Shadow Priest Battle for Azeroth SUGGESTED Changes

[Nefarious Tea]

I've personally accepted this fact. But, I'm trying to be better. It just feels like there is no middle ground. You either do well, or not. And, if there is a middle ground, I haven't found it yet.

The person you're quoting is also kind of wrong. Unless you can multi-DoT like a crazy person and/or don't have to move at all SPriests are very weak. If you look at logs for ABT, outside of Coven and Felhounds which are the one fight type Shadow excels at, Spriest is middle of the road at best. And that includes massively cheesing damage on the small adds on Aggramar.

[itsDwindle]

The person you're quoting is also kind of wrong. Unless you can multi-DoT like a crazy person and/or don't have to move at all SPriests are very weak. If you look at logs for ABT, outside of Coven and Felhounds which are the one fight type Shadow excels at, Spriest is middle of the road at best. And that includes massively cheesing damage on the small adds on Aggramar.

That's fair, but I've been terrible at SP this whole expansion, not just in Antorus (to the point where I had to put it up for a while - for my own sanity).

I feel like I'm doing most everything right, but it's good to know that some of the onus lies on the spec itself. I know not to put too much weight on simmed DPS, because that's "perfect world"/"in a bubble" - but it's still disheartening to see the difference.

It feels like it would be a fun spec, if I could play it better - it's just very punishing, which I guess is the consensus reading through a lot of the posts here.

[Deleted]

I've personally accepted this fact. But, I'm trying to be better. It just feels like there is no middle ground. You either do well, or not. And, if there is a middle ground, I haven't found it yet.

That I would definitely agree with. You would either do really well or really bad, not much of a middle ground. Most of the time, people just don't use mindbender in the right way, I've found.

[itsDwindle]

That I would definitely agree with. You would either do really well or really bad, not much of a middle ground. Most of the time, people just don't use mindbender in the right way, I've found.

The idea is to use in ~25 stacks right? Using the insanity generation to prolong Voidform?

[Nefarious Tea]

The idea is to use in ~25 stacks right? Using the insanity generation to prolong Voidform?

Once you have 4P T21 and 15500-16k haste, you want to start using it at 29-30 stacks. If you use it earlier, you spend most of its life generating enough insanity from VB and MB to not need it.

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That's fair, but I've been terrible at SP this whole expansion, not just in Antorus (to the point where I had to put it up for a while - for my own sanity).

I feel like I'm doing most everything right, but it's good to know that some of the onus lies on the spec itself. I know not to put too much weight on simmed DPS, because that's "perfect world"/"in a bubble" - but it's still disheartening to see the difference.

It feels like it would be a fun spec, if I could play it better - it's just very punishing, which I guess is the consensus reading through a lot of the posts here.

I know what you feel, man. I do nowhere near the DPS on say Heroic Aggramar, that logs say I should. Except... you look at any log higher than about 1.4-1.6M DPS on Aggramar and... half their damage is from the small adds, which you should be CC'ing and not touching. All the top logs seemingly come from guilds who strat is to keep murdering the adds until they need them. So if your guild does the fight properly, you'll never parse well.

[Batistea]

Whatever happens, if they intend to keep the general playstyle we have now, the second mind blast charge must become MANDATORY! no question! Those who were unlucky enough to never see the leggo belt suffered pretty badly for not having that second MB charge unless they were damn near amazing at playing the class, and it sucks.

[Jedimindtrx]

2/11/18 Those BFA changes are cringey.
- DO NOT MAKE SW a talent, forever baseline!! why is that even an idea?
- AOE & Mobility improvements to be viable in M+. I'm assuming that SP will be good in raids.
- SP has always been a niche class, at least let SP be the best of the best in their niche which is multi target cleave and execution phase. Twist of Fate & SWD should be baseline.

Have SP centered around 3 different types of Playstyles. A spec within the spec similar to how Affliction locks have a ST spec, Split Cleave, or Sustained AOE. SP should have a VF spec, a Void spec focused around spawning creatures, and a DOT emphasis spec.

1. Have a VF-less SP be the baseline. Make VF a talent in a row with Edge of Insanity (from PVP tree) and maybe like Void Summoner, chance on insanity spent to summon spheres of insanity (this would be the go-to multidot talent)
2. Bring back Priority Target burst with Devouring Plague! Make it so DP is an insanity spender that can stack on targets. Useful for ST, class fantasy, strong niche.
3. Auspicious Spirits Talent should be... your ghosts do AOE dmg upon impact like mini bombs. Useful for M+
4. HALO, VoidOrb Bomb, Void Quake, Void Explosion, or Spectral Thurible (yes like the trinket). AOE tree. Shadowcrash Baseline. All these would be so useful for M+
5. Make different types of Shadowfiends a tree. ex: 2 charges of shadowfiend, or mindbender, or a buffed version like the ones from Argus with the void wings that cast voidbolts. Useful for burst, insanity gen, or sustained ST.
6. Spectral Guise iirc. Make it so it not only leaves a shadow clone, but we can step into the Void becoming immune for 1-3 secs. Useful immunity, survivability, mobility for all situations esp M+
7. Give PW:S a Purple Effect, so we visually see Void Shield taking into effect.
8. Spirit link (PVP talent, name eludes me where MB hits all targets affect with SWP) should be a PVE talent as well. Niche specialty in multitarget cleave, Useful for M+
9. Since they're bring back niches again, Group Mana or PowerBar Battery. Raid and Group Utility
10. STEALTH. I know mages can go invis, but come on Shadow... STEALTH in some way should be apart of the class fantasy.
11. If VF is the talent selected, similar to Diablo's Archon, give VF a Hyper Beam/Kamehaha. Useful for Cleave, spec differentiation, M+

[Niwes]

biggest problem on SP is this:

if playing ideal or even be able to play them out ideal, when encounter allows, they do massive dmg and are OP.
this was even more so in EN with surrender, but its still the same even without surrender.
ergo: with exact right encounters and played well, SP can be massivelly overpowered.

if encounter is not ideal, or just slightly good, or movement, or wrong timings, or specific aoe phases, or or or... SP is completely underpowered and utterly shit, regardless how hard you try.
ergo: with slightly wrong encounters or a few obstacles for timing etc. SP is massivelly underpowered.

this black/white behaviour is the biggest problem with this class. nearly no other class is that black/white. and therefore its HEAVY player investment for the class, with HEAVY sucking RNG as reward for that investment. this is the horriblest design ever. even more than some DK unholy specs in older xpacs.

the problem is: blizz will never get rid of that problem, if they dont redesign the class fundamentals. they can change surrenders, dot behaviour and aoe behaviour a 1000 times, but it will change nothing.

so, the solution someone provided above, to be a pure niche class but be absolutelly best in that niche, is the opposite of everything that could rescue this class. if they keep that huge gap between „ideal circumstances & played very well“ and „standard situations & forgiving class mechanic“ SP will NEVER EVER become a serious class.

result: since they dont want do that big changes to classes for BfA, forget SP. it will suck the next whole xpac imo. if you dont wanna be that ass fucked special snowflake, get away from SP in BfA.

just to be clear: i would LOVE to main shadow in BfA. i love the style. i even love the play style. but if you wanna be overall competetive in average of all encounters and be in battle between place 1-5 in the overall rankings of your raid, you should not play shadow. it sucks, cause i would love to play em. but i even more love it to be competitive. and i mean reliable and scalable competitive. and from this point of view, you do not wanna play shadow in BfA.

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That's fair, but I've been terrible at SP this whole expansion, not just in Antorus (to the point where I had to put it up for a while - for my own sanity).

I feel like I'm doing most everything right, but it's good to know that some of the onus lies on the spec itself. I know not to put too much weight on simmed DPS, because that's "perfect world"/"in a bubble" - but it's still disheartening to see the difference.

It feels like it would be a fun spec, if I could play it better - it's just very punishing, which I guess is the consensus reading through a lot of the posts here.

yep. the real problem is, that „its just very punishing“ is completely dependent on RNG. thats the problem with that class.

[RsinRC]

Oddly enough the talent switches and tof nerf makes shadow have more obvious distinct roles. Not the answer to our problems but def a step in a good direction.

[zito]

Oddly enough the talent switches and tof nerf makes shadow have more obvious distinct roles. Not the answer to our problems but def a step in a good direction.

Removing baseline abilities and putting them as talents is a good direction? Cause it's not, it's just dumbing down shadow priest. There's also retarded talent placements that make zero sense to even be considered for testing. You got aoe talents in the same row with ST ones in their goal of trying to make people pick playstyle choices instead of picking talents per boss how the hell does that work? Pick the aoe talent when you need aoe, pick the ST one when there's no need for aoe. Then there's just plain stupid ones like sticking sanlayn with the movement speed options. Don't need movement speed on this boss fight? Pick sanlayn otherwise pick mania. Last word is also pointless, 15 seconds off a 45 second silence or you can pick an extra CC. Useless for both PvP and PvE. If SWD and ToF are going to continue to exist as talents they should be on the same line. ToF will always be the must pick unless it's competing with another execute phase move. Also why do +% increase talents even exist?????? The whole point of these smaller talent choices over the big trees we use to have is to remove to unnecessary bulk of flat % increases yet they fucking still put them in the talents.

The entire talent system is a hot fucking mess of garbage.

[RsinRC]

snip

I wasn't defending their actions just merely pointing out that with the new changes there are actually talent choices to have different setups for different situations unlike now.

You can actually have ST setups, you can actually have Multi tar setups. That is what i mean as a step forward, imo. Also ToF got nerfed to only a 10% damage increase and it definitely does not feel like it's the only choice anymore if it stays that way and looks like the go to ST option.

Prolly haven't seen my earlier posts recently about our spec but I'm pretty much on your side.

[Ophenia]

Honestly I don't really care about the new Talents bullshit they're doing every other day. In the end we'll get to see if that's viable/fun when numbers are here.

What concerns me the most is that the Shadow Priest slowly lost all that made Shadow Priest a great class to play in raids.

- We could MassDispell. Now the Massdispell is limited to 5 targets, in BfA the MassDispell will go from 15 to 45 seconds CD.
- We could burst additional targets. We were the kings for Ra'Den's orbs along with Arcane Mages, and we were gods on Blast Furnace's Elementalists. Now we don't even look at Varimathras's clones or literally any adds in Heroic modes except for ToF sniping. You want/need to burst a target ? Well plan that 1 minute ahead, you'll need Void Torrent, Mindbender, and 35+ stacks to deal acceptable damage (not even above-the-top damage.).
- We could assist heal. Halo, Divine Star, or the Flash heal triggering Twist of Fate, or Vampiric Embrace that was not the fucking joke it is right now (honestly I can cast VE with 50 dotted targets alive, it would heal less than if I spammed 4 flash heals Blizzard).
- We could soak stuff. You know, Dispersion absorbing 90% damage.
- We had talents we could chose. The only talent I've switched in the last year was Mindbender (for ST) to Misery (Outdoor/Dungeon). Every thing else is mandatory. I've done an Antorus normal run with my Afflock and I switched a lot more talents in 11 bosses than I did with my Shadow Priest for the last 6 months because their talents actually make sense and are not mandatory part of their DPS cycle.
- And for the lore part : We had an identity. We were Shadow Priest. Now we're some kind of Priests not sure whether to use Shadow or Void magic, being absolutely useless if we stick to Shadow (makes sense 10/10).
- Edit : Ah, forgot the DoTsnapshotting Blizzard removed in the end of MoP. I understand the reason why they removed it, but that completely nullified the interest of playing DoT classes for me. Managing your DoTs should be the main task a DoTclass should deal with. Not DoT-and-forget like we have now (and the 3 to 2 seconds nerf to VoidBolt will not solve it, that's still a "DoT every xx seconds" gameplay.).

I'm back to raiding from casual content since last month and I've never been as bored as I am today playing my Shadow Priest. Even the CoP DoTweave nonsense was more fun to play.

I know they already said they won't change classes drastically in BfA except the few that don't work, like the Demonolock. I really hope the Shadow Priest is considered as a "problematic spec", even though the fact it is still widely played makes that unlikely...

TL;DR : Voidform needs to go, talents need to be heavily redesigned, Shadow Priest overall utility shall be put back, Shadow Priest identity shall be implemented (if we're Void Priests, then give us more Void spells than our current 2 ones.).

[Jervaise]

Honestly I don't really care about the new Talents bullshit they're doing every other day. In the end we'll get to see if that's viable/fun when numbers are here.

What concerns me the most is that the Shadow Priest slowly lost all that made Shadow Priest a great class to play in raids.

- We could MassDispell. Now the Massdispell is limited to 5 targets, in BfA the MassDispell will go from 15 to 45 seconds CD.
- We could burst additional targets. We were the kings for Ra'Den's orbs along with Arcane Mages, and we were gods on Blast Furnace's Elementalists. Now we don't even look at Varimathras's clones or literally any adds in Heroic modes except for ToF sniping. You want/need to burst a target ? Well plan that 1 minute ahead, you'll need Void Torrent, Mindbender, and 35+ stacks to deal acceptable damage (not even above-the-top damage.).
- We could assist heal. Halo, Divine Star, or the Flash heal triggering Twist of Fate, or Vampiric Embrace that was not the fucking joke it is right now (honestly I can cast VE with 50 dotted targets alive, it would heal less than if I spammed 4 flash heals Blizzard).
- We could soak stuff. You know, Dispersion absorbing 90% damage.
- We had talents we could chose. The only talent I've switched in the last year was Mindbender (for ST) to Misery (Outdoor/Dungeon). Every thing else is mandatory. I've done an Antorus normal run with my Afflock and I switched a lot more talents in 11 bosses than I did with my Shadow Priest for the last 6 months because their talents actually make sense and are not mandatory part of their DPS cycle.
- And for the lore part : We had an identity. We were Shadow Priest. Now we're some kind of Priests not sure whether to use Shadow or Void magic, being absolutely useless if we stick to Shadow (makes sense 10/10).
- Edit : Ah, forgot the DoTsnapshotting Blizzard removed in the end of MoP. I understand the reason why they removed it, but that completely nullified the interest of playing DoT classes for me. Managing your DoTs should be the main task a DoTclass should deal with. Not DoT-and-forget like we have now (and the 3 to 2 seconds nerf to VoidBolt will not solve it, that's still a "DoT every xx seconds" gameplay.).

I'm back to raiding from casual content since last month and I've never been as bored as I am today playing my Shadow Priest. Even the CoP DoTweave nonsense was more fun to play.

I know they already said they won't change classes drastically in BfA except the few that don't work, like the Demonolock. I really hope the Shadow Priest is considered as a "problematic spec", even though the fact it is still widely played makes that unlikely...

TL;DR : Voidform needs to go, talents need to be heavily redesigned, Shadow Priest overall utility shall be put back, Shadow Priest identity shall be implemented (if we're Void Priests, then give us more Void spells than our current 2 ones.).

Just a friendly side note: Shadow and void are the same thing. Read a little lore (at least follow the lore in game), I really think you'll enjoy it Shadow priests are at the very centre of lore these days and there are so many behind the scenes stories that are absolutely fantastic.

For starters, check this beautiful diagram

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Cosmic_forces

Edit: Like: the void represents freedom, equality, flesh/mortality and madness while light represents faith, absolution, logic, authority and to a degree unquestionable judgment - lack of freedom is a great concept.

Us priests dabble in between, sometimes completely surrendering to madness, sometimes to blind faith. I like the read.

[Ophenia]

Just a friendly side note: Shadow and void are the same thing. Read a little lore (at least follow the lore in game), I really think you'll enjoy it Shadow priests are at the very centre of lore these days and there are so many behind the scenes stories that are absolutely fantastic.

I'm not at all an expert on the Lore, but I always believed the Shadow was the "physical" representation of the Void (same as Holy for the Light). I don't really know how to explain that.
Like, we're using Shadow techniques to defeat bad guys, but when we're under Voidform, the power of the Void comes directly through us.

If Shadow is exactly the same as Void, then IG it doesn't make sense to have both Shadowform and Voidform (with different aspects btw).

I just wanted to highlight that, if Blizz wants to stick with the Voidform, which they probably will, then we need to have a real identity behind it. To summarize the situation today, when reaching full Insanity, we activate the Voidform through Void eruption, then we have... One spell coming from the void ?? Everything else is the same as we've always used.

What may be interesting, is that all our spells change while in Voidform. I was thinking, for example, that Dispersion could be replaced by some kind of Void Realm transfer, with the same damage reduction, but no silence effect. Mind Blast and our DoTs could be replaced as well. Just for the fantasy. Currently we're activating Voidform to gain a flat damage boost and stats increase, that's boring as hell.

I think there was a Warlock spec back in MoP (Demono I think ? Under Metamorphosis) with this kind of stuff.

[Deleted]

I really miss wod spriest pvp, and even pve if i am honest. I absolutely hate what we have become and have rerolled, looks like i will not even bother leveling to 120 on priest at bfa.

Give back spectral guise,
Give back devouring plague,
Give back shadow orbs,
Give back my shadowform,
Give back mind spike,
Give back cascade,
Give back CoP,
Take my tentacles,
Just combine mind flay and mindsear into one ability with no stupid gimmick attachments, or if you insist on some stupid gimmick, just give us back shadow orbs and make mind flay work like insanity did but instead makes mind flay mind sear, just give us something to make this spec not so damned hollow and boring.

Give me back something that made me actually enjoy my spriest.

Like even just give us void torrent baseline and bring back CoP in some way that which would change us to be a less dot focused and more bursty spec so we could actually be useful in non raid group content, anything that actually makes being a spriest fun outside of raids (or even in raids). ANYTHING

[Rhaxus]

Everyone that is advocating talent switching based on st/ aoe is out of their mind. i play warlock right now and the best change in BfA so far is the change to talent tiers so that all aoe decisions are on one tier and all st on another.

almost nothing annoyed me more than talent/ gear switching almost every single fight

you really shouldn't want that, you should hope for talents, that allow for you to fine-tune your way of fighting, not those that enable you to do st/ aoe by combining the right ones

[zito]

almost nothing annoyed me more than talent/ gear switching almost every single fight

well you're gonna have to do that with this version too. Not every fight is gonna need aoe and not every fight needs specifically ST so you'll be switching talents yet again based on boss fights

so no this doesn't fine tune how you want to fight, fine tuning how you want to fight is picking a playstyle - which aoe do I want? because each aoe does something different. Having all aoes available doesn't fix shit, it's just gonna cause more talent switches than before. Unless they remove the ability to switch talents on the fly nothing will change.

[Ophenia]

Everyone that is advocating talent switching based on st/ aoe is out of their mind. i play warlock right now and the best change in BfA so far is the change to talent tiers so that all aoe decisions are on one tier and all st on another.

almost nothing annoyed me more than talent/ gear switching almost every single fight

you really shouldn't want that, you should hope for talents, that allow for you to fine-tune your way of fighting, not those that enable you to do st/ aoe by combining the right ones

We had during all Legion, and it seems to be the same in BfA, mandatory talents everywhere. That's even more boring than the "switch talent every now and then" for Warlocks.

Most of the "choices" don't really make sense. Dark Void will never compete with Misery.

Ah, and tell me how Shadow Word : Death is usable in exactly the same situation as Auspicious Spirits / Shadow Crash ?

[Rhaxus]

We had during all Legion, and it seems to be the same in BfA, mandatory talents everywhere. That's even more boring than the "switch talent every now and then" for Warlocks.

Most of the "choices" don't really make sense. Dark Void will never compete with Misery.

Ah, and tell me how Shadow Word : Death is usable in exactly the same situation as Auspicious Spirits / Shadow Crash ?

that's a different problem though, you want equal choices per talent row, that makes sense, all i am saying is that you shouldn't want rows with a mix of st and aoe talents

[RsinRC]

@Rhaxus I played Shadowpriest since mop with no other alts. I'd like different playstyles choices in each row. Why would I want 3 different types of 1 thing (st, some, cc) in 1 row? 1 of them is always going to be best anyways totally falsifying choice. And we suffered tremendously from lack of variety in our talents and got stuck with one build since before legion started when we was all telling them the problems since beta.

At least this way we can actually differentiate between fights and not get stuck with one build for entire expansion.

Probably the dumbest thing I've heard someone begging for the same borefest of talents since I only main Shadowpriest and don't even dabble with healing. No way do I just want one thing for every situation in the game. No way do I want a Strong ST build for aoe/multitarget or strong aoe/multitarget build for ST.

I love the idea I can tackle things differently and not feel stuck with the same shit cuz it's the 'best' .

Not saying this is exactly what's happening but dude, the mere fact that they acknowledged a problem and seem like that's what they want to resolve this early in the alpha is a good thing. Lots of months and builds to come and hopefully lots of changes to make the class stay fun and viable.