Shadowlands Class Update Feedback - Shadow Priest

Classes Priest
22

A fundamental problem with Voidform is that it creates a significant ramp to our DPS. In its current state, with Chorus of Insanity, we usually wait 45-60s before our damage peaks.

And the ramp to the potential peak Voidform DPS only gets longer as you gear up and you are able to sustain longer and longer Voidforms.

This creates frustrating game play in many parts of the game outside of raids and m+ keys relevant to your ilvl .

  • How often do you enter VF while doing dailies or WQ? Generally, the killing blows land when you erupt and VF drops just as you engage another pack.
  • Doing low keys to help friends makes you feel very underpowered as everything dies before you get any damage up.
  • You do not feel more and more powerful as you gear up.

I want to feel more and more powerful as I gear up in all aspects of the game, but current VF style does not allow that.

_

Without things like Chorus of Insanity (BfA) or Mass Hysteria (Legion) staying in Voidform doesn’t give us much value.

The game developers NEED to understand that it is the above items that make VF viable without significantly buffing our dmg spells. But the above items are also the cause of our back loaded dmg.

_

Lack of Utility
As someone who enjoys pushing high Mythic+ Keystones, and likes the challenge of timing big keys with my friends, the thing I crave most for Shadow Priest is utility.

The lack of useful utilities for SP is really a big problem. We do not have a single utility where someone would say “It will be nice to have SP for X ability”. Our blanket silence is on 45 sec CD (30 if talented) , and it will be nice to change the talented version to a 15 or 20 sec interrupt.
Vampiric Embrace should be a self heal (or targeted buff), and when talented, becomes a party heal.

_

Cooldown Usage
I’m tired of the ramping damage. Shadow Priests have been locked into a punishing cycle of ramping damage for the past two expansions and I think it has run its course.

This!
I need to feel powerful NOW, but I cannot, as I can only become powerful in another 45 to 60 seconds as long as there is no transition phase downtime

_

Level 75
The way this row is designed this is where each option has its strength:

  • Auspicious Spirits: Spread Targets/Long Lived general purpose
  • Shadow Crash: Stacked Cleave/AoE
  • Death and Madness: Fights with a lot of adds that die relatively quickly?
    … this talent will struggle next to the other options in a raiding environment, as most adds in raids have 15+ people hitting them… the reliability of you getting the killing blow is extremely rare.

As above, please consider the practical usage of Death and Madness. This talent needs a grace period to be even viable. However, instead of granting substantial amount of insanity, consider “Pausing insanity drain for x seconds”.
The exponential drain rate at high VF stacks, makes the “substantial amount of insanity” insignificant.

_

Level 100
Surrender to Madness is not good enough and is frankly, just boring.

The repeated failure to properly implement and balance this ability from when it was first introduced to it’s current state makes this talent not exciting anymore. How good does this ability have to be in order to be worth having and how OP will it be in the hands of cutting edge players?

I am hoping to see a talent that can front load our damage almost like a reverse VF that can be used as a Cooldown.

The Shadow Priest instantly gains a huge spike of Insanity, x Crit% & y Haste% (modified by intellect to allow for scaling), and casts Void Eruption on the target. Over the duration, Insanity-generating abilities grant 100% more Insanity, and you can cast your spells while moving. The added Crit and haste values are tied to StM insanity and subsequently drains to zero when StM VF ends.

The dying part (or any other penalty) can be done away with since this talent supports front loading and not back loading. The lack of Lingering Insanity stacks at the end of an StM Voidform is punishment enough.
As a bonus, add in massive number of writhing tentacles during StM Voidform to make us feel very powerful.

11 Likes
23

Yea just on the S2M note, I think the reverse S2M talent would be the only way it would actually be balanceable. Something like:

S2M - 10m cooldown, 2m duration - The Spriest immediately enters Voidform and remains in Voidform for the next 2 minutes. Also you gain like max Voidform stacks for the full duration.
Then you die, no matter what happens, after 2 minutes you die. Horribly (visually I want just an explosion of blood and guts) - and you can’t be ressed for the remainder of the fight. And all the other DPS get to laugh and kick your corpse (to make them feel better, because you just broke the damage meter).

So basically the only reasonable balance point for S2M is: it’s hilariously overpowered for clearing easy farm bosses, but completely useless for progression bosses.

Edit: I just realized I designed DH Metamorphosis, but with a longer cooldown and a death penalty.

2 Likes
24

Wasn’t that kind of the original S2M? You just didn’t have a set duration, just a vague notion of when it might end if you practiced. You wouldn’t pop it at the start (unless you were just that certain the fight would be over in <3 minutes), you’d try to save it for the halfwayish point where you’d die as close to the boss as you could.

EDIT: S2M might be a decent solo talent, but that feels like such a weird sentiment. It’s definitely advantageous to not just up and die if you kill the thing.

25

Feedback that suggests that going back to a Legion-spec voidform “fixes” anything terrifies me. Voidform is a failed experiment, full-stop. It pigeon-holes the class into specific types of content outside of which it struggles in ways other classes simply do not. It is not fun simply because it is or was at one point “hectic” - what it is is tedious, unforgiving, and unrewarding. Dropping out of Voidform after every pack in a dungeon sucks way more than it feels good to re-enter it for 2 seconds after you’ve ramped up and everything is basically already dead. The rhythm it gives to solo content is just schizophrenic and incredibly unsatisfying. The ONLY place it works is on raid bosses, very high-key mythic+, and in certain circumstances in PvP. To that end, it makes sense as a talent, but not as a baseline. It is the epitome of something that looks good on paper but simply doesn’t work in the game. I will never not be baffled by the decision to incorporate the mechanic for THREE expansions straight when literally all evidence is that it DOES NOT WORK and is not FUN.

27 Likes
26

How long the ramp up takes is terrible in all content, in my opinion. Makes us a joke on fights like Wrathion and in M+ when things aren’t chain pulled. When you have to rely completely on someone else doing something for you to do well, that’s bad design. On another note, even with a 1.8k io score I have trouble getting into a pug if my guildies aren’t on to do M+ with. I have even been invited to a group and then kicked because one of the party members told the group leader that shadow priests were terrible. It just makes the game hard to enjoy when you literally apply to over 50 groups and get immediately declined from almost all of them because you don’t bring enough to the table like other classes.

6 Likes
27

Let’s talk about the datamined stuff - which is very little:

Mind Blast 
Cooldown changed from 7.5 sec recharge to 15 sec recharge
plus 
Mind Blast's cooldown reduced by 7 sec.

This puts MB’s cooldown at 8 seconds. Shadows whole rotation up to this point has always been at a multiply of the GCD. At 8 seconds, MB no longer is. This means that, unless you spec the still existing Shadow Word: Void, you will either wait 0.5 seconds for it, or delay it by 1 second…

Shadow Word: Death
A word of dark binding that inflicts (115% of Spell power) Shadow damage to the target. If the target is not killed by Shadow Word: Death, the caster takes damage equal to the damage inflicted upon the target.

Does not generate Insanity baseline…

 Death and Madness  If a target dies within 6 sec after being struck by your Shadow Word: Death, you gain 40 insanity over 4 sec and the cooldown of your Shadow Word: Death is reset.

Insanity with the Voidform as it exists has no DPS value. Resetting the cooldown in the rare scenarios it resets the cooldown likely never competes against Asp. Spirits and/or Shadowcrash.

Surrender to Madness   You instantly gain 100 Insanity and cast Void Eruption on the target.
For the next 25 sec, your Insanity-generating abilities generate 100% more Insanity and you can cast while moving.
If the target does not die within 25 sec of using Surrender to Madness, you die.

This is horrible. On a two minute cooldown, you get close to nothing for it:

  • the initial insanity is necessary so you can press the button on a moderately high Voidform and not drop out. (effectively making extending a Voidform possible)
  • The VER cast replaces the VER cast you’d get by starting a new Voidform (so not much value)
  • Now you get 25 seconds (if at all) of keeping your roughly 12% haste from the active Voidform - as a comparison: Legacy provides a permanent 5% dmg increase during Voidform. The risk of the talent is in absolutely no relaton to the close to non existent DPS gain it provides.
  • (in the case it behaves like Dark Ascension next to it and resets Voidform stacks… i don’t want to even think about that being the case)

Extending a single Voidform by 25 seconds has a marginal DPS gain at best. What made surrender good in the Emerald Nightmare was: (1) degenerate gameplay of VB-MB-VB-MB past the 0.75 GCD at 60%+ haste past 60 stacks (2) Mass Hysteria

Void Bolt  Void Bolt can be cast while channelling Mind Flay.

I’d imagine this wants to fix clipping every 2nd MF during Voidform, but does it really achieve that?

Currently VF GCDs look like:
VB - MB - MF - VB - MF (start channel) - MF (no button press required as you continue to channel) - VB - MB - MF - VB
With this it will look like:
MF - VB - MB - MF - VB (channeling MF) - MF (start channel) - MF (start a new channel for the following VB) - VB - MB - MF - VB (with MF channel) - MF (start channel) - MF( start a new channel for the following VB)

In one case you clip MF with VB (which is more intuitive, yet imo still wrong, but clipping MF for other stuff has been a part for Shadow since forever), in the new case you will have to “clip” every second MF cast with MF. That seems extremely unintuitive.

So to summarize the current Shadow changes:

  • generally good unpruned buttons (though with some caveats: SW:D needs baseline insanity, and Power Infusion casteable on others kind of feels like you might want to cast it on higher burst specs, e.g. fire mage instead of yourself.)
  • two dead on arrival talents based around the notion that generating more Insanity has some value (it does not)
  • a passive effect of questionable unintuitivity
  • the dead talents during BfA likely continue to stay dead without massive changes (Void Torrent, Mindbender, Fortress, Shadowy Insight, plus the two new ones)
10 Likes
28

My thoughts regarding surrender to madness, taken from the S2M thread in this forum.

Extending voidform is not an inherently interesting concept, especially when every cooldown we already have is used to the same effect. The problems with this continual desire to extend voidform as the only way to interact with our damage are threefold in my view.

1: Voidform has to be rewarding to make any cooldown involve it’s extension justified, the current design of voidform lacks this reward and leans on BFA’s external systems to provide it. These systems are going away.

2: Extending voidform provides damage at very specific intervals in shadows rotation if it does at all. This is, in my view, antithetic to one of the core purposes of a cooldown in the first place, to provide some method of dealing meaningful damage in the immediate or near immediate.

3: The void form arms race. Put more plainly, the more tools and design quirks that are able to extend voidform, the more shadows damage and damage pattern is balanced around voidform extension, and the worse shadow gets in content where continual voidform extension isn’t possible.

What would a potential solution to this be? Give shadow priest a cooldown that subverts the standard nature of voidform, instead of just making it longer. Give us a super voidform with an upfront damage bonus or empowered baseline spells that do cool and powerful things, or reverse the stack system so we start high and tick down to provide that power in the immediate.

Do something, anything, as long as it isn’t just make it longer.

12 Likes
29

The feedback is going to the games developers. It shouldn’t take a detailed explanation for them to understand why something in the game is obviously and near unanimously disliked.

If I need to write 500 words to explain to a developer of the game why a forced ramping and cyclical damage pattern is bad for a single DPS spec in the game when every other spec has on demand damage, they should not be employed as game developers.

13 Likes
30

Hello All,

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Shadow Priest Problems (My Complaints)
Shadow Priest Changes that should be brought to Shadowlands
Update some spells with a twist
Talents
Conclusion

Introduction:
The majority of the following read is going to be going over older iterations of shadow priest and why some parts should come back and why Void Form and insanity should be scrapped. I am by no means expert but ever since void form has been introduced to the game, it has been immensely less fun. There are a lot of shadow priest peers that feel the same way and I hope to voice their concern as well.

Shadow Priest Problems (My Complaints):
Trying to stay in void form for long periods of time to increase haste/damage output is gimmicky and derives too long of a ramp up time. When legion changed shadow priest to utilize void form they took away too many abilities, that eventually left priests less bursty, long ramp-up times, little utility for aoe, under performing aoe throughput compared to other classes, and less tanky (from a pvp standpoint, BFA has fixed some of the tankiness).

Why do I think that void form is gimmicky? Because in a PVE scenario with the tool kit VF currently provides is never going to excel except extremely high M+ which spriest have enough time to ramp up their damage, but yet there are a lot of classes that just do damage better in an M+ standpoint (at this point why bring you over a class just flat outs performs superior). I think the current iteration of spriest is why you will never see it brought into an M+ invitational or MDI just because of lack of utility and up front aoe damage. In a PVP scenario, your VF can easily be lined, cc’d, kicked, and none the less be rendered useless, and then you have to ramp back up sanity (which is never fun). You really only get to play the class at its full potential in raids.

VF right now has so many band-aids to try to stay competitive or provide more “splash damage” some of the spriest abilities/talents are needed just so it can keep up or perform in damage. Some examples are below:

Void Eruption does splash damage.
Dark Ascension (talent) does splash damage and it is really just another void eruption (why?).
Shadow Crash (talent) does an aoe shadow crash.
Dark Void (talent) applies SWP to all targets.
Misery (talent) VT applies SWP.

I feel like there are so many talents and abilities just to make up for shadow priests slow ramp up time.I feel like some of the talents were given to support the poor design of VF instead of enhance it (like legion Surrender to Madness). Please blizzard do not hinge spriest on one ability again. StM is boring and same with VF.

Priest Changes that should be brought to Shadowlands:

Please bring back MOP style shadow orb game play. This empowers our devouring plague/(also back in the day longer the stun I believe) and just rewarded players on their decision making.

Devouring plague (baseline) - Not much to say here, this was by far the most rewarding ability to use in the game watching mobs/people die quickly with a dot is very satisfying.

Mind spike (baseline) - Have you ever done a mythic+ where the mobs are dying fast but your dots were not going to get the job done and you already used mind blast but just out of range of using shadow word death? This is where mind spike comes in play.

Angelic feather (mobility talent, this is currently healing priest only and I do not know why).

Spectral guise (mobility talent, and escape from pvp people, or stealth past pve mobs).

Phantasm - This was a talent that empowered fade to remove all movement impairing effects (yes get away from those pesky dks finally).

Cascade, halo, divine star (these should be some sort of aoe tree talents for shadow, some of these are currently healing only).

From Darkness, Comes Light (talent) - Shadow: Surge of darkness - Periodic damage form your vampiric touch has a %20 chance to cause your next Mind Spike to not consume your damage over time effects, become instant cast, cost no mana, and deal 50% additional damage. Limit 2 charges.

Solace and Insanity (talent) - Casting Mind Flay while your target is affected by your Devouring Plague causes your Mind Flay to deal 33% additional damage per orb consumed by Devouring Plague.

MoP Mastery: Shadowy Recall - Periodic damage has a % chance to deal damage twice. Our current (BFA) mastery might as well just be versatility with a different math multiplier. Shadowy recall will empower our dots without the need of something like staying into VF for long periods of time to be competitive in damage and having an underwhelming time outside of VF.

Renew, Prayer of Mending, Flash Heal should be baseline. If these become baseline just have shadow mend a longer cast and more healing. Currently the shadowlands changes has disc and holy getting shadow spells but shadow would like some disc/holy spells as well. This will help fighting in the world, maybe toss a heal in a M+ if the healer dies (you know just hybrid class things).

Mind Vision - Just because this is a cool and unique ability and can be used for scouting in pvp or pve (rare mobs (maybe blizzard will implement different mobs spawning in the same dungeon and you can see what mob you will be fighting on M+ (just a thought))).

Update some spells with a twist:

Void Torrent (Talent, Buff, CD) - Empowers your next spell Mind Flay, Mind Blast, Mind Sear depending on how many dots are applied. Mind Flay for each dot that is on the enemy target, mind flaying that target creates a damage over time spell spawning on the enemy (looks like a tentacle flaying). Mind Blast bursts the target for an extra amount of damage. Mind Sear for each dot that is on the enemy target, mind sear will pulsate that damage to near by enemy.

Psychic Link should be brought to a regular talent and should no longer be a pvp talent.

Devour (Talent, CD) - Devouring plague now spread to a new near by enemy when the targeted enemy dies. Devouring plague is refreshed to its 6 second duration if it reaches a new enemy.

Talents:
This is what I envision the talent trees to look like. Obviously some of the abilities that I have magically thought of will fit in (so please take it with a grain of salt).

Level 15 (Damage): Shadowy Insight/Psychic Link/Fortress of Mind

Level 30 (Utility): Body and Soul, Angelic Feather, Phantasm

Level 45 (Priest Damage Enhancement): (Updated ability I created) Void Torrent, Devour (ability I created), Dark Void/Shadow Crash.

Level 60 (CC): Last Word, Mind Bomb, Psychic Horror

Level 75 (Utility): Spectral Guise, San’layn, Intangibility.

Level 90 (Single Target): Twist of Fate, From Darkness Comes Light, Solace and Insanity.

Level 100 (AoE Talents): Cascade, Halo, Divine Star.

With the above talents and some of them being aoe oriented, it would make shadow priest feel more upfront loaded with aoe damage. Bringing a better experience outside of raiding with Void Form.

Conclusion:
Void Form is a shell without something like surrender to madness. Playing around 1 ability in the game is not fun or unique and it is quite irritating to be passed on in M+ and PvP content because the design of your class does not bring a lot of front-loaded damage. Some of the changes above I feel like fix this issue with the level 100 talents, Combining it with some of the level 45 talents. Overall I feel like Void Form has to be passively rewarded (void eruption splash damage) just to be competitive and a lot of the spells were created because VF needed a crutch.

I think it would be best if Void Form as scrapped and shadow orbs/devouring plague play style to come back.

I personally would like to see a mix of spells brought back to shadow, like Angelic Feather, Halo, Devine Star, Cascade, Spectral Guise (to all priests). I would like some old talents to revisit as well. A lot of these abilities are already in the game, they just need to make them class available. It would be nice to be a hybrid again and toss out a few niche spells like renew, or prayer of mending. Please make mana some what matter again instead of just being drained by 4 dispels/heals/shields.

I am by no means a game designer but I have been playing wow since I was young. I have seen a lot of spells abilities come and go. And by far the most fun the game has been was when you had a boat load of abilities and your class felt unique and niche. Yes, some classes will overlap with spells and abilities and I think that is perfectly fine as long as the core of that class in unique and brings something to the table.

After writing this over the last couple hours thinking of abilities and what should be brought back to the game I am honestly having a hard time wrapping this up. So please forgive me! I might come back tomorrow or next week to add more things or changes that could be exciting.

Thank you,
Xertling

15 Likes
32

Forgive my ignorance, I’m messing around with Shadow Priest for the first time since they decided to add Shadow Orbs (Cataclysm?) to the spec. But why do you consider a 20 to 25% increase to spell damage in addition to all the other benefits you mentioned “not enticing”?

33

very disappointing to see that we’re not getting Devouring Plague back AND we’re sticking with this void form mechanic

33 Likes
34

Voidform increases damage by 20%, shadowform already increases it by 10%. One replaces the other, so its roughly a 10% increase.

As far as the question itself goes, its not so much about the binary “in vs out” of voidform. It’s more about what’s justifying the continuing cost of keeping us in. If we’re expecting voidform uptime to be somewhere between 70-90% across the course of an expansion (As it was in BFA) then how powerful can the flat buff really be?

And given all that, and the understanding of how voidform uptime works, is making that longer really worth all that much? We had the exact same problem at the start of BFA and the “solution” was chorus of insanity, problem being that pushed our damage to after voidform not during it, and has gradually made the spec even more backloaded as voidform has gotten longer.

It’s hard to be excited for something you’re supposed to be excited about, when you’re doing it 70-90% of the time, and any time you aren’t doing it is absolutely mind numbingly dull.

5 Likes
35

And even then, Voidform gameplay itself isn’t something extraordinary. It’s very very static.

20 Likes
36

Okay, gonna drop this link

https://www.wowhead.com/news=311952/liveblog-of-the-shadowlands-sloot-interview-with-ion-hazzikostas

And this quote specifically:

Is this a final list of things or can we expect more things unpruned or talent reworks?

There isn’t another large drop of additional class changes that are planned. But they wanted to do the big changes and revamps in now so that they can get feedback and not have to fix them in a future patch.

Alright so…I’m probably out. I’ll participate in the alpha/beta if I get in and try to offer whatever feedback I can, but I’m just not going to enjoy more VF.

28 Likes
37

Shadow Priest and Balance Druid seem to fill very similar roles. The problem is that Balance Druid just seems to be better at every aspect of this role.

Rebirth is far more useful than Fortitude.

Sunfire affects all enemies within 8 yrds of the target. Shadow Priests have to talent into such a mechanic for SW: Pain.

Shadow Priest can Silence an enemy. Balance Druid can silence of pack of enemies with Solar Beam.

Moonkin Form provides immunity to Polymorph. Shadow Priest gets no such protection with Shadowform.

Balance Druid is already far more mobile than Shadow Priest, but can also shrug off snares by shapeshifting. I feel like Shadow Priest also spends a lot more time having to stand still to cast or channel.

Essentially, I feel like Shadow Priest is lacking a bit in what it offers to a group as well as to a player choosing what class / spec to play.

Being slow with so much time spent casting and channeling, I think it would make sense for Shadow Priest to be able to channel (but not cast) spells while moving.

I would also like to see Shadowform offer some form of CC protection like Moonkin Form. I think it would make sense to have Shadowform make you immune to snares with Dispersion improving that effect to make you immune to roots as well.

As for what the spec can offer a group, I know the spec has Mass Dispel, but since 85% of the player base is Blood Elf, I feel like the value of this tool is drastically diminished.

One other tool the spec has is Mind Control. There have been times that this ability was used to great effect, but there seem to be more and more arbitrary restrictions as to which NPCs can be controlled. There is also the fact that the Priest remains stationary and has limited range.

I think it could be fun to bring this ability back to prominence while improving its usage for Shadow Priest. Let Holy and Disc have Mind Control while Shadow gets an improved version that combines the ability to disperse into shadow energy and control an enemy’s mind. Rather than leaving their body behind in such a vulnerable state, the caster could disperse into shadow energy and essentially psychically possess the target to move around with unlimited range.

5 Likes
38

Reading this gave me such a huge pang of desire for MoP style game play again. I gave voidform a shot and haven’t liked it since the change in Legion. I would love the old play style back so bad, I seriously am hoping Blizzard hear the community about this issue.

19 Likes
39

The main issue i have with spriest right now is how dead the talent tree is.

There are 8ish talents that are never used in any form of pve content. I was expecting to see some sort of revamp for these especially after hearing Shadow Word: Death was going baseline and i’d hoped S2M would die in a fiery whole and never be seen again.

But here we are, and S2M is worse than it’s ever been. With 0 reason for having long void forms (Mass Hysteria and CoI gone), insanity gen is worthless. Also, the fact that it can kill you and you need a mob to live for the perfect amount of time before dying makes it worse than DA. Which is a dead talent…

Please give us actual talent choices…

PS: Take Vamp Embrace of the GCD

Thanks,
Phlora

11 Likes
40

I feel the same way. I believe most of the people who complain about VF have overlooked the uniqueness of SP’s gameplay and VF’s synergy with dots and class fantasy. They just want a replica of other classes which have bursty damage. For me, that would only strip the fun away from playing SP.

4 Likes
41

Thank you for the kind words! I really hope change does happen. It is disheartening to have your favorite class ripped away from you because of fantasy.

Going back looking at some MoP videos made me cry inside a bit lol.

11 Likes
42

Honestly Shadow in its current and projected form looks to have major foundation issues, from spells(their make up with CDs cast times), projected rotations, talents, utility, scailing with out azerite, and really just fun factor. Its been a mishmash of old ideas pigeon holed into half assed ideology for far too long.

The spec really needs to be taken down to drawing board with a few iconic abilities and themes. Its just tiring have the same issues with MB CDs clashing with other abilities for nearly a decade. Other specs have been given fixes to the similar issues like HP capping easily just to give Shadow orbs as a worse version. Shadow word void still existing as a talent when Warriors get a fix baseline.

The entire thing just doesnt make sense from top to bottom in how they cant see the glaring issues the spec has had for nearly a decade.

4 Likes