Shadow Form and Moonkin Form were added to the game back when hybrid classes were a big deal. Healing would cause you to drop your form, which could leave you open to attackers. These forms also used to cost a good chunk of mana, so leaving the form was something you really needed to consider. It’s not like this at all today.
No— Cat Form and Bear Form are not the same thing at all actually. You need to become an animal to rip and tear with claws and to bite. There’s actual mechanical purpose to those forms.
Casting spells shouldn’t mean you must be in a specific form for it. In Warcraft 3, none of the Druids needed to become Moonkin to use their abilities to their fullest. Any humanoid can cast a spell.
In this day and age, making it cosmetic like Druid Treant Form would achieve the same effect. Who really is out here thinking, “oh boy. I just love my Shadowform so much because I get 10% more spell damage!”— not many people, I would generalize.
Some people here act like we’re “trying to take away their class fantasy”, but in my opinion, you’re inhibiting our class fantasy by forcing us to play the way you want. No one is necessarily right or wrong in this topic. But the side arguing for Shadowform to be cosmetic is at least giving both sides the choice whether or not to enter the form.
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Unrelated slightly, but expanding more here— Voidform should be the way Shadow Priests are “forced” into a shadowy form. It would make that form feel unique and grandiose since most of the time, you’d look like your non-shadowy self (if you didn’t use the hypothetical optional Shadow Form).
It’s on a button you activate and you noticeably give yourself to the void for a short while before returning to normal. (Kind of similar to Shaman Ascendance).
Just to play devils advocate. How does needing to be in Shadowform in anyway inhibit your class fantasy? Mechanically speaking shadowform doesn’t do anything. Its a damage buff like Shammy weapon buffs with its own spell effect.
Because I’m playing a Priest, not a blob of Shadow (or in the case of the glyph- an oil-slicked dude). The only Shadow focused spec in the whole game and it requires us to not look like Priests, but some strange purple ghost, vampire?
What always drew me to Shadow (and Priest as a whole) was the whole psychic theming. I like the idea of a faith-based magic caster. Why can’t I just be a guy that uses shadow magic? I have to become a shade or some kind of wraith to do it? I don’t like it.
No, but to give you an idea. Demonology Warlocks have their pets, Destro has fire and brimstone, affliction is about debuffs and decay. All three can pretty much be recognized on sight.
Likewise an Unholy DK will be known by their pets, frost by the ice and dragon, and blood by the vamprism and self healing. Once again they all tend to be pretty easily disernable on sight.
Is your idea of a Shadow Priest, honestly at this point a void priest, being a character who shows no signs of void influence? We have yet to run into a character that uses void power that doesn’t have something that identifies them as such up front.
So let me ask you, how would you represent that in game without Shadowform?
I mean, the psychic theme is one component of an otherwise shadow and void oriented subclass. In the same way that holy priest has a holy, light-focused aesthetic, shadow priest has a shadow, void-focused aesthetic. That kind of goes double considering that the void tends to be presented as a corrupting influence that changes the things it touches for any considerable length of time.
I have no real interest in engaging much in this point because I personally think it’s silly.
Does a Discipline Priest need to be massively discernable to Holy Priest? How about the Hunter specs between each other? The Rogue specs?
99.99% of the time, you will know what spec someone is from the UI. Even in arena PvP, you see the icon of the literal spec on the arena frames.
This point makes no sense to me at all. If losing or winning in the game is contingent on another player recognizing what exact spec you are on sight, I think there’s some bigger problems that person needs to deal with.
I don’t think it’s about the gameplay importance of being able to identify the spec, but more the fact that people tend to enjoy having an evident visual theme to the class, be it an army of little demons summoned to do your bidding, wispy void tendrils, or glowing angel wings.
So, when I said, I would want Shadowform to be cosmetic, did you guys just glaze over that? Genuinely.
The people that would want to be stuck in a form because they love it, could be. The ones that do not would now not be forced. Unless that’s what you guys are advocating for? You want these players forced into Shadowform for your personal gameplay enjoyment? If so, just say that really. At least be clear about it.
Also, as for “showing the corrupting influence of shadow magic”, I literally already talked about how Voidform shows this perfectly well. Even the giant glowing purple angel wings from Dark Ascension show this. (Not to mention, again you could still cosmetically show your corrupted influence with the cosmetic Shadowform).
I didn’t glaze over anything; I was just pointing out that identifiability probably wasn’t what they were getting at. I have no idea why you’re being so hostile here. Maybe it’s worth taking a break?
Hostility is not the same thing as frustration, by the way. I said what I said- and then had my points ignored, then was asked things I already essentially answered. Of course that is annoying! I mean even you dodged my question about you apparently wanting to force others into a form for your own enjoyment in accordance with your post prior to this one. So yes, excuse my use of the bold function, but when you feel ignored sometimes you have to be very, very direct!
I’m not sure how you interpreted my comment as “wanting to force others into a form for [my] own enjoyment.” I was responding to your comment where you said:
The psychic part of things is a small (and shrinking, sadly) component of a much broader fantasy, with most of the emphasis being on the shadow priest’s utilization of the void. Being “just a guy that uses shadow magic” isn’t really what Blizzard seems to be going for with the spec. If that doesn’t appeal to you then I can see why you don’t like the visuals, but it isn’t incomprehensible why they are the way they are.
Personally, I think it would be great if shadowform was just rolled into baseline stats, and I don’t really care if the visual is optional or not. That doesn’t matter to me at all, since I can simply choose to have it on or off.
This is what I was responding to. Did you know Warlocks can use Grimoire of Sacrifice to “turn off” the requirement of a demon pet? Hunters have Lone Wolf. Frost Mages no longer have permanent Water Elemental- it’s tied to Icy Veins.
These do not break the classes for me. The spell effects and spell visuals make a class 100 times over a random identifier like a form or a pet.
Yes and they actually are. Aside for things lime Sins of The many being an ever present buff for disc that holy lacks there are many other gameplay elements that display it clearly between the mix of shadow for disc, the near lack of it for holy, the spirit of redemption for holy, etc.
As for hunter if you see a bunch of pets you have a BM, if you see no pets and a bow you have a marksman, if you see a melee weapon you have survival. It is literally right there for you to see.
1 2hander warrior is arms, 2x 2 handers is fury and sword and board is prot.
Mages are easily identified by their shield.
Etc etc
I get that in this day and age everyone is spending more time playing the UI instead of the game, but that doesn’t mean gameplay indicators and indentifying markers should be ignored.
This is essentially what making Shadowform purely cosmetic does. It is also likely a big reason why blizzard doesn’t do it. I was asking you how you would replace it because to get what want, IE optional Shadowform, you would need to think about something like this, and Blizzard absolutely would.
Okay, make Power Word: Shield purple instead of holy golden. There. It works for you that Mage shields identify them by spec, this should work just as well!
I wouldn’t have an issue with it, and honestly I half expected you to make a statement like this originally, or hell they could do some cool effect with your character shadow or a number of other things.
At the end of the day, even though Blizzard fully ignores these forums, its better to give alternatives that enables the things you want than to just say you want it.
I said 3 separate times here, which you seemed to ignore or glaze over, Voidform and Dark Ascension are major identifiers that you are a master of shadow magic. No other class in the game grows wings of darkness or literally floats in the air with tentacles coming out of them.
Add a purple PW: Shield into the mix, and whatever other whacky ideas you might have, and bam. It’s not hard to identify that a player blasting nothing but pure shadow magic (especially spells like Mind Flay and Void Torrent) that they are a Shadow Priest. I’m not sure why this is a disputed thing.
Voidform and Dark Ascension doesn’t really work. It would be like only being able to see a mage is a frost mage if they pop icy veins.
Mind Flay and Void Torrent are decent but ine is a filler, and one is a 30 sec CD that is part of a DPS set up and not really something you can identify quickly until it happens.
Things like Mind Blast doesn’t work as its shared with Disc, and even SW:P is used by Holy which means spells wise it Shadow Crash/VT/Flay/Torrent that are really unique. Its why things like changing the color of PWS or some other visual effect is better.
The reason I drive this home is in the past classes actually didn’t give themselves up so easily. There was a lot of overlap amd even with addons designed to tell you their spec sometimes they couldn’t tell you until the middle of an arena match when specific abilities had been used. That is something Blizz had legitimately worked on and improved and removing Shadowform without any other consistent signifier would be a step back.
That is the issue distilled. Even if the contrarians get “their” Shadowform class fantasy, the mere idea that some other shadow priests are out there and get to choose a look they prefere causes them to have a meltdown. It’s not going to change your lives in the slightless.
They are the gamer equivalent of the nosey Karen who sends a letter to the city council because someone 2 streets away painted their house a colour you don’t like.
Voidform and Dark Ascension absolutely do work. Icy Veins has the most boring basic vanilla WoW animation in the game, absolutely not comparable. Combustion on a Fire Mage is more comparable to something like Voidform. You literally turn into Johnny Storm. Agree to disagree on this one I guess…
For the second part, a filler is going to be cast very often and at least in the case of Mind Flay (Void Torrent too even if it is less often), this spell is a literal line going directly to your player model from the mob you are attacking. Unless you are a goldfish that needs to see this spell effect 100% of the time or you suddenly just “forget” that that player is a Shadow Priest- I’m not sure what we’re even discussing here anymore.
Are we talking about your specific inability to identify classes by obvious spell effects at this point? Are we talking about perceived “newbie” players that just cannot get by without a 100% identifying effect on each and every spec in the game? It’s a feedback loop conversion of nothing to me.