11.1 for shadow

Classes Priest
1

Im sorry in advance if you consider this to be spam but; I got pretty excited seeing the 11.1 patch notes and usually a wall of text scares me a bit. But it excited me instead, hoping for some changes to shadow. Than I scrolled down to see nothing for Shadow. Sadge.

I can understand if someone could consider this as crying but I’ve recently had some fun in M+ and as strong as it is, it feels all a bit weird and clunky. I’ve played my SP a lot since WoTLK and its my main for the last 3 patches. Usually I’m a PvP only guy, but some friends who’re pretty new to WoW like M+ so I decided to give it a try.
I feel very comfortable in PvP as SP and its in a pretty solid spot. But in PvE, you just look to optimize every global and you get proc after proc after proc. Its a nice brain exercise but does it feel overly complicated IMO.
I also totally understand why people been complaining about shadow crash for PvE. I expected some more topics or mentions about it but I haven’t really seen anything yet on EU or US forums.

How do you guys feel about no changes for 11.1 for shadow? For PvE or PvP, both matter.

2

I really have no hopes or dreams left for SP. Never been a fan of void crap i much preferred it being just a shadow priest without the void stuff and its aoe has always been way too annoying to use for any long term fun to play to me compared to mage/warlock.

3

We’ve complained about it ever since it became a thing. It was a step in the right direction to makes us more competitive in aoe, but it has always fallen short, and I’d say that the fix could easily be a 10 sec CD rather than 20 sec CD and maybe have the target cap at 10 rather than 8.

On another note, having mastery be 0.75% per 700 points instead of 0.50% per 700 points could help us in both aoe and st

As for our capstone talents, they all need a slight to full rework.
N’zoth was already hated back in BFA when it was a corruption, honestly if they just made it deal it’s damage instantly and tuned it a little higher it could be good, and also maybe proc SA
Inescapable torment / Y’shaarj was BIS legendary in SL but was generally disliked because it breaks the rotation a lot. If Y’shaarj just made bender a permanent pet with slightly higher damage, the rotational problems would be fixed
Yogg-saron is fine, just needs better tuning for both st and aoe
C’thun just needs to proc a bit more

The talent Malediction should just be a basic part of Void torrent, as the majority of the time Void torrent keeps getting pushed down the priority list, or it should also reduce channel time by 50% as it’s extremely low damage for the length of the channel, and with movement being crazy all this season a shorter cast time would really fix it’s shortcomings

Mental fortitude I would change to work as warlocks Soul Leech, as aoe damage is high this season thus not really letting us gain a benefit from it

As for the base tree talent Void Shield, I would change it to be Inner Fire, old school armor increase aura, but just as a passive talent. Or make it the first triple talent node, 1 Inner will (mana regen) 2 Inner Fire (% armor increase) 3 Inner turmoil (passive insanity regen in and out of combat). Or again make it work like warlocks Soul Leech

And in general our DOT damage is so low that they either need to buff it or buff the DOT related talents

I for one think that SW:D should deal more damage than Kill shot / kill command / execute as it comes with the drawback of dealing damage to ourselves

As for Archon it’s pretty good, though for shadow only, I would probably make Power surge make Halo passive and automatically just cast halo every 5 sec while in combat and remove the healing portion to not make it OP
As for the defensive talents I would probably change Heightened Alteration to just be a 5% base damage reduction as shadow is crazy squishy in pve

For Voidweaver my only note is it’s clunky and pushes us to use the worse option for burst, love the Void Torrent movement though

3 Likes
4

I get where you’re coming from. When voidform and the whole theme came I liked it at first sight. But nowadays I’m thinking more how I’d like it all to be the oldschool version again. Gameplay and visual wise…

1 Like
5

Yes you make very good points. If you look at the bigger picture you can see everything’s a hot mess. The talents, the rotation, the damage etc etc… As you mention its weird that SW:D doesn’t deal decent damage and I feel the same about Mind blast.

For some reasons I have my fingers crossed for a rework and to be fair, If it happens I dont hope they change a lot, but just smoothen out the gameplay and they get a clear vision of how they want SP to be as its been in a weird state for years now.

6

Yeah as of S1 TWW for Archon MB is just a filler spell
For Voidweaver you have to make sure you have both charges every time you use Void Torrent thus mimicking the same rotational problems Inescapable Torment gives but every 30 sec instead of every 60 sec and again has us use the worse option for burst to maximise it’s damage

I know if they did all the changes I mentioned shadow would become too strong, so the proposed mastery change can be cut from it, and the buff to dots can be cut as well, but they should buff the healing amount of VT and DP to be more than 30%. In my case VT does 332k over 21 secs 30% of that is 99.6k which is nothing over 21 sec in a world where bosses passively pulse 200k+ damage every few secs

I’ve been a shadow main for the majority of my time playing the game. I used to be a sweatlord back in WoD, where I got a worlds best parse. Ever since then life has become more important so I became a casual HC player, where I still today am amongst the top. So those things I’ve brought up comes from a place of experience
I personally like the idea of M+ but dread it as a shadow main because our kit isn’t really suited for it.

In SL Blizz did start moving shadow into a better position to be working all around, and come s2 DF, was made a better again, though they didn’t listen to our cries and pleas about the 3 talents that used to be legendaries/corruptions that everybody hated (Inescapable Torment, Idol of N’Zoth and Insidious Ire) that was added in s1 and they never addressed/fixed the confusing nature of Idol of Y’shaarj.

1 Like
7

One thing i would really want back but i know its impossible to balance and raider’s would hate it would be the when the shadowy apparitions were first introduced and they spawned more when you moved and also i would very much like the old animation for them back where they were just a shadow copy of my character slowly walking towards the enemy.

To me its just nuts that blizzard completely ignores the glyph system when it would have clear purpose of giving stuff like 27 different shadow forms that the game has had over the years back to people who were fond of different shadow form visuals.

Shadow priest in general to me is always tons of fun to level but every time when i go to dungeons its just depressing when every other class just pushes one button and everything dies in glorious mayhem and SP basically has F all.

8

I do agree that SA is extremely visually satisfying, and before Archon got revealed I had an inner hope that it would’ve evolved around SA

9

Yes, another great mention. It would make it feel way less punishing if you’d have to move :slight_smile:

1 Like
10

Also bring back *Spectral Guise.

11

The classic discussion about shadow.
“Proposed changes: buff torrent, buff capstones, buff sw:d, buff dot damage because all of that feels like it doesnt hit hard enough.”

Second guy comes in: " Yo MB doesnt hit hard enough buff that too"…

The usual 3th guy with the classic “omg i hate void stuff” phrase comes in. Btw you can try pre void SP on classic …it is unbeliveably boring copared to anything wod and up. Aoe is literaly just one button spam and single target is flay mb and constantly recasting dots.

But back to the topic. We cannot have a nuclear button damage, because we have too many damage sources. Its impossible to buff sw:d or mb or torrent to hit hard without making the spec broken af. And if you gonna argument with “you can nerf other parts of the kit” (like you mentioned our mastery) then the rest of the button will hit like a noodle by default. Dots will be weak…if dots are strong…link have to be weak,if mb and death or even bender are strong…then you gotta get hit somewhere else. Nerfing mastery isnt a solution if it stays functioning as it is now. It actualy needs a complete rework then you can cherry pick couple abilities that can hit hard.

You cannot do these buffs in a kit where you have damage chart of like 25 sources with 10-15 significant ones. Because if you feel like only mb and sw:d needs a huge buff in your feedback then theres 100% chance that there will be a guy right behind you with “yo…dots are super weak too and needs a buff” followed by a thirth guy with “yo…torrent is weak it needs to hit like a truck for such long cast” etc etc etc and you end up with a feedback consisting of summary of basicaly “buff everything to the moon”. Edit: also forgot to mention a guy that will come in with “DP doesnt hit hard enough for it to be our only spender”.

Imo shadow needs trimming. It needs to have like 1-2 less buttons to press in burst and 1 more button to press off cds. Mastery needs a complete rework and the capstones should actualy be a opening talents where you get a choice node that will let you pick one of 4 old gods and then the rest of the talents would be associated with that playstyle…isharrj -pet, yogg-spirits, nzoth dots, cthun channeling abilities and void…or something like this. Right now shadow is just a frankenstein of couple different specs and as an result it feels insanely bloated where your main goal when building your talents is basicaly “pick everything”.
But thats just my opinion, just one of many that gets screamed into the void.

Also centering the entire spec around shadow crash, which is ability that everyone and their mother hated to use, is actualy very questionable design to say the least. The amount of places where some “quick zerg” small adds spawn or nonelite swarms around elites that soak your crash this season is making it even worse. Id say that mind blast on a target with vt will spread all dots to 2 more targets etc etc just like enha shaman lava lash in shadowlands.

But all of this was said a billion times over. Its same stuff over and over again and nobody seems to give a damn… to see a major patch comming without small changes, not minor tweaks, no talents changes no nothing, like literaly not a single word…zero…nada…is just concerning.
We dont need a rework every second patch but holy crap the ignorance is insane.

12

This yeah.

  • Merge swp and vampiric touch into 1.

  • Remove shadowfiend/mindflayer and all talents set around them.

  • Remove void torrent. Purpose is already fulfilled by MF:I.

  • Not sure abt shadow crash. I have never liked it, but I’m not really sure what to offer in place.

  • Either remove SW:D or make it unique in some way. If it deals damage to us when it fails to kill something, go balls to the walls and make it hit like a truck. If not, remove it. Not every spec needs an execute.

  • Turn voidform into a bestial wrath kind of buff. You lower it’s cd by x amount every time you use mind blast or devouring plague, and then you stay in it for a flat duration, gaining access to voidbolt and other benefits. This way, no more scaling issues.

  • Shadowy apparitions need their purpose clarified. But at bare minimum remove crit talents that enhance them in some way. We are perma stacking haste as it is, and in PVP versa is our guaranteed other stat, making the other 2 hard or impossible to get.

  • speaking of stats, just make shadow’s mastery into “increases the damage if your spells by x”. Yes, it’s boring, but it works.

  • devouring plague either removed or doubled down on. Give it a scary dispel mechanic like unstable affliction.

  • mind blast reworked into a hard hitting, hard-cast nuke that’s supposed to be on cooldown, like it used to be. Make it chunk people.

  • Speaking of mind blast, offer a capstone talent choice node that either turns mind blast into mindgames (essentially a harder hitting and also utility giving mb, adjust damage and modifiers accordingly), or into a shotgun blast that hits not just your main target but x amount of targets in a cone around the target. Think of mind blast from BG3.

  • Speaking of capstones, offer a voidform alternative that turns the cooldown and mf: into mind spike for the duration. Should appease both voidform and dark ascension enjoyers.

  • Regarding our AOE, I do suggest removing psyching link in place of something else. Psychic link is another thing that presents a scaling issue, either its omega busted or super weak. Worse, it can lead to our ST being nerfed due to our aoe being too strong. Idk what to offer in its place, just something simple.

Other than that, some utility stuff:

  • MF:I is now instant and now summons an eyestalk that does the channel for you.

  • offer a talent that allows levitate (when cast on the priest) to work while in combat (and undispellaple) and allows mf to be channeled while moving.

  • silence moved to class talent tree. Make it costly to access for both holy and disci, but still possible.

  • move dispersion and intangibility into class tree. Make them costly to get for disci and holy.

  • power infusion removed. Now you can buff us without worrying about the tax.

  • MD buffed back to original cooldown. If it breaks encounters, design better encounters, lazy devs.

  • remove either body and soul or angelic feather, offer a burst mobility cooldown like spectral guise or door of shadows in its place, with a followup talent that somehow buffs it.