This is a strawman argument. There’s no reason to assume that one or the other is related at all, and just stands up a different argument to discuss.
It honestly doesn’t matter how much you want Shadow Orbs or how much you or others think it’s “the right call.” It doesn’t matter what your experience level with Shadow Priests is or how long you’ve been playing the game or how many people agree with you.
Voidform is not going away. That’s really it. Either accept it, yell into the void, or leave. Throwing temper tantrums is going to accomplish nothing other than make you more frustrated by way of an echo chamber that’ll pat you on the back and assure you that you’re in the right.
Tearing out an existing mechanic and trying to replace it with an entirely new one (Even if ‘new’ in this case, was a previous version) is near impossible unless it was planned far, far in advance (Way before any Alpha launch). That’s really what it boils down to.
To highlight a few key points:
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Shadow Orbs were designed around Shadow’s toolkit at the time. Additionally, shadow orbs were designed around the content at the time.
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The timeframe in which shadow orbs could’ve replaced Voidform is long gone. The WoW team isn’t going to rip out voidform now and replace it with shadow orbs as its’ too late. “But it’s Alpha!” Yes, it is, and that’s too late. Consider that Torghast has been in development for over a year at this point (At least April 2019) and the Alpha is still only testing a fraction of the classes by now.
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Regardless of how you feel about either mechanic, there’s no guarantee that reverting to shadow orbs is going to make you feel any better, because you have literally no idea if shadow orbs would be better balanced for current/future content. You can speculate and assume and theorycraft, but you don’t actually know.
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With regards to other classes/specs being reverted to previous mechanics: Again, those classes are being retooled with those changes in mind, far before any mention of an Alpha. An Alpha isn’t “ground zero”, a substantial amount of work from all sides has already been done in preparation of Alpha. Additionally, those changes (ex: Maelstrom to Mana) isn’t nearly as large a change than completely removing something like voidform.
Voidform is not impossible to balance. I’m sorry, but anyone who makes such a statement has no idea what they’re talking about from a developmental standpoint. Classes and specs aren’t just designed in a couple of hours and thrown into the game with no forethought put into its future state. That’s not how game design works.
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I see. You’re claiming that its a strawman argument because you think that they can somehow make a mechanic (INSANITY) which has low damage up front, and then ramps up and down to eventually be the same (on average) as literally ALMOST ANY OTHER SPEC which starts off with burst damage, then lowers while the cooldowns are recycling, then goes up again when they’re used, and average damage is the same as Shadow.
Shadow’s damage starts off slower, but then ends up averaging about the same after a few minutes. The other specs start off higher, then end up averaging about the same after their cooldowns recycle.
Unless the fight is long enough for the damage to average out, your performance can ONLY be worse (all other things being equal). Insanity, as it exists, locks us into this pattern. There is no strawman here, there is a mechanic that makes our class objectively worse than the others.
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No it’s a strawman argument because instead of discussing the issues with Voidform and Shadow and what we want to see Blizzard look into for Alpha, we now have to discuss a different topic entirely.
Instead of voidform and suggestions, we have to talk about the relation of thematic class identity with class function.
Instead of talking about voidform and suggestions, we have to talk about whether shadow can be the same as any other said class, or even that is SHOULD be the same.
These are strawman arguments. Or at the least, red herrings that don’t really contribute to the conversation atm.
The last part is just pretty much repeating what everyone has already said in this thread. Myself included, to a degree.
What is going to be different about this iteration that they’ll be able to balance it out this time around?
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In case you haven’t noticed, the forums have been absolutely peppered with suggestions about what to do with voidform.
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I can’t speak to that with any degree of certainty because things are in flux seeing how we’re not even in beta.
I have zero horses in this race regarding Shadow. I don’t play Shadow, so whatever happens to Shadow is outside my realm. Shadow could be completely retooled to something that’s neither voidform or shadow orbs and it wouldn’t affect me.
That doesn’t change the fact that voidform isn’t impossible to balance. Is ramp-up too long? Shorten the ramp-up. Is the voidform not impactful? Improve the rotation or haste stack bonuses. Voidform too long because of the shorter ramp-up? Shorten the voidform and make it stronger to compensate. Even at the highest level, you can tweak.
And quite frankly, it doesn’t matter whether Blizzard gets it wrong. That just means they got it wrong, it doesn’t mean that voidform is an impossible-to-balance design.
I hate to break it to you, but a lot more thought goes into classes and specs than you likely realize. What you think of those classes and specs is irrelevant. Specs don’t get made with the intention to only last 1 expansion.
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Well said Tickacktick
I don’t know why they cant see how Shadow plays backwards compared to the rest of the game. That is why it cant be fixed WHILE keeping its identity as a “ramp up” mechanic.
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So after 4 years, this time they will get it right? Even when you consider its only gotten worse from Legion to BFA and worse yet when you see hows its performing on Alpha?
It’s currently a dead spec, it just doesn’t work. Why cant they fix it after 4 years? As you said, many things factor in but 4 years of this crap is not a good track record. Why should it be kept on life support any longer?
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It doesn’t matter how many times they get it wrong, again. I also don’t know how Shadow Priest is doing in terms of PvE compared to other DPS classes. If, for example Shadow Priest is anything but the bottom in M+ or raiding, then your argument holds even less weight because the spec is working by virtue of it not being at the bottom.
You have to separate your feelings of the class from how they actually perform. Can Shadow Priest do the vast majority of content in the game? If they can, then your argument isn’t valid. Mind you, “vast majority” doesn’t mean “Can they do the highest keys and mythic raid”. No class/spec in the game is designed around the hardest content, they’re designed around the content most completeable by the majority of players.
I don’t think that it’s completely broken, my viewpoint is that the current design of voidform puts too much strain on the developers for designing content, gear, abilities, and talents that it becomes too much work for them to fix it each time, and leads to a negative player experience when it does eventually get fixed.
The players don’t like being useful in only one part of content when other classes don’t make that sacrifice. And arguably M+ content is MORE important to be viable in than raid content, since even middle of the road raid dps can still clear all relevant content with a group.
Players don’t enjoy a lack of variety in talents, which is restricted by the exponential scaling design.
And they don’t like being nerfed every content patch and losing power, because that’s just not a good feeling. You worked to have a strong gear and good dps after being weaker, and then as soon as a new raid tier comes out you have to make that climb up all over again.
I don’t think it’s unable to be balanced, I think that the way Blizzard has chosen to “balance” it is a terrible decision. And I think that their refusal to work on the other parts of the class shows they either don’t feel like spending the work required to do so, or can’t because the tinkering each patch is already as much as they have development time for.
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I’m sure they do put a lot of thought into it. They’ve certainly manage to make it a comparable spec in many raid fights. What they don’t seem to have put any thought into is how they are going to make the class worth playing outside of raids. We’ve had mythic+ dungeons for two expansions already. Nothing happening there. You think that STM is going to be the fix for that? I sure don’t.
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It’s certainly not a “dead spec” as much as people like to claim that it is, but it’s definitely not “working” just because it’s not at the bottom. There are definitely issues with the spec. There’s a serious gap in viability and desireability for shadow dps in M+ dungeons in the lower-mid tier mythics. And so only the handful of strong and well geared players pushing M10-M15+ with guildies and premade groups are able to perform. Which means anyone trying to do M5±M9+ for gear (me) can’t get groups outside of getting carried. And since you need to do a LOT of those M+ runs to gear out optimally unless you ate all of the world’s 4-leaf clovers you are going to have a negative play experience.
So there is a serious situation out there affecting players. But it’s not “The sky is falling, end of the world, my character implodes on login” that some people are making it out to be.
Oh God I sincerely hope they aren’t planning to make StM the fix for M+… nothing says “Bring me to M+” like an ability that will LITERALLY kill you am I right?
But wait, I am getting something here. Spitballing an idea.
StM - Instantly activate a voidform at X stacks, and increase insanity generation by 100% for 30/45/60 seconds?? Cast while moving. At the end of the duration you can’t generate insanity for 1 minute. Killing a boss consumes the buff, ending the effect and refunding half of the cooldown. 5min/10min cooldown.
It’s not amazing, but it’s certainly more effective than that garbage they have on alpha.
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First you say we can’t simply say we don’t like how voidform mechanics feel because it’s not an argument and then when someone explains why vodiform is horrible you pretty much say oh shut it won’t change and to add the cherry on top you say this.
then why are you here? why are you here? what do you want?
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Do you want to actually read what I said, or do you want to try to put words in my mouth again. I didn’t “pretty much say” anything. I said what I said.
Why wouldn’t you? I mean, its a freaking easy way to make that timer # move up, 5 seconds each time you push the button. 
umm…hello? can you read?
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Surprisingly, I can. You’ll notice after that cherry-picked statement however, that I explain why it’s not going away. Quote the entire post next time and respond to that so you can properly refute me instead of putting words in my mouth again.
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This is your thread and so far past the first few posts, you’ve done nothing but get angry with people that don’t absolutely agree with you. You intentionally framed your post’s title in a way that excludes other views than yours too. It’s almost as if you just want a soapbox.
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