Is anyone else angry that Blizzard has done Hero Talents redesign, Racial buffs and now Marksmanship Hunter class redesign. But Shadow hasn’t gotten a real look in 3 expansions? WTF Blizzard
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At the risk of feeding the trolls:
Shadow gets a rework almost every expansion…just not this one yet…and it’s still Season 1. Three recent major patches in a row each featured three AOE redesigns…Searing Nightmare, to a Mind Sear spender (first patch DF), to Psychic Link being the core AOE function.
DF also redesigned Shadow to have either Dark Ascension or Voidform as the cooldown. The first patch of DF entirely redesigned the shadow tree, which was further redesigned throughout DF.
The constant redesigns are also part of the problem: now there have been so many redesigns that it doesn’t matter what Blizz does, because too many people now believe we just need to revert to MOP, Cata, Legion, or BFA patch X.XX to solve 99% of shadow’s “problems.” Alternatively, some recommend we throw away 75% of the spec in favor of one of their various “talent/spell manifestos”: long lists of new or overhauled abilities.
Shadow plays just fine. Sure, it’s got a few rough edges that could be smoothed out. It’s also got a few strengths and weaknesses that do not need to be smoothed out b/c each spec having distinct strengths and weaknesses is just good design.
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Poe already laid it out well, but to be honest, your statement is ignoring a lot of patches. Shadow might not operate how you like, but they’ve definitely had work done over the expansions.
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So much misinformation and slander. The issue isnt that shaodw needs reworks constantly and all the other completely made things you said. Especially that garbage about everyone just wanting an old playstyle, seriously most people are in the forums trying to suggest anime inspired abilities that would make them untouchable gods.
The issue is that they made very massive gameplay changes across all of the content done at end game and updated every class accordingly, except shapdw priest.
They undid all of the DF decisions that lead to nerfing mass dispel, yet its still nerfed. They made major changes to how interrupts work making a successful interrupt more powerful than a silence. Yet we have to go 2 talents deep for a 30s cd, silence/interrupt.
The other impacts are that all content included heavy amounts of “weak mob” aoe. Where you have multiple trash pulls and bosses that include mob counts far exceeding the 8 mob limit we have that are priority but we just cant do anything about it where every other dps has at least one good answer to this. The same is that all content has had a lot of movement heavy sections and the chamges they did make to us were damning for that. They nerfed dot damage and mobility damage options.
The issue is that for most every problem createdwe have an easy fix option if they just updated our impacted abilities with the gameplay like they did for other classes. The reason people reference old abilities is because when the content was similar we literally had those old abilities to deal with it.
They just needed to do things like unnerf dispel, make silence more reliable for pve, keep dot damage viable for less dps loss in intense mobility mechanics. Which is a great time to mention that part of the aggitation players feel is that the changes that do happen created issues. Like all the data coming in for end game was showing shadow priest was bottom 3 for Aoe, so they nerf psychic link 5%?
I am sure there is some major rework planned because everything is about light vs void right now and we are the light and void class. Its just lame that the current spriest reality is radio silence and completely being ignored. That will always draw ire.
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Despite you quoted it you missed the entire context of my argument. I did not say that Shadow priest have not seen changes. I said that Shadow has not had a Real look in the last 3 expansions.
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The current version of shadow priest also tries to incorporate multiple designs of previous expansions, which synergize rather poorly, and it’s feels unfinished.
Our captstones are Idols of the Old Gods, yet outside of N’Zoth they don’t feel impactful or make our game play more intresting.
To give us an alternative to Void Form but ended up with a spell where they didn’t make it interesting. Meaning, we’ll either have “AoE burst spell that gives you an instant ST burst that synergizes with your mastery, prolongs your dots, gives you a charge of mind blast, is prolonged for spent insanity” or … a flat damage buff for only half your kit.
Build your own shadow priest" was how it was marketed for the spec but this idea already falls flat when people need to take a bit of everything for performance and the individual pieces do not add up to a coherent result. We’re just going in all directions and none of them really synergize.
They wanted a cool class tree that shares things across specs but specifically for priest don’t want to share shadow stuff with holy and the other way around since our themes are so distinct. Meaning they don’t want a holy priest to poof out with dispersion. Shadow gets very little from the holy side of the tree and holy even can’t use some of the shadow stuff like a silence.
They want to keep our supportive niche but completely designed themselves into a corner with Power Infusion.
Shadow it’s a mix of conflicting design choices, missing direction, too little development time and dots you need to keep uptime on for your base damage, yet we don’t have the tools needed for that. Shadowy Apperitions is a mess of an ability that does little to no damage and has no synergy with out other aspects. If the Apperitions hit we got some insanity at least then it would have a use in our kit.
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I don’t disagree with your premise. Shadow could use a more focused creative direction. What you seem to want is a full restructure of how the spec operates though. Similar to something like demonology warlock in legion, or survival hunter.
I think that could help a lot. But it’s not something that is regularly implemented. Most specs haven’t had such attention…ever; because blizzard prefers incremental changes.
Shadow Priest has gone through many different iterations, and over the years it has cultivated multiple groups of people who prefer one version over the next. There is no way to satisfy them all. I think it’s time to settle down with the reworks and just focus on smoothing out the pain points of the current iteration.
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I agree, shadow feels really solid - there’s a lot that’s going right with shadow - it has great defensives, CC that’s strong enough to make it one of the top PvP specs, and both of the hero trees feel viable and powerful. The lack of on demand AoE is an issue I think a lot of ranged specs are having just because of how add heavy the current season has been from a raid perspective and m+. I think it could be improved, but I also think it could easily drive shadow into OP territory in other contexts. I can already pump very large ST numbers at 630, if we swing back around to a ST heavy raid I think shadow will shine.
There’s a lot of specs where only one hero talent is good, or where they are locked in to one of their capstones. Shadow has too really strong hero talents, and DA and VF both yield different playstyles will both have a lot of great pros and cons.
I also disagree that VF isn’t interesting. Keeping Long VF roles through insanity management is very fun. If I want simple and on demand, I can go DA, if I want long rolling damage with more micromanagement I can go VF.
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As a Marks Hunter and Disc Priest dual-mains, you should pray Shadow doesn’t get a “reimagining” on par with the Marksman changes. You’d probably end up with a 4-step old god transformation sequence where your primary nuke is a physical melee range tentacle slam.
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Sounds like Illaoi from League of Legends. In which case… Sign me up! 
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I have followed these forums for over ten years. Every time Blizzard reworks Shadow priests, without fail, within 2 months there is a chorus of grievants demanding yet another rework. The very person who started this post is saying “REWORK WHEN???” and “Shadow hasn’t gotten a rework in 3 expansions! WTF?”, despite Shadow having received constant reworks recently.
If people in the Shadow forums keep demanding reworks shortly after multiple reworks, then yes, there is a demand for constant reworks. Whether it is the same individuals demanding reworks or other “new or returning” complainers really doesn’t make a difference, the point is that the Shadow forum community in general does demand constant reworks.
I agree with you on the Mass Dispel issue. Priests have always been the “dispel kings” and it is a defining aspect of being a priest. That said, that is a priest class issue rather than a Shadow spec issue specifically. The issue is in the class tree, not the shadow tree.
They don’t, though. Look on the Druid forums and they’ll complain about having to take time to Moonfire mobs. Any time AOE is nerfed to 5 targets, or nerfed to do diminished damage beyond 5 targets (as has consistently been the case), you’ll see people complain. Just because they hit beyond 5 targets doesn’t mean they hit hard. Damage-wise, Shadow keeps up with all other classes in M+, and you can verify this by looking at the damage at the end of each run. No, that doesn’t mean they have perfectly-equal AOE damage profiles as pallies or warriors, but that’s fine.
Also regarding situations “Where you have multiple trash pulls and bosses that include mob counts far exceeding the 8 mob limit we have that are priority”…there is no pack in M+ or anywhere that contains 8+ mobs that are __all_priority_mobs. Priority mobs are the 1 or 2 mobs in various packs that need to be killed/CC’d ASAP.
You are 100% correct, but the OP said “hasn’t had a real look in 3 expansions” not “hasn’t been reworked”.
Shadow has had numerous reworks. But they were all phoned-in, basically went live without any iteration, and either failed to solve the problems they set out to address or introduced new problems that were predicted, but not addressed, during testing.
Also, this:
is untrue. 10.1 rearranged parts of the tree, but only changed a few talents, and didn’t address the vast majority of the problems with the tree in 10.0. It did accomplish its goals of greatly reducing shadow’s mobility and removed the massive zero-effort AoE of Mind Sear, but left essentially every other problem in the tree. It did not receive further iteration throughout Dragonflight.
I recognize that there are people that enjoy the Dragonflight version of shadow. Respectfully, even those that like Dragonflight shadow should be able to recognize that the shadow tree has no meaningful choices in it, the coexistence of Dark Ascension and Void Eruption is a crippling flaw that hurts the class identity greatly, and the hero classes do nothing but more heavily weigh casting Void Torrent and Halo with minimal delay, which arguably makes shadow’s gameplay flatter given that Halo previously could be held for a while to be used for healing at a proper time.
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I would be happy if they just reverted SP to what it was in the days of Vanilla. Problem solved.
The class you brought to buff warlock damage?
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You might need to revisit what shadow was back in vanilla. You might be thinking of BC shadow? Not sure what you’re thinking of. Shadow wasn’t particularly desirable back in vanilla.
The class with no cd on vampiric embrace.
I’m sorry but you’re a huge misinformation fan and have a very negative attitude in general. So being real honest with you, You saying your the source that EVERYTIME a rework happens all the shadow priests come and demand another rework is just completely hearsay. I say this as a priest main of 20 years who has really enjoyed the different playstyles throughout all the expansions I even enjoyed this one.
Damage-wise, Shadow keeps up with all other classes in M+, and you can verify this by looking at the damage at the end of each run.
Again, blatant misinformation and lies. There is always a noticeable difference between the shadow priest and the other two dps. You should go actually look at the meters from higher end play if you’re going to say something as hyperbolic as shadow priest can keep up with all the other dps. The best parsing S-Priests in the game can only be above 2nd highest dps in a run when one of the other dps is having a bad run or sucks at their role.
The multiple trash pull thing is again you not reading, or not understanding. So i’ll just let you make up your arguments there, if you feel like you want to actually read it then go for it.
Always good to see a bottom tier player happy with “clearing normal” and not even playing the spec argue about what the spec does or doesn’t need. All specs can handle world content and normal raiding without issue, let people who see the issues at higher level play discuss the issues at higher level play.
Just because a reported statement is “hearsay” or “anecdotal” does not mean it is incorrect. If you don’t want to believe it, feel free to just…deny it. But you are commenting in the very same post where the original poster uses wild language (“WTF”) to post misinfo about the “lack of Shadow getting a real look in 3 expansions.” That’s some immediate evidence that my claims are based on something. Again, feel free to deny it if you wish.
In my perspective, your comments are misinformation. But I won’t call them a lie, because I don’t just walk around assuming malevolent intent for people who just have a different - even misinformed - position on various issues.
You really don’t know much about me as a player, and you haven’t cited any records about my in-game accomplishments (or lack thereof), but feel free to pretend otherwise. I don’t call people “trash players” just for having a different - and again, even a misinformed - perspective on class/spec issues.
I won’t be responding to you further because it’s clear you are not willing to have a serious and mature discussion on the issues.