Shadow Priests in WoW can rejoice. The developers have planned a few powerful buffs!
In World of Warcraft: Legion, Shadow Priests have a quite specific niche to fill. They excel in long fights that follow the “Council” principle, where two or three enemies must be fought simultaneously. Their damage in long fights against single targets is also decent.
However, Shadow Priests have a real problem in short fights against a variety of weak enemies. They have almost no area damage that they can apply quickly and effectively.
This poses a particular problem in dungeons. Since almost all fights here (excluding bosses) consist of as many enemies as possible, Shadow Priests are almost useless. Their damage often falls far below that of the tank, which is why Shadow Priests are rarely used in “Mythic+” dungeons and feel slowly but surely excluded.
Blizzard wants to change that. With an upcoming hotfix, the area damage capabilities for Shadow Priests will be drastically increased! Switching to Voidform through Void Eruption will then deal significant damage, and Mind Blast will become more powerful.
Void Eruption will become a powerful area spell
The following changes are planned:
- Void Eruption
- Void Eruption no longer deals damage based on each application of Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch on the target. Instead, it deals a single amount of damage to all targets afflicted with either Shadow Word: Pain or/and Vampiric Touch.
- The damage has been increased by 700%.
- Shadowflame (Talent)
- The cooldown has been reduced to 20 seconds (previously 30 seconds).
- Now generates 20 Insanity (previously 15).
- The projectile now travels 60% faster.
- Mind Blast (Passive)
- The damage has been increased by 50%.
In compensation, there will also be a few minor nerfs.
- Heart of Void (Legendary Item)
- Increases the damage of Void Eruption by 75% (previously 300%) and heals you for 25% of the damage dealt (previously 40%).
- Shadow Word: Pain / Vampiric Touch
- The damage has been reduced by 4%.
The mentioned changes will go live on November 29 after the maintenance.
Cortyn says: Shadow Priests have had to wait a long time, but now it’s finally getting better. If the update really happens like this, then I won’t have to be ashamed of my DPS being towards the lower end in trash groups anymore. And maybe random groups won’t be so reluctant to take a Shadow Priest along to complete a higher key.
How do you like the changes to the Shadow Priest? Does it make them too powerful and leave them with hardly any weaknesses? Or was this change necessary?
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