My idea for Shadow Priest 9.0 Spec/Class design (LF FEEDBACK)

Classes Priest
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Title.

Hello everyone.

Since we’re confirmed that classes are moving away from spec-focus and back toward the class focus in Shadowlands (something I am very much looking forward to), I felt it was a good idea to iterate shadow priests going forward and give some ideas, given that Shadow priests, alongside maybe Survival Hunters, are perhaps the deepest spec-specific designs since Legion, and unique in many ways, which makes their redesigning particularly challenging.

I’ve decided to split my iteration into different parts, which are labelled as following:

  1. Design philosophy and class fantasy of Shadow Priests.
  2. Resources
  3. List of baseline abilities.
  4. Talents
  5. Rotation(s)
  6. Conclusions & summary of changes

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the suggestions.

1. Design philosophy and class fantasy of Shadow Priests

Currently, Shadow Priest is an iteration of some sort of eldritch void lord/old god worshipper and power wielder, dancing between sanity and insanity (or surrendering to it). Shadow priests are masters of manipulation and crushing their opponents will (e.g. mind flay, mind trauma, mind blast, Mind control) and baring them to the horrors and fears only they can tolerate (E.g. psychic scream, psychic horror, psyfiend). Shadow priests rotation and resource building and using is also arguably the most unique of all the other classes.

While this is all fine and good, this design has thruly rang hollow as it feels there is nothing priestly about shadow- Indeed, shadow priests can cast only few light side spells which plays into the spec fantasy, but has really dilluted the class fantasy of the spec in return.

On top of this, the ramp-up mechanic of void form is notoriously impossible to balance, as both Legion and BFA prove (with SP getting a 3rd nerf in a row). Additionally, the single school means that shadow priests are very vulnerable to being kicked in one school, as much of their utility and damage potential is tied to just one school (whereas with most casters they have 2-3 schools to combat this).

These are all the reasons why I want to change the spec with the design philosophies and aims I’ll be describing below:

a) Bringing back the PRIEST in Shadow
b) Reiterating and clearly defining the strengths and role of shadow priests in the game

a) Bringing back the priest in Shadow priests is quite simple: Shadow Priests are still priests- And this is already being done by Blizzard, with abilities like flash heal returning to all the specs. Simply put, visuals, rotation and gameplay wise, priests should feel like these casters who utilize both light and shadow in their arsenal, rather than looking solely like these eldritch old god casters.

I know this upsets a great deal of playerbase of shadow priests who really love the theme of a void caster: Which is where latter parts of my iteration come in, as we can use both talents as well as glyphs to customize how shadowy do you want your shadow priests abilities and theme to be- Or how hybrid, light side-y. The choice will be up to you.

b) In my reiteration/definition of shadow priests, shadow spec is built around a foundation of familiar concepts all the way from Vanilla, but also on the newer, more streamlined concepts. A hybrid, if you will. These concepts are:

I. Hybrid damage between dots and proc based hard hits. This is relatively similar how the spec currently plays, as shadow priest has always been about having both dots and other damage abilities to trickle down your opponents- Without relying solely on dots for damage dealing like specs such as affli warlocks do. However, depending on your preferences, you can choose between a more proccy based gameplay with casts here and there, or a more dot based, continuous damage build.

II. Vampiric damage. Shadow priests have two abilities that directly have the word “vampiric” in them, and indeed even in Vanilla Shadow priests were all about dealing high damage while also being able to heal themselves off of the damage they dealt, as well as their party members. I wish to further emphasize this in the design of shadow priests, with their abilities healing them based on the damage they deal, as well as their allies.

III. Anti-caster. As said, shadow priests are all about affecting the opponent’s mind and slowly draining their sanity and trickling them down into the abyss. Consequently, almost all casting requires concentration and focus of somesort, it plays well into the fantasy of shadow priests to be able to reduce the effectiveness of their opponents spellcasting, and in many ways this is already the case: Be it sapping the efficiency of their enemies spells or outright nullifying and removing their protective spells, this is an aspect I wish to focus on, which combines both new design approaches to shadow priests abilities, as well as incorporating the already (and in the past) existing abilities to be the foundation for that focus.

All in all, the TLDR of design philosophy for shadow priests I want is simply this: Taking lessons from the past and building on what’s already solid, while also inventing new concepts that reinforce those pillars and give players more choice regarding do they want their classes to go more into the specialization or the class theme in their gameplay.

2. Resources.

The big elephant in the room is what is to be done with voidform and the insanity mechanic. As much as I like it visually, it has proven time and time again that it is not a viable thing to balance the spec around, and either ends up clunky and useless, or too strong and overpowering. Ramp-up mechanics are simply bad, and shouldn’t be used. More importantly, since we are moving toward CLASS design over SPEC design, it makes sense that shadow ditches its overt reliance on Void elements of the spec.

As a result, Void form is -removed-. Insanity remains, but it now fills a new purpose.

Instead of being a resource that drains and its draining speed ramps up over time, it is now a built resource which, once reaching a cap, can be used by the priest to empower one of their rotational or utility abilities.

Insanity is gained, as it is now, via the use of your damaging and utility spells. Generally, since he idea is that Shadowpriest is all about constant pressure and sapping your enemy, you don’t have any major/big DPS cooldowns other classes do, which means that you will be filling the bar fairly quickly, as intended. You should be looking at having an empowered ability every 15 - 20 seconds or so.

Mana is also still going to be a resource for SP, as it currently is.

  1. List of Baseline Abilities.

Here is the list of baseline abilities, including passive ones. If an ability’s function has changed from BFA or something has been added to it, I will further reiterate it. If an ability generates insanity, i’ve marked it with (+) mark. Regarding the range and costs of abilities, unless specified, assume they are in the 40 yard range and cost mana the same way most abilities do in BFA.

Active:
(DAMAGE)

  • Mind flay.+
  • Mind blast+, NYI: 7 second cooldown, 2 sec cast. Blast your targets mind with x amount of shadow damage, and causing Mind trauma. When empowered, transforms into Lashing Shadows. NYI: Lashing shadows: Requires shadow empowerment. Lash out with your shadows, dealing a high amount of shadow damage at your target and increasing the duration of your damage over time effects on the target by 4 seconds. Instant cast. NYI: Mind trauma: Reduces casting speed of spells by 15%. Lasts 6 seconds.
  • Shadow word: Pain +. When empowered, transforms into Devouring Plague.
    NYI: Devouring plague. Instant cast, requires shadow empowerment. Deals high shadow damage and heals you for a portion of the damage dealt. Only one Devouring plague can be active at a time. Lasts 21 seconds.
  • Vampiric Touch +. When empowered, transforms into sap essence. NYI: Sap essence. Requires shadow empowerment instant cast. Sap your opponents life energies, healing you based on the damage dealt.
  • Shadow word: Death +
  • Shadow Fiend+. Nyi: Summon a shadow fiend to assault your target for 15 seconds. Generates insanity on succesful melee attacks. Cooldown 1 minute.
  • Mind sear+. When empowered, transforms into cascading shadows. NYI: Cascading shadows: Flare shadows on your target, causing a cascade of shadow energies to erupt from your target which deal x amount of damage and bounce up to 5 times between all targets within 30 yards. Damage increased on longer jumps. Instant cast.
  • Shadowy apparitions
  • Mastery: Enveloping shadows. Increases the damage of your shadow based offensive abilities by x amount.

(UTILITY)

  • Leap of faith
  • Psychic scream
  • Silence
  • Power Word: Shield +
  • Flash heal
  • Dispel magic +
  • Purify disease
  • Mass dispel
  • Mind control
  • Mind soothe NYI: Instant cast. Soothes your targets mind, reducing the range at which they aggro you.
  • Focused will
  • Shackle monstrosity, NYI: 2 second cast. Shackle the target undead or abberation, preventing all actions and movement. Lasts 1 minute. Any damage taken will cancel the effect.
  • Fade, NYI: Fade out, removing all your threat, increasing your movement speed by 50% for 4 seconds and causing most spells and abilities to miss you. 45 second cooldown.
  • Dispersion, NYI: Works the same as it does now, but with intangibility baseline.
  • Resurrection
  • Desperate prayer
  • Vampiric Embrace

(MISC)

  • Power word: Fortitude
  • Mind Vision
  • Levitate
  • Shadow Form

4) Talents

Row 1: Mobility.
Talent 1: Twist of fates, NYI: Your leap of faith’s cooldown is reduced by 50%, and it now pulls you to a friendly target, rather than pulling them to you.
Talent 2: Body and soul
Talent 3: Spectral guise NYI: 30 second cooldown, instant. Leaves an illusion of yourself behind that fools enemies for 6 seconds or until it is killed, granting you stealth and freedom from movement impairing effects for the duration.

Row 2: Healing/self sustain

Talent 1: San’layn NYI: Increases the healing you receive from Vampiric Touch and Sap vitality by x amount.
Talent 2: From darkness comes light NYI: Your damaging over time effects have a chance to reduce the cast time and mana cost of flash heal by 50%, stacking up to 2 times.
Talent 3: Void shift

Row 3: Utility.
Talent 1: Void tendrils NYI: Roots all nearby targets with void tendrils, rooting them in place for 20 seconds or until the tendrils are killed (8 second in pvp). 30 second cooldown. Instant cast.
Talent 2: Psychic horror
Talent 3: Mind Bomb

Row 4: Quality of Life
Talent 1: Misery
Talent 2: Concentrated will: Mind flay is now castable while moving
Talent 3: Horrifying visions (NYI): Auspicious spirits generate x amount of insanity.

Row 5: AOE damage
Talent 1: Halo NYI: 2 second cast, 1 minute cooldown. Release a halo of pure shadow energy around you, healing allies by x amount and damaging enemies by y amount.
Talent 2: Misery loves company (NYI): Your Mind blast and Lashing shadows now deal 50% of their damage to up to two other targets afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain and also apply their respective effects on them.
Talent 3: Share the pain: Your Auspicious spirits now explode upon impact, dealing x amount of damage to all enemies within 6 yards.

Row 6: Damage boost
Talent 1: Thought harvester (NYI). When you fully channel a mind flay, you gain 5% haste, stacking up to 3 times. Lasts for 20 seconds.
Talent 2: Power infusion NYI: 2 min cooldown, instant. Infuse your target with power, increasing their damage and healing by 20% for 15 seconds.
Talent 3: Final word (NYI): When your Shadow word: Death fails to kill the target, it increases the damage of your next mind blast or Lashing shadows by x amount, stacking up to 2 times.

Row 7: Rotation changer.
Talent 1: Shadow Word: Insanity (NYI). Instant cast. Consumes your Shadow word: Pain on the target, dealing x amount of shadow damage. Can only be used when there is less than 6 seconds remaining of the duration of Shadow Word: Pain
Talent 2: Collapsing star (NYI). Instant cast, 3 minute cooldown. Conjure a star in the target location which radiates light around it, dealing x amount of damage to enemies. The star is targettable by the priest, and can be overloaded with shadow damage. Upon overloading, the star collapses, dealing a burst of shadow damage to all enemies within 20 yards radius.
Talent 3: Fading Sanity: Increases the insanity generation of your spells by x %, and allows you to store two empowerments instead of one.

5) Rotation examples

Single target (opener)

  1. Shadowfiend (on cooldown).
  2. Vampiric touch
  3. Mind Blast
  4. Shadow word: Pain
  5. Devouring plague
  6. Mind flay
  7. Lashing shadows

And so forth.

The idea is to get your insanity rolling as quickly as possible. After that, you should try and get in as many lashing shadows as possible to keep your dots rolling, refreshing them as often as you can as well as mind flaying whenever you got nothing else to use. This example assumes you have no talents select, and obviously the order changes according to that, as well as according to the situation.

Aoe:

  1. Shadowfiend
  2. Multidot if possible
  3. If less than 3 targets, use Mind blast on cooldown.
  4. If 3 or more targets and they are close enough for cleave, use mind sear.
  5. Vary the use of cascading shadows and Lashing shadows: If the targets are far apart, it’s worth using cascading shadows on every opportunity as you won’t be able to refresh the dots effectively with lashing shadows. If they are clumped together, it’s worth swapping between Cascading Shadows and Lashing Shadows to keep your dots rolling.

These are also subject to change, based on the talents you choose.

6) Conclusions.

With this suggestion, I tried to take a holistic look at what seems to have worked with shadow priests in the past and the present, and mixed in some new stuff. At the same time, I’ve tried to offer abilities and talents to the spec that make it resemble more of a priest or more of a shadowcaster, depending which one you prefer. Additionally, I’ve tried to design the talent rows that you can choose, based on your preference, whether you want to focus on passively creating more damage, micro managing your character, or focusing on the bigger procs of your spec.

In other words, I’ve attempted to create a shadow specialization that can be customized based on player preference, whichever iteration you seem to have liked most.

Additionally, there could be glyphs to change the appearance of your spells.

Thanks, hope you like it. Please leave your comments and thoughts below.

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If they remove void form I might go back to sp, used to love it. They can make the insanity source somewhat like moonkins astral power imo

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Did you just reinstate this post? I swear it was deleted earlier…

Anyway, will take a look after food. Reserving post.

Anyway, seems pretty comprehensive, a nice little hypothetical / wish list, but as far as feedback goes “Do it exactly like this” will fall on deaf ears, though there’s a few things I would like to see moving forward from this.

Problems though,

How visually are you representing spell empowerment, does every ability have an “empowered” mirror, or is there an ability that costs resources that applies the empowerment to the next thing you cast? Both of those options are cumbersome and I can’t see a quick fix that keeps the ability to choose and time your empowerments.

Mobility / movement efficiency without concentrated will is awful. Every single thing except SWP is hard casted, compared to live where every 3rd global is instant. Movement and target heavy are rarely if ever mutually exclusive and its not a choice I want to have to be making.

Shadow word insanity existed for a patch, exactly as you have it, in MoP. Widely regarded as the worst talent shadow has ever had, and was removed swiftly afterwards.

Shadowfiend is also hideously dull, given the stupidity of pet AI, especially totem / guardian AI. You could easily do away with this, replace it with devouring plague, and given empowered SWP a different name. I doubt anyone would actually be sad to see shadowfiend go.

Giving shadow access to void shift, talented dispersion, greater fade, spectral guise, and desperate prayer is also (While a lot of fun) waaaaaaaaay too much.

Talent row 1 mentioning leap of faith means you’d need to learn leap at level 15 or earlier, which is a recipe for trolling ad nausea.

PI being usable on other players is a very slippery slope.

Thought harvester appears more tedious than enjoyable.

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Hey there! OP here on alt, thank you for the feedback.

How I personally visualized it happening is that once you reach the cap, all the said abilities that can be empowered light up (in addition to displaying the now EMPOWERED tooltip info on them), in addition to the player getting a shadowy icon atop their HUD that indicates that an empowerment is available. This has 2 purposes:

  1. The lighting up practically shows for people what abilities can be empowered and
  2. The icon shows the current amount of empowers available (in this case, it’d be 1.)

The idea is that you want to use your empowerment as soon as you get one- Which one of the possibilities you choose is up to you, however.

The idea I have with the talent system I proposed is that you could choose to have a more turret-like playstyle or movement style playstyle- Each with their pros and cons. But I understand your concern, though I think that the issue could be fixed with number tuning (e.g. how often you get a shadow empowerment) or build resources- Both SW:Pain and Vampiric touch after all in this iteration are intended to generate insanity from the dot damage as well as the initial tick, though I’m unsure if it came across clearly.

Alternatively, the mind flay thing could be a passive ability instead of a talent. But, I do not quite frankly think it is healthy for the game (like most casted abilities on the move, as Cata showed, particularly in PVP context).

Really? I myself really liked it, and was quite happy that they brought the iteration (not really but kind-of) into warrior rend in WoD: MEaning that your dot dealt steady damage, but a burst of damage at the end of its duration. It’s also another instant cast option, and I could see a lot of use for it especially in smaller environments with dots falling off back-to-back like m+ and arena.

Either way, if the talent would be hated by the playerbase I’d of course consider changing it to something else.

I actually really like shadowfiend which is why I even went as far as to turn it into the mindbender cooldown- I think it’s a cool thing to have an actual physical dot on your enemy that is applied by a guardian which you can’t dispel or interrupt, and I have never had issues with the pet AI, or at least I haven’t noticed it. I like it.

You have to put this into the context of unpruning, though. There are other classes that I envision should also be getting a lot of their old stuff back (e.g. Warriors, shield wall, enraged regeneration/second wind, banners, etc). More importantly, they are really requested and wanted back abilities and I think by placing them correctly in the rows while also properly unpruning/designing the other classes, it’s not too much to ask.

I know. That’s the reason I want it to be a thing lmao. Speaking of which, in my ideal world hunters would be getting back their old aspects (including aspect of the pack).

I’m a bit chaotic-neutral, yes.

It’s been like that majority of the game- And it hasn’t broken the game. It certainly could, but that comes down to number tuning I feel, the ability itself feels fine.

A lot of the talents rows are intended to have synergies between them- Such as the aforementioned mind flay on move and this one. If you want to be more mobile, you might also want to consider having more passive haste so you can focus on other stats.

Perhaps it is my PVP view/thought on the game that skews me quite heavily that way rather than looking at raiding, but I do believe that things could be done.

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Now THIS is a bible of text

+1 for the time you took out of your day to make dis

… Shame i cba to read it

This was ment as a joke btw, sorry if it came off as mean-spirited

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So its just a bar you fill, and when you fill it the next spell you cast is empowered and you fall back to 0? So you’ve got no choice over when you use empowered abilities, unless you want to stand there doing almost nothing. I’m personally not a fan of this, the big thing I look for (And see in every other spec) in a resource system is the freedom to use it how and when I please.

That didn’t come across, thankyou for the clarification, though I do have to say there’s no real way to be “efficient” with this base rotation you’ve created. Shadow is currently one of the most movement efficient dps specs in raiding (As far as what you lose for moving, as long as you’re doing it right) because of how little power resource generation often has, as well as how many instant casts we have.

While I don’t particularly feel that void bolting every 3 globals is very true to the core designs of shadow over the past decade, I do think moving back to something as rigid as what you suggest while fight design has moved so far forward isn’t a good idea.

Then you are certainly one of very few. While, as you’ve said, the idea of a dot “last ticking” for good damage is interesting, having to handle it manually in a game like WoW is tedious.

If it doesn’t have a cooldown, how do you successfully work out a cut off for when the ability should be usable. How do you make sure the global you spend on it is even worth using, whilst also not making it so it’s good to intentionally cut every dot short at x seconds. These are all the problems that cropped up when it was initially suggested, and when it went live they were all far from solved.

WoD rend is cool though (If a little dull within the context of WoD warrior but thats another story).

Even at the peak of abilities in WoW, shadow had less defensive cooldowns than this for rated pvp. Desperate prayer makes no sense to have, unless you want to re categorise it as a core priest spell (Which I actually dont mind).

PI was made available to shadow in MoP, by which time it had already been made self cast only.

We have this in PvP, full channeling mind flays for a benefit is something we do but it’s really not something that’s particularly enjoyable by design. Forcing people to use their filler more isn’t particularly enjoyable, and if this is in fact not the case and shadow would be full channeling mind flays in your intended design all the time, then it’s just a 15% passive haste buff which (While absurdly strong) barely qualifies as a talent, and has historically been bundled in with some sort of Nature’s Swiftness talent as a passive bonus.

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I like some of the ideas, not all of them but some are good.

The main problem i have with shadow priest is mostly the ramp up time, especially in aoe, i wish there was something to spread my dots faster when mobs are grouped together.

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Essentially yes- The idea is that it’s just a bar you fill, and then you get to choose what ability you want empowered and in an ideal situation you want to have made that decision before the bar even fills according to the situation- The abilities are also quite self-explanatory, so it’s no so much of a idea about “standing there doing nothing”, but rather promoting a really fast paced “click when light up” play., which is why all the empowered abilities are also instant cast.

I was toying with the idea of having more “bars” to fill, but I felt it’d be too similar or really identical to the way how the shadow orbs worked, and having seen the shortcomings of that system I opted for this approach instead.

You are however right that yeah, it is not so much of a resource management system but rather a resource optimization system, similar to how I suppose elemental shaman maelstrom works, except that you don’t get to pool it but rather use it whenever possible. This is however a conscious choice from my side.

That is 100% fair and I understand your PoV, however I think that for movement heavy encounter designs you could get away with passive resource generation with some talent choices in the rows quite well and although you are right that there’d be no void bolting in this iteration, you have to remember that you also have one more dot to play with, and also instant casts, particularly with cascading shadows which should compensate for the hardcasting of mind sear/flay, vampiric touch and mind blast. I’m also unsure if it is really a class design fault per-say but encounter design problem specifically, but alas, it is too complex a question to answer thoroughly from my part.

Now that you are pointing out these things, perhaps you are right. Though I think you could potentially get away with it, I think that the ability messes quite badly with the way how I intended the spec to work around dots, procs and empowerments.

I’ll see if I can come up with something more interesting for the final row, which is really intended to change up/enhance your rotation in a way (with collapsing star being the big big burst build-up choice, Fading Sanity being the easy passive choice like Legacy of the void while also opening up the chance to store more empowerments.

You’re not wrong, but as I said, I want to enhance the spec’s self-sustaining nature, and with right number balancing (and unpruning of all the classes, really), I think that the class can safely get away with the things I mention. Desperate prayer is also a core priest ability ( at least in this iteration ), which was another one of the goals to make the priest feel “priestly” again, and you see some of the talent interactions and choices showcasing this.

It’s also intentional that this iteration of the spec isn’t identical with the past iterations of shadow priest: It’s (attempting) to take the best parts from both past and present shadow priest design and mold them together into what the spec could be at best. Whether that is the case or not is a whole another question that (you) and others have to answer.

I’m aware, but I feel it’s such an iconic spell (with a long history in pre-Mop era of being usable on others), and then being available to also shadow priests (and it saw particularly a lot of use in arenas in legion!), that I felt it should definitely be included- And what makes it unique from all the other burst cooldowns like avatar or combustion or wings is that you can commit it not only to yourself but others, which in theory should mean that it should be weaker/last less long, which again I think can be achieved with number tuning. If that becomes unfeasible, the ability can of course be reduced to just a burst cooldown, but I don’t really think that it then justifies a talent spot anymore as I fundamentally don’t think shadow is necessarily supposed to be a burst spec (though how much exactly is considered burst is a whole another topic).

It’s worth noting that haste bonus effects are not unheard of and the 15% seems quite reasonable when compared to effects like into the fray of prot warriors and the frost DK talent which also increases your haste by the same amount. The buff also lasts for a long time (20 seconds), so it’s not intended for you to be mind flaying all the time, but rather just make your base mind flay more powerful/useful to your rotation rather than something you need to put more emphasis on than before.

While this itration doesn’t per-say make dot spreading faster (as that opens a whole new can of worms), it does offer a valuable tool in the form of talents + cascading shadows to give you more reliable and higher uptime with AOE, even if your dots fall off here and there.

Thanks for the replies guys, keep them coming.

Edit: Realized I had wrong tooltips on both Cascading shadows + thought harvester, they should now match my original intentions.

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The problem is also that usually for shadow, but also for many other specs, you have to sacrifice either your aoe or st damage, that is not something good in my book.

Let’s take for example misery, excellent for how shadow works in aoe, but literally provides no benefit in st, while on the same row there are talents that give you exactly that.

This is something in general i do not like, i wish there was a way to spread both of your dots to other targets as shadow, without the need to apply vampiric touch to every single one.

This is more of a general point though, as other specs also suffer from a similar problem.

For example, feral aoe does not have a aoe spender, which means in very big pulls, you basically use swipe, just an example, but there are a couple others.

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In the new iteration, Misery is paired with other two QoL choices, rather than the live where you have to make an absurd choice between it and dark void (ToF is not really worth is it?).

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Yea, but i personally do not like your suggestion on the voidform mechanic, i like that to be honest.

The ramp up time in aoe now that i think about it, is more of a problem because you have to apply all these dots one target at a time, in st the ramp up time is actually not that bad, it’s aoe the problem.

In general, there are some specs that could use some redesign.

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As said, while I understand your point regarding the DoT spreading, it opens a big can of worms.

Let’s say, for the sake of the argument that in a new iteration mind sear for example would automatically spread your dots to everyone it hits, or something similar.

This means that obviously the DoT damage of those individual dots has to be either artificially reduced not to make the AOE insane as the dots themselves are meant for micro-managing or ST use, or something similar. Striking a balance point then there makes balancing the damage of Shadow’s dots on ST vs AOE a nightmare , unless I suppose you used something like “ok dots applied by this aoe effect deal x amount reduced damage + generate x less resources”, which just feels cheap and you could just ask why not just bake that damage into mind sear passively?

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Because mind sear feels way worse to use, compared to having a lot of dots out on shadow priest, they could make it so your dots do more damage on the target you are selecting, for example, it could apply a buff on mind blast that lasts way more than you need that increases your damage done against the target with dots, if aoe would get too crazy with the current normal values.

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That’s also an option, but you have to remember the cost for it: I personally really like micro-managing my misery dots on a lot of enemies, and while it ends up doing absurdly good damage especially if I get to void erupt onto them and refresh my dots, it is undeniably clunky and there are diminishing returns to just how many dots can you feasibly maintain and still do the rest of your rotation.

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This, to me, is one of the core problems with shadow’s current design. The railroading / lack of rotational flexibility with what and when you press. You solve the what with this, but it leaves the when behind. It doesn’t have to be entirely as efficient to pool resources / empowerments as it does to use them as they come up, but leaving the rotation as “yeah you just gotta spam mind flay” if you dont use your empowerment immediately kinda bites.

For disc. Not shadow. I don’t want to be forced to take a talent to boost someone else’s burst damage, especially when the cooldown seems so suited to be stacked alongside other burst CDs (That we don’t even have) for maximum effect.

FDK gets melee attack speed, not haste. Haste affects global cooldowns, dot ticks, cast speed, and hasted cooldowns (Of which mind blast is one). Melee attack speed is just increased swings.

Also 15% haste for a tank is valued very differently to how it is for a dps.

That doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue though, the talent is dull fire and forget and puts more weight into a filler spell which is already pretty dull. I could see it on a first row, next to some other pretty simple options that empowered core spells in some way (Maybe a very simple additional spell too), but not at level 90, and not at 15%.

(Also while I remember, all row 1 talents are throughput increases. You can’t put mobility or utility spells on them)

If you make dots easily spread, you have to massively reduce their role within single target, which in turn moves damage into casted filler spells like mind flay (To prevent nukes getting too bursty) and forces a spec to be even less mobile.

ToF is the go to in a majority of raid encounters, just to clarify.

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I guess we’ll have agree to disagree on this one but I do not really understand why would you want to hold onto one of the empowerments? As said, they are supposed to be used when available- I do not see a scenario other than you simply being unable to use it where you would want to hold onto an empowerment, be it aoe or single target.

I think that ultimately it comes down to testing out what cycle should you be expecting with 0 haste and crit as a SP to get an empowerment. Maybe it turns out that empowerment should be generated every 10 seconds or so (assuming you have your basic dots up), though I see a scenario when in AoE that you would be looking at using an empowerment every 2nd cast, whereas now it is voidbolting every 3rd.

Okay you’re right ablut frost DK but there are specs like arms wsrriors that also have haste tied to a talent- Which consequently is either 10 or 20% haste.

To me Haste is a stat that is supposed to make your rotation more smooth and frankly I have never liked hitting “haste caps” on any classes- It feels like a cheap thing to do that instead of giving people a fun rotation from the get-go, you got to farm an arbitrary secondary stat in order to be tolerable to play.

I also have always liked mind flay as an ability- So I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Reduce our dependency on haste but also make the ability more engaging to use with talents that increase its usability.

Not in this iteration. Had I done a warrior talent row instead of a priest one, you’d see a similar structure.

I am consciously moving away from a design where self sustain/healing abilities for example are paired with mobility talents randomly.

17

I don’t think you’ve quite understood my point. I mean that you cannot have none damage talents on the first row of the tree. You get to level 15 and you learn one of three throughput talents. Always. Regardless of class.

18

No, I’m just saying that it is not an error that there are no throughput talents on level 15 row. I named the rows and it wouldn’t matter if I for example swapped the first row with the 4th one, because you’ll have access to them all the same.

19

Yes, you need to swap the 1st row with one of the others. Also you have 3 none throughput talent rows, something shared currently only by WW monk, which is fine, just something worth mentioning. The spec lacks one throughput talent choice over everything else currently.

Row 1 is at least one augmentation of a core ability, at least 1 basic active ability, and then another either passive augmentation or active ability.

After that, what specifically goes on each row is kind of inconsistent, though the last 2 rows are always throughput. The middle 4 can be in any order.

20

This is a conscious choise by me- In Shadowlands, all the classes would have similar talent trees (e.g. having a mobility row 1st, then healing, then utility, and so forth.

This ensures that every single class has some sort of presence in all of them. While it doesn’t for example mean that shadow priest will be as mobile as a demon hunter, now shadow priest isn’t at least a complete turret spec (save for moving with voidform).

So long as the abilities and talents are differentiated appropriately (e.g. Shockwave vs Legsweep), this will also not allow for homogenization, but will go back to the idea of “bringing the player, not the class”.

Now with that being said, if in your opinion classes -should- have a throughput row, which of the rows would you replace with it for example?

Also, I came up with some new suggestions for the concerns you brough up.

Removed.

Talent 1: Mind molder (NYI). Passive. Your single target mind affecting spells are now improved.
Mind blast: Mind blast now has two charges.
Mind flay: Mind flay can now be cast while moving.
Mind control: You can now control the minds of all creatures, and teaches you a new additional ability: Dominate mind.
NYI: Dominate mind. Instant cast, 5 min cooldown. Dominate the mind of a target humanoid, forcing them to act as your guardian for five minutes. The act of mind controlling disables this ability. Lasts 5 minutes. Can not be used on players.

Additionally:

Removed.

Talent 2: Purification (NYI). Dispelling now removes up to 2 magical effects at once.