The following feedback is from the perspective of a Shadow Priest.

Overall Archon starts to deliver on the fantasy of enhanced cooldowns, but does it in a way with Halo that does not quite fit together nicely as a Shadow Priest. The empowered cooldowns themselves also do not feel particularly different than normally, they just now last a bit longer and you press Halo beforehand. That being said the iteration we see now does look powerful, although I wish it had more than just an updated Halo visual to enhance the theme, particularly with our cooldowns or Surge of Insanity casts. The Halo visual change itself also feels a bit lackluster for Shadow in particular and not sure I prefer it over the current version.

Surge of Insanity casts and Shadowy Apparitions don't feel super connected to the tree, but could be a big point to develop a visually different experience as an Archon.

The description for Archon says, "Archons can be blessed from higher beings to enter into an ascended state, becoming an ultimate version of themselves". The current version of the tree doesn't have enough changing with our cooldowns to actually make them feel like ultimate versions, both visually and playstyle wise. There are plenty of buffs to the cooldowns themselves but other than that it doesn't hit the theme well enough for me, especially compared to Voidweaver. Dark Ascension and Void Eruption are both a bit lacking in terms of identity, this could be a good time to revisiting this feedback.

All current bugs for Priests in The War Within are listed here.

Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree.​

• Word of Supremacy for Archon would make you feel pushed toward the tree when trying to live high-key Mythic+ dungeons compared to Voidweaver

Any bugs blocking testing?​

• Animation of Halo does not seem to match when the damage happens, but the Holy version seems to match.
• As an Archon Priest, if someone else casts Power Infusion on you while yours is active, it will remove your existing Power Infusion buff completely.
• If you are mid-cast of Mind Spike and get a proc of Mind Spike: Insanity from a Halo creation it will consume the Surge of Insanity and not give you the increased damage. It should either buff the damage or not consume the proc (which is what Mind Flay: Insanity does). This also does not generate a Shadowy Apparition from this bug.

Hero Talents that Create Frustrating or Unsatisfying gameplay​

• Current iteration of Sustained Potency means that you can gain damage using a 2-minute "opener". Since the hidden buff does not reset on combat start with a boss (mostly looking at raid here, should not reset on dungeon bosses) you can use a 2 minute opener to cast two Halo's pre-pull to bank 6 seconds and then cast the third Halo during cooldowns to get 9s of extension on your opener cooldown. This is pretty degenerate and probably shouldn't be a mechanic.
• Halo being a casted spell adds to the bloat of the opener and feels unsatisfying. We have Shadowfiend or Mindbender + Casted Halo + Casted Dark Ascension/Void Eruption to start our cooldowns.
• Since Archon interacts with Surge of Insanity, it brings up issues with Mind Flay: Insanity and Mind Spike: Insanity that we brought up earlier.
  • Mind Spike: Insanity feels the same as Mind Spike and not visually different. Compared to Surge of Light being instant-cast these feel much worse.
  • Mind Flay: Insanity feels unsatisfying to press and longer to execute. Impossible to weave many of these into your burst window.
  • Makes Voidform builds, particularly with Mind's Eye feel very cluttered with having extra Surge of Insanity procs during cooldowns, especially with Mind Flay: Insanity. You are even sometimes encouraged to instantly cancel Mind Flay: Insanity just to not waste the Shadowy Apparition.
  • Giving mobility to these spells would help make Archon not only feel different to play, but also add movement into a tree that currently does not have anything
• The cooldown extension makes Ancient Madness feel less satisfying as it still fizzles out quickly and is still much less valuable with Void Eruption.
• Currently we use Divine Star to get Insanity pre-pull to start out with 25 when the pull starts. This makes the opener feel much better and because of the way Halo works with the Insanity decay and the fact that we now want it for damage this doesn't become an option anymore since the tree does not work with Divine Star.

Hero Talents where Functionality is Confusing, Unclear, or Difficult to Track​

• Halo's range currently is increased to 40 yards, but in reality its closer to 37 or so. Standing exactly 40 yards away from the target you will not get any hits of Halo. This same problem exists today on live/without Archon but at 27 yards instead of 30.
• Heightened Alteration working for Dispersion doesn't feel like its giving us much. More duration is not something that is very useful. Not really sure what this was intended to give the spec.
• Sustained Potency stacks outside of your cooldown (buff should not be hidden)
• Dark Ascension Perfected Form modifier is applying twice to Direct spell damage, and not to any periodic.
• Void Eruption Perfected Form is an additive effect instead of multiplicative with the existing modifier, this is confusing and slightly low-balling the damage increase
• Resonant Energy debuff stacking is confusing since the damage taken increase does not stack, just the slow
• The extra Halo's generated from Power Surge not giving Insanity is unclear if that is intended
• Power Surge has no buff to track when the future Halo's are happening

The following feedback is from the perspective of a Shadow Priest.

You can find all current bugs for Priests in The War Within here.

Any bugs blocking testing?​

• Voidwraith
  • Does not work with Mindbender (see below section)
  • Does not trigger Idol of Y'Shaarj
  • Sometimes melee's instead of casting
  • Is not scaling with any of our Priest modifiers. This includes Twist of Fate, Mastery, Shadowform, Idol of Y'Shaarj, Voidheart, etc
  • Currently does work with Inescapable Torment, unsure which half of this is intended, but guessing it is supposed to work with our talents.
• Depth of Shadows
  • Proccing this puts Mindbender or Shadowfiend on cooldown
  • Does not trigger Idol of Y'Shaarj
• Devour Matter 300% increase is not applying
• After talenting into and out of No Escape, it is still active.

Hero Talents that Create Frustrating or Unsatisfying gameplay​

• Current Entropic Rift window feels very busy and borderline overwhelming and you are rushing to try and get Void Blasts and Devouring Plagues out and do not have room to do much else. This is directly linked to feeling like we cannot quite "cap" the rift size or extension consistently. If that was fixed this might also be better to play with. There is some charm in having to chase the rotation here.
  • Currently Shadow also feels like it has to ramp to get meaningful damage out of the talent, the Void Torrent channel into then spawning the rift and then reaching peak 15 seconds later is a very long time in environments when things do not live that long.
• Darkening Horizon feels very unachievable to get the full extension without Bloodlust, Power Infusion, and a lot of baseline haste while also getting lucky with procs. Not being able to max this except in rare cases is unsatisfying.
  • Reducing the cooldown of Void Blast, making it Instant Cast, working with other spells as well, and/or increasing how much extension you get per Void Blast would help
  • Changing it to a spammable spell like Discipline probably would not feel fun, as it would really hurt the value of non-filler spells during this window
• Collapsing Void Devouring Plague expansion feels extremely underwhelming or even non-existent, even after casting 5 Devouring Plagues the size of the rift is still smaller than 8 yards, which is less than Shadow Crash and by then it fizzles away.
  • Make it work with Devouring Plague ticks and/or significantly increase how much it is increased by per cast
  • Fantasy element and visually this is extremely underwhelming
• When a mob dies that was the original target of Entropic Rift, this can feel super unsatisfying, especially if it remains as a small size since it currently does not move or re-target.
  • Would be awesome if an enemy dies in the rift it also expands and "consumes" them
• Entropic Rift not pulling enemies in feels unsatisfying. For a spell that closely resembles a black hole, I wish it acted more like it. The slow from No Escape is in a similar space but not nearly what I expected. In PvE the applications for the slow are quite underwhelming.
• The choice node between No Escape and Dark Energy is unsatisfying. At the current size of the rift No Escape feels extremely underwhelming and likely will not have many use cases in PvE at the current size Shadow can get it to. In the current state it feels like Dark Energy will be preferred always.
  • Would love to see additions or changes to No Escape such as the black hole design mentioned above.
  • Adjusting the pacing/sizing that Shadow can get the rift to would certainly help No Escape.
• The choice node between Devour Matter and Void Empowerment does not feel satisfying. Devour Matter is an extremely niche ability in almost all types of content, where it will only provide a small amount of value even if the condition is met. On the other hand Void Empowerment is always useful and consistent and provides value every 30 seconds with Malediction.
  • If we had this choice node on live, in current examples where we do face enemies with shields (Tindral, Fyrakk, Iridikron) that is such a small portion of the fight, Void Empowerment would still be the better choice.
• Currently locks you into the bottom right side of our spec talent tree for this spec as Void Torrent, Malediction, and Idol of C'Thun all have such strong synergies. Could be frustrating when taking any Shadow Word: Death points in Voidweaver that also encourage spending points in the bottom left side of our spec tree.
• In certain cases Shadow might be incentivized to cancel Void Torrent early just to get the rift to spawn sooner. This might just come down to tuning of Void Torrent though. Spawning at the start of the cast would have even more problems depending on tuning of Void Torrent, end is better but that incentive is still there. This is also contributing to having a somewhat length burst/ramp time for our damage. Will take 3 seconds of Void Torrent + up to 15 seconds of the Rift before it collapses, which is a long time for damage especially in environments like Normal dungeons.

Hero Talents where Functionality is Confusing, Unclear, or Difficult to Track​

• Cooldown of Voidwraith is confusing since when taking Mindbender the cooldown is not lowered at all and remains fixed at 2 minutes, making Mindbender a completely dead talent.
• Depth of Shadows (451308) has an internal cooldown of 1 second. This can be confusing for players because at higher haste levels and a Death and Madness reset you can cast Shadow Word: Death back to back and the second cast would be unable to proc the effect.
• Proc rate of Depth of Shadows and the health threshold is currently unknown and not shown on the spell.
• Inner Quietus does not increase the direct damage of Shadow Word: Pain. This is particular is confusing with Catharsis.
• Voidwraith's talent tooltip indicates that it deals "up to 50% additional damage, dealing more damage to higher health enemies" but the actual spell deals a flat 135% of spellpower and then if the mob is above 50% health it deals 100% increased damage. This is inconsistent with the talent tooltip and not sure what is intended.
• There is nothing baseline in-game to track how many times you have extended Entropic Rift (and if you have any left) with Darkening Horizon without using some kind of WeakAura. (x/5)
• There is nothing baseline in-game to track how many times you have expanded Entropic Rift with Collapsing Void without using some kind of WeakAura. (x/8)
• Void Blast's tooltip shows a low number for Shadow
• Visual of Entropic Rift can be hard to see in certain environments on the ground, and because it does not re-target after the original dies this is important to know where to drag mobs into, especially for your Tank in PvE environments. The rift not re-targeting after the original dies is also unintuitive.

Entropic Rift Windows

[quote="Publik-thrall, post:2, topic:1833178"] Current Entropic Rift window feels very busy and borderline overwhelming and you are rushing to try and get Void Blasts and Devouring Plagues out and do not have room to do much else. This is directly linked to feeling like we cannot quite “cap” the rift size or extension consistently. If that was fixed this might also be better to play with. There is some charm in having to chase the rotation here. [/quote]

After spending a bit more time with Voidweaver I wanted to clarify this comment a bit since I was pretty vague in this statement.

The Entropic Rift window specifically for Shadow Priests has a varying degree of pure gameplay feel based on other talents that we are picking. Particularly if you are playing a build with Void Eruption and especially worse if you also have Inescapable Torment. With Void Eruption you inevitably have to sacrifice some casts of spells like Void Bolt to prioritize Entropic Rift casts in a way that makes it feel busy.

There's enough rotational pressure from Void Blasts, Devouring Plague (and Shadow Word: Death if you have Inescapable Torment) to make the windows feel rewarding that adding the additional rotational pressure of Void Bolt detracts from the experience and makes it feel significantly less rewarding.

For a Hero Talent tree that has Void in the name Void Eruption does not have great synergies with these spells. Void Eruption as a cooldown is primarily focused around Void Bolt, which doesn't have any direct synergies with Voidweaver. We only rarely will reach maximum extension of the rift duration from very lucky procs, and by doing so we are de-prioritizing Void Bolts.

For other builds that do not use Void Eruption the Rift itself brings a much welcomed pacing into the build that feels like you are working towards something. That something is still a bit uninspiring at the current size of the rift, but that was covered in a different section. Expanding the rift size in general feels lackluster as a Shadow Priest (much better as Discipline).

I think there should be some kind of sweet spot the build lives where expanding the rifts size should feel exciting and rewarding, and the extension of the rift duration should be easy to get a few casts, and reward players that are more skillful with the full extension. For Shadow Priests the rift expansion is extremely underwhelming and it feels like we can almost never get the full duration extension off, even while playing perfectly.

Opener Concerns and Setup Time

Another point I didn't get to focus on earlier was the opener itself into the Entropic Rift. As a goal we are encouraged to have our DoTs active before pressing Void Torrent, but with how we start off pulls currently we are heavily incentivized to just cast Void Torrent for one tick and then cancel to spawn the rift just to get into the start of our opener. Casting Void Torrent just into Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain on the opener just isn't worth full channeling, and sitting there building up to 45/50/55 Insanity for Devouring Plague (depending on talents) is quite a long wait for our cooldown cycle.

This is certainly part of tuning overall, but is something we are noticing with the opener and setup of a Voidweaver Shadow Priest that is a bit awkward to play with currently.

Pathing and Build Diversity

The other big thing related to this is how the tree is currently pressuring you to not only pickup Void Torrent, Malediction, and Idol of C'Thun in the bottom section, but talents like Depth of Shadows or Voidwraith also pull you towards Mindbender, Inescapable Torment, and Idol of Y'Shaarj (assuming bugs are worked out/intended to work with these). Mastermind is also an extremely valuable point with any build due to the strength of Void Blast.

Encouraging and locking into the bottom right section is totally expected with the core of Entropic Rift, but it just gets a bit much when we are also heavily encouraged to path on the complete opposite side of the tree, not to mention thematically the Shadow Word: Death and Pet-focused spells don't exactly fit the Void theme as well as other nodes.

Welcome to Book of Shadows!