I personally don’t want the headache of going in and out of shadowform manually, in addition to going in and out of voidform passively. The form within a form thing is dumb. We should either be shadow priests or void priests. I don’t want to be a void priest, but If doing that means a ground up rebuild I’d prefer it to the current confusing mess.
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That makes sense- so it mainly is a thematic change where shadow priests want more holy spells to feel more like a priest. I guess that’s been somewhat lost on me regarding shadow since I mainly play disc and have been thrilled to get more shadow spells for more of balance between light and shadow/void. I do understand it though. Personally I’m firmly behind shadow mend in every way. It feels much more exciting to me than flash heal ever did and sets disc apart from both holy specs thematically.
That said I agree that shadow has been done dirty and needs a lot of work. I’d personally like to see void form and insanity axed entirely but I know that won’t happen.
Part of the reason I love disc is the “class fantasy” of balancing light and shadow so I’m 100% on board with shadow getting more holy spells returned to their kit. The tough thing is that if flash heal replaces shadow mend on shadow, it doesn’t make much sense for it to still exist on disc, and I’d personally be sad to lose it for more holy spells. Maybe if they did what you suggested but created a disc/shadow glyph to skin it as shadow mend?
Oh and while I’m at it- let it be usable in shadow form. Between shadow and boomkin I’m tired of having to shift forms just to throw out a heal.
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I think it does, discipline used its affinity for both to find ways for one to empower the other. Shadow in their quest for power cut to the chase and just uses what it learned from before.
“Do something, anything, as long as it isn’t just make it longer.”
This is one of the biggest things I think I agree with. Voidform’s problems for me, aren’t as much the gameplay, as I quite enjoy it. But the actual effectiveness of talents, the limited options they offer, and the linear mindset of them. Everything we have is about extending voidform, and extending voidform becomes harder and harder to balance on some fights over others.
There’s lots of reasons for this. High uptime fights with minimal movement allow Shadow to shine their strongest, combine that with the exponential scaling that extended voidform offers and you have a problem. Shadow is already a very strong boss cleaving spec at base. That problem existed all the way back in MoP and their only response was to nerf our dot damage.
So as long as the only aspect of voidform is extending the duration, and as long as extending the duration causes larger and larger dps gains on specific fights, there won’t be a lot of wiggle room in giving us interesting stuff.
For the record I think that voidform and the in and out gameplay can work, just not if everything currently stays the same. Something mechanically there needs to change, and a lot of those talents around making voidform work need to be made baseline or removed due to those changes.
I find shadow fun, and I love what Legion did with the spec. I just don’t think there’s enough going on with talents, and I think that M+ dungeons are HORRIBLY designed and balanced. Because it’s not just shadow that loses out there. It’s absolutely ABSURD that Demon Hunters have 2-3 times the representation in that content as nearly every other class/spec in the game. And that’s never changed. And it needs to.
On a lot of things we agree, and while you and I certainly don’t share the same opinion of Voidform as a mechanic. I am still committed to giving whatever feedback I can that pushes for realistic improvements to the spec in shadowlands. Just not going to shut up about how I actually feel either 
All that being said… I’d like to see.
Lotv baseline.
S2M’s core premise removed and redesigned as some sort of empowered voidform cooldown, instead of an extension tool.
LI replaced with its EN counterpart and made baseline, removing some backloading from voidform’s damage pattern.
A meaningful SWD that is rotationally significant during execute.
Complete removal of the Void Bolt Rank 2 passive.
2nd Charge of Mind Blast baseline.
Either baseline haste buff to Voidform, or move haste per stack back to 1%.
Personally think Void Torrent, DA, and Death and Madness needs reworking, but their purposes / actual spells are basically fine… That still leaves 4 new talents to fix the problems you mentioned, as well as add a little spice to break the monotony of the core 3 spells.
Oh, and all of our covenant spells are currently awful. Either having no interaction with the spec, serving no clear purpose, or pushing us into a utility role instead of a dps one which we can’t back out from.
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Lotv should have been made baseline back in Legion. It was the number one proposed change as early as Emerald Nightmare tier of content. I remember tons of threads about how StM felt really bad despite the performance of it, and that Legacy felt so good to use that it should be baseline to begin with. (Lots of people wanted instant cast voidform too, but w.e imo)
S2M absolutely needs to be some other kind of dps cooldown instead of just being “really big voidform”.
I don’t like the idea of just bringing back TBC Death. It’s just another instant hit button at that point that hurts healers. As fun as it was to accidentally kill myself on Curator, booooooo.
LI used to be baseline to voidform and I hated the change that made it a talent, because it just felt mandatory at that point.
Yes to second MB charge baseline. The main reason people take SW:V as a talent seems to be because of the second charge fixing rotational issues.
VB Rank 2 is stupid. Utter nonsense. It attempts to solve a problem in the worst way.
I’ve always felt that Twins Painful Touch passive from Legion legendaries would have made an amazing talent option for shadow in M+. Often times there’s a lack of good choices, and being able to start a trash pull with full insanity going VT->VE->Mind Sear spread dots is so fluid and really helps to reduce the feeling of having to sit there and tap target the dots around just to not have enough time to make good use of the rest of the abilities.
My feeling on Voidform is pretty generic atm, not a lot of specifics just because it’s mostly based on feeling the class play in content. But in essence I would like to see the following:
Voidform is the start of our fights. Give us some way to have insanity available to us before each fight starts. This is the biggest issue with playing 5 man content. Because of how hard it is to generate insanity outside of a fight, every choice you make in 5 mans feels wrong.
It’s unclear how this would work or feel, but if the benefit of being in voidform wasn’t tied explicitly to the duration, and the stacks gained from leaving it wasn’t about reducing the time between voidforms, I think it would be a lot better for most people. The mechanics I like about voidform are mostly superficial class fantasy and void bolt when in voidform. I like that idea. I’m no married to the stacking haste and extension, but I also don’t want it to just be relegated to a button press dps cooldown. One of the reasons I hate playing Demon Hunter is that you don’t spend a lot of time in your metamophosis state, which to me is the main fantasy of the demon hunter. Maybe that’s just my experience.
So I love that voidform is an in and out system rather than something you use once in the fight. I’d like to see there be a way that makes voidform meaningful in that way without it being so crucial to maximize total uptime on the boss.
In my mind if voidform is the start of the fight, then it can be designed in a way that makes voidform powerful, and after leaving voidform you retain some of that power. And the way to maintain that power outside voidform is to dip into it again at regular intervals.
Another idea in my mind is having another ability that spends insanity outside of voidform. I don’t just want a button you press to cause your next ability to spend insanity for something, because historically those kinds of things have ALWAYS been bad for players enjoyment. But Devouring Plague could be an ability that can be used outside of voidform that spends insanity. Or some other spell. Something that allows the use of that insanity during quicker fights where voidform can’t be used as effectively. And making sure it’s not something that gets used in voidform would limit the need to try and perfectly time in during voidforms which could get REAL awkward.
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I wanna make something very clear, because it’ll help contextualise how I feel you’re being perceived and what’s caused a lot of the animosity between people, myself included earlier on.
When people talk about voidform, they expect people to mean all the mechanics that underpin it, the core of its design, and ultimately how it works now. I have to thank you, immensely, for explaining what specific aspects of Voidform you actually do consider to be positive, and can see from it that you do not mean that.
I’ve always been a massive proponent for the separation of mechanics from thematics, and being clear about what exactly you like and dislike when it comes to shadow mechanically. It’s clear now that you mean and defend something very different, something many here would not instinctively consider to be “Voidform”, and have unfortunately then been lashed out against.
Also Re: DH and Meta. When you get gear and start playing the demonic VOP build, you spend an obscene amount of time in meta. Looking through our DH’s logs in my guild there’s times he spends whole minutes in meta without dropping out,
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Entirely possible. But trying to get people to talk about the spec and define more about it before was like pulling teeth. Partially because I was talking about it from the perspective of someone actively playing it, and some people (not all) were talking about it from the perspective outside that. Which is why I got frustrated because those people couldn’t understand my viewpoints without currently playing, at least in my mind. You have to experience the class and content to have the reactions to how that content ends up being.
I think insanity, voidform, and the idea of generating insanity to use it as a resource is very interesting and entirely salvageable. I think the greatest disservice done to current shadow was to not expand upon that mechanic and make it more than just extend voidform. As long as I get to keep using voidform regularly, keep Void Bolt, and keep the edge of madness style feel to the abilities I am golden.
If they decide to strip away the stacking haste, and change up the benefits of all that, fine. Just let me keep my voidform regular usage and my void bolt rotations.
EDIT: DH/Meta convo. See, but that requires a specific spec and the gearing for it. I don’t know if I’m going to explain this properly, but using SW:Death right now in open world content actually feels rather good. I tend to use VF every fight or every other, because I can get a huge recovery of insanity right at the end of a pull. The problem is that talent only performs that way on open world content that no one cares about. But, I care how it feels XD.
I think in many cases it was miscommunication / a lack of willingness to question or understand. Nobody was necessarily wrong, given what each party understood of the other, but neither side had a complete picture.
I can tell you though that some here that look like outsiders, myself included, are very much not, they just made the (Honestly reasonable) assumption that your defence of voidform was equally defending its current underlying mechanics. Mechanics that I still consider to be fundamentally broken and opposed to anything any other dps spec is attempting to do, or designed around doing well.
That obviously doesn’t excuse anyone’s actions though, even mine, though mine are still on the tamer side.
Agreed, and this is really the crossroads. While you consider this to be “Keeping voidform”. I would consider this to just be keeping the spell names, but otherwise something on the scale of a full rework.
The question I asked myself, and I assume many others did, before they began vocally backing a return to orbs was this…
Do we think Blizzard are capable / in a position to do a full rework and essentially build a whole new set of rotational interactions and mechanics around 1-2 salvageable aspects of voidform, or do we believe that ship to have sailed (Or never been to port at all) and instead need to revert to something simpler we expect them to have a better understanding of?
Personally I’m leaning towards the latter, though it’s looking more and more like neither as the days go by, and that should worry everyone. Even those who are reasonably fine with things as is, because SL is just so much worse.
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Just read the latest blue post about alpha and they fixed a bug that allowed some players to test unfinished classes. Warriors and Shaman. Priests are finished. In my case literally. I still remember that 1500 post thread in legion (state of shadow) that received no blue posts. Help isn’t on the way guys. I refuse to do Torghast on a spec that performs worse in solo content than its healing spec.
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I remember writing it, and its reddit counterpart, and the followup that was produced in uldir.
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As much as I love reading your stuff on the Discord, this part I see as unlikely.
I do not believe they will even consider a rework. I know I’m very cynical, but I just can’t see them actually stopping and doing the requisite work needed to give us a true revamp. I expect band-aids and efforts to run out the clock till the 11th hour, followed by a round of buffs to shut up the easily mollified players, followed by a slow withdrawal of the buffs. Then when people finally cry foul again, they will say “Maybe next Expansion”, and do the same rope-a-dope trick again.
Not trying to sound pessimistic Ellipsis. I know you and others are doing your absolute best. But you’ve been in the past expansions like me, and seen the cone of silence employed by them before. I know you know what I speak of, and the fatigue that comes with seeing this cycle time and time again.
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No I’m very aware neither look likely to happen. The question was which of the two was most likely to happen, and out of those, I’d say it’s the latter.
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Ok I don’t have a ton of experience on the forums, but I would like to give my 2cents on this topic. I’ve mostly played shadow priest. With times jumping between Feral druid and Rogue. I loved Shadow Priest. I can’t imagine the pressure trying to balance all classes and make them still feel unique. With that said I can see why the idea of VF seemed good on paper, but fell kinda short. I do NOT like the changes I saw so far on the alpha and I want to attempt to see if maybe, by some miracle, other priests like the ideas i come up with. If so then hopefully also then Blizz sees it. So this is what I quickly thought of.
VF isn’t going anywhere, we know this. So how could we change the way it works in some way. I, along others, find the idea of VF just being a Haste buff with 1 extra button to push, not very exciting. In PvP, trying to time the burst with VF and SwD+Silence was kind of exciting. Now that is the only time I get any excitement out of using VF.
So, what did my tiny mind come up with? -----------------IDEA #1
–What if outside of VF you had to manage your dots and keep a good sustained amount of dmg. Like if you refresh the dot before the last tick, its dmg is increased by x%(capped at a certain limit) and lowered by refreshing with longer seconds still on the dot. Instead of just randomly refreshing dots, your rewarded for managing dots better.
–Then by going into VF the mechanics changed to a form of burst type dmg. Kind of how Devouring Plague used to work but with current dots. Maybe going into VF puts a DP type dot and you have to detonate the DP dot to consume all dots for burst dmg. The more successful you were with stacking the dots the more the burst will be. Once you go into VF you have Mindblast, Voidspike and Voidbolt to use until VF ends and detonates the dots. Or you can self detonate.
Vague idea, just throwing it out there.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------IDEA #2
–Keep current mechanics of VF and either make a mechanic of killing adds increases time in VF or the longer your DoTs stay active the more dmg and insanity the do. Killing a mob or add could either reset the rate of which insanity drains, or simply boost you to full. Either way, combined with the increased insanity rate from Dots, once you drop out of VF, you can easily climb back into it much quicker.
Stacking haste buff is not fun, plus with the change of being able to cast Voidbolt while channeling Mindfly or Mindsear just makes for a short period of button smashing. Then back to slowly pushing MF and MB until back into VF.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------IDEA #3
I have never changed my talents in all of BFA, and seeing that BASICALLY all the talents are staying the same, I feel I don’t have much choice again.
I have never used : Shadow Word: Void / Surrender to Madness / Dark Ascension / Dark Void / Shadow Crash.
All interesting spells that just sit in a Talent System that I never change.
MAYBE in certain circumstances they are useful but not significant enough to warrant a swap.
With that said,
–Have your dots, MB, Mindflay etc be your insanity builders, then once VF is ready, casting it bursts the target consuming the dots and giving you complete knowledge of the Shadow Word! Dark Void being how you reapply Shadow Word pain, SW Void being your new MB, Shadow (Word) Crash…well being Shadow Crash, Dark Ascension can be Voids version of Power Infusion, because lets be honest if you make PI castable on Allies, it will ALWAYS be another classes spell and not used for our rotation. Void Torrent, Shadow Word Death…make VF your instant dmg spell casting state. Once VF wears off, work your way back into it.
This doesn’t fix the problem a lot of priests have with downtime out of voidform, buuuut it does make going into VF a hell of a lot more exciting.
With this option, you now have a ton of talent spots open to fix the cookie cutter build problem with Shadow right now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------IDEA #4
–Dark Ascension
The spell reads as such. Immediately activates a new Voidform… NEW VOIDFORM!
SOOOOO what if you cycles between two Voidforms. DoT Voidform and Voidform from Idea 3#
Once you get into your first voidform you maintain it as long as you can, then pop into Dark Ascension form. Stay in that form as long as you can and back into DoT VF. Back and forth. Keeping two unique forms of dps without having to drop into a stalemate. The downtime in dps, because each class has one, would be the intial pop into each form. Having to build your dots up for #1 or stacks of SW Void which power your bigger spells like Void Torrent or Shadow Crash… again just spit balling here…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------ENDING!!!
Overall what I see on the alpha just seems like the same old boring thing not being addressed. There is so much potential in the Talent tree alone, if only the spells weren’t buried under the talents that make our class essential for dps.
Others would see the above statement and say “if your bored of it play a different class.” Well when your class used to be fun, then got changed to be boring and you see hidden potential, you don’t want to play a different class. YOU WANT YOUR CLASS THAT YOU LOVE TO THRIVE! BE VIABLE! BE FUN! I don’t want to be the most OP class, I just want the excitement back, to be viable and fun!
The Shadow Word Death change, i hate. No not the fact that it is only 1 charge and lower dmg annnnnd can now give us insanity back and CD refreshed if they die. I hate the fact that if they don’t die, the damage is reflected back to us. We are an extremely squishy class already, and in arenas/BGS, we are almost always targeted. Adding SELF damage to the list isn’t something that I’m excited about. Could this be used to POSSIBLY get out of Blind or a Sheep, well yes. But that is so circumstantial. Any time I had an opponent in range of my SWD, you use SWD+Silence combo to secure the kill. Not once have I been CC’d when using SWD. Maybe my memory is foggy and I just don’t remember, but this is a change that was not needed. Any other class that has an Execute have such a repercussion? The Surrender to Madness rework just seems like they want to force that down our throats, when it will never work, never be fun.
It is still early in the Alpha, I hope something will be changed, I just want to have fun playing the class that i love again!
Please let me know what you guys think of my ideas. Feel free to add to them, change them, or just overall post what you think needs to be done!
If you made it this far in my post i sincerely thank you for reading it all!!!
Well, a shift to a different resource and mechanic is a full overhaul in my eyes. If they were to keep the spells and the insanity and voidform assets, they would not have to redesign those at all. It gives them a larger base to work from.
And while you view the mechanics as needing to be separate from the theme and identity, and I like playing the class because of the theme and identity, Blizzard tends to view classes as several parts. When they do a rework of a class, they aren’t just redesigning the fundamentals of what the abilities do.
They design the look and feel of the spells, the mechanics, the theme and playstyle, and the class identity all together. They build their mechanics and styles off their class identities, so any removal of insanity and voidform would require a new overhaul for class identity and feel as well, causing a LOT more work. And I get a lot of people don’t feel that way that played the class before, but that’s likely not how Blizzard feels about the game. They clearly are trying to bring class fantasy to the front.
So I think the biggest restriction to changing the resource and mechanics away from insanity to orbs (aside from being a regressive mechanic that is basically just holy power) is the need to redesign all the other aspects of the class around that. That means assets and resources and class identity. Something I highly doubt they would have time for, let along would have a desire for.
So I think the realistic path forward is finding a way to use VF and insanity that isn’t just what current shadow is.
I view discussions involving both to be connected, but I feel like people need to be willing to separate them when they’re trying to be specific. Something like “I like voidform” could mean any number of things depending what you consider to still be “voidform”.
I take a view that voidform is the mechanics that underpin it, and that as soon as you move away from those mechanics (Stacks, ramping drain, backloaded damage) it may still be called voidform, but it is not the voidform I was previously referring to.
In the same way there people are complaining about “a return to eclipse” in the druid forum, despite SL’s version of eclipse baring little mechanical resemblance to any previous version.
Kinda like the ship of Theseus, how much can you replace before you either need a new term to define it, or you’re willing to change the definition of the existing term.
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What you are describing is WoD Demo lock mechanic which i’m not totally opposed to (i would need to try it ). Also I don’t hate void priest concept (actually i like the idea of worshipping the old gods) however what i hate is the mechanic.
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The reason Shadow Orbs is such an attractive topic is because of the following.
- It worked and played rather well in Wod and even decently in MoP and meh to alight in Cata.
- They have the data and animations/graphic etc. for a WoD version of Shadow I can assure you that. That means they don’t have to build up a new Shadow Spec from scratch. WoD shadow is still pretty recent and fits with the current way the game plays. They wont have to add/adjust much aside from numbers to get back to the way Shadow played.
- It can be built upon because its a system that blizzard understands and is comfortable with because many specs follow a builder/spender route.
Its a safe option that doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel so to speak.
Edit:
I think its clear that Shadow Orbs have proved that its far easily able to improve/build upon compared to Insanity.
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Shadow Orbs was introduced in Cata and only got better in MoP and better yet in WoD.
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Void Form / Insanity started out meh to alright in Legion? Got worse in BFA and seems worse yet so far in Alpha.
Void Form / Insanity just not working out. I think that’s clear to see. Lets just let it go away and stop wasting time keeping a priests only DPS spec an utter broken / unplayable / unfun mess.
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precisely. there are so many ways they can push it and take it however with voidform i don’t see that. I think its so limited.
if its up to me i would have WoD orbs back but i would settle for WoD Demo lock mechanic.
I also would love to have my vampiric embrace buff back. make it a passive in shadowform that turns 15% of your damage into healing for you (only you) but you also have the spell that would increase it to 75%(without talent) for 15sec and heals you and 3 most injured allies with 40yrds of you. Similair to Paladin Aura Mastery.
“It worked and played rather well in Wod and even decently in MoP and meh to alight in Cata.”
Yes, sure. But current wow =/= wod, cata, or MoP. A LOT of things have changed, and the introduction of M+ and the change in focus of endgame content means that things that worked in previous expansions are highly unlikely to work now. Especially because in MoP and WoD Shadow STILL had issues in content outside of raids, it just wasn’t major content. That’s a big deal.
“I think its clear that Shadow Orbs have proved that its far easily able to improve/build upon compared to Insanity.”
There is zero chance we get a copy and paste Holy Power. This already exists for paladins. It’s pretty clear that a lot of what Blizzard does is to make a greater definition between classes.
“I also would love to have my vampiric embrace buff back. make it a passive in shadowform that turns 15% of your damage into healing for you (only you) but you also have the spell that would increase it to 75%(without talent) for 15sec and heals you and 3 most injured allies with 40yrds of you. Similair to Paladin Aura Mastery.”
Why not just give us some way to gain passive leech? It’s absolutely absurd that they invented a stat that was literally what Shadow Priests alone did before, and then gave it a bunch of different classes and NOT to Shadow…
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