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"