Void Shift Changes

[Talent]

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8704260473

I'm going to start off by saying "I Agree" with the Void Shift changes but I feel like defensively It leaves us short. Void shift is broken when saving another teammate as shadow but when saving yourself it was pretty balanced.

This probably won't even be viewed but I'll suggest it anyways. I think a good "Defensive" change that Isn't too overpowered on a 6min CD for shadow would be: Instead of swapping HP as shadow, void swap swaps your positioning as well as changes your target.

So, say I'm the targeted shadow priest and my pally is sitting 30-40 yrds away and I use void swap on him. He is now in my location and I am now in his location and he is now the target. It can save a life if used correctly or the enemy team can still easily recover from it and hop back on the spriest. Basically in a defensive point of view its just a 6min cd blink/feign death while still putting your teammate in harms way.

It would be a better change than just removing our "New" lvl 87 spell completely in competitive play.

TL;DR Disc/holy still life swaps, Shadow Location/positioning swaps.

[rnbwtrout]

i said it from day one of MoP beta when spriests were given spectral guise and void shift, they were way overbudget. now if you didn't already have dispersion, i would say you got a leg to stand on. even with the changes, spriests are still overbudget on utility seeing as they can also heal and not insignificant at that. i'll not shed a single tear when the rich man gets $1 stolen from him.

[Yvaelle]

That's a good solution to it, I like it

I agree that the utility nerf makes sense, but we don't really need the defensive nerf, it makes sense for nerfing God Comp (in particular) - but Void Shift removal + Mass Dispel nerf is too much.

I suggested they cap Void Shift (for Shadow) at 30% of max health swapped, rather than up to 100% - this would mean if your teammate is dying (20% health) and you are fine (100% health), you give them 30% of your health: teammate at 50% health, shadow at 70% health. If you are dying and your teammate is at 100% health, you gain 30% of max health, they lose 30% of their max health. This means Void Shift doesn't really heal at all, it just re-distributes the damage a bit - the enemy teams pressure on your comp remains the same, you just temporarily deny them that kill cycle (maybe, given burst this expansion 30% of max health is certainly no guarantee). Personally I think the cooldown should be lowered from 6 minutes if that were the case - it's not that strong of an ability.

Your idea is a much cooler ability though, and it would help with Spriest mobility - I could see all manner of neat tricks using it. If your healer was caught in the open getting CC chained, you could target+position swap them to safety next to a pillar to break the CC chain (but blow a major defensive cooldown in the process, it still may be worth it though). If your melee teammate was getting trucked in the open, you could position/target swap them - putting them at safety (presumably closer to your healer) - while surprising your opponents with a Void Shift->Fear Bomb

I like it a lot, it could even be made into a Shadow version of Leap of Faith (because it's something I want to use every 90 seconds!)

---------- Post added 2013-04-23 at 03:24 AM ----------

i said it from day one of MoP beta when spriests were given spectral guise and void shift, they were way overbudget. now if you didn't already have dispersion, i would say you got a leg to stand on. even with the changes, spriests are still overbudget on utility seeing as they can also heal and not insignificant at that. i'll not shed a single tear when the rich man gets $1 stolen from him.

Shadow heals are currently the weakest of all hybrid heals both in terms of individual output and HPS, not to mention being the only hybrid who really cares about mana (and Flash Heals are horrendously expensive). The 'heals' that we have that matter are Halo (requires your teammate stands still for 3 seconds while the wave gets to them), Void Shift (removed in 5.3), and Power Word: Shield (was nerfed by like... 30%? in 5.2). Flash Heals work in a pinch, but they don't hold a candle to Ret, Enh, Feral, or even Boomy burst healing if your healer is getting gibbed.

When we had Phantasm, Dispersion, 0.5s Mass Dispel, Void Shift, Spectral Guise, and 55% more powerful heals - then yes, Shadow was overbudget (5.0->5.1). In 5.2, Void Shift + 0.5s Mass Dispel when we can freecast all match (via Mage babysitter) playing God Comp - then yes, Shadow's utility contributed heavily to God Comp's success. The loss of Void Shift will hurt every Spriest comp (particularly resto spec synergy, since they needed our occasional support healing), but the Mass Dispel nerf won't really matter for God Comp - it will hurt every Spriest who doesn't have an infinity of peels though (a mistake on Blizzard's part).

Should Shadow's Void Shift be nerfed (in its current form)? Yes. Should it be removed from the game? No. Should Mass Dispel have its cast time tripled at the same time? No - especcially when the real problem with God Comp isn't Shadow, it's Frost Mage + Rdruid peels. God Comp isn't even the best thing in 5.2 anymore, Affliction Mage/Lock/Druid (the new God Comp) is already the highest rated team in the world - and their representation about 2200 is growing rapidly as a result of that fame - Shadow has already been replaced from its best comp before these nerfs even go live.

Shadow's representation has already declined significantly since last season, what's confusing everybody is that Priest representation skyrocketed - because after the Rogue buffs, Disc went from non-existent to arguably the best healer in the game overnight (as did Rogue representation). The rogue buffs brought back RMP and Thugcleave - previously non-existent last season - as two of the strongest comps this season (the third being Affliction MLD): even though Shadow's representation declined, Priest representation skyrockted, because Discs suddenly make up 10% of all arena participants - up from 0.2% last season.

Edit: By the way the reason I single out God Comp is because 80%+ of high rated Shadowpriests all play the same 3's comp (God Comp), while Shatterplay and RPS are popular at lower levels, they both get countered eventually by skilled RMP's and Affliction MLD's - so talking about Shadow being overpowered in 3's is really a misnomer, it's a single comp that is too strong when put together (Shadow + Fmage + Rdruid). Also, Shadow being overpowered right now is also really a discussion about 3's in particular - our representation in 2's, and RBG's (and to a lesser extent even 5's) is not exemplary - the only bracket we truly excel in is 3's.

[Metacrias]

Shadow heals are currently the weakest of all hybrid heals both in terms of individual output and HPS, not to mention being the only hybrid who really cares about mana (and Flash Heals are horrendously expensive). The 'heals' that we have that matter are Halo (requires your teammate stands still for 3 seconds while the wave gets to them), Void Shift (removed in 5.3), and Power Word: Shield (was nerfed by like... 30%? in 5.2). Flash Heals work in a pinch, but they don't hold a candle to Ret, Enh, Feral, or even Boomy burst healing if your healer is getting gibbed.

Are you sure about this; do numbers back it up? I have a level 90 spriest, but my main is an Ele Shammy (with Enh off-spec) and I find my spriest to be quite a bit more effective if I need to help heal - We also have renew, prayer of mending, binding heal and vampiric embrace as means to heal others aside from PW:S and flash heal. Yes, these aren't the most powerful heals (although vampiric embrace can be very effective) - with glyphs you can stay in shadow form using all but binding heal and you can strengthen renew and prayer of mending. Add to this the utility we with silence, Hymn of Hope, psychic scream and two separate dispels (even if the better is getting nerfed). I can't speak for pallys or monks, but I don't see Enh/Ele Shammy's as better off-healers than spriests.

[Deleted]

Monk,feral and ret have far more approving heals than shadow and most only take 1 GCD where as shadow wastes 4 to get there heals up losing pressure in the process. also watching out for your healer is very harsh on mana making you waste more time spreading VT to have aplicable burst just thought i'd add that it where as all other hybrids have no concern for resources !

[Yvaelle]

Are you sure about this; do numbers back it up? I have a level 90 spriest, but my main is an Ele Shammy (with Enh off-spec) and I find my spriest to be quite a bit more effective if I need to help heal - We also have renew, prayer of mending, binding heal and vampiric embrace as means to heal others aside from PW:S and flash heal. Yes, these aren't the most powerful heals (although vampiric embrace can be very effective) - with glyphs you can stay in shadow form using all but binding heal and you can strengthen renew and prayer of mending. Add to this the utility we with silence, Hymn of Hope, psychic scream and two separate dispels (even if the better is getting nerfed). I can't speak for pallys or monks, but I don't see Enh/Ele Shammy's as better off-healers than spriests.

@Elemental vs Shadow healing
My spriest is fully 491/493 pvp geared (498 weapons), I Flash Heal for 45-50k (non-crit), it takes 1.5 seconds to cast. My DK alt does 3's with an ele shaman who is also fully geared, she Healing Surges for 45-50k (non-crit), it takes 1.5 seconds to cast. So Elemental Shamans have the same healing per cast, same cast time, and thus same HPS as a flash heal spamming Spriest.

Without Void Shift, spriests have Halo / Shield / VE in addition to Flash Heals, while Ele's have either Ancestral Guidance (better than VE; in 3's its 40% to 3 people vs 33% to 3 people, and has half the cooldown - 2m vs 3m on VE), or Healing Tide (another strong alternative especcially if you are the one they are likely to kill), or Healing Rain (weaker option but not terrible), or Chain Heal. Ele healing is therefore generally better at responding to cleave/pressure damage, while Spriest shields are better for responding to spikes of burst damage (15+ seconds apart).

It's a legitimate complaint that being able to respond to burst can be more valuable than responding to pressure (especcially in early xpac seasons where pressure is mostly absent and burst is king) - but it should be noted that Ele's have significantly less mana-risk than Spriests do - because the near constant use of 22 second cooldown Thunderstorm (15% back per use) is far better than the VT mana regen model (2% mana back per tick (3 seconds, assuming they aren't dispelled or you haven't been CC'd or the target isn't immune to magic) - especcially when you consider that the most expensive action Ele does is often healing, while Spriests are expected to use level 90 talents and mass dispel pretty much on cooldown, both of which are horrendously expensive. Ele can also choose to take Ancestral Swiftness, giving them an instant heal if needed once per minute - where no such effect exists for Shadow. So in 5.3 (post Void Shift nerf) Ele and Shadow are roughly equally capable of pvp hybrid healing.


@Enhancement (and melee in general) Healing
Enhancement is melee - and therefore harder to compare - while free casting Healing Surges is probably less effective for them than casters (I have to assume because my Enh sham is only 86 so far), Enhancement has the benefit of enjoying Ancestral Swiftness more than Ele does, and of course Maelstorm Healingstorm procs. I often watch Diablous do gladiator->rank 1 level Enhancement pvp, and he seems to pretty consistently Healingstorm crit for 100-160k (and it always feels like crits, but we can deduce from that that he's non-critting for 50-80k) - that's significantly stronger than Shadow or Ele and critically - it's an instant cast - meaning he can do it while being tunneled, he can do it in response to sudden unexpected burst (ie. fmages, rogues, hunters) without the 1.5s casting 'kick me' delay that Shadow and (to a lesser extent due to Ancestral Swiftness) Ele have. Add to that that he can then often follow-up with an AS-Healing Surge as another instant, unstoppable heal - and you have in many ways a stronger healer than Shadow or Ele - with less sustained healing, but healing which is larger per spell, higher HPS, and (critically) uninterruptable.

This seems to be the intended balance for caster hybrids vs melee hybrids - Shadow, Ele and Balance all have greater sustained healing (due to larger mana pools) but all of them are to easier to control and prevent their healing, because of the cast times. While Enh, Feral, Ret and WW all have stronger, instant burst healing, but less sustained healing (via smaller mana pools).


@Minor Heals over Time
The spells I focus on are there because they actually *feel* relevant to pvp, you mentioned Renew for example - but Renew works out to 4-5 times weaker than Second Wind, and about a half to a third as good as Recuperate - unless your in the middle of a full arena reset, Renew isn't a relevant amount of healing - similarly while ProM isn't exactly trivial - it's not going to have a real effect versus MoP-level burst. If we were to include that, we should really include Healing Stream and Healing Rain, which make up a far stronger kit than Renew+ProM, but - while useful in a pinch - aren't really relevant to the discussion given the state of burst in MoP pvp.


@Ancestral Guidance vs Vampiric Embrace
You also mentioned VE being very effective - that's absolutely true - but in comparison to Shamans in particular, Ancestral Guidance is hand over fist better than Vampiric Embrace. In 3v3, VE heals for 50% of the Spriests damage, divided by number of party members, for 15 seconds - so if you deal 50k DPS in a PvP environment, each party member receives 8,333 healing per second for 15 seconds (2/3rds that of Second Wind, pretty good), or 125k healing over 15 seconds each. By contrast, Ancestral Guidance heals for 40% of the Shamans damage to 3 people for 10 seconds, so a 50k DPS (in PvP environment) shaman heals for 20k per second to 3 people (versus 8333 for VE), or 200k healing over 10 seconds (a 60% healing increase occurring in just 2/3rds the time). Glyphed VE would do 16666 (vs 20k) per person per second, or 167k per person over 10 seconds. Glyphed VE is a huge improvement over unglyphed VE, but still not as good as Ancestral Guidance. Two last but decisive points, 1) Ancestral Guidance has just a 2 minute cooldown, while VE has a 3 minute cooldown - which makes AG way better than VE, and 2) if the Priest gets tunneled or CC'd during VE, it does no healing - but if the Shaman expects to get tunneled, they can take Healing Tide totem instead - which will still provide even stronger HPS than a freecasting shaman during AG, albeit on a 3 minute cooldown (the same CD as VE).

[Vicarious]

Also worth mentioning is the drawback of having to drop shadowform to cast flash heal which, if you take damage while casting, makes the cast not even worth it. I do also enjoy the couple recent mentions on the forums of shadow being the only caster that can be run out of mana to as a viable strategy to win, that the blue posters ignore when quoting that person and giving some irrelevant answer. It's cool mages have a really high cost on spell steal too they can only cast 5 of them in a row with no cd then they are out of wait he has mana again.

[Deleted]

I dont think the VS loss is really a big deal. I rarely ever have to use it as a life saver to me, its normally for my healer against mongo cleave teams who hit all their cd's and train something while dribbling all over their keyboards. A big loss is the MD on .5 when glyphed and removing blocks/shields etc. Now its on 1.5 and glyph needed to get rid of those items. Thats a big nerf. That said - I play god comp in 3's, so getting a block off oppo mage or shield off the pala is nice to continue pressure BUT we can usually switch hard anyway. Its mainly the def lost for pulling my healer out of traps we couldnt stand on or for pollies that werent grounded all in all. Aslong as we dont get any other nasties im strill gonna keep trying with my priest....But I will continue to keep my lock geared as a backup

Losing VS in arenas entirely is a little harsh as its shadows only MOP skill. LOH, AOTD etc were skills before MOP. Can we not have something useable for an already fairly simplez spec ???

[stickyjam]

I dont think the VS loss is really a big deal. I rarely ever have to use it as a life saver to me, its normally for my healer against mongo cleave teams who hit all their cd's and train something while dribbling all over their keyboards.

This.


I think the best way would be VS swapped to desperate prayer for all priest specs.

[Yvaelle]

I dont think the VS loss is really a big deal. I rarely ever have to use it as a life saver to me, its normally for my healer against mongo cleave teams who hit all their cd's and train something while dribbling all over their keyboards. A big loss is the MD on .5 when glyphed and removing blocks/shields etc. Now its on 1.5 and glyph needed to get rid of those items. Thats a big nerf.

Agreed, while this thread is specific to void shift and thus more healing focused, the mass dispel nerf is far greater than the loss of VS.

---------- Post added 2013-04-26 at 09:56 AM ----------

This.


I think the best way would be VS swapped to desperate prayer for all priest specs.

Like. WTB.

[Zubacz]

Shadow's Void Shift saves lives in pve. I really don't want to swap places with a tank - I want to heal him for 400k while I am safe to be healed over a longer time.

[Alanar]

Agreed, while this thread is specific to void shift and thus more healing focused, the mass dispel nerf is far greater than the loss of VS.

---------- Post added 2013-04-26 at 09:56 AM ----------



Like. WTB.

I second this.

[tsokin]

Not sure breaking the spell for PVP is the right call, but making it swap places breaks it in PVE for most uses. Void Shift is used like lay on hands for tanks, and if we had to swap places to do this it would cause some real problems. A great example of it for this tier would be Mag, Dark Animus. Both of these fights have mechanics that make it so you cannot stack on the tank, and punishes you for pulling that tank out of melee range.