How To Fix Shadow Priest

[Tokas]

how to fix shadow priest:
never enter voidform, just do your normal rotation and skip that button.
we will be doing 50% damage of normal DPS, maybe then Blizz will give us some priority over.. you know... anything.

[Ophenia]

And what if we had something like the Arcane Mage Mana ?

We'd have some spells generating insanity (Mind Blast, DoTs, Shadow Crash and all the likes), one or 2 spenders (won't mention Devouring Plague for the 10 billionth time, but Devouring Plague for example ), and our damage would increase the more Insanity we have. If we ever reach the cap, we're going insane, which put us in "exhausted mode", either :
- losing insanity at a set rate without possibility to gain any until it reaches 0.
- decreased haste for XX seconds, we'd have to use spenders to decrease insanity to get rid of the debuff
In this grand scheme, Voidform could be that berserk cooldown where you can go overcap without penalty for X seconds

That may be interesting to play, trying to max out the output by taking risks or play a bit more safely with only slightly less damage output.

The only "problem" is that we would need 2 spenders for it to work well, one usable without active target, as there are a few PvE encounters where you might get stuck forever above the cap. So we would have like 2-3 spenders, one offensive single-target one (DP), maybe one healing/assist one (spend XX insanity to heal X nearby allies for X or spend XX insanity to cloak all nearby allies in the Shadows, reducing damage taken by XX%), or one AoE (surrounding you, like Fire's Blast Wave).

[heinz0r]

Since the BfA prepatch, Shadow has been suffering from a case of cognitive dissonance: voidform works thematically as well as mechanically if your goal is to stay in voidform as long as possible. Currently however, it is more beneficial to aim for casting as many void eruptions as possible which is counter-intuitive to prolonging voidform. The issue is further complicated by the fact that simply nerfing void eruption while buffing voidform will reintroduce the same problem from Legion where Shadow had a severe ramp up time.

In order to find the happy middle ground we need to:

1) Nerf void eruption damage to make staying in voidform as long as possible the better DPS choice.
2) Give voidform a unique identity by adding the following effects:
a) LotV baseline.
b) Cast while moving effect from StM baseline while in voidform.
c) Vampiric Embrace now a baseline passive of voidform (VE might require a nerf for this to be balanced).
3) Make the following talent changes to work with the voidform changes:
a) San'layn just increases self-healing while in voidform. CDR effect removed due to Vampiric Embrace being a passive of voidform.
b) StM now just increases insanity generated by 100%. Now a level 45 talent in place of Dark Void.
c) Dark Void could now be an AoE burst talent in place of StM: rather than applying SW:P to all enemies surrounding the target, it now consumes the rest of the time on all your DoTs, dealing their damage instantly (similar to an AoE Deathbolt that AffLocks just got in this patch).
d) Since LotV is now a baseline passive, that talent slot is now for shadow priests who hate multidotting: Mind Blast (or SW:V) now applies any DoTs on the target to all nearby enemies.
e) Dark Ascension now activates a voidform with full insanity, cannot be used while already in voidform, and returns you to the same amount of insanity you had before you used it (allowing you to potentially chain 2 voidform phases).
4) Change Mind Sear back to a passive of Mind Flay that damages all enemies that have SW:P on them allowing for spread AoE.

I believe that these changes should:

A) Give voidform a reason to exist while maintaining its unique mechanics but not making you feel useless outside of it.
B) Decrease the ramp-up time baseline allowing you to have the mobility and self healing of voidform more readily available while leaving the option to stack insanity to 100 for greater reward if you dont need the mobility/healing right away.
C) Since we usually need to multidot before using Mind Sear anyway, decrease ability bloat and allow for spread AoE by rolling Mind Sear back into Mind Flay.
D) Provide 3 unique lvl 100 talents to either remove the need to multi-dot (replacement talent for LotV), chain voidforms (new Dark Ascension), or AoE burst (new Dark Void in place of StM).

I don't believe I missed anything, but if I wasn't clear on something please don't hesitate to ask for clarification. As always, all feedback is welcome

To hell with the silly voidform mechanic tbh... it has always been clunky design and I wish we would just go back to what it used to be.

[ttylol]

1) Nerf void eruption damage to make staying in voidform as long as possible the better DPS choice.
2) Give voidform a unique identity
3) LotV baseline

Those would be enough for me. But, ideally:

Shadow Crash baseline with two charges
Void Eruption resets cooldown on 1 charge of Shadow Crash instead of dealing damage (maybe refreshes dots too?)
Shadow Crash cooldown reduced by X sec everytime you gain a stack of Voidform

[Nyel]

Those would be enough for me. But, ideally:

Shadow Crash baseline with two charges
Void Eruption resets cooldown on 1 charge of Shadow Crash instead of dealing damage (maybe refreshes dots too?)
Shadow Crash cooldown reduced by X sec everytime you gain a stack of Voidform

God no, Shadow Crash is absolutely awful, especially for ST. Ground based AoE spells that you need to target are incredibly annoying to fit into (ST) rotations. If they'd make it target based + cleave I'd be happy though.

[Deleted]

God no, Shadow Crash is absolutely awful, especially for ST. Ground based AoE spells that you need to target are incredibly annoying to fit into (ST) rotations. If they'd make it target based + cleave I'd be happy though.

If you are already aware of it then ignore this ;-). But [@cursor] macro makes any ground-targeted really easy/fluid to use (atleast for me).

Example:

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] shadow crash

[Angrie]

1)Why not bake Void Bolt and Void Eruption into the one spell?

Take Void Bolt effects and add them to void eruption. Void Eruption now takes the place of void bolt. Tune appropriately.

Void Bolt's graphic sucks compared to Void Eruption - would rather see Eruptions more often over bolts.


2) SWD baseline

3) S2M Baseline -> replaces Void Form
- Still does Void Form stuff
- No longer does 90% of your HP
- Still doubles insanity generation
- Still able to move and cast.

4) Replace S2M in talents with a new ability - Void Tendril - Mind Flay/Sear summons a Void Tendril to attack your target for 25% of Mind Flay Damage and slows by 30%

5) Increase our insanity pool to 1,000. We can either have short S2M windows or pool it for a huge dps window.



S2M sounds much more like a cooldown ability than Void Form... unless there's a plan lore wise, void form just sounds stupid. Especially with "insanity" as a resource.

I'm fine with how spriests are right now, but i would not be opposed to changes.
/My two pennies

[Ophenia]

If you are already aware of it then ignore this ;-). But [@cursor] macro makes any ground-targeted really easy/fluid to use (atleast for me).

Example:

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] shadow crash

That's a small bandaid fix, but that doesn't solve all the clunkiness of Shadow Crash. Personally, I quite rarely have my cursor somewhere near the target. SC is quite awful to use in single-target encounters. And Shadow Crash will likely be the go-to talent in this row for single target as well as multiple target (because they probably forgot the 2 other talents on the row won't even be considered, unless a "Wrath of Azshara" kind of encounter exists somewhere)...
They should allow the [@target] to be used, to be honest (I didn't try though, I just know it doesn't/didn't work for a couple of spells).

That's the same as for my Demon Hunter, I had to bind Metamorphosis to 2 keys because of that. One with a [@player] modified, to not move when metamorphosing, and another one without modifier to be able to actually jump somewhere.
That sucks in terms of QoL.