Shadow Priest Battle for Azeroth SUGGESTED Changes

[zito]

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still posting memes and pretending to be productive I see

still quoting me eventhough your done

[Aggrodesiac]

still posting memes and pretending to be productive I see

still quoting me eventhough your done

This is my face wondering why you're still talking to me.

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Nobody cares about the numbers here. I'd abandon this theoretical "highest DPS" to any warlock or mage if we could get back some utility.

I agree with this a decent bit. Sure, being a "DPS" means it's important that we do lots of damage, but I honestly feel like I brought so much more to the table back in the day when I was popping Divine Hymns and Divine Hopes for healers, Void Shifting tanks, life gripping people (which I'm stoked we have back), and even things like Symbiosis Tranq during MoP. I've had so many more watercooler moments as a Spriest doing those intangibles - clutch off heals, clutch fears, clutch cooldowns, etc - than I think I have topping out on meters. I miss filling that niche, and I'd honestly take some of that back at the expense of raw damage, I think.

[Xenodrake]

Shadowpriest should go back to how they was in Cata. SWP - VT - MB on Cd - SWD with proc or low hp - Flay... bring back the old shadow priest please I hate this Voidform shit.

[Aggrodesiac]

I think legion shadow priest is really fun, certainly the most interesting caster spec to me.
I don't want shadow word: death to be a talent, but I like the mind sear change.
A weak but spammable aoe option might work out but I think it's important that specs aren't perfect.

While I feel like Legion Shadow Priest had some ups and downs, I think overall the idea of fighting the insanity was really cool. I'd like to see them really fine tune this new identity, otherwise I feel like we're always going to be fighting what Shadow used to feel like, the glory days, etc.

Additionally, I 100% agree that SW should be baseline. Having to talent for it is sort of lame, but I again recognize that I think this is Blizzard's way of creating different playstyles for Shadow based upon the talent row it's in, depending on fights or whatever. Not a fan of it, but I get it.

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Shadowpriest should go back to how they was in Cata. SWP - VT - MB on Cd - SWD with proc or low hp - Flay... bring back the old shadow priest please I hate this Voidform shit.

Would be dope if we had a spec more like old school Shadow Priest, and another spec for everyone who likes this "Void Form Shit".

Right, Zito? <3

[zito]

This is my face wondering why you're still talking to me.

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I agree with this a decent bit. Sure, being a "DPS" means it's important that we do lots of damage, but I honestly feel like I brought so much more to the table back in the day when I was popping Divine Hymns and Divine Hopes for healers, Void Shifting tanks, life gripping people (which I'm stoked we have back), and even things like Symbiosis Tranq during MoP. I've had so many more watercooler moments as a Spriest doing those intangibles - clutch off heals, clutch fears, clutch cooldowns, etc - than I think I have topping out on meters. I miss filling that niche, and I'd honestly take some of that back at the expense of raw damage, I think.

All you do is keep quoting me so if you don't want to read my responses then don't respond to them

[Caladia]

Would prefer if you two just ignored each other at this point. :|

[Oneirophobia]

I'm pretty content with current shadow priest, except our AOE being annoying. It's such a pain in the ass to aoe down mobs who die quickly without shadow crash. Shadow crash is interesting but let's be honest, it feels bad to take because of how badly it performs compared to the other choices. I just wish I could mindsear sans dots when stuff dies too fast. Think giving tree in Antorus.


Other than that, remove Vampiric Embrace or rework it. It is a completely lackluster spell and I'm convinced at this point it's only sticking around because it is somewhat iconic. If Blizz really wants to go "classes have unique buffs and niche utilities" route in BfA, all the power to them, just start with Vampiric Embrace.

I'd personally like to see it as a single target ability you apply to someone, and then as you deal damage it heals them for x% of damage dealt. Apply it to yourself, apply it to others, up to Blizz. Would be neat if it was extra effective when used on yourself, so in PVP scenarios you'd have to choose between protecting an ally or protecting yourself, and the enemy team could counter it by focusing you when you've got it on an ally.

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Would prefer if you two just ignored each other at this point. :|

I'd prefer if a mod came in here and did their job, they've been filling up pages now with their nonsense.

[Isentropy]

Shadow Crash is more than viable at the moment, it is essentially on par with Legacy of the Void in practically every situation and your choice largely comes down to what you prefer to play. In the vast majority of dungeons Shadow Crash is categorically better. The tradeoff for st does not exist anymore with the last buffs it got. It’s just that a lot of people either aren’t aware of it being a matter of preference (such as yourself) or they don’t care enough to swap to Shadow Crash because they prefer playing with Legacy of the Void instead.

As for Vampiric Embrace, the cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes in BFA and a talent that reduces its cooldown even more in addition to making it heal for more, making it available every 1.25 minutes off the top of my head, which is very respectable as far as free group utility goes. It’s not ideal that San’layn is competing with movement talents since shadow has no movement tools baseline, but I think the tradeoff will be in favour of San’layn more often than you’d initially think. The tradeoff being acceptable enough doesn’t mean that I think it’s completely fine that shadow has to lose out on something as basic as a movement speed boost to get any mobility at all, just so we’re clear on that.

[Aggrodesiac]

I've been sending this guy gifs for the last two days in an attempt to make light of his attitude, which in hindsight did very little aside from annoy others apparently, but I have also been providing serious input and responses to other individuals in this thread. I entertained his "nonsense" at first, but after that I've been throwing him a gif and talking to other folks, while he's just been continuing to attempt to instigate. Go back and look at the "pages" we were filling up, and you'll see almost every post of mine is attempting to provide thoughtful insight and feedback, while he was merely being a jerk.

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I'm pretty content with current shadow priest, except our AOE being annoying. It's such a pain in the ass to aoe down mobs who die quickly without shadow crash. Shadow crash is interesting but let's be honest, it feels bad to take because of how badly it performs compared to the other choices. I just wish I could mindsear sans dots when stuff dies too fast. Think giving tree in Antorus.

Other than that, remove Vampiric Embrace or rework it. It is a completely lackluster spell and I'm convinced at this point it's only sticking around because it is somewhat iconic. If Blizz really wants to go "classes have unique buffs and niche utilities" route in BfA, all the power to them, just start with Vampiric Embrace.

I'd personally like to see it as a single target ability you apply to someone, and then as you deal damage it heals them for x% of damage dealt. Apply it to yourself, apply it to others, up to Blizz. Would be neat if it was extra effective when used on yourself, so in PVP scenarios you'd have to choose between protecting an ally or protecting yourself, and the enemy team could counter it by focusing you when you've got it on an ally.

I've always hated taking Shadow Crash - too long of a cooldown, too long of a windup, and almost never came close to the other talents on the row. While I understand the niche it's trying to fill for Shadow Priest, it just feels clunky from start to finish.

I really like that Vampiric Embrace idea, would make it a lot more interesting as a potential tank cooldown or a lifesaving ability for a healer stuck in fire, etc, as opposed to this "hit the button and heal people for like, 3% of their HP" cooldown.

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As for Vampiric Embrace, the cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes in BFA and a talent that reduces its cooldown even more in addition to making it heal for more, making it available every 1.25 minutes off the top of my head, which is very respectable as far as free group utility goes. It’s not ideal that San’layn is competing with movement talents since shadow has no movement tools baseline, but I think the tradeoff will be in favour of San’layn more often than you’d initially think. The tradeoff being acceptable enough doesn’t mean that I think it’s completely fine that shadow has to lose out on something as basic as a movement speed boost to get any mobility at all, just so we’re clear on that.

Even with them adjusting the cooldown, I just don't really see it pumping out meaningful heals, even with the San'layn talent. Plus, I feel like the talent will almost never be taken because people have gotten so accustomed to the ease and usefulness of Body and Soul (myself included), and won't forgo that for what appears to be a mostly insignificant healing cooldown.

[Isentropy]

I've always hated taking Shadow Crash - too long of a cooldown, too long of a windup, and almost never came close to the other talents on the row. While I understand the niche it's trying to fill for Shadow Priest, it just feels clunky from start to finish.

It has a fairly short cooldown now (20 seconds) and the projectile speed is extremely fast to the point of it looking a bit silly, even. There’s nothing especially clunky about it, which is a really vague term to use in this context anyway. Regardless, the talent is in a more than fine spot right now and is objectively a viable choice, you can choose not to pick it if you don’t like it though because Legacy of the Void is just fine too.

Even with them adjusting the cooldown, I just don't really see it pumping out meaningful heals, even with the San'layn talent. Plus, I feel like the talent will almost never be taken because people have gotten so accustomed to the ease and usefulness of Body and Soul (myself included), and won't forgo that for what appears to be a mostly insignificant healing cooldown.

What are you expecting it to do? Why do you think it won’t be able to pump out meaningful heals? On live right now Vampiric Embrace has a lot of potential when used well and is a very potent supplementary healing cooldown. That’s all it has to be because it’s not going to be on par with a healer cooldown. This isn’t MoP. It’s not going to be what gets you brought to the raid, but making Vampiric Embrace the utility tool to do that for us makes it unnecessarily difficult to design damage patterns in encounters, especially when taking into acccount shadow is the only spec left that has a good offhealing tool like Vampiric Embrace baseline.

Also, you not seeing the usefulness of San’layn and sticking with what you know is up to you, but that doesn’t mean San’layn isn’t fine as a talent. That’s not something the devs will ever take into account and in fact comments like yours are what the devs mean when they talk about how player perspective can muddy the waters in regards to what talents are viable or not.

[Aggrodesiac]

It has a fairly short cooldown now (20 seconds) and the projectile speed is extremely fast to the point of it looking a bit silly, even. There’s nothing especially clunky about it, which is a really vague term to use in this context anyway. Regardless, the talent is in a more than fine spot right now and is objectively a viable choice, you can choose not to pick it if you don’t like it though because Legacy of the Void is just fine too.

The shorter cooldown is nice, but I still am unsure it'll be competitive in the talent tier that it's in now on the Alpha. And yes, I admit this is purely subjective from my experience, and my experience is that it's been clunky - and by clunky, I mean it's somewhat unwieldy, and sometimes difficult to use optimally even with a faster projectile speed. (Not sure how it was vague, but I appreciate your feedback nonetheless).

What are you expecting it to do? Why do you think it won’t be able to pump out meaningful heals? On live right now Vampiric Embrace has a lot of potential when used well and is a very potent supplementary healing cooldown. That’s all it has to be because it’s not going to be on par with a healer cooldown. This isn’t MoP. It’s not going to be what gets you brought to the raid, but making Vampiric Embrace the utility tool to do that for us makes it unnecessarily difficult to design damage patterns in encounters, especially when taking into acccount shadow is the only spec left that has a good offhealing tool like Vampiric Embrace baseline.

Also, you not seeing the usefulness of San’layn and sticking with what you know is up to you, but that doesn’t mean San’layn isn’t fine as a talent. That’s not something the devs will ever take into account and in fact comments like yours are what the devs mean when they talk about how player perspective can muddy the waters in regards to what talents are viable or not.

I'm glad that we still have Vamp Embrace, but I do miss when it was more of a meaningful cooldown to pop. You mentioned MoP, and I'd like to have a little more of that niche utility that we used to have, as I've already mentioned in this thread. I don't need it to be a healer cooldown, obviously, but right now it feels mediocre at best, even with this talent. I'd prefer, like I mentioned above in response to Oneirophobia, for VE to be something a bit more in my control at this point - it's not really viable raid healing like it used to be, so let me make strategic decisions with it instead of random smart heals that more often than not are not potent enough to be a real difference maker.

Also, my comparing it to Body and Soul and how I'm accusomted to that talent was simply because that's the tier it's currently on - regardless of the talent tier it was on, I'm not sure I'd take it in it's current state because I don't think it's impactful enough. And that, I think, is something that the devs do take into account. Player perspective does matter if the majority of players are ignoring a talent altogether. Now, of course I'm not saying that this is absolutely going to happen regarding VE, or that San'layn is completely useless, but I am more or less providing an alternative look at player perspective's ability to impact developers.

[Annesh]

It has a fairly short cooldown now (20 seconds) and the projectile speed is extremely fast to the point of it looking a bit silly, even. There’s nothing especially clunky about it, which is a really vague term to use in this context anyway. Regardless, the talent is in a more than fine spot right now and is objectively a viable choice, you can choose not to pick it if you don’t like it though because Legacy of the Void is just fine too.

Trouble is, the spec feels bad to play without LotV's 65 insanity threshold, so the way the two talents compete is awkward. SC is meant for situations where you need burst AoE, but at the same time it delays the Leggo-Chest-enhanced-VEru burst by an extra 35 insanity, which can feel like an eternity when your AoE god teammates are happily blowing everything up without you. SC relieves ramp-up in one way, but also increases ramp-up in a different way.

It also doesn't scale with Mastery or Haste, which is a big deal. LotV scales evenly with all our spells because it just adds a flat % and organically reduces insanity buildup.

Then there's the simple fact that Crash is not good enough on its own to give the class strong enough AoE to resonate with the community. Shadow is still considered bad in low and very high M+, and that means you won't get the invites even if you in particular can almost compete on DPS with the right gear and talents. Shadow lacks in some other very key ways - lack of attractive utility, low survivability.

Shadow won't be truly fixed for Mythic+ until it gets legitimately powerful AoE that can be used well by even the plebs, so that the community will SEE shadow doing great, and often, and so think of Shadow as a safe invite.

[ttylol]

Couldn't sleep so I spent the night daydreaming :P Tried to combine this forum's ideas but I kinda went overboard lol

[Kilee25]

Cool ideas @ttylol

[Ophenia]

Shadow Crash is more than viable at the moment, it is essentially on par with Legacy of the Void in practically every situation and your choice largely comes down to what you prefer to play. In the vast majority of dungeons Shadow Crash is categorically better. The tradeoff for st does not exist anymore with the last buffs it got. It’s just that a lot of people either aren’t aware of it being a matter of preference (such as yourself) or they don’t care enough to swap to Shadow Crash because they prefer playing with Legacy of the Void instead.

Why Shadow Crash when your Void Eruption deals up to 10M damage with the chest legendary exactly ? That's a complete waste.

The only situation where Shadow Crash can be interesting is for Lower Karazhan huge packs. For any other situation Legacy of the Void is way better overall (especially if you consider than most of the trash packs have one priority target).

As for Vampiric Embrace, the cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes in BFA and a talent that reduces its cooldown even more in addition to making it heal for more, making it available every 1.25 minutes off the top of my head, which is very respectable as far as free group utility goes. It’s not ideal that San’layn is competing with movement talents since shadow has no movement tools baseline, but I think the tradeoff will be in favour of San’layn more often than you’d initially think. The tradeoff being acceptable enough doesn’t mean that I think it’s completely fine that shadow has to lose out on something as basic as a movement speed boost to get any mobility at all, just so we’re clear on that.

Respectable ?

Have you checked the amount of healing done by Vampiric Embrace in Legion ?

If you're using it with full Voidform stacks and several targets you may heal for 4 million per Vampiric Embrace. Do you really still consider it as a viable healing cooldown ? Its only utility by now is for solo outdoor content (because it will actually heal you).

I'd rather they put it back at 3 minute cooldown but with a real healing output.

[Aggrodesiac]

Why Shadow Crash when your Void Eruption deals up to 10M damage with the chest legendary exactly ? That's a complete waste.

The only situation where Shadow Crash can be interesting is for Lower Karazhan huge packs. For any other situation Legacy of the Void is way better overall (especially if you consider than most of the trash packs have one priority target).

Yeah, it's not especially potent now, and unfortunately I feel like I'm not sold on where it is in the BfA Alpha either. Hypothetically I think it's in a better spot to pick it for like Mythic+, maybe, but with Shadow Word: Death no longer baseline, I'm worried we won't see much from Shadow Crash in BfA.

Respectable ?

Have you checked the amount of healing done by Vampiric Embrace in Legion ?

If you're using it with full Voidform stacks and several targets you may heal for 4 million per Vampiric Embrace. Do you really still consider it as a viable healing cooldown ? Its only utility by now is for solo outdoor content (because it will actually heal you).

I'd rather they put it back at 3 minute cooldown but with a real healing output.

Unfortunately it is also quite underwhelming on the BfA Alpha - including solo outdoor stuff. Sure, there is still so much to be changed and balanced and what not, but popping VE after I pulled a couple extra mobs while questing did not appear to heal me much at all. Could be bugged or something, but with VE in Voidform going HAM I still died pretty handily to three mobs. I think some major tweaks to VE are needed before I even consider attempting to talent for it.

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Couldn't sleep so I spent the night daydreaming :P Tried to combine this forum's ideas but I kinda went overboard lol[/IMG]

I really like a lot of these ideas, @ttylol, and something really jumped out at me that I had never really considered before regarding Insanity - give us viable ways to use Insanity, other than Void Form, so that we can have some interesting gameplay choices with that resource, delaying Void Form, without crazy DPS losses.

This is totally a stretch, but just hear me out... There is a God in the MOBA Smite called Cu Chulainn, and his main mechanic is essentially as he takes and deals damage with attacks and abilities, he gains a rage buff that eventually lets him hulk out and go into a really powerful transformation. However, he also has an important ability that lets him "Vent Anger", which does some AoE damage, but more importantly it allows him to still deal some damage while also delaying his main form to deal the most damage at the most opportunte time.

Could be interesting if there were more options available like your suggestion around Mind Spike. Potentially totally divergent from what Shadow Priest is all about right now, and maybe super farfetched, but could be some really interesting choices if it was taken down that route.

[kalaratic]

i would love to see insanity spenders in the alpha to see how it works out. there's so much room to be creative with the spec but they're being so fucking safe about it. really sad stuff

[Aggrodesiac]

i would love to see insanity spenders in the alpha to see how it works out. there's so much room to be creative with the spec but they're being so fucking safe about it. really sad stuff

1000% agree with this. Use this testing for just that: testing. Put some new abilities in there, change some current ones, add some old ones, and play around with interesting gameplay choices around how to use that insanity. Maybe it doens't work, so be it. But maybe it's really awesome and begins to chip away at some of the concerns the Spriest community has.

[Deleted]

Give insanity gimmick to both demon hunter specs and tie it in with metamorph like what should have happened originally when they stole the mechanic from demo warlocks pretending to be demon hunters.

Give us back shadow orbs.
Give back spectral guise.
Give back cascade.
Give back shadowform, both visuals and tankiness.
Give us a proper dot spread option, the way sunfire spreads for balance druids would be nice for vt.

None of these will make us a broken class but will help fill the enormous gaping hole of a spec we are in anything that is not a raid boss.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Why Shadow Crash when your Void Eruption deals up to 10M damage with the chest legendary exactly ? That's a complete waste.

The only situation where Shadow Crash can be interesting is for Lower Karazhan huge packs. For any other situation Legacy of the Void is way better overall (especially if you consider than most of the trash packs have one priority target).

First of all, SC doesn't replace VotE, it's extra dmg on top of it.

Also, VoiEr does nowhere close to 10m dmg, unless you have 975 iLvl equipped, with every single Int proc and ToF up when casting it, in which case SC would also do amazing numbers. Even with the buffed VoiEr dmg, the most optimal way to play, is still to keep your same VF over to the next pack, trying to keep it up as long as possible. SC is outright better than LotV in Lower Kara, EoA and BRH (regardless of affixes). It's also preferable in most dungeons as soon as you get a Fortified week, and it's mandatory every Teeming week.

The only place where LotV is noticeably better than SC, is in low trash, high boss dungeons like Upper Kara or VotW, with Tyrannical.


Comments like yours can only possibly come from ppl who simply refused to try SC, because of the stigma of SC being shit for the majority of the expansion.