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Season 3 Shadow Priest Feedback

· 10 min read
Publik
Publik
Maintainer of Book of Shadows

Shadow Priest Feedback​

Major Cooldown Design​

All the way back in the Dragonflight development cycle it was mentioned that our cooldowns would be looked at in a future patch. Several patches later the problems with Dark Ascension and Void Eruption as a choice node is still present in our spec tree.

Dark Ascension is incredibly simple in its design, and has little cohesion with our overall spec or talent tree design. This has recently become even worse with the removal of Mind Spike, which felt like it was the defacto filler to pick with Dark Ascension. In its current state I just do not understand why this is still in the game, I would much rather have a choice node that modifies Void Eruption instead of Dark Ascension (see below).

Being able to pick between a 1-minute Shadow Priest compared to a 2-minute Shadow Priest is a really cool concept. However, since these are separate cooldowns today there is a severe lack of cohesion with the rest of our kit since spells need to work with both. This also limits the design options you have with our cooldowns.

At this point Void Eruption is a much more interesting cooldown and I would prefer focusing Shadow Priests on that cooldown over Dark Ascension. Exploring past ideas like ramping DoT damage or haste as Voidform goes on would be cool to see in the modern game, but just is not possible as long as Dark Ascension still exists to balance Void Eruption against.

Note that if Dark Ascension did go away it would mean a lot to the community to get a glyph that altered Voidform's animation to be the Dark Ascension wings.

DoT Maintenance and Application​

This patch we saw a few targeted changes at Shadow Crash to help with our DoT maintenance and application gameplay. Overall I think these changes solve good problems in raid, but seem to miss the mark for Mythic+ specifically.

Shadow Crash Issues​

The two main pain points with the new design are as follows:

  • Shadow Crash has become a damage talent with Descending Darkness
  • Bugs limit its usefulness in Mythic+, particularly in large pulls

Shadow Crash has mostly existed as a DoT application tool, with an exception of a Dragonflight tier set that was quite controversial. The reason for the controversy is making it a damage button now gives us a conflict, do we press Shadow Crash for damage or hold for DoT'ing targets? Luckily the 2 charge system can help with this, but largely this gameplay feels unhealthy to be pulling the player in two different ways.

There are quite a lot of people that dislike pressing Shadow Crash in single target, and it does feel quite weird, unsure if this was intentional. Due to current pathing challenges (see below) we take Shadow Crash and Descending Darkness in every single build currently. Part of this is pathing but also because it helps solve our issues with Mobility and Movement by giving us a valuable instant-cast to press when needed. Unfortunately this just feels like a conflicting design and I wish these problems could be solved with other solutions.

The other large issue is how these changes affect Mythic+. We have long known of bugs as it relates to Shadow Crash and DoT'ing targets, particularly in large pulls. The changes lowering the target count seem to have made these bugs more prevalent/happen on more packs than usual. Until Shadow Crash correctly prioritizes un-dotted targets to apply DoTs vs. refreshing this spell will continue to be an incredibly flawed way of applying DoTs.

Shadow Priest isn't a DoT Spec​

I was pretty disappointed that there was nothing else adjusted with the spec as it relates to casting and maintaining DoT spells. We have been locked behind Misery being a required talent and Shadow Crash as our DoT applicator for quite some time now, and the issues are still quite obvious. There is no build variety that actually makes DoTs powerful vs. easy to spread, everything is just leaning in towards the easy to spread category. This makes our DoT gameplay non-existent in places where we used to actually press Vampiric Touch or Shadow Word: Pain in previous iterations, particularly low-target count environments.

In the current design since we take Shadow Crash everywhere we literally never press Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch in Single Target, and even most cleave environments. This has made Shadow Priests lose a core piece of its identity and I wish there were alternatives available in the tree to make DoTs an actual part of our gameplay again. This removes Shadow Word: Pain as a rotational instant-cast spell to use during movement.

On top of this our DoTs have continued to be neglected when it comes to power, currently only totalling to less than 4% of our total damage (SW:P and VT).

Utility Nodes in the Spec Tree​

Currently Shadow Priests have to choose 2 utility points in the top section of our talent tree before moving onto the middle section after picking all the damage nodes.

This creates a problem, as we are limited to 2 of the 4 of these nodes without losing DPS by sacrificing points in the rest of the tree.

  • Dispersion
  • Silence
  • Intangibility or Mental Fortitude
  • Last Word or Psychic Horror

For most content we always want to have Dispersion. This leaves effectively just one point left, which typically we players will choose Mental Fortitude to counter the squishy nature of playing a Priest. This means we are effectively choosing between losing defensive utility, our interrupt, or DPS with this choice.

If Dispersion and/or Silence were just made baseline for Shadow Priests this issue goes away.

Spec Tree Pathing Issues​

With the changes to the talent tree this patch I wanted to go over specific issues with pathing that we notice on the tree to bring up those pain points when creating a build.

  • The Shadow Crash path is only 2 points to get to Void Torrent. The alternative option is 3 points which inherently puts these nodes at a disadvantage.
  • The following nodes are in a weird spot where nothing before/after is related. They are also pretty uninspiring in general.
    • Madness Weaving
    • Dark Evangelism
    • Idol of Y'Shaarj
  • Number of 2 point nodes is still the highest in the game
  • Plagued by lots of numerically weak nodes that do not change your gameplay or others that are super niche. These cause our pathing to be restricted.

Core Shadow Priest Themes are not always easy to path or there are too few choices. I've created annotated trees and then ranked their pathing situation for each core theme. Furthermore as a cost of these being core themes we notice that the actual base spells are severely undertuned. The cost of these spells having lots of talent points seems to be weak base spells, which impacts their dependency on these talents. Shadowy Apparitions, Mind Blast, Shadowfiend or Mindbender melees, and DoTs are extremely weak baseline.

Mobility, Movement, and Utility​

Mobility and Movement​

Shadow Priests have long been known for their mobility issues, which is still very much relevant in Season 3 of The War Within.

The only way Shadow Priests can actually counter this kind of mobility problem is to pay for a race change. Dractyhr, Goblin, and Void Elf become our only way to get meaningful movement displacement when other classes have this built into their kit. Nothing in the changes coming in Season 3 make this problem better. Vault of the Heavens or Door of Shadows in the Priest tree please?

Utility​

The other topic that is still painful is our classes group utility. Often times the only thing that makes Priests stick out from the crowd is Power Word: Fortitude, something that Holy and Discipline also bring in addition to Shadow Priests. Giving Shadow some of its own identity when it comes to utility would go a long way.

Shadow Priests do get value out of Vampiric Embrace that Holy and Discipline do not, but this ability has its own flaws that often do not make it valuable. The two big ones are the "smart" heal aspect of Vampiric Embrace being pretty dumb and it being hard to press on-demand when the group actually needs healing. To get good healing out of this we need to be doing good damage, lining this up is typically not something Priests do in this day and age. Would rather the spell just be passive Leech for my party, or something that I can control more that is not tied to my damage as much.

The other big problem with Shadow Priests is how it relates in the current Mythic+ Group Composition meta. There are different requirements for what a healer or dps should bring to a group, and generally speaking our group utility for control is niche and typically weaker than our ranged dps counterparts.

  • Shackle Undead usually has incredibly niche to no value every season in Mythic+
    • Why can't this work for more enemy types? Or just call it "Shackle"?
  • Psychic Horror is a severe DPS loss to take (see above section on spec tree utility points)
  • Silence is arguably the worst interrupt in the game for Mythic+ content. Often times the Silence portion of the effect is useless, leading to us just having a long cooldown interrupt.
  • Dominate Mind is either overpowered or useless.
  • Psychic Scream is pulling a lot of weight for us right now as an AoE stop, unfortunately we do have to play in melee to use it though. This was a big problem solved by Mind Bomb (particularly in its stun version) that I still miss to this day
  • Mass Dispel has not only seen significant nerfs, there has also been a notable change in dungeon design limiting its use cases
  • Void Tendrils goes most seasons with most players forgetting it even exists it is so niche and often useless

Priests have had plenty of utility spells in the past that were useful, but not game breaking that have been taken away from us. Bringing some of these back or shoring up existing utility problems would go a long way to groups being excited about inviting a Shadow Priest into their group.

  • Shining Force
  • Mind Bomb

Season 3 Set Bonus Feedback

· 3 min read
Publik
Publik
Maintainer of Book of Shadows

In the below sections I will go over the existing sets and feedback about them. I have also included preliminary numbers on how strong these tier sets are currently.

Archon​

  • 2pc: +4%
  • 2pc + 4pc: +17%

The Archon set bonus going into Season 3 is fairly straightforward, it gives us more Halos, which leads to more Insanity, and more Devouring Plague casts. This gives us even more casts of Mind Flay: Insanity and longer Voidforms.

Archon was already a fairly uninspiring Hero talent setup for Shadow Priests, and this set really does not add to anything it was doing, just repeats more of the same. Unfortunately it has fallen into the age old trap of just making Voidform last longer and become more punishing. Adding in more Halo's could be interesting but not in the way that it currently does extending our Voidform, just getting the same visuals we have but for longer is not as exciting as the Voidweaver set. The 4-set also is in a weird spot that you do not actually get any value from this set until the burst part of your Voidform is over (18 seconds after you press Halo).

A spec should not be able to sustain a single cast of its major cooldown for 90-120s. This effectively makes it not a cooldown considering how we get balanced around this. There are much more interesting ways to buff Voidform or our cooldowns that is not simply making them last longer. Voidform does not need to last longer.

Being able to sustain a single Voidform this long makes the gameplay more punishing when handling mechanics or having to move. This is just bringing back some of the old problems we had with drain-based Voidform in previous expansions without any of the cool parts of extending Voidform that we had (ramping haste/damage/insanity drain gameplay).

Voidweaver​

  • 2pc: +20%
  • 2pc + 4pc: +45%

Clearly the Voidweaver set is currently overpowered. This needs to be resolved by nerfing this set specifically, and not base Shadow Priest nerfs. The set itself is fun to play with and feels like it changes our core gameplay loop during cooldowns for the better, but includes modifiers that simply bloat the value and are not necessary.

The reason that this set is so much fun to play with is it makes you feel like you are machine gunning out Void Blast casts, and it feels awesome. The cast time reduction and more important the cooldown reduction of Void Blast is what gives us this feeling, the damage modifier to Void Blast is not necessary and is just a massive tuning knob that does not need to be there. Similarly the 4pc buffing Entropic Rift damage is not necessary for the set to be powerful.

A more appropriate version of the set that is not egregiously overtuned but still keep the parts that are fun might look like this:

  • 2pc: Void Blast's cast time is reduced by 20%. Void Blast's cooldown is reduced by 50%.
  • 4pc: Void Blast now also causes Entropic Rift to grow, and the damage of your next Void Torrent is increased by up to 100% based on the size of Entropic Rift when it collapses.

11.2 Shadow Priest Rework

· 8 min read
Publik
Publik
Maintainer of Book of Shadows

Below is my initial reaction to changes on the 11.2 PTR for Shadow Priests.

Gameplay Changes​

Overall this patch has lots of design changes of how we deal damage but realistically gameplay wise the changes are quite tame, which makes sense for a mid-expansion rework. The major gameplay changes you will notice are:

Questions​

Below is the list of questions the community has with unclear interactions or changes coming in 11.2.

Problems Ignored​

While the list of changes is overall pretty positive I was disappointed that a few of the issues the spec has went unaddressed this patch. Below are the big ones I feel still could use adjustments.

Pathing Issues​

Below is the list of current pathing issues I noticed with the talent tree redesign and where these nodes feel out of place in their current design and/or place on the tree in general. All of these options are also difficult to take/path into in their current state.

Tier Set​

Overall the sets seem pretty powerful numbers wise but still need to play-test them to see how they feel. First reaction is fairly positive!

Archon​

Voidweaver​

This tier set will likely eliminate the need to pool Mind Blasts before casting Void Torrent.

Talent Changes​

In this section I'm going to quickly touch on the changes and give my reaction to them.

  • Dark Ascension
    • This talent still existing feels extra out of place now that Mind Spike was removed since our only filler spell is now not buffed with this cooldown, particularly with Surge of Insanity procs.
  • Subservient Shadows
  • Madness Weaving
    • Feels pretty lackluster given its place on the talent tree.
    • Weird way to add damage to the spec
    • The spec already likes mastery so its functionality feels misplaced and is not very clear to the average player.
  • Death's Torment
  • Deathspeaker
    • losing the movement global is a bit disappointing, wish we still had the proc version as a choice node
    • Really begins to highlight how weak Shadow Word: Death is baseline
    • While this talent on live does interact with Depth of Shadows this current iteration does not. Without adjusting that talent as well we have this weird zone between 35% and 20% health where we have different execute interactions which makes things feel confusing.
  • Shadow Crash
  • Descending Darkness
    • while optimizing Shadow Crash damage does give us yet another form of AoE you now have a conflicted sense of using it solely for DoT spreading or Damage. I personally liked not feeling pressured to use it on cooldown but rather being able to mostly just save it for DoTing purposes, and now this is a bit conflicting.
    • On fresh targets DoTs are applied after Shadow Crash deals damage so you lose out on the Mastery modifier here which feels bad, another reason why making this a damage spell is awkward.
  • Void Volley
    • not using its own keybind is awesome
    • this spell is just super cool and I love it
  • Idol of N'Zoth
    • tooltip is very confusing
    • insanity generation buffs are currently hidden from your buff bar and combat log
    • Devouring Plague gives 12 stacks regardless of Mind's Eye vs. Distorted Reality, potentially an oversight?
  • Idol of Y'Shaarj
    • This really has nothing to do with pets and does feels out of place on the tree for what it was reworked into.
    • The pathing talents are all pet related, and this talent proccing haste emphasizes a known issue with the game not updating pet melee-swing time in real-time after you get a haste proc. Pets update on a slower interval (roughly ~3 seconds) which makes this node feel even more out of place.
    • feels very feast or famine gameplay which is not typical of this spec.