Shadow Priest Battle for Azeroth SUGGESTED Changes

[Triggered Fridgekin]

just give us a shadow version of holy nova that applies shadow word pain and generates insanity ffs

I'd tweak this by giving Shadow a Lovecraftian insanity aura where simply being in their presence inflicts great pain by melting sanity. It'd be boring as hell as far as a spell is concerned but it'd fit the whole idea of void magic and shadow priests.

[Jaigar]

Shadow Priest has a real identity crisis now. Its in form before Legion, Shadow Priest always had relatively consistent damage with the only burst potential coming from Devouring Plague. WoD Spriest was wierd offering a DoT style and a ST style that played Mind Spike. Though both styles were different, they still offered similar damage profiles. AS just worked better in council fights whereas CoP worked better in ST.

Now Spriest have a strange ramping mechanic that takes literally a minute to hit to top of, and at that point, your DoTs are doing roughly 4x the damage as they were doing before the ramp started. Its this weird cyclical problem in their damage profile thats smoothed a bit by Lingering Insanity (an absolutely necessary talent) and made worse by Mass Hysteria.

Void form stacks are just too powerful right now and are the end-all-be-all for shadow priest. It means any fight mechanic or snag hit while at high stacks is super punishing, screwing up the mindbender rotation. It creates a feast or famine situation for spriest.

The entire mechanic needs rework. We aren't seeing void form go away because of the BFA theme.

#1. Remove Ramp from Void Form. This would mean removing the stack mechanic.
#2. No insanity generation during Void Form. However, maintaining the Legacy of the Void design and going in at 65 resource instead of 100 could be an option. This allows spriest to bank their void form if theres an ideal time.
#3. Much slower insanity generation. Insanity would still proc off of casts and DoTs, but the pace would be slow enough that you actually have a decision on when to use it. Say in single target, you may get enough insanity for 1 void form every ~40 seconds, lasting 15 seconds, or in AoE, every ~20 seconds, lasting 15 seconds. You could also cancel your void form early for a penalty (say 15 insanity). The idea behind this is to priest to plan ahead a little bit and make decisions based on whats coming.

Theres some tweaking of course, because you want the player to be in void form for optimum damage. You could follow the current model of void bolt extending DoTs (possibly making it better if void form has a lower uptime), or perhaps work in something in that builds stacks then pops (AoE pop perhaps, allowing timing to come into play here).

Just spitballing. But I really don't like the current ramp situation of spriest. Its definitely fun when you are rattling off spells super fast, but it really sucks when you have bad ping and the class just doesn't work, or just get hit with a mechanic at a bad time.

[Jervaise]

As a priest player since march 2005 (the same exact priest)

First, slightly off topic: Why do we still have a toggle for shadowform? In the past it was a case of casting baseline priest spells that are not of shadow school that would take you out of shadowform. So a toggle made sense. I don't get it these days, it's just annoyance of a GCD every now and then when you are combat ressed etc.

I would suggest to just give the bonuses baseline and perhaps ditch the entire buff. Cosmetics-wise glyphs could handle whether to be displayed normally + voidform or shadowform + voidform. I wouldn't mind seeing my transmog for once.

About proper mechanics: I would like the following changes: (Just ideas ofc, I'm not a class designer. I could be going full crazy here - no pun intended)

1) New baseline AE spell: Lunatic Oblation; Make a sacrificial offering to the voices below at the target area, dealing (800% of Spell power) Shadow damage to all targets within while applying both vampiric touch and shadow word: pain to all of them. 2,5 seconds cast. 90 seconds cooldown. Generates 65 insanity. (Spell graphics could be tendrils showing up in a circular area. A talent could make the zone last 4 seconds, also slowing enemies cought within by 15%.)

2) New baseline cooldown spell: Convulsions; Get in a maniacal psychic alignment with the will of the void, lowering your insanity drain (and the drain amount's ramp-up) by 50% and increasing your haste by 25% for 6 seconds. You can only cast Voidbolt and Dispersion during the duration of convulsions. Your Voidbolts during convulsions create Voidshards that target and damage all enemies within 8 Yards of your target. Voidbolt cooldown is removed during Convulsions. Your Voidbolt damage is also increased by 50% during this time. Instant, 6 Min Cooldown. Generates 20 insanity. Can only be cast during Voidform.

3) New Supplementary Spell: Voidshard; Lumps of volatile void energies breaking through dimensions. Deals (basically 25% of Voidbolt damage) to targets. Voidshards are created by powerful Voidbolts cast during Convulsion.

[davesignal]

We have a toggle for Shadowform because Blizzard gave us a permanent Shadowform at the start of Legion and people complained about it. They put the toggle back in for.. 7.1.5, I think? And because our damage was abysmal outside of Voidform, they also (re)attached a 10% damage buff to it.

[Kyranna]

What I would like in no particular order:
Spectral guise.
Pw shield shadow themed.
Body and soul duration upped to 6 seconds at least in pve.
Ravens: seriously. Cosmetic only if necessary.
Devouring Darkness (like the old Plague, just more in theme and a small tribute to Terry Pratchett). Make it a CD of some sorts, replace VE which is nothing really cool for its cooldown and make it graphically impressive, like a pool of darkness filled with various horrors that does ae damage and leeches life back as a HoT on the priest and his/her group (raid utility albeit minor).
Shadow Nova: to farm old content without respeccing, it can do crap damage on current content when < 10 targets.
Old Shadowform as a glyph.
Shadow Crash baseline: applies sw pain on targets hit. 30s cooldown.
Shadow Tendrils back.
Glyph to have a no Cd tanking Shadowfiend that does crap damage but is good as much as the consumable pet (from order hall shadow prayers). We could sometimes solo a bit better hard hitting mobs.

Pvp I have no idea and honestly don't care about it.

Nothing about my wishes would really affect raids and raid dps, I'm ok with the current situation except for the silly haste requirements, looting good gear is becoming a problem. I'm a casual player and a casual raider, but still like to play and perform well.

[Ailil]

Tentacles, lots more tentacles.

[ZazuuPriest]

I honestly think every iteration of WoD Priest spec was superior to Legion. God how i miss WoD Disc

[Nihiel]

I honestly think every iteration of WoD Priest spec was superior to Legion.

I agree 100%, at least for shadow.

Tentacles, lots more tentacles.

Not directed at you, just in general: I cannot fathom how people enjoy the Legion spriest lore retcon. The whole tentacle-insanity thing is honestly a complete bore. Shadow was never about "OH LOOK AT MY TENTACLES AND WATCH ME GO INSANE AND KILL MYSELF," anything and everything manifesting, talking gibberish in /s because of "class fantasy" etc. Spriests hid in the shadows, their power didn't have to manifest as disgusting Illaoi-hentai tentacles, nor did their power over the mind have to be explained by sucking off the Old Gods.
The Legion spriest rework is an abomination of a retcon and it cannot disappear quickly enough in my opinion.

[Muddler]

God, I hope Insanity is gone. Or at least Void Form.

[Sorshen]

Channeled cone of ethereal void tentacles that deals heavy AoE damage (and maybe applies VT /SW: p with talent)
Something like the ability of Malachai from PoE

[ttylol]

#2. No insanity generation during Void Form.
#3. Much slower insanity generation. Insanity would still proc off of casts and DoTs, but the pace would be slow enough that you actually have a decision on when to use it. Say in single target, you may get enough insanity for 1 void form every ~40 seconds, lasting 15 seconds, or in AoE, every ~20 seconds, lasting 15 seconds. You could also cancel your void form early for a penalty (say 15 insanity). The idea behind this is to priest to plan ahead a little bit and make decisions based on whats coming.

Exactly, respectable damage outside of Voidform would shift its design towards something like current Colossus Smash/Bestial Wrath or old Tigereye Brew: impactful, but not feast or famine.

And that shorter duration Voidform, along with a bit of start-of-the-fight-Insanity (like Soul Shards), would allow us to fully benefit from the common Heroism-on-pull.

[BobAwesome]

I honestly think every iteration of WoD Priest spec was superior to Legion. God how i miss WoD Disc

It really was amazing. You could go the typical apply dots and spam MF route with AS talent, or have a more direct damage route with periods of burst with CoP talent.

[Archpriest]

I am quite satisfied with Blizzard saying there wont be massive class changes next expansion, as I find all three priest specs fun and interesting. Seriously, it’s the first time I want to play all specs as they are just so well designed. That does not mean there are no room gor improvement however. For shadow I would like them to go over the playstyle and talents and refine it, simmilar to what they did with patch... 7.1.5? The one where surrender to madness got nerfed. (I miss mind sear though). I am also quite curious to see how shadow will play without the artifact - void torrent feels line a cornerstone of the spcc atm.

[msdos]

For some reason I see them giving shadow a "Death grip" type ability, seeing as how no one really keeps their unique stuff, why should DKs be exempt? (My main is DK btw)
I would give Shadowpriests a clone of Gorefiend's grasp but make it less range-y, much smaller radius, shorter cooldown, less travel distance on the grip, maybe even make it a "suck you in" mechanic that's really popular this xpac, call it Shadow Vacuum or something, but adds that are clumped up and gripped together suffer a shadowy explosion when they all land.

It would be a neat option that fits lore, makes sense, looks cool and gives a bit of utility in the form of crowd control.

[ZazuuPriest]

It really was amazing. You could go the typical apply dots and spam MF route with AS talent, or have a more direct damage route with periods of burst with CoP talent.

God i miss CoP, its the only version of Shadow that i really enjoyed playing

[ThrashMetalFtw]

God i miss CoP, its the only version of Shadow that i really enjoyed playing

If you only miss the one previous iteration of Shadow, that plays nothing like how SPs have traditionally played or are "supposed to" play, you are probably playing the wrong class.

Might I suggest something like Ele Shaman, Mage or Destro Lock instead, as they actually have playstyles that look somewhat like CoP...

[Spicymemer]

The current iteration of Affliction is how Shadow played between WotLK and Cata, minus the demons

Thematically Shadow is doing well.

The talent trees are a mess, the class ceases to exist outside of a very rigid talent 'choice', I would say that most of the talents need to be baseline but that would just make the baseline shadow priest convoluted.

Our Voidform/Insanity mechanic made sense at lower gear levels, pre bender and with S2M in mind, but now its a mess and lets not forget the haste math which most shadow players dont understand or arent aware of, instead the theorycrafters just tell them stat budgets and keep them in the dark.

Here is the haste math in a very simple equation.
Character Haste x 1.(Current VF stacks) + Current VF stacks = Current Haste

As an example, If your character has 42% haste on their character sheet and they are currently at 40 stacks of voidform
(42% x 1.40) + 40 = 98.8% haste

TLDR if you dont exclusively chase haste items or have access to seriously high ilvl peices (yes this means mythic raiding), you literally cant function at any decent level, wow what a great class design blizzard!

Anyway, to fix shadow there are some things that really need to change.

1. Change our mastery, while we dont have a clear image of what our mastery is like outside of a mass hysteria vaccum, but its safe to say that multiplications ontop of multiplications are a really bad thing for balance, it also pigeonholes us to being sub par on single target and 'strong' on multidot, not that it matters, because our Affliction cousins are better at multidot and single target anyway (they're also better self healers, more mobile, more utility, similar execute and they're on the conq token too, really makes you wonder why shadow should exist in a raid, haha!)

2. Change the way voidform works, there are many changes that could be made, removing the over the top synergy with haste would be on my chopping block, the insanity mechanic needs a serious overhaul. Its far too restrictive to reach 55 (min) stacks of voidform every voidform otherwise your rotation completely falls out of sync for an entire minute, especially on a class that is seriously immobile.

3. Talents need a serious redesign, most of them are incredibly weak even useless and some are so strong that the class doesn't operate without them. Its hard to imagine a world without Void Ray or SWV, but cmon, #alltalentsmatter am i right?

4. We need baseline cooldowns, This is why i have a soft spot for Cata shadow priest even though i ultimately prefer WoTLK shadow, Shadowfiend was a stronger cooldown and we had a kinda weak cooldown in Dark Archangel, BUT IT WAS STILL A COOLDOWN, and other than casting 2 dots, we had no ramp up, these were the good days.

Here are a few of my suggestions.

1. Remove VF 'stacks', Its simply the worst thing in the world, it causes ramp up issues, it causes cooldown issues, its easily lost due to boss mechanics, VF giving a damage bonus is the incentive to 'stay in voidform as long as possible', not 'stay in voidform or do less dps than tanks'.

2. Make S2M baseline, Imagine a 2 minute cooldown, Grants 100 insanity, activates Void Eruption straight away, Increase Haste and/or Damage, allows casting while moving

3. Talent Redesign
T15
Nerf ToF, make it exclusively for add fights (buffing duration). Remove insanity from fotm, replace SWV
T60
Replace all 3 talents (AoE/Multidot/Dotcleave/Dotspread tier), SWD should always be castable sub 35%
T75
Dot Damage/Dot interaction (remove insanity gen from Auspicious), Replace SI
T90 Replace all 3 talents (S2M replaces PI, Mindbender is boring, Improve Misery and put it in T60)
T100 Replace all 3 talents (LoTV 65 insanity or higher goes baseline)

Theres so much you can do to shadow, all it requires is a dev to actually think about the spec for more than 30 seconds.

[ZazuuPriest]

If you only miss the one previous iteration of Shadow, that plays nothing like how SPs have traditionally played or are "supposed to" play, you are probably playing the wrong class.

Might I suggest something like Ele Shaman, Mage or Destro Lock instead, as they actually have playstyles that look somewhat like CoP...

oh no i play disc, ive always played a priest, ive also always hated shadow.

[Bearded Sith]

Here's a perspective from a newish Shadow Priest.

First off, you guys who want to "go back to XX expansion" Shadow Priest, give it up. 1) it won't happen. 2) it's not constructive. 3) it's incredibly subjective.

I have played every class except Rogue and Paladin to 110, raid-worthy gearing/capability. Not every class is "fun", but EVERY CLASS and spec is viable if you know what you're doing and what the limits/abilities of the class/spec are. The same goes with Shadow Priest. One thing I've really began to appreciate with Shadow is the chaos the class has going for it. It's so stupid fun when those haste stacks start coming in. Very frantic and chaotic. That, in a nutshell, is Shadow Priest.

The thing is, and the thing I always say to people on these forums, if you don't like it, it's not for you. Don't force something that's just not there. Play a different spec or class. There's nothing wrong with that, and getting angry over the "state of your spec" is just silly. Go play something else...simple as that.

[Jaigar]

Here's a perspective from a newish Shadow Priest.

First off, you guys who want to "go back to XX expansion" Shadow Priest, give it up. 1) it won't happen. 2) it's not constructive. 3) it's incredibly subjective.

I have played every class except Rogue and Paladin to 110, raid-worthy gearing/capability. Not every class is "fun", but EVERY CLASS and spec is viable if you know what you're doing and what the limits/abilities of the class/spec are. The same goes with Shadow Priest. One thing I've really began to appreciate with Shadow is the chaos the class has going for it. It's so stupid fun when those haste stacks start coming in. Very frantic and chaotic. That, in a nutshell, is Shadow Priest.

The thing is, and the thing I always say to people on these forums, if you don't like it, it's not for you. Don't force something that's just not there. Play a different spec or class. There's nothing wrong with that, and getting angry over the "state of your spec" is just silly. Go play something else...simple as that.

What?

First off, you miss the point when people say they want a previous expansion's iteration of shadow priest. The current shadow priest is nothing like how the spec originally played. Traditionally, shadow priest was a consistent damage class with good self sustain and small group heals via VE. Now its nothing like that. Its reliant on a mechanic that ramps damage up extremely (DoTs at 50 stacks do almost 4x the damage vs. out of void form) and overly punishes players for screwing up. Its similar to Frost DK's Breath of Sindragosa, but that didn't ramp. However Blizzard found it necessary to change it to no longer make it mandatory because people didn't find it fun to deal with.

Talk about not constructive, there's people here who's played the class since vanilla (I played spriest starting in TBC through wrath, a tad at the end of MoP, WoD, and Legion), and yer using the "If you don't like it then you can get out" argument?

I moved my shadow priest to my alt now (decided to main ele) because the class is frustrating to main spec. Min-maxing shadow and trying to squeeze every bit out of it is very frustrating when you just get completely destroyed by a single mechanic. Having to move above 40 void stacks cause you to lose a stack at least, and if its enough movement, you'll just pop out way too early and your mindbender rotation is screwed. On top of that, you can pop Dispersion while moving to hold Void Stacks, but why are we using defensives offensively?

Falling out of form because you can't attack the boss for a few seconds like on sisters, or not being able to take advantage of your ramp at all (75% parse on Imonar for spriest is around 1.1 mil) just feels really bad. This is the cause often in M+, particularly in bolstering weeks.