Shadow TWW beta

Classes Priest
1

Greetings fellow Void enjoyers! I am making this post based off my own feelings about the beta from what I’ve experienced so far. Most of which this has to do with PvP though I don’t think my feedback is only for that community. I do think that it will have value for all Shadow Priest players. I’m a consistent Duelist PvP’er, KSM, and AoTC player for regards to my skill level.

First things first VoidWeaver feels like garbage.
Why:

  • So right off there are a few glaring issue with the tree. Most importantly is the fact that you are FORCED to play Dark Ascension. Its the premier Void tree and you are unable to use the ability Void Eruption.
    – Solution: Make void blast a shared talent choice with Void Corruption. Which is a Stackable Damage over time ability that does its damage over 1 second, and deals damage every .25 seconds. Why is this better? Unlocking us from dark ascension now gives us the FREEDOM to select other talents and not feel bad about it. Taking DA and not taking MS:I just feels like its missing the mark completely. In-fact it feels worst because, taking Spike but not taking Mind Melt and Mastermind also feel equally bad. Just make sure that its tuned properly to account for not having 20% damage from DA.
  • Entropic Rift Looks like a black hole and doesn’t pull you in. Look I get that it probably has something to do with M+ and the grouping of the mobs but truthfully I don’t care. Change No Escape to pull enemies towards the center of it, maybe even lower the slow amount so it is escapable. Also It doesn’t have to interrupt spell casting while the enemies are being pulled in, so it doesn’t necessarily have to count as a CC other than a slow. When you consider that it starts out as a small zone and only gets bigger towards the end of the cast, I don’t think it would be too strong.

Archon
Truthfully I don’t have much to add here. I’ve been playing this mostly because it actually feels more cohesive and just stronger overall.

  • Heightened Alteration Will pretty much never see any use. Very seldom are we ever going to choose extend the duration that we don’t deal damage. In-fact with the pace that healers are able to top people it can be done in 2-3 globals.
    – Instead I prepose something along the lines of while Power Word: Shield is on cooldown, (insert number here)% damage is returned to you as healing.

Aside from that really I’m still playing around with Archon and it doesn’t feel awful. The only other thing Id like to see is Halo cast speed drop and set to a steady 1 second cast. Unsure if its just the haste value feeling or what but it does seem to just be a little slow, especially when you consider travel time.

Talent Trees

  • Priest Tree
    -Last I knew Sanguine Teachings and San’lyan were not giving proper values in Arenas. Fix that.
  • Swap Holy Nova with Spell Warding and Blessed Recovery. Its would just add another talent for Shadow priest allowing us use it elsewhere.
  • Cauterizing Shadows, what even is this talent? 33k Heal when we have 6+ million health is just a laugh. Then once you realize that you’re goal is to never trigger the effect that talent is just the icing on the cake. The priority is to keep your DoTs on enemies up the whole time we are in combat and with Void Bolt it will be extending the duration. Also Mental Decay actively fighting it.
    – I’m not even sure what you went for here in this talent. It makes no sense at all and the only reason its picked is to gain Manipulation. I’d like to see Phantom Reach moved up to this spot and given the ability BUM BUM BUM
  • Door of Shadows In place of Phantom Reach. 1 min CD, 40 yard range, 1 second cast. Look not having mobility at this point in the game is just embarrassing. While we can do steady sprints with feathers and PW:S we have no way of being able to do some serious displacement. without costing us damage. If you throw out everything I said At least give us this ability.

Shadow Tree

  • Silence OR Dispersion is baseline. Normally I’m against making abilities baseline but currently we need to use 8 talents to unlock our next tree. DP > Apparitions > Misery > Surge > Though Harvester > Psychic Link are all basically required. Leaving 4 open spots with 2 points to spend. You can Take both but then are unable to buff them. Or take 1 + buff. Either way giving us both with the ability to buff 1 I think would make it healthier.
  • COMBINE THE SHADOW CRASH TALENTS Lazy thinking is not a good reason to split talents so we have more things to pick. We are never going take just crash without Whispering Shadows.
    – Instead have something like our DF tier 3 of buffing Shadow crash damage per stack of (insert random buff name here), Tie it to Mind blast / Void Blast / Void Corruption.
  • Shadowy Insight Now gives a temorary charge of Mind blast / Void Blast / Void Corruption
    – Time to give it back. Spec feels and plays much better with it also with VoidWeaver its just a passive buff to not miss out on very important damage.
  • Maddening Touch, Dark Evangelism, Mind Devour, And Phantasmal Pathogen, are all just lame 2 point talents that we have to take to get us to the next row.
    – This is a great row to start pulling out our already swamped PvP talents. Example: combine Phantasmal Pathogen & Maddening Touch. Move Mind Devour right 1 and put VOID ORIGINS underneath Ancient Madness (bring it back to the game). A different version of Mind Trauma would also fit well in there.

Shadow Priest abilities
Some of this you might have already picked up on but I’ll go threw everything Id like to see changed anyway.

  • Vampiric Touch Dispel protection changed, getting this dispelled off you gives you the debuff of Malediction. Absorbing healing taken for (x) amount or 8 seconds. The priest gains the full benefit of their mastery attacking targets with Malediction.
  • Halo Mana cost reduced to 50,000. Surely won’t notice it in pve but there are moments where you do in pvp.
  • Void Origins brought back to the game. - Remove Void Volley I really don’t care.
  • Door Of Shadows put in the Priest Tree. We need a reliable way to move from A → B
  • Shadow Fiend put to a 2 Min cooldown. Easier to sync with Void Eruption builds
  • Power infusion no longer dispellable. Its time, especially getting it spell stolen is super lame considering the state mages are in.

And that’s about all I have. I’m sure there’s more and quite frankly I don’t expect much more changes between now and the release of the game. These are just somethings that I think would greatly improve the class going forward. Currently the biggest disappointment is VoidWeaver. Please fix that ASAP.
I’ve tried to leave out things like “buff damage on x/y/z” due to at any point blizzard can decided that DP does 5mil damage per tick and instantly we’re the best class.

EDIT: 8/7/24

Throwing some more information in here as I play more on the beta. PvP is very disheartening.
Honestly some things I’d like to take a look at changes.
Making Void Eruption / Dark Ascension AND Halo baseline instant cast.

  • I understand the hesitation in adding more instant cast into the game. And as someone who has played melee classes I fully understand wanting to be able to kick something but truthfully they’re bigger fish to fry.

– We’re the only class that has to cast our burst cooldown. Not doing damage but just trying to get our offensive off, to do damage. If its the damage aspect of Void Eruption worry not, its only doing 85k damage. Giving us access to Void Bolt, which is still only averaging 300k a shot. Aside from that the vast majority of shadow priest damage is going to come putting up and maintaining DoT’s on the targets.

– In regards to Halo, in archon its only hitting for 300k a whack, even if you add in every hit from all 6 were looking at roughly 1.8million over the course of 15 seconds. And while it is an AoE the potential to break CC is there and you’re not guaranteed to hit all three targets.

– And once you consider the fact that even AFTER getting these two abilities off in order for shadow to do any type of “kill target” damage you still need to channel MF:I or Void Torrent. Nothing else in our kit is going to be able to give us any meaningful on demand damage. Both of these being kickable AND We either lose our Void Torrent or a charge of Surge of Insanity if we want to fake cast.

Hero Talents

  • Voidweaver
    – After some playing around with it there are scenarios where it doesn’t feel awful. I’ve found that If I know I’m going to be run at it does add some more survivability through Void Leech and Embrace the Shadow. Also the ability to cast our Void Torrent on the go, while being able to reposition around a pillar to avoid CC or charge a healer for a follow up fear is nice. I expect it to be the more common choice when not playing with a Warlock.
    – It also is very strong into class that have absorb effects. Devour Matter giving us not only more shield damage but also insanity (which alone feels much better). No Obviously purging shields will be better when able, but that isn’t always an option.

  • Archon
    – Not much has changed on my opinion here. The damage is some of the best I’ve been able to do. That being said it seems to rely on being able to free cast a little bit more. Halo getting off is an essential and its just one more thing for them to stop. Because of that I find in match ups that aren’t vs Caster cleaves I’ve started to lean more towards Voidweaver. Also playing with a Warlock is another good time to play Archon because more than likely they are going to be the primary target allowing you more free casting ability.

General Tip
If you are playing with Mind Flay you should be capping out the talent Dark Evangelism before you put your point into Mental Decay.
Mind flay is a DoT effect and gets value from DE, which will also effect ALL you’re DoT effects. unlike MD.

More Feedback
I’ve pretty much given up on Dark Ascension even with Voidweaver. (Not that I’m mad about this). I can see DA being better in PvE when you’re not trying to fake kicks and you can just do your rotation. In PvP that’s just not the case. Void Blast hitting for 450k while in DA isn’t enough for how difficult it is to get off. VS running Void Eruption and slamming 5ish Void Bolts off for 300k which is an instant.

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I actually like this method of dispel protection. It can both be effective and still remains thematic of being a Priest in regards to our absorb shield aspect.

I would also like to think you can easily build a PvP talent where the Priest is granted a damage absorb shield equal to 50% of the healing absorb debuff amount currently in play across every target.

So when facing a Shadow Priest and you dispel their Vampiric Touch, you now have to eat through a passive damage shield and the target(s) you dispelled VT from will be vulnerable for a bit.

Makes it very risky I think. I like it anyway lol.

Obviously change the numbers as needed but I think the point was made.

It sort of reminds me of the Mind Restrain talent in the initial DF Priest class talent tree where your Mind Blast caused the target to have to eat through the debuff of damage dealt to the target. But this way is passive and reversed and only effect PvP.

In regards to Void Origins, it would be nice to have sure. But frankly that needs to just be baseline because it’s absolutely absurd that all or nearly all class/specs don’t have to deal with a cast time on their cooldowns.

Dark Archangel in Cataclysm never had a cast time and Dark Ascension is just Dark Archangel only slightly different.

The only reason why these cooldowns have a cast time imo is because Void Eruption always had a cast time because it dealt damage going into Voidform and I recall a while back that the justification that the wow devs gave for cooldowns having a cast time or not was if they dealt damage or not.

So it would be ludicrous to have Dark Ascension without a cast time but keep Void Eruption with a cast time. So they just kept both as having a cast time to keep some semblance of balance.

This is another reason why Void Eruption and by extension Void Bolt should be separated from Voidform.

Void Eruption should be an AOE resource spender spell while Void Bolt should be either removed completely or share a talent location with Void Eruption to be more single target or cleave centric and put a stacking debuff on the target to deal more damage or something… frankly I think Void Bolts purpose can be pushed into other spells as I think Void Bolt just adds another button in an already tight DPS window.

So basically make it act like Devouring Plague where it deals up front damage and DOT damage afterwards.

I mean I guess it can work. But then it begs the question… why not just make it affect Devouring Plague?

I mean Mind Blast and its charges issues are already a pain point.

Why not just take some inspiration from WoD Auspicious Spirits talent where your spirits gave you shadow orbs which resulted in a flood of orbs that you can use to fire off Devouring Plagues across the field. This was very satisfying gameplay that really pushed you into a dot/rot spec as most of your time was spent just dotting things non stop.

So in this version, make it so while your Entropic Rift is out, your Devouring Plagues cost 50% less and multiple applications up to max 5 can be applied on the target resulting in all the dot damage from each to fuel synergies.

That idea might need a bit more cooking but it would make your Entropic Rift window very fast paced by pushing more uptime with Devouring Plague instead of slowing you down if you are lacking Mind Blast charges.

I touch on this a bit here…

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The reason not to is because you don’t want to just spam DP. You are 100% able to run yourself out of insanity if you just spam push DP. Especially at current haste levels. Aside from being in your CDS you should be just maintaining the dot, as well as making sure you don’t over cap.

Until our mastery gets reworked the days of shadow being a dot / rot spec are over. Very rarely in our breakdown are our dots (aside from DP) anywhere near the top. (I could go either way on this honestly I don’t mind both playstyles)

which is also why I mentioned

I see your point, I think its to no ones surprised that the current state needs some changes whether it be a redesign of the ability or a change to how you’re extending the rift. My change was solely to make it so we we’re required to lock in DA.

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I see what your attempting to do but I guess without saying it I was highlighting the fact that it just seems like a lot of bandaids for something that should really require a fresh new look/direction instead of this constant bandaid implementations they keep making since the Legion redesign.

All they do is try to fix one thing but then make 2 new problems to deal with.

All because they seem to have a severe lack of vision and direction to take Priest and Shadow specifically in.

The writing was on the wall for Voidform after being a mess for 2 entire expansions and feeling like a husk on SL alpha before they once again added a lot of bandaids to get it through to DF to once again add bandaids instead of actually figure out what Shadow and Priest is supposed to do instead of what it had always done but with the game shifting over the years, much of what priest and shadow brought is either removed or redundant or useless in terms of the majority of content these days go.

Then with gameplay rotation specifically, we are in that mess of being a dot spec but also not wanting to fully embrace it as to be OP as dot specs once we’re back in the day in cleave fights.

Then with a class talent tree and now the hero talent trees, priest suffer the most because each spec played entirely different where they don’t even use the same spells and that Holy and Shadow just feel weird if they use the other diametrically opposing spell type.

Lots of issues that require a fresh look and really needs a solid vision to proceed with instead of these knee jerk like reaction and implementations they keep tossing out without any regards to having an open and honest communication and dialog with the community.

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I think blizzard has absolutely zero plans of making multi dotting without direct follow-up involvement (Apparition spawns, psychic link, malefic rapture / shard spending) a relevant source of damage. That being said I would like to see a roughly 30% nerf to shadow mastery and that damage put back into the base spec. Shadow’s mastery is 1.5% damage per mastery point, which is well above average.

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Everything I’ve read and watched is placing sp’s very low or mid. That’s arena, keys and single target / raids.

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All of this can be fixed with number tuning, again.

my post main concern has to do with gameplay.

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Great ideas here. Shadow priest defiantly needs some of those changes, majorly. I would say also buff DP and MB. Single target is incredibly weak.

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They also need to un-nerf the mass dispell. They absolutely murdered that button in every scenario.

Pvp talents need to be looked at aswell, we have way too many game changing options and not enough slots.

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Added Edit And bumped thread.

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dark ascension + void eruption + insanity: mind spike must be instant cast.

Need mega buff to DP . as a spender its very weak.

shadow crash need to rework. it must be a instant cast to ground spell. (like death&decay) and it must give insanity per affected target.

need a mobility skill like mages blink. 10 yrds is enough

need new mastery. i think sp has worst mastery in game. especially it has syngery with selectable skill. and its very hard for pvp. or at least make it work with dark ascension too.

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All of these changes would be appreciated your hired , you start immediately!

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8/17/24

After making two different Priest one Voidweaver and the other Archon and getting to roughly 2k MMR and a bunch of duels on each I’ve come to a couple more points that I would like to mention, while also boosting my post back up :slight_smile:
Archon vs Voidweaver
PvP
— Archon: It just does more damage overall and offers a more consistent window for doing burst damage. Few very important factors here why Archon has this damage profile

  • Having Halo gives you 1 minute goes that are very strong. 3 stacks of Surge of Insanity, each MF:I giving you ~ 1 Mil damage per global. With that you’re able to dish out some serious damage If you’re able to. You also just get more insanity from archon which creates the feedback loop of Halo > Devouring Plague > MF:I > Devouring Plague > MF:I ect… You add in the extra Haste from Concentrated Infusion and damage from the Perfected Form, Resonant Energy and Empower Surges And I’m able to get MF:I’s doing 1-1.2m consistent enough.
  • It also allows you to play with some wonky talent setups. Picking up Mastermind gives Flay the opportunity to crit for 450k a tick. which is roughly what a perfect Void Torrent non critical ticks for. MF:I is roughly ~50% of a Void Torrent, 50% of its damage, 50% of its cast time, 50% of the insanity value.
  • I was incredibly wrong about Heightened Alteration, its synergy with Intangibility give you quite a bit more of a boost to get back into the fight.
  • Randomly decent build involves running Dark Archangel for strong 1 min go’s. While losing Void Bolt and overall damage. What you gain is a boost in damage to Halo and grabbing Energy Compression causing it to hit well. I don’t think this build will reign supreme by any means but its just something else that can be done.

— Voidweaver: Is in a little bit of a funky place, It’s able to do some nice DoT damage with the buff to VT. You’re also able to get out some massive rifts if it connects. It might be one of the strongest 1v1 specs if you’re allowed pillars.

  • Truthfully the primary issue with VW is the fact that you’re eggs are in one basket. Its all based around good Void Torrents, now that being said if you’re able to land good VoiT’s it is rewarded. I’ve been able to have my Rifts collapse for 1.6Mil. And as a Shadow priest seeing that number is not a common occurrence.
  • Lots of Dot damage, synergies: Inner Quietus, Maddening Touch and Dark Evangelism Added with Void Empowerment, Mind Devourer, and Screams of the Void allow to put out some very nice pressure all the while building up a big Collapsing Voidon the kill target.
  • A little anti synergy in the build is that it Shadow priest is designed around 45 second go’s, default; Psychic Scream, Psychic Horror, Silence, and Psyfiend are all 45 second cooldowns. Taking Malediction puts your VoiT off sync. But also not taking it you’re missing out on a lot of insanity generation. I have no real solution here Just something that doesn’t feel good.
  • Biggest frustration with VW is that its very predictable, and obvious! Once you’ve been noticed a a VW just CCing on your VoiT’s shuts down your whole kill window. One thing that’s nice about the Archon is once the Halo is off you’ve banked those MF:I’s for the next 30 seconds. Which allows some form of flexibility.
    • Overall I probably recommend VW to newer / less skilled SP’s that added mobility from VoiT and the extra defensive talent through Void Leech or Embrace the Shadow sersiouly help struggling priest.

Talents
– Something seriously needs to be done about that amount of 2 pointers in the Shadow tree. I’m pretty sure we have the most amount of 2 point talents in one tree. Having 8 total, 9 if you include the fact that they broke up the Shadow Crash Talent. Just gaining 3-4 talents I think would make a huge improvement in diversifying Shadow in pvp. Right now you pick one style of doing damage and you are bound to it. Gaining those talents would allow the priest to be able to dip into other builds such as apparitions, SW:D or more passive DoT damage.

  • The 4 nodes that Jump out at me instantly are 4 on the tier two of the Shadow tree. Maddening Touch, Dark Evangelism, Mind Devour, and Phantasmal Pathogen. Buff these to their 2/2 state and make them one point talents. (Seeing how my original suggestion won’t be happening)
  • You have to seriously buff Mind Spike or it will never see the light of day. Not that its a bad thing but its hilariously under tuned currently.
  • Mental Fortitude should just be re-designed so we are not required to be at 100% health. It probably wont change much but as it is, it will never be picked. (for pvp)
  • Time to re-instate Mass Dispel back to where it was. The game is just to CC heavy and having a form of utility to help the healers needs to return. Currently you’re probably only going to be getting 1-2 uses out of this spell in an arena. There is no room in the PvP talents to pick it up, that wasn’t the solution. It was mostly you’re fault for making dungeons the way they were that made priest required. Coupled with the fact that Mind Sooth no longer works in dungeons and we’ve basically lost all our dungeon Utility aside from Void Shift and Power infusion.
  • Ancient Madness Is horrible. Giving us a diminishing 10% crit buff while in our burst window is very bad. First off in PvP its the least valued stat, in PvE it’s number 3. Unless you’re VW and DA it won’t last the full duration of your burst cooldown. The best and easist solution would be to turn the talent into VOID ORIGINS. Everyone wants it to return. We cast enough we shouldn’t have to also cause our burst button.
  • Make Mind Devourer available by connecting it to Shadowy Insight. They feel as though they are supposed to selected at the same time anyway.
    FOR THE LOVE OF OLD GOD LET US PW:S PSYFIEND AGAIN 250k Hp. A sneeze kills it, Meanwhile I have to have a fully Charged catharsis to kill a Observer. And I still get hit for the damage.

Probably my last post about the beta, while balance seems good compared to past beta’s my biggest disappointment is the complete lack of redesigning. Aside from number tuning shadow gained next to nothing in-fact we lost Mindgames. It would have really been nice to see some serious look at how bogged down our Shadow Tree is with 2 pointers. Or to have actually gained some actual form of mobility other than a sprint for both Archon and Voidweaver. In PvE the build with the cooler visuals won’t be seen except for a few occasions, and they’re locked into Dark Archangel. PvP feels like we are the only caster that casts anymore and because of that its pretty easy to shut down our damage compared to other casters. Coupled with the fact that our mobility is a joke we shall just continue being the punching bag. Which I won’t pretend that we don’t have a lot of self defensive buffs, and we are tanky because of that. I’ve straight up seen people just give up and attack a teammate instead. But does it feel good, no not really.

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