Shadow Priest Guide
Class Changes
Shadow has received a suite of changes on the 12.1 PTR aimed at reducing the need to juggle multiple short cooldown abilities during Voidform, as well as an additional source of indiscriminate AoE cleave with the new Shadeburst talent.
Shadow
Developers’ notes: For Shadow in Curses of Ula’tek, we’re intending to improve Voidform gameplay and are adding an additional source of multi-target damage to reduce the spec’s reliance on Psychic Link in AoE situations. For Voidform, we’re updating Void Volley to be a limited use ability that can be used a set number of times during Voidform which leaves more room in the rotation while giving you the chance to use it at its most opportune moment. We’ve also updated Voidform support talents to have more noticeable effects to align with our goals.
New Talent: Shadeburst – Shadowy Apparitions that float towards your primary target explode, dealing Shadow damage to all enemies within 8 yards. Damage reduced beyond 5 targets.
Improved Voidform has been redesigned – Voidform increases your spell damage by an additional 5% and grants 2 additional uses of Void Volley.
Ancient Madness has been redesigned – Shadow Word: Madness increases your Haste during Voidform by 2% and increases its duration by 1.5 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. When Voidform ends, the Haste lingers and decays over 10 seconds.
Voidform now grants 3 uses of Void Volley instead of Void Volley having a cooldown during Voidform.
Power Word: Shield absorb increased by 25%.
Phantom Menace has been removed.
Hero Talents
Archon
Focused Outburst has been redesigned – Void Volley deals 15% increased damage and Shadow Word: Madness casts during Voidform unleash a Void Volley at your target.
Resonant Energy has been slightly redesigned – Creating a Halo increases your spell damage by 2% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 4 times.
Not mentioned in the patch notes: Shadowy Apparitions travel time reduced by 50%.
Exploding Shadowy Apparitions are something that have been on many player's Christmas lists for long, long, time and they have finally been added in the form of Shadeburst. This, in theory, gives Shadow a form of AoE damage that is not directly tied to the need to have Vampiric Touch applied to multiple targets. It also gives the spec a much needed tuning knob to differentiate between spread target and stacked AoE damage. One of the major issues that has arisen throughout the most recent expansions is Shadow's over reliance on spreading Vampiric Touch to deal any sort of AoE damage through the aforementioned Shadowy Apparitions, as well as Psychic Link. Psychic Link in particular has been a particular problem for Blizzard when it comes to tuning, seeing multiple changes almost every single patch. This reliance on Vampiric Touch causes two problems, the first is that Shadow is extremely bad at any sort of short lived AoE (Vaelgor & Ezzorak for example) and the second is that Shadow's Single Target talent build and Damage Profile are nearly identical to that of its Cleave one. This often leaves the spec in a position where its efficient AoE has to be paid for with poor Single Target, but at the same time that AoE only comes into its own on large numbers of spread long living targets. A damage pattern that hardly exists.
This is where Shadeburst could potentially come in, unfortunately though it has some problems. The talent is effectively just a small cleave component attached to Shadow Word: Madness. This means that while it's not reliant on Vampiric Touch being active, it's still just an extension of Shadow's Single Target damage. Another issue is that it currently doesn't scale with any of the other talents designed to increase the potency or frequency of Shadowy Apparitions such as Void Apparitions or Tormented Spirits, with one of Shadow's strongest Apparition talents in Phantom Menace being completely removed. Alongside its extremely poor tuning, it's just too weak to really do anything as part of Shadow's AoE toolkit, let alone be a standalone damage source of its own in situations where burst damage is needed. Both of these issues knock a lot of the wind out of what has been one of the community's biggest "It'd be cool if" ideas.
There have also been major changes to Voidform specifically to increase its impact and make it easier to get the maximum number of Void Volley casts off while it is active. On live, Shadow's cooldown window can feel hectic with lots of short cooldown spells and procs to manage and optimize. Personally, I think the chaos is a lot of fun and the spec feels extremely smooth when you find a rhythm and get to press meaningful buttons throughout pretty much your entire cooldown window, however it is still frustrating to drop a Void Volley due to not quite being able to cast the spell exactly as it came off cooldown every single time. Void Volley now having 3, potentially 5, charges instead of a fixed cooldown means you can be much more flexible with how you use them. The reworked Improved Voidform and Ancient Madness are also fantastic, taking two extremely bland talents on live and giving them each their own distinct identity when it comes to how you want to customise your major cooldown. More Void Volleys feels excellent and offers even more mobility, while the update to Ancient Madness adds extra haste and a noticeable increase to duration.
With Void Volley no longer having a cooldown, the Focused Outburst talent has been completely redesigned. Originally this talent reduced the cooldown of Void Volley from 10 seconds to 6, mirroring the cadence of Void Bolt in The War Within. Now though, it causes every cast of Shadow Word: Madness to launch a Void Volley completely for free. This is immense fun and has been the highlight of my experiences on the PTR thus far. The Void Volley animation is one of my favourites and getting to launch wave after wave of bolts towards my enemies during cooldowns (And reap the benefits on the meters) makes Voidform feel like a truly impactful cooldown. However, this new talent is also extremely strong and heavily pushes Archon to be the dominant hero talent over Voidweaver.
The final meaningful change Shadow is receiving is more of a Quality of Life fix than anything else. Ever since it was first reintroduced to Shadow, Halo has been tempermental. failing to hit targets within range with absolutely no rhyme or reason. This has impacted Shadow's damage in Dungeons, Raids, and even the open world as one of Halo's most important and often overlooked roles has been to apply a 10% stacking damage taken debuff to all enemies. While it's unlikely the bugs with Halo will ever truly be fixed, the change to Resonant Energy at least means that the only thing lost is the direct damage Halo would have dealt.
The buff to Power Word: Shield isn't really worth talking about. The spell is pitifully weak even after a 25% increase and is used exclusively for the speed boost from Body and Soul. This buff seems more like an attempt to offset the 30% health increase coming in 12.1, and less to make it an actually valuable part of our utility of defensive kit. On live servers with a 536k health pool it currently shields me for 18.5k. We're looking at a 300% increase to make that remotely relevant.
Tier Set
Shadow's tier set Increases the damage and frequency of Tentacle Slam, as well as providing an additional piece of interaction to make Vampiric Touch generate Shadowy Apparitions.
Shadow
2-Set Bonus: Tentacle Slam cooldown reduced by 3 seconds and its damage is increased by 100%.
4-Set Bonus: After casting Tentacle Slam, your next Vampiric Touch is instant, generates 4 additional Insanity, and conjures Shadowy Apparitions that deal 200% of normal damage.
This tier set bonus feels like it tries to pull in a lot of different directions and leaves a lot to be desired both in terms of strength and execution. Increasing the direct damage and incentive to cast Tentacle Slam on cooldown runs counter to the ability being the spec's only way to deal meaningful AoE damage. Blizzard have also stated this tier that their goal with TIer Set bonuses is to provide some level of gameplay and have them not just be passive, and while this set bonus does offer some gameplay, having players recast Vampiric Touch on enemies that have likely just been dotted by Tentacle Slam with no immediate damage component does not feel very fun or compelling. The apparition it generates is OK and means it has value in AoE but it still feels too detached from the act of casting the Vampiric Touch to have any real oomph behind it. When this effect was last in the game as the Unfurling Darkness there was similar sentiment expressed that ultimately lead to the talent's removal.
Equally as disappointing as the quality of the gameplay created by Shadow's new Tier Set is its tuning. The set feels extremely weak compared to many that are coming in 12.1 and even Shadow's season 1 set bonus. Personally I would want a complete rethink but given how close 12.1 is I'm not sure how feasible that would be. It's really, really bad and I am not looking forward to playing with it at all.
Closing Thoughts
While the changes are by and large very good, it feels like there's some real trepidation from Blizzard when it comes to trying to solve the problem of Shadow's AoE. The improvements to Voidform feel great, with the cooldown finally feeling like it has some heft. The charge system on Void Volley works excellently and leads to the spec having some unique flair that sets it apart from other similar caster dps.
When it comes to Shadowy Apparitions it feels like we've got a long way to go. The loss of Phantom Menace and the Season 1 tier set , with nothing to offset the nerfs which came in 12.0 due to the addition of that set bonus, leaves cleave and AoE feeling quite weak. The addition of Shadeburst on paper looks extremely cool, but its current implementation is just too weak and completely disconnected from the way in which Shadow generates and synergises with its Shadowy Apparitions. I would sincerely hope we can see the apparition nerf from 12.0 reverted and avoid the mistake in future of nerfing the base spec due to the impact of a set bonus that will be gone 6 months later.
It's drastic but I would like to see Shadowy Apparitions gradually phase out Psychic Link as Shadow's primary form of AoE damage, with more interactions like Shadeburst to improve the spec's ability to deal damage without being shackled to mass applying Vampiric Touch. Every change to the spec in 12.1 so far has been a step in the right direction for Shadow, but Blizzard needs to follow through and ensure the spec has a consistently valuable damage pattern like most everyone else, as well as make Power Word: Shield more than just a vestigial spell we cast for some movement speed.
Shadow's tier set though is another story and, in my opinion, a complete non starter. It lacks any sort of impact and is deeply unsatisfying to use despite offering a small amount of interaction and mobility. It at least needs substantial buffs, if not a full redesign.
