[Legion] Shadow Priest Discussion

[zenyatta]

When would you pop StM? If you try to pop it at the beginning of a "burn on pull" fight, and you die within a couple min on a ~6 min boss fight with a 2min brez debuff... well, that just seems like you'd be useless laying there dead for at least 2 min. So would you pop it at the end of a fight, say ~20% hp on boss?

I'm definitely not interested in a talent that allows high dps but only when me dying on purpose won't be a hindrance to the group.

[davesignal]

I feel like it would be legitimately helpful to change the title of this thread to mention that you use Surrender to Madness during the execute phase.

Edit: Or if Surrender to Madness was more intuitive.

[Kyrik]

Most of this will probably be way too late as feedback since Blizzard has stated we are basically done with major changes now (except mages of course, because they are special).

This is based off someone who will only be interested in raiding and Mythic+ dungeons, very limited time with the beta and months of lurking in this thread. For some perspective I loved the Auspicious Spirits style during BRF and early HFC and was more than happy for CoP to exist as an alternative.

Anyway, a dump of my thoughts

Void Form

• CD too low on Mind Blast and Void Bolt. No time for any fillers. GCD being lowered every 1 second also means a 3gcd VB cd feels clunky. There is a wait of about 0.5 gcd between casting 2nd spell after Void Bolt and it coming back off cooldown. Feels awkward. More time spent on Mind Flay would mitigate this since it is a variable length channel.
• Feels so bad when boss mechanics cause a wasted Void Form - immunity, high movement, etc

Insanity Resource

• No way to bank resources and save them for later. Void Form is a huge damage boost, need to use it straight away. Previous orbs resource system allowed for a small amount of flexibility with resource spending, that is completely gone now.
• Zero Insanity, zero Lingering Insanity opener is awful. Not just the damage, but the feel of the spec. I don’t agree that classes should start with zero of their resources at all. People will probably find ways to entire combat with a partial bar, if not an entire bar, and as soon as that happens it will feel mandatory. Either allow some amount of Insanity generation out of combat, or perhaps a spell only usable out of combat, with a small that would could be channeled to quickly gain insanity. If you know you are about to enter combat, then would it not make sense to perform some ritual (Ritual of Insanity) to commune with the Old Gods to build power?

Dots

• All the interesting interaction is on SWP. VT only has 30% Apparition trigger through artifact.
• Could differential the dots a little. Cast VT just for big damage, cast SWP for setting up other effects (apparitions, Sphere of Insanity, Shadowy Insight). Allow dot spread on SWP since the damage is weaker, so less issues with having it on lots of targets.

AoE

• Shadow crash baseline, replace it with Void Singularity
• Void Singularity - Black hole style spells. Moderate ticking damage, draws enemies towards the centre (or place it on a mob and draw everything towards 1 target). Synergy with Shadow Crash/Mind Sear. Provides shadow with very valuable raid utility
• Sphere of Insanity needs a huge buff - but I like the concept
• SWP dot spread would still make a lot of sense. SoI is evidence that designers want shadow AoE to be tied to dots, but it's too time consuming to set up (coupled with SWP's really low duration). Don't understand why designers are ok with SWP spread from Mind Sear in pvp, but not PvE. Where they worried about the old artifact trait where Mind Sear would trigger SWP ticks?

Talents

• Shadowy Insight: Instant cast Mind Blast feels great, but Cooldown reset spells NEED to have a charge system baseline. Value of a proc varies too much otherwise 2 charges on mind blast would provide flexibility for SI procs and current Mind Spike implementation. Would make Void Form feel much smoother since you wouldn’t lose any MB casts when Void Bolt and MB come off cooldown at the same time
• Power Infusion: +haste seems really weak when we are already drowning in it. Don't need any more ways to make the spec more stressful and spammy.
• Mania: Maxes out too low. Unreliable as insanity fluctuates
• Body and Soul: Tying movement speed to one of our only defensive abilities is awful. Damage mitigation and movement are 2 completely separate scenarios, one spell with a cooldown cannot fill both roles.
• Bring back something to replace the feel of Glyphed Leap of Faith (or just give us that spell back). Teleport to a friendly's position - fits the theme. Compare current spriest movement talents with BM hunter is night and day. Disengage + Posthaste. Burst movement, 50% more speed increase for almost 3 times the duration. On a spell with a recharge system for a total of 2 jumps + 16 seconds movement speed.
• Dominant Mind: Cool idea but feels hard to balance. If you can control powerful mobs, then you have no choice but to balance around that, which makes it mandatory (only dps spell in this tier). If the mobs do low damage, then it's only purpose is for removing a dangerous add. Still has a use, but way less interesting. Please please please don’t force us to constantly find Mind Controlled mobs in order to feel competitive.
• Void Ray: Repudiation of War was a crap mechanic for a trinket, and this is worse in every way. Buff is way too short, for way too little gain. Also current Voidform gameplay has almost no room for filler spells, so this is quickly forgotten.
• San'layn: Boring, but if it's balanced well then it's fine to have a passive talent.
• Surrender To Madness: great idea. Love how unique it is. Only reason it’s considered powerful right now is because the other talents in this tier are super weak.
• Mind Spike: Nice idea, would fill a gap where shadow currently lack passive "free" cleave that a lot of specs have. Too restrictive in practice though since the detonation is triggered by one of our highest priority cd spells, Mind Blast. Need a better way to detonate it: detonate button?

The Cleave Niche

• Very rare that the goldilocks number is reached. Currently this is capped at 3 targets for shadow because of Void Bolt dot refresh and SWP 14 second timer.
• Damage spread is too even and fixed
• A guess would be that Legion priest 3 target cleave damage split would be around 40/30/30.
• Legion cleave doesn’t allow for any choice in damage distribution
• WoD Auspicious Spirits cleave would be around 70/15/15 split on damage when there is a priority target, but that could be adjusted at any time by choosing which target to cast Devouring Plague on. It was amazing

Misc

• Shadowfiend: what even is this? 3m cooldown for almost no damage. Would rather see this function like Mindbender as baseline, and then find another use for Mindbender
• Current speed of the spec is verging on unplayable with 200+ ms for anyone looking to max out the potential of their character
• Spectral Guise: literally leaving a shadow of yourself behind to confuse the enemy. How is this not perfect for the spec?

[l33t]

Most of this will probably be way too late as feedback since Blizzard has stated we are basically done with major changes now (except mages of course, because they are special).

You know what's the problem with your awesome list of changes? You do it to make Shadowpriest's gameplay awesome, while the design goal for developers is just as always - give enough shinies so shadow players won't leave the spec but not enough shinies to be competitive against cloth competitors. In other words, you want equality, while developers would never treat us equally to mages and locks.

[Aeriel]

Didn't fit the theme, so it went away. Although anyone can look at shadow and see its theme is still a mess (although I guess that's what happens when you try to cram a bunch of ideas into one spec, instead of several). They could have made a void version of the spell, renamed it, and called it good, but they didn't. Although if they make shadowcrash's cooldown lower I think it would be better.

Honestly this spell fits more than others. Rename it "Mind Tear" or "Mental Entropy" or something. Make the first target be low damage, then double for the second two and triple for the next. The multiplier actually fits with the theme of "growing insane", while being a unique spell (AoE typically starts high and goes down with additional targets). Clearly you would never want it single target unless the Insanity was on par with SWV and only off the initial cast. Hell, it wouldbe a better version of SWV.

[Yvaelle]

You know what's the problem with your awesome list of changes? You do it to make Shadowpriest's gameplay awesome, while the design goal for developers is just as always - give enough shinies so shadow players won't leave the spec but not enough shinies to be competitive against cloth competitors. In other words, you want equality, while developers would never treat us equally to mages and locks.

When I make my MMO, there will be 30 different Shadow classes, and they will all be awesome!

[Sxq]

I'm not jumping on the hate train or anything, but it seems silly to think that any of the original changes were because they thought the gameplay could be better. We only got a big rework to make sure that we were, thematically, less similar to warlocks/other casters. So once they decided our niche was old god power/transformation, then they go backward and fit in gameplay elements. But realistically the design philosophy from the developer's perspective has clearly not change, and it was never intended to change. We have pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as all of WoD. Gained some buttons, lost some buttons, but ultimately it's clear that they're happy with the role that shadow fills.

I personally liked WoD shadow (and as a bit of a pet peeve, I hate people who haven't played the spec in 2 years who come in here and tell us how it should be) and I'm planning to continue playing it in Legion. But if you're seriously unhappy about the fundamentals you should probably not stick around expecting them to do a 180.

[davesignal]

That's the thing, though: spamming direct damage nukes as fast as possible is so far from Shadow's fundamentals as to be mind boggling. The only way that would be shadow's fundamentals is if the grand sum of your experience was WoD, and only playing Clarity of Power Shadow at that.

Edit: The heart of the matter, I think, is the fact that Blizzard has for some reason decided there only gets to be one true DOT class, and that Shadow needs to be differentiated away from Affliction with this half-dots-half-nukes idiocy. This despite the fact that there's dozens of direct damage classes of varying similarities and, what, four DOT heavy specs? Two of which are heavily focused on bleeds and share identical resources?

[Kretan]

Yikes this thread devolved in to an emotional dumping ground quickly.

- - - Updated - - -

Most of this will probably be way too late as feedback since Blizzard has stated we are basically done with major changes now (except mages of course, because they are special).

This is based off someone who will only be interested in raiding and Mythic+ dungeons, very limited time with the beta and months of lurking in this thread. For some perspective I loved the Auspicious Spirits style during BRF and early HFC and was more than happy for CoP to exist as an alternative.

Anyway, a dump of my thoughts

Void Form

• CD too low on Mind Blast and Void Bolt. No time for any fillers. GCD being lowered every 1 second also means a 3gcd VB cd feels clunky. There is a wait of about 0.5 gcd between casting 2nd spell after Void Bolt and it coming back off cooldown. Feels awkward. More time spent on Mind Flay would mitigate this since it is a variable length channel.
• Feels so bad when boss mechanics cause a wasted Void Form - immunity, high movement, etc

Insanity Resource

• No way to bank resources and save them for later. Void Form is a huge damage boost, need to use it straight away. Previous orbs resource system allowed for a small amount of flexibility with resource spending, that is completely gone now.
• Zero Insanity, zero Lingering Insanity opener is awful. Not just the damage, but the feel of the spec. I don’t agree that classes should start with zero of their resources at all. People will probably find ways to entire combat with a partial bar, if not an entire bar, and as soon as that happens it will feel mandatory. Either allow some amount of Insanity generation out of combat, or perhaps a spell only usable out of combat, with a small that would could be channeled to quickly gain insanity. If you know you are about to enter combat, then would it not make sense to perform some ritual (Ritual of Insanity) to commune with the Old Gods to build power?

Dots

• All the interesting interaction is on SWP. VT only has 30% Apparition trigger through artifact.
• Could differential the dots a little. Cast VT just for big damage, cast SWP for setting up other effects (apparitions, Sphere of Insanity, Shadowy Insight). Allow dot spread on SWP since the damage is weaker, so less issues with having it on lots of targets.

AoE

• Shadow crash baseline, replace it with Void Singularity
• Void Singularity - Black hole style spells. Moderate ticking damage, draws enemies towards the centre (or place it on a mob and draw everything towards 1 target). Synergy with Shadow Crash/Mind Sear. Provides shadow with very valuable raid utility
• Sphere of Insanity needs a huge buff - but I like the concept
• SWP dot spread would still make a lot of sense. SoI is evidence that designers want shadow AoE to be tied to dots, but it's too time consuming to set up (coupled with SWP's really low duration). Don't understand why designers are ok with SWP spread from Mind Sear in pvp, but not PvE. Where they worried about the old artifact trait where Mind Sear would trigger SWP ticks?

Talents

• Shadowy Insight: Instant cast Mind Blast feels great, but Cooldown reset spells NEED to have a charge system baseline. Value of a proc varies too much otherwise 2 charges on mind blast would provide flexibility for SI procs and current Mind Spike implementation. Would make Void Form feel much smoother since you wouldn’t lose any MB casts when Void Bolt and MB come off cooldown at the same time
• Power Infusion: +haste seems really weak when we are already drowning in it. Don't need any more ways to make the spec more stressful and spammy.
• Mania: Maxes out too low. Unreliable as insanity fluctuates
• Body and Soul: Tying movement speed to one of our only defensive abilities is awful. Damage mitigation and movement are 2 completely separate scenarios, one spell with a cooldown cannot fill both roles.
• Bring back something to replace the feel of Glyphed Leap of Faith (or just give us that spell back). Teleport to a friendly's position - fits the theme. Compare current spriest movement talents with BM hunter is night and day. Disengage + Posthaste. Burst movement, 50% more speed increase for almost 3 times the duration. On a spell with a recharge system for a total of 2 jumps + 16 seconds movement speed.
• Dominant Mind: Cool idea but feels hard to balance. If you can control powerful mobs, then you have no choice but to balance around that, which makes it mandatory (only dps spell in this tier). If the mobs do low damage, then it's only purpose is for removing a dangerous add. Still has a use, but way less interesting. Please please please don’t force us to constantly find Mind Controlled mobs in order to feel competitive.
• Void Ray: Repudiation of War was a crap mechanic for a trinket, and this is worse in every way. Buff is way too short, for way too little gain. Also current Voidform gameplay has almost no room for filler spells, so this is quickly forgotten.
• San'layn: Boring, but if it's balanced well then it's fine to have a passive talent.
• Surrender To Madness: great idea. Love how unique it is. Only reason it’s considered powerful right now is because the other talents in this tier are super weak.
• Mind Spike: Nice idea, would fill a gap where shadow currently lack passive "free" cleave that a lot of specs have. Too restrictive in practice though since the detonation is triggered by one of our highest priority cd spells, Mind Blast. Need a better way to detonate it: detonate button?

The Cleave Niche

• Very rare that the goldilocks number is reached. Currently this is capped at 3 targets for shadow because of Void Bolt dot refresh and SWP 14 second timer.
• Damage spread is too even and fixed
• A guess would be that Legion priest 3 target cleave damage split would be around 40/30/30.
• Legion cleave doesn’t allow for any choice in damage distribution
• WoD Auspicious Spirits cleave would be around 70/15/15 split on damage when there is a priority target, but that could be adjusted at any time by choosing which target to cast Devouring Plague on. It was amazing

Misc

• Shadowfiend: what even is this? 3m cooldown for almost no damage. Would rather see this function like Mindbender as baseline, and then find another use for Mindbender
• Current speed of the spec is verging on unplayable with 200+ ms for anyone looking to max out the potential of their character
• Spectral Guise: literally leaving a shadow of yourself behind to confuse the enemy. How is this not perfect for the spec?

Yeah I think a lot of this feedback is echoed and has been given to the devs at some point in similar form. I think a lot of people will agree on a lot of points here.

[Yvaelle]

@Kyrik, remember to post that on the official forums - while the devs have lurked here before - they probably aren't keeping up with our 400 page Shadow thread as religiously as they are receiving summarized feedback from their website MVPs.

If you don't have access to the NA forums let us know, and we can repost for you.

[Tanned]

My updated list of Shadow feedback points. I may add some more in the morning. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

Mastery is too weak in single target.

• In my single target tests at both level 100 and level 110, damage affected by Mastery (if you factor out Mastery) was less than 40% of the total damage. This puts mastery underbudget on single target by about 20%; my sims and tests have it as weaker than versatility!
• Mastery is moderately strong in multiple target situations, but is still weaker than Haste and Crit up to a point.
• Mastery becomes the strongest with long Surrender to Madness casts. At level 110 with multiple targets it may be overpoweringly strong.
• To fix our Mastery, I think that one more single target spell should be put onto it and then its damage should be adjusted accordingly. I'm okay with mastery being near Crit or slightly worse than Crit on Single Target. I dislike how much better it gets in multitarget cleave scenarios.
• I think the best spell to add to our mastery would be Mind Blast.

Our Artifact Traits need another pass.

• The costs for traits is unfair (and that makes them feel less fun). I have to work much harder as a Shadow Priest to get all my Golden Dragon traits than most other classes. For example:
  
  1. A Shadow Priest must spend 26 points, or 602700 AP to obtain all of their "Golden Dragon" Artifact Traits.
  2. A Havoc Demon Hunter must only spend 24 points, or 358770 AP, to obtain all of their "Golden Dragon" traits.
  3. An Arms Warrior must only spend 23 points, or 276270, to obtain all of their "Golden Dragon" Artifact Traits.
  4. I understand that not all Traits are created equally, and that some non-"Golden Dragon" traits are likely stronger than the "Golden Dragon" ones (I'm looking at you Sinister Thoughts).
  5. Given the exponential cost increases, this feels much worse early on in the expansion; I could be a week or two behind the Warrior or Demon Hunter as a result of these disparities.
• A number of very important traits are passed up in order to get all of our "Golden Dragon" traits. While this may be intended, a number of these traits are what people consider "role critical." For example:
  
  1. Mental Fortitude appears to be one of the more important Traits to have for surviving high end dungeon, raid and PVP content and yet it is locked behind an entirely optional 3 point trait.
  2. Sinister Thoughts would make much more sense in the spot where Thrive in the Shadows is now. You might even consider swapping it with Creeping Shadows to partially balance how bad Sphere of Insanity is.
  3. The number of mandatory talents in weird places would not feel as bad if Shadow didn't need so much more Artifact Power to get its Golden Dragon Traits.
• Consider making Sphere of Insanity a more meaningful Artifact Trait. In its current iteration, it is a very small damage contributor. In addition, the sound effect on it is quite annoying.

Consider the gear distribution.

• Shadow current shares exactly the same artifact Relic setup as Affliction Warlocks (Shadow Blood Shadow); traditionally Shadow has shared gameplay kits with Affliction Warlocks as well and usually Warlock does that kit (e.g., multidotting) better.
• Warlocks and Shadow Priests are on the same conqueror token and have the same Cloth and Caster DPS trinket needs.
• My worry is that the combination may force guilds to pick between the consistently good Warlock class and the sporadically good Shadow Priest class.

Consider some quality of life changes for Shadow.

• Our survivability is generally very bad. The class feels very killable. In PVP most comps will 100% tunnel the Shadow Priest, making enjoying that content very difficult. In persistent damage raid scenarios our choices are die.
• Surrender to Madness and High End Raiders. Most high end raiders believe that we will be shoehorned into Surrender to Madness. It would be nice if the spell had some quality of life changes. For example; if you use the spell and you kill the related boss and end the raid encounter, you can "Reap" the bosses' essence to stave off the "Die Horribly" effect in STM.
• Perception that we need excellent latency to play the class. This is related to bugs that have been reported about Voidform wherein you can get a cast off while in Voidform and have it land with you outside of Voidform. The worst example is casting Void Torrent (which is supposed to instantly halt all Insanity drain) while in Shadowform, but having the ability channel in its entirety outside of Shadowform.
• It is too easy to cap out on Haste with the .75 GCD floor.
• Void Torrent is incredibly punishing. Consider making it non-interruptable again. Compare Void Torrent (single target item) with Bladestorm; Bladestorm is not by anything.
• Void Bolt casting refresh. Please consider making Void Bolt refresh DoTs on cast rather than on landing.
• Shadow Word: Pain Duration. Consider makign Shadow Word: Pain at least 1 second longer. It seems like the 14s change was made for Disc and ended up sort of hurting Shadow. The faster tick period is nice for talents like SI, but not nice in general.

[Fleckens]

I'm not jumping on the hate train or anything, but it seems silly to think that any of the original changes were because they thought the gameplay could be better. We only got a big rework to make sure that we were, thematically, less similar to warlocks/other casters. So once they decided our niche was old god power/transformation, then they go backward and fit in gameplay elements. But realistically the design philosophy from the developer's perspective has clearly not change, and it was never intended to change. We have pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as all of WoD. Gained some buttons, lost some buttons, but ultimately it's clear that they're happy with the role that shadow fills.

I personally liked WoD shadow (and as a bit of a pet peeve, I hate people who haven't played the spec in 2 years who come in here and tell us how it should be) and I'm planning to continue playing it in Legion. But if you're seriously unhappy about the fundamentals you should probably not stick around expecting them to do a 180.

While legion shadow is not perfect by any means, I find it miles better than mop and wod shadow. I played shadow in wrath and cata and quit it when they made shadow orbs a resource and made it all about devouring plague. Cataclysm shadow was still the perfect for me, but legion I can definitely see myself enjoying as long as it gets tuned properly.

[Kyrik]

@Yvaelle - I posted it to the EU Alpha class feedback forums, but anyone it would be great if someone here were able to post any or all of it to the US forums.

[l33t]

My updated list of Shadow feedback points. I may add some more in the morning. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

I want to add: we need passive DR, something around 15%. It would tremendously help both with pvp absurd @ 110 and with shitty leveling.
I think the best way to implement that is to make shadowmend bonus healing traits baseline and place DR on their place.

Oh, and also I think our Mass dispel should cost no mana, having it on a huge CD is enough.

[Deja Thoris]

I also dislike that our heal is now the same spell school as our damage. At least in WoD you can cast a flash heal when you get locked on shadow to pretend you are doing something.

[Nycros]

A couple of really good overview posts in the last few pages. Have to say I agree with most of it, but don't think all of it needs to happen.

Honestly, if they fix SoI to actually deal damage, our AoE would be at a great place now that shadow crash is buffed. Plus it's a very Spriest way to go about it...

Additionally, I'm going to repeat myself and say fade should have 15% damage reduction baseline. Helps survivability in PvP, pve, leveling, etc.

The odd things left in our kit:
- Mania is useless, replace it with spectral guise.
- Edge of Insanity is useless, replace it with old Void Lord damage/healing bonus
- Last Word is a neat idea, but will likely never be taken due to DR with Silence
- Mind Trauma should not exist in its current state.

Final note, I've always thought that StM would make sense having a 'marked for death' style effect. Either you kill the target and regain your sanity, or you fail and die. If it still has the cooldown it can't be spammed through easy content either.

[Aeriel]

Most of this will probably be way too late as feedback since Blizzard has stated we are basically done with major changes now (except mages of course, because they are special).

This is based off someone who will only be interested in raiding and Mythic+ dungeons, very limited time with the beta and months of lurking in this thread. For some perspective I loved the Auspicious Spirits style during BRF and early HFC and was more than happy for CoP to exist as an alternative.

Anyway, a dump of my thoughts

Void Form

• CD too low on Mind Blast and Void Bolt. No time for any fillers. GCD being lowered every 1 second also means a 3gcd VB cd feels clunky. There is a wait of about 0.5 gcd between casting 2nd spell after Void Bolt and it coming back off cooldown. Feels awkward. More time spent on Mind Flay would mitigate this since it is a variable length channel.
• Feels so bad when boss mechanics cause a wasted Void Form - immunity, high movement, etc

Most of this feels like it comes from the cooldown reduction on MB. Without the cooldown reduction, the cooldowns would be proportionally 1:2. Personally, I would prefer MB to go back to instant cast instead of the cooldown reduction, but that would kill Insanity generation. Many of the insanity nerfs (particularly the recent decay increase) would have to reverted to balance that back. Also, MB needs a recharge system. SI is bugged, and that seems to be the central issue. Sometimes it is coded as a cooldown, and others it is coded as a recharge, effectively.

[Deleted]

Does anyone know whether insanity resets when pulling a raidboss? Or will we be 'forced' to farm some insanity before the pull.

[l33t]

Does anyone know whether insanity resets when pulling a raidboss? Or will we be 'forced' to farm some insanity before the pull.

You are not allowed to burst with your fellow raiders, stop that already. Leave bursting to real dps specs.

[Deleted]

You are not allowed to burst with your fellow raiders, stop that already. Leave bursting to real dps specs.

I'd like to have 100 insanity at start, but if that means I have to farm it shadoworb style before the pull, then i'd rather have it work like WW monk buff. Remove it all on bosspull.