Feral druid combo points is pretty much holy power
(also feral and rogue are pretty much the same)
ELemental and enhance shammy ammo charges is pretty much holy power (this change was made in alpha from mealstorm bar to ammo charges that are exactly like holy power, so much for moving away from homogenizing)
Warlock soul shards is pretty much like holy power.
EDIT: forgot Forst Mage Icicle build which is pretty much holy power
The point Heylaa is making is that all those are based around the idea of Builder / Spender. Only works slightly different amount themselves but the core tenant is in fact a Builder / Spender function.
Mythic+ did not exist in WoD. The game’s content was designed differently back then, and there’s a lot more content designed for end game now than there was back then. You can not buy it for a second, that’s fine. But you need to do something more than just cry “This is BS and I don’t believe you.” to prove a point.
So again, how does Shadow Orbs magically fix the following issues?
Weak aoe damage, lack of effective dot spreading, lack of maintaining dots easily on large pulls, uselessness of Shackle Undead in 90% of content, the inability to control you character while using MC for CC, low healing output from Shadow Mend and the inability to cast more than a few before going oom?
These are absolutely issues that exist right now. And they are issues that exist entirely separately from voidform. They’ve never bothered to address or fix these issues either.
You can say this over and over and over again until you are blue in the face and it will still mean as little as it did the first seven times you said it because you have refused to elaborate on anything besides that.
We get it. You don’t want exactly what voidform is on live as the resource mechanic. THAT’S FINE. I’ve said above in my post that’s not an issue. I don’t get why you keep coming back to this.
It STILL doesn’t address the rest of the broken parts of the spec for content like Mythic+.
It doesn’t address the other problems related to the spec. Elaborate more than just “Shadow Orbs like WoD.”
We get it. You liked the class at a different point in the game. That point in the game is gone. Please give something more to the thread.
Yup, and in the end portion of WoD they introduced Mythic 5 man dungeons as a prelude to M+ in Legion. I did amazing in that place. So what does that mean when compared to the other classes? Do you think that ALL classes prior to Legion reworks would be unable to play in M+ content in Legion? That is not the case. Shadow played just fine and I always beat everyone in my Mythic 5 mans.
If anything, Shadow would do better if you compare classes in WoD vs Legion as no way people would think Shadow is topping charts compared to other classes in Legion.
Your argument is very poor. Mechanically Shadow functioned amazing in WoD and if all you have to say is “but the damage” then that speaks for itself, you don’t know what your talking about. Damage is a number, it can be adjusted without a whole class revamp. The same cannot be said about Void Form / Insanity.
Exactly, proving my point again.
Shadow did amazing at everything in WoD. Name 1 thing it had trouble with? You cant.
I can name several things that Shadow at/in lacks NOW and more so in Shadowlands. You’r roasting yourself with that comment.
I called your bluff. Its your turn mate to own up to your comment of “Shadow STILL has issues in WoD”.
It doesn’t, I cant prove a negative. The onus in on you good sir to site an example of content that Shadow struggled with.
The best thing you can come up with is a system that wasn’t even in the game at that point? Like it said, piss poor argument. Especially so given how poor Shadow’s current era of Void Form / Insanity does in M+. At least the version of Mythic 5 mans in WoD shadow did amazing at. Try again mate.
I’ve stated it before to you and other people, you cant seem to understand what a broken and inflexible state Void Form / Insanity is is compared to how much you can do / accomplish with Shadow Pre Legion era.
Simple answer, Shadow Orbs allows the spec to grow and change without getting out of control or being utter crap. It has a cap / ceiling to keep it in line with a maximum amount of Shadow Orbs you can hold onto. Void Form / Insanity does not. Thus it will scale out of control at best case or be extremely weak and unsatisfying to play at worst case.
Then add on to the fact that it forces you to tunnel into the boss / mobs and restricts not only your movement but also you ability to take on the supportive role with your tool kit as a priest.
This is a non argument, your grasping at straws. This is just a numbers / mechanic change (via baseline or talents) that doesn’t affect how the overall way Shadow Orbs make the spec play.
Shadow Word: Death used to grant a % of mana back when the damage got reflected back onto you. That is an idea to keep mana up if that is an issue. But that’s not something that affects Shadow Orb gameplay.
They exist because if you happen to scale crazy with Void form up-time while having access to other good supporting abilities then you need to be nerfed in one way or another. With the thought that you can achive great OP damage via Void Form because it does’t have a scaling cap, you are neutered with other aspects of play via your utility and heals.
As we have mentioned, Void Form / Insanity mechanic drags the entire spec down because everything is tied to it in one way or another.
Shadow absolutely sucked and was an utter chore in challenge modes. You could do them, but needing to play a high mastery 16% haste cop build was utterly demoralising and still not that effective.
Good point, I forgot about challenge modes back then.
If I recall correctly though, didn’t they normalize your gear so you cant stack secondary stats? Because Shadow Priests has for the majority of its life in wow always performed poorly with low haste. So not being able to gear up and reach those break points was always a struggle.
Stats aside, did it have issues mechanically speaking? Because I recall having an answer to all situations I came across.
Regarding COP build, are you saying it wasn’t an enjoyable play style in general or specifically in challenge mode?
What did we get in legion / BFA that helped shadows multi dotting?
Misery, Twins, DA, Eruption.
The old AoE interaction in WoD was mind sear, then mind sear insanity, which was wasn’t great. The majority of what made shadow good on multi target was damage funneling through as generating orbs. That likely wouldn’t be too strong in keys.
Options?
Erupt as aoe spender?
Keep dark void and likely have to tweak how AS works to not cause too much crit scaling?
Mind sear damage is capped as a function of mind flay damage, and increasing base flay damage roots us to the floor so that’s not a good idea.
So do we wanna go down the “Mass apply pains with DV to funnel an ST spender and get more uptime” or “Use eruption in aoe and DP on ST route”. I personally prefer the first, but the second is easier.
I didn’t enjoy cop more generally, and shadow had a pretty fundamental flaw in its aoe in WoD, kinda the same one it has now without talents or essences. The GCD investment before you start to do aoe is massive.
Mind sear’s maximum damage is always capped at 50% of mind flay. So our fire and forget aoe always has to be weak, otherwise flay gets too strong and we end up welded to the floor because losing flay damage is too much of a loss (What currently happens in SL).
They actually fixed this in legion by making sear a completely independently tunable passive attached to mind flay, but that brought with it its own problems and was ultimately reverted.
I picked up Surge of Darkness for instant cast procs of Mind Spike.
Twist of Fate to amp up all my damage and healing with snipes of renew/deaths etc.
Clarity of Power.
With those I just dot up 3-4 targets and start bursting down the non dotted target for massive damage bursts all the while getting orbs like crazy with lots of death procing and short CD mind blast and tossing out more and more devouring plagues to proc more and more spikes for burst.
Not sure if you played similar but I found that style really fun, engaging and effective.
Granted, that way was not as good on single target boss fights. So swapping to Insanity is what I ended up doing if i really wanted to min/max.
Also mixing in Shadowy Insight and/or Auspicious Spirits pending situation could be fun to.
It was cool to have the choice/option to do such things back then.
That’s sorely missing now and I hope we get choice back again in SL.
Side note:
I think having Mind Sear causes our entire spec to be wacky because if you are allowed to multi-dot + spamming an AOE button, our damage will be adjusted for both.
I say remove Mind Sear and allow our “AOE” to come in the form of a dot spread via a resource spender. I purposed in a previous post to have mind spike act as a spender to spread dots.
Mind Spike is able to be casted without a resource, but it will have extra effect of spreading dots to another target within 5 yeards. 1 orb = 1 target. So spread to 5 targets at max for a total of 6 targets.
I think that would be in line with the target capping in Shadowlands and our damage wouldn’t be split into Mind Sear. Granted, we would no longer have access an instant AOE button. But maybe we can have a talent row that we can pick between DoT spread vs AoE Mind Sear.
CoP in pve involved hard casting mind spike as a filler, and not dotting your main target unless you had double dp set up to cover the time with mind flay insanity in highmaul brf, or in HFC when you got the trinket just not applying dots at all.
I recall doing the dot weaving dance on most HFC fights myself.
Dot up, pool orbs to 5, refresh dots and DP / insanity for the duration, then MB then another DP / insanity for the duration then refresh dots and pool up again.
Its been a while but I recall it something along those lines and it was quite effective.
You didn’t dot at all outside of the dp windows. It was more like. Blast to 4 orbs, spike as filler, dots, blast, dp, mfi, blast, dp, mfi, blast, back to spamming spike.
You legit had like 20% dot uptime maybe. Not a gameplay style I ever wanna go back to really.
I recall doing that as well. Its been a while and its late but I do agree that, that type of play style isn’t the best but lots of priest found enjoyment from it.
What I would like to see is 3 major play styles for Shadow.
Extra dot focused (Devouring Plague)
Empowered face melter focused (Mind Flay Insanity)
Castable spells / instant cast proc focused (CoP)
All 3 would have dots as a secondary damage source.
I think with those options, people can pick more rotting damage, more beam melting damage or more proc based / castable spells damage.
I think it would provide great overall primary damage source options for everyone.