Celestalon I believe was the head of class Dev during legions development, and is the one who created voidform and surrender to madness. I think he’s the director of hearthstone but he may have since moved on from that also.
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I’m all up for either a sub - spec thing or 4th spec for Priest (which is unlikely), or ANYTHING at this point that would bring Void Form full game play back.
It is worth it in my opinion and the design itself would deserve to be in game as it was, as the original.
Celestalon did an awesome job, really unique and very clever-minded person. It would be amazing if he was working as a Shadow dev. up until now.
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Current ptr has 4 or 5 specs being tuned out of 36. Actually the fire mage ones remind me of the spriest ones, they have a load of %multipliers into combustion, kindling cdr is stat based as well as NF cdr rising with a conduit. They’ve built the spec badly and it may see nerfs every major patch too.
In bfa spriest got big nerfs every patch cos it was scaling out of control. Massive nerfs that gear solved. Of course CoI was partly to blame too.
This is the point, they couldn’t balance the scaling of the rising haste with no set time limit and had to massively nerf it every major patch. PI is just a 20sec flat buff thats easy to balance, it’s just a like powerful trinket.
I don’t get the point of this information? if old voidform is still here then it would be 5 or 6 specs being tuned out of 36?
you gotta be kidding, all that cdr cannot be compared to how old shadow priest was played cause there was no cd… it’s about maintaining the buff, what fire mage have to maintain?
because thats what happen if a spec outdamages every other dps unreasonably, tuning gonna happen regardless of class design… even current spriest got nerfed slidely on ptr, if priest scale good too, they gonna get big nerf.
I’m pretty sure Spriest started to be playable in 8.1, and then overpowered in 8.2 (like fire mage, boomkin and afflic now), that’s when they get big nerf in 8.3, so that’s just incorrect.
I think you missed my point, that statement just to show they do intend to keep old voidform mechanic, but the whole tool kit they provided is to serve the current voidform and would be overpowered if applicable to the old mechanic as well, the rework is some last minute planning that’s why it’s messy.
honestly, you should read all their notes on the rework, nothing indicates their fear of tuning…
We are really geting our wires crossed here.
I read your comment as saying all classes get tuning on a patch, i’m guessing thats not what you meant.
My point about fire mage is that it is going to scale out of control like spriest did because of the way the spec has been made for sl. I expect it’ll get nerfs every patch. It’s not just about the dmg its doing now its about the power in the conduits and leggos. It was poor at the start of the expac.
I don’t think they would admit to removing a spec because they couldn’t balance it, especially when similar specs work in other mmos. They went 2 expacs with spriest being a problem for them. They couldn’t make it work.
Won’t argue with this cause at this point we’re both speculating and are both fixed with our ideas 
I guess Fire mage situation is somewhat like spriest, and i’m not surprise if they got nerfed to the ground cause it’s not the 1st time… back in Legion, fire were doing great the 1st couple of patches, and then they fell off in 7.3. They went on to be pretty sh*t in the beginning of bfa and then dominate again in 8.3 and up until now. They are either broken or nothing =))) seem to have the same balance issue like old spriest, but the difference is they dont have a group of people demanding to remove anything, and the dev is okey with tuning them every patch =)))
If old voidform was the original design of a brand new spec instead of a rework of spriest, it gonna get the respect it deserve…
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The only time i remember shadow to be as broken as mages are was back in BFA inside zaqul realm which granted haste and shadow where kind of godlike because of their VE .
Now as about mages, there was never a class the be so absurdly broken as we saw mages to be with their top broken era being back in hellfire citadel if im not mistaken…
Well yeah, nobody is whining when mages are so OP because people got used to mages being the top tier ranged in pvp+pve at the same time. Which i find absurd.
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It’s not only mages, unfortunately. Good examples are also warlocks and hunters, although hunters are a bit debatable. Mages and warlocks were not touched for a very, very long time.
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Thats true but personally i think they are not as broken as mages simply because locks for example shine only in raiding. In pvp are not that good and in M+ they usually are… Auto decline 
As for hunters… Someone told me along time ago they are the A-B-C class of the game so everybody can play it, true or false? No idea since never played one 
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Good point about warlocks, yes.
Yes, hunters are like that, easy class. But honestly - which class is not easy to play right now? Nothing is really hard to play in the game. Play something close to perfect? Sure, takes some skill and dedication. But play something decently if you try a bit? It’s not very complicated.
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I just said what ive been told.
While people do say that WW is not that easy, i played it so much that i didnt feel any difficulty tbh. No idea if its easy now in SL but i dont see much changed.
Yeah, indeed.
I personally think that no class is really difficult to play correctly, just takes practice and dedication to do it right, but that may be just my opinion of course.
Yep agree.
Unless we talk about specs like Fdk back in WoD that i played it last time or DH back in BFA again because i didnt play them now.
They used to be 1-2-3 specs 
I will say i absolutely hated and still hate Voidform mechanically in all its iterations with every fiber of my being, void bolt and everything that comes with it, the very essence of the playstyle, because such playstyles come at the cost of class fantasy, class flavour - the DoTs, including mind flay, at least in single target terms. Devouring plague does somewhat mediocre damage, but jeez… Vampiric Touch and SW:pain are just laughable compared to what they used to be, now fillers that do practically no damage.
I want massive, juicy DoTs, juicy mind flays, not Voidform and spamming void bolt, for me, they feel completely out of place. The very existence of Voidform makes me vomit playing the spec, but i am old school, so what can i say, the old iterations of spriest felt satisfying, the DoTs meant something, they were the core of the spec and the damage meters. Sure Legion artifact had a trait that made DoTs do more damage the longer you were in Voidform, but it just wasn’t it, it didn’t feel right, they did nothing otuside VF, not like the old spriest iterations from Classic up to Warlords.
There was this one talent where each mind flay tick did increasingly more damage…was it in warlords or Legion, can’t recall anymore. Even though it was inferior, i always picked it because i absolutely loved the idea. Void Torrent feels good, that massive drain that just murders everything.
The only thing i find fine is Power Infusion, the only CD priests should have, as it was before.
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Dots meaning something or not isn’t really voidforms fault, bliz have nuked dots across the board for all specs. It feels like they think the games kinda outgrown the idea of multi dotting being a powerful niche, and now it just gets in the way of potential encounter design.
Also the stronger mind flay is the worse shadow will play in pve, straight up. You cannot build a spec around a high damage channelled filler any more.
Everything you said about dot is basically what affliction about. That’s the true dot class that requires you to manage like 5-6 dots, so maybe you want to get into that? even though they’re kinda bursty now, but every class has become like that to be functional in M+ (one of the reason they remove voidform, every class is reduced to a basic design for balancing purpose, but blizz still fail anyway and going with that is removing unique flavors out of the game)
For the fantasy argument, i really don’t get the hate here lol. Spriest before voidform existed as basically a spec that priest can switch to to deal some dmg, they don’t have any particular impact lore-wise, thematically they’re inferior to warlock- master of dark art and shadow magic. Voidform give priest a more concrete place and a more well-defined theme, using the deadliest magic from shadow school - void. I don’t know how you can hate that aesthetically?
It usually is actually. Any flat out damage increase means that damage in other areas needs to be reduced to prevent the overall damage from being too high, especially as it scales later down the line. That’s how it has always worked and so Blizzard constantly jo-jo’s between buffs and nerfs. And here we are in BfA, Shadowlands…the DoTs are a complete joke, where as before Voidform, they did really good damage.
Of course you can, the fundamental gameplay hasnt changed, the only reasoning it would have a hard time working is due to some raid/dungeon mechanics, but that’s not an excuse when you can just balance around it.
Not anymore, these days those DoTs are laughable and serve only as an amplifier for Malefic Rapture which is not a DoT and top of the damage output.
That’s the true dot class
Historically that is what shadow has always been about, that is what devs originally intended it to be, hence why DoTs used to be so strong, mind flay use to do fairly lot of damage. Emphasis on mind flay, heck the early descriptions of the spec talked about flaying the minds of enemies…just to paraphrase.
but every class has become like that to be functional in M+
Functionality should not be based around burst, a very flawed design philosphy, to say the least, it should always be about sustained damage. Blizzard is to blame for that, the timed nature of mythic+ which should not even exist in an MMORPG, which is all about slow, gradual progress.
Doesn’t seem like you know about lore much at all. Shadow priests were not originally Void wielders, you cannot wield Void without destroying yourself, if not instantly then slowly over time, it’s inevitable. Yes, even Void elves will be eventually be consumed by the Void, it’s the nature of it, as even said by Alleria herself.
Shadow priests were all about shadow magic, which, like Void magic, is a separate school of magic itself of unknown origin, which doesn’t have a direct source, it’s just that - dark, sinister magic.
In short, spriests never wielded Void in concept, it’s quite like Warlock’s shadowbolt, it’s not Void, but Shadow.
In Legion the concept took a complete 180 degree turn and they became Void wielders which, again, makes no sense whatsoever since you cannot wield Void longterm without losing your mind.
Which is why this -
Ehm…ye, not really, no. It’s a fancy gameplay, though completely nonsensical in lore.
Also -
Spriests dominate and destroy minds, flaying them of their sanity. Hardly inferior i would say.
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Allow me to ask, in what kind of depth did you play/played shadow?
Did you do high M+ with it, Raiding mythic or?
You want affliction in other words.
Completely irrelevant, it’s not about damage output, my only concern is the mechanical design of the ability., it should not exist, Power Infusion is more than sufficient. That would allow Blizzard to prioritize DoT damage over everything else, which is what used to make the spec appealing in the past.
Just the old iteration of spriest, before the Legion’s 180 re-iteration.
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Why do you find it irrelevant and you avoid to answer a simple question?
Thats long gone though, welcome to the future.