Warlock had Demonic Fury, MoP/WoD till prepatch used it, literally best Demo Warlock ever so much fun, dancing inbetween forms for the on demand burst… exactly like insanity really.
…having played both I’d say they are nothing like eachother. Except I guess that they both have a bar and a form you can go into. How they play / interact / what their strengths and weaknesses are from that point are completely different.
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Enrage
Becoming Enraged increases your damage done by x%, Haste by 25%, and movement speed by 10% for 4 sec.
- Bloodthirst has a 30% chance to Enrage you.
- Rampage always Enrages you.
Okay.
Its quite a leap to make something like this work for shadow.
- Shadow has to “cast” things and therefore opens up a window of time where you can be knocked back, CC, target becomes immune etc. and thus waste precious “buff up-time” on doing nothing at all.
- Fury, its as short window that you can unload lots of buttons into instantly and those windows have multiple ways of becoming activated via pressing a button and possibly passively activated via incoming damage like it used to in the past from reviving a critical hit?
- It would be difficult to balance something like this for shadow since Void Form grants x buff to your stats and ALL your abilities benefit from that buff so you can just mass dot up targets to unload damage to multiple enemies.
- Fury has to be in melee range and cant “as easily” unload while in this damage buff window to multiple enemies that are spread or have CD’s on its abilities that do said damage.
- It might work if it enhanced specific abilities like Void Bolt and nothing else but then it looses its “fun” aspect as it will just become more annoying and a nuisance to work around.
Conclusion:
I just think this is something that works fine for melee and instance attacks in short windows. But granting a ranged that has to cast spells and can apply to anything in a 40 yrd range will make it OP if similar buffs were applied OR annoying/nuisance to deal with if it was balanced to only abilities that cant be abused like dotting everything up… or dotting everything up then activating the buff and just get free damage buff ticking on all dotted targets for duration.
So it would only work with an ability that cant be spammed as it is restricted via CD or single target like Mind Blast, Void Bolt, Mind Flay.
This is exactly what one of my past ideas was, was to “empower” some abilities instead of x stats while in Void Form.
- Mind Blast: Becomes instant cast and does X more damage.
- Mind Spike: Becomes Void Bolt and does X more damage.
- Shadow Word: Death: Maybe allows for double tapping of it? or reduced CD? or able to use it at higher health % for its extra execute damage mechanic?
- Mind Flay: 100% more damage to target with at least 1 dot on it?
Stuff like that. Make your abilities “meaningful” in Void Form instead of a ramping stat/dmg mechanic that has no cap.
The two “shadowed” priests in the pic make me think they are going to be doing something with shadows of yourself somehow…idk. Hopefully its meaningful change.
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I don’t think people should be reading into the specific image. It’s one they’ve used when talking about shadow before, as have many fan sites (It’s artwork from the WoW TCG so it’s art Bliz own too), and it’s just the top google search when you type shadow priest for a lot of people.
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REMOVE VOID FORM!
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I just googled “shadow Priest” and I am shocked he didn’t use one of the many tentacled images lol.
Like I said in my post, the fact it’s artwork from the WoW TCG and therefor owned by bliz might have made it a better choice. He did the same with the more generic priestly image he posted at the start of Alpha.
I think it was quite funny that he didn’t have beta when they did this interview/made the video and mere days later, he got the beta.
I refuse to think it was a coincidence lol. He should have gotten into the Alpha imo. Not wait till weeks into the beta.
Shows how tuned in blizz is lol.
Ellipsis, do you know if their was a full version of this interview? I know a lot got cut but I did enjoy it and would like to see everything that was cut.
Also,
It sounded like he either didn’t want to remove Void Form or he just thinks its too late for that and didn’t really want to talk about it? I’d like to know what he thinks about it compared to past shadow iterations. Is this something you could answer based on your conversation with him?
We spoke for 3-4 hours. You can see the edits on the clock behind me 
The conversation was focused on the assumption voidform wouldn’t go away. I don’t want to put words in Anboni’s mouth as I can’t remember everything we said, but we both agreed the less relevant VF was for pvp the better, and definitely had fond memories of aspects of previous iterations.
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Ok so to start I just want to thank you for actually engaging and having real arguments. I’m able to be swayed and convinced to your side of thinking if your argument are compelling.
Also, considering a rework is completely off the table, can you at least consider what I’m saying through the Lense of trying to make VF less clunky?
This is a problem every caster has right? Idk how to get around this aside from just never playing a caster spec. Getting knocked back and stuff is lass of a problem for ranged, right? And at least Mind Flay/ SW Pain and Void Bolt/eruption are instant
Currently its only activated by Rampage and there is a 30% chance to activate it with another ability called bloodthirst. It doesn’t activate via incoming damage to my knowledge but I could be wrong. I’m not super familiar with their borrowed power. I don’t think having a second button is a hurdle we can’t jump with number tuning but maybe I’m wrong.
Sorry, I’m missing the difference between this and Enrage. Doesn’t enrage also buff All of a warriors abilities?
So my counter arguments here ate that Warriors have great mobility and Priests have to cast which slows them down a bit.
This seems like a continuation on three which I would like more clarification on please
So I feel like I need an answer to number 3 to respond to this because I think its our fundamental disagreement or misunderstanding. Doesn’t the voidform buff currently buff spriest in all the ways your saying it would be a problem if they were buffed that way? I’m not understanding you here.
Again, thank you for engaging in a dialogue with me
Beta for CE raiders went out in two blocks, we don’t know if it related to when you cleared Nzoth or not. All I know is I got the first block, he got the second one, unlikely to be related to the video.
CE Raiders?
Current Expansion?
Cutting Edge: The name for the group of achievements related to killing a Mythic end of raid boss while it’s current content.
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Cutting edge?
Shadow arguably has a much harder time of it on that front because of how much ramp up we require before DPS becomes impactful. It certainly is up for debate how much harder though.
So my argument here is to adjust the numbers somehow so there is less time needed to enter VF. Maybe some abilities generate more Insanity or something.
Okay, to be honest… I was addressing your points and trying to explain the problems and ended up writing a massive text wall.
As I was writing and thinking…
I came to the conclusion that what you want is similar to how Shadow worked in Cata. I am not opposed to that idea. But it wasn’t without it flaws.
Shadow Orbs Passive (Cata)
You have a x% chance for your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay spells to grant you a Shadow Orb each time they deal damage. Casting your Mind Blast or Mind Spike spell consumes all Shadow Orbs, increasing damage of that spell by x% per Shadow Orb, and granting x% increased damage on your periodic Shadow spells for 15 sec. You can have up to a maximum of 3 orbs.
The generation of orbs was RNG. That was the drawback of this system.
But it allowed you to burst and increase your dot damage for 15 sec when consuming any amount of orbs.
Problem is, getting something like this to work with a passive decaying resource system and that system is over 50% of your gameplay and can be shut down in various ways which then locks you out of mechanics like Void Bolt usage and causes other issues.
I will now post the wall of text I was writing for context but don’t stress yourself reading it.
Please keep in mind that my arguments are coming from the standpoint in areas where Shadow currently “struggles” with and that is short duration fights and dealing with mechanics that actively prevent you from playing your character.
Meaning that I’m sure shadow works on target dummies/patchwork fights when your able to plant yourself and do damage unimpeded. But once you need to move around and open yourself up to interruptions in the form of player CC be it actively placed upon you to prevent you from pressing buttons OR passively affecting you in the form that the target is immune (Cloak of shadows) then your ability to do anything in a short window of time becomes increasingly frustrating to deal with.
To make it more “bearable” would be to set your damage windows to be 100% power in the beginning of the window, meaning no ramping up to 100% power as each moment that passes, you increasing the chance that you will be unable to utilize that power window to its full potential and therefore always be behind.
Because shadow has this “void form” mechanic tied to it in such a way that its NOT a DPS CD like other classes, its part of its BASELINE damage. Meaning your not doing decent damage for most of the fight and then bursting to do amazing damage on demand for a short duration of the fight.
Instead it is something like this (numbers are not accurate, they are just to illustrate the point)
Normal DPS CD class
- 80% damage for 80% of the fight.
- 100% damage for 20% of the fight.
Shadow DPS
- 60% damage for 50% of the fight.
- 100% damage for 50% of the fight.
What i’m trying to indicate here is that MOST of the damage for the shadow spec is dealt in this “passive decaying resource” window that your balanced around. Meaning each moment you do not utilize this state to absolute perfection, your entire DPS nose dives into oblivion.
Most classes just have to perfect their DPS CD window every 2 min or w/e and then they might miss something her or there while your DPS CD is unavailable as its still cooling down. What this does is make it so your looking forward to pull off the perfect “BURST” every couple of min but then you can relax a bit in between those windows. But for shadow, you have to focus EACH TIME your in void form and that is at least if not more then 50% of the time playing, not 20% or less.Mix in the fact that many fights start with prepotting and bloodlust which then makes all your press button for more DPS CD’s on classes more powerful when stacked, shadow actually wastes that time trying to build up and get into Void Form and then built up again to an imaginary top that can never be reached thereby always adding stress.
Okay… now to address your question.
The fact is, shadow is at least partly a DOT spec and some would consider it a full on dot spec. I personally think its 50% hard cast and 50% dot.
Because of this having ANY damage buff window that affects dots will always cause a headache for balancing purpose because in single target it needs to work. Which means in multi-target it will scale out of control if something is not done/put in place to prevent this. So adding a mechanic that will automatically increase all your damage/stats by x amount will always cause dots to get too crazy to often.
With a warrior however, he is limited by the CD of abilities and target capped and position of himself and enemies. Shadow, we don’t have a CD on our dots so we can apply to as many targets as we want and more further still with more haste gained, not limited to ours or enemy positioned as you only need to be within a 40 yrd range. If our dots had a target cap limit or had a CD tied to them then sure, it would work. But because the “potential” is not hard capped, its really difficult to balance having a massive damage buff applied to them as you then risk moving into just dotting and nothing else which is something blizz does not want AT ALL lol.To more directly answer your question, yes and no. On live, our dots damage has been nerfed throughout BFA because of reasons I have posted above as instead they act more like “triggers” to spawn things like Auspicious spirits which is then tied to resource generation. What this does is make it so if your already geared then your doing fine. But if your not geared, your doing terrible because you cant spawn as many ghosts AND your dots do crap damage.
Basically, dots like what Shadow and affliction have are problematic because of the nature on how the spell works/functions as a set it and forget type of mindset. So any outside source that scales those becomes really problematic for balancing. Then any internal baseline source to “buff” them will need to be “balanced” at the top end.
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Hmm, I think I see your point. It would be much better of VF didn’t scale over time and just had a static buff more like enrage.
Thx for the discussion man
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That said, I still wonder if looking at what Fury does right and try to incorporate a bit of it could maybe at least improve the playstyle if Blizzard refuses to get rid of VF. Like maybe VF can be entered into faster and more frequently yet be harder to sustain so it can’t ramp crazy high. Then you just buff the dps overall so instead of being like 10% at the beginning into 100% 10 seconds later, you get to be +50% at the beginning and 90% 4 seconds later just before it ends. Or something like that if you get my drift
No ramp. Period.
It just does not work for shadow. Maybe it can work for other specs with their toolkits but I would caution on the side of it not. But it especially will not work with shadow because of how easy it is to lock us down and make it null and void.
There is no point in having a ramping mechanic when you can never finish or get to the end point of the ramp because you get shut down so easily via movement and interruption.
Classes / specs that let you kite and avoid cc or can DPS easy on the move or can break CC would have a better shot but since shadow struggles with all 3, that makes it especially bad.
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