Shadowlands: Voidform/Insanity Staying

Classes Priest
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That is why Shadow Orbs is such an overwhelming prospect to go back to.

  1. We know it works.
  2. It can be built upon.
  3. It has the capability to easily shift between long fights and short bursts.

If the devs scrapped void form and came up with something better then cool. But the chances of something new and better I think are worse then just going back to a mechanic like Shadow Orbs that has proved to be better and was wildly accepted among priests as I did not hear in game or forums much outcry back then.

Since it seems clear that “class changes” will not be on the level of “Legion” then I can deduce that a massive change like Insanity was in Legion will not happen again. So lets move it back to a more workable model i.e. Shadow Orbs.

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I’d rather describe it as DP system because its core is management around DP. I don’t think blizz is likely to bring DP back since class/spec identity is what they are selling now, and some might argue shadow will just be the worse version of current affliction lock.
To be honest, I will not be surprised if they make any changes to shadow or not make changes at all. Current alpha build reflects their attitude toward shadow, and it is not encouraging.
I didn’t really enjoy the pre-void shadow because I simply fond it boring(holy&disc were more enjoyable and disc could do any contents, plus we could only use two specs in earlier xpacs).
If they eventually bring that old system back I will accept it and congratulate the ones who want it badly. But I feel that’s just unlikely and I think at this very moment suggesting ways to improve VF(and our talents) is far more practical for an actual change.

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  1. It was a DP Spender for MoP & WoD for sure. But that doesn’t mean its the only option. I don’t care about the specific spell interactions, I care about having control of when and how I choose to play. I don’t want external forces always affecting my choice in what button I want to press.

  2. Just to note, Cata Orbs were used to enhance Mind Blast and Mind Spike damage. It was fun when you got the Orbs but the flaw in that system was to get orbs, it was up to RNG via your DoT’s. This was fixed with the T13 4 set as making your Shadow Fiend always grant you 3 Orbs when it hit a target. It was so fun Bursting with that esp in PvP on say the EFC.

So there are other options that can be built as spenders.

  1. The fact that many of the ideas thrown around by both Blizzard and long time players don’t fix the fundamental’s of Void Form / Insanity on the premise that its either broken and feels horrible to play or its at the other extreme and needs to be nerfed.
    In addition to its clunky and awkward play style results in many players (myself included) just not enjoying playing the spec. Forget about damage and scaling etc. The core base is flawed, just strip it of all borrowed power makes and it makes it feel like such a hassle to simply do solo content with. It’s only viable place is in a raid setting.
  • PvP? your kidding?
  • M+? Hope you got friends that don’t mind carrying you because there is a reason people have a stigma about inviting shadow priest to M+.
  1. I’m fine with making it a talent. But make that talent be all unto itself.
    Make Shadow Orb’s its core base and adjust Void Form to require Shadow Orb interaction. I have outlined this out in a previous post in another thread I think. But tying an entire spec to only work okay in a long drawn out fight like raid bosses is something that is simply unacceptable. Especially with Torghast being the new focal point of Shadowland’s.
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I understand that 1.VF is hard to balance 2. the ramping style is unpopular, but I’m not sure if they have the time or ability to give us a Polished spriest if they decide to make VF a talent or even make it disappear.Remember, there will be covenant abilities(a balance nightmare already) and new legendaries too. I worry that they will not be able to design a new shadow that fits your demand but also demolish the fun for people who enjoyed VF like me.

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this is why people are complaining now when its the second week of alpha rather then later. Because there is time.

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Everywhere I have noticed a severe lack of Shadow Priests. In game, Forums, Alpha Review vid’s etc.

I cant say for certain but I think the people that enjoy the new Insanity / Void Form mechanic are way way way less compared to the people that enjoyed Shadow Prior to the Legion revamp.

If that’s true, I think they need to eat some humble pie and go back to what works and work around that.

Obviously its my opinion, but it seems like its the more reasonable route because they know how it works (Shadow Orbs). They have the data on that and I think it wont be that much work to bring back. I don’t expect new and amazing things. Just something that actually works. Something that has a ebb and flow and rhythm, not something that just feels awful for the majority of the Shadow Priest players (assuming).

They did mention they were really looking at shadow and wanted ideas on that or something. Someone mentioned it and linked to the class designer guys twitter and he specifically mentioned shadow.

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I don’t know, I’ve seen shadow priest representation rise in my arbitrary experiences. It’s hard to really gauge any of that realistically. The only real prevalent Shadow Priest I ever remember seeing content wise was Anboni. I remember a HUGE surge of them in legion though. Especially with the numbers the class was putting out in Raids on launch. I find that performance of the class on tier lists and logs combined with number of negative changes from patches drives a lot of class play.

Which is sad. Because I play the class I want despite their flaws. Even during the unholy abomination that was WotLK launch with our Naxx 2-piece being gag 10% reduced Mind Blast Cost hurl I still stuck with it. I did so because I always enjoyed the class for what it was despite the performance. Even in classic, after playing the class for so long (112 days and 5 hours right now, not bragging just giving an idea) I’m raiding as shadow in Classic too. Because I love playing the class that much and always have.

I really don’t think that class representation in content is necessarily a good judgement of whether a class is good or not. Just look at how many class specs there are. If they cared about representation Shadow wouldn’t need changes, Demon Hunters would. Because shadow is realistically in line with a good percentage from dps if all dps are represented equally.

Shadow performs the job it needs to do and it is still effective. It’s not going to be Demon Hunter levels of viable in M+, and honestly Demon Hunters shouldn’t be that viable as is… at least not how much higher they are than other dps. For me anyway, I can do effective DPS, and I feel like I am contributing in the content I am playing in. I don’t feel weak even at the lower tier of gear and content, and from what I know about shadow priests they get BETTER with optimized gear, not worse.

I don’t know. That’s how I feel. And I will keep getting slaughtered on the forums for liking it apparently. And for saying that the class feels fine and works. I don’t understand the metrics you all keep applying to determine if it’s viable or not. Numbers and rankings I have seen suggest that it is “viable” even if it’s not the best. But that’s my feeling of viable.

There’s a lot of conflicting requirements too from the crowd over what will make spriest work and why voidform is bad. It’s “not fun” or “not rewarding” which is EXTREMELY subjective and not really ever going to be something we all agree on… and then the conversation seems to move to “Lack of choice” or “low variance” which is fair. But a counterpoint to low variance would be that not every class needs variance. There’s a lot of flavors out there. And as for talents, pretty sure everyone agree that there’s no choice in talents. And we are FAR from the only class struggling with that. I think choice in talents is always going to be hard. It’s just really bad right now.

And then finally we get to “not viable” or “bad outside specific content” and to that, it all comes down to metrics. What metric do you base that on. At what point does it become viable. And where does that lie? Because back in Legion the sentiment was that we weren’t viable in M+ and a LOT of the evidence for that was in the PUG invites, at least from the forums. And that’s not really a good indication, because the recorded runs at the time showed that shadow was, while not top tier, a solid tier 2 for timed runs and able to push some of those higher runs with gear. But the stigma of bad shadow priests prevented a lot of people, myself included from getting groups. And when I did get groups I performed just fine in the group. But that gatekeeping was frustrating, and without having a class be as powerful as DH is for that content, or WW Monk, it’s hard to change the minds of players. The bring the class not the player mindset is still very very rampant in the game…

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What a waste of a post that offers nothing to the conversation and just looks to stir up more arguments.

And the “I should go play another class” argument kind of falls flat when apparently I am the only person even willing to play the class. I may not have some amazing raid clears. But that’s gotta say a lot for people that can’t even hit THAT low of a bar…

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Of course it’s a waste of a post in your eyes. It doesn’t fit your narrative.

It’s factual I warrant however. At the end of the day, Blizzard deleted a player class and told every single player that enjoyed the class to go to hell essentially. Sorry if they are not as eager to say “thank you sir, may I have another”, as you would prefer.

Rule #1 in MMO Design. You never marginalize a player’s time investment.

Give. Back. Shadow. Priest. Or expect this to continue as long as the High Elf threads have.

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Exactly this.

I spent the better part of a decade on my priest. Then for no reason it was just changed for a major rework that is nothing like it was previously.
I stated before, I was just thinking it wasn’t for me. Only now that its becoming more and more noticeable am I seeing that it wasn’t just me and the spec is as bad as I saw it back in Legion.
So I am going to show my support for the old system and hope something good comes of it, cause by in large the spec is awful currently and only signs we see are its getting worse, not better. This needs to change.

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(Sorry for the bad English)
I usually don’t post on forums, Im part of the silent masses that usually plays the game and are (mostly) excited about the changes.

As a background: I’m an old priest, this is my main since day 1 (that I started playing of course) and have been playing it at good and rough times. Mainly playing as Holy but always carrying shadow as an offspec or at times playing it as main for good chunk of expansions (killed the LK as shadow).

The current state of SP makes me sad: the ramp up takes too long and when you kill the mob/pack you are back to zero. Even if you chain pull when you come back to loot you will lose your stacks. The damage output is good in some situations but other classes are just too good to make us good options to content like M+.
The rotation you execute must be perfect, if you are forced to move at the wrong time (looking at you corruption) you will lose dps much quicker than other classes.
When VF are available you must use it, because your regular form is too weak. Its not a choice, its just a continuous flow that makes you weak and strong at random depending on the duration of the mob pack life. Half of the time you VF early and trow some DPS at the charts, half of the time you VF when they have 20% life and all the potential is wasted (keep poking the tank to pull while praying that you can trow that void bolt at the next pack).

I truly believe they should make VF a talent and use the time they’re spending making Surrender to Madness viable into making it work. As priest we don’t have more options as DPS, give us something more usable in all kind of content.

I will roll the SP as a main spec in the next expansion and truly wish Bliz listens to the forums and give us some choice. If not removing the VF completely, make it a talent.

As of the: play another class argument: I will play as priest, and at shadowlands (specially because I want to solo the tower) I will main the SP spec. Good or bad I will be there. The only thing that will change is the amount of time I will spend in the game if the spec is not fun to play.

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I don’t even hate VF, i think conceptually it is really cool, if they could pull it out of only being good in one form of content it could be amazing, but i think the design space really limits that. VF worked in legion, albeit barely, but it was entirely stitched together by its interaction with Mass hysteria and that one S2M emerald nightmare tier early on. I remember many priests talking at the time that felt too heavily punished for poor void form because everything was tuned around high vf stacks with mass hysteria which created the ramping problem and the situation where shadow priest did no damage outside of those high stacks
Fast forward to BFA they made vf less important, there was no real incentive to be in vf and the spec hardly functioned. It was really bad. In Vf and outside of it.
The spec gets borrowed power through interactions with chorus and spirits traits in BoD and has ate consistent nerfs to spells and talents ever since, but our borrowed power never got touched. and at the end of BFA we will lose that with no compensation. The only reason vf works again is because of the crit interaction with chorus, but it still brings the issue up that shadow just overwhelmingly sucks in anything that isnt a scripted raid encounter.

Sure, maybe you can make high tyrannical work, or high fortified, but good luck getting invited unless you’re playing with a full group of friends to run higher keys with. Solo 5 mask horrific visions are well…horrific compared to other classes. Open world sucks(but generally always has for priest), just solo play in general is terrible and in pvp its nothing to write home about. It’s just not good.

The only time i even see other shadow priests in this game is when something about the spec is broken for reasons and there’s a ton of fotm rerollers. The risk reward is off and historically shadow hasn’t been that great in raids either; and has been broken less times than i can count on one hand.

Maybe they can make it work, but it feels like they haven’t even tried and shadow looks so uninspired still compared to the other priest specs, even this early on and that’s concerning. Take off lucid dreams, all chorus traits and spirits traits and go play shadow right now. Congrats you’re now playing shadowlands.
If they want to keep experimenting with vf

Lingering Insanity should just be baseline again like it was in early legion. Legacy of the void should be baseline because even if the other two options were better i think it would be one of the rare cases where lotv gets taken anyways because void eruption baseline cast time is ridiculous and feels awful. Taking lotv all expansion has made s2m and dark ascension non picks and i actually think dark ascension had promise. Mind blast needs to have two charges for shadow. Anyone who played shadow in legion before getting their 2nd charge through legendary knows how awful the spec feels without it. and maybe a nature’s balance druidesque sanity generation outside of combat would help with the initial ramp of the spec, i had not considered that. T
hat would hopefully open up options, but i’m not sure.

I think mechanically and thematically orbs are weaker, but play wise they just worked so much better across all aspects of the game that its easy to miss.

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Honestly, that’s the thing for me. I don’t even need shadow to do super dps. I’m ok with being middle of the pack as long as it’s fun to play. I just hate playing around voidform because I feel like I’m constantly being punished and I’m constantly thinking "Man, this would be so much better if I was just playing an aff lock. "
With that being said, I’m actually running an aff lock with drain soul and feel alot more like Spriest than spriest does. It’s really sad.
I don’t mind them sticking with the void theme, but I wish they would overhaul the way it works entirely.

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I still cant believe people are advocating for Orbs. Just because it was better than VF doesnt make it great. It was a Ret Holy power hand me down after it failed for them. It was clunky to an unnecessary level. Having to hold orbs to DP the right target felt awful. No other builder spender before or after has had something like that. And outside of UA none of them are dots. I dont even consider Soul Shards as a builder spender.

I dont mind a builder spender but it just needs to be done in a coherent way.

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I think that’s kinda the point. Nobody actively wants, given total choice, wod orbs exactly as it was.

People want a reliable resource, no ramping stacks dictating their damage, and devouring plague as something that hits hard and self heals, and a shadow word death that feels like a meaningful part of our execute rotation.

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I honestly wouldnt mind a ramping damage. In fact I’d be ok if they made the entire spec about execute phase. It certainly would be different and good in every aspect of the game. Mastery increases damage while at lower target health. Dots tick faster. Resources gain faster. CDs regenerate faster.

Could go 1000 different ways with it.

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Shadow Orbs are attractive for a number of reasons.

  • They worked mechanically.
  • They gave options to different play styles.
  • Builder/Spender is a comfortable way to play that Blizzard understands and thus wont take much effort to fine tune.
  • They wont require a complete overhaul of something new and potentially worse then Insanity (Though that would be an achievement in of itself). This is big because blizzard said they wont do major class overhauls like they did in Legion. But this isn’t on that level as they have already created a solid foundation pre-Legion and have the data to work with and build upon.

In essence, its a safe choice that can be tweaked to something that will work in all content, not just shine in Raids and ignored in quick fights.

I am up for a major revamp, but I just don’t think that’s in the cards this go around.

Edit:

To be clear, I personally want Shadow Orbs back as a mechanic. The spell interaction however can take several different forms. It doesn’t need to be paired only with Devouring Plague, it was in MoP and WoD but not in Cata. I liked the Cata version but it had obvious flaws regarding generating the Orbs in the first place as it was just random chance via dots.

Point is, it can be taken several directions. That’s why Shadow Orbs work, they are flexible.

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The cata version also all but requires snapshotting to really “do” anything.

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If we were to get the cata version back I’m sure they would be able to rework the shadow orb buff to account for a lack of snapshotting.

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That was just a side effect of the generating of Shadow Orbs via dots “Fishing” issue.

I loved Cata Shadow Orbs and would love to go back to it only if we solved the “Fishing” via dots issue.

T13 4 set allowing Shadow Fiend to grant 3 orbs each hit was amazing for burst and I loved swapping to that set with my Dragonwrath & Cunning of cruel trinket for some massive 1 shots in RBG’s on EFC etc.

Ah good times lol.

Around that time I had a friend that used to play Mage but quit end of BC watching me wreaking in BG’s lol.

Ah well lol.

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