Table of content
- Introduction
– Why I enjoy Shadow Priest, and
– How I came to write this post. - Short Story
– Explores the fantasy of the mechanics I envision. - TL;DR of the game mechanics
- Long and detailed description of everything.
– Might be a somewhat confusing read, but if you thought the TL;DR was interesting, it should be worth it.
Hi.
Since Blizzard seems to pay some attention to our community for thoughts on the future of Shadow Priest, I figure this is a good time for my two cents.
I’m very interested in your opinions everybody, so please comment below, especially if I still lack clarity somewhere.
First, I want to make it clear that I don’t care how my class places on the damage meters. Balance is not much of a focus for me unless I have to worry about the devs breaking an enjoyable playstyle in an attempt to fix balance (as it happened between Legion and BfA for example).
I also enjoy healing a lot. I actually prefer healing to standard GCD-bound DPS and tanking in group content.
I came to play Shadow after leveling a Monk in Legion. When you play a melee spec, you’re constantly dealing with the GCD and it might eventually wear you down. It just feels… awkward. It’s not a major matter, but it’s one of those things that little drip by little drip wears you down. I decided I was going to reroll.
After watching some random Shadow Priest during a world quest and being slightly envious of their totally awesome looks, I checked out a couple of Youtube videos and made my pick.
The fact that your APM (actions per minute) went through the roof and that the huge ramping on your haste meant that your GCDs almost disappeared was something I completely adored. That, combined with the awesome aesthetics of the class and having two different healing specs for group content, made the decision easy.
So Blizzard immediately announced that Voidform bonuses and duration were going to be gutted with BfA. Obviously. I wouldn’t even get to level a priest all the way to 110 before the changes.
After coming back to the game just a few days ago, I’m now busy getting my old monk to 120, before I will continue leveling my priest to the cap as well.
But even after all this time, it still hurts to know that Shadow Priest isn’t going to match my expectations. Yeah, the haste buff from Voidform isn’t exactly gone, but it’s not what it was either.
So let’s address that.
To illustrate how I’d like to see Shadow Priest play in the future, let me tell you a little story:
In my imagination, I’m facing a small group of normal monsters in any zone of the last two expansions. There are a few cheap trash mobs and one elite. The fight itself ought to last maybe a minute. Not very long but that’s important.
I spread maladies of the mind against the enemies and pay close attention as madness begins to gather in my mind. Sanity crumbles and I shiver in excitement. I decide to help that process out a bit with a judicious application of a powerful feedback loop of Void energies in my mind. The hysterical madness reaches critical mass and gives me the power to rip open the gates of the Void within me and unleash the insanity that lives within. Torture shaped into material existence by my shadowy zeal lashes out and strikes my foes. Dark elation fills me and I ride high on laughter as I sling bolts of Void power at my enemies.
But almost immediately do I begin to sense the… pressure of drain, of loss. I know the weakness that chases the high. Trepidation runs through me and I would do anything to run away from it and prolong this bath in insanity. The fear of weakness builds in me, drives me insane, forces me, makes me do things that no sane being would admit to. I look into the eyes of my enemy and perceive his sense of self. I grab at it and speak Words of Unholy Prayer that pierce his skull both physically and mentally as they tear at the protections his self offers him. I flay his mind and I feed torturing tendrils made of my own self past the walls of his sanity and create tiny tears through which the Void trickles. As madness blooms in him, I greedily gather it and feed my own with it. Faster and faster desperation drives me. More and more, never enough, further, SURRENDER TO MADNESS!
His mind slowly shatters and his fears strengthen me.
It’s not enough. Never is it enough. I cannot hold open the gates to the Void much longer and the loss closes in on me. Awareness of reason returns in starts of fit and falter. As the reality of my actions stares at me horror grabs at me and I cannot stand it. So I feed it to my enemy. It torments him as it no longer torments me. I torture him with the very horror of what I did to him, and laugh.
I fall into a strange state of half-remembered madness, full with dissociated calculation. My hands move faster than ever, my mouth speaks dark Words of Power, but even so, I cannot escape the Pain. The Pain of loss. I fear Pain.
My Words are weakened by the lack of full immersion with the Void. Sanity returns slowly and it makes me remember old things and tortures me. I cannot escape it. The ultimate Price of the very power I crave, I cannot stop it. The Void gleefully drags my mind across crystalline grief like shards of glass that threaten to stun me. When I am weak enough with need, it assaults me with serrated seductive grins and I know where it points me.
I go willingly. There lies the secret of avoiding the Pain-Price. In a powerful and calculated burst of Words that speak of Death, I sink the Pain-Price into the enemy and watch as it kills him. It is good that he dies because that way the Pain will be sealed within him. It won’t jump at me if he takes it into Death with him. Pain is the Price.
If I’m smart and careful, I can make the enemy hold the Price in Death.
For a while.
It has been a few days since. Already can I feel the shackling whispers of the Price at the edges of my consciousness, but the screaming secrets hidden in the Void tell me how I might avoid the Price. Today I stand in front of more… things. I can force the Price on them.
These are much stronger than the last ones. I’m not alone. There are many people around me, but even so, the fight will last. I will need to be careful today. I can’t allow the Void to fill me too quickly today, because then the Price will come due in full before I can seal it with the Deaths of the things.
My left hand shivers in fear of the Price that I sense closing in on me. My right hand shivers in expectation of the power it will channel again. A Battlecry goes up around me and one of the people charges the tallest of the things.
As my presence goes unnoticed between all the people, I begin threading those maladies of the mind that I’m familiar with through all the things, and the first licks of Insanity shiver through me. Excitement tickles me, but with shaking hands I form the signs and speak the Words that will allow me to limit the Drain into weakness, and infuse a very specific set of memories into the Words. The Words waken the Eternal Mantra within me, a Mantra that I had heard so long ago, long before I ever took the first step on this journey. The Mantra twines around my tongue and splits it exactly as it does my consciousness. Part of my mind becomes the vessel for the Mantra and is lifted… elsewhere. The other part, the part that is still me returns its attention to the things.
Carefully I examine the protective walls around their minds that their identities offer them and begin assaulting the cracks with blasts of shadow. One of the things suddenly whirls on me, but I shove his awareness of myself into a corner of his mind and he forgets me as I fade from his reality. As the presence of the Void rises within me, I widen the cracks in the walls of their minds in preparation for infiltration by the Void. As I approach the threshold of power that will allow me to open the gates within my self, I can feel the Mantra exerting pressure on my soul through that other part of my consciousness. It doesn’t feel like it was ever part of me. My own reality has changed too much in these few seconds. But it was part of me and roots do not lie. So the mantra keeps its influence over my soul and binds me, even as I fight it. A part of me remembers the Price, but most of me knows no reason and does not care. But I can’t rid myself of the Mantra, it has roots too deep within me and binds me even tighter.
I cross critical mass and I try to rip open the gates so that the Void can fill me, but the Mantra doesn’t allow me to open them all the way. But I still gain power. And because the small crack of the gates also prevents the Void from draining as quickly, the pressure of the loss isn’t as great. The things filter back into my attention and I remember the cracks I made in their minds. There isn’t enough of the Void within me erupt in a show of power like last time, but I can still materialize enough to cover myself with it. The world is tinged in shadows around me and I form tendrils of Void and insanity that I feed through the cracks into the minds of the things. They tear minor holes through which the Void drips into the realities of their minds. Success! While I can’t open my own gates fully due to the damnable Mantra, I can gain more power through my enemies. More excitement shivers through me. The drops of Void birth the beginnings of madness within the things. Hungrily I draw on it, use the tendrils like bridges to feed on it. Carefully at first, but I can’t control myself. Faster and faster I draw on the bridges and use the power to punch more holes into the minds of the things.
One by one the bridges collapse, unable to withstand the madness I’m pushing and pulling through them, too great the power. Constantly I rush to create more bridges, but it is impossible to keep up with their collapse. The tears in their minds slowly heal too, and I constantly need to open up new ones. I fight a losing battle and that awareness creeps up on me with every second that ticks by. Time seems to slow down around me as I speak Words faster and faster, as I draw signs with my fingers with a swiftness that seems wholly inhuman. It feels as though the Price is a living being, it hunts me through the shadowed halls of my mind. I seek the power of the Void to escape the Price, knowing that this very power also feeds the Price. But I know that if I can gain enough power, I can move the Price to others. There are Words that allow me to use the power of the Price itself to transfer it into other minds. I only need to hold on long enough, until the things are weakened sufficiently. I pour everything I have into my efforts of keeping up the bridges and tearing new holes for the Void. Just a little longer. The Price hunts me.
I won’t last. The things are still too strong. Panic fills me and wars with Insanity. I am paralyzed, unable to formulate a plan of action, my brain full fevered half-thoughts. Suddenly a bolt of memory flashes through the roots from my other self, called into existence by the Words I spoke so long ago at the beginning of this battle. These are memories of previous similar situations and what I did then. My panicked mind grabs at memories like ropes of a lifeboat. If I can’t outrun the Price, I need to be smarter. I speak more Words and splice my mind once more, this part to serve as a sacrifice to the Price. With everything I have, I hammer the sacrifice and power into the things, giving up far more than I am comfortable with. The weakness instantly claims me and I can sense the Price tormenting the fragment of my mind that I flung into my enemies. I am weak and stagger, almost fall to the ground. The gates within me shut tightly, sealed by the Mantra, while I have no power whatsoever to hold against it. Loss claims me and Misery burns in my gut. Only the one bridge still running between the minds of my enemies and myself, holds me up, strong now that it channels no power. My Words lag, my hands slow, my mind frozen.
Suddenly darkness flares through the bridge, nearly singing it from existence. The darkness hits the shields of my mind, which instinctively recognizes it as belonging to myself. The echo of the hammer blows of power I dealt earlier.
The great holes I had just torn had let enough of the Void pour through into the enemies fast enough to create a shockwave that pushed my own power back into me and energized me. As my hands and Words begin picking up speed again, I gather power and strain against the Mantra to open the gate again. And again I only gain a crack. But I achieve what I wanted, I have tricked the Price long enough to outrun it once more. I am filled with enough of the Void to create more bridges and to keep tearing holes in the mind of the things. My Words quicken their Deaths, my hands blur the signs. Faster and faster I run from the Price, sure this time that I will last long enough to seal it with Death. Mania rules my thoughts and guides my actions.
Thank you for reading that short story. I hope you had fun.
TL;DR
- Let me state here that I believe it would be a major mistake to remove the ramp from any mechanic of the Shadow Priest. Doing so would turn us into just a copy of the other ranged casters in the game. Further, the ramp is what allows us to enjoy the high APM due to the contrast to the low APM before the ramp.
What I wished to demonstrate were the two very different strategies that I think are necessary for the Shadow spec to remain viable and easy to balance:
- Before any fight, you decide whether or not it will take longer than 20 seconds or so. If you predict a fast kill, you would go with a glorious blast of power that elevates your haste bonus nearly instantaneously. We want a ramp for the contrast, but since the battle isn’t going to last long, we need to get to the point very quickly. But the fast burst has a downtime associated with it, unlike the long ramp.
- Should the fight take longer, you would choose the long ramp. Haste stacks are gained slowly, but preserved for longer and there is no insanity generation downtime between Voidform phases.
- The downtime of the short ramp can be skipped with either a 2min cooldown, or if you use a specific skill correctly. Details below.
- The short ramp also serves as a sort of damage CD for the long ramp. Skilled players will be able to use it while also avoiding the downtime going back into the long ramp.
Effectively, it’s two play styles combined into one and you can access either at any time, with a caveat. They do flow into one another, but require thinking ahead and cooldown management for that.
General Details
- The base rate of Insanity gains is lower than it currently is and will be buffed by combat initiating cooldowns. Which initiator you choose determines the strength and duration of the buff.
- You have two initiators, the one for the short ramp is instant cast, has a 20s CD, applies a strong buff to haste stack and insanity gains. The one for the long ramp shares a cooldown with the first, but applies a much weaker buff to haste stack and insanity gains, but these last a lot longer. Both these initiators turn your abilities into ones suited to their strategies.
Short Ramp
- All about gaining APM very quickly so you can fully enjoy fights even against targets with low HP. APM gains don’t last long though, and you are punished for using the short ramp against the wrong target or at the wrong time.
- You can enter the short ramp at any time that its initiator is off cooldown, even directly from the long ramp.
- Voidform turns into Void Eruption (VE - just like the one we have these days) and when used, applies a strong debuff to your Insanity drain, meaning that it drains very quickly. VE also applies a second buff to haste stack gains. You’re not supposed to benefit from VE’s haste buff for long, but if you’re good enough, you can delay the loss of it for a couple of extra GCDs. The battle for haste duration is still there - very intense and short. Once insanity hits 0, you lose all bonuses to haste instantly, unless you managed to kill a target with Shadow Word: Death, in which case the haste loss will be delayed until your short ramp initiator cools down, at which point all haste stacks will be dropped entirely, but you can start over without delay.
- The cooldown of the initiator needs to be long enough that failure to stave off the haste loss with Shadow Word: Death is punished for the rest of the current battle, but also short enough to allow you to start your next (unrelated) battle unhindered. Depending on the pace of Shadowlands, this probably means a cooldown period of 20 to 30 seconds.
- There ought to be one 2min CD that allows you to skip the wait for the initiator to come off cooldown. This would allow you to react in case you pulled adds at a bad time while leveling or are fighting an elite that takes longer to kill than you expected, but you can’t use it every time and if you really messed up, you will die for it. This CD is only available in short ramp and shares a cooldown with an important mobility CD in long ramp. Using either one wrong has consequences.
- During the short ramp, Shadow Word: Death has a cooldown, but can be used at any time if you think it can kill an enemy. Failure to do so will lock you out of the opportunity to keep your APM up and means that the short ramp can’t be abused during boss fights without consequence. Basically, SW:D is an Execute that you might run the danger of using too early, or too late.
- Other damage CDs are turned into abilities that further increase haste and damage for short durations. They’re designed to reduce kill times by increasing the already very high gains to haste from initiator+VE. I think it would be really cool if you had a 2min CD that you could activate just before using Void Eruption. It would act as a VE before the actual VE and empower the second (real) one’s bonuses to haste. This would result in not only doubling the direct damage when kicking off into VE but also giving you more GCDs via extra haste stacks with which to fight the drain to 0 insanity, thereby lending itself to a slightly longer fight. The fact that this is a 2min CD makes it as special as the three spirits for monks. Basically, our 2min damage CDs are less about doing damage directly, and more about increasing APM.
- With the very high cast speeds and very short GCDs, you’re kinda like a ranged melee class in short ramp mode. Many of your skills are focused on dealing damage while moving. You have Void Bolts and Mind Blasts and Mind Flay that can be cast while moving, but if you’re willing to stand still, Mind Flay will do more damage per tick than otherwise, at the cost of lower insanity generation. So if you stand still, you will do greater damage, but you will also drop the VE haste stacks earlier and will have to wait longer for the initiator to come off CD.
This too could be affected by a 2min CD. - While the debuff from VE is still active, you cannot use the initiator for the long ramp below, leaving you without a meaningful way of generating insanity or haste unless you use a 2min cooldown to ready the short ramp initiator immediately, which will also by extension also unlock the long ramp initiator.
Long Ramp
- You want to use the long ramp against targets that you predict will survive the short ramp, even if you were to use every trick you knew to prolong the active duration of the short ramp. You can still access the short ramp at any time during the long ramp as if it were a damage CD, but doing so will lock you out of the long ramp for however long the cooldown of the short ramp CD takes.
- Using this initiator turns Void Eruption into Voidform and applies a weaker buff to haste and insanity gains, but one that will last a lot longer.
- Voidform doesn’t deal direct damage like VE, but it does improve also haste stack gains and defenses. It applies a smaller debuff to insanity drains. You gain haste stacks a lot slower, but they last much longer than Void Eruption’s haste stacks would, meaning that you have a longer ramp to maximum APM but also stay in it for longer. Further, you don’t have the costly downtime of the short ramp, because the haste stacks from Voidform will drain gradually, rather than instantly. Here too, you can use Shadow Word: Death to delay the loss of haste stacks for a bit longer.
- In the long ramp, Shadow Word: Death has no cooldown, but can only be used when the target is low health. That means that you can sustain your haste stacks even with no insanity when the boss is about to die, but not otherwise.
- Damage CDs are more about the ability to enter the short ramp for damage without being subjected to the timeout afterward. Further, careful management of your cooldowns between strategies is necessary, as using them for damage in the short ramp means that you won’t have any for skipping time-outs.
- All skills in the long ramp have cast times, and you’re not allowed to move while casting at all. If you need to move, you either have to go into the short ramp or lose insanity faster.
- You have one 2min CD that allows you to teleport to a targeted spot even at a considerable distance during the long ramp. This CD is also one that turns into the only timeout-skipper available during the short ramp, so you really have to think about whether or not your teleport will work as you’re imagining. If you use it wrong, you could then still activate the short ramp to keep moving, but you would be exposed to the timeout.
- If tests prove that this single timeout-skipper on a 2min CD shared with the teleport is not enough, then I would add another CD for timeout-skipping, but this one can only be accessed from the long ramp. You have to use it just before you hit the short ramp initiator, which will then not activate its cooldown, meaning that you can also cast the long ramp initiator immediately after the haste stacks from VE ran out.
- To facilitate the long uptime of haste stacks while in long ramp mode, you grant haste stacks to your enemy and then steal them as insanity. The equivalent in the fantasy earlier would be the holes you create within the mind of your enemy, where the Void can trickle through and drive them to madness. You gather that Void energy and absorb it yourself, driving yourself further insane. This is another management mechanic designed to add a little complexity to the admittedly simple rotation of the shadow priest. You cause your enemy to go increasingly berserk - giving them haste while also increasing the damage they take. If it’s getting too dangerous and your healers need to preserve mana, you absorb those haste stacks as insanity, weakening the enemy but also removing the damage buff for your party or raid. Further, every time you absorb haste, you create another bridge - a passive Mind Flay that ticks damage like a DoT. These bridges will all drop as soon as your insanity hits 0.
- Of course, you’ll still run out of insanity and lose your Voidform eventually. But the reason that you can maintain the long ramp so much longer than the short ramp is the exact rate at which your enemy gains his haste stacks - the higher they already are, the faster they will accumulate. Basically, if you absorbed only 10 haste stacks, you would gain only 1 insanity. If you absorbed 100 haste stacks, you would gain 100 insanity, a tenfold increase of efficiency. Your tank might also be dead by now. Your Mind Flay bridges basically live on borrowed time. You have to balance between building Mind Flays connecting your enemies and you, and absorbing their haste to power your Voidform. A long ramp priest would eventually have many Mind Flay streams running between him and any enemies he targets. Good use of this mechanic shows the difference between skilled and experienced Void Priests, and those who aren’t. By capping the upper amount of possible haste stacks on an enemy, or inflicting a punishment on the Priest if he leaves those stacks on the boss unattended for too long, the party can be protected against griefing by trolls.
Please feel free to discuss everything. I’d be happy if you showed your interest. Thanks for reading. 