This ability was cool and unique, and should have never been removed.
Shadow Priest talent tree is a mess and needs a rework - such as taking away so much focus from Mind Flay.
Remove Searing Nightmare.
Make Void Eruption actually matter and have impact.
And bring back Spectral Guise
Would love that as well, but doubt it will happen. Apparently they changed mindcontrol to a 2min cooldown aswell. Not sure if it’s intended or alpha bug.
I do like the talent trees, there’s lots of cool combinations to make.
I never liked it.
I recognize that it provided a useful mechanic in PvP, but besides that it didn’t really fill any gameplay niche.
At the end of the day, then it’s a pseudo form of Vanish, which in itself is weird. Why do Priests have stealth mechanics?! It never really seemed to fit the spec’s design and felt more like a case of Blizzard having to give Priests something out of obligation, but they already had everything, so… There was a period where that seemed to be Blizzard’s general design approach: Everyone has everything, but they still want more, so just give them random stuff. Here’s Spectral Guise. Now you can be a sneaky Priest!
There’s also the general design of the ability. It’s called Spectral. You’re a Shadow Priest. How does it even fit in?! It comes across way more as an Arcane Mage ability in its presentation.
I don’t want it back. I’m all for getting new stuff or shuffling old stuff out in favor of other old stuff, but I don’t want Spectral Guise.
It was not a pseudo-vanish. The image left behind would taunt targets, so it had multiple uses beyond PvP which added a bit of survability and fun gameplay. Shadow Priest is a shadow (no pun intended) of its former self. The spec is not fun to play and it’s very frustrating in both PvP AND PvE. It’s like they don’t know what to do with it, and it has remants of past iterations that don’t even make sense or have good interaction nowadays, like Void Eruption or Surrender to Madness.
In PvP you would typically use it as an escape mechanic. Guy is hitting on you? Press Spectral Guise and sneak away. Just like a Rogue using Vanish. And to me that’s just weird. It’s not my gameplay expectation when playing a Priest that I should be sneaky sneaky. It just doesn’t fit the design, in my opinion. I’ll play a Rogue if I want to sneak around.
In PvE it did have the whole taunt mechanic, but as I said, that’s not a gameplay niche, because we’ve always filled that mechanic with Shadowfiend + Fade. So Spectral Guise didn’t really do anything we couldn’t do already.
I think it’s fair enough to say that the spec could use some design tinkering because Blizzard don’t quite know what to do with the spec. But I don’t personally want Spectral Guise back, because that ability really did feel like Blizzard didn’t know what they were doing with the spec.
Except it has a counter, and killing the image would imediately take you out of the short duration stealth - and on top of it, you would not go far without mobility and with snares applied on you. Plus, it multiple uses beyond just sneaking away, like for example as an emergy button to stop a cast being made on you - like feign death.
Spectral Guise had more use than GF + Shadowfiend + you will need to have those CDs lined up, and take into consideration how long Shadowfied CD is (without Mindbender), and GF is useless cause the target will get back to you imediately
Well, having it back doesn’t mean you’d have to pick it up in the talent rows - so I don’t get why you don’t want it back just because you don’t like that ability, which, again, if well placed, it would be completely optional
That seems like a weird logic. I mean, then we might as well invent an ability called turd dropping, because if you don’t like it you don’t have to take it.
I kind of feel that what exists for the spec should fit within its overall design fantasy.
And for me a Shadow Priest has always been about melting faces.
You’re a tank and you grind your enemies down. Originally that consisted of stuff like Shadowform, Inner Fire, Power Word: Shield, Vampiric Embrace, and then lots of Mind Flay. And that to me is the core fantasy. You’re tenacious as all hell and your opponents just melt over time if they try to stick around too long.
And I personally feel that an ability like Spectral Guise drifts too far away from that gameplay fantasy. So I don’t want it. I appreciate new additions like Dispersion and Void Form, because it fits within that tanky ramp fantasy. Spectral Guise doesn’t. It fits more for an Arcane Mage where it’s about escaping and moving around and pew pewing on the fly.
Now that’s an actual weird logic.
You have Surrender to Madness, and you don’t pick it up. It would be a similar situation.
You play with San’layn, and I’d rather use dispersion or body and soul. Does that mean by your logic that those should be removed?
Goingo into a spectral shadowy form is within the shadow priest fantasy. Much more than whatever that’s they doing now, steering it towards old god stuff.
A shame shadow priest no longer does that, isn’t it? Resorting to dumb mechanics to do AoE dps cuz our AoE ability is trash. And not to even mention how single target damage has been nerfed into oblivion.
Hard disagree. Spectral Guise has nothing to do with arcane mage. It’s literally based in shadow damage/theme.
I think within the spec design that both Surrender to Madness and San’layn fits the fantasy. One feeds into the ramping nature of the spec, and the other enforces the tanking properties. Those are the two core pillars of Shadow Priest to me. And that’s what Blizzard should emphasize, if you ask me. I don’t want stuff that takes the spec in another design direction – even if it’s presented as optional – because it dilutes the core design fantasy.
There wasn’t anything shadowy about Spectral Guise. Like I said in my initial post, that’s one thing that irks me about it. Being spectral leans more toward the toolkit of an Arcane Mage with Mirror Images and Invisibility and Shimmer and so on.
If Blizzard wants to give me something as a Shadow Priest, then I expect it to be called something with Shadow or Void or Old Gods, and I expect it to be purple. Spectral Guise fits none of those criteria.
I have a Spectral Tiger mount, which is the origin of the whole “spectral” look in WoW. There’s nothing shadow about it.
Lore-wise there’s a case to be made for spectral implying a ghost or shade or similar, but then that leans way more toward Deathknights than Shadow Priests.
And if it’s more literal, i.e. a specter implying a shadow, then it’s a lot more related to Subtlety Rogue in design fantasy than it is to Shadow Priest. The Shadow in Priest is more tangible, like turning into a purple magical cloud with Dispersion.
This is the spell description:
It’s literally the most thematic spell Shadow Priests ever had. How is a spell which is based in shadow magic related in any way to mages, which use arcane invisibility, or DKs?
Anyways, lots of Shadow Priests beyond myself have been pleading to have it back, and if there’s a better chance to ask for it, that chance is now
I think they removed it for a reason, I very much doubt that it would come back. When it comes to PvP, spriest has alot already.
“Your shadow blurs into the darkness, leaving your true form behind.”
Sounds cool!
“As a shadow you are stealthed, but remain in combat. Lasts 6 sec or until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks.”
Doesn’t sound cool.
Like I’ve said a few times now, then personally, in my own humble opinion, I don’t want stealth mechanics when playing a Priest. I don’t associate that mechanic and playstyle with the fantasy of playing a Priest.
Fair be if you or others feel different. To each his own. I just don’t fancy it.
Absolutely. You’re not the first person to propose its return, and if there’s ever a time for it, then it’s certainly during an Alpha/Beta when Blizzard are revamping the talent trees. So who knows.
They removed lots of abilities, including blind for some rogue specs, and brought it back.
Same for multiple other spells for multiple other specs which were eventually brought back, not only in DF, but in SL and previous xpacks.
Not blind, gouge. But yeah, if all rogue specs have gouge again, we can have that. It was a fun ability and not even op imo.
I mean pre-DF. Not sure if it was once SL launched when it was brought back, but in recent expansions there was a time not every rogue had blind for a short while
Blind was always available for all rogue specs. They removed gouge from assassination and subtlety in legion, it’s now available again for all 3 rogue specs.
Nope.
Assa did not have Blind at Legion launch and was re-added to it on patch 7.1.5.
Here’s the changelog:
Ehm, I played assassination in Legion and I’ve always had blind. In case that I did misremember, I did a Google search and I literally can’t find a single thread about it.
Well, I’ve played a bit of rogue and my mate had a rogue as main, and I’m 100% sure there was a time at least one spec did not have blind for a short while.
And I thought it had been around BFA, but it was apparently in Legion. Time goes by fast.
And the changelog denotes it if you mouseover it:
Build 22758 states outlaw and sub
Build 23178 then states both and assa
I did see that, but I’m 99.9% sure that it isn’t correct. Blind being such an iconic rogue ability and very important in PvP, there would have been at least 1 thread about it you would think.
Anyways, I’m with you on getting our fun spectral guise back.