Well Blizzard, the Shadow Priest community is putting the ball in your court. What changes, at this point, could possibly stop all the re-rolls from happening in BFA?
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Dweeb from H2P shadow discord here. This is pretty much spot-on to the problems of shadow, and its so glaringly obvious that I have no clue how it was allowed to pass as is. Azerite traits look even worse on top of it all, as none of them significantly change your playstyle outside of whispers of the damned. Not sure why I even continue playing this game TBH.
Shadow doesnt have this many theorycrafters.
I had hoped for azerite traits,atleast something close to mass hysteria but I guess I'm going to reroll another caster now. I don't know how this passed. The talents are all over the place and we basically fill the lack of any AoE abilities with them,for single target? There's absolutely no emphasis on long void forms which this specc was basically about."Yeh but they said 8.1 will bring change!" It won't. That's what they say everytime. They either make it way too overtuned,roll it out and see people playing it again just to nerf it or make it straight up broken,easy to play so you will have Death's Embrace Warlock 2.0 (although I highly doubt it because Blizz apparently hates Shadow for some reason,just like Ele Sham)There's also a problem with stats and how dumb and dull they have gotten. And it's affecting shadow arguably harder than other speccs. I loved the Legion SP. Fast paced gameplay,rewarding but also very punishing if you fcked up. Now we have this.... I get it,balancing is not easy but for a multi million company with so much experience they can't just leave some speccs in the dirt and let people hope for another patch. Especially when there's so much feedback during alpha,beta,prepatch.Also there have been many voices regarding the spellclash between Void Bolt and Mind Blast.In Legion we had to give up an item slot for that,now a talent? Ret and Enh have spell clashing too but somehow they get 2 charges on their spells. Feels to me that Blizz removed the good parts Legion Shadow had while ignoring the problems Legion brought in the first place.
How about:Remove voidformBring back shadow orbsSpenders:3 orbs Devouring plague (low duration high damage and maybe increase dot damage)2 orbs Void bolt3 orbs Void eruptionVoidform can then become a cooldown.
Sure, maybe you are right about them now wanting to go back. But like you said, it IS an easier solution. And I don't think it's a bad idea to go back to a foundation that works and merge ideas from BfA/Legion into that.I just don't see how to balance SP with voidform so it's viable and not OP in all content. Maybe you have some ideas, but I just don't see it.
It's too bad the people writing this article don't work for Blizz. They seem to have several multitudes of intelligence above the actual devs.
Decided to try leveling my priest post 8.0 - she went from bank alt to leveling because I didn't care for any spec in Legion. I tried leveling in shadow but felt it was too slow and survivability was terrible, so I switched to disc and killed things just as quickly and was always at 100% hp. With all the more interesting casters specs in the game, I find it VERY difficult to even bother switching to shadow at all.
It needs a ground up rework. I've played shadow since BC and it's never felt worse. It's as if Blizzard can't decide on the balance between shadowform and voidform. Tearing it all down and bringing it back is probably best. I'd get away from dot based gameplay and go to resource building and spending. Mind blast, spike, sear, flay should be the core of the rotation, with voidform an entirely different rotation. If we have to keep dots, them make voidform consume them for an insanity generating dot in their place.
It's nice to see one of these review posts really digging in and addressing all of the problems with the design of this spec. Thank you, authors.
I'm sure this will be an unpopular take on the spec, but I'm actually really enjoying Shadow Priest (SP) in Battle for Azeroth (BfA). Yes, the rotation is less complex and less reliant on the VF (Void Form) minigame, but I feel more impactful in almost every other scenario, which was a big failing in Legion (for me). The spec outside of VF in Legion felt so weak that it was often unfun to play. I now feel like I am having fun while having an impact almost 100% of the time in BfA on my SP, and while I admit that some talents need to be looked at due to the de-emphasis on VF, I plan on playing my Void Elf SP through BfA. I also feel that the feedback provided in this post is valuable, so I'm certainly not trying to discount that. I simply feel that a few tweaks may do the job more effectively than a complete overhaul to the spec. I will also freely admit that I am easy to please and generally find every spec fun to play in some way, so I may not be the best source of feedback here.
I, as well, really enjoyed the Legion iteration. And I find the changes going into BfA to be good attempts at adressing the problems. But the glaring disconnect between how it works in BfA and the talents they brought over from Legion is very obvious to me.I absolutely trust the authors here, and 123fakestreet made good points. I just really hope my favourite caster can be something I can play as a second main! Going to main Monk, praying that FoF stun is brought back. And then have my SP as a close second like in Legion. But in Legion I ended up "only" playing PvP and raids as SP. And often swapped to Disc in raids and always for dungeons. In BfA I hope I can stay true to SP in all kinds of content.Anyways, thanks for this post. You are obviously thourough in your analysis, and I do trust your philosophy. Let's just hope Blizzard pulls this off! I would not be sad to see old iterations added to, but I do think it can work out either way. Still hoping it will be implemented before 8.1^^Edit: I am also kind of sad to see void eruption hitting within a radius of the target instead of all targets that are dotted up. The best feeling with SP in arena/BGs/spread multitarget PvE fights was dressing void eruption and seeing damage fly out all over the place. Felt unique and amazing! 10y radius is just like everyone else..
I'd honestly like it if it did both. Would help us in spread target fights a ton and make getting dots out as fast as possible not a large requirement.