while u are kinda right.
shadow always has been a concept about “mind”
mind blast , mind fly , mind control
void thing started in legion if im not mistaken , all because the dagger .
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Maybe, but I guess I haven’t seen that sentiment much (not that saying it isn’t true, just uncertain).
From a gameplay perspective, I’d say it certainly seems least true. Again, it’s not so much the specific abilities (which spec does/doesnt get mind blast or void torrent etc), the tuning (stuff like mass hysteria, ramp time, scaling, etc), but the core gameplay loop difference. Builder/spender versus cyclical ramping. Those two playstyles have very, very different feels and flows while you play.
And as far as fantasy, again, it’s okay to have some overlap. One spec having more tentacles doesn’t mean the other has to lose all tentacles so to speak. Classes share stuff, specializations just give you more of one thing than the other. Yes, some classes have specs that are vastly different from the rest of the class, some are closer together. That’s ok. For this, It’s a difference in blasting someone with the actual energy of the void versus using the energy to drain away at them.
With void I’m looking for “I’m on the verge of losing myself to my void powers, and just barely coming back from the edge” while getting a cyclical gameplay loop of the legion design. It could have different abilities, less dots, whatever, but those are the core things.
With shadow I’m looking for “I’m eating away at you, draining, weakening you as I draw your physical and mental resolve away” while getting a dot maintaining builder/spender gameplay loop. Again, this could have many of our previously iterated abilities or something different, but those are the core things.
Now when I say “I’m looking for” that of course doesn’t mean everyone agrees, but those are generally speaking the separations I can see both flavor wise and gameplay wise. And it’s perfectly fine and even expected for certain people to not care for one.
But can most people that play shadow currently really get down with one of those two ideas? What about just those core concepts for shadow are off or missing? Same for void?
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Yes, that’s right. I remember very distinctly reading the priest class preview for Legion saying that they were really going to be bringing Shadow’s identity as a harbinger of the Old Gods to the forefront, and the comments section below being full of, “Wait, since when did we worship Old Gods?”
Classic Shadow always seemed at least partially rooted in the Forsakens’ Cult of the Forgotten Shadow. Granted, it was always pretty vague what the Cult’s actually belief system was beyond rejecting the Light, which they felt had abandoned them during the Scourging of Lordaeron, but there was certainly never any sense of it being Old God worship.
But that much overlap isn’t two different specs of one class, it’s two different builds of one spec.
I’d be curious for you to elaborate more on how this is too much overlap. Could you give more feedback on the more detailed things I said in the post?
Do you feel like drawing upon the void to cause pain, anguish, and drain mental and physical vitality is the same thing as actually manifesting void energy to physically blast people with while tearing rifts into the physical world while training to maintain your own sanity?
Or is do you feel that managing dots with a builder spender style is too similar to trying to maintain a buffed form as long as possible until cycling back out of it?
I understand how our current iterations have had too much overlap, but I’d be interested to hear what about these separate concepts specifically have too much overlap/don’t have enough distinct core elements to be fleshed out on their own.
Mostly the multi dotting, and the feel / cadence of the spells being cast. Mind blast has the same cooldown it’s had since at least MoP, it being hasted and everything shadow has either being instant or having a cooldown of some number of gcds has always made it feel a lot more rhythmic than other casters.
Apparitions are the closest thing to a universally beloved aspect for shadow priest in all eras, despite having no thematic connection to the void.
I honestly don’t even think we have a dedicated class dev.
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Got it. So I mentioned in that post that I don’t believe the void spec requires multiple dots (maybe no dots). Additionally, I rarely see that people that advocate for wanting that legion playstyle seem to be specifically desirous to have the dots.
So we remove the dots, and our overlap for the core becomes I think just mind blast and mind mind flay (maybe you call swd core as well). Are two/three spells too much overlap?
If so, does void remove mind flay for a spammable hard cast? Similar to dots, I don’t know that having/not having mind flay is the focal point for those looking for that legion playstyle.
I’d say for the most part it’s either assumed or people don’t think beyond the immediate issue they have the current situation. Shadow was the strongest / at some points only multi dotter / spread cleave spec in the entire game throughout legion and BFA.
Woof, there was a lot of new editions to this since yesterday… I’ll say once again as a long time shadow main(dabbled in vanilla, main since TBC) and I say shadow priest not void priest. Because even blizzard differentiates between the 2 by having different NPC names. Shadow most definitely had a theme and playstyle previous to the current void-esque playstyle that made me love it. And I won’t beat a dead horse because there has been plenty of things said that I agree with for the creation of a 4th spec. Though I doubt it will ever come about. I see priest like this, Holy at one end, and Void Priest at the other. With Disc and Shadow in the middle as 2 sides of the same coin. Would it be easy to flesh out? No. and you won’t please everyone, which I think we can all agree, is a fools errand because people will always complain about something. But I think it’s a step in the right direction to please both sides that enjoy the more dps heavy void style and the more support dps shadow style of old.
Plus I find it annoying that they get rid of the first support style spec( shadow) and then re add support specs later.
CAN WE GET A BLUE POST IN DA HOUSE! BLIZZARD! NOTICE US!! lol
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Understood. I’d be interested for other people that enjoyed the legion playstyle to come in on that. Do you consider core to that playstyle? If you had that playstyle with no dots, or a passive dot, would you consider it an improvement over the current options?
Just from my personal perspective, dots certainly weren’t what I would miss or what I think of as the core of that style. They ultimately were a very passive thing. The “meat” of that playstyle was during void form where the were refreshed automatically.
That of course is me referring to feel and fantasy. I’m very aware that mass hysteria ramping was a huge part of the damage, but again, that was passive.
That would definitely mean void would need a direction that doesn’t involve multi dotting for aoe, but again, I don’t know that the people looking for that playstyle are going to take issue with that.
Shadow’s legion/BFA playstyle was heavily defined by its split cleave power, and in those scenarios you were actively managing your dots because Void Bolt did not maintain dot uptime on more than one set of enemies.
I agree with everything Ellipsis is saying - there’s basically an 80% or greater overlap that each side of the void/shadow divide would want to claim as their own. I used to be more invested in how Voidform gameplay could be preserved, but at this point the apathy has set in. They should just cut Dark Ascension or Void Eruption and cut Mind Spike and just let shadow be the quasi-MoP version we have currently to put the matter to rest and refine what we have now so that we aren’t still playing a 10 minute brainstorm draft of a spec in another two years.
It absolutely was very powerful in spread cleave situations, but again, I’m not talking about power. The core playstyle difference of building a resource and spending it versus the cycle of maintaining a buff as long as possible and then having to get back into it and start over, as well as the lore/ascetic/story (whatever term) of each of these different ideas.
People continue to pick out very specific items, but I don’t feel are really addressing those ideas in totality.
The kit is very different from the core playstyle. We have many different builder spenders with different kits. I still just don’t see really any evidence based on conversations that would tell me people that enjoyed the legion style Priest would be unhappy if it came with a different lot of abilities, because I believe what they miss is the playstyle; the kit is still there.
Also, no one really loses things overall, because it’s a spec. If you want to spread some fat dots you can, and if you want to blast people with void bolts you can. If you want to be a shadowing, energy draining, mentally fatiguing vampire guy you can; and if you want to be a cosmic, tentacle covered, void blasting, rift opener you can.
Again, it’s one class. You can share some things. And with hero talents, you can share even more things.
I would love to get to switch back and forth and play two awesome specs. For anyone who only has interest in one of them, what are the things you believe the other side would get that you want?
So far it looks like they are still avoiding our preference to focus on DoTs over void torrent, mind spike, and mind blast.
In retail, my SWP does less damage than a boomkins DoTs. Kinda sad…
And for godsakes, please don’t bring back the void eruption playstyle for pvp. It was horrendous waiting on that cooldown to do any damage. I much more preferred the spriest playstyle from WoD where you got a lot of insta procs form mind spike etc…
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You were talking about dots being present but passive in legion-style shadow. I brought up split cleave because dots were actively maintained in in those encounters and those encounters are why shadow would be taken, so active dot management was still a large part of voidform gameplay. It wasn’t purely fast-paced resource management.
I loved voidform and I would be unhappy with what you’re proposing. Ellispsis is spot on, and “shadow” calling dibs on basically everything shadow is except for the stuff the anti-voidform crowd hated is pretty wacky if you ask me.
Blizzard can come up with something great if they spend more than ten minutes on the spec, trim a cooldown (I don’t care which one anymore since Voidform is basically just Void Bolt now), and remove Mind Spike. They just need to do it instead of continuously kicking the can down the road when they…run out of time…like they always do.
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I agree that that cleave fights were a reason a group would’ve wanted to have a shadow priest then, but that still isn’t relevant to the points I’m making. It didn’t change the core playstyle. You rotated your void bolts to refresh the dots on the different targets.
If we had the shadow you are suggesting, why would you be against having a separate spec that had that different playstyle?
I’m not opposed to there being another priest spec in theory even if I am in practice because Blizzard can’t manage the specs that already exist. But let’s assume that’s not an issue for the sake of discussion.
The reason I’m specifically opposed to your proposal is because you’re framing it as “void priest” as if it is giving the people that liked voidform what they liked back. You’re not, because most of what people that liked about voidform is still part of shadow and you’re insisting that they should enjoy a bunch of new stuff they’re not attached to and summon lots of void pets, which is odd because summoning pets is far more entrenched as shadow gameplay than voidform gameplay.
I don’t want to assume your intent since you seem genuine, but I think the thing you’re not catching onto is that you have two classes, shadow, which has abilities A, B, C, D, and E, and void, which has abilities A, B, C, D, E, and F. What you’re missing is that you’re saying:
“Okay crew, let’s divvy up the abilities. Shadow is keeping A, B, C, D, and E, because they had those first. Void is only keeping F, but it’s okay, because we’re going to add G, H, and I to void so that it’s a complete spec and everybody is happy.”
Regardless of the ultimate outcome or design quality, the way you’re proposing this happens looks and feels terrible to anyone that was a fan of voidform shadow. I’m sure it would get a lot of attention from other players, but what you’re proposing is not something that would be done as a favor to fans of voidform priest.
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Thank you, this is good insight into your overall thoughts.
First, you may well be right about people that enjoyed legion shadow enjoying primarily because of dots, mind flay, or other historical core shadow abilities. However, I believe it very possible you could be wrong about that as well. Again, I love the classic shadow core abilities, but I loved legion shadow for reasons outside of that (what I continue to refer to as a different core gameplay loop regardless of the actual abilities within that loop). So at minimum there are some players it wouldn’t feel terrible for.
And I can see your frustration, but it’s not that I’m missing what I’m saying. You stated it quite correctly. I believe there is a contingent of players that would be happy with getting the legion playstyle loop back even if it meant having different abilities.
Also, if you’re resigned to them removing void form altogether for the sake of making the current design of shadow work better (because I agree it definitely would), then why would it be an issue to make a version in a different spec that you don’t like?
Because this is accepting the thing that I enjoyed is never coming back.
At this point I don’t personally care what shadow is or isn’t, I just want a coherent well built spec. But were Voidform / Void priest to be made reality, and that NOT be the gameplay of Legion and BFA Shadow, that would be a travesty.
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Ellipsis already answered, and while my personal feelings are very similar I’d also add that we already have an example of what happens when Blizzard takes the aesthetic from one spec and gives it to another one in the form of metamorphosis. Nobody that played demonology and liked metamorphosis gameplay cares that it was always a demon hunter ability or that it is aesthetically still in the game or that the modern version of demonology is very aesthetically unique and cool.
They care about how something they were invested in was taken from them and given to somebody else. Completely changing voidform and making it a completely new spec is doing exactly that.