What was your favorite itirration of shadow priest?

Priest was main from July 2006 till Sept 2016, and I played shadow for all of that time.
Although I had a ton of fun pvp’n in vanilla, and being a huge mana battery in TBC, or no mindblast all flay of late wotlk, Cata till the end of Wod, was my fav time playing shadow.

Highlights were
Staff, cunning and T13 4pc fun,
Unerring Vision Halo during ToT was hnnnng,
All the boss spell dodging cheese with Spectral Guise,
Early Mythic HM with CoP min maxing with PWS reflect dmg on fights,
BRF/HFC with a ton of Crit/haste/multistrike as AS cascade, TBH it was peak shadow

Lowlights were
Thousands of mana injectors, so many mana pots
Holy nova doing more dmg than sear at the start of Cata
Not getting a shadow orb for the first 20 seconds of the fight
Being buff and nerfed within 2 days during ToT
Legion shadow overhaul

I’ve tried to come back to raiding on my priest a couple of time but I just don’t enjoy the current playstyle with insanity, made me feel real sad ditching my main after so many years :frowning:

7 Likes

WoD or MoP.

Probably WoD because you had gameplay options with the clarity of power build or the auspicious spirits build.

I miss shadow orbs in all their iterations. Even cataclysm was fun too with the shadow orbs turning your mind blast into a nuke. Also the sound when you generated an orb.

You can get the thaumaturgist’s orb to replicate the spell effect of shadow orbs, but it’s not the same.

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Its not perfect, but the Thaumatergist orb or however its spelled gives it back to you :]

Definitely MoP &WoD. It had a mixture of DoT and Burst damage and it was an absolute beast in pvp if played correctly. It just felt so satisfying to play.

Spectral Guise
Mind Blast Crit Roots
Devouring Plague healing
Good Burst
Mind Spike
Fear Ward
Angelic Feather
Flash Heal
Void Tendrils
Psyfiend Fear
Cascade - Was super fun to use in BGS and watch it bounce across the entire map.

The current shadow design pales in comparison to the glory days of MoP and Wod Shadow. I wish they’d bring that playstyle back.

21 Likes

For me, like most classes, was WotLK.

You had your Spirit and Stam buffs, you had your Vampiric Embrace buff that lasted 30 minutes, it was just all around amazing. Absolutely LOVED it.

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A SPriest after my own heart :sob:

I really wish the OP would correct the spelling in the topic title.

Any pre-legion iteration was better. It was better before Blizzard did their unwanted redesign and forced insanity and voidform on us.

19 Likes

MoP and WoD

Definitely cata was one of the top tier shadow moments for me as well. I have no clue how it played in WoD because i completely skipped that xpac. So at least for me it was Cata > MoP > Wrath > BC. but before Legion Shadow in every xpac i enjoyed more than anything else.

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Lowlight you missed

In the first tier of MoP, Holy spec did more ST than Shadow(i wish i was joking…)

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4 set dragon soul. Popping wings and mind spike mind blast spamming for that burst dps was insane. I was able to beat our mage on tendon damage during heroic spine. Unfortunately, I only got to dps that fight once since I’ve always mained disc.

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MoP was absolutely the most fun: shadow orbs/ravens was neat visually and fun, easy-to-understand, damage mechanics. Mind Spike is still something I miss - just to cut down those last mobs without DoT ticks. It also was visually satisfying: like stabbing shadow blades into their brain.

The current version of Shadow is acceptable. I hate Voidform, but I think the kinks have been smoothed significantly from when BfA started.

So much of what the spec and class is was changed with Voidform; I don’t think I’ll ever like it.

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WoD followed by MoP / Late Cataclysm.

But sadly that was too much fun. I dunno. Sometimes I feel like Blizzard decided we weren’t real people or something, or maybe wanted to force us to heal like they did to Paladins in Classic. Regardless of reason, they just straight up deleted our spec. They then replaced it with the “Madness” spec that uses Voidform and labeled it “Shadow”.

Whoever created Voidform should feel bad. If their hellbent on keeping such a worthless spell to define and intentionally hobble the playstyle of a spec, they should at least make Discipline into a Clarity of Power themed Direct Damage / Holy DPS tree for people who don’t like the new version of “Shadow”, or create a fourth spec for Priests called “Purification” or something.

At least I have my DK for play still, otherwise I’d probably just quit for FFXIV totally.

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End of wrath. Had absolutely class damage, versatile kit, everything was ask just on point

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Cataclysm. Shadow was at its peak (and so were most other specs). I miss it dearly.

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i never played shadow until legion, but i like bfa more than it.

which…i prefer everything about bfa over legion so

if i were to chose between Legion and BfA i would be kinda mixed. I like BfA version in dungeons more but Legion version hada bit mroe skill expression in raids.

This. At this point… why can’t we just have, idk, a talent or something that is a passive that ‘calms our minds and gives us mana back, removes void form and gives us a damage % boost’ so we just… go back to the past??? A spell even, heck, and when disabled, you go back to void priest with tentacles and old gods galore. Seperate shadow and void, I’m sure there’s some super simple way it could be done.

Why do people think Voidform is going to stay? It’s a massive design and balance nightmare, and it’s certainly not worth the effort of keeping around considering how many Priest players hate it. Going into detail as to why it sucks would take way, way too long, and people have already explained it better than I could, but it’s absolutely not staying in 9.0. (by that I mean the mechanics of it of course, it’ll probably stay as something completely different like a DPS cooldown or a stance like MoP Meta)

2 Likes