wow Shadow Priest Changes in Shadowlands

[Starym 3,800]

 

It's finally time for Shadow priests to get some attention in Shadowlands! Devouring Plague is back filling the role of Voidform in certain situations and we get a lot more details on Shadow Word: Death and how it's going to be more relevant in longer fights.

Shadow Priests (source)

Blue post content goes here

Updated June 24

In this next build of the Shadowlands Alpha, we have updates to Shadow Priests that are intended to address some common concerns about the spec.

Returning Ability: Devouring Plague

We’ve seen a lot of feedback that Voidform can be challenging to utilize to its full potential in some combat situations, such as in Mythic Keystone dungeons on non-boss encounters, or for leveling and doing outdoor content. We tend to agree that Voidform can feel unrewarding in situations where it becomes difficult to maintain efficient insanity generation. Rather than heavily re-designing Void Form, we’re introducing a new tool for these combat situations with the return of Devouring Plague.

Along with Void Eruption , Devouring Plague will be the only other spell that costs Insanity. Our intent with Devouring Plague is for it to be used on enemies who die quickly, such as common creatures while leveling, or on simple trash pulls, while Void Form is more powerful on longer combat encounters.

Shadow Word: Death

Although we’ve seen a lot of excitement around this iconic spell making a return, we have concerns that it wasn’t very clear what its role will be in the modern Shadow Priest kit. Shadow Word: Death has always been intended to be an “execute” ability, so it must be something that is mostly used in the outdoor/leveling content. In the past, Shadow Word: Death found itself in Priest’s core rotations, even being used repeatedly against targets that weren’t about to die.

For Shadowlands, we don’t intend to add another core button to the Priest’s normal rotation. We want Shadow Word: Death to be situational. However, we feel that it could be a little more relevant in longer encounters such as boss fights. We’ve changed Shadow Word: Death to now deal 100% additional damage to targets at or below 20% health. Priests may now find that they wish to weave Shadow Word: Death into their rotations in some situations.

---

We feel that these changes will have a very meaningful impact on how the Shadow Priest now plays.

After you’ve tested this out in the Alpha, please let us know what you think. Thank you!

 

More Shadowlands Class Changes

Death Knight	Mage	Rogue
Death Knight 9.0.1 Class Changes	Mage 9.0.1 Class Changes	Rogue 9.0.1 Class Changes
Demon Hunter	Monk	Shaman
Demon Hunter 9.0.1 Class Changes	Monk 9.0.1 Class Changes	Shaman 9.0.1 Class Changes
Druid	Paladin	Warlock
Druid 9.0.1 Class Changes	Paladin 9.0.1 Class Changes	Warlock 9.0.1 Class Changes
Hunter	Priest	Warrior
Hunter 9.0.1 Class Changes	Priest 9.0.1 Class Changes	Warrior 9.0.1 Class Changes

 

[durdyenglish 298]

Shadow Word: Death becomes a priority add kill button.

[JLS07 2]

I don't want to be rude, but..   4 years bearing the voidform, 4 years giving feedbacks and showing to blizzard the hate of the community to the voidform, 3 months of  SL alpha waiting for something relevant to address the problems of the spec and this is all they can do ?  what a joke...

[Steveson 193]

2 hours ago, JLS07 said:

I don't want to be rude, but..   4 years bearing the voidform, 4 years giving feedbacks and showing to blizzard the hate of the community to the voidform, 3 months of  SL alpha waiting for something relevant to address the problems of the spec and this is all they can do ?  what a joke...

Yeah it's like they honestly think that there is nothing wrong with Void Form and how basicaly entire Shadow Priest gameplay is focused around it. "But Blizzard balance things around top world players and nobody is playing as Shadow Priest hurr durr". Well yeah and guess why? Because the spec sucked ever since Legion and became worse with each expansion ya dingus

[Peghoul 1]

I know this can be harsh for the devs and all... but voidform and insanity are leading to nowhere... just drop this idea already. Shadow priest became unfunny and weird. Since Shadowlands  is about getting back to old identity classes and spe, maybe it's about time to get back the fun and useful SP from previous expansions (aka before Legion).

[Wulfheart 1]

Generaly speaking this change feels like it offers nothing that could help the spec, but I feel like it is opening up for some sizable redesign. I'd personaly be happy if Blizzard made Insanity into resource that is mainly used for Devouring Plague as main damage spender. As for Voidform, Blizzard could ditch Insanity mini-game and turn it into a let's say, 2 minute cooldown with set duration, that aside from what it does now also increases Insanity generation. This could open up for more freedom in gameplay and potentialy better damage potential.

[miggfo 12]

Voidform is fun as hell and one of the most fun and exciting ideas any MMO has ever had for a DPS design. Cannot relate at all to people who can't appreciate and enjoy it heavily. Plus, pre-legion Shadowpriest's DPS gameplay was pretty generic.

 

Hopefully the Devouring Plague solution gives priest more flexibility in short-lived situations.

Edited June 25, 2020 by miggfo

[Steveson 193]

17 hours ago, miggfo said:

Voidform is fun as hell and one of the most fun and exciting ideas any MMO has ever had for a DPS design

The Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2 - "Are we a joke to you boy?"

[miggfo 12]

On 6/26/2020 at 6:37 AM, Steveson said:

The Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2 - "Are we a joke to you boy?"

I've played both and enjoy them quite a lot, yeah. I said "one of the most" - not saying modern Shadowpriest beats literally everything.

Guild Wars 2 Revenant with Charged Mists is right up there with Shadowpriest for me. Same with Chronomancer. I enjoy GW2 dps quite a lot but I don't think there's a ton of stand out dps design from among the rest of the GW2 specs, in terms of pure dps gameplay- but for hybrid stuff GW2 certainly has a major edge over WoW/ESO/FFXIV, but that's not the same as having particularly inspired DPS design.

 

I actually haven't played any particularly special ESO rotations. Is there anything that stands out to you? There's not many unique class mechanics at all- class identity is pretty weak in ESO, and so most of the rotations revolve around keeping up buffs/dots and using a single filler ability, quite vanilla and not super nuanced or super exciting overall. More lucky ones will have something like Merciless Resolve, Crystal Fragments procs, Backlash, or Molten Whip.

 

I can't think of any ESO rotation that's super fancy like Charged Mists/Chronomancer/Void Form/etc, but I haven't put as much time into ESO as GW2/WoW/FFXIV so maybe i'm missing something. I haven't gotten to experiment with stuff much, mostly just used well-established ESO DPS builds. I want to try a Necro build that builds boatlods of ult from dead adds though, but haven't started on that yet and no idea if such a thing is good in fights where there's sufficient adds. I'd be real interested to hear any suggestions from you.

Edited June 28, 2020 by miggfo

[Grzmilu 0]

Shadow priest was awesome on the beginning of legion, when staying in voidform was more demanding and Surrender of Madness was primary talent on raids.