[7.2] Legion Shadow Priest Guide and Discussion

[RsinRC]

That would probably make it ridiculously better than any other option on that row.

Now, for Legacy of the Void? Yeah, that could be a good addition there.

Either way works lol better transition, buff to Vtor and maybe changing up meta rotations.

[N1gh7h4wk]

Thanks for them, you guys have been a huge help to the community.

I have a question if you don't mind, though I think you read howtopriest more than you do here so hopefully you see this -

Any advice about gearing for LoTV? While I do raid, I also enjoy mythic+, so I'm curious if those breakpoints are good for LoTV as well. Reason I'm asking is because if it's still better to stack haste with LoTV, I could just stick with the previous breakpoint of 10k you guys released instead of having to regem/regear. Thanks.

Those statweights relay on using s2m, to simulate a dungeon with lotv requires a lot of work. We are still figuring out how to get the best results. I'm not quite sure about the weight changes with the hotfixes, but I think that you can roll the weights for dungeons and perform fine for now.

[Dawnrage]

Those statweights relay on using s2m, to simulate a dungeon with lotv requires a lot of work. We are still figuring out how to get the best results. I'm not quite sure about the weight changes with the hotfixes, but I think that you can roll the weights for dungeons and perform fine for now.

Thanks for the response.

You guys think PTR shadow might be complete this week? They did say they plan to release a bunch of changes for all the specs this week to let people see the full picture of their spec changes and then releasing their insight on them. Curious to see what shadow's new legendary is.

[Deleted]

You can survive by taking a feather and dispersing

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...uras&source=26

[lcs]

Do DoTs snapshot on death? ie, if I die at 85 stacks from S2M, do the DoTs I have active continue until they run out with the haste from those stacks and the 30% damage buff from Voidform?

[Dawnrage]

Do DoTs snapshot on death? ie, if I die at 85 stacks from S2M, do the DoTs I have active continue until they run out with the haste from those stacks and the 30% damage buff from Voidform?

They do not. The second you exit S2M/die/haste changes because you go into voidform without void lord/damage goes up and down due to buffs or debuffs, your dots will dynamically update and do the damage based on your current stats/buffs or debuffs.

[Syld]

I was just doing LFR Trial of valor and my insanity drained on every void torrent cast, is this a bug?

[davesignal]

There's currently a really bad bug relating to dropping a ton of insanity, yeah.

[Isentropy]

My thoughts on the changes currently on the PTR;

Surrender to Madness

Quite a harsh nerf to how long we can stay in Voidform during Surrender to Madness in current gear, but it is possible that the 2 set in Nighthold will change that a bit. Combined with the nerf to Auspicious Spirits, getting to the third Void Torrent without having Mangaza’s Madness appears to be impossible (outside of using drums when you want it perhaps). It does seem possible with the legendary belt though, albeit very hard and probably inconsistent. More testing and optimizing on this is required. I would have liked to see a less harsh nerf to the bonus Insanity generation and just shift our damage peak by capping Mass Hysteria below 100, but it can’t be argued that a nerf of some kind wasn’t deserved. Hopefully nerfing it like this means a better alternative will present itself.

Void Bolt

The change to Void Bolt seems to be intended as a help in stacked target situations, but I fear that it affects our spread target multidotting too much when inside Voidform. Before, if there were two spread out targets, you didn’t have to switch targets after every Void Bolt in order for your dots to stay on the targets. There was some wiggle room, which allowed you to shift your focus to one target for quite a long period of time, only having to Void Bolt the other target once every 14 seconds. Now, unless targets are stacked, you will basically have to cycle your Void Bolts or you’ll end up having to reapply dots during Voidform. If you hit one target with Void Bolt twice in a row, that means that the duration of your dots on your other target would essentially be 3 seconds behind, and while your dots may not end up falling off while you’re inside Voidform, once you’re out of Voidform this results in more and sooner manual dot application than before. I will explain that in more detail later on in this paragaph. And even if you do use Void Bolt to switch targets every time it’s off cooldown, it still looks really awkward for your dots to be so low in duration a lot of the time. It’s worth noting that this seems to be the case when targets are stacked too, as our dot durations across targets will be different because of how shadow has to manually apply its dots in a staggered fashion.

The new Void Bolt may not be very different in how much time it adds to your dots overall, but the very nature of how it adds time means that when you exit Voidform, you will have less time on your dots remaining than before - which means that you’re having to reapply your dots earlier, and by the time you can go into Voidform again your dots will have a low duration, possibly low enough to make you have to apply your dots again. You could ‘reset’ that chain of events before because Void Bolt refreshed the duration, but with the proposed change it just creates this loop that is hard to break through and will almost inevitably lead to having to manually refresh your dots inside Voidform as well if there are multiple targets, which feels bad and isn’t optimal. The buffs to our base Insanity generation mean that time between Voidforms will be lower than before, but I do not believe that outweighs the negative impact the new Void Bolt has on what is supposed to be our strength: damaging spread out targets. Lingering Insanity no longer being baseline is also very relevant to consider, but I’ll elaborate on that in its own paragraph. If you think about practical situations in raids, I cannot think of very many situations where the new Void Bolt wouldn’t just be worse than the current Void Bolt. It’s a tradeoff, but one I don’t think makes a lot of sense all things considered - and perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t feel as nice to play with compared to before.

Mind Flay

Getting rid of Mind Sear means that we no longer have the awkward issue of Mind Flay and Mind Sear output being tied to each other, which allows for better/easier tuning and also creates room for a mechanically better, more interesting way for shadow to AoE. The new Mind Flay takes the alpha Void Corruption and also makes it a viable way to AoE (whereas the alpha Void Corruption merely did damage to targets with your dots on them which didn’t really work as AoE). The idea is solid, and I like it a lot. Some concerns: unless you have a lot of mastery or unless you’re in Voidform, it will be worse than Mind Sear’s damage right now. Insanity generation of Mind Flay also doesn’t scale with more targets like Mind Sear did, which means that we potentially lose the ability to stay in Voidform for as long as we could before in some cases. Before, depending on the amount of targets, you would just Mind Sear if your dots were up as it did more damage and generated more Insanity than Mind Blast - now, Mind Blast is more important for Insanity generation and Mind Sear no longer exists (and as previously mentioned, Mind Flay’s Insanity generation doesn’t scale with more targets) which means that this will probably be a net Insanity loss even in cleave situations. Auspicious Spirits being nerfed only adds to the problem.

Lingering Insanity

This is, in my opinion, the biggest change in terms of how much it impacts our playstyle. I don’t understand why the need was felt to change this part of our toolkit, as it was crucial to the ebb and flow of going in and out of Voidform. Yes, Insanity generation of our spells was buffed (except for Void Bolt) which means that overall, time between Voidforms will be shorter than before - however, I would like to focus on another aspect of what made Lingering Insanity a great and a very necessary addition to our toolkit.

Of all the specs that have dots as a big part of their playstyle, shadow is the only spec that has no way of spreading its dots (outside of the legendary ring, but I’m not counting that). Lingering Insanity felt like the compromise to that fact - we may have to manually multidot everything, but at least we have all this extra haste so we can make that significantly faster. You put your dots up outside of Voidform, then during Voidform you can use Void Bolt to refresh them again. The intended playstyle was clear and it flowed really well - it just worked, though proper target switching can prove to be a challenge for players new to the spec. It was satisfying to do if executed properly and emphasized that we are the kings of spread out multidotting. Our dots still do the same amount of damage, but in 7.1.5 we will be applying them at a much slower rate than before (unless you take the new talent Lingering Insanity, which is still worse than the old baseline version) and combined with the issues I laid out in the paragraph about Void Bolt I do not believe this is a change that benefits the playstyle. I mean that both in terms of numbers and in terms of how it will affect people’s enjoyment of the spec.

The Twins’ Painful Touch

With Mind Sear gone, the tooltip probably defaulted to Mind Flay - at least, that’s what I hope because if the current tooltip on the PTR is actually intended then that is a massive nerf and takes away any possibility to play around the buff. Either add spawns line up perfectly with you getting the buff, or it just gets wasted completely. There is no real in between there - not using Mind Flay at all just isn’t an option. In situations where spreading your dots would be detrimental to the group as a whole, we have no choice but to just refrain from using Mind Flay at all. Il’gynoth is a good example of a fight where it would be quite bad. The ring was really interesting and promoted smart usage of your dots/Mind Sear, so it’s a shame if it would be reduced to be potentially completely useless in situations where you would normally want to be able to utilize it. Perhaps make the effect on use or tie it to another spell that isn’t used rotationally as much.

Shadow Crash

Big buff, which may or may not make it a good option for dungeons now if you want AoE. Issue is still that Power Infusion offers similar/better benefits for cleave and is still significantly better for single target too, so I’m skeptical that it will see much use as long as it’s on the 90 talent row. The biggest service you could do to Shadow Crash, in and of itself a cool ability, would probably be to move it to another talent row or maybe give us a weaker version baseline.

Legacy/Mind Spike

As these talents actually get reworked, I will write more in depth about them (or if they don’t get reworked at all I’ll write about why they should probably be reworked) but for now all I’ll say is that Legacy of the Void and Mind Spike are still not very appealing options/alternatives to Surrender to Madness. Mind Spike is now especially unappealing, considering that Mind Flay already cleaves by itself now. Waiting to see what’s in store in regards to these two.

[bunglehaze]

Blue post from the Blizz PTR discussion. Has anyone noticed a significant multi target gameplay?

Shadow Priest:
Shadow’s overall pacing is being adjusted so that the highest peak is at the end of Voidform, rather than just before the start of the next one. As a part of this, Lingering Insanity is removed, but overall Insanity generation (and therefore Voidform uptime) is increased. Additionally, Mind Sear is replaced with a new passive effect that allows Mind Flay to fulfill the same purpose. Shadow already has significant multi-target gameplay from the desire to maintain two damage-over-time effects on each target (a process which being is made smoother by allowing Void Bolt to extend DoTs on multiple targets at once). Finally, we are continuing to tweak the Insanity decay rate in Voidform, and the strength of Surrender to Madness, to better balance the Level 100 row. We want to preserve the purpose and strengths of Surrender to Madness for players who enjoy it, without it being quite so ubiquitous as it is currently.

I know they stated earlier in the post that lots of class changes are happening on the next build but I wonder if this is just a refinement of what already exists and as a result still likely to result in a sub par class.

Hi BTW, first post but been lurking for years

[kalaratic]

ya i'm not a fan of the new void bolt refresh and personally i don't view it as "smoother" at all. it is a lot more engaging for me to cycle through targets and refresh the dots like we have now, especially when you pop power infusion and have to manage your insanity plus the dots. i've adapted away from enemy grid after the patch and i really like the gameplay i get now but i can see why they want to change it. just wish the refresh was longer than 3 seconds

[Naga Coatl]

They should give QoL to shadow to reduce its "raid only" feeling. While a non-LI dependant insanity generation buff is quite welcomed, they should close the gap between SF and non-SF. High SF stacks are unobtainable outside of 'serious content', and with gear the need to use VF for the daily tasks lowers.

I sincerely hope that they will scrap VF/Insanity for the next expansion. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing half of my spec just because its 'main mode' isn't needed. Ramp ups within ramp ups are not fun in my opinion.

[davesignal]

It would be nice if Voidform stayed at 30%, but Shadowform went up to like 15%. All they really need to do is buff the damage we do in Shadowform significantly without buffing the Voidform damage (or maybe even nerfing it a tiny amount, if they still think S2M is too strong).

[RsinRC]

There is a huge change most don't talk about. On live dotting inside of VF is a loss because of the insanity and damage yu lose while doing it.

On the PTR, with the new changes, your insanity building abilities while in VF generate the same amount of insanity regardless if you're dotting or mindflaying. In other words you will see a 30 stack VF regardless if you're dotting or using mindflay. Multidotting while INSIDE VF is no where near as bad as it is now.

To add, if yu dot up 3 targets and enter VF but there are 7 targets available these new changes let you fit both a SWP and a Vamp Touch in between VBs allowing you to put up new dots while maintaining\extending the ones already up. It is a much more simple and smoother experience compared to looking for targets who's dots are falling off. And you do a substantial amount of damage when you finally mindflay. Not a huge fan of using MB in aoe but it is part of the rotation in the ptr for both st and aoe to get you higher stacks.

It definitely is a step in the right direction. I'm exited to see how they'll implement the full dot refresher tho cuz ima miss being able to refresh targets farther away. Hopefully they do something interesting to.remedy that.

[Isentropy]

There is a huge change most don't talk about. On live dotting inside of VF is a loss because of the insanity and damage yu lose while doing it.

On the PTR, with the new changes, your insanity building abilities while in VF generate the same amount of insanity regardless if you're dotting or mindflaying. In other words you will see a 30 stack VF regardless if you're dotting or using mindflay. Multidotting while INSIDE VF is no where near as bad as it is now.

To add, if yu dot up 3 targets and enter VF but there are 7 targets available these new changes let you fit both a SWP and a Vamp Touch in between VBs allowing you to put up new dots while maintaining\extending the ones already up. It is a much more simple and smoother experience compared to looking for targets who's dots are falling off. And you do a substantial amount of damage when you finally mindflay. Not a huge fan of using MB in aoe but it is part of the rotation in the ptr for both st and aoe to get you higher stacks.

It definitely is a step in the right direction. I'm exited to see how they'll implement the full dot refresher tho cuz ima miss being able to refresh targets farther away. Hopefully they do something interesting to.remedy that.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain generate 6 and 4 Insanity respectively for a total of 10 over 2 globals, versus Mind Flay which generates 12 Insanity over its duration. It's still an Insanity loss to dot versus having to Mind Flay, not to mention that you lose the free cleave damage from Mind Flay by having to do so. Regardless, the biggest issue of multidotting inside of Voidform is lack of globals. Delaying Mind Blast is now more punishing because it generates more Insanity than before, delaying Void Bolt is more punishing because you'll fall behind on dot durations if you don't do it on cooldown (you'd never really delay Void Bolt on live either, though) and since Auspicious Spirits was nerfed your passive Insanity generation will take a big hit. On stacked targets you may not have to tab target during Voidform, but outside of Voidform you will have to manually apply your dots again at some point which will force you to tab target anyway and in the case of spread out targets you will have to constantly tab target unless you don't mind your dots falling off of one target (which is a big deal if one mob is spread but the rest of the pack is stacked). So no, it really isn't a step in the right direction, it's one step forward and two steps backwards. In practice the new Void Bolt will be worse than the old Void Bolt in the majority of situations, especially so in raids. Think how much this affects Odyn, Il'gynoth and Cenarius to name but a few examples - it's just strictly worse in every single way.

[Darth-Piekus]

I have to disagree. Those with the Twins Painful Touch which will have the Mindflay spreading both dots in targets around it will be perfect as I won't need to change targets cause I know every time I Void Bolt my main target all of the Mob dots will be extended.

[RsinRC]

I'm not sure what you're talking about, Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain generate 6 and 4 Insanity respectively for a total of 10 over 2 globals, versus Mind Flay which generates 12 Insanity over its duration. It's still an Insanity loss to dot versus having to Mind Flay, not to mention that you lose the free cleave damage from Mind Flay by having to do so. Regardless, the biggest issue of multidotting inside of Voidform is lack of globals. Delaying Mind Blast is now more punishing because it generates more Insanity than before, delaying Void Bolt is more punishing because you'll fall behind on dot durations if you don't do it on cooldown (you'd never really delay Void Bolt on live either, though) and since Auspicious Spirits was nerfed your passive Insanity generation will take a big hit. On stacked targets you may not have to tab target during Voidform, but outside of Voidform you will have to manually apply your dots again at some point which will force you to tab target anyway and in the case of spread out targets you will have to constantly tab target unless you don't mind your dots falling off of one target (which is a big deal if one mob is spread but the rest of the pack is stacked). So no, it really isn't a step in the right direction, it's one step forward and two steps backwards. In practice the new Void Bolt will be worse than the old Void Bolt in the majority of situations, especially so in raids. Think how much this affects Odyn, Il'gynoth and Cenarius to name but a few examples - it's just strictly worse in every single way.

A reminder, 2 globals is less than 3s with our haste and the damage gain you get from casting the dots are worth much more than losing 2 insanity if you're right.

Lack of globals is not an issue. You can easily fit swp and VT in between VB and MB globals even with mindflay and not have to worry about none of your dots falling off your target(s). Yu can continue ramping up dot damage, since you know dots are our main source of damage and the more dots you can put up while gaining stacks the better.

It is still better to apply them outside of VF but with such a shorter time window and only a few globals between VFs it is inevitable. You literally go into VF with LotV after dotting only 2 and a half targets if you're using a normal rotation. The new changes made this process inside VF much smoother since you wont lose as much insanity as you do on live. Removing mindsear further emphazises this.

I agree with the spread out targets and how retarded the changes affect it and i'm sorely hoping they fix that somehow cuz that is our big niche.

I disagree. In practice for most dungeons and most content this change is pretty kool, imo.
• Spamming tab to dot targets outside of VF and then not having to worry about those dots dropping when yu enter VF and only having to hit 1 target to achieve this (ptr)
vs
• Having to spam tab to dot targets outside of VF and then spam tab inside VF to VB targets with expiring dots and still have dots drop on you (live)
The former wins with better execution and dots dont fall off (unless spread) when in VF.

To add I can so far have 3 targets dotted and keep said dots up without reapplying them for 2 entire VF cycles. Thats without lingering insanity or PI. Pretty kool if you ask me

[Gorsameth]

There is a huge change most don't talk about. On live dotting inside of VF is a loss because of the insanity and damage yu lose while doing it.

On the PTR, with the new changes, your insanity building abilities while in VF generate the same amount of insanity regardless if you're dotting or mindflaying. In other words you will see a 30 stack VF regardless if you're dotting or using mindflay. Multidotting while INSIDE VF is no where near as bad as it is now.

To add, if yu dot up 3 targets and enter VF but there are 7 targets available these new changes let you fit both a SWP and a Vamp Touch in between VBs allowing you to put up new dots while maintaining\extending the ones already up. It is a much more simple and smoother experience compared to looking for targets who's dots are falling off. And you do a substantial amount of damage when you finally mindflay. Not a huge fan of using MB in aoe but it is part of the rotation in the ptr for both st and aoe to get you higher stacks.

It definitely is a step in the right direction. I'm exited to see how they'll implement the full dot refresher tho cuz ima miss being able to refresh targets farther away. Hopefully they do something interesting to.remedy that.

Please explain to me what I am missing here.
SW:P did not get an insanity gain increase, VT was increased but only by a small amount. Mindblast became more important aswell as voidbolt (tho you wanted to cast both on cd anyway.

I don't see anything that would indicate a significant change in interactions that would make dotting in void form less punishing.

Shadow Priest:
Shadow’s overall pacing is being adjusted so that the highest peak is at the end of Voidform, rather than just before the start of the next one. As a part of this, Lingering Insanity is removed, but overall Insanity generation (and therefore Voidform uptime) is increased. Additionally, Mind Sear is replaced with a new passive effect that allows Mind Flay to fulfill the same purpose. Shadow already has significant multi-target gameplay from the desire to maintain two damage-over-time effects on each target (a process which being is made smoother by allowing Void Bolt to extend DoTs on multiple targets at once). Finally, we are continuing to tweak the Insanity decay rate in Voidform, and the strength of Surrender to Madness, to better balance the Level 100 row. We want to preserve the purpose and strengths of Surrender to Madness for players who enjoy it, without it being quite so ubiquitous as it is currently.

This reads as something scary to me. Mostly the comment about nerfing StM to balance the 100 tier. We want the other talents to be buffed until they actually do something noticeable. Make them good and desirable. Not just nerfing StM into the ground until it no longer exists.

Also the start of that comment just reads wrong. The highest peak of pacing is at the top of voidform already as your fighting to get 1 more spell out to extend it. Yes you have a lot of haste when you come out of Voidform with the old Lingering Insanity but for the most part you spend it channelling Mindflay while Mind Blast is on cd.

[RsinRC]

@Gorsameth Just replied to Isentropy right before your post. It may answer your question. BTW VT, MF and MB got their insanity gain increased.

[Deleted]

That blue post about shadow is just so wrong on so many levels, someone who can post on US forums can please reply to that?