I’m so salty over SP… its the spec I want to love and play… but be useful for something outside of council fights.
This is so disappointing but its my fault for even expecting something better.
10 Likes
a talent that can front load our damage almost like a reverse VF that can be used as a Cooldown.
Just another thought on a front loaded CD based talent. Imagine when you exit regular voidform, you gain a counter like buff based on the number of VF stacks. This counter doesn’t do anything in itself, but always record the previous highest VF stacks gained. So for every VF that exceeded the previous, the counter grows, but doesn’t decrease if you had a bad VF.
Now when you activate the CD based front loaded VF, you gain haste and crit based on this counter. This counter never expires until the CD is used.
This gives an incentive to sustain the longest VF you can, and also rewards you directly when the CD is used.
Hello all!!!
First of all, english is not my native lenguage, i beg your pardon for any miss typing.
I would like to leave a few words here, as i did on the last 2 xpacs feedback, and i hope we get the best for our class. I will summarize in 3 points what i want to say: a) Personal Feedback on SP in the last 2 xpacs b) talent sugestions c) a little criticism about our community
a) Personal Feedback on Shadow
After some time mainning Priest, i play a ele shammy today. Its not top tier on any content, but it has some impactfull gameplay, something that almost every class on WoW lacks today: Impact.
Shadow Priests, with aff locks, suffered much on the last expansions with the DOT system. Somehow, DOTs are not as impactfull as they were in the past, and DOT caster suffer the most. Im not here to discuss the solution for aff locks, but we had our change before, to solve give us more impact. Its called Voidform. Voidform was here to create some impact in our dots, making so it will melt the target faster. But we had other alternatives in the past, like devouring plague, wich worked fine for a time. i personally dislike the voidform gameplay, i dont touch my SP since legion, and i loved the identity of the class. That identity changed the moment you created voidform. Some people like, some people dislike, but its a fact that Voidform states a before and after for some SPriest players. not only that, but gameplay wise, Voidform is a hell of a nightmare to balance since day 1. Its not just a Surrender to Madness problem, every atempt to make VF work either made it OP or Trash.
To summarizze, we have 2 great problems: Impact and Class Identity, both have the root of the problem on our class design. Shadow is probably the class that survived for the most changes on his core designs since classic. We had classic, WotLK, Orbs, Shadowweave, VF… why not use, all the experience we had from past shadow priests?
b) My sugestion
Our final talent row may hold the answer. May it be possible to use it to adapt the identity of the player into the spec. Because yes, its a thing about SPriest playberbase: We have multiple views about what our calss should be.
If we have, lets say, Devouring Plague, Mind Spike and Surrender to Madness as 3 talents. Voidform attached to Surrender to Madness, on the same idea, may fill the “Phantasy” of being consumed by the void, as the “Melt the single target” talent. Devouring plague as a alternative to play wihtout Voidform, focusing on dot pressure on spread targets. Mind Spike as the Dotless alternative. That should be a good start point for the core design of the class.
Please, bear in mind that, for me, the root of the problem is on the class design and identity, not balance. One comes just after another. On early alpha, i have hopes that we can discuss that kind of thing, since its on the topic since legion Beta. It is clearly a “Turning Point” for SPriests.
c) Criticism about our own feedback
Well, i’ll be honest: I am a lawyer, not a programmer. I know about people, not software. If im here to provide a feedback, it is as a costumer, not as a programmer. I believe no one here has any obrigation to construct a feedback based on the programmer demands or game design in dephts. I understand that is desirable, but cant be the mainstream. And im not saying this to blizzard, im saying this to our own community. We are, and ever will be, simaddicted’s. We love numbers and data. But feedback cant be all about sim numbers and attunement, it has to be about our own personal feeling about the class too. Shadow saw a good performance along these 2 xpacs, OP performance in some patches, but, for many of us, it was a painfull experience. It was nowhere near to enjoyable.
And yes, this is also a point to consider, and is precisely the kind of feedback a alpha test feedback needs to be. No performance attunement can replace a fluid gameplay.
So please, i ask you and everyone who happens to bear a alpha/beta key in future: Think on the class design and the way you enjoy playing it. Numbers can be attuned, but personal feeling is something more tricky. I wish so hard i can have fun with my SPriest again, so much that OP Surrender to Madness did no tcompensate for. Not even OP pvp on BFA (With the bonus resistance without VF. But i must admit it was good to not press VF! That buttom gives me anxiety crisis!).
7 Likes
Worth noting many of those players who raided and performed within those patches are the ones providing feedback that despite doing well it was not fun, or that despite being fun in that small sliver of the game (And mostly because it was good) it was not fun in the majority of activities outside of raiding.
I really, truly hope Blizzard listens. The feedback here works under the sad assumption that the mechanics which underpin voidform are not going away, it has to if we stand any chance of seeing improvement going into Shadowlandws, but really and honestly. I want voidform gone.
22 Likes
Spot on post. Give us a reason to care about our insanity resource. Don’t lock us in to one talent build for the entire expansion and don’t return abilities purely for aesthetic/hype. We don’t need a 2nd expansion in a row where we have the same talents getting zero play and collecting dust. Give us back devouring plague or something of that nature so we have something to look forward to in our rotation. There is a big problem with a spec when it does not function properly without taking a specific talent (LI) or azerite traits (chorus/SA). The return of SWD, PI (assuming the current alpha versions are improved in later builds) and the addition of the talent death and madness is a great start in my eyes but the spec still needs much more cleaning up.
6 Likes
Insanity doesn’t make sense with the current iteration of void form. When Void forms matter (like now in end of BfA), you get double punished for screwing up. You lose DPS directly by not casting spells, then you also lose DPS by having less CoI/LI stacks.
The content in the game has gone away from valuing multidot, specifically nerfing it with BfA’s release and then again after BfD, TEP. You have more fights where damage windows are extremely important (Ashvane in EP and Nzoth for example) and you can’t turn up the heat at will. Every class in the game has a burst DPS CD (Boomkins is a bit long), and raiding/M+ has prioritized using these.
Ramp doesn’t work in M+ for the vast majority of players. Shadow is the only class that needs chain pulls and doesn’t really take advantage of huge AoE pulls.
Shadow has always struggled in the area of burst DPS, but ever since Legion, Dungeons became more relevant with M+ expecting players to complete keys every week. Dungeon performance cannot be ignored like it was in WoD and before. Heading into BfA, Affliction were in a similar boat (They could burst like crazy with UA shards refunding in Legion), and Affliction got Dark Glare as an additional burst CD.
Void Form in its current iteration just doesn’t mesh with the current landscape of WoW which values burst damage far more than sustained. There is no inherent benefit to sustain damage if overall DPS is on par with a burst spec.
8 Likes
I agree they need to bring more damage and more reason to stay in shadow form for longer. The leigon verson of S priest was perfect and it should have a high skill cap and punish those who cant maintain void form.
2 Likes
The legion version of shadow sucked for anything that was not raiding. And i’d argue the 45+ Chorus/LI rampup is hardly doing any better.
Something like that works if you have other DPS spec you can fall back to for other content. As long as Shadow is the only Priest DPS spec a long ramp-up is just dumb.
4 Likes
Excellent post, and I’m excited ti bump you back up.
When I was perusing the Shadowlands changes to Spriest specifically I kept muttering to myself one of three things:
“So how are they fixing the voidform dilemma?”
“No additional utility?!”
“Looks like we’re going to be hopelessly haste dependent again, and absolutely garbage for the first raid-tier… again…”
And you really hit most of my frustrations. Voidform really needs some “oomph”. It needs like a 20-30% shadow damage buff, or it needs to give our abilities the chance to proc additional damage, or it needs to radically change our spells to such an extent as to be interesting.
Our single target damage is shaping up to be just as bad as BFA.
We bring a stamina buff and the occasional AoE stun to the group. That’s pathetic. Why can’t we get like an AoE leech, where 10% of all of our damage heals the entire 5man group? Or every tick of Shadow-Word Touch gives group members like 0.25% mana? Or why can’t we bring a debuff that increases all magic damage done to the target by 5% (like a new-Age shadow weaving)? Why can’t we completely mind-control a target like DKs can enslave an undead?
Shadowpriest damage requires tons of ramp up, is mediocre on few-targets, requires too much secondary stat scaling, and when combined with our utter lack of utility makes the class really unattractive for the 5man Mythic+ meta, and only marginally attractive for later-tier raiding on council-style fights.
The current changes do NOT make me excited to re-main Shadow in Shadowlands…
7 Likes
They need to just let go of the stacking design of Voidform. So long as it gains stacks there will be constraints on the design space to make it a back-loaded damage profile. Honestly, assuming they are going to keep the general premise of Voidform and Insanity resource:
1.) Make VF a static haste and/or crit bonus plus maybe an additional X% of those secondary stats based on gear, liked a baked-in Severe corruption effect (this lets the spec scale and provides needed speed at lower character and gear levels while avoiding back-loaded damage)
2.) Tweak mastery to also increase Insanity on your Insanity generators (this could give mastery a reason to exist as currently its scaling with Shadow is atrocious and would serve as a sort of scaling replacement for the WoTD azerite trait)
Obviously this would require balancing and is just an example of a rough outline of how I think they could change the current VF mechanics in a minimally invasive way while not changing too much about the feel/enjoyment of the spec (which is to “go fast”). It also obviates the need for some Mass Hysteria or Chorus-like effect to make the current stacking design meaningful, which it is not on its own. Again this is just an example, to re-iterate my main point is that i believe Voidform stacks need to be replaced with some sort of static effect.
Spot on. Every other spec has front-loaded damage. Everyone here is talking about PvE but the problems are even more apparent in PvP. You can get Croud Controlled out of literally every voidform if the opposing team wants to…
Not to mention that getting dots up on the opposing team gives them a massive window to interrupt you even if you’re a juke god. Healers dispel your dots during a “go” and you have to settle with shadow word pain because if you go for a vamp cast, you’ll have to juke cast or you’ll get interrupted and that will make you fall out of void form.
You can make the argument to not go into void form until you’re on DR for any off CC and people don’t have interrupts up etc. but should a class really have that much downtime?
Just bring back shadow orbs, devouring plague, and most importantly mind spike procs with added damage to targets without your dots on them. That was brilliant design.
Edit: I wanted to edit this to say any class can get interrupted on their damage cooldowns and it feels bad but it’s the dispel aspect of it all and having to recast in order to get our DoTs back up and do any damage. The mind spike procs fixed this back in MoP. If we were in the middle of our CC chain “go” and the healer decided to dispel our dots, we could unload our saved up mind spike procs to do good burst damage. In the current state of the game, the dispel protection that comes with Vamp Touch isn’t enough. Dispelling our dots is too valuable in any situation, it needs to be a tougher choice for a healer to make. It shouldn’t feel like that for ANY dot class.
12 Likes
Anyone else think the mastery needs to change? Its essentially Versatility 2.0. Theres nothing engaging about it. Nothing tied into it. Nothing to gain from it. Just absolutely boring and doesnt bring anything to the table. Neverminding the fact that its a terrible scaling stat to begin with.
3 Likes
4 Likes
I don’t think any devs will ever read any of this. They will do what they want, the way they want to despite situations like Diablo “Don’t you have phones” edition and “You think you do, but you don’t” Classic. The difference is that ignoring feedback here won’t damage their PR or tank ActiBlizz stocks. It took a huge backlash to get only some of the classes changed.
BTW, I hate that shadow’s talent tree doesn’t have any changes or any real new talents. No I don’t count Death and Madness as something new, it just makes SW:D generate insanity if talented like it does in BFA. There is still time for change but that’s what people said through the BFA alpha and beta and look what that did.
6 Likes
it’s not that they won’t read it. the whole forum is pretty much dominated with people complaining about voidform/insanity mechanic. it’s just quite frankly they don’t care. To remove voidform/insanity mechanic would require them to make a fundamental change to the core mechanic of the spec which requires for them to provide time and resource. time and resource = money that Blizz rather not spend. Blizz is very aware and conscious that people are addicted to the game and no matter how horribly they gut a class people will play the game. Just check the other forums people are saying they gonna change mains.
This is unfortunate but it’s just the way it is. In their mind they simply don’t care if you don’t enjoy the mechanic of the spec there are 11 other classes you can roll.
4 Likes
The thing is, this request isn’t something new that just popped up last week. People have been asking for quite a while.
7 Likes
I totally agree with and i have been one of those people who been saying voidform/insanity gameplay is not enjoyable, but with that being said it’s been 4 years and they still won’t do anything about it. We have to face it they simply don’t care they rather spend their resource on other things because they know we will keep playing this game we’ll just reroll.
2 Likes
Think of it as ramping to a new way to play the class.
Seriously though, agree with the post 100%. I actually like insanity and voidform but they don’t mean much anymore. The personal challenge I like to set myself in getting higher and higher voidforms ultimately has no payoff in the end.
3 Likes
yall need to start going to church… like for realz…
I’ll admit that, despite playing priest since 2005, shadow is a newer concept to me. I played the spec off and on over the years, but didn’t commit to it fully until end of WoD/Legion’s beginning. Much of this is my own opinion, or rehashed from previous comments. I wasn’t a hardcore raider or PVPer, but I did arena and saw heroic raid tiers.
In Legion, they made shadow extremely reliant on the legendary weapon passives to keep it propped up (including StM, which [in my opinion] was an insanely fun mechanic at the time until it was nerfed.) With BFA, and the exceptionally slow start to see shadow get the changes it needed (…and just to be nerfed time and time again), we have Azerite and Corruption to at least keep us kind of relevant. Just not relevant enough to be included in M+ all that much and our contribution in PVP is a joke.
I know a lot of people have said this before me. At this point I’m simply reiterating like I said at the start, but Blizz needs to make certain (anything at this point will help, honestly) spells baseline or tweak VF to have the class stand up on its own two feet. Am I optimistic? Not in the least, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that someone sees this thread.
1 Like