Upcoming Shadow Priest Changes - 8.1.0

[MechaCThun]

- Voidform increases spell damage by 20% (up from 10%)

- Insanity drain increase per second in Voidform reduced by 15%

- Void Bolt Insanity generation increased by 25%

- Dispersion's damage reduction has been increased to 75% (up from 60%). We agree that because it comes with the penalty of not being able to cast spells, it deserves to be stronger. Additionally, it now increases movement speed by 50%.

- Shadowform's 10% physical damage reduction was intended to feel like a bonus to Shadowform, but instead felt like a penalty to Voidform, since you lose that defensive benefit going into Voidform.

We're replacing this bonus from hadowform with the Focused Will passive (which the other two Priest specs already have), causing melee abilities and attacks to reduce all damage taken by 15% for 8 sec.

- Hallucinations (the PvP talent) is becoming a baseline passive, and allows your successful Dispel Magic, Mass Dispel, Purify Disease, Vampiric Embrace, and Power Word: Shield casts to generate 6 Insanity (same amount per cast as your filler, Mind Flay).

This give you more freedom to use your on-global cooldown utility buttons, especially in Voidform, without incurring as much damage loss, since Insanity is constantly draining.

Other talent adjustments worth mentioning:

- Mind Bomb and Psychic Scream now take 40% longer to break from damage.
- Void Torrent generates 30 Insanity over its duration and deals 20% increased damage. Additionally, no longer requires Voidform to cast, so you can choose to use it on a priority damage target at any time.
- Lingering Insanity fades every 3 sec instead of every 2 sec.
- Surrender to Madness cooldown reduced by 33% and penalty duration reduced by 50%.


SOURCE

Personally, I'm still not a fan of the focus revolving around getting into and stay in Voidform, but these damage increases may be worth it to play Shadow again.

What do you guys think?

[Oneirophobia]

Those are some pretty big numbers. O_o

[Sithalos]

They were already good in PvP, now they're going to be insane.

[Theangryone]

If they keep it up, it will be a decent spec by the next xpac.

[MechaCThun]

They were already good in PvP, now they're going to be insane.

Ba-dum-tiss

[Scrysis]

Hate void form. Will still hate void form. "Let's punish people for moving and doing mechanics!"

[ZazuuPriest]

Priests: We hate Voidform
Blizz: Ok we hear you
Priests: Doubt it
Blizz: We're making Voidform more important

[Oranase]

As an above post said, they're still great in PVP. Will be interesting to see how they are after this.

My thoughts: Broken. Except now, in a good way!

[Warning]

Great changes, but they do warrant the removal/nerfing of Edge of Insanity, otherwise they'll be way too tanky. Shadowpriests are currently tier 1/Overpowered in pvp and with Edge of Insanity on top of these changes they would be completely broken.

[chazus]

Priests: We hate Voidform
Blizz: Ok we hear you
Priests: Doubt it
Blizz: We're making Voidform more important

This is pretty much what I've felt. My GF mains like 4 spriests (I'm trying to get help for her, I swear), and I have one as well. The general consensus is 'voidform sucks as a mechanic, and is also bad' and Blizzard was like "What if it sucks but isn't as bad?"

I mean.

The changes are good? They're certainly better than NOT, but... From what I've heard over years, we want to just go back to shadow orbs and call it good.

[qactuar]

I don't see anything in there that changes Shadow's playstyle, and that's a problem for me. The way we deal damage doesn't really have any flow to it, because we have very few/no procs, same with synergy between our abilities, and the whole thing with void bolt and mind blast overlapping.

These are still buffs, don't get me wrong, but it's very half-baked to me.

[ZazuuPriest]

This is pretty much what I've felt. My GF mains like 4 spriests (I'm trying to get help for her, I swear), and I have one as well. The general consensus is 'voidform sucks as a mechanic, and is also bad' and Blizzard was like "What if it sucks but isn't as bad?"

I mean.

The changes are good? They're certainly better than NOT, but... From what I've heard over years, we want to just go back to shadow orbs and call it good.

i want to go back to CoP, thats the dream

[jimmy valmer]

So is this that supposed rework they were talking about? Cause if it is I'm just gonna shelf my priest for the rest of the expansion.

[Kithelle]

This is pretty much what I've felt. My GF mains like 4 spriests (I'm trying to get help for her, I swear), and I have one as well. The general consensus is 'voidform sucks as a mechanic, and is also bad' and Blizzard was like "What if it sucks but isn't as bad?"

I mean.

The changes are good? They're certainly better than NOT, but... From what I've heard over years, we want to just go back to shadow orbs and call it good.

Yup...I just hate Voidform...I hate it...only thing I hate more is that all three of the level 100 talents are about going into Voidform. As a PvPer, going into Voidform loses more than it gains pretty much...get a little extra damage and not much haste unless you're being completely ignored so you would be able to stop and turret to keep insanity up.

[Thelxi]

Flat out buffs to placate dumb people and avoid actual work, very disappointing. On the bright side these buffs might stick longer than regular buffs and not be nerfed immediately once the tears start flowing on forums, like destruction was allowed to be strong in MoP for a while.

[Jibbler]

They get feedback all during alpha and beta about spriests don’t feel good to play anymore, they ignore it and tell us we have to wait till 8.1. This doesn’t help the main issue with spriests. The gameplay will still feel clunky

[Kithelle]

They get feedback all during alpha and beta about spriests don’t feel good to play anymore, they ignore it and tell us we have to wait till 8.1. This doesn’t help the main issue with spriests. The gameplay will still feel clunky

Happening with multiple specs...Shaman are another...tell them things aren't good in alpha...get told wait till beta...tell them things aren't better...wait till 8.1.

Feels like they're going to rush 8.1 out so they can have it live before Blizzcon so they can hype 8.2.....and tell us we'll get fixed in 8.3!

[Ramaloce]

It's a start and I hope that what this is, a start and not the entire thing. I honestly was hoping voidform would die and we could get either purple holypower (aka shadow orbs) or a purple version of builder spender like boomkins astral power. Guess they only gotten to some of the feedback in that has been given in alpha/beta.

[-aiko-]

I love void form as a concept. It looks awesome and at its core provides gameplay unique to Shadow.

The problem is that it doesn't feel impactful right now so this is a step in the right direction. I was a pretty big fan of Legion Shadow due to how many stacks you could get and how much up-time you had. It was fast-paced and fun. It suffered way too much from heavy movement fights though so I hope they consider something for that. Let us cast while moving or something

[Fascinate]

Actually mind boggling that people think shadow orbs is better than voidform, ive been playing this spec since its inception and legion shadow is far and away the superior design, hopefully these changes are enough to bring back the high stack hectic voidform playstyle.