(RANT) Shadow Priest

Classes Priest
1

Imagine making a void themed expansion, and once again completely missing the ball on Shadow Priest.
Coming from a mainly PvP perspective, the Spec is closed to unplayable - even considering if we got massive number buffs - i just don’t see how you can save the current version of SP from the melee lobbies and insane amount of micro CC and mobility .

I feel like there are two Specs that blizzard always managed to mess up, that being shadow and enhancement.
Am i just cooked and washed, or is whomever is designing /tweaking SP completely incompetent?

Talked with a few SP discords - pretty much everyone agree that the spec feels horrible to play, unrewarding etc.

Guess its another expansion where i just do storyline, dabble in some arenas if there are any xmogs i want ( which there is not currently, since pretty much all the season 1 sets look absolutely horrible )
and then after that i just unsub again.

I could list a trilion different ideas about tuning down PI and stuff , to allow for buffs other places - or even just rotational changes, but noone is listening so why bother? ( after all we have been asking for these changes since forever )

Someone fire whomever is designing SP ( And enhancement for that matter )

  • Sorry for the rant, lets hope for meaningful changes soon.
3 Likes
2

It can be an extremely challenging specialization to play, I had mained it for several seasons and outplayed very good players consistently to win games, go on win streaks and increase rating yet still I simply cannot break past 2200CR, in 2v2 or 3v3.

When looking at 2200+CR Shadow Priests, I do not notice huge differences for there to be such complications with the class. They have one of the best kill shots in the game which has been ruined for me completely, I even changed specialization because of it.

The void themed expansion does suggest Shadow Priest would dominate throughout and you must remember it is only early days. They are also using shadow spells which means the void may be able to break away slightly to not favour Shadow Priests.

As soon as they introduced [Void Torrent] I was ready to be able to seriously one shot a player with three dots, a pet and crits from the full cast, yet…still it was no where near to a Frost Mage, for example; [Glacial Spike] and [Frost Bomb] combination.

Slightly off-topic in some of my response but it may be possible for you to still find a way to make the class viable for you. I mean, have a play with the talent builds or worst case change class.

Enhancement in player vs player seems to me like you MUST be in a well coordinated team who have played with each other for a significant amount of time, not… I’m rolling Enh let’s go. Turbo is literally the only comp that seems to work. After playing the spec I can only give credit to it, it is a really enjoyable spec and if they wanted to tune it into meta it wouldn’t be too difficult to do so.

3

I agree shadow (and priest class in general) is not in the healthiest form for number of reasons, but my own experience was not that miserable.

Issues I would like to see addressed:

1) Heavy emphasis on casting
It is not an issue on itself, there are also classes which tend to cast a lot, but we have little tools which would enable us to cast efficiently. Voidweaver allowing cast Void Torrent while moving is step in good direction, but it is just for one hero talent.
Archon on the other hand has to cast Halo. Given the crucial role of that spell in Archon’s design, I believe it should be instant at least for this hero spec.
We also have to cast our CDs - Voidform/DA. The only other caster who needs to do that is Arcane mage, but for them, Arcane Surge is tied with big nuke.
What I would personally love is removing cast time for Voidform/DA and Halo. Cast time on these abilities only adds unnecessary delay in our bursts and adds yet another means to counter us, without any real tools to defend us.

2) Mobility
Yes, everybody knows how that our mobility sucks. Feathers look fine on paper, but in practice, they are just not effective mobility to rely on.
I am personally fine with having low mobility, but complete lack of any tools for it often leads to very miserable experience.
Without giving us new mobility spells, I think we would definitely need at least slow/root/knockback protection. If we can’t zoom around battlefield, at least make us harder to lock down. We already have Phantasm, so Fade frees us from slows, but that alone is very clumsy, as we often get slowed a second after. What I would do is to make Phantasm sort of our personal Freedom for few seconds. Another solution would be feathers preventing our movement speed being reduced below 80% while active.

3) Identity
Over years and specificaly in DF, Shadow become amalgamation of various themes spec had over years, with the idea of “build your own shadow priest”. Now we have some old god themes, some vampiric themes, some old school pure shadow themes, some psychic powers and now also cosmic void.
It is a mess. I really don’t understand how inflicting pain, attacking mind, summoning eldritch aberrations, spreading plagues and opening cosmic rifts mix well together. I would very welcome thematic consolidation of shadow priest. It may seem as minor thing, but I believe that with clear spec design will come better mechanical spec design. Just look at Arcane mages - they get similar thematic pruning and their gameplay experience was improved in the process.

4) Too many utility in our spec tree
I believe having utility spells in a spec tree is not a bad thing on itself, but as for shadow, the way our tree is structured, it is very punishing for us to take all utility.
What I would like to see is moving Psychic Horror into a class tree as a choice node with Chastise, which would free a point for in class tree for Holy priests too. Holy would still prefer Chastise (with a talent in their spec tree to improve it to a stun), shadow would still prefer Psychic Horror and discipline would have new choice of CC. Win win here.
I would also add an interrupt into a class tree with Shadow having option to upgrade it to silence in their spec tree if they need to and move it to a position in a spec tree where we can avoid it.

As for Priest class in general - I really hope we will get revamp soon, especially for our class tree, which is ancient and outdated.

1 Like
4

I think SP’s problems are twofold:

A) It’s designed with a mindset that simply doesn’t agree with modern wow.

What I mean by this for example is that you need to cast so many things. Thing is, casters should be casting things- But only seemingly 2 specs (Sp and demo) are forced to do it, the others don’t need to and in fact their instant cast builds and multiple spell schools even encourage you not to cast. Ele shaman, current destro, affli, frost mage, boomkin and alö the healer specializations come to mind.

By all means, make casters cast again. Diminish the importance of instants, make casters stand still etc, but apply ut -universally- across all the classes. It feels like we are being singled out for no valid reason.

And before anybody jumps on this saying “but SP has been s tier in x content the past few months!!” Yeah well survival hunter was numerically the best spec in Legion nighthold and yet nobody played it because it was god damn attrocious to play.

I would trade away being high in numbers and damage any day any moment for a modern, smooth gameplay where my Mind blast hits as hard as it used to back in the day, where SW:D hits like an execute, our dots are worth something and aren’t easy to dispel, and we have tools vs melees other than “lol just fakecast and tank it”.

B) Related to above, there are too many glaring pain points in the class in general.

  • It has no burst mobility whatsoever.
  • MD nerf due to m+ was never compensated for in pvp.
  • Flash heal heals 7% of your total HP rn.
  • Far too many 2 point talents, more than any other class in the game.
  • We were promised rework for DA, we never got it.
  • Power infusion tax (just remove it).
  • Capstone talents very weak proportional to their cost.
  • silence or a kick should be baseline in class talent tree.
  • Many of our abilities feel extremely disconnected and low-impact because we have so many of them. E.g. power word shield vs flash heal, void torrent vs mf:i, too many competing secondary stats (haste / masyery vs versa (pvp) vs crit (apparitions), shadowfiend not being a playstyle priests want, nor is it particularly intereating.

You could delete void torrent, halo, pw:s, shadowfiend, crit build for apparitions etc and you’d probsbly improve the class massively. Make mf:I and ms:i instant cast (mf:i summons an eyestalk to channel the mf:i for you), and make the idols offer something exciting and you got a solid spec.

The class has lots of good things going for it, mind you and it is not unplayable by any means. But the amount of work you need to put in to get the same results as other classes is disgusting. And no, the answer isn’t “just reroll”, I simply want my class to be modernized like all the other specs.

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5

Exactly. SP just feels like from different game. With the amount of mobility and CC in PVP I dont understand why SP has to hardcast everything.

Ok let SP cast everything but then it should be really rewarding. Its obviously start of new expansion but even now there are classes that can dmg 80 % of your hp before you even do anything. The fake cast dance into full CC into dying quickly while unable to move is not fun. Its pure masochism and makes me regret purchasing another expansion and gametime.

I always thought Spriest is about medium consistent damage while preparing the burst…

Not talking about theme of SP. When I read Voidweaver I was expecting throwing rifts and shyt. Not spawning an itteration of mages frozen orb. (I dont like the design of entropic rift personally).

Is it even worth complaining and suggesting on forums?

6

Nah you cant design a spec like that. If you create a spec that takes far higher skill to play but as a reward it just deals more damage or is omega broken because of it, you throw all balance out the window and introduce a meta where fresh players get stomped by more skilled players and they just end up quitting the game.

7

hmm thats a good point. Obviously it couldnt be that strong but I see where you heading.

In that case there is absolutely no reason to cast everything :smiley:

8

Well it does seem like Blizzard decided that getting of a nice cast chain, or casting anything whatsoever is not what they want. any good ranged DPS spec is almost purely instant cast - almost like old MM hunter, run around and spam instant cast.

But yea, i dont know who is working on SP, but they clearly got some of that funky mushroom.

I love specs having different feelings / bringing different stuff to the fight - be that pve or pvp. But all classes almost play the same now, with zero identity.
And then you have specs like SP that are playing wow Classic hardcore, hard casting to deal mediocre damage… while everyone else are playing smash fairy dragons warcraft 2000 ultra pro, flying all over shooting happy sparkles out of thier behindes.

Anyways, good responses all around from people. i agree with almost 100% of it. Cheers.

1 Like
9

A caster must cast.

That said, when a Warrior and Death Knight are stunning/interrupting everything you do (7 stuns/interrupts in total - a quick guess) cast you may as well not be in the game. The instant cast spec had/has some serious potential, it creates a class that involves a skill others are not concerned with and if you don’t like it or cannot play it. Then they offer a talent build which is focused more on casting.

10

bro are you cooked? .
You cannot currently spec into any " instant cast spec " that has any value.
And litteraly noone enjoyed playing the shadowword death with mindbender burst thing, even if it was super overtuned for awhile.

Currently there is one talent setup that is leaps ahead of any other combination, and you are trolling if you are not playing it. Currently Shadow just does not feel good to play, with the options we have. … well lack of options, there is one build and thats it.

popping Bender and spamming PW:Death was an awful playstyle, both for yourself and game balance.

I LIKE CASTING, but when you have no mobility and everything stops your cast constantly - ontop of having one of the highest ramp up times in terms of burst and regular dps. Then you have a edited by moderator spec =)

On my Destro warlock spec’ed into the wither hero talent, i can instant cast my immolate/ wither. which procs instant cast, does insane damage and gives me resources.
I litteraly can just kite with portal and teleport, spam instant damage. And god forgive my enemy if i get 2 secs to cast, because then i got INSTANT burst. With all the generated stuff from wither i will pop 3 chaosbolts and an infernal together with hellcaller burst ability so quickly up my enemies pooper that they regret ever stopping to train me - no ramp time needed.

Now compare that to Shadowpriest. we have to cast all of our dots, which is not allowed when you are getting trained by 2 melee’s, we have zero mobility ( feather is not mobility lol, 60% increased movement speed can be nice - but you are always sitting with a 50% slow at minimum. so you basiclly just get to run at normal speed )

IF my teammates somehow manage to peel two edited by moderator brained fury warriors off me, it takes me around two globals to Dot Targets up. Then i have to set up my burst which is Form which is casted, then Torrent which is a casted, and then i further have to ramp with Mindblast / Dev plague . It is true that you currently do decent damage if you get those 8ish seconds to freecast. But there is just no way thats happening in an Arena in the current meta, since any sort of CC - be that micro or a full kidney will instantly ruin your go.

I still plan to play a shadowpriest, but i am so annoyed that we get left in the dirt like this - i could to some degree live with it if our Dots and normal rotation put out insane amounts of pressure, but currently outside of burst our damage is looking very weak.

I just don’t see how they think SP is gonna be enjoyable without a rework, i expect at a minimum to see damage increases. But that’s not gonna help how awful the spec feels in this meta - due to the issues mentioned above. Until these issues are addressed , i can only see SP being viable in premade top combo’s - where you just bring the SP for Power word infusion and dispells / the fear silence comb - which is a edited by moderator horrible idea to design around ( Also PI needs to get removed ASAP, or atleast be moved into holy/disc tree’s, it can’t be real that we for expansions in a row have been balanced around the idea that … oh but SP have PI, so we can’t give them anything else or allow them to deal any damage )

There are good things to say about Hero talents, i adore the voidweaver theme - it’s just not very good.

Peace.

11

Fun fact mage they actually did a good thing this expack they can’t die not even by a shadow priest now Fact.

their shield does more absorb than any priest spell your constantly on 20% health. . . devs are craptastic for this crap iteration for priest :stuck_out_tongue:

also

just make shadow spells like DA VF instant cast and halo too then give us casting while in dispersion like paladin bubble there fixed pvp and pve for you.

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If you were unable to do anything against two aggro melees, such as double Fury Warrior as you suggested, then an instant cast build would allow you to do something. I tried the build immediately in the DF exp and noticed it wasn’t quite as I would have hoped in terms of damage, but of course resolved several issues vs double melee composition. Now the opportunity to play the build has been removed and it is simply down to your own ability and team mates awareness to ensure the Shadow Priest is getting maximum damage output with casting as well as whilst utilising the useful spells that that available.

Shadow Priest is not and will never be a Mage or Warlock, what the class offers is unique and more than enough to do extremely well in both dungeon’s and raid’s as well as rated player vs player combat, at a lower or higher tournament level.

13

okay you are cooked confirmed.

It’s not about being a mage or a warlock. obivously duh.
you tried Death Word bender build in early DF - and you say it wasnt what you good enough damage was ? you do realize that i quite litteraly oneshot anything right?..

And no shadow priest offers nothing unique right now, the utility and supportive capabilities that SP used to have are long gone and outshined by other specs.
The only real thing they back is mass DS and PI , personally i hate PI ( like most PVP’ers ) and Mass DP is not unique anymore, since plenty of other classes got the ability to remove immunties now.

I don’t know what you are talking about " instant " cast build , and if you think SP is in a good place you are absolutely cooked.

  • i mean don’t take my word for it, Staphsp, Faded theo litteraly all of the old priest multiglads/youtubers are saying the samething. StaphSP straight up said he was just gonna play Cata instead.

SP needs a way to get casts/damage off, just like Destro and afflic have gotten in the recent years - because they did NOT always have the capabilties, they were added due to complaints about being trained down without being able to play the game.

SP’s design is really not good right now = and a lot of it has to do with mobility and CC creep on all other classes.

let’s forexample take Destro as an example - since its the only other class i’ve been above 2.2k on.

on the Defensive and mobilityside, if you just purely think outside of the fact that all thier basedamage is instant cast, be that wither currently or the rest of thier tree.

  • they have higher dps, they arguably bring better utility with port, MS … like in general insane utility for the team,

anyways, even if you look away from thier mobility and utility. they also have a wall that makes them immune to kicks = atleast that way you can always wall, trinket a stun and get some casts off with infernal , which usually nets a kill.

Point is, shadowpriest have plenty of good flavor and theres a lot of the spells i love.
But the talents are legit made by a mentally challenged chimpanzee.
It would be a fine tree if we were playing Pre bfa before all the insane mobility and utility creep… but alas.

Blizzard can do two things RN. They can overtune our damage ( which is the most likely outcome )
Or they can actually get thier sh*t together an adresse the issues the SP’ community have been raising for the past 3-4 expansion .

EDIT: Just read some of your other comments; it is clear that you don’t understand the issues; and you focus is just on " giving SP a blink, would be to magey " .
Here’s the fact, if you have no way to Kite / no mobility - and you are cooked if you think Feather is mobility, it litteraly does nothing but make you move at normal speed in an Arena match. - you are usually sitting with a 50% slow on you

Then you need to make up for it with immunities, self heal/peel = basiclly the way the old Destro warlock used to play, a massive hulking chaosbolt throwing draintank.

  • SP used to do something along the same but with Leech on damage and self heals.

SP used to have really good offheal, peel and low CR Fade along with other things that made them really hard to focus down in pvp. But for some reason we’ve lost most of these things, whilst other classes consistently have been gaining CC and mobility, hence slowly making our allready outdated spec worse and worse.

I mean a few quick fixes would be to give us a way to apply or dots like afflictions JINX . no cast, just all dots up with one global. same goes for Void form / DA . small stuff like this would quickly help quite a lot.
Then you could add someway to kite; i dunno a rift tear that make you push your enemies away and slow them - if you want to avoid giving them blinks. If not you need major defensives buffs or major buffs on selfheal.

Anyways, i don’t think you actually understand what the issue is…
go check out some of Staphsp’s latest videos and see his take on it, he words is very nicely
" it just feels really bad man "
and that’s coming from someone who’s been consistently rank 1 on sp for years on years …

anyways gl on… whatever

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Good, because I don’t want it to be.
So instesd of blink, give us spectral guise. Something to allow us to create burst distance.

And give us back some instants. Everybody else has them, why not us?

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15

they shouldnt change anything, I am starting to enjoy 3 sec window in 3v3 after enemy use all their CC and I manage to bait all kicks. Following 3 secs of activating burst rotation into another 10-15sec CC and kick baiting again. Peak gaming experience.

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16

It is when dungeons have a lot of mechanics taht requires you to move and long casts in pvp is just not fun cuz u gotta perma bait kicks or get kicked

couldnt explain it better myself

17

This!!! Lmao

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18

Shadowpriest is one of the few DPS specs I’d play but when I see their state I’d just roll heals.

19

then you logg paladin tank and do more damage than them and sustain more than them. And kite adds meanwhile they have everything hard cast :stuck_out_tongue: .

Worst part they took away from the game was Instant halo and Void form and Dark Ascension.

also why remove mind sear??

20

Bro had me spit out my coffee, haha so true.

Well, i mean all we can hope is we get the same treatment Retri paladin got in DF and get a rework. or atleast massive number tweaks and pvp talents that make us less of a punching bag.

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