too good! The sad thing is it’s true. The bias in attention they show between classes is just way too blatant. If we were mages or druids we would have 5 different glyphs for shadowform 
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Windwalker isn’t quite as much fun these days as it was in MoP, but it’s still pretty solid if you’re okay with melee. The balance changes look decent as well, so I may give my boomkin a go for SL. Still too early to tell in my book!
I also like voidform, so here’s my insight on this:
Void Bolt clipping your other skills.
This isn’t really a new issue for shadow. Mindflay has always been something that had to be clipped at one point or another. Even in Classic it doesn’t fit perfectly all the time. It was less noticeable then because most people didn’t raid as shadow, you weren’t allowed. But Shadow’s rotation has always been awkward and required some kind of clipping at some point in the game. I remember back in TBC and WotLK knowing when to properly clip your Mind Flay for a dps boost was a sign of skill. Now it’s something to be fixed. I think Mind Flay clip is honestly the least troublesome part of the system right now.
Tier 6 talents don’t feel like a choice
It’s not just Tier 6. A lot of talents don’t feel like a real choice, and the fact that the only thing that matters for the class is extending voidform further creates a limit on talents. They have not given us any meaningful M+ designed talents to help fix our restrictions there, and that’s a SERIOUS issue. Shadowcrash has been doa for a while, and we just need better 5 man content talents and variety.
Void Eruption damage is too high in AoE.
I don’t actually think this is a problem. I think that the problem is, when facing more than 3 enemies there’s not a lot of incentive to stay in voidform, because just trying to forcibly chain eruptions is strong. The other issue is how voidform feels with those fights. If you know the fight won’t last, if you pop voidform just for the aoe, you get no further benefit from it, and it’s very difficult to keep it going between pulls unless you get to another enemy immediately. So then the player either chooses to use it, and doesn’t have anything for the next fight, or chooses not to use it and does nothing for this fight. It’s a lose lose situation and that’s never been addressed since Legion.
I definitely think that voidform is fun for me. And I like the new direction for the class. Simply put, it was just never properly updated for the longest time with a meaningful change in my eyes. And voidform gives us that revamp to the class. Now they just need to address player pain points for the spec. And I think that the biggest one is M+. Because even with some raid fights where Shadow is weak, you are still doing something. You still raid. Every class and playstyle has those raid fights where they are not great. It happens. But not being great in M+ is hard to overcome, because there’s a LOT less variety in what players need to do, and a lot less margin for error.
2 Likes
To be fair, a shadow themed caster class that was about using mental damaging spells in a world where the only mental manipulation heavily used in story was from the Old Gods was a pretty big indication of where the class was getting its strength. As early as MoP we had interactions where our stuff was being tied to the old gods, via the Glyph for the Sha Fiend. And the sha are just the blood of an Old God.
So it shouldn’t really be surprising at all that they took it this route, for me at least. But I get that some people might not have saw that coming up in Legion. Considering we had already dealt with 3 of the 4 known Old Gods. I do think they kind of blew their load on the Xalatath stuff in Legion and left us wanting in BfA. The coolest part of Shadow Priests in Legion was your weapon telling you to do stupid stuff like get yourself impaled by Odin…
My God. Shadow Priests got a dps cd that killed them, and they got a line of dialogue that killed them?! I think Blizz was trying to prep us for all the nerfs!
My alt in Legion was Windwalker and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a builder/spender that does not play like other builder/spenders because of the mastery. But the mastery forces a kind of love/hate relationship with players. For me, my alt will be Unholy DK just because I will finally finish the Shadowmourne questline after having never gotten my infusions in WotLK. And it will be an interesting way to test out the leveling zone changes.
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I think a lot of the mind flay clipping issue would be fixed if the damage was partially assigned on interrupting the cast OR the clip breakpoints were shown on the standard UI channel. Needing to install a custom UI to know where these are is somewhat irksome…
I get that this is how it feels, but kinda just becomes a wash given the ticks are split evenly on the gcd, so if you just cast things as they become available you aren’t going to miss ticks anyway.
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Ah, so this is kinda what you were calling out in your other post - even if I hit Mind Flay and immediately hit Void Bolt, once the GCD comes off from Mind Flay, I’ll have been guaranteed 2 ticks minimum from the Mind Flay… When I play, I am panicked about coming 0.1s short of the tick, but it’s good to know that I don’t need to worry about that until ticks 3/4 - thanks!
Maybe you can help me here: In some cases, not most, but often enough to notice, I had less than a GCD left in Void Bolt CD. Granted, something wrong probably happened before where I’m even in that situation, I don’t really know how to handle it when it occurs. Is it better to push out the Void Bolt (Mind Flay and immediately clip with Void Bolt once GCD comes off) or simply stop-cast and get the Void Bolt cooldown rolling again?
Again, I really appreciate the extra info and the help you’ve shared.
This is weird, and it can be a combination of a lot of things. The first thing to cover is yes, the best way to avoid this is just be much more consistent with your casting. Remembering your ABCs (Always Be Casting) and always be doing something when you’re moving, even if that’s just mashing shadow word pain, will keep you “in time” with the rest of the rotation.
The second thing is, the best way to handle it if it has happened is to keep casting and bolt when the next GCD is up. Once you void bolt, the whole “loop” has kind of reset, and things are back to normal. I also very much dislike doing nothing.
The third thing, and this is the kinda weird thing, and to me understanding this takes a lot of the confusion out of shadow. And that’s that the WoW UI doesn’t update fast enough to accurately track your spell cooldowns. Hasted cooldowns, altered constantly by constantly changing haste, in a game with a low tick rate, leads to these “I don’t know if I can do x” problems that you mention. It’s another reason why I say try to fit the GCD, because odds are it does fit, the game just can’t track your cooldowns.
The fourth thing, given all the stuff I’ve said above. The best way to play shadow’s rotation is by feel, not by thinking. Shadow’s rotation is short, it’s repetitive, it’s fast, it’s not reactive or methodical. You do not have time to weigh decisions in real time, that is why there is no decision making beyond just “When do I lucid?”
The way I play shadow, even raiding on Mythic N’zoth is this…
Always Be Casting.
Bolt, GCD, GCD, Bolt. Clip flay or sear short for anything of higher priority.
Don’t let SWV cap at 2 charges.
If you are above 147% haste, cut a GCD and go to Bolt, GCD, Bolt. Again, still clipping flay and sear.
Follow those rules and you can’t really go wrong.
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It’s more that the abilities and their cooldowns don’t line up properly. Mindflay was always a filler, and as such has the lowest priority. Since it’s a non-stop channel, even playing like a robot means you still have to clip some of the time. It’s just the nature of Mind Flay.
In Classic resists are far more common, and sometimes your pain falls off during a mind flay channel. It’s even weirder in TBC where VT and SWP have different durations and different cast times.
I doubt anything will change the mind flay clipping issue in a meaningful way outside changing mind flay from a channel with no cd.
Ugh like why they’re all just a different shade of blue/gray that no one really cares about. Even Frost Mages don’t want this glyph. What I’d want as a Frost Mage is to have a glyph to give me back the old spell effects cause these new ones are so bleak.
That’s reasonable. It did used to work that way, after all!
Big part of the problem right here. This is bad spec design.
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This problem has existed since inception though. Whether it was dot duration, Mind Blast cooldown, or whatever else, mind flay clipping has always been a product of having to cut it early to keep higher priority spells on.
The class has from day 1 been about a priority system to spell casts instead of a pure rotation.
Personally I don’t consider cutting mind flay short a problem to be fixed. It’s a filler spell with a fixed amount of damage per GCD, and all its damage is done in intervals of GCDs. The only value you get from full channeling flay is an honour talent.
What we’ve got in SL alpha though, with VB Rank2, and the complete lack of space in the rotation to cast anything without something sitting off cooldown. That’s a problem.
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I remember only casting Mind Flay in Vanilla Naxx to keep the Shadow Weaving Debuff on Boss, and I think it was Rank 1 or a low rank just to conserve mana for the fight.
Ah mana management days lol.
Oh I agree. I think the issue is them trying to find a solution to a problem that didn’t exist. I think that clipping mind flay is actually a reality of Mind Flay and that should just be an accepted part of the system.
Yea… not looking forward to this personally. But the longer that Classic goes the weaker I get so it seems inevitable. I was top 5 dps at the start of MC, and now well into BWL with the limited upgrades I have received I am around 8-12. I’m only going to drop lower and lower. And my primary consumables are distilled wisdom flask, brilliant mana oil, and mageblood potion. Sad times.
As it stands, it’s a reality of poor game design.
When clipping Mind Flay is acceptable is in an old model where for example, in WotLK - you would cast Flay, cast another Flay, something like Mind Blast or a DOT refresh would come up - you would interrupt your Flay for a priority spell.
Breaking your flow in the above case feels intentional and wanted, for the higher priority spell.
Currently we rotationally break flow every 3rd GCD, with Bolt - Blast - Flay (clip) - Repeat.
It’s just a worse version of Spike - Spike - Blast - Repeat, the COP rotation they got rid of because they understood that was too simplistic: but now we’re going into our third expansion with the same 2.5 spell rotation.
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I personally don’t find flay to be very interesting, and what you described is the consequence of giving us new priority spells to cast but never adjusting the old mind flay at all. Mind flay is one of those core abilities that made sense a long time ago, and because every shadow priest grew up on it they’ve kept it as a class identity spell, despite the fact it has aged in this game like sour milk.