[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[Kretan]

I cannot think of a single class that does not in some way suffer during those extremely rare intermission phases. Energy classes cap their energy, anyone with a proc can waste procs, every RNG trinket under the sun, the potential to lose a cast of a DPS CD if the delay lines up just right (or just wrong), etc.

Nobody's immune to bad encounter design, and even then, that particular issue comes up.. what, once an expansion? Twice?



There are, they have been made, you refuse to acknowledge them as valid. Like I said, the best option at this point is to leave the choice in the individual players hands. A theological divide this vast should best be handled by just accommodating both parties. Make it a talent, hell, make it a glyph, make it an item you buy from the temple.

Edit: Shit, I mean, it's not like we don't have plenty of dead talents they could replace with something like this, that might actually differentiate gameplay styles. Would anyone mourn Mind Spike getting replaced with something like "You generate 10% more Insanity, but Voidform now automatically activates at 100 Insanity"?

So, if I understand your first argument here, you say that because other classes suffer we should too? Also it's not just an intermission phase, it's an out of range, CCd, important add coming up, trash pack ending for challenge modes....I could go on. This would be a MAJOR nerf to shadow in challenge modes.

That talent idea reminds me of mana shield from back in the day in pvp...."if you could cast it on your opponent, it would be OP". It would be an awful talent. You even put "BUT void form activated automatically at 100". You phrased your own talent idea like the removal of void form control a nerf/draw back.

it seems totally useless and most people macro it into voidbolt.

Also, when you're lagging sometimes when you click on the macro... it will activate Voidform but not cast voidbolt which is extremely annoying.

This is the only argument on the entire page. You guys want to reduce the quality of life for shadow priest to change a double press macro in to a single press? That's just lazy...... it's one button press for very real benefits. Double pressing the macro makes it 100% work lag or not.

Also pvp exists whether you play it or not.....don't force a talent choice where a talent choice doesn't need to be forced. Auto void form makes shadow priest non-viable in pvp barring a talent so mandatory it would be asinine. Everyone was arguing for less of those.......

Please list out the other benefits of losing the choice. I don't know of any argument other than that valid or not valid.

[davesignal]

I mean, off the top of my head, an active Voidform promotes trying to use Voidform as a DPS cooldown rather than a cyclical class mechanic. Being as Shadow still lacks an actual DPS cooldown, trying to push Voidform into that role dilutes its purpose in giving the class a cyclical rhythm and prevents us from getting a real, actual, factual DPS CD. Why, Blizzard might ask, does Shadow need a real DPS CD if we can just hold on to Voidform for five or ten seconds in anticipation of a burst phase?

It promotes a playstyle that deliberately involves wasting resources, which is a silly thing to do and just does not feel right. It's borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, insisting you do something that very clearly causes you to lose DPS (wasting insanity, lowering your Voidform uptime) because of your need for burst DPS.

And for what, waiting for an AOE phase? With our shit AOE?

And when you're not doing that, it just seems like a pointless, perfunctory step. I see it and, to me, it looks like if Hunters had (to simplify things) a button labeled "Build Focus", a button labeled "Spend Focus", and a third button that just says "Focus Spending Form". It's perfunctory. Rogues don't have to hit a button to enable spending combo points; when they fill them up, they just spend them.

Now yeah, PVP? That's fine, that makes sense. From what I understand, PVP is all about finding an enemy's moment of greatest strength and negating it or finding their moment of great weakness and exploiting it. Control is king, etc, and far more common. I can even get why people would like having a button that essentially says "On My Command, Unleash Hell Void".

That's why I think there ought to be an option to go one way or another.

Edit:

Also pvp exists whether you play it or not.....don't force a talent choice where a talent choice doesn't need to be forced. Auto void form makes shadow priest non-viable in pvp barring a talent so mandatory it would be asinine. Everyone was arguing for less of those.......

I know everyone is arguing for less of those, but, like, Blizzard clearly doesn't appear to actually care. Anyone with eyes can look at the PvP talents and see they clearly want a design where there are right answers and wrong answers. Even so, don't make it a PvP talent. Make it a regular talent. Let people build the class up as they prefer.

[escott410]

No, just no. It's a toggle now and it better stay that way. This has already been discussed before and I don't want to see it return ever again.

[Cebel]

passive voidform is shit. Period.

[Kretan]

I mean, off the top of my head, it promotes trying to use Voidform as a DPS cooldown rather than a cyclical class mechanic. Being as Shadow still lacks an actual DPS cooldown, trying to push Voidform into that roll dilutes its purpose in giving the class a cyclical rhythm and prevents us from getting a real, actual, factual DPS CD. Why, Blizzard might ask, does Shadow need a real DPS CD if we can just hold on to Voidform for five or ten seconds in anticipation of a burst phase?

Total straw man. The mechanics and use of void form with and without control are exactly the same, except control allows you to not have a fiery plane crash loss of dps. The cyclical rhythm is just not a thing at all....it's identical and it feels identical. Having played it in pve, pvp, and leveling you want to get in to voidform YESTERDAY at all times....you are already itching to get in to it so it feels cyclical with or without pressing the button.

Not having a real dps cooldown is a completely separate issue. On that topic, we have surrender to madness and void torrent...DPS cooldowns......just not direct like percentage increase for x seconds.

It promotes a playstyle that deliberately involves wasting resources, which is a silly thing to do and just does not feel right. It's borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, insisting you do something that very clearly causes you to lose DPS (wasting insanity, lowering your Voidform uptime) because of your need for burst DPS.

And for what, waiting for an AOE phase? With our shit AOE?

You don't get it then if this is how you view it. You don't hold it off to burst for a few seconds (not saying you would never need to....never say never)...most of the time you press it the next key press after hitting the insanity cutoff you need to activate it. Stupid people and bad players will hold it off, and I don't want my class designed around those types of players.

You need control with this spec because losing a void form is disastrous in terms of losing dps, and it's way more common than you think. You need to start from zero again if you waste a void form.....and it takes 2 void forms to start rolling 100%. If you have control and avoid the reset of your momentum, you can pick up nearly right where you left off. Having control can put you 30-60 seconds further in to your momentum every time you save void form for dps down time or any break in casting. That includes heavy movement, boss flies away, RP, etc etc etc. Imagine needing 60 seconds to get 100% started dps wise on every trash pack in challenge modes.......having control prevents that ridiculous ramp up. It gives you control to not press it and hold it off for a lengthy time for those times when it is mandatory to hold off or you tank down in dps. Losing control would make shadow priest the worst dps in the game for challenge modes.

And when you're not doing that, it just seems like a pointless, perfunctory step. I see it and, to me, it looks like if Hunters had (to simplify things) a button labeled "Build Focus", a button labeled "Spend Focus", and a third button that just says "Focus Spending Form". It's perfunctory. Rogues don't have to hit a button to enable spending combo points; when they fill them up, they just spend them.

Now yeah, PVP? That's fine, that makes sense. From what I understand, PVP is all about finding an enemy's moment of greatest strength and negating it or finding their moment of great weakness and exploiting it. Control is king, etc, and far more common. I can even get why people would like having a button that essentially says "On My Command, Unleash Hell Void".

That's why I think there ought to be an option to go one way or another.

It's a non issue step, and those analogies are awful.

Void form importance >>>>>>> combo points

Void form's importance is on par with major class CDs. Like I have said in many places in this thread, haste scales and feeds in to itself to create a spec that scales amazingly with increasing haste. If you have a terrible void form or you need to start from zero momentum, you lose this entire benefit. It would be much more similar to a rogue having the following:

"If you don't spend combo points immediately, lose all combo points, and generate energy at a reduced rate for 30 seconds."

Sure, most of the time it's ok and you won't notice, but when it's not the class shrivels up to an awful non-viable heap of terrible design. With that design, the rogue would have perpetually reduced energy regen during challenge modes to be doing a reduced rate of damage than they are balanced for.

That's what a lack of void form control does; it makes us operate at a balance point lower than intended in challenge modes, and makes us the worst dps on any raid fight that causes us to auto activate void form at the wrong time. It's a terrible idea. Wanting that option is wanting a worse spec for no gain just to be lazy and not press a button twice a minute.

- - - Updated - - -

No, just no. It's a toggle now and it better stay that way. This has already been discussed before and I don't want to see it return ever again.

passive voidform is shit. Period.

These are correct ^

- - - Updated - - -

I know everyone is arguing for less of those, but, like, Blizzard clearly doesn't appear to actually care. Anyone with eyes can look at the PvP talents and see they clearly want a design where there are right answers and wrong answers. Even so, don't make it a PvP talent. Make it a regular talent. Let people build the class up as they prefer.

The problem is that the control aspect would have to be balanced by a major spec buff, and it would be entirely unbalanced because on situations where control doesn't matter it would be overtuned while being a trap talent and dps reduction on any situation where the loss of control kills the spec.

[davesignal]

You don't get it then if this is how you view it. You don't hold it off to burst for a few seconds (not saying you would never need to....never say never)...most of the time you press it the next key press after hitting the insanity cutoff you need to activate it. Stupid people and bad players will hold it off, and I don't want my class designed around those types of players.

I'm just going to jump in right here: I know this, and you know this, and I think most people with enough sense to be thinking critically about the Shadow before it's released know this. But mark my words: trying to game VF by delaying it is going to become the prevailing (incorrect) wisdom on it, and people will howl about it, and Blizzard will cave to it and send the spec careening further and further away from the intended vision trying to appease the gibbering masses who can't even clear LFR, let alone heroic or mythic.

Mark my words on that, but otherwise I'll drop the subject.

[Annesh]

On the other hand, what could be done to remove the button weirdness is just have Void Bolt castable at 100 insanity (60 with lotv), and it activates void form automatically when cast the first time.

Other than that, I strongly strongly strongly disagree with anyone wanting it to be passive and uncontrollable. That's the kind of boneheaded design choice that would literally make me quit the game.

- - - Updated - - -

trying to game VF by delaying it is going to become the prevailing (incorrect) wisdom on it, and people will howl about it, and Blizzard will cave to it and send the spec careening further and further away from the intended vision trying to appease the gibbering masses who can't even clear LFR

I have no idea what you're talking about. Not even the faintest clue.

You're reframing "the ability to control your damage" as "gaming a system," assigning a negative connotation. Are you saying you'd prefer to play a class that just goes "/roll 100" and whatever number comes up, that's the percent of normal DPS you did for the encounter? Because that's the sort of system that not having control over your damage phase will do, it leaves your DPS up to fate.

Man, why are we even talking about issues we figured out months ago. Control is good, lack of control is bad. Blizzard is on our side. Let's get back to whining about melee.

- - - Updated - - -

You double-posted, Lanfear. Bad Lanfear, no biscuit. B)

[Kretan]

I'm just going to jump in right here: I know this, and you know this, and I think most people with enough sense to be thinking critically about the Shadow before it's released know this. But mark my words: trying to game VF by delaying it is going to become the prevailing (incorrect) wisdom on it, and people will howl about it, and Blizzard will cave to it and send the spec careening further and further away from the intended vision trying to appease the gibbering masses who can't even clear LFR, let alone heroic or mythic.

Mark my words on that, but otherwise I'll drop the subject.

Anyone howling about it is probably not someone worth paying attention to. It is clear as day that blizzard doesn't cave to crying unless they agree with the premise, and saying "people will cry and they will make it worse" is not an argument worth standing on....it's just a waterfall argument.

On the other hand, what could be done to remove the button weirdness is just have Void Bolt castable at 100 insanity (60 with lotv), and it activates void form automatically when cast the first time.

Agreed. That would solve absolutely everything.

Other than that, I strongly strongly strongly disagree with anyone wanting it to be passive and uncontrollable. That's the kind of boneheaded design choice that would literally make me quit the game.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Not even the faintest clue.

You're reframing "the ability to control your damage" as "gaming a system," assigning a negative connotation. Are you saying you'd prefer to play a class that just goes "/roll 100" and whatever number comes up, that's the percent of normal DPS you did for the encounter? Because that's the sort of system that not having control over your damage phase will do, it leaves your DPS up to fate.

Man, why are we even talking about issues we figured out months ago. Control is good, lack of control is bad. Blizzard is on our side. Let's get back to whining about melee.

I agree. F&$k warriors. F#*k rogues.

You double-posted, Lanfear. Bad Lanfear, no biscuit. B)

I was trying out the lack of control on my posting rate, and it seems it is also a negative there. It was for science.

[Echocho]

Going back to cast time mind blast is gonna take some getting used to

[Annesh]

I was trying out the lack of control on my posting rate, and it seems it is also a negative there. It was for science.

You know, the funny thing is I was actually going to like, play along by cheekily arguing with some parody statement that mirrors @davesignal's position on the issue. But I don't actually understand it well enough. Either it's too irrational for me to accept as valid, or he's done a poor job at expressing himself. Or I haven't read his posts very carefully, idk

[davesignal]

Probably a combination of the 2nd and the 3rd. I'm tired which doesn't lend itself to explaining things and I don't think you're trying very hard to view it from the other side, which is understandable considering you already have what you want out of the mechanic.

Edit: But at this point I'm just gonna cede the point because honestly arguing about class design is fruitless

[Nycros]

I'm just going to jump in right here: I know this, and you know this, and I think most people with enough sense to be thinking critically about the Shadow before it's released know this. But mark my words: trying to game VF by delaying it is going to become the prevailing (incorrect) wisdom on it, and people will howl about it, and Blizzard will cave to it and send the spec careening further and further away from the intended vision trying to appease the gibbering masses who can't even clear LFR, let alone heroic or mythic.

Mark my words on that, but otherwise I'll drop the subject.

Is that Dreamskull?

[Djriff]

The thing is, passive void form or toggle void form, there is no difference. I would much prefer the option, and if you don't want it, macro it. End of story.

[l33t]

The thing is, passive void form or toggle void form, there is no difference. I would much prefer the option, and if you don't want it, macro it. End of story.

Exactly. I don't quite understand all the fuss around toggleable VF, since it is the solution which pleases everyone. Want a little more control? YOu have it. Want a little more automation? Just macro it - like this:

#showtooltip Void bolt
/cast Void form
/cast Void bolt

and that's it. Win/win for everybody. I see no reason to argue over it, unless people feel offensive that not only THEIR WAY is being catered to.

[Djriff]

Hell you could macro it into every ability and be fine.

[Deleted]

Perhaps a glyph could make it toggle automatically when you hit 100 insanity (or 60 with LotV). That way everyone has a choice.

[Aeriel]

Perhaps a glyph could make it toggle automatically when you hit 100 insanity (or 60 with LotV). That way everyone has a choice.

I think Annesh's idea of it activating on VB cast is the most streamlined (I had the same idea when I was catching up on posts).

There are plenty of spells that work that way, primarily druid ones obviously. 99% of the time you would start VF by casting VB, and a stopcast macro should work for any other case.

[Deleted]

Got some bad news for people, glyph shadows and shadowy friends are exclusive, both are tied to voidform so you can only have one or the other. This also means that if they introduce a no tentacles glyph then you can only have one of the three. Glyph of sha also not working with mindbender atm

The lag makes it a lot worse than it is but i really hate mind blast having a cast time again, it just doesn't feel right anymore after playing cop for so long.

Passive void form is not really good, it would be extremely annoying and awkward, controlled void form is by far the best choice.

[RsinRC]

To say the least, having a streamlined VF would make the gameplay more interesting.

If they do make it streamlined, Insanity should stop decay when out of combat.

The difference between controllable and streamlined is really just about having a macro/button to activate it to not having to press a button to activate it.

Pvp already has a talent that had the streamlined version in mind and making it controllable and by giving out of VF a damage increase.

Having it controllable vs streamlined will further differentiate bad players from good players because timing is that much more important.

Having VF streamling will maximize the potential damage even more so throughout a fight because there will be no need to have to press a button, react to a button lighting up or lag having lag issues.

Still, With such a huge diversity in players in wow, I think it is overall best to have it toggable. I can see people crying more by having it streamlined because they want to hold it to kill the next quest mob and the like.

Pleass refrain from calling it stupid because at the end of the day it brings a higher, more interesting skill cap ceiling to the spec than having to press a button 2 times.

Having it as a talent is perfectly fine with me.

[Purple]

I didn't expect the activated/passive voidform discussion pop up again. Hitting a button to switch into it isn't that bad, and being able to tie entering the form via a macrod void bolt sounds perfectly doable - even sensible for most users.

Got some bad news for people, glyph shadows and shadowy friends are exclusive, both are tied to voidform so you can only have one or the other. This also means that if they introduce a no tentacles glyph then you can only have one of the three. Glyph of sha also not working with mindbender atm

Well, that all sounds pointless and stupid. I imagine someone will come up with a justification for this, or defend it somehow. It'll still be pointless and stupid. I'm not particularly fond of the look given to Shadowform at zero insanity as is (even at 100 it doesn't look quite right by my eye, but I'll admit that's getting nit picky). More things complicating getting the visuals users want doesn't help matters from my perspective, though I admit that is just my perspective.