DISCLAIMER​

This post is now outdated. We have posted updated guidance in IcyVeins and the Discord and the below information is mostly out of date. Keeping this only for historical purposes.

October 8th/9th Changes​

Voidweaver has received lots of buffs to its kit which when using the right talent build and optimized gear can end up being better than Archon in certain situations. When comparing the best builds Voidweaver is up to 1% ahead of Archon, meaning they are very close.

THINGS ARE STILL BEING TESTED

It takes us a long time to sim talent builds, especially with rotational changes. Having only gotten this on Friday night we are still working on things and the below information should be treated as EARLY information.

List of Changes​

• Mind Blast damage increased by 10%.
• Shadow Word: Death damage increased by 10%.
• Void Bolt damage increased by 10%.
• Shadowy Apparition damage increased by 10%.
• Voidweaver: Entropic Rift damage increased by 10%.
• Voidweaver: Void Blast damage increased by 20%.
• Voidweaver: Collapsing Void damage increased by 10%.
• Voidweaver: Voidwraith damage increased by 10%.
• Voidweaver: Inner Quietus now increases Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain damage by 25% (was 20%).

How big are these buffs?​

• Archon Single: +2.8%
• Voidweaver Single: +5.2%
• Archon Triple Idol AoE: +2.2%
• Archon Hybrid AoE: +2.2%
• Voidweaver AoE: +3.9%

Overview​

There are a few keys things to note:

• Unfurling Darkness is now strongly preferred for Voidweaver builds in non-dungeon environments. This supplements our DoT refreshing instead of relying on Mental Decay and also gives us an instant cast spell thats hits like a truck. This can still be used in dungeon environments depending on how much of your time is spent at lower target counts (5 or less).
• By default SimC will cause a certain percentage of ticks of Entropic Rift to miss, this is aimed at making it more realistic with boss and target movement. Chance is 5% on single target and up to 10% above 2 targets.
• Voidweaver will naturally struggle as you go into dungeons and start pulling massive packs together, anything more than 8 targets is rough. For this reason pushing keys will still prefer Archon most weeks, but any type of pug situation where you are pulling one pack a time will do great with Voidweaver, especially during Voidbound weeks.

When to pick Archon?​

• Consistent single target damage, not contingent on targets staying in place.
• Prefers the Void Eruption playstyle
• Mythic+ Dungeons where you are pushing high key levels where packs are living 60+ seconds long or you are consistently pulling packs together and around your cooldowns.

When to pick Voidweaver?​

• Top single target damage, particularly when bosses are not moving out of Entropic Rift. This is contingent on playing Unfurling Darkness. If you do not want to play with this talent than Archon will net more single target damage.
• Prefers the Dark Ascension playstyle
• Mythic+ Dungeons where you are pulling one pack at a time and not chain pulling massive pulls. Ideally stays at/under 8 targets as much as possible.
• Anytime you are fighting against absorb shields for Devour Matter (i.e. Voidbound affix, Queen Ansurek intermission, etc)

Rotation Changes​

The following is a list of changes done to the APL compared to before these changes. This is not a full list of how to play Voidweaver.

• Pool Mind Blast for 1 GCD with Mind Flay or 2 GCDs with Mind Spike before Void Torrent comes off cooldown with Voidweaver
• As Voidweaver you should cast Vampiric Touch to proc Unfurling Darkness when facing less than 6 targets and Dark Ascension is not active. This falls just above normal Mind Blast in the priority list.
• You should cast Vampiric Touch to spend Unfurling Darkness as a top priority action when the buff is available. This means as soon as you proc this you immediately spend it.
• Removed unlocked Devouring Plague use during Dark Ascension and instead unlocked it while Entropic Rift is active specifically. You still use Devouring Plague at high priority if it is about to expire or you are capping on Insanity.

Example Voidweaver Opener​

This is an example opener with the VW_VE_VW_DA_cthun_82852967308207_Spike_DR build.

1. Cast Halo pre-pull for 10 Insanity
2. Open with Vampiric Touch to proc Unfurling Darkness and apply our DoTs
3. Cast Vampiric Touch again to consume Unfurling Darkness
4. Mind Spike
5. Voidwraith
6. Dark Ascension
7. Power Infusion + Potion
8. Devouring Plague
9. Void Torrent
10. Void Blast
11. Void Blast
12. Devouring Plague

Full openers with a wider variety of talent builds will be posted to the guide soon.

WeakAuras​

With all of the changes there are a few WeakAuras to list to help with the rotational parts of playing Voidweaver Shadow Priest.

• Pooling Mind Blast Helper
• Unfurling Darkness
• These are all baked into Publik's WeakAura Set

Breakdowns​

The below charts include breakdowns in the various sim environments. Click each link to see the builds used. Note that this page will not be updated after the launch of the changes and you should check the guide for the most up to date builds at that point.

Single Target​

Actor	DPS	Increase
VW_VE_VW_DA_cthun_82852967308207_Spike_DR	1474383	1.05%
VW_VE_VW_DA_yshaarj_cthun_81150852152239_Flay_DR	1470867	0.87%
AR_SP_VF_cthun_80658376897455_Flay_ME	1462020	0.00%

Single Target + Shadow Crash​

Actor	DPS	Increase
VW_VE_VW_DA_cthun_82852967308207_Spike_DR (ST)	1474383	5.6%
VW_VE_VW_DA_yshaarj_cthun_81150852152239_Flay_DR (ST)	1470867	5.3%
VW_VE_VW_DA_yshaarj_cthun_81150817583023_Flay_DR (ST + Crash)	1460556	4.5%
VW_VE_VW_DA_cthun_80603201142703_Spike_DR (ST + Crash)	1396577	0.00%

2 Target (Stacked)​

Actor	DPS	Increase
VW_VE_DoS_DA_cthun_82852967824303_Flay_DR	1940053	2.60%
AR_SP_VF_cthun_82847494255535_Flay_ME	1892048	0.00%

Composite Raid​

Actor	DPS	Increase
VW_VE_VW_DA_yshaarj_cthun_81150852152239_Flay_ME	1509902	0.61%
VW_VE_VW_DA_yshaarj_cthun_81150817583023_Flay_DR	1508243	0.58%
VW_VE_VW_DA_cthun_82852967308207_Spike_DR	1505940	0.42%
AR_SP_VF_cthun_80658376897455_Flay_ME	1502299	0.00%

8 Target 1 Minute Burst​

Actor	DPS	Increase
AR_EC_VF_nzoth_yogg_cthun_129962077501359_Flay_ME	7087685	23.06%
AR_SP_VF_nzoth_yogg_cthun_129962077501359_Flay_ME	7027585	22.08%
AR_EC_VF_nzoth_cthun_99313325094831_Flay_ME	6514997	13.92%
VW_DH_DoS_VF_nzoth_cthun_98245891561391_Flay_ME	6122240	6.39%
VW_DH_DoS_DA_nzoth_cthun_98245891561391_Flay_ME	5757985	0.00%

DungeonRoute Overall Average (+15)​

Actor	DPS	Increase
AR_SP_VF_nzoth_cthun_98241696217007_Flay_ME (Hybrid)	1874853	1.06%
VW_VE_DoS_DA_nzoth_cthun_98245853822895_Flay_ME	1871053	0.85%
AR_SP_VF_nzoth_yogg_cthun_129962177181615_Flay_ME (Triple Idol)	1855268	0.00%

I've posted quite a lot on these topics already but wanted to call out a few things that are still plaguing the spec.

There are a lot of bugs facing the spec currently, several of which are very impactful to playing the game. The full list is here with the big ones below:

• Halo is pulling mobs that are not currently in combat
• Voidheart is expiring early
• Voidwraith pet is taking full damage as if it was a player
• Darkening Horizon is not always extending correctly
• Mind Soothe is not castable
• Idol of C'Thun is completely broken

Season 1 Tier Set Bonus

Currently the tier set for Shadow Priests is about a 3% DPS gain going from equivalent gear without the set bonus to equipping the full 4 set. This is particularly due to the strength of Distorted Reality (especially early on with less stats) and the inherent synergy with Mind's Eye. Mind's Eye does gain about 5% with the set but this is not enough to offset the loss at current tuning.

In AoE situations the set bonus is about 4%, primarily due to preferring Mind's Eye for these builds. Overall this makes for a pretty underwhelming set bonus effect power wise, and particularly stings because the set bonus is pretty boring as it stands today.

Hero Talent Iteration

So far we have not seen much iteration on our Hero Talent trees, particularly for Archon. Archon looks exactly how it did when it was first released and not a single thing was ever changed or iterated on, including the actual numerical tuning of the tree. I don't want to repost feedback but this is extremely disappointing and it feels like this just wasn't a priority to work on.

While Voidweaver did get some iteration early on there are still quite a few challenges that tree has that would really help to see more iteration and changes with to make it feel better to play, particularly with the way the Entropic Rift spawns and follows targets.

Talent Tree Tree Iteration

Going into the expansion Shadow Priest has received little to no changes to the base spec. While we have gotten reworks quite often over the years none of these have really ever felt complete and this certainly adds to the frustration when comments made in previous dev cycles of revisiting things like Dark Ascension were never changed in the TWW beta cycle.

Furthermore Shadow Priests now have the most 2 point nodes in our tree, and our class tree has the most total points. This equates to 1894837640784 possible builds of our class tree which is obviously an insane number to reason about, but is kind of crazy considering some classes only have a fraction of a percent of that amount. This is not solely indicative of a problem, but does make Priests feel like our tree is not created equally when looking at other classes and specs in the game.

This is still causing ugly issues in places like the Shadow spec tree where you have to pick between more DPS or taking the loss to get crucial defensive or utility nodes. As far as I'm aware the design goals were to not have this be a choice but we still have a crowded top section of our talent tree which feels horrible.

Decided to wrap up some previous posts and feedback into a more concise entry to give current good, bad, and bugs for Voidweaver and Archon from a Shadow Priest perspective.

Good​

• Visually exciting
• Mini-bursts every 30s feel nice
• Cast while moving Void Torrent is fun to play with

Bad​

• Shadowy Insight procs can be frustrating as we pool Mind Blasts before our Void Torrent and waste these procs.
• Travel time to getting to the target can be frustrating, would feel much better if it just spawned under the target.
• Pooling Mind Blasts before Void Torrents can be awkward
• Slowly follows the target if its moving across the room too fast
• Feels like we need to play around Mind Melt a bit too much
• Lack of Void interactions on the tree, particularly Voidform. Instead we have several points that deal with Mindbender, SW:D, or dots
• Retargeting when original target dies feels really random
• Devour Matter can be good in niche cases, but feels bad that most of the time it does nothing

Gamebreaking Bugs​

• Void Blast sometimes breaks
• Voidwraith gets 1-shot by most environmental AoE effects
• Darkening Horizon doesnt always work correctly

State of Archon

Good​

• Off-healing can be quite powerful
• If you like Halo, it is cool to see the bursts
• Simple to play, if you like base shadow you will like Archon

Bad​

• Puts a weird amount of emphasis on MFI/MSI
• Does not make our cooldowns feel that powerful
• Can feel overwhemled trying to spend Surge procs before capping, particularly with VF
• Honestly quite boring relative to Voidweaver
• Halo itself is pretty weak baseline, especially since the echoes do not give Insanity

Gamebreaking Bugs​

• Mind Spike can munch free Surge of Insanity procs

In this post I wanted to highlight the known bugs for Shadow Priest on Beta. I have categorized these into a few categories to indicate severity. These have all been reported in game as well but I wanted to provide more visibility.

Impacting Gameplay​

The following all have significant impacts towards gameplay that actively impeded our ability to test things.

• Darkening Horizon is not always extending correctly
• Entropic Rift can fall off the map/fail to spawn if the target is not grounded
• Void Blast can remain forever if Entropic Rift fails to spawn/despawn
• Mind Vision is not castable
• Mind Soothe is not castable
• The free Surge of Insanity proc from Halo creations can munch procs with Mind Spike
• Voidwraith unhasted GCDs
• Insidious Ire is behaving erratically
• Mind Spike: Insanity is cancelled mid-cast if the buff expires
• Entropic Rift will sometimes retarget an enemy you are not in combat with

Unclear Behavior​

The following bugs are unclear interactions that may or may not be intended.

• Phantom Reach does not work with Psychic Link
• Deathspeaker does not count as "below 20%" for Depth of Shadows
• Collapsing Rift damage increase is not applied to Entropic Rift
• Voidheart is scaling all Shadow damage
• Tormented Spirits get the crit value on Shadowy Apparitions based on previous action

Minor​

The following bugs are relatively minor but still worth mentioning

• Idol of C'Thun will spawn on your current target instead of the one Void Torrent was cast on
• Casting Power Infusion on an Archon priest that already has Power Infusion consumes the buff
• Entropic Rift Incorrect Spawn Location on Mouseover
• You cannot apply Glyphs to Mindbender without first untalenting it
• Mind Flay cannot be Press and Hold casted

Spelldata Issues​

The following are mostly data clarity issues with spell functionality or tooltips.

• Darkening Horizon Spell Data is Duplicated
• Shadowy Insight proc data is missing

After raid testing and some Mythic+ testing today I wanted to give my updated thoughts on Voidweaver and Archon from a Shadow Priest perspective.

Voidweaver​

Overall this spec feels pretty great, but there are a couple of things that if changed could make it play even better.

One of the most frustrating moments right now when playing Voidweaver is getting Shadowy Insight procs while banking up for your next Entropic Rift. Because of a change made to make Shadowy Insight no longer grant a temporary charge of Mind Blast, these procs can often be completely wasted. We are incentivized to bank of Mind Blasts right before Void Torrents but these procs happening right before can end up being very frustrating.

The other thing that is still a bit weird is the emphasis around Shadow Word: Death and Shadowfiend spells. Neither of these are particularly related to the Void but do end up in several places on the tree: Devour Matter, Depth of Shadows, and Voidwraith. Personally I do not see how these fit together in the build and end up making our points in the spec tree feel even more restrictive. Devour Matter is definitely the odd one out here, it is a pretty boring node that I often forget even exists.

The last big thing with Voidweaver that does not feel very satisfying is the size of the Rift and the expansion. Because of how little we end up casting Devouring Plague rotationally this expansion is very minor, especially compared to Discipline. Making this work with ticks of Devouring Plague or adjusting how much it grows per cast would go a long way to making this be more usable. With the current size of the rift and positioning of a pack in Mythic+ it could be awkwardly missing a lot of mobs. This is also notably worse off because the Rift does not currently retarget if the original target dies.

Archon​

Compared to Voidweaver, Archon is particularly uninspiring to play with. The playstyle is basically the baseline version of the spec we have in Dragonflight, you just now press Halo at the start of your cooldowns. It is possible this was the goal all along for Archon, but having a relatively small change to the spec for a whole Hero talent feel wise does not make it feel like a Hero Talent to me.

This is made even worse with the lack of distinct visual changes with Archon. Yes we spawn a few extra Halos and it radiates out and back to us, but for a spec themed around empowering our cooldowns this just misses the mark for me when our cooldowns are lacking any visual change. Even the Hero Talent icon itself looks amazing but feels really out of place considering the visuals and feel of the spec do not match.

Archon itself is likely suffering from an already existing problem the spec has with cooldowns that are not particularly exciting by themselves (particularly Dark Ascension).

The one thing that Archon has going for it that might even make us feel pulled to play it is the absolutely disgusting amount of off-healing we get from being centered around Halo. Not sure how this will be balanced but that is a strong positive.

General Shadow Priest​

While I already covered recent changes here I wanted to discuss a few other points that I would love to see discussion or changes towards.

We have not seen any spec tree changes so I do not want to copy things from my previous post but these issues are generally all still present and would welcome any changes here to help improve our spec tree.

Shadow Crash and Void Crash​

Adding in Void Crash as an alternative to Shadow Crash will be a welcomed change for some players, but also creates some anti-patterns with the current size of the spell. Because of the relatively small radius of Shadow and Void Crash (8 yards), having it be centered around a single enemy can easily make it difficult to target a full clump of adds. This can also be quite confusing for new players using the talent. Increasing this up to 10 or 12 yards (likely alongside Shadow Crash) would make it feel much better from a DoT management perspective.

Notable Bugs​

• Mind Soothe is currently not able to be cast at all. Just says "You can't use that here"

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