Void is so good. Give me more tentacles.
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That’s why we need a second dps spec for priests.
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Nah. I actually hate the shadowform aesthetic, would love VF to be 24/7.
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You must have started playing spriest in legion.
I think one of the problems with the Shadow Priest today is that people are somewhat stuck on what it used to be in the past, preventing the class from evolving. Priests are tied to what they worship, which can be anything, and that can make things a bit difficult. Having the Priest centered on something would help a bit with what to do with the class, thematically. And with a good theme, it would be easy to create cohesive gameplay. Personally, I like how the Priest is today, it’s definitely not a perfect class, but it appeals to me. If they separated Shadow (DOT) and Void (burst), the Void side would probably do much better, while the Shadow side would get lost.
I can get that.
I also liked more the only shadow stuff with no Void.
But ppl here saying the theme is not cohesive and doesn’t have an identity is just wrong. The spec overall has a very strong identity and theme in the warcraft class representation.
I don’t dislike the Void stuff tho, TWW visual updates to spriest look quite sick tbh
Where does the vampire stuff fit then?
Vampire stuff? you mean Vampiric touch? So the problem is the name of some spells?
vampire is not a school of magic in warcraft, and shadow priest definitely do not use blood magic.
The spells are called vampiric because of the idea of doing dmg while regenerating hp like how vampires in fantasy and horror culture do the same.
But this is not about being vampires. It’s just how shadow magic works.
You could call the spells John and Emma and it would still be fitting to the class because shadow magic is all about this.
I feel like what you are missing is although your reasons for why certain things fit, make sense, etc to you, that doesn’t mean it does others. You seem to be treating it like a factual conversation rather than opinion.
People bring their opinions from both inside and outside of the game’s own lore to what makes sense as to the theme of a class or spec, similar to how you have referenced vampires outside of WoW.
Let me give another example similar to my barbarian example from earlier. If WoW introduced what they called vampires, and they were short, pleasant humanoids with big hairy feet and nothing to do with undead, blood, etc then yes you could make that argument that in this world’s lore that’s just what vampires are, and that’s ok for people that want to accept that. But others are equally within reason to say those are not vampires.
So it is perfectly valid for you to say light and shadow being accessed by the same person, using psychic based spells, draining energy, summoning tentacles, and blasting people with void energy are all part of a cohesive theme based on WOW’s lore.
But it is also perfectly valid for others to say light, shadow, void, psychic, etc are different themes that shouldn’t all be meshed together and could fulfill multiple very different, independent themes and character fantasies.
Personally I played shadow from cata-WOD and for me it was always a vampiric shadow damage spec. Kind of the opposite of a holy priest. I just feel like all the void could be separated to make another spec
Uhmm…
no
If you don’t like that shadow magic in WoW is about Psychic spells, drain energy, void tentacles, etc etc. Then that’s an opinion and something you don’t like, and that’s fine and totally valid.
Now saying all those stuff is not cohesive and doesn’t have an identity, then that’s just wrong. We’re talking about lore and game design now. It all makes sense and works fine together from a gameplay AND lore perspective.
The original post was about the spec not having an identity, and it totally has one and it makes sense from a gameplay and lore perspective.
If you don’t like it that’s a You problem, not a game design problem.
Just doesn’t seem like you understand the point, so that’s ok. I’ve seen at least two other threads made in the last 24 hours along the same lines of the themes, and countless ones throughout the last 20 years 
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yeah, anyone who thinks the shadow priests of today resemble the shadow priests of yesteryear clearly didn’t play the spec in its earliest iterations. shadow priests originally were themed around, most obviously, gothic horror, mentalism, and the cultures of specific races in azeroth, viz. the forsaken and trolls. later on it became more enmeshed with the old gods and The Void, the which meant swapping out our ravens and violet-turquoise fire for black and purple tentacles. now it’s angry outer space (ffs the voidweaver spell just looks like a slightly tweaked ardenweald vfx). in point of simple fact, it isn’t coherent. the only organic extant thruline is arguably that the void/shadow pertains to the mind, but tbqh that’s just a priest thing in general (the heart/mind distinction which is supposed to correlate to light/void doesn’t really hold up to more than five seconds of scrutiny). it’s a bit disappointing
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