Shadow BFA Datamining

[Theed]

Don't get your expectations so high, it's very unlikely that we'll get back a full-powered 90% Dispersion. We'll likely keep this 2min-cd 60% silencing reduction.

And VT is buffed though. Reduced CD and I think its healing is untouched

I've experienced every beta since classic. I don't have high expectations

VT is nerfed, VE CD is buffed.

[zito]

I'm in heaven! I have missed this so much in Pvp.

Edit: If this is in lieu of another stun or silence... then to hell with this and BFA. I WANT MY PSYCHIC HORROR!

Remember when it was baseline? those were the days where they didn't remove baseline stuff and stick them in a talent

[Caladia]

Didn't it also take 1-3 Shadow Orbs when it was baseline?

[Deleted]

S2m being on a 4m cd screams use me for execute pretty much with the average fight lengths not really going above 8mins. So busting it out as close to 1min before the boss dies and stack as much modifiers as you can with swd and go to town.

Fuck it up and you just limp to the finish instead of no dps seems like a nice change while still retaining the skill of timing it without it being so punishing

[Caladia]

S2m being on a 4m cd screams use me for execute pretty much with the average fight lengths not really going above 8mins. So busting it out as close to 1min before the boss dies and stack as much modifiers as you can with swd and go to town.

Fuck it up and you just limp to the finish instead of no dps seems like a nice change while still retaining the skill of timing it without it being so punishing

Anshlun made a clip yesterday on a dummy with starter gear, with PI + StM he only made it to ~35 stacks of VF. Obviously this will be a bit longer with gear, but I'm not sure we'll be able to hold a 60s VF for the duration of STM.

[davesignal]

Thank God. Blizzard should be moving us to more frequent, shorter Voidforms and moving more power into the Void Eruption cast itself. That 60 second long Voidform/90% uptime shit was degenerate as hell.

[zito]

Didn't it also take 1-3 Shadow Orbs when it was baseline?

Lol???

Physic horror was a thing before cataclysm ( when they introduced shadow orbs) and it didn't cost a shadow orb before orbs either, also the only reason why it costed a shadow orb too was because there was no other spells besides mind blast that used orbs so they just threw it on horror which ended up being a big nerf.

[Caladia]

Lol???

Physic horror was a thing before cataclysm ( when they introduced shadow orbs) and it didn't cost a shadow orb before orbs either, also the only reason why it costed a shadow orb too was because there was no other spells besides mind blast that used orbs so they just threw it on horror which ended up being a big nerf.

Ah, I didn't start Shadow until MoP. Thanks for the info.

[zito]

Ah, I didn't start Shadow until MoP. Thanks for the info.

Yup, cataclysm was the beginning of the end (literally) where they started to fuck with shit with no reason. Everything new we got ended up being removed starting with nerfs then flat out removals. Void shift gone, spectral guise gone, mind spike gone, baseline crap being put into talents because the blizzard team can't think of anything else to do nowadays.

- - - Updated - - -

I remember when they added mind spike, it was implemented to give priests something to do when they got locked out of shadow school (it did shadowfrost damage) because that's literally the only class of spells we could use and they ended up nerfing it and being locked out of shadow school too and then they just removed it, brought it back as a talent and then removed it again.

[Yvaelle]

lol, this has been an underlining problem since forever. Spriests have always had a defense problem and the excuse is that we can heal. It's disgusting in PvP because all people do is tunnel the shadow priest since after dispersion we are sitting ducks.

One time we got defensive cooldowns they were removed because SHADOW PRIEST OP 2967582048602860809. Shadow guise, void shift.... rip

I mean, not Forever. In TBC we were 3v3 Tanks. You could sit both your DPS on me and do no meaningful damage, or you could try to jump on my team's Rogue, and I'd be left to free-cast - and both of those situations were basically Lose/Lose for the enemy team. Sit on me and we'll attrition them to death with the DoTs I do get out and the control the rogue puts into the healer. Peel the rogue and I'll free cast DoTs & Mana Burn, and then your healer is truly wrecked. WotLK was kind of like that too but to a lesser extent.

But yea... that was like a decade ago - so I guess it's been a pretty consistent problem since then.

[Stratcaster]

This is all a butthole of a mess, too many compromises and not enough genuine thought have gone into SPs lately.

[Deleted]

Anshlun made a clip yesterday on a dummy with starter gear, with PI + StM he only made it to ~35 stacks of VF. Obviously this will be a bit longer with gear, but I'm not sure we'll be able to hold a 60s VF for the duration of STM.

Mmmmm that kinda sucks, did he wait till high stacks to pop PI? And was he using SW: D and SW:V as those should be a major buff to generation allowing further extension.

I mean the logical reason in my head for putting a 1min duration on the talent should, in theory, mean that it should always be possible to stay in VF for the full 1min, as the whole point of giving it a finite duration is that you can balance around that and not the current iteration of just trying to keep it up as long as possible which has huge deltas due to mechanics, player skill etc.

I'm sure they will adjust things to make it so.............hopefully

[Ophenia]

Mmmmm that kinda sucks, did he wait till high stacks to pop PI? And was he using SW: D and SW:V as those should be a major buff to generation allowing further extension.

I mean the logical reason in my head for putting a 1min duration on the talent should, in theory, mean that it should always be possible to stay in VF for the full 1min, as the whole point of giving it a finite duration is that you can balance around that and not the current iteration of just trying to keep it up as long as possible which has huge deltas due to mechanics, player skill etc.

I'm sure they will adjust things to make it so.............hopefully

The mandatory "one minute voidform rotation" is boring as hell and a complete balancing nightmare.

Voidform should be a regular burst, let's say 20% uptime. Not this nonsense 90% uptime with 5 seconds in-between Voidforms and the fact you start achieving some bit of DPS after 30 stacks and the mandatory Mindbender.

[Deleted]

The mandatory "one minute voidform rotation" is boring as hell and a complete balancing nightmare.

Voidform should be a regular burst, let's say 20% uptime. Not this nonsense 90% uptime with 5 seconds in-between Voidforms and the fact you start achieving some bit of DPS after 30 stacks and the mandatory Mindbender.

I agree about more regular voidforms, tho there will come a point where in and out with too much regularity will water it down and feel less epic, so they will have to strike the balance well.

As the for the 1min VF maybe boring to you but not too others, hence why its a talent, so here's hoping they balance it well enough that one doesn't become mandatory. S2M's 1min should be much easier to balance by virtue of its much longer cooldown, so it will see finite use due to the average length of fights.

In my head they are going for using it early say on pull and then having to suffer the full 30s debuff of no insanity generation will result in a minor net dps increase or closer to being dps neutral thus encouraging you to work out in the fight (most likely the last min of the boss in execute time) to use is so you totally negate the 30s debuff as the boss dies within 1s of your VF dropping or if you fuck it up and the boss dies 10s after you can still limp to the end instead of being dead like the current S2M. So used outside of execute the talent kinda balances itself really.

It will also be great for any fights that have intermissions, i.e time your S2M so it drops just before you go into the intermission thus negating a lot of the debuff, but only if you are still able to use it for the 1min execute at the end of the fight. The talent has a lot of fore thought going into it as a player to get the best out of it, which i think is great!!

[Jervaise]

Shorter VF's mean more VF's during a fight, and that naturally means screwing up punishes you less. I can buy into that.

However, cooldowns being of "regular use" should be gone too. SF and bender should not generate insanity, instead they should be big damage dealers. That way we can, like any other class, pop cooldowns when they are needed, not to fix a rotation.

Now, if SF and bender are kept as they are - that is with insanity generation - then we should get a baseline damage increase trigger that is on a longer cooldown, perhaps in the same row as bender. CAUSE I HATE NOT BEING IN CONTROL OF WHEN I DO DAMAGE BLIZ!

Another problem with shorter VF's, though, is that it becomes more of an eclipse mechanic rather than what it is today. I don't enjoy that gameplay personally.

I really miss the cata spriest of all the iterations I played. Sure, we had issues with orb generation, RNG and ramp up mechanics - but do we not have these issues now either?


If it were up to me here is what I would do to the main playstyle of shadow: Remove insanity building mechanic - remove the ramp up to ramp up to ramp up (rampupception?).

Instead, make VF into a cooldown with 2 min CD - namely surrender to madness - remove the current s2m. When popped, you start with 100 insanity and the drain starts, just like today. There is no mass hysteria ramping up, only trying to stay in the VF as long as you can. Haste goes up the more you stay as today though. Normally you should be able to stay in it max 40-45 seconds before all your insanity is drained.

Then you have 1 min 20 secondish of relaxed time where you play as the old dot spec we all used to love and know.

This should be a lvl100 talent practically replacing WoD CoP builds - cause let's face it, legion spriest is practically a skinned version of WoD CoP build - as in dotless cast spec.

The competing talents could be:

- a renamed devouring plague like suggested on these forums which focuses on insanity dumping for a big third stacking dot while managing the our other two dots. Insanity mechanic for this talent should be a builder spender, unlike VF which is maintenance.

- a passive echo of void kind of mechanic in which insanity always gets drained - but there is nothing to fall out of. Instead the higher you maintain your insanity, the more echo damage you do on all targets you are damaging. Pretty similar to holy priest echo of light. The main goal here would be to keep your insanity as high as you can all the time by casting and and doing damage (dot ticks would bring insanity).

I'll stop my fantasy here. Sorry.

[Ophenia]

I agree about more regular voidforms, tho there will come a point where in and out with too much regularity will water it down and feel less epic, so they will have to strike the balance well.

Well, to me that's more epic if we actually had to build up something to get into the Voidform. Currently, we spend our lives in Voidform, that's not epic at all, that's nearly our natural state.

On the contrary, if you have to build it during 20 minutes to finally unleash the power of the void dealing tons of damage, that would be epic. Like the Surrender to Madness (I hate this talent but I appreciate the concept).

Honestly that would even be a great alternative to Surrender to Madness and Legacy of the Void on the last Talents' row (Void Torrent cannot be kept in this row, let's face it Blizzard).

Master of the Void
- Void Eruption now has a 3-5 minute cooldown, and grants you 10-20 stacks of Voidform.
- Shadowform now increases all your Shadow damages by an additional xx% (to compensate the fact we couldn't have our 80% voidform uptime anymore)

The problem of this is that we would need something to spend Insanity outside of Voidform. Either through a re-addition of a Devouring Plague consuming like 50 insanity, or maybe even Shadow Word : Death that would be usable outside of exec range with bonus damage for exec. I'd prefer that over losing it definitely in the Talents system where it cannot compete with Misery in MM+ dungeons.

[Deleted]

Master of the Void
- Void Eruption now has a 3-5 minute cooldown, and grants you 10-20 stacks of Voidform.
- Shadowform now increases all your Shadow damages by an additional xx% (to compensate the fact we couldn't have our 80% voidform uptime anymore)

The problem of this is that we would need something to spend Insanity outside of Voidform. Either through a re-addition of a Devouring Plague consuming like 50 insanity, or maybe even Shadow Word : Death that would be usable outside of exec range with bonus damage for exec. I'd prefer that over losing it definitely in the Talents system where it cannot compete with Misery in MM+ dungeons.

Interesting, tho i feel like that would be harder to balance on fights where you could potentially use it more than once, which would be a massive increase. But i do like the idea of a super saiyan VF a lot!!

I miss DP as well, would be great if they brought it back as an insanity spender as an alternative to the void form playstyle.

On a side note, i love that PH is back, i absolutely loved playing godcomp in mists/wod, could be back on the menu!!!

[Deleted]

I can't believe anyone is even remotely happy right now.

How can anyone think this is positive when Void Torrent is taken away and then made to compete with 2 other 100 talents.

How can anyone be happy when an ability as iconic as SW is taken away and then made to compete with 2 other 45 talents.

They need to just suck it up and can S2M - ideally they would suck it up and can the entire Void Form concept - it works in raids but is absolutely awful in any other content with frequent breaks, as in 5 man content where it can drop off in between packs.

And for the love of god, can we finally just give Shadow a fucking cooldown in the form of a baseline Power Infusion?

[dragonmancers]

While i completely agree that there should be some way for shadow to control their damage and voidforms better, I think taking VFs uptime down significantly is not the solution, to the people saying it should be this super powerful form that's up 20% of the time, are you just talking about a ranged Shadow Dance?? because that's basically what you're asking for, and to the people saying voidform itself isn't super powerful and special you're right, but those last 10-20 seconds where you're fighting (and eventually losing) to keep your voidform, it DOES feel special and powerful. This doesn't mean you have to have ALL your damage coming from those parts of voidform, but the stacking haste it gives can still make it FEEL powerful

[davesignal]

Yes, a ranged Shadow Dance would be great. In fact, it would be ideal: something with charges we could hold and use for immense burst when necessary.

Maybe if Void Eruption cost, like, 35 Insanity to activate and Voidform lasted a fixed amount of time, during which SWP/VT duration went up instead of down and we had access to powerful direct damage spells, that would be great. Maybe have it last 15 seconds, pause all insanity generation, and instantly increase haste by 15% that fades 1% per second.