Shadow needs a proper re-design, the devs have clearly been thinking about it for the last two expansions, but I suspect they don't know where to go from here. If the next beta should shine on us a little, I want to give them some ideas they are welcome to steal and take all the credit for
The Role of Hybrid Supports
Hybrids have gone through some bizarre times during the last few expansions. In TBC our role was entirely support, with trivial DPS but an incredible amount of soft power through various combinations of buffs, debuffs, dispels and heals. In WotLK our damage was brought close to par with the pure DPS specs, while our utility was decreased dramatically - but still a strong niche in the game. Cataclysm lead to even greater parity in damage, and further reduced support. In Pandaria the trend ends. The damage delta between specs has increased and our utility diminishes - but emphasis on support healing has expanded for all hybrids.
While homogenization is important for balance, differentiation is important for success and enjoyment in a competitive environment - it adds valuable flavour to classes and makes them feel unique and relatable. Support healing is just one model for what hybrids could offer. I propose Shadow move into a different niche (likely accompanied by Shamans) as a way to differentiate ourselves once more. We should offer less support healing, but retain or gain support dispels and defensive buffs:
The following specs should continue to be support Healers:
- Ret Paladins - they possess a natural affinity toward the light, and should possess powerful instant heal procs
- Balance Druids - they are masters of the 'balance' of nature, yet they are heavily lop-sided toward damage dealing, healing should be improved
- Windwalker Monks - improve their healing output, but reduce or remove their access to defensive peels through 2x disarms and tiger's lust
The following specs should offer an alternate support model based on dispels and defensive utility, but not (really) heals:
- Shadow Priests - should regain a Purify effect (defensive Dispel Magic), lose access to Holy spells on speccing Shadow, but gain a powerful Black Shield effect
- Elemental Shamans - gain Cleanse Spirit (defensive dispel) but lose access to Healing Surge, gain Earth Shield
- Enhancement Shamans - gain Cleanse Spirit (defensive dispel) but lose access to Healing Surge, gain Earth Shield
- all three specs should receive a stronger version of offensive dispel than anyone else (particularly healers), dispelling 2 magic effects without a cooldown
Shadow Orbs as a Real Secondary Resource
The devs want this to be an important secondary resource mechanic for Shadow. As it stands it is a cheap imitation of Holy Power. Without radically changing the nature of the resource (ie. energy, fury), we can learn a lot by comparing to Holy Power and avoiding and correcting for the mistakes that Holy Power has encountered as a much older and more robust resource.
- Abilities should consume a maximum of 3 Shadow Orbs, but we should be able to pool up to 5 orbs at a time
- Shadow needs at least four tools it can spend Shadow Orbs on
- Needs a frequent-use generator that scales with haste and is an instant ability so we can build our resource consistently
Retribution builds Holy Power via Crusader Strike and Divine Purpose. Crusader Strike is only a 4.5 second cooldown and is reduced by haste - our Mind Blast is an 8 second cooldown and not reduced by haste. One solution here would be to reduce the cooldown of Mind Blast, but that would make it seem too similar - a better solution would be to create an alternate generation method (such as Divine Purpose) that is stronger than Divine Purpose - but keep our normal Orb building mechanic as Mind Blast with an 8 second cooldown.
I'd propose the following as Shadow Orb generators:
Mind Blast *redesigned* - instant cast, 10 second cooldown (up from 8), cooldown reduced by haste
Coagulate *new* - passive - regenerates 1 Shadow Orb every 30 seconds
Glyph of Dispersion *redesigned* - while Dispersion is active you regenerate 1 Shadow Orb every 2 seconds.
Shadow Word: Death *unchanged*
And the following finishers to spend Shadow Orbs on:
- Devouring Plague removed
Mind War *new* - channeled - Consumes 3 Shadow Orbs to deal 110% 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 create an absorption shield on the target for 400% of Spellpower. While Black Shield is active the target is immune to spell pushback, interrupts and silence. Undispellable.
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, and the priest regains 2 Shadow Orbs.
Additionally, lesser but still powerful abilities should consume a single Shadow Orb - this is a method of reducing burst power by floating a mix of offensive and defensive cooldowns and then rapidly blowing through a list of powerful cooldowns (of different sorts) in a matter of seconds. It creates alternate paths to success and would make the system feel very robust, let me draw up some example abilities and then explain why it becomes interesting:
Desperate Prayer *moved* - Desperate Prayer is now the level 87 ability for all Priests.
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, for the first 3 seconds the priest is untargetable. 30 second cooldown.
What does this mean for Shadow PvP?
First it should be noted I'm assuming we would lose access to the 15% damage reduction that Shadowform provides, as well as all Holy spells including Flash Heal, Renew and Prayer of Mending: while specced Shadow. With the loss of so much of our current survivability, we would need new tools to make us more competitive with Mages and Warlocks in terms of survivability through mobility and good use of cooldowns (but notably not via tanking and healing through damage as we have always done).
What makes this system interesting is that gives us a lot of options - but limits our ability to use those options in rapid succession. The ability to save up 5 minutes worth of cooldowns and then use all of them inside 30 seconds is part of what is wrong with PvP currently, everyone has so many cooldowns that - should they use them all at once - it's in some cases impossible to counter. For Shadow at least, we can address this growing problem (for all classes) by tying our best abilities to our secondary resource (Shadow Orbs).
If I'm being tunneled I could use Void Shift on a melee teammate to simultaneously drop them into the action and remove myself from harms way. Alternately, if a teammate is getting tunneled I can use Void Shift in reverse - to remove them from harms way and drop myself in their place - and then presumably Psychic Scream Alternately, a good use of Void Shift would also be to displace fleeing opponents, or I could Void Shift one enemy to get sight on a second enemy who thought they were safe.
This makes Void Shift alone an incredibly powerful mobility tool for both offense and defense - the kind of mobility we would need in a world where we are no longer expected to tank our opponents, but instead kite to survive (much like mages and locks in MoP). However, by tying it to the Shadow Orb we diminish our damage dealing potential if we want to make use of this utility - I can Void Shift to get eyes on a line of sight enemy healer, but doing so will lose me an orb I'd need to follow up with Despair or Mind War: making it worthwhile, but only if I think I can finish them without my finisher (ie. Shadow Word: Death alone, without Mind War or SW: Despair). The 20 second cooldown of course makes sure we can't build up many orbs and Void Shift repeatedly.
Psychic Horror costing 3 Shadow Orbs has been borderline unused all expansion - we use it when we only have 1 Shadow Orb available, but it's just not a competitive value to Devouring Plague when we have 2 or 3 orbs active. By making Psychic Horror only consume 1 Orb, but removing the horror effect and increasing the cooldown - we make a disarm ability which is the highest cost Disarm in the game (no other disarm costs secondary resource) - but which will continue to be a useful peel if the circumstances are right. You wouldn't want to use it on cooldown (as most disarms are used) for fear of the orb cost, but it would always be "available" when you need it since it will only consume 1 Orb rather than 0 (can't cast it) or 3 (Waayyy too expensive).
Fade returns to the pre 5.2 (5.1?) state of being a target drop which we can use for avoiding crowd control, but now has a cost appropriate for the ability - it's still definitely worth Fading if your team is being pressured and you are about to be dropped into a long CC chain where you won't be able to help - but like Psychic Horror it's not something you want to do on cooldown just because you can because it costs you significant damage.
The 3 Shadow Orb maximum cost of abilities works as it does now, but the 5 Shadow Orb capacity means if Coagulate or Divine Insight procs we are no longer losing valuable Orbs to a poorly designed system. It also means that a Spriest who hasn't been pressured enough to need to use their abilities for a minute can build up 5 Shadow Orbs at once, and then time their next Coagulate tick with their burst - such that they can go:
Shadow Word: Despair -> Halo -> Mind War -> Shadow Word: Death. That makes for a pretty impressive burst cycle (comparable to the 1-2 minute burst cycles of other classes) - but it has a Lot of ways it can be shut down (unlike other classes):
1. if the fight is close the spriest needs their Orbs for utility and peels, preventing them from accumulating many orbs.
2. a healer can defensively dispel VT+Pain+Despair to negate an enormous amount of this stars-align damage cycle.
3. anyone with a kick or CC can interrupt the Mind War->Death to alternately disrupt much of such a damage cycle.
4. should the enemy survive that, the spriest just put themselves at a massive detriment accumulating orbs for the last minute, and now has no utility and gain for doing so (meaning that major defensive cooldowns are particularly effective against it - the spriest should choose their kill targets very carefully)
This means Spriests need to have a hefty knowledge of their opponents cooldowns and capabilities, they need to have excellent situational awareness of what has already been used and which un-CC'd enemies could disrupt them, and they need to coordinate significantly with their team to pull it all off. It also means they need to sacrifice their utility and control for the minute building up to it, and if something disrupts their teams preparation (CC'd teammates for example) - they lose a Lot for sitting at the 5 orb cap for too long.
Some people will likely criticize this model for making Shadow harder than it needs to be, but I think the Spriest community can handle the difficulty - and will enjoy returning to being a very high skill cap and coordination-based class, rather than the simplistic model of Mists of Pandaria. It gives us a clear and defined class vision - we no longer have any support heals - but we do have a very powerful Black Shield and the return of an instant defensive dispel to support our healers once more, we return to having powerful battlefield control as we had using Death to break poly's and strong defensive and offensive dispels - and we also have to juggle a now much more complex DPS system during that.
What I like most about this model is that it allows Spriests to choose how to play their class on an Arena team. A spriest playing in a Shatterplay or Shatreeplay (Shadow/Frost Mage/Restoration Healer) can leverage their teammates strong control to accumulate more orbs for their burst cycles. Alternately, a spriest in a currently-less-competitive comp can leverage their 1 Shadow Orb ability spells to exert greater support at the cost of losing much of their burst cycles.
The best shadowpriests will do both depending on how they predict the next minute or two of the game will play out. If the enemy blows through their offensive cooldowns but fails to score a kill, a good spriest will see that and spend their orbs on DPS or pool orbs for damage (Mind War and Despair) - knowing that their utility won't be needed for a moment: if the Spriest mis-judges and the enemy team is still dangerous, they won't have access to their peels and utility (and somebody will probably die). This means most spriests will always want at least 1 Orb in their back-pocket, but will never want to have 5 orbs for fear of a 6th orb being lost - we will try to float between 1 and 4 as best we can, and only spend our last orb or build a 5th orb if we are desperate or very confident in our predictions. That, to me, sounds like a Lot of fun.
What does this mean for Shadow PvE?
While many of these changes have obvious PvP implications, I want to point out that I'm not solely thinking of how to improve Shadow PvP here. Shadow PvE has felt out of place all through Mists of Pandaria, and I hope to remedy it. I'll repost the particularly relevant changes to PvE as a brief overview:
*Shadow Orb Finishers consume a maximum of 3 Shadow Orbs, but we have a capacity for 5 Shadow Orbs at a time*
Shadow Orb Generators:
Mind Blast *redesigned* - instant cast, 10 second cooldown (up from 8), cooldown reduced by haste
Coagulate *new* - passive - regenerates 1 Shadow Orb every 30 seconds
Glyph of Dispersion *redesigned* - while Dispersion is active you regenerate 1 Shadow Orb every 2 seconds.
Shadow Word: Death *unchanged*
Shadow Orb Finishing Moves:
*Devouring Plague removed
Mind War *new* - channeled - Consumes 3 Shadow Orbs to deal 110% 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 create an absorption shield on the target for 400% of Spellpower. While Black Shield is active the target is immune to spell pushback, interrupts and silence. Undispellable.
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, and the priest regains 2 Shadow Orbs.
1. This means we begin each fight with 5 Shadow Orbs (either by 150 seconds since our last used Shadow Orb for Coagulate to generate 5, or by using Dispersion on the run back), allowing us to make use of the common practice of Bloodlusting on the pull of most bosses so that everyone can blow their cooldowns as effectively as possible (currently we get very little benefit of Bloodlust on the pull since we don't have Orbs yet): problem solved.
2. It means that while we can't float a lot of burst all at once, Devouring Plague no longer dictates we need to use our finisher - before our next orb generates (DI proc, MB cooldown, or SW: Death cooldown). We can use it on 3 Orbs to always be safe, or if we're monitoring our Coagulate internal cooldown we can build up to 4 or 5 with careful attention. Generally it is safest and most prudent to use a Finisher whenever you have 3 Orbs, but good PvE spriests can micro-manage the 5-orb pool to get greater effect out of cooldowns like Power Infusion, damage buff boss mechanics, or for burning important upcoming adds down a little faster.
3. Giving us two ways to deal damage with Orbs (Mind War and Despair) means building up 5 orbs at once isn't useless, it also means that during high movement phases we can use Despair to get some good damage out while moving - conversely Mind War rewards us for being able to stand still for 5 seconds and channel without interruption.
4. Making Mind Blasts instant means we aren't crippled by heavy movement fights - because we can continue to generate our resources at a normal rate regardless of movement - it's still far from optimal to be moving however - since much of our time is spent channelling (Mind Flay and Mind War).
Overall, I think this address much of what I dislike about Shadow's PvE DPS priorities - it removes a lot of the quality of life issues and fight mechanic grievances, and makes our Shadow Orb "resource" give us more than one thing to use it on. It doesn't make the class overly complex to the level that some of us took it to in WotLK and Cataclysm - it's still pretty straight-forward for beginners - but it also gives the more advanced among us something to obsess over again.
I'd like to do a little more with the PvE DPS systems still. Obviously this is just a work in progress, a collection of ideas for how Shadow could be improved.
Thank you all for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts, critiques and support for these ideas