Early Shadow Priest Changes in Shadowlands

[Bobbysoxer-tarren-mill]

Hi, I’m playing a Shadow Priest in Arenas and although I’m pretty casual and nothing amazing, I couldn’t help but notice the lack of changes for Shadow Priests regarding Arenas.

Here’s the WoWHead link: https://www.wowhead.com/news=311877/shadowlands-class-changes-preview-early-preview-of-class-changes-and-class-philo

I’m talking only about Arena PvP:

As you can see if you scroll down to the Priest section, SW:D is becoming a baseline spell (which is really good and how it’s supposed to be in my opinion!) and PI as well. But other than that, that’s pretty much it for Shadow. I guess Mind Soothe is basically useless in Arenas. Also not sure but isn’t PI dispellable?

Death and Madness seems useless in Arenas since once you get a killing blow on enemy team you’ve probably win the game… So that’s a talent you’re not gonna pick most likely.

Surrender to Madness isn’t suitable for Arenas, obvious reason. (You die if you fail to kill your target after the buff ends) And like in Legion, it probably won’t even be available in Arenas.

So to put it simply, looking at these early changes the only thing that’s going to change for Shadow PvP are:

Baseline SW:D
Power Infusion which will be dispelled the moment you use it

And to put it even worse; You might have used SW:D already in BfA if you played with Rogue or something else to line your burst and kills. So basically there’s absolutely no change in the way you play your Shadow Priest in BfA vs. Shadowlands! (excluding the external systems tied to your character power ofc, sigh… But that’s a topic for another day)

I was really hoping a lot more changes for Shadow and more baseline abilities, I even was hoping we get shadow orbs back! By the way, didn’t you have Flash Heal as an example-spell for all Specs in Blizzcon? I can’t find it now.

And now, I’m only talking for myself here, but I would love to see shadow orbs and old Mastery (MoP) back for Shadow Priest, the reason for MoP-Mastery, it gave you more chances for Mind Blast and Mind Spike procs, which was huge deal for Shadow back then. Psychic Horror should be baseline but instead of stunning it could horrify and disarm the target like in MoP and Mind Bomb should be like it was in Legion… Also, something like Renew and Prayer of Mending wouldn’t hurt.

I know it’s early that’s why I’m saying this and I’m happy about the unpruning, but Shadow needs more changes! (spells)

Thank you!

[Soflay-drakthul (Soflay)]

Well, it looks like they want you to play warlock or mage, caster wise. I can’t shake the feeling SL is going to be another melee expansion.

[Bobbysoxer-tarren-mill]

Luckily though these are just the very first upcoming changes and more are on the way!

[Pleistorus-silvermoon]

Yeah, I am glad I am not the only one who is disappointed about these changes… and not only shadow is the problem, but priest in general. I mean, pallies get so many cool and exciting changes (not to mention they are already the best healer class out there), druids also get even more utility and great spells back and so on. We get circle of healing and a reworked version of a useless talent in the first place (talking about Surrender to madness)…

What’s worse is that they even said that although it is early, these changes will be the only ones regarding the class changes, so it seems that this is the only direction for priest this expansion. What they really need to do is rework Shadow Priest’s gameplay because it simply doesn’t work with its kit and bring some fun changes to Holy and Disc. Anything that would make us more valuable to mythic and PvP.