Whats wrong with Shadow Priest?

[Foolicious]

The days of mastery being interesting are gone. They stream lined most mastery to just be % bonuses unless your like holy where everything adds a hot to your targets which honestly is just a % bonus to that heal just not at one time

Mastery was always a % increase in damage. Mop Shadow mastery and elemental mastery (overload and earthen rage)being the exception. Fire mages ignite did also interact a little bit more back when combustion was interesting, but the mastery itself was just a flat damage increase.
The only thing that has changed is the exclusion of effects and trinkets which made the old ones a little bit more interesting and the constant tuning. Today mastery is either your best stat because it scales to good or you don't want it because other stats scale better.
If blizzard would have seen a problem in that they would have started changing it in mop, but they didn't.

Bad comparison. Shadow's always had the aspect to it of draining or leeching from their opponents, so Vampiric Touch fits just fine. That being said, I would like to see more Void-themed abilities because there's always been overlap with warlocks to a degree, and perhaps even DKs to a degree. If Blizzard would continue carving out this Void niche they created for Shadow with Legion, I'd personally be on board with that theme. However, I think as soon as they introduced Alleria and the Void Elves' story at the end of the Argus campaign that possibility was dashed...

I dont think this will ever happen. I think, and correct me if i am wrong, the only spells that ever got renamed where wrath and starfire. its more likely to see a new class with void abilitys than renaming ours.

I don't know if you have paid attention during the legion class order hall quest. The only represantation of shadow priests in the order hall was this insane gnome no one gave a crap about. And when i saw the alleria cinematic i was really sad, because it was the exact thing we did for two years according to our new lore and no one even though about us. But now it was something special?
But it all seems kinda familiar, doesn't it ?=P

I really whish they would go back to mop class design. Shadow is one of the biggest, but not the only victim of the new design. We need fleshed out specs with talents to adjust our playstyle, not gimmicky specs that are only playable when you took talent x and y.

[Malix Farwin]

recently leveled an alt shadow priest and im having tons of fun but i keep seeing people on forums complaining how broken shadow is
whats exactly is wrong with it?

So young and innocent, wait till 120.

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every class suffers from few rows of shitty talents and rotation feels okay i main mage and honestly spriest rotation feels much more fun for me

Seriously get 120 then talk

[Kilee25]

Some people in my guild said they really enjoyed WoD shadow on their alts, or in the first stages of the leveling process. I checked their talents, and they'd just taken all the proc talents that made their bars light up during play. They went to a few raids and were below the tanks in damage, then stopped immediately. Is it possible that a similar thing might be happening now? It's quite possible for the non-raiding, super-casual experience to be alright for a player just picking up the spec from scratch. I'm not trying to be condescending - it's a serious question. Is it possible that you're just saying you enjoy the look and feel of it from a outside world-questing point of view?

[Enclave]

So young and innocent, wait till 120.

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Seriously get 120 then talk

I'm 120 for 2 weeks now
Leveled is in the past tense

[krl]

The result, is that the most optimal way to play shadow in pvp right now is to sit at full insanity and never enter voidform, focusing on strong utility you bring rather than maximising dps. You literally just don't play half of your spec. Going into voidform is just not worth it unless you *have* to score a kill, else you will get swapped to and probably just die before you get back to edge of insanity.

Edit: To be clear, shadow is pretty good right now in 3s, it has a ton of utility, is quite tanky and does enough damage. it's just not fun to not be able to use your spec's mechanics

This will get nerfed to the ground *before anything is done to the spec*. It can't be anything else than an oversight. Too bad it is currently the only interesting aspect of the spec.

[cafecito820]

For me, it's mostly that Void Form and Void Eruption were just terrible ideas from the beginning.

Because of the way Insanity works (both how quickly you generate it, and how you have no choice to spend it in small quantities), you're essentially forced to use your main damage cooldown when the game dictates, not when you deem appropriate. This isn't so much a problem on raid boss fights that last for several minutes, but it makes questing completely obnoxious. Every other class in the game that generates a resource and spends it on damage has the option to use the resource at their discretion. Not having that control just flat out sucks.

Aside from that; what is even the point of Shadow Form anymore? Why do we have to have a base caster form, a Shadow form, AND a Void form? Previously, Shadow Form is what made Shadow Priests unique, and what gave them the ability to cast all their shadow spells. Void Form just implemented another layer of that same class design on top of what was already there, and it makes the whole thing seem really redundant. It's like if Balance Druids had their chicken form, and then a MOONCHICKEN form on top of it that allowed them to spend their Astral Power. Stupid.

[Ambereldus]

Honestly, it reminds me of the old uncontrollable Eclipse bar Balance Druids had at one point. You know, the one that swung between Solar and Lunar periodically while in combat and you had to alter your rotation depending on what stage you were in. It was removed from Druids so they could have more control over their phase transitions.

...reminds me of the barely controllable nature of Insanity. Go figure.

Oh, and you remember back in MoP when shadow got Shadow Orbs (Holy Power)? We couldn't bank resources because we had a cap of 3 orbs, with a spender that cost 3.
Paladins got Holy Power the expansion before, with exactly the same implementation, i.e. cap of 3, spenders cost 3. Do you know what they got in MoP, the same time we got orbs? An increased cap from 3 to 5...so they could bank resources.

...Priests had to wait an expansion to get that too. Go figure.

Yes, I'm still salty.

[Ashgaan]

Honestly, it reminds me of the old uncontrollable Eclipse bar Balance Druids had at one point. You know, the one that swung between Solar and Lunar periodically while in combat and you had to alter your rotation depending on what stage you were in. It was removed from Druids so they could have more control over their phase transitions.

...reminds me of the barely controllable nature of Insanity. Go figure.

Oh, and you remember back in MoP when shadow got Shadow Orbs (Holy Power)? We couldn't bank resources because we had a cap of 3 orbs, with a spender that cost 3.
Paladins got Holy Power the expansion before, with exactly the same implementation, i.e. cap of 3, spenders cost 3. Do you know what they got in MoP, the same time we got orbs? An increased cap from 3 to 5...so they could bank resources.

...Priests had to wait an expansion to get that too. Go figure.

Yes, I'm still salty.

And paladins got it from Rogues, monks also, unholy DK with their fester can also be considered roughly the same.

Edit: Not that it's a bad thing to have some sort of resource style sharing, IF it works well.

[Ambereldus]

Yeah. I'm just salty that we've gotten the "failed" iterations of other classes mechanics...

...several times.

I can hope this time will be different, but I won't be holding my breath for it.

[Zka]

Lowish dps, horrible rotation, almost no utility.

[VooDsXo]

Lowish dps, horrible rotation, almost no utility.

Which the low DPS makes the utility we do have lower...

The reality is the build up and drop gameplay is unique but it isn't working out well, as blizzard won't allow for it to work as it should. The way the spec should work on paper is you continue to build unleashing madness upon your enemy that inevitably overtakes their mind with insanity. However, it's more like you have no burst because your damage increase isn't a cooldown but an ability you need to first significantly build up before being able to unleash.

In the current state of the game no it isn't exactly possible to outright do this style of damage and as a caster it feels well not even clunky but completely undeveloped and unrefined. I've said it before and I'll say it again give this exact mechanic to Demon Hunters and it works perfectly, as you fight the chaos gets to be too much and you turn into a demon, allowing metamorphosis to stay as an on use cooldown but removes eyebeam talent in favor of something better and makes demo a baseline spell not talent for eyebeam. It also makes more sense lore wise, if we had a back and forth like moonkins from some From light comes darkness and from darkness comes light play yea sure it'd be epic, but as it stands now we go crazy grow tentacles you can barely see and get our rotation obliterated for a mediocre at best and viable at worst damage increase.

[Debased]

the overall flow of the rotation, void form being ass and our talent choices being ass is what's wrong with it. You can have tons of fun with it but at the end of the day shadow has been an after thought in blizzards minds since alpha

Basically this. It's still fun, and I enjoy playing it (besides the trouble finding groups for more challenging stuff).The overall design is mediocre as hell though. Blizzard should be ashamed they released it as is. Playing my rogue alt is night and day in terms of fluidity and design.

[Theed]

I'll take this one (primarily talking from a 3v3 point of view), it's a combination of changes from legion to bfa that end up with a really broken spec in PvP.

Firstly, shadows defensives got gutted with BfA, the biggest one being Dispersion, which had a 50% heal attached to it and was a 1m15s cd. (as opposed to now which is just the 60% damage reduction on a 2 minute cooldown.

Next, so much of shadows damage got shifted out of voidform, so going into voidform only gives you a bit of haste, and access to void bolt. On top of that, shadowform gives 10% damage reduction, which is lost when going into voidform.

And then blizzard changed a pvp talent, edge of insanity, to give 20% damage reduction when above 60 insanity and in shadowform.

The result, is that the most optimal way to play shadow in pvp right now is to sit at full insanity and never enter voidform, focusing on strong utility you bring rather than maximising dps. You literally just don't play half of your spec. Going into voidform is just not worth it unless you *have* to score a kill, else you will get swapped to and probably just die before you get back to edge of insanity.

Edit: To be clear, shadow is pretty good right now in 3s, it has a ton of utility, is quite tanky and does enough damage. it's just not fun to not be able to use your spec's mechanics

Shadow has NEVER been less fun to play than now in pvp. Even S5 DK times were more fun. The talent needs to go and the spec needs proper survivability tools without gutting 90% of the specs mechanics.

[Debased]

recently leveled an alt shadow priest and im having tons of fun but i keep seeing people on forums complaining how broken shadow is
whats exactly is wrong with it?

Do a few M+ dungeons or raid progression or arenas (without the gimmick setup) and ask us again if it's still unclear.

[Deleted]

Do a few M+ dungeons or raid progression or arenas (without the gimmick setup) and ask us again if it's still unclear.

There's nothing gimmicky about not using Voidform at all. Thank you Blizzard for allowing us to do that at least in PvP and surprise surprise, spec doesn't suck there.

[Isentropy]

Incredible how someone can unironically claim not making use of a spec’s core mechanic at any point is not a gimmicky build.

Edit: just realized this is the same person who continues to insist Dark Void and Shadow Crash are our best ST talents. That explains it I guess.

[Yvaelle]

every class suffers from few rows of shitty talents and rotation feels okay i main mage and honestly spriest rotation feels much more fun for me

It's the baseline spec. Shadow is unplayable right now. The spell rotation is garbage, the spec has no strength, etc.

If Spriest rotation feels much more fun to you, main swap?

[Voidwielder]

The proper question - What's right with Shadow Priest?

Nothing.

Okay, it has some neat visuals and spell names. That's about it.

[Deleted]

Incredible how someone can unironically claim not making use of a spec’s core mechanic at any point is not a gimmicky build.

Edit: just realized this is the same person who continues to insist Dark Void and Shadow Crash are our best ST talents. That explains it I guess.

Obviously Blizzard disagrees with you, since the whole point of that talent is to never go into Voidform in exchange of taking less damage. Shadow plays right now like always before - without shitty resource called insanity. And it's viable in PvP, unlike of your "insanity" spec.
And yes, you're right, those talents NOW sim 100-200 dps less than "proper" talents. Doesn't make the spec any less shit and hilarious.

[Ambereldus]

To be fair, the whole Void theme for shadow has the potential to be very compelling, even if the current iteration doesn't live up to that potential.

Many posters have suggested ways to incorporate the theme "going insane" in a more believable manner than currently exists. Personally, I think Blizzard has designed insanity backwards, and we should be fighting to NOT go insane while we channel the immense powers of the void. Dip too deep into the abyss and it grabs hold of you, losing yourself to madness.