Celestalon's "significant changes for Shadow in an upcoming patch"

[Deleted]

Source@http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/17562796338?page=2

copy paste@

Thanks for the candid and constructive post. We read tons of feedback, and these kinds of posts, where the community is working together to provide constructive points, are exactly the kinds we like to read and discuss internally. So much so that we thought it was worth offering a reply based on some of the thoughts and discussions we’ve had since reading it.

First, let’s talk about talents. In general, most of these concerns are ones which we can work to improve through number tweaks. As a caveat, I’d remind that it’s not fair to look at talents purely from a raiding and min/maxing point of view (for example, Surge of Darkness is about as dominant in PvP as Insanity is in Raiding). But, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to improve things in the raiding context.
Level 45 talents are a more skewed than we’d like, but all of the talents do see some play. Surge of Darkness vs Insanity is largely a question of whether you want more mobility. Highly skilled players in top raid guilds tend to min/max their movement better, and so typically find the raw DPS of Insanity more valuable. We’re hoping that Mindbender sees a bit more play, in part due to the Legendary Ring, and in cases where cooldowns are valuable. Overall, a row that could certainly be more balanced, which we plan to place greater emphasis on in the future.
Level 75 talents are similar; Twist of Fate is dominant amongst top raiders, but isn’t completely exclusive. Power Infusion and Shadowy Insight both do see some play. Power Infusion may go up a bit for the same reasons as Mindbender. Additionally, Twist of Fate requires some gaming of its proc to get the maximum theoretical value out of, leading to the row being more balanced in general for the average player. That said, Twist of Fate is likely the ideal one to be dominant, since it’s a good talent for both experienced and inexperienced players.
Clarity of Power has ended up being somewhat ironically named, because it’s actually rather unclear how it’s supposed to work. In fact, when we designed it, the DoT-weaving style that has emerged was never intended. It’s a good example of how players can use tools we give you in unexpected ways, and eek more performance than we expect out of something. Late in beta, it became clear that it wasn’t just a crazy idea, and was actually a significant performance boost to do. We opted to just let it go at that time, and see what happened with it. Unfortunately, it ended up overly dominant, without a clear/elegant solution to change it. In 6.1, we opted to just buff the other two talents on the row up to be competitive with the unintentionally overpowered Clarity of Power. That leaves CoP in the unfortunate situation of being the best, if you know the unintuitive trick to it, which is a poor situation for players who are new or not ‘in-the-know’. Void Entropy is also probably a little undertuned still; it’s just quite niche right now.


Next, the Shadow class trinket. It is, indeed, very punishing to use if there is a target swap. The intention is that it’s a tradeoff to use, but that in a good situation, it’s very strong, and I think the numbers reflect that (perhaps too much, based on PTR testing, but we’re still evaluating that). In general, the class trinkets are more situational effects. Being on trinkets, they’re more optional and swappable, than something like a set bonus is (which has few alternatives). There are exceptions on both sides of that, of course, but it’s a general case. Finally, there is one improvement coming that will help; it’ll reach max stacks twice as fast in the next PTR build.

Many other classes have the option to swap specs for any given fight, to switch to a spec more suited to that fight. Having only a single spec, Priests have no such option. Instead, we tried to position Mastery as an option that they could tailor their gear toward or away from based on the fight. I think it’s fair to say that that hasn’t worked out as well as we’d hoped, but hasn’t been a failure. I think one of the extenuating circumstances here is that raid fights this expansion have had more multi-target focus than single-target, leading Mastery to be quite niche indeed.

In terms of AoE, Shadow is intended to fill the role of a multi-DoTter. Different classes are different, and we don’t want to make them more homogenous by giving them strong burst AoE options like certain specs of Mages or Warlocks. That said, Shadow should excel at the situations they’re suited to, more. If the fight calls for sustained damage on 3 spread out targets, that’s a case that Shadow should be favored on, and I’m not sure if they do enough right now, to make up for the more common case of clumped/burst/many-target AoE. It’s something we’re looking at improving in the future.

Each raid tier, every spec gets new set bonuses. Sometimes their effects are more passive, sometimes more active. We try to make things exciting and feel rewarding. With any case like this, where there are so many bonuses, and they have to try to fulfill so many goals simultaneously, there’s bound to be some varying degree of success at that. And that’s generally OK; it adds texture to the game when how much you interact with your set bonuses varies between tiers. Your criticisms are totally valid, and we’ll take the feedback into account when designing future set bonuses, for sure.

Finally, I’d like to talk a bit more about Shadow in general; the big picture, not so much about these specific concerns. We’ve been retrospective lately about where Shadow has come, and how much it truly fulfills its intended fantasy, gameplay style, role, etc. Shadow Priests should be the masters of the shadows cast by the light from the Holy Priests. In terms of lore and fantasy, they should focus on the powers of the Void. However, they’re still Priests; they know that what they’re dabbling with is dangerous, and have to try to go as far as they can without going *too* far. Pain, Insanity, Darkness… These are the tools they use on their enemies, and even a bit on themselves. For the future, we’re looking at ways that we can adjust their gameplay to feel more viscerally “Shadow Priest”. We think some things have worked well (like their DoTs), and other things have worked not so well (like Shadow Orbs). It’s too early to announce anything specific at this point, but we can tell you that there are very significant changes coming to Shadow in a future patch, that we hope will better capture the fantasy, while providing unique gameplay. We're reading all of your feedback, and taking it into account when making these changes.

Again, thanks for the constructive feedback, and we look forward to more in the future.

EDIT: Whoops, accidentally said "Level 60 talents" when I meant "Level 75 talents". Fixed above. Forgive me.

Im wondering is this the last news we have heard in regards to the state of shadow? them saying shadow orbs didn't work out to well might mean they will remove them, what would you like to see happen to shadow?. id like to see them get druid treatment and get their own spec. i didnt mind shadow back in cata days personally.

[muto]

Shadow is fine. Void Entropy just needs to be replaced with something else, or have its damage buffed significantly. It would also be nice if the Twist of Fate tier was balanced, so you could play any of the three, and do about equal dps.

[Darkeon]

Shadow is fine. Void Entropy just needs to be replaced with something else, or have its damage buffed significantly. It would also be nice if the Twist of Fate tier was balanced, so you could play any of the three, and do about equal dps.

That seems plenty of possible changes for something that "is fine".

[muto]

That seems plenty of possible changes for something that "is fine".

It's not exactly an overhaul of the class balancing talents.

[Kilee25]

For Void Entory, I'd like to see a return to something similar to our Wrath days, where VE behaves as a dot that can be cast any time, but only on one target. In addition to this I'd like to see this talent also strengthen Pain and VT, in such a way that the majority of this spec's damage comes once again from dots, rather than procs. I'm really quite surprised that this talent hasn't seen a big overhall this expac. I did not think that Bliz would let it ride the entire expac unused.

As for a re-design of shadow orbs, I am wondering if we will get something like a "sanity" meter that will slowly fill as we cast "mind" spells. The trick will be to keep it from reaching the top and us becoming "insane" for a bit. in order to regain sanity, you would have to do something helpful for the raid. Shield, PoM, Dispell, Heal, etc... you would do more damage, the more "sane" you were, so the idea would be finding ways to do damage and help the raid while keeping your Sanity as low as possible. I don't know... I'm just reading their letter and thinking along those lines...

[Setheria]

It feels to me more and more and like Blizz is heading down the path of 4 specs for every class.

Druids are the example, with glad warriors and the diversity shadow gets from the AS/Cop (and I guess Vent) being a further test.

I think doing so would solve many of our issues. For a long time we have been a tricky class to balance due to the synergy of our talents. Buff our single target to be reasonable and we go crazy on multi-dot. Splitting it would allow the alteration of spells and their damage co-efficients much more easily.

Blizz needs to work to resolve the whole 'your dots are crap' thing as well. They hit so weakly compared to almost every other dot, and yet shadow is supposed to be the quintessential dot class. They can find a way to make shadow word pain not rubbish on single target, but also worth multi-dotting with and not OP in spread/cleave, etc. Debuffs, dimishing damage per target, or some rework of Vent to make it a non talented single target strong dot (a la doom) are all options.

I would see Mastery requiring two different options to link into varying specs as well. As it is Mastery works for CoP and is fine, but it simply doesn't make any meaningful transition to AS. Having 2 separate specs with different Mastery effects would solve that issue. So basically current mastery for CoP, older mastery (dot damage) for AS or the like. Vent can just go and save any kind of re-work.

As it stands, with CoP and AS being the two options, you simply can't go mastery unless you're caching the items or getting inundated with cloth drops. Why would you otherwise give mastery to shadow when mages/locks benefit much more?

Shadow orbs as a resource aren't one I feel strongly about. Removing them would require a significant re-work.

The risk for me is in removing shadow orbs you need to replace it with something to provide complexity. I loved earlier iterations of shadow, but putting up dots, MB on CD and flay in between with no procs, etc is very simplistic. If we're not managing orbs, give us something else - be it some kind of former shadow weaving debuff/buff, etc. Perhaps this is where class trinkets are coming in (Blizz do like to trial mechanics for potential changes as set bonus' or trinkets). Even if that is the case, once you have your debuff, it won't fall off in it's current state, so we'd simply have a weaker opener until debuff/buff gets going and shadow already has a slow wind up compared to most.

I also feel a return of dark archangel or some kind of on demand burst would help a lot. This would required tuning to compensate in other areas, but I feel it's an area we're lacking in.

The Halo/Cascade/Div Star tier needs re-balancing. Halo has it's situations whilst Cascade is universally strong since the bounce changes. I can see Blizz easily nerfing Cascade rather than making Div Star competetive. We have a spread damage AOE, a hard hitting longer CD range factored AOE and then a rubbish one. Div star has less of an area of effect, so I can see a niche for a hard hitting ability on a CD commensurate with it's strength.

I think another meaningful choice for shadow should be how we're balanced around an ability like VE.

As it stands, we will never (for long) be top tier damage when we can still heal in such a way. In correct situations, it's such a useful spell, that if dps were equal, shadow would dominate the cloth dps bracket.

I think there is room in there to provide BC flavor or Cata damage. Balancing could be very hard though, but I'd love a talent that provided additional healing for your group or even you individually at the expense of damage. This would allow shadow to either say, ok, let's ditch the healing (from say VE) and compete with mages/locks consistently or accept we'll do 10% less damage (or however much it is) but provide some kind of tangible, non situationally strong vampiric heal.

Anyway, some random thoughts.

[worcester]

Changes I would like to see are:

-Devouring Plague renamed
-Vampiric touch to leech (and possibly limited to 1 target; increase ST damage/decrease spread cleave)
-Mastery changed (something akin to resto shaman deep healing but for damage; preserves our execute niche but will still be our worst stat)
-Shadow form +10% avoidance (flavour reasons, clever use of new stats in abilities; slight pve buff)

Things I would want to stay the same:

- NO DPS cooldown. (One of shadows unique things, whether for bad or good, was the lack of a natural cooldown; instead simply have a higher baseline dps that ramps up over time: see note on mastery change)
- Weak aoe damage. (mind sear is clunky, by extension searing insanity is even worse to maintain ST orb generation/spending rotation to AOE. It just feeels bad)

[Philomene]

I would like more spells to spend our orbs on. Right now you only have Plague or Horror. Maybe some kind of Archangel increasing damage, or rework Vampiric Embrace to use them. I wish Shadow Orbs would be more of a resource like Demonic Fury for Demo Locks than it is now. Gameplay feels too much scripted now : gain orbs, deal damage, gain orbs, deal damage, etc.

[muto]

I would like more spells to spend our orbs on. Right now you only have Plague or Horror. Maybe some kind of Archangel increasing damage, or rework Vampiric Embrace to use them. I wish Shadow Orbs would be more of a resource like Demonic Fury for Demo Locks than it is now. Gameplay feels too much scripted now : gain orbs, deal damage, gain orbs, deal damage, etc.

Fuck no; they will never do that. Blizzard already stated that they are going to overhaul Demo again in the future. Can't say I'm too shocked. The spec is too unforgiving.

[l33t]

Well...

I wanted to write big list of changes I'd love to see in this famous "overhaul", starting from doing same baseline single target dps as our cloth competitors...

...but the reality is, modern Blizzard fails to deliver anything other than "your VT/SWP ticks each have a chance to lower your Mind blast cooldown by 0,03 secs".

[Philomene]

Fuck no; they will never do that. Blizzard already stated that they are going to overhaul Demo again in the future. Can't say I'm too shocked. The spec is too unforgiving.

They said they wanted each class to have some kind of secondary resource. What will we get instead of Orbs if they get rid of them ? Well, they could go back to what Orbs were before Mists of Pandaria. I actually prefered the old system.

[muto]

They said they wanted each class to have some kind of secondary resource. What will be get instead of Orbs if they get rid of them ? Well, they could go back to what Orbs were before Mists of Pandaria. I actually prefered the old system.

Just keep Orbs the way they are now. Don't fix something that isn't broken.

[Bosen]

I think Shadow should be split off entirely as a class: Psionic.

Make gearing easier for them.

[Philomene]

Just keep Orbs the way they are now. Don't fix something that isn't broken.

They're not fine with the way it works for now. For the moment it's more of a guess of what kind of overhaul we will probably get in the next expansion.

[Cromatus]

This statement is pretty old (1 month or 2?) and he is hardly saying anything concrete... at some point I even think he doesn't know what he is talking about. He completely lost me at the point where he is talking about RP and the void lmao.

[Deleted]

Well...

I wanted to write big list of changes I'd love to see in this famous "overhaul", starting from doing same baseline single target dps as our cloth competitors...

...but the reality is, modern Blizzard fails to deliver anything other than "your VT/SWP ticks each have a chance to lower your Mind blast cooldown by 0,03 secs".

Too right! It seems like our class has been getting the smack down by Blizz's virtual penis for so long that a lot of people appear to be "used to it" like abused dogs that still love and protect their owners anyway, so much so that any little bone thrown our way is supposed to make us happy. I would like to see us doing competitive dps with a Mage for the entirety of at least one expansion without having to use every little trick in the book. How is it fair for one class that needs to utillize 5+ spells to compete with another that can essentially spam 1 and do an enormous amount of dps? I don't see people using the term anymore, but that's IMBA and not in a good way.

[Alanar]

This statement is pretty old (1 month or 2?) and he is hardly saying anything concrete... at some point I even think he doesn't know what he is talking about. He completely lost me at the point where he is talking about RP and the void lmao.

Well, it was a needed clarification were all shadow priests were saying it was power from the void that we use and were the warlocks said this wasn't true cus only warlocks did that. Well there ya go in your face was th first thing I thought about.

[Chisu]

So, in my opinion, Blizzard was going quite nice with shadow until mop came out. I'm playing SP since BC and always in a high DPS state. BC was quite cool i guess, wrath also, cata was in opinion one of the best , because they brought some difficult decisions to make, in terms of trinkets and refreshing dots and such ( like the mirror trinket from valiona ). But with mop it was getting to big. Dhadow orbs habe become pretty dumb. The playstyle was like pretty straight, but with options you could play in high DPS and its making fun , like playing with si proccs and such. It felt kinda like mage but it was fun.
Now with the t7 talents and the 5 orbs mechanic, the whole playstyle has became the most annoying i have ever played. Cop has nothing to do with the shadow in its original state, and it feels pretty odd to play it in a RAID. In pvp its okay or for leveling / questing. But i really dislike the fact that youre using a Rotation instead of a priority list, like it always was with our class.
AS feels better , but the problem i see behind it, is in phases where you cant gain that much orbs in lack of targets. You are so damn weak when no sa's are proccing. And on fights like xhul youre getting so much orbs that you dont know where to put them on.
Vent is okay for such things when you solo something, but in most of those time youre going to use one of the other talents.
So i guess the t7 talents needs a rebuild.
T6 talents have became weird. In the beginning of mop you where using halo as real CD. Now, you use it only for much targets. The latest cascade changes where good and they where needed in my opinion. DS is fine but you dont have the boses to use it properly and the healing is much low in comparision to what it healed back in mop (remember thok).

So i think they need to rebuild the shadow in its current state , because i dont feel like a "regular" shadow anymore , like i was back then.

These are my opinions , in a RAID/ soloing state.
Sorry for wrong grammar, its not my native language.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't be surprised if the CoP talent was made into a 4th spec and dedicated to a single-target/AoE role while the classic Shadow would be maintained as a dot/cleave style spec like AS and VEntropy is now.

They seem to be testing this on some of the classes, warriors are the obvious example, possibly hunters and warlocks. Personally, I like the varied gameplay that Shadow offers but I didn't play shadow as a main pre-WoD so my judgement is different than those that have played for years.

[Drye]

They're talking about rebuilding shadow for the next expansion. But just a patch type thing.