Shadow Re-design Ideas

[supersnap]

I would much rather blizzard make it so haste isn't as good for shadow, or make crit and mastery much better for shadow. I don't know about you guys but having 50% haste just isn't fun. Not to mention having 50% haste, with lust, berserk, and PI. I would like to see other mastery ideas. Make crit work with the spec more. I enjoyed when our mindflay crits reduced shadowfiends cooldown.

[HeroZero]

I would much rather blizzard make it so haste isn't as good for shadow, or make crit and mastery much better for shadow. I don't know about you guys but having 50% haste just isn't fun. Not to mention having 50% haste, with lust, berserk, and PI. I would like to see other mastery ideas. Make crit work with the spec more. I enjoyed when our mindflay crits reduced shadowfiends cooldown.

Perhaps when abilities that consume shadow orbs crit they have a chance to return a shadow orb, would have to be adjusted based on their number of ticks to normalize it. Might be silly OP in PvP like if you had 5 orbs, mind war, get three orbs back do it again get a couple back do it again... etc. But It could make it more interesting. Still not sure what to do about our mastery, it seems good but its merely ok.

[drpepper101]

Let me say first that I love a lot of your ideas(especially the names), but as far a realism is concerned there are quite a few things that would never make it to live. If this was just a cool new ideas thread for fun rather than one for actual potential changes that blizzard should take into consideration, my apologies for misunderstanding.

Anyway, first to discuss some of your ideas. The best word to describe what we need here is subtle. They aren't going to give shadow a full blown revamp.

Mind Blast - Should just keep the cast time. There are more fun and unique ideas to fix our movement disparity from other classes(we'll get to that more later). This will also keep down pvp burst.

Coagulate - Even as rare as it might be, this would need to be tracked. If you cap out on orbs with a mind blast the second before the 30 second timer hits - gg wasted orb. The majority of players don't want to deal with things like this. I do like the consistency of it, but the problem is that its over a long period of time - the same time period where rng based things tend to even out. It could be a proc that gives your next finisher a 33% chance per orb to grant a new orb, maybe a 30 sec icd. Another problem with this whole idea is that there are times, namely during execute, where we don't even use mindflay or divine star if it's talented. More orbs would only make this worse.

I think a more proper change would to just make our orbs slowly reset to a set number outside of combat; probably 1 - much like burning embers reset to 1 or demonic fury resets to 200 for destro and demonology warlocks respectively.

Since we're on the topic of orbs, I much prefer leaving orbs the way they are. I think limiting the way we gain them, and keeping the cap at three is good for the class, and keeps us different from ret paladins. It's not fair to argue that rets get the ease of a 5 cap, where as we suffer with 3. A ret uses up to 4 times as many 3 hp finishers as we use 3 orb finishers, and they have a lot more ways to gain them. It's a totally different play style. That said, I wouldn't be turned off to the idea of some more finishers, maybe 1 defensive and 1 aoe.

Shadow Word: Death - Definitely needs to happen. The double cast is one of the clunkiest things in this game. It will need to be closer to 125%-150% of live damage though. All about that pvp burst. If they need to gain damage back elsewhere they can always pump it into mind flay.

Devouring Plague - They would never remove a completely reasonable and unique ability like this, especially one that has been around for 8 years. I know they could make the name way cooler but that's life.

Mind War - This could be our aoe finisher, much like divine storm for rets - probably would have a decently long cd.

Black Shield - This needs some work, but like I said I'm all for another defensive/peeling finisher.

Shadow Word: Despair - No. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. We have dp for single target damage/burst and mind flay for slows. They should honestly make the 50% mind flay snare be something like a 2 second debuff per tick, rather than just during the channel.

Voidsong - Here is your aoe finisher idea. Put it up in Mind War since that has a cooler name and scratch this. We have mind sear for channeled aoe so this would either have to be an instant class like chaos wave or be a modifier to mind sear. Both reasonable ideas. There is also no reason to remove insanity, although it does need a bit of a nerf.

Your whole utility section is sketchy. There is no reason these defensive abilities need to use orbs. We need to stay away from that!

Desperate Prayer - Leave it where it is, fits great.

Void Shift - Don't take raid utility away!

New Void Shift - As fun and abusive as it sounds, there is no use at all for an ability like this. Death and life grip both have an array of uses, this one lacks even one.

Psychic Horror - The only changes that should be made to this are increase the stun duration and make the disarm scale with orbs. Something like 1.5 second stun per orb and a 4 second disarm per orb. That probably wouldn't work but something that would make it used more with 3 orbs rather than just with 1.

Fade - Again, shouldn't have an orb requirement. I would love it if they brought the 'untargetable by ranged attacks' back, even if in a talent again.

I'll stay away from the glyphs since I'm not very creative and they aren't supposed to have a huge impact.



To sum up my feelings on all of it -

Really needs to be fixed section:
-Single cast SWD
-Orbs slowly reset to 1 out of combat.
-Improved movement capabilities. Maybe a form toggle or glyph that allows a 50% damage mind flay. I'll leave the creativity and bright ideas to you guys.

Give us a real cooldown section:
-Shadowfiend should do something more. One of the most boring pve cds in the game. Even just a single modifier to any ability, maybe a cleaving mindblast or mindflay. Nothing too overpowered, just something fun and semi-challenging to maximize damage output.
OR
-Make pi baseline for all priests. In this case they could leave shadowfiend 'mind'less(lolpun) and boring. Replace the talent.

Talent balances section: (Shadow already has one of the best and most balanced trees in the game.)
-Nerf insanity and buff our base damage elsewhere. This would help lower pvp burst and bring up the use of the other talents in that tier.
-Replace or alter Mindbender. Shadowfiend is boring every 3 minutes and doesn't get any less boring with a 1 minute cd. It needs to be better for shadow and worse for disc/holy.

Would be super fun but nothing we really need section:
-Add up to two orb finishers, one defensive(Black Shield?!) and one aoe(Mind War?!). They need to have cool names too.

Don't change us too much section:
-Keep orb generation and cap the same.
-Keep orb requirements off utility and lesser defensive abilities. Not a good place for them in pve.

Sorry it's kind of long and not amazingly put together; or colorful.

[supersnap]

I would much rather the extra damage for shadow word: death be a dot after the the initial damage, so we have another ability to scale with mastery, and the burst wouldn't be so bad for PvP.

[Alanar]

The suggested changes u made yvaelle seems alright, I will comment on those later on the day

[Yvaelle]

I would much rather the extra damage for shadow word: death be a dot after the the initial damage, so we have another ability to scale with mastery, and the burst wouldn't be so bad for PvP.

I really like this idea!

[Juicebox]

Here's just a few ideas I got.

Switch cast time of MB and DP perhaps.
Having resource generation with casting can be annoying in PVP. Having burst with a cast does make sense to me.

Changing Shadowfiend to increase our crit by 1% for each attack it does, lasting until it's gone would be fun. Means timing it right gets more important.

Mind Spike damage lowered by a lot, but castable while moving, not removing dots but increases duration of SW:P and VT by 1 tick instead.
3 charges with 5 second regeneration rate.

[Ramaloce]

Yvaelle you never cease to amaze me. Love every single idea here, I do however have mild balance concerns with these changes:

1) New Voidshift + glyph + leap of faith. Would be a very powerful hard switch combo, and can see the possibility of a beat down target A, till lucky trinket on CD fear then void+lifegrip hard switch to Target B. Assuming target A and B are far away enough in the first place for that to be useful.

2)Shadow Word: Despair being a Instant "finisher" when are sources of orbs with these changes are un-counterable is very concerning balance wise. Even if it is dispel-able which is more or less negated by it's baked in protection. The damage on this ability would need be noticeably lower then Mind War, while still being high enough to be useful. Also I assume Glyphed Shadow Word: Despair would do 1/3 of the damage being it has 1/3 the cost.

3) With losing our base line heal spells, i'm not sure if this would be enough survivability. Also I don't think the majority of priest nor blizzard would be to keen of the idea of shadow becoming more "Pure dps flavor" rather then the "healing hybrid" that they know and "love"

Those are the only potential balance issues I can think of at the moment, though now I have some questions:

-Is Coagulate limited to only being able to give the first orb while not in combat? If not then I can see every boss pull with a spriest would be delayed up to 1.5mins-haste.
-When Shadow Word: Despair jumps to the dispeler will it be at the duration it was at or would it be a full refresh?
-If the dispeler of Shadow Word: Despair is person with Dispair itself then would it just go away? (I'm assuming yes but just making sure)

[Yvaelle]

Let me say first that I love a lot of your ideas(especially the names), but as far a realism is concerned there are quite a few things that would never make it to live. If this was just a cool new ideas thread for fun rather than one for actual potential changes that blizzard should take into consideration, my apologies for misunderstanding.

Anyway, first to discuss some of your ideas. The best word to describe what we need here is subtle. They aren't going to give shadow a full blown revamp.

I suspect they've wanted to give us a full revamp for some expansions now, but every time they start it - they don't know where to go next and give up. It's with that in mind that I'm trying to offer them a more complete vision which I wholeheartedly encourage them to steal from We as the spriest community have a lot of great ideas, but Shadow as a spec hasn't changed too significantly since like... TBC/WotLK.

I'm working from a few assumptions here about what they want for Shadow:
- they want us to not have passive damage reduction
- they want us to use Shadow Orbs as a real resource (embedded it in our UI)

I also have a vision for a different kind of support class, that is not so healing-support focused, that I feel Shadow (and Shamans) could occupy - which would let Rets/Druids focus more on true healing support.

Mind Blast - Should just keep the cast time. There are more fun and unique ideas to fix our movement disparity from other classes(we'll get to that more later). This will also keep down pvp burst.

I think you missed the first post where I discussed these changes in more detail, but the idea with making Mind Blast (a shadow orb generator) instant, is that our resource generation shouldn't be controllable - stunning a rogue or feral doesn't stop their energy regeneration, stunning a warrior doesn't make him lose rage (the opposite, in fact), CC'ing a Mage doesn't stop their cooldowns from coming back up - but CC'ing a spriest and delaying our Mind Blast casts does shutdown our resource regeneration: a true resource shouldn't suffer in this way.

Instant Mind Blasts mean that you can't control our resource generation, but channeled and dispellable burst means you can control our burst damage: that's a better model for every class I think. You should always have the option to use your tools, but you should never feel helpless during an enemy burst cycle (this is why Shockwave/TfB, or Deep Freeze/Shatter - see so much criticism).

Coagulate - Even as rare as it might be, this would need to be tracked. If you cap out on orbs with a mind blast the second before the 30 second timer hits - gg wasted orb. The majority of players don't want to deal with things like this. I do like the consistency of it, but the problem is that its over a long period of time - the same time period where rng based things tend to even out. It could be a proc that gives your next finisher a 33% chance per orb to grant a new orb, maybe a 30 sec icd. Another problem with this whole idea is that there are times, namely during execute, where we don't even use mindflay or divine star if it's talented. More orbs would only make this worse.

I despise proc systems, it's part of what drew me to Shadow back in TBC - we were a solely perfomance-based class - no procs - no randomness - the delta for shadow parses corresponded strictly to the algorithm of skill+gear=DPS. Proc based Orb generation would still run the risk of being at 4 orbs, having it proc just before you MB - getting six - and thus losing one.

The point of a 5 Orb (or Holy Power) system is that you are supposed to use your resources optimally at 3, 3 maximizes DPET, while more than 3 runs the risk of capping out. Holy Power was really frustrating when it was capped at 3 and required 3 per move, Paladins rejoiced when it was moved to 5 because now they had that buffer and didn't feel like they were constantly "losing" holy power. Since the Shadow Orb system is a rip-off of Holy Power pre-5 cap change, it's facing exactly the same problem Paladins did - because it's the same system. If you get 3 orbs, and DI procs - and you suddenly rush to toss out DP, DI-MB, then scramble to get some Insanity in - that's not a fun system, either you felt like you sat on the proc too long, or you try to finish your Insanity cast while the DI proc is blocking further DI procs and blocking your MB cooldown from regenerating - it's uncomfortable - exactly like it was for Paladins, exactly the way the 5 HP buff fixed it for them.

Ideally, you want to spend at 3 - you can 'risk' going to 5 to burst a little harder, but your running the risk of a sixth wasted Orb - that's an interesting trade-off - because it's allowing you to invest in your future burst a little harder, but it's giving you a sharp diminishing return once you go above 3. I have an awesome visual of a Shadow Orb swooping in from distance-unseen to enter orbit around us for Coagulate as well

I think a more proper change would to just make our orbs slowly reset to a set number outside of combat; probably 1 - much like burning embers reset to 1 or demonic fury resets to 200 for destro and demonology warlocks respectively.

Regenerating back to 1 Shadow Orb is already a warlock mechanic, we're already similar enough to them as it is - and it doesn't mean to them with Embers or Soul Shards what it would mean to us with Orbs. Embers can't begin at 4 because then they'd open every fight with quad-Chaos Bolts, we spend 3 Orbs per finisher - they spend a single ember tap - the systems aren't the same at all - perhaps we could cap out-of-combat Orb regeneration at 3? That way it would be 1 Finisher (1 Ember tap ~= 3 Orbs?), but since I'm trying to embed our strongest utility into the orb system: Ember Taps/Soul Shards and Shadow Orbs aren't really comparable.

Since we're on the topic of orbs, I much prefer leaving orbs the way they are. I think limiting the way we gain them, and keeping the cap at three is good for the class, and keeps us different from ret paladins. It's not fair to argue that rets get the ease of a 5 cap, where as we suffer with 3. A ret uses up to 4 times as many 3 hp finishers as we use 3 orb finishers, and they have a lot more ways to gain them. It's a totally different play style. That said, I wouldn't be turned off to the idea of some more finishers, maybe 1 defensive and 1 aoe.

We may just fundamentally disagree on this I think - orbs are a very boring mechanic right now, they barely function for DP - which is the only thing they need to do at the moment. It's not about an ease of a 5-cap versus a 3-cap - it's just a poor design for any system - imagine if Rogues had one move that cost 100 energy and did enough of their damage that it was worth ignoring everything else to make sure you were maximizing that one move? That's not an interesting system, it's just uncomfortable: yet that is how the current 3-orb=DP system functions. Rets burn through Holy Power about 3-4 times faster than we do, but that to me means that a wasted Shadow Orb is 3-4 times worse than a wasted Holy Power - the goal is to design a more robust system for Shadow Orbs, more ways to gain them - more ways to spend them - Paladins currently just have a better system than we do.

Shadow Word: Death - Definitely needs to happen. The double cast is one of the clunkiest things in this game. It will need to be closer to 125%-150% of live damage though. All about that pvp burst. If they need to gain damage back elsewhere they can always pump it into mind flay.

Our PvP burst certainly isn't bad, but we're not a noteworthy 'burst' class in MoP (for example, nobody brings us to RBGs for our burst - the way Locks, Mages and Ele's get brought). In the realm of execute mechanics, Death even nearly doubled would only begin to hit as hard as Killshot, Shadowburn and Execute - Death's DPET is so low that currently in PvE we don't bother casting it twice, even though we're supposed to, because it's not worth the damage - it's only worth the first cast for the Orb it generates. A 25% damage buff wouldn't be apt compensation. We need the DPET to match other executes, and that means ~150-180% damage into a single GCD - somebody made the suggestion of making the extra damage a DoT: I like that idea a lot

Devouring Plague - They would never remove a completely reasonable and unique ability like this, especially one that has been around for 8 years. I know they could make the name way cooler but that's life.

The reason I want to remove it is that it is dispellable, but otherwise uncounterable burst damage - which is the wrong model for PvP burst - a much better model is something like Mind War (or MF: Insanity), but - sitting on us forever shouldn't be able to also shut down all our capability for damage via orbs - which is why Despair is an instant cast damage over time - even if we are being sat on, we can put out pressure, but can't burst - if they swap off of us - we can burst via Mind War. By contrast in MoP we can DP someone right in our face and gain the full damage/healing of it, but can't cast Mind Blasts to generate orbs: that's backward from how it should be. Devouring Plague has been around since forever, but it really hasn't - as we know it now it's only been around in MoP, in the past we had a different version of Shadow Word: Pain that was also called Devouring Plague - but the name is the only similarity. Plague's are an Affliction thing, I'd like to push us away from the Warlock conceptual overlap - into focusing more on actual Shadowy-ness: DP is the prime example.

Mind War - This could be our aoe finisher, much like divine storm for rets - probably would have a decently long cd.

Definitely shouldn't be our AoE finisher - apart from being a channel just like Mind Sear, a mind war (in any other fantasy setting that includes the term) is a duel of minds - the dueling / tug-of-war aspect of it is critical. 'Psychic Screamo' would be more like an AoE attack - where we broadcast obnoxious screaming angst to every enemy in the area (joke by the way, please, please don't let them give us Psychic Screamo).

Black Shield - This needs some work, but like I said I'm all for another defensive/peeling finisher.

Agreed, it's the one I put the most thought into since the original post, and while we come up with some decent ideas for it - it still doesn't feel right. Needs work.

Shadow Word: Despair - No. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. We have dp for single target damage/burst and mind flay for slows. They should honestly make the 50% mind flay snare be something like a 2 second debuff per tick, rather than just during the channel.

I removed Devouring Plague from my list, so you're working from an assumption that I already exempted from the general ideas - having DP and Despair would I agree be too much overlap - but when we don't have DP, and do have Mind War - we need something like Despair to help us keep up pressure and expend orbs in a different single target way, while being sat on in PvP - or while moving in PvE if we hit 5 orbs.

Voidsong - Here is your aoe finisher idea. Put it up in Mind War since that has a cooler name and scratch this. We have mind sear for channeled aoe so this would either have to be an instant class like chaos wave or be a modifier to mind sear. Both reasonable ideas. There is also no reason to remove insanity, although it does need a bit of a nerf.

You're right about the instant cast - I liked the idea of some sort of damage Hymn - we've been talking about a potential Shadow Hymn for years, but I think it should be probably be a ground-targeted AOE that spawns a giant Shadow Orb (Smoking Orb of Nothing) just above head-height, and damages anyone in the area around it - that way it wouldn't overlap in being yet another channeled AoE. Insanity wouldn't work with Mind War, which is why I removed it - more importantly though - it makes that tier work better, FDCL can be about DoT cleaving, Mindbender can be about single target, and Voidsong can be about mass AoE - right now Insanity and Mindbender both fulfill the same single target niche, and there is no mass AoE choice: this fixes that.

Your whole utility section is sketchy. There is no reason these defensive abilities need to use orbs. We need to stay away from that!

If we had trouble generating orbs, then I'd agree we should stay away from that - but with instant cast Mind Blasts and Coagulate funneling us orbs, our utility should use Shadow Orbs - these systems go hand in hand but you kind of dismissed the orb generation and wanted us to stick to 3 orbs and cast time Mind Blasts without Coagulate: if that were the case, then obviously I wouldn't want to tie our utility into the current terrible orb system.

Desperate Prayer - Leave it where it is, fits great.

I kind of want to move Angelic Bulwark to the 87 passive rather than Desperate Prayer - Desperate Prayer would make a more interesting / competitive choice with the other options in that tier.

Void Shift - Don't take raid utility away!

It's already taken away from PvP - and I left it for Holy / Disc (renamed to Spirit Shift). More importantly this ties into the original post that I think you missed - I want to move us away from healing support and more toward a different kind of support (that emphasizes dispels and movement). I'd like to see Rets get more use out of things like Lay on Hands (which is comparable to Void Shift) - while we do things more like Black Shield or regaining an instant defensive dispel magic - or save people with Life Grip + New Void Shift.

New Void Shift - As fun and abusive as it sounds, there is no use at all for an ability like this. Death and life grip both have an array of uses, this one lacks even one.

I'm not sure what you mean it lacks uses, for starters - it's a 30 yard range teleport - that in itself fixes a lot of issues with our mobility both in PvE and PvP. It allows us to instantly swap allies out of bad positions - teleporting a raider who is going to die out of fire and dispersing to save ourselves, or teleporting a healer who is getting tunnelled by melee in arenas while simultaneously moving ourselves into the perfect Psychic Scream position.

In world pvp or battlegrounds - imagine chasing an opponent fleeing from your team - they're going to escape! Void Shift. They are now in the middle of your team, you are now blocking their extraction (or your standing in the middle of their team, in which case I hope you have dispersion!). Alternately, imagine in arenas that you set up your burst, you almost get the kill - but then your team gets peeled, your kill target hides behind a pillar - and the enemy healer moves around until they are in LoS of your kill... he's safe, kill denied. Or not. Void Shift. Their healer is now LoS of their kill target, you are now standing in sight of your kill - finish him > There is a proposed glyph that would also prevent the teammate shifting component of this, which would be useful in raids if we only wanted it for high movement fights - as a way to teleport to allies keep up with the faster-moving classes.

In function, it's no more potentially abusive than Leap of Faith (the ability to put an ally into a bad position) - which is something Priests already have: it's something that isn't abused in serious raiding or arenas, and every class has ways to abuse mechanics to make other people sad in random battlegrounds / LFR.

Psychic Horror - The only changes that should be made to this are increase the stun duration and make the disarm scale with orbs. Something like 1.5 second stun per orb and a 4 second disarm per orb. That probably wouldn't work but something that would make it used more with 3 orbs rather than just with 1.

No, a more powerful disarm than the 8 second one other classes (including us) already have wouldn't be balanced in PvP, we don't need a 4.5 second stun + 12 second disarm: even if it costs 3 orbs. What we need is to have our disarm back without it costing us all our damage (DP), that means a 1 Orb cap, or no orb cost at all - no other single target disarm in the game has a cost: exception Psychic Horror. Even with a 1 Orb cost, it's still the most expensive disarm in the game. I don't want to make our disarm stronger than others (the horror effect is dumb anyways, also it's a horror not a stun btw) - but I do want to us to be able to use our disarm: right now we pretty much can't.

Fade - Again, shouldn't have an orb requirement. I would love it if they brought the 'untargetable by ranged attacks' back, even if in a talent again.

They can't give it back to us as a talent because then Disc and Holy could take it - in a world where Shadow doesn't have healing spells, doesn't have 15% passive damage reduction, and needs ways to survive in pvp - something like New Void Shift + untargettable Fade is the way to go IMO. I think Woaden suggested that if we're above 90% health it shouldn't have an Orb cost - that make sense since it encourages us to use it pro-actively in PvE at no cost, not reactively (after pulling aggro). If it's going to be as strong as 5.0 Phantasm though, I think it has to have an attached Orb cost - target drops are really cool gameplay that give us plenty of tricks for dodging CC / gap closers without making us stronger once engaged.

-Shadowfiend should do something more. One of the most boring pve cds in the game. Even just a single modifier to any ability, maybe a cleaving mindblast or mindflay. Nothing too overpowered, just something fun and semi-challenging to maximize damage output.
OR

-Make pi baseline for all priests. In this case they could leave shadowfiend 'mind'less(lolpun) and boring. Replace the talent.


Give us a real cooldown section:
-Shadowfiend should do something more. One of the most boring pve cds in the game. Even just a single modifier to any ability, maybe a cleaving mindblast or mindflay. Nothing too overpowered, just something fun and semi-challenging to maximize damage output.[/quote]

Completely agree, Shadowfiend/Mindbender need to do *something* but I don't have a great idea for that yet - would love to hear more peoples thoughts for this!

-Make pi baseline for all priests. In this case they could leave shadowfiend 'mind'less(lolpun) and boring. Replace the talent.

I don't want to see it baseline. PI was coolest when it was Disc giving it to other people during their burst cycles - it was utility then - as a DPS cooldown it's dull and doesn't really fit with Shadow IMO. It's supposed to be about infusing someone with power, but our power remains the same (well, it increases by 5%), we just act faster / more often - it's more like Caffeine Infusion. We possess it, and then we infuse ourselves with it? It's already in us - 'infusion' implies it going into a different person IMO - which is vestigial from when it did.

Talent balances section: (Shadow already has one of the best and most balanced trees in the game.)
-Nerf insanity and buff our base damage elsewhere. This would help lower pvp burst and bring up the use of the other talents in that tier.

Our pvp burst isn't really a worry in MoP - in Cataclysm we were deadly with our Mastery+3 Orbs giving us crazy massive Mind Blasts - but that's just not the case now. Mind Blast is a generator now, not a finisher, mastery is changed - Insanity is a good model for a finisher precisely because everyone can counter it, and it doesn't happen all in the same GCD like Shatter (it's why I think Mind War should take its place). I already spoke about that tier regarding Voidsong / Mind War - but the real issue with it isn't that Insanity is too good, it's that Mindbender does the same thing (single target damage) - that tier should be 1x multi-dot, 1x single target, 1x mass aoe talents.

-Replace or alter Mindbender. Shadowfiend is boring every 3 minutes and doesn't get any less boring with a 1 minute cd. It needs to be better for shadow and worse for disc/holy.

It needs to be better, but don't you dare replace my adorable little octopus (or if anything, replace shadowfiend with mindbender graphic permanently - I'm so over his slobbering, and lead-paint-licking AI).

[Alanar]

Shadow Orb Finishers

Devouring Plague *removed*

Mind War *new* - channeled - Consumes 3 Shadow Orbs to deal 150% of spellpower each second for 5 seconds. Mind War heals the Priest for 5% of max health each time it deals damage.

Black Shield *new* - instant cast. Consumes 3 Shadow Orbs to shield the priest for 50% of max health, or 25% to allies. While Black Shield lasts the target is immune to spell pushback and interrupts, lasts 30 seconds, applies Weakened Soul. If cast on an enemy, Black Shield instead absorbs 20% of their max health in healing received.

Shadow Word: Despair *new* - instant cast. Consumes 3 Shadow Orbs to deal progressively more damage each second over 8 seconds. Despair snares the target by 20% initially, and an additional 10% each second for the duration, up to 99%. If Despair is dispelled, the dispeller suffers Despair instead.

Voidsong *replaces Mind Flay: Insanity* - Channeled, 5 second duration (immune to spell pushback) - Consumes 3 Shadow Orbs to call the void into reality, dealing massive AoE damage to any who remain nearby. (Reference to Hymn of Hope, Divine Hymn, and: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10)

Black shield: I love it, I have been asking for a nice shadowy shield for a long time, now I wonder would it been nice to have a finnisher which is kinda like Dark renew? Since we are going the holy power way. A finnisher like maybe Eternal flame but no instant heal, more like the Old Vampiric embrace, but introduced as a nice Hot?( I know it worked with the damage you deal) maybe something You pur on yourself with 3 orbs and It gives you a buff to heal you for x% the damage you deal.

Shadow Word: Despair: I could see QQ coming from this, I would love to see this to executed to our toolkit a build in snare as a new finnisher sounds awesome!

Voidsong: I like it, but i would much rather see this as something instant. Maybe try it like a strong Dot that spreads to nearby targets.

Void Shift *redesigned* - Shadow Only. Costs 1 Shadow Orb. The shadowpriest instantly exchanges places with the targetted ally or enemy, 20 second cooldown.

Psychic Horror *redesigned* - Costs 1 Shadow Orb. Disarms the opponent of their weapon for 8 seconds. 60 second cooldown.

Fade *redesigned*(for Shadow) - Costs 1 Shadow Orb. Greatly reduces threat for 10 seconds, and for the first 3 seconds the priest is untargetable. 30 second cooldown.

Void shift: I love to see something done to our mobility, but same as fade and psychic horror, If you realy wanna put this to our orb generation mechanic You could put it up as ur finnisher. I dont like this, better increase it's cooldown so you could use it when u need it, instead of waiting for mindblast to come off cooldown and use your fade.. Right now it feels weird/bad to have my disarm on a orb cost. What is your reason behind this?

Hit and run: Some one posted this, Idk if it would be to much to have it combined with your new voidshift. But the spell was to powerfull for rogues, but would be perfect for Shadow. I would love to have both, But then i would much rather keep my Leap of fath and have hit and run change it name to Leap of Shadow and make it like hit and run.

Glyph Suggestions

Glyph of Voidsong - Minor - Your Voidsong now summons a thousand starving crows.

Glyph of Reflective Shieldnow also applies to Black Shield on you. (Amounts to basically the same effect as before.)

Glyph of Despair your Despair now always consumes only 1 shadow orb, instead of up to 3.

Crows, hell yea we need more crows/ravens

Glyph of dispair seems realy OP, but I want it

You know I love your design Yvealle, Been playing Shadow for to long and i think it's about time Shadow gets some craze overhaul. And yes we have the same problem as cata paladins.

ps: sorry for my grammer .

[Drye]

I would much rather blizzard make it so haste isn't as good for shadow, or make crit and mastery much better for shadow. I don't know about you guys but having 50% haste just isn't fun. Not to mention having 50% haste, with lust, berserk, and PI. I would like to see other mastery ideas. Make crit work with the spec more. I enjoyed when our mindflay crits reduced shadowfiends cooldown.

I fully disagree. I find having 50% haste very enjoyable. It makes playing the class more exciting.

[soulyouth]

It needs to be better, but don't you dare replace my adorable little octopus (or if anything, replace shadowfiend with mindbender graphic permanently - I'm so over his slobbering, and lead-paint-licking AI).

<3 glad I'm not the only one that loves it, sucks that for shadow we hardly go mindbender

[HeroZero]

Another advantage I see with the passive orb generation from the proposed Coagulate (COALESCE) would be if there is a shadow orb finisher to do something for AoE perhaps making it an Insanity style Mind Sear (repurpose that talent into mass AoE YAY!) I could see this being something we put on our primary Mind Sear target that act just like Insanity now. 'IF' we had something to use shadow orbs for AoE I would still think having an instant shadow orb generator such as mindblast instant cast would allow us to continue generating orbs whilst still doing AoE damage instead of stopping for X seconds for a cast and doing the same.

Someone mentioned a stacking crit with our stupid pet, but I believe a stacking mastery buff would be more appropriate in terms of flavor.

*edit* Perhaps even further have it stack a percentage of our current mastery rating to improve mastery usefulness.

I know it was mentioned the dislike of a plague from a shadow priest but honestly I think Devouring Plague should stick around and why not have it act like the proposed Shadow: Word Despair, nothing scarier than a self aware plague seeking out its dispeller to finish out the remainder of its duration. It would also leave it only dispellable by certain classes which I think would be ideal in terms of PvP combat.



But on the topic of damage Cooldowns GOOD GOD I JUST WANT SOMETHINGANYTHINGATALL!

- - - Updated - - -

Your whole utility section is sketchy. There is no reason these defensive abilities need to use orbs. We need to stay away from that!

Desperate Prayer - Leave it where it is, fits great.

Void Shift - Don't take raid utility away!

New Void Shift - As fun and abusive as it sounds, there is no use at all for an ability like this. Death and life grip both have an array of uses, this one lacks even one.

Psychic Horror - The only changes that should be made to this are increase the stun duration and make the disarm scale with orbs. Something like 1.5 second stun per orb and a 4 second disarm per orb. That probably wouldn't work but something that would make it used more with 3 orbs rather than just with 1.

Fade - Again, shouldn't have an orb requirement. I would love it if they brought the 'untargetable by ranged attacks' back, even if in a talent again.

I'll stay away from the glyphs since I'm not very creative and they aren't supposed to have a huge impact.

I would not mind the desperate prayer angelic bulwark swap from previous proposals, Psychic Horror should cap at two orbs, I agree Fade is not something that should use shadow orbs no matter what. The concept of it having the temporary non-targetable effect is not a bad idea but would probably take the place of the curent fade glyph we have.

[Durka]

Right now we have Glyph of dark binding which is pretty much a mandatory glyph for shadow. I was thinking to also avoid the whole having to stack haste feeling, a glyph like this:

Glyph of empowerd blasting: Your mind blast critical strikes generate 2 shadow orbs instead of one.

This would also make crit rating a fun thing to toy with as well.

Always enjoy your read and your ideas Yvaelle,

ShadowDurka
Aerie Peak
Alliance

This could be OP I suppose but I like something like (your shadow apparitions damage to enemies have a 5% chance to cause next mind blast within 10 seconds to be a critical strike. This could be the 2 set bonus for shadow. I currently hate the 2 set bonus. Feels very weak to me.

[veiledy0]

Right now we have Glyph of dark binding which is pretty much a mandatory glyph for shadow. I was thinking to also avoid the whole having to stack haste feeling, a glyph like this:

Glyph of empowerd blasting: Your mind blast critical strikes generate 2 shadow orbs instead of one.

This would also make crit rating a fun thing to toy with as well.

...and make the extra orb go to waste once your Mind Blast crits when you already have 2 of them. And that glyph would also be mandatory, which is not likely to happen. Dark Binding glyph isn't mandatory either, it's just that all the other glyphs except Mind Flay/Inner Sanctum/Fade are proper dog for PvE. The only "mandatory" glyph is Inner Sanctum for high end raiding, 'cause it's less damage taken at 0 cost.

[HeroZero]

The double proc thing sounds strange, just not very doable to me. I agree with Veil it would become mandatory. As for Dark Binding I never had use for it when raiding on my shadow priest, if anything I would bubble myself and that was it. I briefly considered using it in conjunction with twist of fate to snipe heals and snag the buff but decided I didn't care enough to do so .

[Durka]

...and make the extra orb go to waste once your Mind Blast crits when you already have 2 of them. And that glyph would also be mandatory, which is not likely to happen. Dark Binding glyph isn't mandatory either, it's just that all the other glyphs except Mind Flay/Inner Sanctum/Fade are proper dog for PvE. The only "mandatory" glyph is Inner Sanctum for high end raiding, 'cause it's less damage taken at 0 cost.

I should have been more specific, sorry. This is under the assumption that the whole "5 total orbs bar" went into effect. If you had 2, and MB crits, then you would have 4.....and I doubt you would really not want to use something at that point. But ya, it would make this mandatory.

[soulyouth]

Anyone else think they should just roll glyph of mind blast and glyph of mind spike together and add the 50% crit per stack like we used to get ? I do miss that snare.

[Juicebox]

Someone mentioned MB adding 2 orbs on crit, but seeing it doesn't scale with mastery it could have the same chance as our mastery to proc an extra orb instead.
For this to work we'd have to have 4 orbs though, with 3 being consunable at the most. That would sort the issue of wasting orbs if it procs when you're at 2.
Someone else mentioned default orb regenerates to 1 OOC. Also a good idea.

I love so many ideas that have came out from this thread though.
Hopefully this thread has been seen by blizzard too and they steal some of our ideas for next expansion.

[Frmercury]

With Shadowy Recall as the Mastery (which I for one am a huge fan of) non-Periodic damage sources will always not scale with Mastery. I don't think that's a bad thing as long they contribute to our DoT(s) in some meaningful way. I do favor having our abilities scaling with as many secondary stats as possible and finding creative ways to do that is important.