Before I start, first off I would like to thank Preach for asking a bunch of meaningful questions in his interview today. From dungeons, to GCD, borrowed power, class design, etc it was really good on his part.
It’s unfortunate that when Preach asked about Shadow priest the question was completely dodged. The guy he was interviewing said he doesn’t have anything for us, which doesn’t look good. At all.
With all the feedback that has been given, how do you not even have a single thing to say about Shadow? If not from you, then from whoever is in charge of this spec?
We literally got to ask someone at Blizzard about a spec that desperately needs help and we still know nothing. It’s ridiculous.
Please stop. The question wasn’t dodged. The only doom-saying going on is the one you’re conjuring up in your head.
He’s an Encounter Designer. I literally said this several posts ago that he’s not in-charge of class design and you were very likely going to get an unsatisfying answer. And I was right.
I did. You’re expecting a satisfactory response from someone that’s not in-charge of class design. The interview isn’t about Shadow Priests or class balance. It’s about Torghast and encounter design. From the guy that leads encounter design.
I get it. You’re hungry for information. You only have yourself to blame for having your expectations so high for something that literally isn’t relevant to the subject of the interview itself.
My expectations were low actually, and the response to class design somehow managed to fail it. There’s no way someone like him doesn’t know anything about the plans they have for classes, no way. You say he’s only in charge of encounter design, when he spent a lot of the interview talking about the new borrowed power we’re getting that completely ties in with the classes themselves.
Yeah, it was just a generic dodge answer. I actually felt like I was watching one of Ion’s Q&A’s when Preach asked about Shadow, that’s how rehearsed it was.
What you think and what is actually true are two completely different things. “There’s no way he doesn’t know anything about the plans they have for classes, no way.” You’re under this imaginary conspiracy that he knows, he just won’t tell you, which isn’t true.
You’re grasping at straws and making up conclusions that suit your narrative. Anything that didn’t result in him directly saying “Here’s what’s wrong with Shadow Priests and here’s what we’re doing to fix them” is an automatic ‘loss’ in your book.
hear me out Torghast has no anima power what so ever that has to do with voidform/insanity except one that gives you 20 insanity rather then 15 on mind blast crits.
you cannot tell me that they are just gonna go live with no anima power that has to do with voidform/insanity when other classes have amazing fun anima power that interacts with their core mechanic.
I wish I was as optimistic as you Heylaa but after years of this class design at this point I just can’t do it. I truly hope I’m proven wrong and they address this spec. Until then…
We can tell that’s not true; just look at Balance Druids. They’re insisting on returning to a design everyone who plays the spec absolutely despises.
And as for the interview, what I got from that specifically with regard to Shadow was that they’ve taken the feedback on board, but their current priority is getting the core Shadowlands systems out to alpha testers with the intention that class adjustments be looked at with full context (which is fair).
The feedback has been given. We’ve been told what they’re delivering first. Best thing to do now is to wait until that all comes out, look at where it puts us, then say, “okay, now what about Shadow?”
you know what’s funny Morgan mentions how visions are horrible because of the insanity draining system and feeling like you’re losing. yet the core design of shadow is basically horrific vision. their are an obvious disconnect.
We’ve just been flat out told that they’re not addressing it until the rest of those systems are out. That’s the timeline. In the meantime, repeating the same complaints is going to accomplish at best literally nothing, and at worst make everything you say in future be heard as whining for the sake of whining (which, let’s face it, a lot of players do).
I mean, you do you, but at this point there’s nothing to be gained from it unless you’re actually bringing new suggestions to the table.
I would add that he also said “because there might be something in the raid that makes your class feel better”. So, to me, he’s saying that that any fix will be more borrowed power.
He said that class fantasy/play was more important than spec in regards to both Torghast and covenants. Dont count on lack of voidform to mean anything.
It was never said or implied that it was a secret conspiracy to hold back info. That’s you making things up, not Aviela. The implication is that there IS NO INFO. Which is a freaking travesty in and of itself.
So i actually went back and listened to the interview again and…they are not changing anything about the spec.
Morgan mentioned that Torghast anima powers are not spec related but are generic class anima. in other words they were to lazy to put effort in what they are hyping to be the highlight of the expan and just made generic class nonsense powers.
the powers are not even unique to each class. there is a build for priest where you can mind control rats which will make them reproduce and then you can blow them up and guess what…mage has the same build just more convenient. there conjure food conjures rats that can be killed for an explosive aoe dps.
honestly these interviews are not here to communicate with the community its to sell snake oil. they show up and say stuff like 'we wanted to go back to the core feeling of classes rather then making each spec disconnected fromm its class" which just means “we are not going to put actual work into each 37 specs we would rather cut corners and only work on 12 classes”…it’s so funny to think this is coming from such company as Blizzard.
I’m glad to see so many people with the same thoughts. It goes to show how many people enjoyed previous iterations of the spec. There is a reason why we rolled this spec in the past and it’s clear that the majority of us didn’t do it because of voidform.
I’ll keep my hopes up until the beta at least. Let’s give it time and see what happens. But it doesn’t hurt to start gearing an alt…
Voidform was one of the reasons I quit playing WoW. I remember hoping Shadow Priest got something reworked to make them more competitive to other DPS classes at the time. I was excited for the “new redesign”. It wasn’t great. I just started playing again since the very beginning of Legion. I still don’t like it. It isn’t fun, it’s stressful. I’d rather have the old play style and do slightly lower general damage and have fun doing it.
I would agree with most things, the ramp up time is an issue. Especially with Blizzard designing many boss encounters with invulnerability phases. While other classes can just hold cooldowns untill a boss comes back, shadow priests will just drop out of voidform and have to start the ramp again. If Blizzard want to keep the voidform mechanic, I would like to see a cooldown added where voidform could be paused for up to 30 seconds and resumed when targets become available again.
but after years of this class design at this point I just can’t do it. I truly hope I’m proven wrong and they address this spec. Until then…