Is shadow the worst its ever been?

[Al Gorefiend]

I think death on the talent tree REALLY was a poor design decision. Imo, make it baseline and in its place give us something that does heavy single-target to compete with shadow crash.

[kail]

I think death on the talent tree REALLY was a poor design decision. Imo, make it baseline and in its place give us something that does heavy single-target to compete with shadow crash.

Oddly enough, my favorite variant of Shadow was during cata. It felt like the dot maintaining spec where everything revolved around Shadow Damage Over Time. There was even the Archangel CD that looked amazing with SForm. MoP and Warlords were OK, did like the hard hitting DP as the orb/raven spender. I didn't try CoP, didn't care for it at all. Legion spriest almost plays like CoP, but on crack and BFA isn't much different. The mastery is also lazy as hell.

[gaymer77]

Shadow was at it's worst until midway through WotLK. I don't know why the people saying it was shit in BC. I was on par with our mages and locks in BC in equal gear AND I was a mana battery for the healers and/or locks in the raid. In vanilla I was a rolling HOT for the tank/melee group or I was a rolling HOT for the lock group so healers didn't have to throw them heals after they life tapped most of the time.

I just jumped on the ptr to see if it is finally online and noticed that shadow isnt playable at all.

You are automatically in holy specc and you cant open shadows spellbook or click on shadow specialisation without wow error caused by "feature not implemented".
Feral and elemental both have their changes implemented and enhancement is at least playable.

I am active on the ptr on pretty much every ptr cycle and never saw anything like this, but i dont know enough about the workflow of developers to tell if its something special.

I think we can be pretty sure even though they are silent as usual we can see some work for 8.1. I dont want to hype anyone, especially after seeing our latest live buff, but right now we have to stay strong and wait...

Or they decided to trow the whole spec in the dumpster. Also a possibility xD

Is this locked into holy just for the start of the PTR decision & you're able to switch to shadow or disc after you're sent to Org/SW or is this for the entirety of the PTR time?

[Lilly32]

played shadow from TBC-Cata. in no particular order things I want

Wand Spec
Baseline Shadow Word: Death
Devouring Plague

[Darth-Piekus]

Out of curiosity. In a recent blue post they mentioned again that they are revamping Shadow. Anyone has any idea when to expect to see the changes?

[Foolicious]

Is this locked into holy just for the start of the PTR decision & you're able to switch to shadow or disc after you're sent to Org/SW or is this for the entirety of the PTR time?

Don't know what you mean exactly, but i did copy my 120 Priest from live servers and had the 110 version still there. i also created a dark iron dwarf lv 20 priest to see if its because they are copied. It simply wasnt possible to click on anything shadow related without getting disconnected.

But they fixed it / reverted whatever they did in the newest build and you can play it once again. Only changes are the latest hotfixes.

Out of curiosity. In a recent blue post they mentioned again that they are revamping Shadow. Anyone has any idea when to expect to see the changes?

My first guess was last week with the first playable ptr build. We all know how that turned out =p

It would be nice if they had the changes ready for the first raidtesting this monday. But this would mean another ptr build this week or on monday. The latter is unlikely.

i really dont know if they just dont want feedback or they aren't finished with the first version, which would be a shame. They announced it nearly six months ago that they had not enough time for bfa launch. They should have done something in the mean time.

At this point you can only pray to see changes as soon as possible.

[zito]

So playing around with shadowy insight and I actually find it interestingly good. So what it doesn't tell you is that if you are casting mind blast and it procs it does NOT consume the proc allowing you to cast mind blast 2 in a row. What's even better is that if it procs while you are in the middle of casting and then stop casting it will NOT trigger the mind blast CD! So it procs while you hardcast and then you move and then you cast your instant cast and then MB doesn't go on CD allowing you to hard cast MB. Of course this only happens when you are casting it. The only "downside" is snap shooting is still a thing (SI procing when MB is almost off CD) but tbh playing with it for a few hours this hardly ever happens and the benefits imo outweighs the cons. It gives you better damage while moving and an extra MB if you are hard casting it while it procs and tons of procs with multiple targets.

So shadowy insight should literally be the best talent for that row if you are faced with heavy movement fights or anything with 2 or more targets that can have pain up. I literally do not miss void at all and wonder why both wowhead and icy veins don't talk about this "hidden" feature of the talent, people immediately right it off as terrible but it's actually pretty good. Did both sites even test it at all?

[Misuteri]

Oddly enough, my favorite variant of Shadow was during cata. It felt like the dot maintaining spec where everything revolved around Shadow Damage Over Time. There was even the Archangel CD that looked amazing with SForm. MoP and Warlords were OK, did like the hard hitting DP as the orb/raven spender. I didn't try CoP, didn't care for it at all. Legion spriest almost plays like CoP, but on crack and BFA isn't much different. The mastery is also lazy as hell.

I had 2 raiding mains in Cata, well, 1 3/4 . An affliction lock and shadow priest. Say what you want about Cata but it had the mechanics and “feel” exactly right for those DOT classes.

MOP blew up both specs for PVE DPS and I don’t think shadow has recovered since in playability.

[Ophenia]

So shadowy insight should literally be the best talent for that row if you are faced with heavy movement fights or anything with 2 or more targets that can have pain up. I literally do not miss void at all and wonder why both wowhead and icy veins don't talk about this "hidden" feature of the talent, people immediately right it off as terrible but it's actually pretty good. Did both sites even test it at all?

The problem is that there isn't any encounter like that in Uldir. And in pure single target, it's still below both Void and FotM.

I'd really love that Shadowy Insight is good again. I have the feeling the Shadow Spec is lacking "surprises". Your cycle from 100% to 0% is the same, we don't have any proc or any "special flavor" (like the fact we were great in Exec phases until BfA) to break the monotony

[Isentropy]

So playing around with shadowy insight and I actually find it interestingly good. So what it doesn't tell you is that if you are casting mind blast and it procs it does NOT consume the proc allowing you to cast mind blast 2 in a row. What's even better is that if it procs while you are in the middle of casting and then stop casting it will NOT trigger the mind blast CD! So it procs while you hardcast and then you move and then you cast your instant cast and then MB doesn't go on CD allowing you to hard cast MB. Of course this only happens when you are casting it. The only "downside" is snap shooting is still a thing (SI procing when MB is almost off CD) but tbh playing with it for a few hours this hardly ever happens and the benefits imo outweighs the cons. It gives you better damage while moving and an extra MB if you are hard casting it while it procs and tons of procs with multiple targets.

So shadowy insight should literally be the best talent for that row if you are faced with heavy movement fights or anything with 2 or more targets that can have pain up. I literally do not miss void at all and wonder why both wowhead and icy veins don't talk about this "hidden" feature of the talent, people immediately right it off as terrible but it's actually pretty good. Did both sites even test it at all?

Shadowy Insight does not scale with additional targets having Shadow Word: Pain anymore because the proc was changed to work with the RPPM system in BFA. Its value is static regardless of the fight type, and in fact the more AoE-centric the fight is the less you want to spend globals on extra Mind Blasts over, say, applying DoTs. This makes it even worse in practice compared to just hitting a dummy.

The biggest problem Shadowy Insight has comes from the fact that you can waste its proc fully or close to fully really often, due to the fact that Mind Blast has such a low cooldown - the scenario you describe where SI procs during a regular Mind Blast cast is literally the best case scenario and is not likely to happen every time. It's more likely for it to proc at a bad time because, as described above, Mind Blast has such a low cooldown. If SI procs during movement then sure, it will have done its job, but at 3 RPPM what are the odds that you get the procs precisely when you want them? It is entirely random, and you get 3 procs per minute on average; you can't hold onto the proc for movement either.

This talent has been tested enough, I can assure you that. It's had the same flaws for multiple expansions in a row now and it's the same thing in BFA. Especially without having access to an additional Mind Blast charge, the talent just fundamentally does not work well with how shadow is designed; if Shadow Word: Void were to hypothetically be on a different row then maybe Shadowy Insight would see some play. If you like it, by all means, play with it - but numerically it is simply behind the other options.

[EliteNightKnight]

For me, 8.1 is like the last chance to get back to wow. If shadow priest will be a disaster again, seems like I'll just play OW/HOTS until D4 release.

Still waiting for ptr

[Glnger]

For me, 8.1 is like the last chance to get back to wow. If shadow priest will be a disaster again, seems like I'll just play OW/HOTS until D4 release.

Still waiting for ptr

yup, pretty much playing other games now because I want to see shadow actually be fun again. I really do enjoy PVP healing, but ffs, making Spriests unplayable as anything other than default pvp healer isnt working

[Foolicious]

We got our first bluepost in months!

Extended the thread guys! Thanks for the continued feedback here.

Blizzard really knows how to piss people off ._.

[zito]

Raid testing started and no changes. Not looking good

[sd2400533]

Raid testing started and no changes. Not looking good

yeah, its over. no change, no rework, no tuning, it's dead and buried.

[Jervaise]

Raid testing started and no changes. Not looking good

relax! it's only alpha

oh wait what year are we ion?

[pkm]

Hold on now. If they announced changes for shaman then they definitely must do for priests as well.

[Rotted]

I've played shadow properly for TBC, MoP, WoD, Legion as an alt and mained it in BFA.

I've never had as much trouble I do now trying to get into pugs. So now I resolve to dickery tactics, create my own keystone run, set myself up as a healer, switch to dps when the tank joins. But more often than not someone leaves and the reason; the reason isn't because it's a douche bag tactic but because "You play shadow? lol" and gone.

[Tripax]

I wonder how well would it work if Vampiric Touch would spread to all targets in the same way as Sunfire does for boomkins. Plus what if mindsear made SW:P and VT tick X% faster.

[EliteNightKnight]

PTR patch notes:
- Void form now gives 5% more damage

Explanation: We didn't have enough time to prepare changes for the shadow priest. We are expecting to bring them along with 8.2 ptr