I’m referring to “popping” orbs giving you a massive damage boost to your dots, scaling with mastery.
That requires snapshotting if it came back exactly as it was then, if I recall correctly.
You been saying you play the class and everyone else here doesn’t. But looking at your profile and seeing you didn’t do anything on this expansion and that you stack Mastery as a Shadow Priest reveals that you are the fake priest here… and a clown.
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Execute phase specialization is what Shadow was in MOP and WOD.
That’s definitely part of why people miss it.
Death has been at various points, one of the hardest hitting spells in the game.
It also generated Shadow Orbs, which nearly doubled our DP rotational speed.
We also had TOF for part of that period too, which we could leverage from any low HP mob, to all targets.
The nostalgia part of Orbs isn’t the boring 5-point build/spend model, it’s:
- powerful multi-DOT
- powerful funnel damage (DP’ing priority targets)
- crazy execute phases (Death + Bonus Orbs + TOF)
- powerful passive self-healing (DP self-heals)
I don’t think anyone is particularly excited about the 5-point model. Aesthetically Shadow Ravens had some fans, but I don’t think that’s why people miss it really. It all comes down to those bullets above - and execute phase is a big part of that.
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My main Issue for Orbs was the constant wasting of them waiting for the proper target. Heaven forbid if the mob wasnt going to live long enough. Or if you didnt wait you just use your orbs on spending them on the incorrect target. A Spender shouldnt be something you have to choose to target for now or later. No other spender is like that. It doesnt work.
I quit Shadow after the first tier of MoP for the first time in my career for personal choice that wasnt for the betterment of the guild. Lasted 2 more tiers and quit on Heroic Le Shien progression until I picked up for BFA
As long as you aren’t capping overall I see no issue with this. It not being correct to spend as soon as it’s available, and having some overflow room to properly time things is a big part of that type of gameplay. You say you quit in mop, so you skipped WoD which is when they fixed a lot of the issues orbs had in mop.
I would definitely like to start with some number of orbs out of combat by default though.
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Besides just functioning well when I played it just didnt feel shadowy at all.
That can be reframed, though I personally don’t care.
I think Yvaelle hit the nail on the head. It’s not about the specific mechanic, it’s not about the visuals or the lore or the design minutiae of exactly how orbs worked at whatever particular time you remember them from.
It’s the buttons and options we had, what they did for us, and most importantly what it felt like to press or use them.
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Oh that, yea.
It can still work, just wont be as strong which I think is fine as snap shotting was an issue and hence why they removed it.
They can just make it so when you consume orbs/get buff, all your DoT spells damage in increased during that buff window. Simple and basically your dot damage is always amped up as long as you keep consuming orbs regularly.
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Oh man this was so fun.
Finding those low health mobs to snipe a SW:D to get orbs and proc Twist of Faith or trying to find those moments to proc TOF before pulls by healing yourself or someone.
WoD Shadow was so fun.
Also, Feather + Shield + Spectral Guise = c-ya lol. (PvP minded / worked so good in Ashran).
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If we get orbs back, then I don’t care if we start with orbs or not really lol.
Its not that bad to start building them up. Because on long fights, yea it will ramp up. But on short fights, you start scaling quickly with SW:D snipes and just keep it rolling until all is dead. then next fight you should be starting at max orbs and start unloading.
It’s only the initial battle that takes a bit of time to ramp but then its quick for long and short fights a like.
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yes, yes, and yes. That exactly. thank you very much.
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guys I know I said this before but please keep an eye on the alpha official priest feedback. Vampyral basically explained all that we have been discussing so please leave a like on her comments. It’s important because Blizz is for sure monitoring that post so leaving a like to us is like voting to show what we support.
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Heylaa, are you in the Priest Discord? If so I’d love to friend with you on Disc and chat if your free.
no I’m not on disc sorry 
Not stacking mastery by choice. I’m curious how you anticipate that I should just slap haste and crit on the gear if it doesn’t drop it?
And being lectured by 110 druids and priests that haven’t stepped foot into BfA content on how Shadow doesn’t work is kind of ridiculous. And that was my entire point. I may not have optimized gear yet, but it’s not like I can just poof optimized gear out of my backside at a moments notice either.
But nothing that you just pointed out is going to change if they remove voidform and give us shadow orbs. Enemies are still going to die in content too fast for us to multi-dot and get the best benefit out of it. We would lose the aoe from void eruption and mind sear is still hot garbage for aoe.
I don’t see orbs fixing the issues any more than what we have now. We still suffer the same core problems, because at a base level none of the core functionality of shadow with or without voidform works in M+ style content.
And there’s an argument to be made that we DO have powerful multi-dot now, but it only functions in some content not because of voidform but because of multidotting itself.
A lot of the pieces already exist for these kinds of things on live anyway. Shadow Word: Death, Vamp Touch healing, ToF. It’s just that they are either far too weak to be effective at what they do, or they are talents, and tying those things to talents means that something is going to lose out.
And sure, you can make an argument that voidform pushes those other talents into being better. But it can be equally true that the talents themselves aren’t balanced enough to allow for that choice.
I think too many people just liked shadow in a specific era, and think that era we should go back to. The problem is the game doesn’t work that way. And your memory of that era doesn’t equate to a system that works here and now. Shadow Orbs WoD would be just as garbage in content now as anything else shadow is doing.
“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+.”
I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that Demon Hunters and BM Hunters consistently outperform every other class in that content to the point that bringing classes like shadow priests, ele/enhance shaman, Feral Druids, Demo/AFF Locks, and DKs/Rogues is frowned upon. Because those classes performance means that you might not get the timer, while having DH/BM Hunter makes the runs far easier.
That’s the problem. And it’s absolutely not unqiue to shadow either. And it’s not even a bigger issues just because shadow has “one dps spec” because there are classes like warlock with all three specs having a low representation.
It’s their refusal to adjust the content and address the classes like Demon Hunter for the game itself. As long as M+ content is designed around the same mechanics it has been, and they don’t fix VT, SWP, Mind Sear issues in that content, shadow will always be sub par. Orbs or not. Neither works in M+.
Edited to reflect a typo.
Amideus, it seems clear to everyone that you are not discussing in good faith.
So can I ask what your motive is here? What are you hoping to accomplish?
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I think it’s worth reading his recent response in the other thread, TLDR: we got off on the wrong foot because people picture what exactly constitutes voidform very differently.
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I put it this way.
If you line up all the class/specs in the game in all patches ranging from Legion to BFA. I would wager the Shadow Priest spec would be near the bottom list of those to be picked.
I played Demon Hunter in Legion as my main and me and my friends were pushing decently high keys (low-mid 20’s) and whenever we saw a Shadow Priest que up to fill our only DPS spot left, we were all like nope.
It wasn’t because of the damage, it was because of the inability to do what needed to be done via not die, move fast, burst hard, not get locked out via silence/stun etc.
We ran a lot and always picking up a random 5th member and only a couple times did we get a Shadow Priest that worked out. But they were geared and good. But only just barely kept up with us.
It sucked because whenever the priests that didn’t work out fail and die etc. We had a chuckle about it but I also said its not his fault, he just cant do what he needs because lack of tools or his DPS will drop if he avoids mechanics etc.
This was not just known in our group, we noticed many groups running saw the same outcome with Shadow Priests.
It has only gotten worse in BFA, not better (afaik) because I haven’t played much of BFA.
Edit:
To address your point concerning that Shadow Orb’s wouldn’t solve this issue.
I simply Disagree. Here’s why.
You didn’t have to fight the spec while executing mechanics. You can stop for a moment and shield, fear, MC, Shackle, silence or just start spamming heals because a team member got low or the healer died and your supporting your team a bit until you rez healer and stabilize etc. Doing any of that, you know actually playing the priest as it was designed via being flexible with its utility didn’t punish your DPS that much. Only for as long as you were not doing damage. But with Void Form, you loose your entire Void Form doing this process which then forces you to “restart” your ramp up back into Void Form and then you’r secondary ramp up to start scaling damage. Then once again that could all be shut down via you using your supportive abilities and not DPS ones.
Having Void Form forces you to tunnel a mob/boss or you suffer. You have no choice to help out your group or if you do, your damage simply plummets to the bottom.
Unfun.
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