Shadowlands Class Update Feedback - Shadow Priest

Classes Priest
124

Mind Sear functionality is the biggest limiting factor on our aoe damage, the cap on it’s damage in relation to Mind Flay forces it to be weak, and therefor you need something else to make it impactful. Besides, spam one button isn’t that engaging either. I’ve never really been the biggest fan of Sear past Wrath.

I do greatly prefer making an ability like DV the main focus there. As I said earlier, Twins was a massive increase in M+ viability for the priest, so much so that trying to do M+ without the ring was awful. It also felt really really good because it took something you already wanted to do, dot everything, and eliminated the long delay required to get there.

It’s my personal preference that DV be the majority function. Whether it remains the way it is now, or changes depends on how the rest of the class is built. Clearly current DV still isn’t enough to really grant much benefit to M+, but I am tempted to try it. (Misery has just so much QoL to it, it’s hard to give up)

I could see DV either getting buffed and remaining as is now, becoming a spender and losing the CD, or being rolled into a passive that affects eruption/mind sear in some way. I honestly don’t see DV being problematic at all for most boss encounters so I don’t see why it hasn’t been a focal point to at least bandaid our M+ this expansion. I get that fixing M+ for shadow requires more than just buffing one talent, but at least that would be a lever to press that would boost our potential on one of our weaknesses.

Additionally after some more brainstorming last night, I had a thought on Voidform. Voidform is problematic for the developers to balance around because of the excessive scaling damage it can deal, and that is also the pain point for many priests, the linear focus on long voidforms. You want to extend the voidform as long as possible, and the devs don’t want you to extend it too long, and any attempt to increase the baselevel of the spec also increases the topend.

Why not make voidform more like Meta?

Mind Blast - Baseline 2 charges.
SW:V and Fortress of the Mind removed (because no one has used FotM in the entire history of the talent)

Voidform no longer grants stacking haste. Voidform now transforms Mind Blast into Shadow Word: Void and Mind Flay/Mind Sear into their Insanity counterparts. Void Bolt still exists.

This leaves in void eruption, and transitions the power of voidform away from insane stack scaling into a raw power increase. From there you can start working on balancing the base level of the spec without worrying about causing Voidform to get out of control, AND you can design talents around something other than voidform extension, while still having voidform extension as an option.

As long as it doesn’t just become generic 3 minute dps cooldown, it can still remain different enough from Meta as well.

125

“Well that makes sense, I am more PvP minded then PvE.”

This is probably why we have so many conflicting views on the spec. As I am far more PVE oriented than PVP. I gave up on asking for PVP focused changes when we lost all our defense, most of our healing, and became cc bots with no mobility and nothing to compensate. I realized that it was impossible to ask for PVP balance and it was clear they just didn’t care about it either.

I’m sure there was choice in PVP for Shadow in WoD, I personally hated WoD pvp so I just tried to avoid it. It was so far removed from the older style of Vanilla/TBC and with the bad taste of MoP still in my mouth, I really didn’t feel a connection anymore.

But for pve, these talents that are supposed to give us “Choice” rarely do, even in WoD. There’s almost always a single option for each tier that works, and the tiers that do have options usually are because there’s little to no use for any of them.

The lack of variety in builds is not unique to shadow. The thing that is unique to shadow is the lack of variety in gameplay. The linear style of massive voidform stacks and voidform extension. Which means that all the talents are focused solely on that, and therefor the only options are the best ones in most scenarios.

It’s more of a why it’s like that, than an “It is like that” situation for PVE.

126

As I mentioned above, Shadow did have choice / options regarding play style in WoD and they were close enough that you can still perform pretty decent.

Sure as you are eluding to there was an “optimal” choice. But that didn’t mean the rest were broken and unplayable as we have now with Void Form.

You can go several directions in WoD. But with Void Form you are stuck with 1 play style for all content be it PvE or PvP.

That said, WoD in that context is a better design.

Edit:

Also, don’t tell me that having a spec locked in to 1 type of build is the “proper” design.
If that was the case then talents should be thrown out all together or at least only allowing utility talents and not game play talents.

3 Likes
127

Agreed. I think the only place I really used it was M Zakuun in HFC. It was okay as a novelty but I would absolutely not want that as a full-time play style.

128

Pretty sure it was the default in highmaul for all bosses (Except twin ogron which was CoP SoD because 2 permanent targets), then it was kinda mixed in BRF with Blackhand being AS MFI.

HFC progress was mostly AS, except for Zakuun as you say, but once you had an archi trinket it just devolved completely into dotless COP MFI, which was absolutely horrendous :frowning:

Think the bird was still AS though, I kinda stopped raiding around that time once archi trinket was getting popular.

2 Likes
129

Not according to the historical posts of the time. Let’s talk about each tier shall we?

Tier 1 and Tier 2 have relatively little impact on shadow for pve dps. They are generally personal preference talents because of their low impact on your role.

Tier 3 - Surge of Darkness, Mindbender, Insanity. Insanity was almost exclusively the choice. Mindbender was never really taken, and Surge was useful on a handful of fights.

Tier 4 is another tier with little to no impact on pve.

Tier 5 - Twist of Fate, Power Infusion, Shadowy Insight. Twist of Fate outperformed the other talents in this row SIGNIFICANTLY in pve content. by such a wide margin.

Tier 6 - Cascade, Divine Star, Halo - again, almost a unanimous choice as Halo for pve was by and large the most effective and useful ability, and mostly because it was used while moving and that was it. Many situations didn’t require Cascade at all, and Divine Star was poopy.

Tier 7 - This was the meat tier, and there are only two choices that make it for players. CoP and AS. The problem is, that AS doesn’t become an option for players until high tier gear with large amounts of crit.

The idea of “Choice” for pve in these talents is mostly false. And I don’t mean for shadow. I mean for the system itself. You would be hard pressed to find a dps spec that doesn’t have a very narrow and predefined set of talents for content in most situations, with only 2-3 MAYBE being swapped every now and then, or swapped between content types.

Ever since the introduction of the talent tiers to replace talent trees, the idea was that they would offer more choice than trees did, since many times it was always cookie cutter spec. And yet, that’s what nearly all these talents tiers look like for classes these days.

130

What I can extract from all that is you are in favor of limiting 1 type of play style that is only “decent” in 1 type of content “Raids” and then everywhere else be damned.

The game is not just “raids” and having a spec be mechanically broken for everything besides that is NOT a good criteria in terms of game / class design.

With the options you got in WoD, you can mix and match varying options to suite ones play style even if there was a clear “optimal” choice doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing because once again, not everyone that plays shadow does the same single type of content. There is more to the game then that.

I will admit that having being restricted to 1 type of play style is easier to balance. But that leads into the issues we have now.

  1. Void Form at its base level is flawed and cant be balanced because it will always be too high or too low and if you restrict the floor / ceiling to be so close to each other that it makes going into Void Form almost pointless (alpha) then its exactly that, pointless so it needs to be removed.
  2. If it just trips over itself and feels clunky, there is no other option to play. You are forced to deal with that mess or stop playing. That is not a good sign of spec design.

So yes, WoD talents can definitely be looked at and changed around. I’m all for that. But the whole point of referring to the different build’s is that in the Shadow Orbs era and more so within WoD, the spec gave choice in how the player wants to play for the content they are in. Void Form does not. So if it doesn’t work you don’t just have some dead talents, you have a dead spec.

If I had to choose, I’d had have a spec that can play well at ts core and have some dead talents then having a spec that cant play at all aside from “Raids” and only just okay at that.

2 Likes
131

I am happy that someone else remembers this. I think that if we have to stick with voidform, that this being a talent or baseline ability would be a good step in making priest decent in 5 mans.

132

I miss when it was bugged and it would just dot everything within range sometimes.

Then after that the buff applied itself to you when you erupted, but also when your eruption bolts hit the target, so if you knew what you were doing you could get 2 applications off per eruption.

133

At no point did I say any of this. You just keep arguing with something I am not putting forth. In fact, I have said MULTIPLE TIMES in MULTIPLE THREADS now that I absolutely do not like how we are tuned in M+. I have even talked about those issues here and what I would like to see from the spec going forward.

You seem to just have fond memories of WoD and you never move past that.

Voidform DOES NOT HAVE TO BE stacking haste and linear gameplay. I explicitly said that. I explicitly said that is BAD. You can still have a voidform and insanity mechanic and it not be what it is today. You can have it work in a different way. It can change and still remain voidform/insanity. I don’t know how much clearer that I can make that to you.

You just repeat over and over and over again that you want WoD and that’s just not helpful.

134

How then?

You seem to think its much easier to just “Fix” Void Form / Insanity mechanic.
I am arguing that is is not. In order to “Fix” it would would have to rip out the defining feature which would end up making it completely useless and have no real impact on the game. Thus it should just be removed.

So lets hear how you will magically “fix” it.
I at least came up with possible ideas to either fix it or remove it for something better. All you have been doing is saying you don’t like it either but it should just be fixed. HOW!?

1 Like
135

I don’t think he thinks it’s easier. I think he thinks it would be a step backwards, and leave us in a position where we still have to fix a lot of shadow’s current issues anyway. On that I don’t think I disagree, at all.

Being real, he did also say so much is wrong with it that all he’d really want to have left is void bolt as a rotational spell and the insanity + form.

That’s a resource bar, and a stance that interacts with the resource bar. From there you could literally go in any direction at all. It’s more work, significantly more, and for that reason I don’t think it’s worth much discussion, but it’s an opportunity to design a spec that does not have the problems current or WoD shadow had at all, instead of going back to something and trying to fix it.

1 Like
136

My 2 core issues I see with current shadow is this.

  1. Void Form scaling.
    • Blizzard will never allow Void Form scaling to overtake all other DPS by a little/lot doesn’t matter. Therefore if it scales, it means that until we hit the “High” point it will just be a constant struggle / slog. Then in order to hit those “high” points you need a perfect situation where you are able to not move, tunnel boss, don’t get interrupted and have good supporting gear.
      The rest of the time you are seen by everyone else (and rightfully so) as being inadequate and simply lacking and thus why should they even bother with you as your just a huge liability.
  2. Void Form time limit.
    • This is mainly for PvP but right now as soon as you get into Void Form to do beyond ticklish damage, you can easily be locked out in so many ways via stun, silence, LOS, range and simple movement. Void Form simply handicaps you.
      At one point it was even best to play PvP without going into Void Form because of how bad it is. So to not go into Void Form and loosing out not on just a damage increase but the Void Torrent Artifact ability and Void Bolt was STILL better in PvP because it just wasn’t worth going into Void Form as with max Insanity granted you a static damage increase. Thats pathetic.
      Its as bad as vanilla holy priest spirit of redemption talent as you had to spent a talent that only worked if you failed at your job and died. So bad.
1 Like
137

You could easily design a new set of spells and interactions around “Bar that fills up and depletes” and “Form that empowers spells and spends bar” that sidesteps both of those concerns. The issue is, as I said, it’d take a lot of time and work.

3 Likes
138

Well they have time. Now it’s just to be seen if they have the ability to work on it.

139

As someone who’s had their ear to the ground throughout the development cycle for two expansions regarding this, you are a more optimistic man than I.

6 Likes
140

And i suggested this idea.

Basically its Demonic from Demon hunters.

I think it can work sure. But I also think it should not be tied to the entire spec as a whole. It should be a talent that competes with other talents in that it will define your game play but you can opt out for another path if you so choose.

Just like WoD with CoP & AS builds.

2 different play styles.

That’s all i’m asking for.

1 Like
141

These both fundamentally used the same resource UI, core spec mechanics, and base spells in the same basic way, what you suggested (If I’m remembering correctly, direct me to the post if I am not) would not.

142

Probably because I am deaf.

143

Correct. That is why I don’t think we should waste time in “fixing” Void Form / Insanity or going the empowered version of spending insanity do too being realistic about time constraints.

WoD shadow worked as a baseline. They have the data. That means it would take less time / resources to iterate on that build and make improvements / adjustments then to try to “fix” Void Form or try something new altogether.

1 Like