I’ve been playing pretty much exclusively shadow since Ulduar, with a bit of healing here and there, and this is honestly one of the better iterations of shadow (numbers aside) I’ve seen. For reference I think BRF/HFC was my favorite with the swapping between mind spike and auspicious spirits builds. I have 3 priests at the moment, a main and 2 profession alts, all shadow and all with varying degrees of gear, and none of them feel clunky or bad.
Spec for reference (with mind games in the other tree) :
BIQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA4AkD04AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAwBWgDcgDsgyBcAWQRbBH4AHwBOQ5AHgEBpRSSiECSQIFpFSCA
I understand this is completely subjective and I am definitely a voidform hater, but nothing feels particularly clunky for me right now. AoE feels fine, I don’t feel like I’m fishing for procs for long, if at all, and all of the buttons work well together. Choosing what spells to cast is simple priority like shadow has always had.
What feels bad for you specifically? It’s not perfect but I really enjoy this one.
Mind Sear needs the insanity cost reduced by 50%
5 Likes
There’s really two main things that jump out at me.
1: Over reliance on shadow crash for any sort of AoE damage. This is less of a problem until you start doing higher mythic+ dungeons where tanks are often combining and chaining pulls to save time, at which point it doesn’t cut it at all to be so constrained.
2: The sheer number of buttons in the optimal single target rotation that have 30-60 second colldowns. Mindgames, dark ascension, mindbender, void torrent (In some builds), soon to be halo, shadow crash and arguably even shadow word: death in its current state.
There’s also just the stuff that was commented on throughout beta and still hasn’t been fixed or addressed. Voidform is still bugged and receiving half value from ancient madness, the top of the tree is still overly bloated with utility compared to other classes, and the tree itself has talent points that may as well not exist as they provide almost zero value in any circumstance. The idol talents feel like random add ons that don’t define or influence your playstyle at all.
13 Likes
My examples would be too long winded and would need to break down each of the overlapping, and inconsistent “meta” specs. I’ll try to go into it but I will say, maybe you should try other class specs and I think you’ll start to see where shadow falls short in.
To sum it up you’re pushing 2x or 3x the buttons for 1/2 the damage of another class.
You ever just feel like you shadow crashed the perfectly grouped pack, getting some lucky procs, and hitting that big ol mind sear. You you get mind bender out and you’re smackin em with them dirty mind blast and SW:D. You’re thinking like oh yeah buddy psychic link going to be doing work here too. Then you check the meters and you’re dead last below the tank.
You ever get that perfect 3 tentacle proc but its on a 2-3 pack pull. The big juicy 8 pack comes and no tentacles in sight.
You ever take Mind flay insanity. And you’re pumping that ST boss, you lined up all of your 1 minute cooldown with that helpful PI on the rogue. You’re cycling that Devouring plague into mind flay hitting the perfect procs on mind spike and mind blast to get some juicy instant cast chains. You’re prioritizing coalescing shadows to get them juicy numbers and pump those dots. You’re not forgetting to press void bolt. Then you look at the DPS chart and you’re dead last, and the rogue is getting all the chicks.
You ever shadow crash that 12 pack mob but the tank kept moving so you only dotted 5 of them, now you’re dotting up the last of them so you can start pumping. You finally get it all set up for your big D damage but every other class has already completely destroyed the pack and you’re left looking like a fool with your silly DPS, but don’t think about it now the next pack is coming and you gotta pretend you can pump. But fear not, you have 100 insansity from last fail pull. So you hit em with the cheesy mind sear to get things rolling. You’re just hoping shadow crash is going to up soon. You’re biding your time. Should you A: DoT all mobs and try the ramp. B: Mind bender for some cheeky AoE off Mind blast and SW:D. Doesn’t matter pack is dead, you get no chicks.
9 Likes
Too.many buttons. And for aoe you have to stand still …which in this season seems like it was blizzard main goal to not let players do.
2 Likes
I’ll add to these points with how some procs literally get wasted without use. Mind Devourer, Sear, here comes a swirly at your feet gotta move. Grats. You started a channeled Devourer Sear and had to move. Can’t get it back. Same thing of you spec into Flay Insanity. Use the proc, immediately have to move.
Blast proccing in the middle of a cast and consuming the proc when you finish casting so you lose the instant.
The constant need to stop channeling a filler right when you start because of a better proc or ride it out and sacrifice DPS.
C’Thun tentacles being so random and moving through keys with trash packs always on the burn and move you out-range them when they spawn and they are useless on the next pack.
Babysit buttons like Mindgames which are virtually useless for the utility but do good enough damage you just have to babysit the button and use it.
Things like this make the spec clunky and unfun to lose procs, out-range your procs, constantly interrupting one thing for another. It’s not very smooth.
I fear with giving things like Halo/Star, Mindgames, etc insanity generation they will become more important in the already bloated and messy rotation.
Very bad move to give these things Insanity gen. Was hoping they’d nerf Mindgames damage something fierce so I can remove one button I need to babysit from the rotation but nope. Now it’s going to get more convoluted.
4 Likes
I kind of wish Mind Sear had a fixed duration for the channel, but did more damage during that channel based on how much insanity you spend. So a minimum of 50 insanity with a 1.5s channel, and anything more just deals additional damage. Makes it easier to deal with all of the swirlies that force us to constantly stop our Mind Sear cast.
This is basicaly a tl;dr of dragonflight m+ design. It is sooo noticeable on poorly designed class like shadow.
6 Likes
Ill try to be as concise as i can (yes i cut a lotout)
AOE:
Either shadow crash works and its great or it doesnt and its horrible.
The gameplay loop of shadow crash > mind blast > mind sear actually feels really good, but its completely screwed up when shadow crash whiffs or isnt available. The rotation degenerates into VT>VT>VT>VT>VT>VT before getting into anything else, which isnt fun and is a core issue with the gameplay that isnt fixable with balance changes.
Single target:
Shadows single target is fleshed out baseline with 6 rotational abilities for single target (MB,MF,DP,SW:P,SW:D,VT), we get misery which effectively eliminates SW:P and then we get shadow crash which effectively eliminates VT and SW:P, which creates weird cases where we have completely undervalued keybinds that are still required because of aoe worst case scenarios (which are actually fairly common).
I personally dont like having SC in my single target rotation as it really doesnt add to the rotation other than replace an existing skill.
Then we have junk like mind spike which adds a proc or works as a filler. Personally i dont see the point in it since we can already talent into THREE other procs that increase the value of our existing keybinds and dont bloat our rotation with more buttons, and we were never really begging for a secondary filler since we already had a fleshed out core rotation.
Then there are the 2 abilities we pick up in the class tree that dont interact with our kit in meaningful ways but are forced into it (mind games and halo/divine star) I dont like the gameplay they add (or dont)
Then there is dark ascension which you will always stack with mind bender which effectively translates into your CD taking 2 GCDs before getting going. It really wasnt worth bringing back mechanically, the only value it brings is pretty wings, id be happy to see it gone.
I wont get too deep into problems with the tree but one thing i want to bring up is the lack of kit customization. We really only get to pick our CD and whether we add mind spike to our rotation or not. I would like to see a tree where we can pick what buttons we want and dont want, turn actives into passives, make abilities optional and have more control over what we do. I dont want to remove the option for 14 button rotations but id like the option of dropping things i dont like. The dragonflight talent system has so much potential to be the ‘best of the best’ but its just a mish mash of everything haphazardly jumbled together.
TLDR: dot applicaiton in aoe is jank, single target is bloated.
7 Likes
Shadow Crash needs to have cooldown reduced by haste or something. Even open world farming its kinda sad that we just…STOP because we lack the effective AOE setup consistently as our kill speed increases. This goes for M+ also and is just going to be worse for people that get into it.
Like a lot said, the button numbers. So many DPS seem to be able to roll like 3-4 buttons overall whereas we’re often managing multiple ones to do similar effectiveness along with watching multiple shortish cooldowns at the same time while still having a lot of similar issues we’ve always had (like AOE issues and setup time)
1 Like
I think my main complaint is shadow crash. Give us 2 charges and a 20 second CD. I think that would help a lot.
It’s a great ability as it is, we just need it more consistently. It’s such a core piece of our AoE toolkit, it can’t continue as is.
2 Likes
The same problem seems to exist probably over the last decade. GCDs are friggen weird on Spriest. At any one point, you could have 2-4 buttons that need attention, but need to fully consume 2-4 GCDs to expend them. It may be a product of the instant cast nature, which is nice, but the biproduct is very much a definitive “clunkiness” in just doing damage as usual.
1 Like
Two charges feels like it would be a bit much for the damage it actually does. Think leaving as is but just make cooldown reduce with haste would allow as gear improved the cooldown would come down. So as you do bigger content, you naturally can keep up a bit better via faster cooldown on it while not allowing Double Crashing for raw damage from the DD aspect.
Two charges actually doesn’t affect damage much at all.
It does for the one pull you have both, but really all adding a charge does to a spell over a long encounter is add 1 use and remove 1 gcd from the cooldown. The biggest benefit is just flexibility by adding that extra 30 seconds of float.
Reducing the cd has a much bigger effect overall.
1 Like
If the damage needs to be adjusted for the sake of balance, so be it. I’m just thinking about ways to improve such a key part of our spec. Its long CD, it’s a projectile, and it’s targeted are all things that complicate the spell.
An extra charge would just make the skill less punishing when something doesn’t go quite right. A miss, unexpected mobs, and so on.
1 Like
Honestly, they should just change Dark Void to apply both dots as well (also reduce cooldown by haste) and then theres be better options. One that dots and does some burst (Crash) and one that will apply around a target. Right now Dark Void just kinda…sucks comparatively since it only applies Pain but it would literally solve the ground targetted and projectile aspect at the cost of upfront damage.
3 Likes
I think that’s a great idea.
No joke the game waits for me to start using Sear. Every time. I’m like BRUH.
1 Like