Blizzard is planning major changes to the Shadow Priest in Patch 8.1 of World of Warcraft. A lot of buffs are coming.
Together with the Shaman, the Shadow Priest is currently a concern for many players of World of Warcraft. It’s not much fun to play the Shadow Priest, and in higher “Mythic+” dungeons, they are rarely taken along, as their damage is somewhat laughable, as the current DPS ranking shows.
Now Blizzard has revealed how the Shadow Priest will be enhanced with the upcoming Patch 8.1 Tides of Vengeance. There will be numerous buffs.
The Void Form is set to become more significant: Blizzard believes that they have made the Void Form too weak. It does not carry enough significance anymore, and they want to change that. Consequently, there are three buffs for the Void Form:
- Void Form increases spell damage by 20% (previously 10%).
- The rate at which Insanity is drained in Void Form is reduced by 15%.
- Void Bolt generates 25% more Insanity.
Improvements to Dispersion: The ability Dispersion has fallen out of favor with many players. It reduces damage taken by 60% for a few seconds but prevents spell casting. Blizzard acknowledges that this downside is significant, and therefore the effect should be more powerful.
- Dispersion now reduces damage taken by 75% (previously 60%) and increases movement speed by 50%.
- The talent Mania is replaced by Intangibility. It reduces the cooldown of Dispersion by 25% and heals the Shadow Priest for 50% of their health over the duration of Dispersion.
Taking less damage as a Shadow Priest: Currently, Shadow Priests cannot withstand enough damage. They sacrifice the damage reduction from Shadow Form in Void Form – that will change.
The passive effect of Shadow Form will disappear; however, Shadow Priests will now also receive Focused Will. When hit in melee, Shadow Priests will take 15% less damage for 8 seconds – this is stackable up to 2 times.
A PvP talent becomes standard: Also new is that the PvP talent “Hallucinations” becomes a standard for all Shadow Priests. In the future, successfully casting the following spells will generate 6 Insanity each:
- Spell Lock
- Mass Dispel
- Cure Disease
- Vampiric Embrace
- Power Word: Shield
Thus, it is not a significant “loss” to help out and cast useful spells that do not deal direct damage.
Improvements to some talents: Other talents will also be slightly improved to make them more solid options.
- Targets of Mind Bomb and Psychic Scream can now take 40% more damage before they are freed from the effect.
- Void Torrent now generates 30 Insanity over its duration and deals 20% more damage. Additionally, it can also be cast outside of Void Form.
- Lingering Insanity now decreases every 3 seconds instead of every 2 seconds.
- Descent into Madness has a 33% shorter cooldown and now only causes a 15-second period where you cannot generate Insanity (previously 30 seconds).
The community is excited: The initial reactions from the community are overwhelmingly positive. Most Priests are pleased with the changes and are commenting with “Blizzard is actually listening” or “Wow, the changes are fantastic”.
However, a few players express concerns that the adjustments could make Shadow Priests too dominant in PvP. Some fine-tuning may be necessary here.
What do you think of the changes to the Shadow Priest? Are you looking forward to the buffs? Or would you prefer to see more changes to the playstyle?
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