. I’ve seen some good suggestions on this.
- Change Eye of the Void to Reduce CD on Shadowfiend to 3 minutes and have it apply a curse.
- Change homunculi to a passive debuff applied through our dots (outlined in 1b.)
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The t1 6p bonus should be baseline for shadow priests and mind flay should have a 30 yard base range. This allows Mind Flay to be a part of shadow’s core gameplay in SoD without relying on a band-aid fix from a tier set. The base range of this spell being 20 yards does not make sense in this version of wow
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a. Allow Shadow priests to have a modifier for Intellect or Spirit to give additional spellpower
b. Different spell power coefficients for PVP and PVE. This really is the easiest way to balance Spriest without affecting pvp
c. New passive ability - Critical Strikes from Mind Blast procs Spirit Tap. While Spirit Tap is active, it increases your spell damage of all spells by 25% of your total spirit.
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As we scale further into endgame, despair will continually outshine void zone since it’s our primary form of scaling, which means void zone will eventually be replaced for good since despair also buffs mind sear. Making void zone BASELINE for shadow priest would be a great solution
This is still an imperfect AOE solution as Void Zone has a 30 sec cooldown meaning you would want to choose Mind Sear when you really want to pump AOE damage.
TLDR:
The goal of this post is not necessarily to buff Shadow Priest’s damage but to make their playstyle more fun and rewarding in PVE.
Shadow is a dot class and they are always plagued by a long ramp up time, but the pets only exacerbate this issue as their damage patterns resemble additional dots. Removing pets and/or allowing their abilities to be applied automatically through other means alleviates the ramp up time required in PVE.
Mind flay has always been incredibly weak and tying its viability to a tier bonus is a poor temporary fix. Allow this set bonus to be baseline so that Mind flay can find a way into the Spriest rotation for good.
Shadow has always had terrible scaling in classic. If we can add additional scaling mechanisms we can prevent the same scaling issues that happened in TBC from happening in SoD