Angelic Feather was taken out "Because holy." Leap of Faith for the same reason (and by extension, our ability to glyph it for the self-lifegrip to get ourselves someplace quickly). Neither were replaced with a shadow thematic as they should have been. The result is that shadow priests are limited to 1 single talent option if they want to get out of the bad quickly in PvE in legion, and it's not a good one. Body & Soul is universally disliked by raider spriests at the moment, and should by no means become mandatory.
What I feel shadow should have is Voidstep, of which there is already precedent in the game. It should be targeted on the ground and cause the shadow priest to "morph" up out of the floor a certain distance away. It fills the playstyle niche that was held by feathers (ground-targeted movement a la skillshot) while giving shadow something that they frankly NEED to have for handling PvE mechanics. "Just powerwalk and hope nothing bad hits you" is not a good design goal, and it does not make shadow "unique" in anything approaching a good way. The Devs have sworn up and down that PvE and PvP will not conflict with each other anymore, so I feel that PvP should have no bearing on whether shadow can have this or not.
I also feel that "Masochism" should be deleted. It is redundant with the passive we already get from our artifact weapon, and should definitely not be there in place of a movement-speed ability. If Voidstep were to replace any talent in that row, Masochism would be the natural candidate, no questions asked.
Back to the subject of Voidstep and whether it's okay for another class to get a gap opener...
All other ranged have a gap opener: Blink, disengage, displacer beast, lock portal/gate, and shamans which I'll mention in a minute. Basically...the concept of a ranged class having an ability to quickly get to a certain spot and/or get out of the "bad" in PvE is taken for granted, for every single ranged except shadow (and some melee, too -- monks, rogues and warriors, possibly even demon hunters).
One of the reasons I've been given for why shadow shouldn't get anything to fill in this glaring bald spot is "class homogenization." I contest this because if that were the case and these imo essential parts of the ranged toolkit were supposed to be "unique," (to mages/hunters) it wouldn't have been given to shamans as a brand new additional ability, nor would warlocks be added 2 of them (one of which is also a raid CD), nor would displacer beast be added and made available to boomkins -- these are all relatively recent additions. Shadow priests are now the sole and only ranged that does not have one. Therefore I do not think that "homogenization" is a reasonable argument for why shadow should be denied its own.
Which is not to mention that all those other classes have movement speed abilities in addition to their "jump/gap opener" abilities, not instead of -- which would be the case for shadow if this were implemented as a talent. We wouldn't also have a dash/blazing speed/ghostwolf type ability, because this would replace that. By comparison, shadow would still be impoverished -- just mildly less so than it is now, and shadow priests would at least have a choice of talents.
The Devs appear to want shadow to be the only caster that is this immobile. Putting an insanity cost on Voidstep in PvE would certainly discourage me from using it. I need my parse fix!! In that case, shadow would still retain its "immobility" as a caster, while having the option to sacrifice damage for survival if they need it.
It would also be a talent choice for them, so if they would rather take B&S and not lose any damage -- OK. But certain fights that require you to drop what you're doing and BOOK IT, shadow would still be able to survive, and Blizzard wouldn't have to cater any ranged mechanics specifically to shadow priests. Currently, if Blizzard puts in mechanics that target the ranged group with a "think fast" 1shot, the solution is to assume that your raid group has a warlock, and make it so that the demonic gateway has to be used by the ranged to escape the mechanic. Right...on the surface level, that's okay(ish), despite that finding a warlock isn't always easy. But in reality, if the mechanic is only targeting the ranged group, it boils down to only the shadow priest requiring the lock gate. All other ranged can make do without it. One class requiring another class to be present in order to be "viable" for a particular fight is unheard of.
Therefore what's more likely to happen is that the team would be forced to abandon their ideas for such a mechanic, indirectly -- yet still solely -- because of shadow priests.
I really think that's limiting on the PvE dev team. We have so many fights with recycled mechanics already, I'm sure they are not opposed to trying out new ones. This is just an example of how shadow's movement poverty can negatively impact all of PvE and what the devs can and can't create.
Feel free to post constructive feedback on why this would or would not be a good thing for shadow. If anyone has any other ideas to fix shadow's movement-prune pain (seriously...were we really that mobile?) feel free to add them to the discussion as well
I personally prefer b&s over feathers, as it seems faster to me in terms of applying the movement speed buff. also most of the time you don't need to chain speed buffs during an encounter, and if you do, there's still Druids with roar (dunno if it still exists in Legion, only reading [shadow] priest and dh notes).
Body & Soul and Reflective shield made PWS one of the most useful buttons in the game, and its speed increase was sufficient in 90% of the cases you need it in PvE. The only time I've found that it isn't is due to weakened soul, which is being removed anyway (iirc, haven't been following that closely). While I would love some kind of void step, its not strictly necessary.
Life grip was always a gimmick. Was fun to use occasionally for stuff like saving feared idiots on mannoroth and coordinating all the priests in your raid to sequentially grip out a single melee during trash, but we never exactly relied on it.
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