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  1. #21
    I'm very worried about what would happen in PVP. We are at a huge disadvantage against melee as it is. Suddenly jumping into empowered with 0 dots on the target means that if they get close the only thing we have to get them away is Excommunicate, and even them, a leap and a charge from a warrior means they are back in the game with another interrupt, and we have 0 dots on the target, with a spell down.

    It hurts my brain thinking about a mechanic where our dots up and run away like a fart in the wind. In PVP i'd have to go with the spec that means you gain damage for now going Insane/Empowered

  2. #22
    Remove the following spells:

    - Shadow Mend
    - Power Word: Shield
    - Shackle Undead
    - Mass Dispel


    so you dont want to have utility at all? nice bro


    the best shadow priest was in cata.. it was glorious.. i wish spriest was still that way for the most part

  3. #23
    Fluffy Kitten Yvaelle's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Annesh View Post
    Okay loooong response and deconstruction coming.
    First up - thanks for the quality feedback and thought on it - also meant that I delayed my response until I had the time and brainpower to give it a full response, so sorry for delay

    My problems with Shadow

    I have three:
    1) Long ramp fucks us on short fights but doesn't make us better for long fights to make up for it.

    2) Underdesigned AoE fucks us on AoE and big multi-pack pulls.

    3) We suffer too much to heavy movement and phase changes.

    In one sentence, we aren't good enough at raid bosses to justify how mediocre or worse we are at everything else.
    I agree with all three of your core problems. I think my proposal addresses them.

    1) I think I solve this by retaining long ramp-up on long fights (Willpower), but enabling burst on short fights (Apotheosis).

    2) This should be resolved by ~spammable Shadow Crashes - making us potentially very bursty. We could Shadow Crash twice off a pull and deal a lot of damage, enter Apotheosis, and then near-spam Shadow Crashes for 10 seconds. This makes our early AOE burst perhaps too strong, and would need to be toned down probably. Take a different fight scenario though, a boss where it's mostly single target until a wave of trash adds spawns that need to be quickly burst down (Operator Throkgar springs to my mind) - we could forgo Void Torrenting or Devouring Despair on Throkgar some seconds in advance to drop to 0 Insanity, then Shadow Crash -> Mind Blast -> Shadow Crash without triggering Apotheosis (to maintain Willpower for DoTs/flay on the boss after the adds are dead). I think my proposal works well mid-fight, but poorly off the pull (particularly triggering Apotheosis).

    3) I don't think we suffer much to heavy movement in Legion due to Void Bolt spam in long Voidforms, enabling lots of stutterstepping - but historically it's been a key weakness of ours. Disapparate would become an 'oh shit!' button for being out of position. In my system, you would address phase changes by either intentionally triggering Apotheosis at the end of a change when you knew your Willpower stacks would drop, or the duration that Willpower stacks last would address this (ex. either a Lingering Insanity countdown, 1 stack per second, or just a 20 second duration, etc). On Kil'Jaeden our DoTs would retain our Willpower through phase changes by continuing to tick on the boss during transitions.

    Solutions that will help

    SO, with that being said, any solution we propose or receive must address all three of those concerns to get my stamp of approval (not that my opinion is inherently worth anything to anyone, but this is my reply so that statement applies).
    It's valuable to me <3

    1) It must not force us into a single playstyle that relies on long-term ramp. In other words, it must allow for the ability to deal better burst damage, both single-target and cleave/AoE, possibly by sacrificing long-term damage ceiling (although realistically our single-target is already sub-par; I feel very bitter that I have to feel uncomfortable in wanting a kit that makes us as good as boomkins on as many things).

    2) It needs the ability to handle very large pulls just as well as anyone else. When the tank says "Fuck it" and pulls three packs at once, we should be just as excited as everyone else, not groaning that they get to shoot their bars to the moon, while we're stuck dotting 20 mobs one at a time and ending the fight having done half the damage as the tank.

    3) It must not be overly weak to heavy movement and phase changes.
    1) I think Insanity management and Empowered spells gives us this flexibility without relying on long-term ramp up. We can do good single target damage (spend Insanity on Void Torrents) or good multidot (spend Insanity on Devouring Despairs) or good AOE (Shadow Crash) or good burst swaps (Forbidden Word: Null) - but we can only do one of these things at a time, and need to stop doing any of this stuff ~20 seconds in advance to allow our Insanity to drain to 0. We still have long-term ramp-up with Willpower, but we have Boomkin-esque flexibility through Insanity management and foresight.

    2) If the tank pulls 3 packs and everyone grins, we Shadow Crash -> Shadow Crash -> Apotheosis -> Shadow Crash -> Shadow Crash, etc Sometimes that is going to be worthwhile, other times we'll need to content ourselves to Shadow Crash -> Mind Blast -> Shadow Crash, and then let our Insanity cool off for awhile.

    3) Stutterstepping should be an important part of Spriesting. It's part of why we've always needed fight foresight to pre-emptively move out of upcoming mechanics where other classes just stand in the bad spot and blink/dash at the last second. I like that we need to plan ahead, I think it's what makes Spriests the best. With that said, a lot of mechanics are randomly placed - and that really hurts Spriests because we can't plan ahead - that's what Disapparate is meant to solve.

    Survey Says...

    A snap judgement of your willpower/insanity system is that it's definitely interesting, and I REALLY like the whole "empowered versions of spells" gimmick, but it makes me a little skeptical that it would actually address the things that need addressing. The biggest thing I see is that there's no way to spread one of our dots, the way everyone else can.
    I think on this subject we just ideologically disagree. I don't want one of those weak-ass DoTs that other classes get that they can spread to everyone. The solution to quick mass AOE should be Shadow Crash. The solution to long-term AOE should be multi-dots, even if VT->Pain->Tab->Repeat isn't thrilling mechanically.

    Not only are we still stuck painfully manually multi-dotting on big trash pulls (which is the primary reason why we suck on those), but there are several mechanics in your system that actively punish us for having dots up. We should WANT our dots on things, as many as possible. I shouldn't feel guilty for having my dots up.
    There are only two punishments for having DoTs up that I can think of, let me know which I'm overlooking. Apotheosis removes all active DoTs and our Willpower (which is what makes our DoTs strong) - it's meant to be a different kind of fighting. Apotheosis is not a burst cooldown (it's not Elemental Ascendance), it's either your desperate final act on the verge of defeat (ex. the last 10 seconds of a fight), a heroic act of self-sacrifice (ex. your raid is taking raid-wipe damage, you Apotheosis+Vampiric Embrace to save the day, at the cost of later DPS), or a vicious assault on weak minds (spamming Shadow Crashes, Forbidden Words, or Void Torrents on quick trash pulls).

    For most fights though, particularly chain pulling Mythic+ trash or long boss fights, you should want to maintain Willpower for the +100% multiplicative haste buff it's going to provide to your DoTs, your Mind Flays, and your Mind Sears. Unlike Legion's Void Form, this isn't something we drop out of after ~40 seconds or whenever combat ends, if you are chain pulling Mythic+ trash you should be able to retain 100 Willpower through an entire dungeon. That's should be a colossally good reason to stick to DoTs, even Mind Sear isn't going to suck when you have like ~200% haste.

    The real penalty of Apotheosis is losing your Willpower - sure you burst like a Reckstorming Warrior now - but you pay for it for the next minute when you don't have Willpower on the subsequent pulls.

    I know you have Shadow Crash in there, on what's essentially a 10 second cooldown. That's a step in the right direction, giving us a choice whether to use our "resource" on single-target or aoe, like Starsurge or Starfall. But we can't get by on that alone. My immediate suggestion is to have one of those empowerments be to spread SWP to all targets, or to have Shadow Crash apply SWP. Your SWP empowerment is basically Devouring Plague and I gather that's something you care about a lot. But I think it's possible to make something work for everyone.
    I can definitely be overruled here by the community - you probably represent the majority who would want a Shadow Word Pain spreading mechanic like Shadow Crash. Personally I would prefer to just have that damage built into Shadow Crash instead. If Shadow Word: Pain is spreadable, it's likely to do a lot less single target damage (think of Warlock's Corruption or Frost DK's Frost Fever). I want Pain to hurt, not tickle.

    Breaking it Down

    Okay so getting into the system a little, why I think it's too complicated, and various issues I see with it.

    1) I don't really see the point of Willpower. It's not a resource, it's just a stacking buff to reward you over time for not using your big "cooldown." It's kind of misnamed as well; you'd think Willpower would be being used, one way or another, to avoid a build up of Insanity, but that's not the case.
    Don't think of Apotheosis as a cooldown, it's not Elemental Ascendance - 95% of the time you should be trying to avoid triggering Apotheosis. Our Willpower allows us to touch the void, in small doses, without going Insane. Our Apotheosis is an unwanted transformation during a moment of dire desperation - the last act of a desperate priest knowing they are only seconds away from being either dead or victorious, or a knowing self-sacrifice to save their party (Apotheosis + Vampiric Embrace to burn down a dangerous mob and AOE heal like crazy).

    2) Is Willpower even worth it? Apotheosis sounds powerful as hell - you can just jump in it and reapply dots real fast, then spam Void Torrent or Shadow Crashes with seemingly no resource-oriented downside? You'll drop out of Apotheosis within 10 seconds, yes, but you can jump back in within 2 GCDs, and you won't be too interested in the disadvantages. This is because...
    The colossal amount of haste that Willpower provides should be worth it, a 100% multiplicative haste buff is nothing to scoff at. I agree I need a solution to still allow us to immediately enter Apotheosis on a pull if we want, while discouraging us from just continually re-entering that. Up the thread someone mentioned a Weakened Soul effect preventing us from re-entering for awhile, but there might be a cleaner solution. I would definitely appreciate a solution to this problem.

    3) The disadvantages you've put in there are the wrong kind. Removing dots feels like a QoL flaw, just makes you reapply them. HP drain just makes you a burden on the healers. Movement speed is moot because you can merely cancel the buff when you need to move and then spam a couple empowered spells to jump back into Apotheosis when you're able to stand and turret again. This has the unpleasant side-effect of making movement even more punishing than it already is. Big fat goose egg there.
    - Your dots won't do much damage anyways with no Willpower, so it shouldn't be worth the Apotheosis GCD's to re-apply them until it ends
    - HP drain is probably a bad idea yes, should be removed (the intent was to encourage offsetting this with Devouring Despair self-healing, which you could multi-dot)
    - Yea, we need to fix the quickly re-entering Apotheosis issue, the /cancelaura bit was meant to make the penalty of the movement speed and health drain not kill you if you trigger it at the wrong time (but still very prohibitive to your damage for having wiped your Willpower and exited Apotheosis early)


    4) If you fix this by making Willpower more valuable, then you're creeping back toward the nightmare of Legion, gating our damage behind 60 seconds of ramp-up.
    I don't mind a ramp-up on a long boss fight, and I wouldn't mind a ramp-up on Mythic+ trash if we could retain that ramped up damage if we chain pull fast enough. And we shouldn't need to ramp-up on world mobs and every quick encounter, Empowered Spells and Apotheosis should address those scenarios while still keeping Shadow a ramp-up DoT class on boss fights. I don't think Legion is a nightmare, but there is clearly room for improvement.

    5) The "right" kind of disadvantage is entirely resource-based, making you flat unable to do something again if you mess it up. Example: Boomkin hits Starfall on a pack of adds just as they die, causing him to be unable to afford a Starsurge for the big mob/boss that remains.
    The resource-based penalty is Willpower, if you blow Apotheosis on a big trash pull but it dies before even your Shadow Crash spam starts hitting, you depleted your Willpower and wasted your Apotheosis.

    6) Now some minor issues; A) 10 seconds for the "cooldown" of Desperation feels both too long and too short for something as integral as this. B) It's a shared 10 second cooldown across ALL your various DPS spells and utilities, which feels too limiting. Only 2-3 of them will ever be used, because they'll just be better in most or all situations. C) Devouring Despair directly conflicts with Void Torrent, because it can't be used on multiple targets (10 second duration, 10 second cooldown) and is therefore just another single-target spell. One will be better than the other. Even if you increased DD's duration to 20 seconds, you can still only have it on 2 mobs at once. I guess DD is better when moving a lot?
    Sorry I need to make that more clear, Desperation has no cooldown, and is not on the GCD. Because Insanity drains at 5 per second, 10 seconds without using an Empowered spell = -50 Insanity. This means during a fight you get to use one empowered spell every 10 seconds on average, but can float up to 2 empowered spells (from 0 insanity) with a different spell inbetween them (typically Mind Blast). This means you can multi-dot with Devouring Despairs, or single target with Void Torrents. Or with some foresight (to drop to 0 Insanity) you can single target burst with Devouring Despair (50 Insanity) -> Mind Blast (-5 Insanity during that GCD = 45 Insanity) -> Void Torrent (+50 = 95 Insanity), while maintaining 100 Willpower (= 100% haste buff).

    Council Fight: use your Insanity on Devouring Despairs to multi-dot, and you can have 220% uptime (100% on 2 targets, 20% on a third) on DD.

    A priority add spawns that you anticipate will live 10-20 seconds, stop casting in advance to drop to 0 Insanity, then Devouring Despair -> Mind Blast -> Void Torrent -> Death

    20-30 Seconds: drop to 0 Insanity in anticipation, VT+Pain -> DD -> MB -> VT -> Death

    0-10 seconds: drop to 0 Insanity in anticipation, Forbidden Word: Null -> Mind Blast -> Void Torrent -> Death

    Desperation can't have a cooldown greater than 10 seconds, because you need to spam Empowered spells in less than 10 seconds to trigger Apotheosis.

    D) You're completely gutting all our utility, and it's not even GOOD utility! I reeeeeally think it's a bad idea to give up our direct healing - shadowmend is limited enough as it is. Losing PWS is losing B&S - a 40% run speed boost with like 75% uptime (for about 20 seconds, until we run OOM, and then it's more like 50% uptime). Big large huge mobility loss. Then also our one CC, and MD? Good grief man.
    The devs mentioned they want to go through all the utility at the start of BFA and streamline it, so I'm interpreting that to mean nerfs. I'm offering up all the targets for cuts, and adding strong niche utility instead. I think you might be missing what utility I'm adding:

    - Vampiric Embrace is a 2m cooldown, this could potentially be shorter (90s?) - but the idea is I want a big group healing spell in our kit, this should be something you bring a Spriest to a group for, and build into your healing strategy for difficult raid bosses

    - Disapparate is a 1 second target drop and immunity, Arcane Mages had this talent last expansion and didn't recognize the potential here, but we can straight up dodge mechanics with careful timing here. Big bomb about to blow up on you? Nah, not me. Someone needs to soak an Armageddon on Kil'Jaeden? Sure I'll do that, but I'll ignore the DoT that comes with it. Viz'aduum (Karazhan last boss) tries to make you run around with his dumb beam mechanic for 30 seconds? Nah, we target drop that beam and he pewpews the ground instead. This is about bringing back Spectral Guise / Phantasm tricks from prior expansions.

    - Nullify Magic is an instant Purge on both your target and yourself. Mass Dispel is gone, but for many applications we didn't really want to dispel everything everywhere, we just wanted to get the healer out of CC, or remove a deadly DoT. This is an instant cast, and a stronger purge than any healer has - but at a cost of DPS (50 Insanity: a potential Null, Void Torrent, Shadow Crash, or Devouring Despair).

    - We lose Shadow Mend and Shield, but I think we offset that with Devouring Despair healing and VT healing. Maybe it means Void Torrent needs to be a self-heal too though? The devs clearly think the ability to heal and shield others is worth a Lot more than self-healing, which is why Warlocks can be nigh-unkillable in a raid setting, because they can only heal themselves. Spriests can't start spamming Mend/Shield on a dying tank when the healer gets CC'd, but we can dispel the CC off the healer. Spriests can't bomb heals during a high raid damage phase, but we can VE everytime it happens instead of every other time, etc. On Kil'Jaeden we could soak a big Armageddon, then tank small ones with Devouring Despair (and potentially Void Torrents if they self-heal too).

    Roots

    So, because the system is interesting, I wanna take it back to its roots. Please correct me on my assumptions that are wrong here about your goals.

    The elevator pitch for this system seems to be that it allows a high long-term DPS ceiling (through the long ramp of Willpower), with the flexibility of burst AoE and add-killing.
    That's the dream ya

    All in all, what I'd say is that this doesn't quite work out in practice, the way I'm thinking about it. If the system is tuned in such a way that having high willpower is more valuable than just jumping in Apotheosis over and over, then the real punishment for hitting Apotheosis (dropping all Willpower) is far too great to justify using it to kill adds or burn through trash. Better DPS would be yielded by letting Willpower ramp up, then staying at max Willpower for an entire dungeon, never using Apotheosis, at which point Apotheosis may as well just not exist, and Desperation may as well just have a 10 second cooldown. If you try to solve this by having Willpower drain or dump when out of combat, then we're just flat bad for dungeons because we'll have that 50 second ramp-up back, that we can't even control anymore.
    The idea for chain pulling a Mythic+ should be that you don't trigger Apotheosis constantly, and instead want to avoid it to maintain Willpower the entire dungeon. Unless something goes wrong and something needs to die immediately, or sometimes there will be mechanics where it's worthwhile to trigger Apotheosis now and take the hit afterwards, ex. a boss takes 400% increased damage for the next 15 seconds, and your group is going to Bloodlust - that's worth repeating the Willpower ramp-up.

    Unlike Void Form, Willpower doesn't just vanish the moment we stop casting, we need a grace period between pulls (ex. 15 second duration), to encourage chainpulling without forcing us into a 50 second ramp-up on every pull. If our group is functioning well and chain pulling through a Mythic+, Shadow should be amazing at that. If the group is struggling, wiping, people are going AFK, Shadow would perform worse (but would be worth using Apotheosis more).

    In short, you have two entirely different modes of play (maintaining high Willpower vs rotating in and out of Apotheosis), and because of the freedom you're giving players to use one or the other at their leisure, they are not complimentary; they are conflicting. One will always be better than the other. Legion's Voidform system has two modes, but they're designed such that you WANT to be in one as much as possible. One is supposed to be better than the other.
    I don't like Legion's interpretation of Void Form vs. Shadow Form. I think maintaining Willpower vs. frequently triggering Apotheosis should be conflicting playstyles. If you want to be a machine gun DoT god, you can do that (maintain 100 Willpower, don't hit 100 Insanity). If you really like burst cycling through frequently Apotheosis usage, you can do that too: you can't do both at once though.

    I don't want one to always be better than the other, I want them to be situationally better. There is a right time for Apotheosis, and a right time for Willpower.

    I understand that you're not meaning Apotheosis to be used as a rotational tool, like a "DPS cooldown" or a "phase," but you have to understand that since you've built it to be both dangerous and worth DPS, people will use it for that DPS and criticize the drawbacks as QoL problems.
    Yea, the health drain and movement speed is too oppressive, not having Willpower and making your DoTs/channels shit is probably good enough of a drawback.

    But this leads me to ask, what is your goal with Apotheosis? I'm not even 100% sure. If you want it to be a punishment for hitting 100 insanity, then why does it look so juicy for DPS (spammed empowered abilities)? If you want it to be an alternate DPS mode used for burst, then why does it come with such painful drawbacks? It's too versatile to be good for any one particular combat encounter type (works for single-target, AoE, small-group cleave), so it's not as if max-Willpower playstyle is for long single-target boss fights and Apotheosis spam is for dungeon trash fights.
    It's not a punishment, though it can be punishing if used incorrectly. It's potentially an alternate DPS mode if you prefer it or don't really like machine gun DoTs/channels (but this should really be what Shadow is about). It's primarily a burst of agency over a bad situation. Most of the time you want to be DoTting. Every now and then though, everything needs to die right now: that's where Apotheosis steps in.

    So yeah, I'm not sure it's accomplishing what you want it to, though I might've missed something or misread your goals.
    It's definitely WIP - it needed community help to grow beyond my vision of what it could be, into what would actually be good.

    Suggestions

    Honestly, and this might sound crazy to you, but hear me out: I think you should get rid of Apotheosis's drawbacks and tweak the DPS benefits. It's already got the drawback that it doesn't do as much damage in the long run as staying at high Willpower. I think you want Apotheosis to do two things at once - either it's a punishment for reaching 100 insanity, or it's a DPS mode for short fights. But these things aren't working together very well, so one or the other has to go, and my vote is on the former.
    Agreed it's too punishing in the OP iteration, need to maybe take off the HP drain and movement slow. Losing your Willpower should be punishment enough.

    How about this: "Power Overwhelming (Level 15 talent): Your Voidform increases Shadow damage by an additional 30%, but causes insanity to drain 30% faster and no longer increases haste." Basically the same idea, it's just a talent. You have your baseline haste-stacking Voidform for long fights, and you can talent this thing for short fights. Bonus points, it keeps all the sexy Voidform animations, and it'll be a lot easier for Blizzard to implement.
    Sounds a lot like keeping the 'nightmare of Legion' to me

    I dislike cycling regularly into Void Form at all, I'd prefer to go back to being a DoT spec, and not spending most of my time spamming Void Bolt and Mind Blast. If we're trying to just push it all into one talent in the new system, I'd maybe say:

    Power Overwhelming (replaces S2M since they implied that was likely already happening): You no longer have access to Void Bolt, but your DoTs and Mind Flay generate additional insanity with every tick, Mind Flay deals additional damage in Void Form and extends your DoT Durations by 1 second per tick.

    I always assumed Apotheosis would just use the Void Form animations ya

    Along with a baseline SWP-spreader and better access to Shadow Crash, that's about all I need to feel happy with the spec for PvE (plus some genius solution for movement/phase changes that I don't have myself). PvP design still needs a lot of work, but before I even bother with Shadow PvP, or touch PvP again at all, they're gonna have to walk wayyyyy back on the melee v caster shit show they've fallen into over the last few expansions.
    When I think back to when I liked Shadow PvP, it was when we were tankier (Devouring Despair was meant to help with this the way DP did in Pandaria), had neat Spectral Guise / Phantasm tricks (Disapparate), and could dispel-cleave with our healer to make Spriest 3v3's uniquely difficult to control/contain (TBC, WotLK, Cata): Nullify Magic.

    Eagerly looking forward to your reply!
    Likewise
    Last edited by Yvaelle; 2017-11-17 at 09:32 PM.
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  4. #24
    I can allready feel my disappointment, since i like this concept very much, but, knowing blizz devs, they will miss the point or half implement it even if you should manage to nail the balance of this idea.
    Or they feel the need to add some unneeded limitations again, because "not being able to do all content with your main char would be a lack of decisionmaking" since all removal of actual fun world utility ( falldamage reductions etc) or talents has been touted as increasing decisionmaking, because otherwise the game is not fun - which i find to be total horseshit btw, i wouldn't mind if everyone had the same capabilities in all areas of the game( aoe, st, spread sustain etc) and we would only choose the theme we want our character to represent, just like they wanted us to play at the start of legion: play your spec, noone should be forced to play the spec he doesn't like, class fantasy yada yada

    if i want to play a priest or dk i don't want to get blasted with bullshit limitations like movementspeed based around the idea that i am super deadly once i get into range or once i get to ramp long enough, since i won't be strong enough to offset the penalty anyways, because class balance.

    rant over...

  5. #25
    Deleted
    I appreciate you guys taking the time but in reality all shadow will get is some gimmicky instant AOE spell, removal of mass histeria and turning s2m into 2 min cd. I really don't see blizzard doing another shadow revamp (as they have already stated they wont) so you are wasting your time.

  6. #26
    The idea of insanity is cool but its been more of a hindrance than a help in M+ just bring back Cata Shadow.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    First up - thanks for the quality feedback and thought on it - also meant that I delayed my response until I had the time and brainpower to give it a full response, so sorry for delay
    Haha no worries. <3

    So just like in my own post, a lot of the early stuff here is superceded by the later stuff, so there are only bits and pieces in the early reply that stand out as things worth touching on right now; the rest will be answered when things come into more focus later.

    Worth saying right now though, is that I do get that Desperation doesn't have an actual cooldown. I put the word "cooldown" in quotes because it's kind of a flexible version of a cooldown. So for most intents and purposes, it is. So just don't get hung up on my use of the word there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    This should be resolved by ~spammable Shadow Crashes
    Yes, and that's part of the design that rubs me the wrong way - one button spam for AoE. That sounds awkward and kinda boring. In addition, if we're capable of Shadow Crashing 7-8 times in a row for AoE burst, then Shadow Crash will be tuned so that each one is really underwhelming. Sounds super blah.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    3) I don't think we suffer much to heavy movement in Legion due to Void Bolt spam
    Yeah, part of the Void Bolt concept from the beginning was to give us an instant-cast on a super short cooldown, for mobility. And it does work, and that's part of what I like about Voidform, but it only works for extremely brief movement needs. In other words, if the fight is making you move any further than a slight shift to the right every few seconds (which happens all the time), then it doesn't help as much as it needs to. Between our gigantic general vulnerability to movement and Void Bolt's only-partial compensation, we're still too vulnerable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    Disapparate would become an 'oh shit!' button for being out of position.
    Sure but it's on the same "cooldown" as your actual DPS spells. Which other class in the game has to sacrifice DPS for their mobility tools? Seems like we're suffering more than others, which is a paradigm I'm desperate to see an end to.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    On Kil'Jaeden our DoTs would retain our Willpower through phase changes by continuing to tick on the boss during transitions.
    Yeah, that'd work nicely, for situations like that. But if the boss goes straight immune, the design's intended solution is to bust Apotheosis 10 seconds from the phase transition in order to get some burst? Doesn't sound like it'll make up for the fact that you'll still have to ramp up Willpower again after the phase is over.

    I think in general I'm just really against forced ramp, especially when it's that long.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    It's valuable to me <3
    Aw thanks QTPI

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    1) I think Insanity management and Empowered spells gives us this flexibility without relying on long-term ramp up.
    But we'll still rely on it because that's the way to do our max DPS. The fact that you can keep Willpower rolling as long as you can keep dots rolling somewhere, that's nice. But it's still way too vulnerable to too many situations; what if you're happily cruising along chain-pulling in a dungeon, but someone goes AFK for a boss for juuuust long enough for Willpower to drop? Infuriating.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    or good multidot (spend Insanity on Devouring Despairs)
    Side note, I mentioned in there that Devouring Despair does not actually work as a multi-dot tool, since its "cooldown" is the same as its duration. Thoughts?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    3) Stutterstepping should be an important part of Spriesting. It's part of why we've always needed fight foresight to pre-emptively move out of upcoming mechanics where other classes just stand in the bad spot and blink/dash at the last second. I like that we need to plan ahead, I think it's what makes Spriests the best.
    I mean, to me you're just saying that you like playing an inferior class because you find it more challenging. And that's completely fair and I understand. My old guild always used to make fun of our friendly mage for letting Blink make him lazy, so when he switched to a shaman he got himself killed constantly. Good times.

    But yeah, I'd prefer playing a class with as many tools as possible for various situations. I know I'll distinguish myself regardless.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    I think on this subject we just ideologically disagree. I don't want one of those weak-ass DoTs that other classes get that they can spread to everyone. The solution to quick mass AOE should be Shadow Crash. The solution to long-term AOE should be multi-dots, even if VT->Pain->Tab->Repeat isn't thrilling mechanically.
    Funny story, I used to be in the same camp. I was leery of dot-spreading because I was under the impression that SWP hits harder than Corruption/Sunfire, and I wasn't keen on taking a damage nerf. But the dots that other classes can spread are definitely not "weak-ass." Corruption is really not that much less powerful than SWP. And ultimately it's not about the damage of one dot; it's the damage of the whole AoE kit, and Shadow is super lacking. SWP does roughly 30% more damage than Corruption, averaged over time, but Affliction's and Balance's other AoE mechanics are many times more powerful than Shadow's other AoE. If SWP were spreadable, even without a nerf, I think Affliction would still crush us. And even if SWP needed a nerf to accommodate dot-spreading, that damage could just be added to VT.

    Dot-spreading is not the be-all-end-all of the AoE of a dot class, I understand. But it's for that reason that I don't understand why we shouldn't have it. We're a dot class, we want our DPS to be dot-based, including AoE. The other reason we want it is to make sure our AoE scales with Mastery.

    Ultimately I just want an AoE kit that's not underdesigned, that feels good to use, and that works roughly as well as everyone else's, including on trash fights where we don't have time to manually dot everything up. There's no reason for us to be as bad as we are at it, considering that Aff and Balance (AoE kings) are also just as good as we are at multi-dotting.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    sure you burst like a Reckstorming Warrior now - but you pay for it for the next minute
    Just a thought, but why should we have to pay for it? The warrior doesn't. He'll storm all over some trash and then barrel right into a powerful single-target rotation. Why should Shadow suffer all these sacrifices and penalties, when other classes don't?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    I want Pain to hurt, not tickle.
    And I want Pain to be part of a more well-thought-out AoE toolkit. I don't want our dots to be used only for single-target and long-lived Council fights and big mobs, while we have to rely on boring-ass nukes for our AoE. We're a dot class, we should be incorporating our dots in every encounter we face. If the tank pulls 3 packs so the DPS can go nuts, I don't want to transform into a shadowy Mage, just blasting the mobs with nukes.

    Like I said before, Affliction's AoE damage breakdown is like 20% Corruption damage and 80% Seed/Soulflame. If our spreadable SWP is doing more overall damage than Afflction's Corruption, there's still a ton of room for our other AoE spells to not be as good as his, and our overall AoE damage can still be less.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    Up the thread someone mentioned a Weakened Soul effect preventing us from re-entering for awhile, but there might be a cleaner solution. I would definitely appreciate a solution to this problem.
    Eh, my solution is to turn it into a talent. I'm not convinced the two things can co-exist at the same time.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    The devs mentioned they want to go through all the utility at the start of BFA and streamline it, so I'm interpreting that to mean nerfs.
    Sadly, I interpret it the same way, but that's because they WAY overestimate the value of our utility. VE is pathetic, Shadowmend and PWS are negligible, Mass Dispel is useful on maybe 1-2 bosses in all the dungeons and raids in Legion so far.

    The only meaningful raid utilities right now are battle-rez, immunities, and warlock summons. There are smaller utilities of some use, like mage food and warrior shouts. But Shadowpriests bring nothing to the table that raids care about. But maybe their plan of re-adding class buffs and such will put us in a decent position.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    Vampiric Embrace is a 2m cooldown, this could potentially be shorter (90s?) - but the idea is I want a big group healing spell in our kit, this should be something you bring a Spriest to a group for, and build into your healing strategy for difficult raid bosses
    VE would have to be buffed to headpiece levels before it became actually useful.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    Disapparate is a 1 second target drop and immunity, Arcane Mages had this talent last expansion and didn't recognize the potential here, but we can straight up dodge mechanics with careful timing here.
    Uhhhh forgive me if I'm super skeptical about that. 1 second of immunity, after a 30 yard blink? Think about using that on a KJ armageddon - you have to position yourself exactly the right distance away and time it perfectly. Maybe you're a godlike player who would nail that every time, but that doesn't make it useful as a soak for 99.9999% of shadowpriests. It'll be fucked up so many times that raid leaders will just ban shadowpriests from using it. After a week of such a boss being out, it'll be such a meme that spriests will make jokes about how THEY can soak, similar to whenever a rogue offers to heal with First Aid, or when the warlock offers to tank with his VW.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    Nullify Magic is an instant Purge on both your target and yourself. Mass Dispel is gone, but for many applications we didn't really want to dispel everything everywhere, we just wanted to get the healer out of CC, or remove a deadly DoT. This is an instant cast, and a stronger purge than any healer has - but at a cost of DPS
    Yes, exactly. Nobody else has to sacrifice DPS to use their utility.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    The devs clearly think the ability to heal and shield others is worth a Lot more than self-healing, which is why Warlocks can be nigh-unkillable in a raid setting, because they can only heal themselves.
    Yeah this bugs the shit out of me. But I don't think it's a conscious choice they're making about it, which is why it's probably dangerous to be asking for the same kinds of things, even disregarding the homogenization you're running toward. I honestly think Blizz is just ignorant about the Shadowpriest experience, which is going to fuck us whether or not we have utility that technically benefits others (even if it's a negligible amount). So we might as well want to stick with what we have.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    I don't like Legion's interpretation of Void Form vs. Shadow Form.
    See this is the first time I feel like we differ in opinion in a way that isn't just lack of information or understanding. I do like the Voidform system in theory. I like the animations and the hectic spamming and the feeling to trying to maintain it for just a couple extra seconds. I just think it's underdesigned and needs some new options for flexibility depending on the content you're doing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    Sounds a lot like keeping the 'nightmare of Legion' to me
    To me, the nightmare of Legion is just in the inflexibility, not the underlying system. The fact that our design focuses into such a narrow niche, and prevents us from functioning in a lot of content.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    I dislike cycling regularly into Void Form at all, I'd prefer to go back to being a DoT spec, and not spending most of my time spamming Void Bolt and Mind Blast.
    That's totally fair. I can't help but partially agree; I think the design does feel awkward. Why even have Mind Flay if we literally never use it for more than one tick while in Voidform? I like the animation of casually throwing Void Bolts and I like the mobility it offers, but aside from that the playstyle would feel better if (like in your talent idea) Mind Flay/Mind Sear were doing the dot-extension.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    When I think back to when I liked Shadow PvP, it was when we were tankier
    Funny, cause my favorite PvP design was WoD - we were mobile and slippery and fast. Zipping around at Angelic Feather speed, disappearing with Guise, busting Cascade and instant nukes all over the place. I opted for pure Haste/Crit gear (which was suboptimal for DPS I know) so that my instant Mind Blasts had a 45% (!!!) chance to crit and root the braindead melees who smell a free kill. I felt like I actually had options against them, I could escape. Wonderful times.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    (Devouring Despair was meant to help with this the way DP did in Pandaria)
    I honestly don't quite get the attachment you and others have to DP. It's just instant, on-demand self-healing plus a nuke, right? Pretty good, and it worked nice. In theory, they transferred that self-healing to VT (and then nerfed it over and over and over because they're morons), but does that not suit you?

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    had neat Spectral Guise / Phantasm tricks (Disapparate)
    Yeah see empowered Fade wouldn't do the same thing. It's just a Blink clone with a brief immunity that admittedly has a lot of potential, but it's not a short duration stealth.

    My school of thought is not to want a Blink close. Mages and Druids already do that. What I want is Spectral Guise back - no one has an ability quite like that. Give it a root/snare break and a speed boost, and it functions as a Blink, but it's more versatile and interesting. Makes us slippery. I would much rather be slippery than tanky.

    Quote Originally Posted by Yvaelle View Post
    could dispel-cleave with our healer to make Spriest 3v3's uniquely difficult to control/contain (TBC, WotLK, Cata): Nullify Magic.
    Yesss this is where we click real well. I think that's exactly the kind of thing we should want for Shadow PvP. Make Spriest comps uniquely hard to lock down because of our potent anti-magic. Way back in Vanilla, I spent several weeks trying to choose between Mage and Shadowpriest as my main, and I went with the priest because of Dispel Magic - it just seemed like such important utility. To be able to keep myself and my allies clean of debuffs, and my opponents clean of buffs. So strong.

    Aaaanyway, so after this reply to your reply, I think I have a good handle on what you want your system to be and how you want it to work. I'm comfortable forming a final judgement, not on how it was presented in the OP but based on your vision.

    A) The double-tap: The fact that you'd either have to press two keys every time you want to use an empowered spell, OR devote two button slots for each spell that can be empowered, honestly feels pretty awkward. And I don't really see a way to fix that.

    B) It's too vulnerable to failure, and too easy to inaccurately gauge the Insanity meter and accidentally go into Apotheosis. It sounds absolutely maddening to find yourself in a situation where you NEED to use an empowered ability, or you die, but you're above 50 insanity so you just end up dumping your Willpower and have to ramp all the way back up. One small mistake and you've turned a 95% parse into a 60% parse. Sounds awful, possibly even worse than it is now.

    B.5) Building off the previous point, you keep saying that in order to use the system properly you have to "plan ahead." And you do accomplish that. It's clear that you have to let insanity fall to 0 if you need to use X ability in Y situation, and that takes roughly 10-15 seconds of prep time. Can you plan ahead 10-15 seconds at all times? Great, you're doing fine. But that's the kind of thing you expect to see in the top 1% of shadowpriests. And don't forget that the spec will be balanced around what that top 1% can do. So the shadowpriest gods will be roughly middle-of-the-pack overall in the high-level company they keep, but there WILL be no other spriests, because normies won't be able to cut it. So to me, it looks like you're trying to turn the spec into even more of an elitist-only spec, and I have to be 100% against that, not because I don't think I would be able to keep up, but because 1) Since I pug everything I do, I don't want to be declined invites because people think Shadow sucks (because so few people can use it to its potential), and because 2) I don't want to spend that much extra effort just to be on-par with my competitors. I know your reaction to this is that you don't want Shadow to become just another 3-button mongoloid spec, and I agree that I like there to be SOME skill required, but there needs to be a balance, and I think you've gone too far over into the "this spec is too hard to play right" zone.

    C) What about situations you can't "plan ahead" for? These happen all the time, especially in PvP. If something happens that you absolutely could not have anticipated, and you happen to be above 50 insanity at that time (which you always will be, if using the system properly, aka hitting Desperation as often as insanity allows), then you're just fucked. That also sounds awful.

    D) The burst AoE you envision doesn't suit my palate, as it's just spam Shadow Crash until out of Apotheosis. You also don't want dot-spreading. Can't get behind that.

    E) You want all our decent utility to run off the same system/cooldown as our big DPS spells. Big no from me there; nobody else has to sacrifice DPS to access their utility. I'm tired of the perception that everything we have needs some kind of sacrifice or disadvantage.

    Overall, I gotta pass on this one. It's got some really interesting ideas and cool themes, but there's too much about it that sounds super frustrating to play with. Obviously I'm not the be-all-end-all of Shadowpriest design, but with every possible respect, I really hope Blizz doesn't listen to you. Hopefully this post and our chat was more helpful than a quick "this shit sucks lol."

    Do keep iterating, if you find my reasoning solid enough to work off of.

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