I didn’t play Shadow pre-Legion, but at least from this preview it looks like you can avoid all Void form abilities and just dump all your insanity into Devouring Plagues.
Gosh, is mind control not going to be usable on enemy players?
To build on this good feedback, I really like that the tree allows you to choose to focus on a Legion-era Voidform build or a Shadowlands build utilizing Devouring Plague and buffing DOTs. I’d like to see one more ability or passive that extends Voidform for anyone that wants that play style.
Unfurling Darkness Looks really fun.
Mind Devourer shouldn’t be tied to Void Torrent.
You currently get this at lvl 15 in shadowlands. You don’t play priest?
Shadowlands Version
- Mind Devourer
Mind Blast deals 5.0% increased damage and has a 10% chance to make your next Devouring Plague cost no insanity.
Dragonflight Version
- Mind Devourer
Mind Blast deals 5/10% increased damage and has a 10/20% chance to make your next Devouring Plague cost no insanity.
Void Torrent ???
Care to elaborate?
You need to take Void Torrent first, but I misread Void Torrent. Thought you needed to be in Voidform. Thanks for checking me.
I’ve never taken it.
Honestly, Void Torrent imo SHOULD require Voidform. But obviously the placement of the Void Torrent talent wouldn’t fit that requirement.
The placement/paths of the Shadow tree needs serious addressment at the bare minimum. But I think it needs to go even further and actually clearly show various playstyle path possibilities.
As I have outlined and provided a visual representation in my earlier posts, I would think and implore Blizzard to really deliver on a playstyle(s) that is more akin to before the Voidform redesign as many Shadow Priest players like myself have absolute distain for the Voidform mechanic and for me, 2 primary reasons being…
-
Cooldown spec
Turns Shadow into a Cooldown reliant spec in a world where its difficult to make use of it with all the crowd control abilities all the classes have in which we have nearly ZERO ways to reliably pull off the cooldowns due to our lack of kiting / rooting / chain cc in order to give us that window needed. -
Keybinding mess
Voidbolt being the most clunky spell ever in that you can only use it (primarily) inside Voidform and while your in Voidform, you want to use it as much as possible and thus becomes a smash the button spam. Whereas outside Voidform, its a dead button and thus never touched… or rarely touched if you pick up the Void touched talent. That makes keybinding so frustrating as you want a quick and easy keybind for 1/2 the time playing and then avoid pressing it the other half… so clunky it just both really irritates me and infuriates me as we just don’t need this level of complexity in keybind assignments let alone spec design when it runs counter to what you actually face when either dealing with mobs cc or just punching you in the face because we cant use something like frost nova to get all these casted times off or in pvp where our defensives is designed to just getting punched in the face and withstanding it long enough to get a small window for a cast or 2 before resuming getting punched in the face again followed by chain interrupts and other cc.
Not to mention Void Torrent in its current form is just a complete mess/waste. Not only is it in a direct path to get to the bottom section talents, but its practically useless as it doesn’t synergize with Voidform in making it last longer (Though that’s probably because its intentional in order to work without Voidform, which is why I think it should require Voidform). Its just a Mind Flay on a cooldown that generates some insanity… Meaning yet another keybind for something that cant be used often and once its used it both roots you and makes your vulnerable to interrupt / stun / knockback effects for what seems to be little damage and some insanity gain… like what even are they thinking?
Edit:
I think it would be an interesting mechanic where if you pick Void Torrent as a talent, it then becomes active ONLY during Voidform and it turns your Devouring Plague into Void Torrent just like how Void Eruption turns into Void Bolt. Then during Voidform, your insanity “Spender” would be Void Torrent and it can both do damage and increase the duration of Voidform. Then I also think Voidbolt should be an insanity spender and its cooldown reduced to 1 sec.
When increasing Voidform duration, it can be contingent on something like adds 1 sec for each Damage over Time effect on target for each successful second (tick) of Void Torrent damage. Also you can reduce the cooldown of Void Torrent by x amount for each Void Bolt cast. Lots of interesting ways they can take these interactions.
This would both reduce button / keybind bloat and grant those everlasting Voidform folks a way to extend Voidform.
I just want to add the following comparisons between the released trees.
a) Over the 20 point line we have:
-
Death Knight class has by spec:
Blood - 16 points with 12 nodes
Frost - 14 points with 10 nodes
Unholy - 14 points with 10 nodes -
Druid class has by spec:
Boomkin - 18 points with 14 nodes
Feral - 17 points with 13 nodes
Guardian - 12 points with 12 nodes
Restoration - 15 points with 15 nodes -
Priest class has by spec:
Discipline - 19 points with 15 nodes
Holy - 19 points with 13 nodes
Shadow - 22 points with 12 nodes
I mean, just look at the discrepancy there, the priest ones are very heavy on the last portion of the trees, below the 20 point line.
As such below the 20 point line there are a possible 11 points to spend, if you compare:
- Unholy DK he can get 11 points out of max 14 versus Shadow Priest that can get 11 out of 22
For Unholy DK you can grab 74% of the bottom part of the tree with 11 points to spend.
For Shadow Priest you can grab 50% of the bottom part of the tree with 11 points to spend.
That’s a difference of almost 50% more ability to spend in the lower part of the tree.
If you look at the lower parts there are:
Shadow Priest
- First part of the tree - 15 points
- Second part of the tree - 18 points
- Last part of the tree - 22 points
Total points max: 55 points
Unholy DK
- First part of the tree - 13 points
- Second part of the tree - 19 points
- Last part of the tree - 14 points
Total points max: 46 points
So either Unholy DK and the other trees need to gain some weight, or Priests need to lose some.
Because as it stands, the Priest trees have more to grab sure, but on the bottom part of the tree, they’re more heavy on points, leaving players severely gated on what they can get versus DK’s or Druids.
Unholy DK 46 points tree with 30 to spend = can grab 65% of their points
Shadow Priest 55 points tree with 30 to spend = can grab 54% of their points
5 Likes
rogue master race.
Here is a Blood or “Vampiric” themed ability idea.
Not sure the best place to exist, but leaning towards a PvP talent.
-
Exsanguinate
Instant cast
2 min cooldown
You do shadow damage that is proportional to your current missing health. You heal for 50% of the damage done. The damage done cannot exceed your current missing health percentage.
Context:
Inspiration from the Flagellant character from The Darkest Dungeon.
This ability is deadly to your enemy when your low health, but practically worthless when your max health.
So it’s only useful when your already near death. It’s a punishment when getting trained on.
Considering the trend break of having only 1 talent option to start with, with the Specialization talent tree as seen by the Outlaw and Subtlety Talent trees having 2/3 starting options respectively.
I have since modified my own “altered” version of the Blizzard Shadow Priest Talent tree mixed with my own ideas that I have mentioned in my earlier posts and gave it 2 ability starting options instead of 1.
This I think is more “failsafe” in order to be a lot more difficult to accidently “skip” required talents while still providing freedom and flexibility on the choices and path you choose to take.
2 Talent starting choice Shadow Priest Talent tree version (Altered from Blizzard with my own take / flavor)
Additional notes:
Something I didn’t really bring up before but want to address now is the new Idol talents Blizzard added to the Shadow Priest talent tree.
I can see the 2 Idol choice talents being mathed out and 1 or maybe 2 options might be picked and the rest are essentially just dead talents. This is even more worrying because for the most part, the WOW factor people are paying attention to on the Shadow Priest Talent tree is without a doubt the Idol talents. But the fact that atm you can only pick 1 and its (aside from the Shadowfiend trigger one) proc based. Meaning you don’t really have control over what’s happening. Personally, I want full control over what happens when I play. Random procs is what we are trying to get away from. So the fact that they are disguised as “Shadow Priest Talents” because they are Old God / Void related should give us pause are really look at the tree WITHOUT the Idols and judge it as a whole in that context. I myself find it quite lacking when viewed through that lens.
In addition, I am very concerned that unless massive changes happen to the tree to both reorganize the talents in a more clear and direct path in order to offer clear playstyle differences that go beyond just “different types of procs” that the math will come in and indicate X proc talents beat the rest causing a lot of dead talents
Voidform playstyle
- Hungering Void
- Surrender to Madness
This is why in my “altered” version of the tree, I decided to put all 4 of the idols into its own talent. The “balance” for my version is that these “effects” can only happen during the Voidform window and maybe each effect can only happen once per Voidform. This will cause the Voidform to be really powerful.
In my opinion, I think it will be a lot cooler to see all the Idol spells going off and since you can always have them (only during Voidform) then Blizzard can balance around that fact. Otherwise to consider balancing around some builds with different Idols along with other different talents taken will both cause more balancing issues and overall be less fun for the player.
Classic Shadow Priest Playstyle
- Clarity of Power
- Auspicious Spirits
- Dark Archangel
To balance the Voidform playstyle with the others, the others will just have a more consistent/even playstyle and less hills/valleys. So there valleys will be higher than Voidforms valleys and there hills will be lower than Voidforms hills.
Am I crazy or are rogues the only class that doesn’t have to spend points on basic class abilities? And they don’t have to talent an interrupt either like everyone else?
@Sidis the point requirements to get down to the next level pretty much ensure most builds will be able to take an interrupt. A lot of stuff will be unpruned in that u’ll just need to spend points - a lot of people won’t use all the early talents they pick, they will be able to use the interupts tho. Is it possible to build a druid without some? Ya, is it easy no. Will it happen? I hope so, for some content you really don’t need it. Should healers be interrupting??? Not really lol. I do, when I can, it’s a much lower priority for me tho, and usually I can’t because I have more important things to do. So other classes do it. I reckon on DPS classes the interrupts will be closer to the top and almost mandatory anyway.
It’s not a big deal if someone is that toxic they will be mad if they don’t get PI u really don’t want them on ur raid team anyway — I hope blizzard ignore most of the players. Players have no idea what they want or what would be fun lol. Or even how to just have fun anymore haha.
I like the priest trees. Are they perfect? No. They do have me a little excited in their current form to try out. No glaring issues for me.
Taliesan did a good vid on his TV channel about them. I think they are good and they are a fine example of what all the trees should look like.
Sadly the problem with kids these days and the state of the world… I hope the devs stick to their guns anyway because this game is good if you ignore the dumb drama and don’t have a toxic mentality yourself. — that’s not to praise shadowlands covenants, that was a horrible mistake (which is fine now after a few bandaids). Just to say that there are aspects of this game the devs should be hardline on. You cannot cater to or fix the meta FOMO players they live in their own little world, you shouldn’t be trying to either let them be. You just have to pretend they aren’t there or let them go on their super long winded rants about having to take a certain talent and only fix really broken stuff like 6million damage kill shots in pvp.
I’ve never had an issue with PI everyone in my runs is fine with its allocation, if PI is a guild/raid breaker don’t have priests in the run, is it just a *my DPS isn’t the top DPS because other DPS got PI? I thought the main aim was to down bosses and get some loot. Can anyone explain why PI is a raid breaker? is it ego?
Only asking as I’ve never come across this
The design philosophy is inconsistent. Every other class so far has to put some points into obtaining some basic abilities for their spec while also allocating a point for an interrupt.
Rogues on the other hand get sinister strike, backstab, ambush eviscerate, and kick baseline. That’s fine it’s just inconsistent.
That’s cuz rogues. They sorta been that way since wotlk. Loads of stuff. I remember keeping clothies completely locked down in pvp. It’s not possible to take that away from a rogue.
Class Tree and by extension, Class Identity Crisis
I’ve been mulling over the issue with the Priest talents compared to the other classes and I’d like to share what I believe is a core driving wedge within the class identity which affects the theme and in doing so, effects the abilities and there interaction as a whole.
It is my belief for a while now and in seeing how the Priest Class talent tree has been handled that the Priest class has a very glaring identity crisis. It doesn’t know what it wants to be.
The Priest class is divided into 3 specializations…
- Holy
- Discipline
- Shadow
Holy
- Holy imo is a mix between Angelic (Prayer/praying) type of abilities and Narru gifts and themes.
- Holy represents the light side.
Discipline
- Discipline is a mix of inner strength of will and tapping into the dark side.
- Discipline represents the balance and therefore walks between the light and dark side.
Shadow
- Shadow is a mix of imposing your will onto others weak minds with our (mind magic) and taking life essence from enemies (vampirism) and only recently has Void magic with old god influence been introduced and thus I think the cause of many problems.
- Shadow represents the embracing of the dark side and going full on void… or does it?
Currently shadow is being pushed heavily into the Old God theme wrapped around the “void” shell. But I would argue that is not thematically accurate.
Identity History
- Naaru
- From the inception of the Naaru in The Burning Crusade expansion, we learned that they can transform into a type of “Void” version of themselves.
- We see further evidence of this in Warlords of Draenor expansion (Dark Star event) and once again in Legion (Priest order hall campaign).
- Yet in Legion the Shadow Priest got a complete redesign that focused on void and more particularly, Old Gods.
Cosmic Forces Chart
But if you look at the wow cosmic forces chart, you can see that the Holy and Void are opposites.
Does this mean that the Void version of a Naaru jumps across the other side of the cosmic forces chart? It doesn’t appear that way as we have been shown that it’s more of a lifecycle that can go back and forth.
The point being, if Shadow is supposed to be at a complete opposite side of the cosmic forces chart to Holy, then that explains why currently the 2 specializations really have little in common and this manifests itself into the current Class tree. When you compare the other class trees, they make a lot more sense as they have a whole slew of shared abilities.
However, if the Void version of the Naaru is still on the light side of the cosmic forces chart as it’s just in a life/death phase of itself, then I think that should reflect in the class and by extension Shadow itself.
If Holy is inspired/impacted by angelic and Naaru themes, then shadow should have similar themes but only the dark side.
However Void or rather “Void Lords” as depicted on the cosmic forces chart and Old God themes have no connection to Holy or Discipline.
- Cult of Forgotten Shadows Identity
Discipline’s “Shadow” themed abilities and I would argue the lore behind them don’t really point at Void Lords or Old God roots. Instead they more closely relate back to the cult of the forgotten shadow
Balance between Light and Shadow
While the undead generally hate users of the Holy Light, are hurt by it, and have learned how to use the Shadow, they also preach that there must be a balance between Light and Shadow, and that they must learn the Light as well, but never forget they were born from the Shadow.
Where as Shadow could more relate to this excerpt…
The cult preaches balance, mandating that shadow priests must never forget the dangers of falling too deep into the dark energies they manipulate, for it is often too hard to find one’s way back to the Shadow from the deep reaches of the darkness.
- Modern era Identity
So I shared all that in order to bring attention to the mess that is the current priest talents which I think is a conflict of an identity crisis that results in the specializations fighting each other instead of having common ground like the other classes have to draw upon.
We are Priests, not Occultists. If Void Lord / Old God type of theme needs to be present in Shadow, it should only exist in a small form, not be the sole theme of the specialization. At least from both a lore perspective and a gameplay perspective when we are supposed to share similarities with the rest of our class specializations.
In a way it can work if we think about each spec having 2 primary sides (themes) that cross over to one another.
- Holy
- Angelic / Naaru
- Inner will / inner strength
- Discipline
- Inner will / inner strength
- Shadow / dark side of Naaru / Holy
- Shadow
- Shadow / dark side of Naaru / Holy
- Void magic
Ideas and things to consider
Take our past abilities (now PvP talents)
- Archangel
- Dark Archangel
These are both similar in theme that can work in the class tree. Even as a choice talent between the 2. 1 for healing and mana regen and the other for damage and haste buff.
Or consider this, most of the abilities we gained throughout various expansions have found there way as talents. Most of those talents have been segregated in one way or another as follows…
- Removed
- Inner Will
- Mind Spike
- Class tree
- Prayer of Mending
- Shadow Word: Death
- Shadow Fiend
- Mass Dispel
- Leap of Faith
- Holy Tree
- Binding Heal
- Symbol of Hope
- Divine Hymm
- Discipline Tree
- N/A
- Shadow Tree
- Mind Sear
Examples of abilities that can be brought back as class abilities.
-
Mind Spike
I would at least say we can bring back Mind Spike as a class ability and just like Shadow has access to Smite as a class ability yet will most likely never use, Holy can have access to Mind Spike yet might not ever use. But both Discipline and Shadow can incorporate that ability and how it interacts with dots and Mind Blast (3 stacks of 30% critical chance to Mind Blast on target) into talents contained within their specializations talent trees. This can give the class more on demand burst ability and in Shadows case, we can get Surge of Darkness & Clarity of Power In order to get back that type of build/play style we had access to in WoD.
In addition, further class and specialization talents can make use of this ability and empower/modify it to have additional interactions with a type of play style this type of ability can offer. -
Mind Sear
I can also see the case for moving Mind Sear into the Class tree as well which opens for similar treatment that Mind Spike could add in that each spec can have its own custom uses it can bring to the table in altering or enhancing Mind Sear… one example is using Mind Sear in a way that instead of ticking damage… it can do healing ticks. Or apply renews to all friendly targets or have a cap on it. Those can be Holy tree talents. Discipline can have a choice talent that allows Mind Sear to be a DPS ability but add some synergy to its other talents or it can be a damage mitigation ability for example, reduces damage done by targets affected by x% while channeling or reduce damage taken by x% if used like Holy’s version when affecting friendly targets.
The result is that we can start building similarities back into the class again quite easily if the class didn’t have this conflicting wedge of thematic undertones.
To conclude:
I fear that this new talent system is both causing and will continue to cause problems moving forward as long as we have this identity crisis within the specializations where in the case of Shadow, the spec has become very “alien” to its brothers which I think current talent tree evidence indicates that the design has ran itself into a corner and can’t come up with logical ideas that make sense from both a lore and a gameplay perspective while being meaningful and remaining faithful to the class roots.
This is I think why the talents in the class tree really don’t offer much choice and instead just provides an illusion of choice.
Shadow Identity
One thing that comes to mind that is both evident in our current abilities and can be in our theme is the aspect of Death or more specifically, the angel of death… or rather the Archangel of Death.
This is when I think of Malthael from Diablo and his becoming the Archangel of Death. Still an Angel, but using death magic. I think this is what the shadow priest identity / theme should aspire to. This will then make sense from an ability and lore perspective to have similarities between each spec.
3 Likes
I was going to analyze all the spec trees, but seemed like a daunting task. I’ve analyzed the class trees so far, and the only consistent thing I’ve noted so far is that they all have about 58-60 points available.
I honestly think with how different they are, Blizz told them they had free reign to mess with the talents, because Blizz was going to post them as previews and gage which the community liked the most. The design rules are not consistent at all.
The only problem is that the bias is real. Rogues are happy, because it has 0 opportunity costs for their utility and damage buffs, as well as changes that will ensure rogue is stacked over other classes if things aren’t changed before live.
Meanwhile, poor shadow priest (and priest in general) has way too many points in the bottom section of their spec tree and have to choose between DR/raid utility and throughput.
6 Likes
Again rogues have always had utility baseline that other classes didn’t get until later. — screaming that you need as much baseline utility as a rogue is disengenuious and munchkin like — should some content maybe require a rogue??? sure – heriosm, hey??? it’s not wrong to build comps with one guy doing a lot of interupts and this focus on every class doing numbers AND interupts needs to go the way of the dinosaur - one interupt or mild cc is enough let the shadowpriest take mind bomb for those tough packs and use it judiciously x a rogue in party. the class trees as they are now are a step in the right direction, especially for priests, I hope they don’t actually change anything or anything to much.
Not to mention – my only beef is I literally have 43 binds including heal/harm macros so thats 4 hotbars worth of screen realistate (some of which are potions ya, but i like to use potions situationally and there should be ROOM for that)… and adding a few more abilities or wacky mechanics to holy is going to give people headaches. 35 useful binds is way more than enough for complexities sake and tracking 15 different cooldowns is already enough.
If anything I hope the trees let us drop some abilities we rarely use or ONLY take sometimes - like MC - which is awesome in pvp and very rarely used anymore for me — and I hope our talents don’t spam our hotbars with abilities when we switch - let us set up a fresh set of bars for each talent spec or something.
My 2c
Keep it simple and sane. Give flexibility to class fantasy – stop trying to replicate specs across the entire class — it’s fine if shadow is totally alian and uses almost none of the holy stuff except maybe situationally rarely.