What is Shadow?

Classes Priest
1

Is shadow still a priest or is at just a void mage at this point? I tried it and it does not seem to have any religious (or cultist) flavor to its spells. What makes a shadow priest a priest?

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2

Pretty sure shadow is all old god worship now, what with the void tentacles and all.

Just macro your spells to yell “Ia! Ia! C’thulhu Fthagn!”

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3

SPriest is a Void class now. Straight up Old God worship.

So, they’re still priests. Just priests of darkness, instead of Light. Disc priests have this duality yin yang kinda deal going on.

4

But there is no worship/religious/culty flavor in the class at all. Going by shadow priest lore they don’t worship anything anymore.

The cult that all spriests are members of has no religious figures or ideals other than that of needing to know the light before the shadow and that these forces need be balanced. Other than those we seem to just be a newish type of mage that is learning to harness the void without completely losing ourselves to it. The same could be said with almost any force of magic.

I just want to see more priest flavor back in the class/spec. Dark sermons and rituals. Prayers to the void in same ways that we see characters like tirion or anduin do to harness the light or bless others.

Closest thing we have is shadow words pain/death and those are very light amounts of flavor especially because one of them is a talent and if im honest, the next xpack prepatch is probably going to delete death altogether.

Imagine of all the spells were words of shadow thet the priest weaves into a chant or sermon/prayer to manipulate the void into action.

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5

would be nice to see more, but I think that Night Elves had a division of “Dark Side of the Moon” worship. Forsaken have some sense of worship with the Cult of Forgotten Shadow. And I see Void Elves more as philosopher studying the void vs worshiping it. I think maybe this has to do on what void is vs light. I think with light it is sense of unity, sense of all things together while I argue that the void is about self survival, about consuming all/knowing all.

edit: wanted to add I also wanted to see the void being used in good ways. If the void is about negative emotions, could I as a void elf Spriest consume the negative emotions that others suffer from to relieve them from such agony?

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7

It was better when it was Nathrezim / Vampiric / Mind Magic. We honestly should have all of the spells that a Dreadlord uses. They are not typical demons, and worshipped the Old Gods for ages before Sargeras flipped out.

Carrion Swarm could be recolored a blood red / shadow color and serve as a “Cone” oriented spell for Shadow Priests to apply their Shadow Word: Pain to multiple enemies quickly. Then Dark Void could be replaced with a more meaningful talent.

Sleep would be a great utility spell if it was a Talent, or a replacement to Mind Control. Mind Control honestly ties Priests up and has very little use, aside from the fun you can have in Eye of the Storm.

Vampiric Aura would be an amazing spell. We have Vampiric Embrace and Touch. This could be a spell that was always on like a Paladin Aura, but had a ‘activation’ that buffed it to Vampiric Embrace levels and then turned it off till the CD was up.

Inferno is a bust as that’s firmly a Warlock spell. But why not give the Priest the ability to summon a Faceless, or some Void Tendrils? Sheesh there’s so many things Priest ‘should’ be able to do, but can’t because the Mage lead is too busy making sure we’re always subpar, while they rain Glyphs down on their class.

Also here’s the obligatory:

#ShadowWordDeathBaseline
#RemoveVoidform

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8

Spriests dont worship the old gods or the void. They just believe in a balance between the primordial light and void. Thats what the Cult of Forgotten Shadows believes in and in legion all ally and horde spriests are a part of the cult.

Besides that it would be nice if you could talent toward one of the flavors of the spec. (Psychic/Vampire/Void) That is why I think Spriest should be its own class. At least if we arent gonna do anything priesty.

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9

Which doesn’t even make sense anymore, because if Void and Light magic touch each other, it makes an explosion.

10

Would make sense if disc was dps. EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE.

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11

I think it’s meant to be holy / shadow when it comes to disc. unless it’s stated that they use void somewhere. Because when you look at the description for shadow it states “Uses sinister Shadow magic and terrifying Void magic to eradicate enemies.” Which would mean the two aren’t the same. So a disc priest doesn’t have to worry about blowing themselves up!

12

Its a bad description, shadow is the laymans term for void as the greater void was a previously unknown concept.

Think of it as people saw the a spark flicker into a flame on a dry leaf (shadow) and think that this is the extent of fire and then find out the firelands (void) exist.

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13

Yeah that makes sense, shadow would be a lesser version of void. Sorry if it came off as me saying they’re completely different. Wasn’t what I was going for, also doesn’t help that I had just woken up lol. But you explained it perfectly.

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14

I’ll go with what I, and others, have stated in the past; that Void and Shadow could be separated into two different specs allowing people that like the features of either to keep it. Probably won’t happen though, unless they go 4 specs for every class.

15

If they go with an expansion that reinvigorates old zones it would make sense that they could split spriest into its own class while giving priest the much demanded holy dps spec. Call the new spriest cultist or apostate.

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16

I’ve always seen it as a sort of “sorcerer” like from fire emblem. Or an upgraded “dark mage”.

I believe most players who’ve played the class preferred it from when before it had a voidform.

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17

I think it better represented the void better before voidform. In order for void to manifest in our reality it has to consume matter/energy. So having an ability like devouring plague that would infect your enemy with the void causing it to consume their lifeforce is very lore friendly minus the ‘plague’ part. Plagues, by definition, spread rapidly and devouring plague didnt spread at all but that is a simple text change. If they kept it around as a dot that having it on enemies passively built a resource (void/shadow orbs) to be spent on other abilities, I think it could be fun and make it seem less similar to unstable affliction and how it works now.

If they did revert the changes I would love to keep void torrent and void eruptions animations. They are some of my favorite in the game.

18

Shadow priests are cultists now. I hate it. I miss the implications of vampirism and the feeling of subtlety to the spec.

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It’s a dead spec come 8.3.

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I mean, shadow priests have always been taboo among the church of the light and in dalaran so tbey have always been cultists. ‘Cult of Forgotten Shadows’ is the group name for a reason. Vampirism is still there in a way. You drain enemies of lifeforce rather than blood.

21

I didn’t know that my ex GF was a playable spec.

1 Like