Hows the rework?

[ThrashMetalFtw]

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you should better check archives of around may - oct 2018 when you really believe what you stated at the end of your post, lol...

they CLEARLY stated that they spare out shadow and elemental because of time running out and that their overhaul will happen in first big patch. they CLEARLY not talked about minor changes...

if i had the time and do not give a fuck, i would search 1 or 2 hours and find you that big blue post. best thing i quickly find was the QnA panel where ion said that ele, enh and sp isnt talked about cause of latest satements.

you could look at it here:

https://de.wowhead.com/news=284967/l...on-hazzikostas

play the video and the memtioned point is at minute 17:00. the statements before start around 15:00 minute.

a few weeks or days before that video, they mentioned that time is running out for class overhauls and ele and sp are left out and done in first big patch. this is what ion is talking about here. but i couldnt find that blue post (it was clearly stated blue post) quickly.

No, that's not what happened. I know exactly which posts you are talking about, so you don't need to link them. I wish you were correct, and I wish what you are saying was true, but you are wrong.

Blizzard said we were going to receive changes. Any actual rework/redesign of the spec was never mentioned. This was purely wishful thinking by a (big) part of the community, which was ofc understandable, considering the state of the spec at the time.

Players wanted a full redesign like what they do going into a new expansion (me included), but to actually think we were going to get something as amibtious as that would be the pinnacle of naivety.

This exact conversation was also happening on the Shadow Priest discord daily all the way until 8.1 dropped, and every single time somebody mentioned our "promised rework", 10 of the top theorycrafters would tell them that they were wrong, and that we were never promised such a thing. The same thing would happen if you posted your above reply there now.


Blizzard has never done a full redesign of a spec in the middle of an expansion before, so to expect it now would be foolish at best. They always do minor things like buffing/redesigning 1/2 spells or 1/2 talents, even if the base spec is barely functional.

[Unholyground]

Void Form would have been great if it was just a damage CD you used every like 5 minutes or something for a ton of burst. Shadow Orbs to cast DP was my favorite <3.

[Velerios]

There was none... Blizzard lied about that, along with many things.

Exactly this: THERE WAS NO REWORK!!!

It's one of the big bunch of lies blizzard told us: Rework never existed. Shadow has fundamental issues; what blizzard did was giving us bandaid... and adding movement-speed to our defensive-cooldown, nothing more. Shadow has core issues with it's rotation and the crap called voidform, nothing was adressed. Only pulled up the numbers for shadow to shut up.

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No, that's not what happened. I know exactly which posts you are talking about, so you don't need to link them. I wish you were correct, and I wish what you are saying was true, but you are wrong.

Blizzard said we were going to receive changes. Any actual rework/redesign of the spec was never mentioned. This was purely wishful thinking by a (big) part of the community, which was ofc understandable, considering the state of the spec at the time.

Players wanted a full redesign like what they do going into a new expansion (me included), but to actually think we were going to get something as amibtious as that would be the pinnacle of naivety.

This exact conversation was also happening on the Shadow Priest discord daily all the way until 8.1 dropped, and every single time somebody mentioned our "promised rework", 10 of the top theorycrafters would tell them that they were wrong, and that we were never promised such a thing. The same thing would happen if you posted your above reply there now.


Blizzard has never done a full redesign of a spec in the middle of an expansion before, so to expect it now would be foolish at best. They always do minor things like buffing/redesigning 1/2 spells or 1/2 talents, even if the base spec is barely functional.

Sorry, but that's BS: blizzard said that shadow needs changes but it's too late in the development-process. And then they pulled up the carrot on the stick for months. Naturally people expected that the reword THEY MISSED IN THE EXPANSION RELEASE WAS COMING WITH 8.1. Instead we get fixes that they could put in EASILY with a Hotfix. Nothing that blizzard changed couldn't be done mid-patch of 8.0 without a hotfix. Not even the movement-speed increase of Dispersion couldn't be added with a hotfix either. No, they pulled up some garbage-changed, messed with the numbers and sell it to shadow priest as THE BIG REWORK.

Naturally people are angry when they get totally fooled. And just because the numbers right now are good doesn't change the fact that shadow plays still like crap.

[Relapses]

Naturally people are angry when they get totally fooled. And just because the numbers right now are good doesn't change the fact that shadow plays still like crap.

Honestly, for me Shadow played like shit in Nighthold. The low gear level and "long" VF cycle made the spec feel like shit to play. The shorter VF cycle feels much more like a rotation; we're also punished less if we need to move for mechanics and loss a few globals. In general, this iteration simply feels much better. I very rarely feel underpowered as I did with Legion Shadow. I still dislike VF as a mechanic in general but (imo) it isn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. I wouldn't be apposed to a redesign but it's a bit of a "I was promised a pony" complaint to bitch about them being remiss to redesign a spec mid-expansion.

[Velerios]

Honestly, for me Shadow played like shit in Nighthold. The low gear level and "long" VF cycle made the spec feel like shit to play. The shorter VF cycle feels much more like a rotation; we're also punished less if we need to move for mechanics and loss a few globals. In general, this iteration simply feels much better. I very rarely feel underpowered as I did with Legion Shadow. I still dislike VF as a mechanic in general but (imo) it isn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. I wouldn't be apposed to a redesign but it's a bit of a "I was promised a pony" complaint to bitch about them being remiss to redesign a spec mid-expansion.

Naturally you don't feel underpowered as in legion as shadow WAS underpowered in legion. And no, i don't say that legion was much better, because really, it wasn't, but compared to legion it now really plays like crap.
All in all Voidform should simply be removed and replaced with anything else except voidform. Shadow Priest should be Shadow Priest and not Void Priest.

In the end i rather want back my Shadow Orbs from WoD rather than the mess we have now.

[Niwes]

Exactly this: THERE WAS NO REWORK!!!

It's one of the big bunch of lies blizzard told us: Rework never existed. Shadow has fundamental issues; what blizzard did was giving us bandaid... and adding movement-speed to our defensive-cooldown, nothing more. Shadow has core issues with it's rotation and the crap called voidform, nothing was adressed. Only pulled up the numbers for shadow to shut up.

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Sorry, but that's BS: blizzard said that shadow needs changes but it's too late in the development-process. And then they pulled up the carrot on the stick for months. Naturally people expected that the reword THEY MISSED IN THE EXPANSION RELEASE WAS COMING WITH 8.1. Instead we get fixes that they could put in EASILY with a Hotfix. Nothing that blizzard changed couldn't be done mid-patch of 8.0 without a hotfix. Not even the movement-speed increase of Dispersion couldn't be added with a hotfix either. No, they pulled up some garbage-changed, messed with the numbers and sell it to shadow priest as THE BIG REWORK.

Naturally people are angry when they get totally fooled. And just because the numbers right now are good doesn't change the fact that shadow plays still like crap.

maybe its a thing of how you interpret „rework“, but i side with this poster here. sorry.

if i would not be that heavy out of time, i would really like to find that blue post and the according qna, just to see what EXACTLY they said.

[Chillside]

Saddest thing is that that they dumbed the skill-ceiling down so much, that all that matters right now is having right traits and right trinkets, then you can go on icy-veins or whatever just to read an article about spell priorities and you're good to go. The performance difference between heavily experienced player and a newbie is almost non existent, because, as i said, as long as you have the right gear - character does everything for you.
This might surprise few people, but i'll go as far as saying that i actually preferred first bfa raid tier, you know why? because you felt special while topping the meter in uldir, because noone expected you to do so, now there is nothing special about it anymore, anybody can do it, again, with the right traits

I really want to know what other SP players think about this, but i think majority of olschool ones would relate to it. I leveled my current character in season 1, so it's been like 13 years now that i've been playing this guy... literally never felt so unspecial as i do now, again, could be my subjective point of view, but still would like to hear other people's opinions

[Kilee25]

Saddest thing is that that they dumbed the skill-ceiling down so much, that all that matters right now is having right traits and right trinkets, then you can go on icy-veins or whatever just to read an article about spell priorities and you're good to go. The performance difference between heavily experienced player and a newbie is almost non existent, because, as i said, as long as you have the right gear - character does everything for you.
This might surprise few people, but i'll go as far as saying that i actually preferred first bfa raid tier, you know why? because you felt special while topping the meter in uldir, because noone expected you to do so, now there is nothing special about it anymore, anybody can do it, again, with the right traits

I really want to know what other SP players think about this, but i think majority of olschool ones would relate to it. I leveled my current character in season 1, so it's been like 13 years now that i've been playing this guy... literally never felt so unspecial as i do now, again, could be my subjective point of view, but still would like to hear other people's opinions

I may be alone in my thoughts, but I sincerely feel that the convolution of (all) class mechanics was one of the major downfalls of the game. I believe that the pursuit of “easy to play, difficult to master” ended in just simply “difficult to play”. Any priest that didn’t do nearly the theoretical best was driven away from the class because they were ridiculed and kicked from groups/guilds, or asked to switch classes or specs. I think over the years, WoW catered more and more to this type if player, and lost its core casual player base as a result. Love or hate them, the game needs those “casual” players to remain healthy. Without them, it becomes a game increasingly populated by competitive souls who find fun in beating others down and measuring worth by damage meters and iLevel scores.

I feel that all classes need a spec that does very well just by having decent gear and, as you say, “just pushing buttons.” More complex options are perfectly fine, and they should do maybe 5% more damage when played expertly. Something for players to grow into if they have the desire to take their game further, but it shouldn’t be the only choice available.

[Chillside]

I may be alone in my thoughts, but I sincerely feel that the convolution of (all) class mechanics was one of the major downfalls of the game. I believe that the pursuit of “easy to play, difficult to master” ended in just simply “difficult to play”. Any priest that didn’t do nearly the theoretical best was driven away from the class because they were ridiculed and kicked from groups/guilds, or asked to switch classes or specs. I think over the years, WoW catered more and more to this type if player, and lost its core casual player base as a result. Love or hate them, the game needs those “casual” players to remain healthy. Without them, it becomes a game increasingly populated by competitive souls who find fun in beating others down and measuring worth by damage meters and iLevel scores.

I feel that all classes need a spec that does very well just by having decent gear and, as you say, “just pushing buttons.” More complex options are perfectly fine, and they should do maybe 5% more damage when played expertly. Something for players to grow into if they have the desire to take their game further, but it shouldn’t be the only choice available.

Maybe not any priest, but certainly vast majority of them ( that i know of ) either rerolled temporarily, or quit the game for good, but some of us, who stayed "true to ourselves", went through the struggle of not getting invited to the m+ groups because of the leader's ignorance and lack of trust towards SP's in general, but we made it through, it felt borderline amazing to prove people wrong by just done well when noone expected you to do well, i have a friendlist full of total strangers, people who just added me from random m+ groups, because they didn't expect that SP could actually do well in 8.0... and that felt special, i felt like i was doing "my part" in making players belive in us once again, quite succesfully to be honest. And then we got double trait azerite pieces with 30 ilvl jump and that just more or less levelled every SP player up.
I undertand that casuals are majority and it's obvious that we don't need to drive them away, but what do you think would encourage a casual player to get better the most, seeing another player with roughly the same gear, playing the same class but performing alot better, or being on par with everybody else and actually thinking that they've mastered the class and there is no need to get better / more efficient at it
I dont know, again, i might be looking at all of this from completely different perspective, but over the years, nothing did as much of a damage to me and nothing came even close to driving me away from the game in general, than this situation that we ended up with

[ThrashMetalFtw]

I may be alone in my thoughts, but I sincerely feel that the convolution of (all) class mechanics was one of the major downfalls of the game. I believe that the pursuit of “easy to play, difficult to master” ended in just simply “difficult to play”. Any priest that didn’t do nearly the theoretical best was driven away from the class because they were ridiculed and kicked from groups/guilds, or asked to switch classes or specs. I think over the years, WoW catered more and more to this type if player, and lost its core casual player base as a result. Love or hate them, the game needs those “casual” players to remain healthy. Without them, it becomes a game increasingly populated by competitive souls who find fun in beating others down and measuring worth by damage meters and iLevel scores.

I feel that all classes need a spec that does very well just by having decent gear and, as you say, “just pushing buttons.” More complex options are perfectly fine, and they should do maybe 5% more damage when played expertly. Something for players to grow into if they have the desire to take their game further, but it shouldn’t be the only choice available.

"Easy to learn / hard to master" was always a trap imo. Good performance does not come from the small details, it comes from consistently doing your basic rotation properly. Anybody who simply learns his base rotation/priority and then manages to do said basic with minimal mistakes while popping CDs on CD, will get 99% parses (assuming competitive gear ofc).

In all my guilds, there have always beem people talking about the small details that separate the 99% from the 100% parses, trying to learn all the tips and tricks for minmaxing. Snapshotting back when that was a thing, pooling resources together with your CDs. None of that matters if you're not 100% compfortable with your basic rotation, and tbh, the Dps gain you get from doing all the small nuances of "advanced play" is A LOT smaller than the Dps you lose from making a single mistake elsewhere in your rotation.

This applies to all classes and specs, even ones that rely heavily on CDs, but especially for Shadow, which is a 100% maintenance spec without any "burst/rest phases" atm. We don't have any CDs, just high dmg all the time.

Saddest thing is that that they dumbed the skill-ceiling down so much, that all that matters right now is having right traits and right trinkets, then you can go on icy-veins or whatever just to read an article about spell priorities and you're good to go. The performance difference between heavily experienced player and a newbie is almost non existent, because, as i said, as long as you have the right gear - character does everything for you.

You're acting like gear was not always the most important thing. People were not getting any rank 1s back in Cata or MoP with a 5 iLvl disadvantage either.

And yeah, current Shadow is kinda bland, but as I said above, it's a 100% maintenance spec without breaks, full focus the entire fight. A single mistake and you will lose a lot of dmg. We're progressing Jaina atm, with myself and 2 other Shadow Priests. I'm MCing, they are not, yet I usually have an equal or higher amount of VB casts than them after a wipe (quickest way to check if a SP is playing properly). They are obviously making some kind of mistakes somewhere, resulting in missed casts or simply a lower VF uptime, while still being good enough to almost kill Jaina at what would have been a 300ish world rank if we killed her tonight.

My point being that if serious Mythic raiders are making obvious mistakes, the argument that the entire spec is faceroll and plays itself, falls apart.

[Chillside]

"Easy to learn / hard to master" was always a trap imo. Good performance does not come from the small details, it comes from consistently doing your basic rotation properly. Anybody who simply learns his base rotation/priority and then manages to do said basic with minimal mistakes while popping CDs on CD, will get 99% parses (assuming competitive gear ofc).

In all my guilds, there have always beem people talking about the small details that separate the 99% from the 100% parses, trying to learn all the tips and tricks for minmaxing. Snapshotting back when that was a thing, pooling resources together with your CDs. None of that matters if you're not 100% compfortable with your basic rotation, and tbh, the Dps gain you get from doing all the small nuances of "advanced play" is A LOT smaller than the Dps you lose from making a single mistake elsewhere in your rotation.

This applies to all classes and specs, even ones that rely heavily on CDs, but especially for Shadow, which is a 100% maintenance spec without any "burst/rest phases" atm. We don't have any CDs, just high dmg all the time.




You're acting like gear was not always the most important thing. People were not getting any rank 1s back in Cata or MoP with a 5 iLvl disadvantage either.

And yeah, current Shadow is kinda bland, but as I said above, it's a 100% maintenance spec without breaks, full focus the entire fight. A single mistake and you will lose a lot of dmg. We're progressing Jaina atm, with myself and 2 other Shadow Priests. I'm MCing, they are not, yet I usually have an equal or higher amount of VB casts than them after a wipe (quickest way to check if a SP is playing properly). They are obviously making some kind of mistakes somewhere, resulting in missed casts or simply a lower VF uptime, while still being good enough to almost kill Jaina at what would have been a 300ish world rank if we killed her tonight.

My point being that if serious Mythic raiders are making obvious mistakes, the argument that the entire spec is faceroll and plays itself, falls apart.

ahmm, you mentioned Cata and i can't help but go there, i was #1 on my realm during dragon soul and i remember everything very clearly, noone had any disadvantages, except the limitations of their own, everyone had 95% the same gear, including offpieces, because there was no such thing as titanforging, everyone in the top had a legendary staff, everyone had cunning and everyone had insignia, obviously with 4 set bonus ( which entire SP was based on in that particular raid tier ) and as i said 95% similar offpieces. You weren't in top 10? or 20 or whatever, it simply meant that you weren't good enough
Now, we have completely different situation, azerite pieces are more or less the same for everybody, but one guy SP has 7 gem slots in his gear, 2nd one has none, 1st guy has TF conch, 2nd guy has BoD mythic trinkets, which are good.. but Incandescent Sliver is kinda pointless and loses all its value in most fights, so what you end up with is one sp randomly getting his conch proc ( just ignore chorus stacks for a second ), gets a crit on his next sw:void, he stays on vf much longer because most of us use whispers of the damned, you add those conch proc aftermaths at the end and 1st guy ends up having much more vb cast count, that's not a quickest way to check anything, that's literally 1st guy being lucky enough with his shrine farm prior to all of it.
Gear was not always the most important thing, because as i already said after certain point everybody had the same endgame gear and it was impossible for your character to get any stronger untill next expansion

[Kilee25]

Gear has always been quite a bit stronger than skill. I was playing opposite one of the best players I’ve ever known at the end of WoD, but we flipped back and forth on parses throughout the last few weeks of that expansion once I caught up to him with gear. I’m not a bad player by any means, but he was definitely what You describe as the difference between 100% or 99%. But if I got 1 or 2 pieces of gear better than him, I would still see better parses.

I think the variation in gear is even larger these days than it was back then (due to RNG based gear power), so it makes sense that you wouldn’t be able to overcome that with “skill” past a certain point.

To both of you: your and my definition of casual gamers and where they might fit into the game seem worlds apart, and I’m not invested enough in the game anymore to try to explain it all. I want to play wow with my spouse, children, parents, non gaming friends and still have a good time. The game is so far removed from that now days that it’s hard to even speak on the same wavelength about it. Expecting those types of players to suddenly decide they want to get that last 5-10% by “getting good” is exactly the mentality that ran them away in the first place. The types of players I think the game needs back is the type who probably are physically and/or mentally incapable of doing better. The idea that they aren’t already trying as hard as they can is why we are where we are in the first place.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

ahmm, you mentioned Cata and i can't help but go there, i was #1 on my realm during dragon soul and i remember everything very clearly, noone had any disadvantages, except the limitations of their own, everyone had 95% the same gear, including offpieces, because there was no such thing as titanforging, everyone in the top had a legendary staff, everyone had cunning and everyone had insignia, obviously with 4 set bonus ( which entire SP was based on in that particular raid tier ) and as i said 95% similar offpieces. You weren't in top 10? or 20 or whatever, it simply meant that you weren't good enough
Now, we have completely different situation, azerite pieces are more or less the same for everybody, but one guy SP has 7 gem slots in his gear, 2nd one has none, 1st guy has TF conch, 2nd guy has BoD mythic trinkets, which are good.. but Incandescent Sliver is kinda pointless and loses all its value in most fights, so what you end up with is one sp randomly getting his conch proc ( just ignore chorus stacks for a second ), gets a crit on his next sw:void, he stays on vf much longer because most of us use whispers of the damned, you add those conch proc aftermaths at the end and 1st guy ends up having much more vb cast count, that's not a quickest way to check anything, that's literally 1st guy being lucky enough with his shrine farm prior to all of it.
Gear was not always the most important thing, because as i already said after certain point everybody had the same endgame gear and it was impossible for your character to get any stronger untill next expansion

The situation you are talking about only happened at the very end of each tier. And it more or less happens now aswell. Yeah, some guys are super lucky with socket procs, but it usually evens out in the end.

The point was that gear was always more important than skill.

[Malix Farwin]

Why did they even add Voidform? At a time where the spec was virtually universally loved? I mean, out of all the classes/specs needing a fundamental reword, was it really Shadow Priest that needed a new clunky mechanic? I had so much fun in WoD, and then Voidform came along and literally made me reroll Warlock because it was such a pain in the ass to use.

I'm glad that the damage is there. But I don't think I'll go back to Shadow while Voidform exists (in its current form). I was Shadow since mid-TBC, but it's just been ruined for me.

Yea was a shadow priest main since wrath and been keeping up with the community very actively and can say this, Shadow Priest never needed/wanted a gameplay update, in the history of the spec the only real complaint was in MoP and it was our single target. If they were going to introduce the void form gameplay they should of gave the gameplay to a a class/spec that needed it.

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No, that's not what happened. I know exactly which posts you are talking about, so you don't need to link them. I wish you were correct, and I wish what you are saying was true, but you are wrong.

Blizzard said we were going to receive changes. Any actual rework/redesign of the spec was never mentioned. This was purely wishful thinking by a (big) part of the community, which was ofc understandable, considering the state of the spec at the time.

Players wanted a full redesign like what they do going into a new expansion (me included), but to actually think we were going to get something as amibtious as that would be the pinnacle of naivety.

This exact conversation was also happening on the Shadow Priest discord daily all the way until 8.1 dropped, and every single time somebody mentioned our "promised rework", 10 of the top theorycrafters would tell them that they were wrong, and that we were never promised such a thing. The same thing would happen if you posted your above reply there now.


Blizzard has never done a full redesign of a spec in the middle of an expansion before, so to expect it now would be foolish at best. They always do minor things like buffing/redesigning 1/2 spells or 1/2 talents, even if the base spec is barely functional.

We werent expecting a full redesign, we were expecting a revert and it is completely logical to expect one when they did it to Destro in mid Legion. Thats about the level of changes it would of taken(speaking of which even taking a look in legion you can tell they did A LOT more work on classes then they did in BfA which means even more so they definitely could of changed shadow).

For reference this is what i was talking about(scroll down to Destro lock they completely reworked how their resources worked in a mini-patch): https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_7.2.5

It took them more work to revert Destro resource mechanic then it would of to revert Shadow.


In short the last time they said something like they did much more than just give a spec a pvp talent and change some azerite traits. Blizzard set that expectation, not the community. Not really the community's fault for expecting Blizzard to not be lazy and current Shadow is the result of being lazy, A clunky boring mess with over tuned numbers that cannot be properly adjusted.

P.S.: And you are wrong, they have done Redesigns during an expac before.

[Ranvi]

Big question here... I just came back to wow, love the shadow's gameplay, but the question is... Will it be good for longer while, or it is rn and will be nerfed soon? I fkn LOVE this gameplay and don't want to play affliction...

[ceall]

Big question here... I just came back to wow, love the shadow's gameplay, but the question is... Will it be good for longer while, or it is rn and will be nerfed soon? I fkn LOVE this gameplay and don't want to play affliction...

yes, it is good, but if you only want to play it for DEM DEEPS, then go play affli. form reroll is bad.
you should only play a class for the sake of playing it, not for topping meters.

[Ranvi]

I just want to have fun while being able to get inv for pugs raids/m+ sometimes. Don't want to play form #1 but something that isn't dead end of recount.

[Biomega]

I just want to have fun while being able to get inv for pugs raids/m+ sometimes. Don't want to play form #1 but something that isn't dead end of recount.

SP is a high performer in raids right now. It's not the best DPS in M+ (no caster is) but it's far from bad. Also, you can switch to healing for M+ and get easy invites.

[Yes but actually no]

shadow priest is great man XD . its top damage in raids and its very strong, has nice survability too

https://www.mmo-champion.com/search....rchid=62449861

Everything is "great" to you.

[Echeyakee]

The rework never happened. More or less same as elemental, it's just some band-aid fixes. Shadow does decent damage, but not that fun to play.

Voidforms are shorter now, but you still get the old, long ones once you use lucid dreams. Main difference is that you're not very penalized with mechanics, since it's hard to drop out of VF with dreams active, the only dangerous point is at around 20 stacks when you activate it. But it is essentially 4 instant casts, so as long as you're in range of the boss, you're fine. Once it's active, it's pretty solid insanity generation.

They also nerfed dots and buffed SC, making it the best ST talent, which is just retarded, so that's fun. Dots are now less than 20% of your ST damage, so that is also kinda annoying. Shadow is now a spammy mage, more or less.

Holy is more or less the same as always. Some nice new essences giving us more cooldowns and decent longevity.

No idea what is happening to disc. It's pretty strong right now, but strong is a vague concept in a world where glimmerdin exists.