How to fix shadow: A guide

I have some ideas of what would make me happily personally as a shadowpriest:

It’s really time that Priest/Shadowpriest was brought into 2024.

Firstly, Silence and shadowcrash need to be made default spells. Shadowcrash should hit and dot 8 targets by default, replace the 2 shadowcrash talents like so:

  • First Talent: Shadowcrash CD reduced to 15 seconds and initial damage increased 100%

  • Second Talent: Shadowcrash now affects up to 12 targets.

Currently the shadowcrash CD is too punishing as we have to wait for the CD when packs are pulled, being completely unable to AOE at all whilst all other classes can happily mash their AOE buttons and do millions of DPS at will. For some unknown reason not only is our entire AoE damage gated behind talents but it’s on a long unreliable CD. - The increased initial damage from the new talent would help a bit as we are (I think) the absolute worst class in the game when it comes to instant AoE application by some margin.

Silence talent should be replaced with a talent to turn it into a real interrupt (you know, like all the other dps classes get for free - when on earth will we stop being punished for being able to cast flash heal? it’s useless and has been useless for over a decade, there’s no such thing as a hybrid spec anymore. Louder for people in the back: SHADOW, PRIEST, IS, NOT, A , HYBRID, SPEC, please give us the same stuff every other dps class gets.

like for example: Replace PI with A BL, and stop balancing Shadowpriest around PI cos none of us enjoy it, if you must have it then move PI to hold/disc trees or something. alternatively (or additonally) just give us a second power word that buffs the raid/group with 5% haste. (Removing PI + the fact we’re low on meters even with PI is how all these buffs I’m suggesting are ‘paid’ for)

We can’t move, at all. I think we are the only class that has no real movement ability these days, it’s grossly unfair, give us a little dash on a 2 minute cooldown or something, not as strong as blink, maybe half the range and it leaves a trail of angel feathers or whatever. If you want to make it shadow only then make it ‘void warp’ and it leaves a little purple mark on the floor for a second.

Fix voidweaver:

Voidweaver is bad, improve it by making it more consistent and buffing its damage slightly: Entropic rift AoE radius increased 50%, Void Blast damage increased a further 10%

Give us something to do when we are moving, we are one of the most immobile classes in the game and it hurts us horrendously when it comes to being competitive in a ton of different content - Almost everything we do is a hardcast:

  • New spell: Void/Shadow lance, no CD, instant cast, its damage somewhere below mind blast and above SW:P application. (Alternatively to avoid skill bloat, make SW:P initial application do more damage)

Increase mind blast damage 20% (it hits like a wet noodle AND somehow has a CD in addition to this). and whilst you’re at it just change it into something else entirely that has an actual animation like shadowbolt or fireball etc.

Dots: Make dots great again, increase SW:P and VT damage by 20%

Increasing core ability damage like this will also make our damage less cooldown dependent, currently we do very little damage outside of Voidform/Halo CD which means in M+ we are only useful on alternating pulls.

I think most of these buffs could be justified just due to PI being removed before you even consider we are languishing at the bottom of the M+ and Raid meters.

  • TL:DR

Make Shadow Crash a default spell and add talents to make it better than current.

Make Silence default and can be talented into an interrupt.

Remove PI, Replace it with a Bloodlust so we can find M+ Groups.

Because we removed PI, Buff Mindblast and our SW:P/VT Dots by 20%~. (This will also increase our damage outside of our burst windows which currently is a massive portion of our damage)

Improve our damage profile when we are not able to stand still.

Improve Voidweaver a bit by increasing its AOE radius and void blast damage.

1 Like

You coulda combined all that into one sentence saying “Make us broken OP”.

All you haven’t asked for is a CR and an i-win button.

an blink 2 (doors of shadows) instant cast 50% movment speed after cast dps during dispersion also instant cast halo and Void form and Dark ascension.

Then make halo an spender remove shadow crash make halo add dots to all targets it hits

It only sounds broken OP to you because you’re used to being the martyr/victim class

psst: the other classes get all of this stuff and more.

it’s broken OP to have slightly better on demand AoE? Mage would still have more
It’s broken op to have a movement ability? Mage would still have a better one
Broken op to have a proper interrupt? Mage has counterspell
Broken op to not languish at the bottom of the DPS meter? mage… something something
Broken op to have lust? you can see where this is going…

On top of all of that, mage also beats us handily on the meters.
(not only mage, you can do similar though experiment with most dps classes)

Shadowpriest has been balanced around PI/Mass Dispel/etc and balanced around the above average skill of Shadowpriest players for way too long.

The other classes beat us in the meters AND they have all of this other stuff we don’t have, wake up.

1 Like

that retreving line was ove rthe top

1 Like

Only thing needed atm is lower CD on shadowcrash. Or other things, so that we are not punished if the CD doesnt line up perfectly everytime.

I think these 2 DoTs should get merged into 1. This would make it feel more impactful damage-wise, reduce button bloat, and also reduce enemy nameplate clutter.

If I am honest I think people ask for the wrong things in the main. Shadow Crash is alright IMO but then what? What other AOE you got? You have to do more than that. I mean there maybe a class that just uses 1 button for AOE but as someone with 4 80’s its not common.
In terms of DPS and dungeon/raid damage AOE is always massive.

I think the problem lies in when your not blowing cooldowns. My DPS just nose dives (yeah I am a poor Priests without doubt) and this is the case for all classes but I feel more extreme with priest.

Well, AOE wise I do approve on Shadow Crash, but it does not have to do more dmg, just make it hit more targets than 8.
Lower the CD or make it 2 charges (8+8) and also make it smart so it puts on targets not affected by swp/vt.

Removing PI is imo not an option in the state we are at now… I would rather see a rework of PI in sort of:

Increase haste by 25% to the priest, 5% to the raid/group over 20sec. Does not stack with other priests PI. and make it a 2min CD on the ability to gain it again. (so we cant use +5% all the time rotating from priests).
2min CD.

Movement wise, I dont really feel its that bad… we got shield with speed, feathers, dispersion and the talent for fade removes snares.
Its a good amount of abilities to survive and escape.

About Silent, it should not be a talent to have, the talent can change to something else. for now I dont know…

VT/SWP/DP overtime dmg has to really improve, like 20-30% increase.