Should they remove void form?

[ZazuuPriest]

No, because they already did that in legion and people were angry that they couldn't deactivate Shadowform. We had exactly this issue and sometimes people want to be in shadowspec while also having their transmog be visible. So they brought back Shadowform because of exactly this reason.

Personally i would have wished blizzard did a bit more of unpruning and bring healing spells to all priest specs back, even shadow. And then make it so that you can actualy shortly offheal too like a weak healer, but shadowform gets deactivated. So that shadowform actually have an use as a stance you are while doing damage, and when you heal, you need to invest a global CD to go back to your damage spec.

ok but hear me out here... shadowform as an OPTIONAL cosmetic only button. Like for instance if it was baked into the spec without the need to push a button (to quote myself) so you can push the button and be lookin like shit and all shadowy but there is no other function because a damage multiplier on an ability that literally zero spells are locked behind is meaningless.

[Mosha]

ok but hear me out here... shadowform as an OPTIONAL cosmetic only button. Like for instance if it was baked into the spec without the need to push a button (to quote myself) so you can push the button and be lookin like shit and all shadowy but there is no other function because a damage multiplier on an ability that literally zero spells are locked behind is meaningless.

I feel like this is another meaningless change that is only there to simplify the game for really no reason at all. Honestly, I think they should go back to giving shadow priest more healing options or more holy/disc spells that require you to drop shadowform.

[Velerios]

ok but hear me out here... shadowform as an OPTIONAL cosmetic only button. Like for instance if it was baked into the spec without the need to push a button (to quote myself) so you can push the button and be lookin like shit and all shadowy but there is no other function because a damage multiplier on an ability that literally zero spells are locked behind is meaningless.

Nah... simply because shadowform is too iconic to have it to be optional. Being a Shadowpriest should require you having shadowform up. Optional sounds nice, but it goes against anything that shadow priest are; and it is too iconic to make it optional. That's like removing cat form from feral druids and make it optional. But i think that Shadowform should have more customizations AND have maybe a passive effect.

[Foolicious]

But i think that Shadowform should have more customizations AND have maybe a passive effect.

Everything should have more customization. I still can't believe it took them 8 expansions to give us something else than boring cloth cloaks.
Even the new race options are lackluster when compared to different games.

Glyphs in cataclysm where a really good system which they should have build upon not ignore it and let it become a druid only feature.
A glyph that changes hand of guldan to a targeted spell, a glyph that gives the priest movementspeed with mindflay instead of slowing the enemy. Thats simple nonimpactfull customization outside of cosmetic ones.
Cosmetic customization is arguably even more important, but i miss this system.
I also want a glyph to give my shadowform tentacles again!

[Pregnant Orc]

Shadowform used to have a mechanical effect, now it does not so it really has no mechanical reason to remain.
Casting a non-Shadow spell would take us out of it and we would loose out on the damage boost until re-activated. That no longer happens even with Holy spells so there is only ever a cosmetic reason to turn it off.

It has had a bunch of visual reworks, each with its own fans and detractors, so more customization options of blue, smoke, purple, oil effect etc. are all things that have been part of Shadowforms visual identity. I'm sure most long time SPriests have had at least one iteration they didn't care much for or one they wish returned.
Even if removed completely it would live on in Voidform which is, visually speaking, Shadowform+. Continuing to change with time as new themes are added or others are removed.

Best case scenario would be a druid type customization option at the barbershop to pick from various old and current options of Shadowform visuals.
Some feel very strongly about Shadow needing the visual and perhaps an option to have it auto hide out of combat could be a compromise.

[Soon-TM]

@#$& void form. It was annoying in Legion, it was made even worse in BfA, and it provided zero RP value. Shadow Priests were supposed to focus on the more manipulative, fear-inducing elements of religion, rather than its more soothing, "bright" side - not wannabe void mages, or old gods' minions, or w/e crappy excuse Ion came with at the beginning of Legion.

Besides, it was a real pain in the rear to balance, especially with talents such as S2M, which was always OP af or complete crap, without any middle ground. And the feeling of being a cripple (bad damage, terrible mobility) * until you finally managed to activate VF, only to be desperately struggling against the insanity decay was no fun at all, especially considering that you also had to keep track of the 577425670957 abilities raid bosses are packing these days. And I'm not even mentioning PvP... Maybe we will be actually able to fight melee now.

[Spicymemer]

Again, you're just shouting opinions at me.

How about you try arguing like an adult, and make an actual point, backing it up with specific examples, properly laid out theories or, really, anything of substance. You've still failed to actually say what is it that you don't like about the spec.

The fluidity of the spec is all but gone.

Thematically, the shadow priest should not be anything close to a 'whack a mole' gameplay that is Shadowlands.
Im not arguing that legion and bfa were some pinnacle of shadow priest design, infact they are probably just as bad as shadowlands, but between set bonuses or azerite gear and other systems, it was workable and the spec played so fast that the baseline clunkiness was mostly hidden, this mostly resulted in M+ charts looking pretty grim and any other combat situation where high-ish stacks of haste and crit were unobtainable felt pretty bad

I'll not defend TBC spriest, as fun and rewarding as it was.

But lets look forward from WotLK as it is 'essentially' the spriest we still play today, with some cata sprinkled in there.

WotLK was 3 dot maintenance, weaving mindblast and mindflay, mindblast wasnt terribly valuable as mindflay scaled very similarly, but it was still a dps increase, especially when set bonuses were concerned.

We were known for our 2-3 target dot 'cleave' ie we excelled in areas where mobs couldnt simply be aoe'd or cleaved down.

Cata added mastery, shadow orbs and dark archangel, these 3 systems are in a sense exactly the same as our current Mastery, Insanity, Voidform we have in shadowlands, the difference being is that our resource spender nor our cooldown added new buttons, nor was there random procs that caused our normal spellcasting 'rotation' to overlap.

I generally disavow the Catalysm design on its shadow orbs system as i always saw it as a simple knockoff of holy power or combo points, even if it was 20/40/60/80/100 increments of insanity instead of 1/2/3/4/5 Shadow orbs i probably would have prefered it, but it was still a relatively fun spec.

So a rough look at the shadow priest rotation in cataclysm;
3 dot maintenance, mindblast on cooldown, flay inbetween, use ya cooldown when best, shadowfiend regularly (it had like a 70 second cooldown because of talents)

Lets look at the shadowlands rotation.
2 dot maintenace, mindblast on cooldown/cast DP, mindflay filler, use ya void form, adding voidbolt to your rotation and a 2nd stack of mindblast, voidform also resets and grants you a 2nd mindblast, theres also this proc that allows you to use mindblast during your mindflay which adds a temporary mindblast, swd exists in here too, but it hurts you with essentially no recourse, oh and theres these factions which give you new abilities too and they have a talent system of themselves, dont forget to

Like, its a fucking mess.

I havent even considered our specialisation talents, how much more complexity/insanity generation are these things going to add, exactly when do we plan on playing the game instead of creating this bullshit minigame within a spec.

Sure SOME of it these things would be great, no spec should be simple and thus boring, but there is an absolute glut of abilities we have now that only serve to increase damage in different ways, there is little actual gameplay or thematic benefit.

With more gear and more systems (they're going to add more, dont you worry) and put it in a diffuclt enviroment like mythic raiding, the spec will simply cease to exist outside of a super niche situation, becuase there is this massive glaring issue called S2M... It still exists. (not that i dislike the ability itself, it is amazingly thematic and unique),its going to be something to be abused.

A lot of people really disliked the voidform stacks meta of legion-bfa, I understand that, hell, i feel it too, combat enounters where we're still ramping up and its pretty much over or mechanics that prevent us from even attempting to get high stacks, i hate all those things too, i wanted real change for shadow for BFA and Shadowlands, i wanted remakes for Nighthold after S2M was absolutely dumpstered and i found that the machine-gun voidbolt nighthold tier was amazing fun.

I would have liked to see voidform stacks be purged into irrelivency/removal, I wanted us to be less dependant on ramp or even near-elimination of ramp, but we've traded everything away to simply become an overly complex and less rewarding affliction warlock.... that is utterly awful.

The people who hounded to blizzard to change shadow are not people who loved shadow, they loved warlock, but didnt want to reroll.

[ZazuuPriest]

Nah... simply because shadowform is too iconic to have it to be optional. Being a Shadowpriest should require you having shadowform up. Optional sounds nice, but it goes against anything that shadow priest are; and it is too iconic to make it optional. That's like removing cat form from feral druids and make it optional. But i think that Shadowform should have more customizations AND have maybe a passive effect.

if it has a passive effect (i mean it already does but i assume you mean "not the dmg buff") then its literally optional

[Echeyakee]

<Snip>

I agree that covenant system is way too complex for no real reason, and it will encourage just looking up guides and following them, pretty much the exact opposite of announced intention of the system. And the class abilities for shadow range from dubious (mindgames) to outright disrupting to the core gameplay (kyrian), but that whole system was given less thought than holiday events and even less development time. But we would of gotten it regardless if changes to the base class, so you can't blame that on the rework.

But I disagree with lack of fluidity or "clunkiness" outside of that. I mean, lets not kid anyone, shadow had zero mechanical depth for the last 4 years. The spec was mind-numbingly simple, it can be surmised in: get in to VF ASAP, otherwise cast VB, followed by two GCDs worth of filler. Filler is MB or flay. Repeat ad infinitum. Most of the time we did not even had to refresh our dots. In the last 4 years, the only time shadow had any complexity was EM tier, and I'm sure I don't need to explain why that was a clusterfuck. The only reason why it even remotely worked was artificial stat inflation, first from VF and hysteria stacks, later chorus and corruptions. We would get in to situations where spec was so fast, you had no time for any gameplay beyond simple 3 button rotation.

I refuse to call that "fluidity". And you're being overly dramatic when it comes to SL rotation. Outside of VF it's very tame. Dot upkeep is once again important (which also makes talents like misery useful on single target, which is nice), and you need to cast DP, but it's easy enough to fit instead of MF. As a tradeoff, we loose VB for most of the fight. And during VF the only real change is that you get VB back, and you get to cast more DPs. The double MB effect is QoL addition, not an extra mechanic. It allows you to avoid situations where both VB and MB are coming off CD at the same time. And I guess we also have SWD now, but it's not really hard to fit in an instant spell, once every 20 seconds, and only during execute phase. I do agree that backlash is too much though.

And I'm not sure why you think nighthold shadow was any different. Yes, the VB spam was a cool set bonus, but that was once every 30-60 seconds and you had no control over the burst, since delaying VF was akin to going for a piss mid boss fight. Rest of the fight it was exactly the same. If anything, we have similar, but controlled burst in SL with triple DP bursts. Although it's mostly a PvP thing, unless there will be a fight similar to spine.

[united]

With the prepatch dropping today, voidform is finally gone. This was 100% the correct decision imo, and I added one final edit to the OP to compare prepatch/9.0 spriest with previous versions.

[Sinaa]

Go back to preWoD shadow I'd say.

[therealbowser]

A shadow Priest without shadowform is simply no shadow priest. That's their iconic ability and it's more important than anything else. Blizzard should change Glyph of Shadow back to pre 8.0 OR better give us a new glyph that tones shadowform extremely down (still visible, but more like pre 8.0) without the shadow cloud and spell effects on the players body while in shadowform

I disagree 100%. A shadow priest without shadow form a is a shadow priest without shadowform. That's why I said it should be optional. It looks like shit and I've always hated it. Let players who love it use it, let those who don't, not. It's literally just a 10% damage increase and limiting the use of a handful of spells that frankly don't matter. I can't fathom why anyone would have an issue with shadowform being a cosmetic choice, but hey, you are entitled to that opinion.

[Soon-TM]

With the prepatch dropping today, voidform is finally gone. This was 100% the correct decision imo, and I added one final edit to the OP to compare prepatch/9.0 spriest with previous versions.

New spriest looks a lot more fun than the crappy Legion/BfA iteration. This is actually one of the things Blizzard got right, so got to give credit where it is due.

[draynay]

I'm pretty happy with things as they are now. Here's hoping they use the extra time to make the covenant choices more compelling.

[doodle90]

Voidform is fine. I wish they would remove shadowform. Make it a passive and make the actual form a glyph so i dont have to freaking look at it.

[draykorinee]

I have to try out voidform free SP because voidform was awful to me.

[Spicymemer]

Voidform is fine. I wish they would remove shadowform. Make it a passive and make the actual form a glyph so i dont have to freaking look at it.

Piss off to another class then, stop trying to ruin shadow.

[MrHoliday]

I'm okay with voidform, it can feel clunky in PVE as it's a cast and not a instant (you can talent into it being instant in pvp)

Other than the non-instant aspect of it... i think it's a nice addition for shadow.

If they're gonna add/remove anything... BRING BACK PRAYER OF MENDING!!! Make it a universal skill.

[LygoPhobia]

Ya, it is kind of clunky with VF. But at least we have a CD now?

[kenn9530]

Why did shadowpriests get in the first place? Fits more to warlocks (aff)

Classes like warlock and shadow priest are just for gameplay, in actual lore it wouldnt really matter what spells someone could use, they would have the potential to learn just about anything they wanted given enough training.