I still don’t understand why they keep shoving searing nightmare down our throats, there needs to be a way to spread Vampiric touch and devouring plague, which wouldn’t affect ST raid at all, why do we have to dot 6 targets then mind sear then searing nightmare before we can even start doing damage, when affliction warlock gets seed of corruption right now we’re just really bad affliction warlocks
I was thinking of a lot of your stuff by myself and now that you added another very good points, i think its really a mess. I really wouldnt mind if i did not knew how blizzard works with talents and balances. I mean its totally fine for pre alpha state, you have to come up with some idea. I just hope they will listen A LOT to the players. This writing up is a very good job. It nails every bad aspect. At first i was like "this looks very cool" but now the only "good" part is being able to share your PI as a damage dealer in a party. I mean i would be fine if PI was gone for others, but at least this is much better than it was in SL.Oh and by the sake N'Zoth, pls just remove SN. I cant remember such a horrible spell in the complete history of WoW
I don't think there's a single idea in this article I disagree with. I really hope Blizzard takes this feedback into account! In particular, I'd love to see the Mindbender/Shadowflame Prism playstyle be made optional, and we are given a way to become the dot-oriented class we used to be. I hope that the fact that Blizz published our tree so early (and their mention of us in the April Fools patch notes) is an unspoken acknowledgement that they know there are problems, and are looking for feedback like this. My fingers are crossed!
searing nightmare is da poop
So disappointed with the tree. I am beyond shocked Blizzard want to make the Shadowflame Prism playstyle a staple for shadow priests. It's an unenjoyable playstyle. On top of that Searing Nightmare is going forward in it's current iteration. Will there ever be a spec that'll feel worse when doing AoE?
Searing Nightmare and Surrender to MadnessSeeing both of these talents remain in Dragonflight is disappointing…Understatement tbh - I don’t understand why they keep forcing this on me - I will never use them, even if I have to spend points to get past them.This is a great summary and one I hope the devs read closely.
Please remove Searing Nightmare and give Shadow a way to spread dots so that the Apparitions can be our AOE.
eh will just copy my comm from another forum ;d-- looked through the talent tree and am completely disappointedbut honestly? not surprised w/s/e..a tldr is main tree is set in stone - there is, absolutely, nothing useful beside a n-perfect 30/31 build which takes every utility spellin fact, if you like-like mindgames you have to sacrafice three spells or a significant dps%.. wtf!and guess what you have to heal low ppl because 20% dmg is worth the gcd.. so the group will *hate* you, making healer's play more annoyingthat asidethe spec tree is about how many targets you will fight? and for how long?like there are +-4 different trees with a huge dps difference..i can't even freely honor ysha cuz shields break in an instant out of disc priest's rapture, and its talent seems so iffy.. (and again puts strain on the healer to always keep you at 100%)and the tree as a whole.. feels completely the same like now, vamp embrace is k but er it isnt new is itatm it is "pre-set your spells for the specific raid fights/dungeons, use addons cuz you aint have enough slots btw, then play with the absolutely new class you are playing and enjoy it"as a holy, on the other hand, you have a choice whether you want to be more support-oriented (and how), or dps with fire.. go very deep in the tree or play with fake cr or dump your inner kyrian completely (hay yes ;d) etci was truly looking forward to choosing between utility/playstyle options, not, prepare several dps spell sets and dont touch the ui for 6 months.. :(-- oh and yes there is the voicy ppl & bossy guilds issue with PI blizzard still, refuses to look intofunny enough, it won't be a dps loss any more which was the nice thing.. cuz you are choosing another instead of ya: now its just bl on someone together with you, usually best best burst-erso it is a faili really miss the fae cd :(
I do have one disagreement with your analysis. Putting Shadow utility, especially Vampiric Embrace, in the class tree has major repercussions for Disc. The new Disc tree has a section for a Shadow damage cycle that when combined with VE can potentially put out a lot of ST healing on top of Atonement. Especially since Disc will take almost all of the same talents as Shadow in the class tree, except aiming for Crystalline Reflection instead of Mind Games. I can see potential for Dispersion to move to the class tree, but then it would need to be low enough in the tree to be difficult for Holy to acquire cuz theme stuffs and things. As for Auspicious Spirits, it looks Blizz wants to make that one of the primary AoE means. If that is the goal, then switching back to SWP being the target, and giving an easy means of spreading (looking at you Shadow Crash) would make that method a little more feasible as the AoE line.I was also looking forward to a Painwheel talent attached to Misery. Increases SWP duration to match that of VT
I'm glad I was not alone in thinking certain talents are on the wrong side of the tree. I wanted to build a m+ and raid setup and couldn't without taking mismatching stuff. Also wanted a in between but had no clue on how powerful a talent like fortress of the mind and something further down in the tree (near bottom) would be. Usually the bottom talents should be more powerful.
Searing Nightmare's a top clunky spell.Here's how to fix it:Make it baseline baked into Mind Sear- Searing Nightmare would pulse every 1.2sec for 30 insanity, working basically the same (spreads Shadow Word: Pain and does damage.) Now the fun stuff. We can spend points into a passive talent "Searing Nightmare's damage has a 15/30% chance to spread Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague to one additional enemy.Put it somewhere at the bottom of the tree, as a big AOE alternative.
For some reason I can't take these posts serious. I'm very far away from someone who mains a shadow priest but not taking Misery is dull. That talent basically saves 1 gcd after every vampiric touch. It looks and feels so op that it's probably not worth not taking it.
is a good talent only if it says the periodic dmg of pain and touch are increased on all the targets mind sear hits...and shadow need an ability to spread both pain and touch...even assasin rogues got this one in dragon flight idk why blizz doing this to shadow its rly one of the most enjoyable specs and they ruining it
Why's there no single word about Void Eruption is optional now?
I don’t play SP so this is out of my area, but I can appreciate it’s a really thorough write up. Naguura needs to word it this way (section/headings) for balance Druid. Useful criticism and suggestions. 👍
One thing I find pretty odd is all this buffing to Mind Flay and Mind Blast, ignoring completely our dots. Spriests are supposed to be a dot dps class, so why not buffing our dots? It seems to me that Blizz can't really decide if we are or not, it's confusing since we have many dots and many non-dot damaging spells. Maybe at this point they should just split Shadow into 2 different specs: one themed around Shadow and focusing on dots, and maybe one themed around Void and focusing on non-dot damaging spells, like voidbolt, void torrent, mind blast etc. Idk it's just the first idea I came up with.Another BIG problem for me it's the lack of a strong AOE spell. Searing Nightmare has to go, and Mind Sear as of now is really too weak. They should just give us a spell that put a dot on every enemy in a targeted area and then let our shadowy apparitions do damage to every target dotted, it's not so difficult.
I have a couple of ideas on how to improve the state of Shadow Priest with this talent tree.Move to main tree/make baseline (Priest): Silence, Dispersion, Vampiric EmbraceMake ability baseline (Shadow): Mind Flay, Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague, Mind Sear, Void EruptionRemove/Rework/Leveling Spell: Searing Nightmare, Surrender to Madness, DamnationThe fact that so many spells that are part of the core kit can be skipped over is a little insane, pun intended. As the writer iterated, imagine building a tree where you don't take Devouring Plague or Searing Nightmare and have no way to spend Insanity.As far as Searing Nightmare and Surrender to Madness go, they have always been the problem child of Shadow Priest. Ideally, they would just be added as spells you get while leveling.Searing Nightmare could work as a toggle: When toggled, Mind Sear will drain Insanity while channeling (rather than generating it), and will apply Shadow Word: Pain to all targets, and deal increased damage against targets with Shadow Word: Pain applied to them. This could be balanced by capping how many targets it applies Shadow Word: Pain to, or reducing the damage beyond ~8 targets. The toggle would be disabled manually, or when Insanity is spent. Additionally, talents could be made to empower it to spread more than Shadow Word: Pain, and such.As for Surrender to Madness, outside of making this only usable when a target is below a health threshold or reworking it to have a different downside besides the player dying, this seems like an ability that is better off being removed, as the playstyle that enabled it to be good, where Voidform wasn't a damage CD, and instead the player was racing to stay "ascended" as long as possible, is no longer in the game.
How about making Searing Nightmare a DOT which pulses damage around the mob and has a change to spread the other dots?