Shadow is riddled with issues all over the place. To name some off the top of my head…
- Conflicting spells/buttons
- Mind Flay / Mind Spike needs to be figured out and a clear identity needs to be established.
- Mindgames lost its place and should just become a utility cooldown rather than DPS.
- Mind Flay / Void Torrent compete for similar type of ability.
- Consistent AOE is nonexistent with only Psychic Link spreading single target damage. Mind Sear needs to return as choice with Psychic Link.
- Voidform / Dark Ascension need clear identity/ Purpose and talents/spells to support each. Should be Periodic and Non- periodic damage based cooldowns.
- Capstone Idol talents are forgettable and sometimes ignored outright like Idol of Y’Shaarj but other Idols need to be reworked to be more reliable and a clear purpose / build leaning established.
- Power Infusion needs to be reworked as the PI tax is real and its use is frustrating to deal with.
- Mobility is awful and borderline nonexistent with no displacement ability at all and rely on others for mobility entirely.
- Class tree capstone talents are weak or borderline useless pending the spec you are.
- Dot Spread with Shadowcrash is god awful. The spell itself in shooting a slow moving projectile to a targeted area that is easily missable just torpedos the entire spec into the ground since AOE is incredibly reliant on it.
- Mastery based on having each dot spell (3) on the target to unlock full potential is easily prevented in PvP with disease and magic dispels nullifying most of the power in shadows damage potential.
- Dispel protection is nearly nonexistent.
- Major cooldowns requiring cast time on the least mobile class when is prone to easily being locked down and prevents any damage ramping up from starting.
- Most spells require cast time and access to instant cast spells is few and far between which opens for more easily being shut down.
Lots of issues overall but Shadow has a thematic and gameplay style identity crisis in which so many sources of themes that compete to be realized and as such a mix of abilities that compete with each other to do similar things which overall leads to being directionless and increased ability bloat or forgettable interactions that exist in both class and spec trees.
Yes shadow has been in dire straights ever since it’s Legion abomination rework and has suffered ever since as it continues to stay in that shadow of a rework.
But the reasoning for such a sloppy fix each time it’s touched is because the dedicated developer working on Shadow has left during the development process (4 individual developers left since Legion) which causes the rework to be leaderless and directionless and they just slap things together in a bit to duct tape things as best as possible due to time constraints.
Shadow needs a proper amount of design time to really go through and understand what and how should be and how to make the complicated diametrically opposed DPS spec for Priest work in conjunction with its healing brothers since they use completely different toolkit and spell type and thematic and cosmic force power contention.
I go into more depth and detail with ideas of how to solve these issues here…