Newest build SP thoughts(DF)

A lot of positive changes, build looks far better (at least to me) than from last week.

Some things I like:

– VT dispel protection returned and Mass Dispel once again removes potent magical effects. Glad to see it. Light’s Inspiration change feels much better than its previous HoT version(can use it prior to taking damage much better). For the shadow tree, while still some odd ones out, the pathing and direction feels better than before.

  • Pet path seem largely finished(tuning aside).

  • Second Mind Blast charge, thank you a lot! :pray:

  • Psychic Link and improvements to rot build/flay feels fantastic(though from a pvp perspective still much weaker than Deathspeaker).

  • The idols returned to proper capstone place(though still needs tuning).

  • Improved pathing in the general tree.

  • Mind Soothe feels better than ever.


Some things I don’t so much like:
– With the removal of Greater Fade(pvp), Shadowmend’s healing power and it’s HoT via Masochism was a godsend, this is no longer in the game, so with that in mind…

  • Flash Heal even with it’s modifier talent feels harshly underwhelming for Shadow.

  • Holy Nova still serves no purpose for Shadow at all, and with PoM gates a pretty good defensive, in Blessed Recovery(which I’m not sure how pve’ers will use, since it procs off being crit).

  • Words of the Pious and Surge of Light still affects Smite as shadow, in spite of earlier bluepost saying Mind Flay would override Smite for Shadow.

  • Coalescing Shadows being consumed by Spike, makes for an odd interaction when you’re trying to pump up Blast, but also need Spike(Mind Melt), to power it up.

  • Voidform damage reduced by 10% while replacing Shadowform, effectively makes it grant + 0% more damage. This iteration is closer to Hungering Void being baseline, but with the flat 10% reduced damage to Vform itself, I’d like to see the 10% dmg to our target from Void Bolt, back.

  • Void Shield severely lacking in what it could be. Possible to merge that and Mental Fortitude in some manner? Let the shield scale up beyond it’s initial power as long as damage is done. :thinking: :pray:

  • Tithe Evasion, while feeling much better in the general tree, still feels mandatory if you pick up Deathspeaker. To prove my point, not taking Tithe Evasion means(at level 60) with each Deathspeaker proc, you’ll be doing between 12k and 24k(on crit) dmg to yourself. This can easily proc multiple time in a short span, and woe be it gets your target below 20% where you can use it again. In an “ideal” scenario, you can quickly cast SW: Death 4 times in a row, and say all of them crit, you just did 96k dmg to yourself, at level 60. Even with Tithe Speaker, that’s still nearly 25k damage to ourselves.


Overall I feel it’s a very positive change from previous iteration, though some obvious things still need fixing and tuning(looking at you, idols). Also, I’d still like to see something take Vampiric Embrace’s place in the general tree(Vampiric Dominance perhaps?). As far as I’m aware, it adds another button to our healer brothers and sisters who are worried about bloat, while also not doing a whole lot. I’d much rather VE become something unique, that shadow brought to a group, or something of the like.

Shadow Crash and Dark void still fulfils very similar roles, and with Crash being affected by Misery, the roles blur. Would it be possible to just make Crash affect 8 targets?

The two thing I’m least a fan of in this build, is Voidform change, and removal of Shadowmend. Could we kindly have Improved Flash Heal be replaced by Shadowmend for Shadowpriests? If not, Flash Heal needs a shadow specific buff of some kind, to mimic what we lost with Mend removal. Hard casting a heal that takes 20% of my mana pool, and even with Improved Flash heal talent, doesn’t even heal me for 10%, feels a bit harsh.

4 Likes

Big yes it barely heals anything, and its terrible for mana efficiency in pvp and pve

This is a bug so I wouldn’t worry much

Yes Mind Spike eating the shadow charges ruins the ramp and potential of being able to hit insane hard hiting MB on targets, only MB should eat the charges IMO

I dont agree with this Voidform for the most part feels fine for its power level and whats its supposed to do, Since its a abilty that is ment for massive burst on AOE since void bolt now keeps all dots constantly being refreshed on all targets and with it lasting the longer you dump insanity the better it gets unlike DA where its a single target burst CD on a short CD to make up for the fact you can easily get from my testing alone on 5 targets only 30-40 sec Voidform with 100% uptime on dots giving this more damage would be very risky I’d say, Maybe allowing main target to get debuffed again but the damage aspect back no if it means we lose the 25 insanity for each sec added.

This and Vamp embrace need buffs or should be gone

Its forced yes but the majority of shadow priest players for pve/pvp will take Mind games for how strong of a ability it is so its fine where its at but 75% reduction is a bit low still maybe 85% to avoid the possibility of spam procs killing you.

major problem is that by buffing Shadow Crash to a higher amount of targets hit you make Dark Void INFINITLY worse due to the fact that with misery shadow crash applies SWP anyway so why would you ever choose dark void over misery if this is the case as with VT you can have massive cleave damage from all of your targets getting hit by MB/MF/MS Unless they make Dark Void not have a hard aoe cap no shot they can buff Shadow Crash but then it makes Voidform in AOE even more insane from how many spirits that you could summon and increase the duration of voidform to legion levels with surrender to madness.

Make it Shadow/Disc only and make this talent effected by shadow coveant for disc for bonus effects or smart healing on a target and for shadow it grants whole party % leech and heals everyone for 20-40% of the priest damage done and on a high CD of 3-4 minutes boom powerful, fixes bloat by not giving holy more spells and makes Disc have more reasons to use shadow covenant.

1 Thing I’d add is allow halo/divine star to generate insanity for shadow so its worth pressing for aoe since its effect is beautiful

1 Like

Agree, if their plan is to make Vform an aoe cooldown, then this is fitting. Still a little sad that there’s no cooldown for rot builds though.

For this I was thinking more in line with merging them, since locks have something similar in Cataclysm.

aaand yes, to both of these. VE could be something interesting, right now it doesn’t do a whole lot for disc and holy, as far as I know. Current shadow also has a nigh obscene amount of instant procs, making an additional button(Halo/Divine Star) with no reason to be pressed, feel of little use.

I feel you are trying to make priest be way to much like aff lock when their is a huge difference of playstyle’s and tuning. Rot builds have never been a SP thing its has always been bit crits from MB and huge DP dot ticks unlike aff where they just rot enemies from more or less passive damage from their dots and they can accelerate the tick rate from talents more or less

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If you’re worried about vampiric embrace button bloat, it aligns with PI, and I have it macro’ed thus, plus trinket, and prismatic bauble. Because you gotta have 250,000G rainbow trails on your dark cloud. If it was off gcd it’d be easier to macro, but for now, it works with the 3 other things. When I think about it, it almost makes sense if the vampiric embrace did affect others, like, you PI and VE someone and now they are healing. But I prefer if it just had a group wide effect.

1 Like

Agree, don’t want to be a second warlock, but dots/channels have been important to us in one semplance or other since forever and we’ve always had a mix of both Blaster and Rot. In DF especially they seem to be bringing Rot back, in the form of Coalescing Shadows and Dark Evangelism buffing periodic damage, along with Mind Flay: Insanity, Screams of the Void, as well as C’thun and N’zoth Idols. Not to forget that Mind Flay and Void Torrent themselves no longer count as continuous instant damage, but periodic instead. Perhaps this all makes it to be enough, but currently DA only works on non-periodic, and Vform having no baseline damage increase, only serves to extend dots, which would cancel Flay/Sear channel, unless they make Vbolt castable while Flaying/Searing, or return Hungering Void’s damage to the bolted target.

Just seems odd to me, but who knows, maybe it’s enough. :person_shrugging:

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