A few classes in WoW: Battle for Azeroth are a disaster. Cortyn laments the state of the Shadow Priest.
With Battle for Azeroth, many classes in World of Warcraft are fundamentally overhauled. This makes sense, as with the abolition of artifact weapons, the balance needs to be recalibrated. Many beloved abilities and bonuses are being removed, leading to a rework of most specializations. For the Shadow Priest, this is like digging through the trash.
The Shadow Priest is my absolute favorite class and has been for years. I enjoy the class fantasy of shadow magic, which affects thoughts, causes a slow descent into madness, and yet differs from “typical corruption” like Fel magic.
But the gameplay in Battle for Azeroth is an absolute catastrophe. It’s as if Blizzard looked at all the changes (for the better!) of the Shadow Priest throughout Legion and said, “Yes… exactly all of that… let’s undo it for now!”
Anyone who leveled a Shadow Priest at the start of Legion (that is, at Patch 7.0) can darkly remember what I’m talking about. Every fight against two or more enemies resembled a boss fight. If you didn’t have Vampiric Embrace (self-healing) available, you could comfortably lie down and start planning your way from the graveyard.
Rewards that punish
The balancing of monsters compared to the Shadow Priest is extremely questionable.
Interrupting spells has disadvantages: An enemy (a witch in Drustvar) is casting a spell. As a Shadow Priest, I could interrupt the spell and prevent it. The logical thought would be: I interrupt a spell, so I take less damage. That would be great gameplay that rewards good reactions.
But it’s not. When I interrupt the witch, she comes into melee range and hits me in the face. Each of her melee attacks deals almost double the damage of her spell.
Self-healing is impossible. As a Priest, I play a class that can heal – even as a Shadow Priest, at least a little bit. This is one of the advantages of this class. In critical situations, Shadow Priests also have spells to heal themselves around four times with “Shadow Mend”. However, it heals so little now that two enemies can take back those health points during the time I’m healing.
Main rotation triggers area effect. Particularly annoying is the new Void Eruption. Instead of hitting all targets affected by “Shadow Word: Pain”, it only hits my targeted enemy and all foes within a 10-meter radius.
Can you imagine how often you pull some stupid bird out of the sky or some family of unsuspecting deer (who hit like mountain giants) by accident? You can’t always prevent this, even when playing extremely carefully. Part of my fixed damage rotation for a single target is a spell that causes area damage.
For fairness, I should note that I was wearing level gear, meaning equipment that was available as rewards in quests. With the exaggerated end-equipment from Legion, this may be different at the early levels.
The state of the Shadow Priest – Legion 2.0
For a while, I wondered: Is it maybe me? Have I just become too bad, or are the enemies in Battle for Azeroth fundamentally harder? But no, that’s not the case. I also played a bit of Fury Warrior, Retribution Paladin, and Fire Mage. I laugh at two to three enemies at the same time with those classes. With the plate wearers, I can even pull five to six enemies at once and kill them even faster than the two to three enemies with my Shadow Priest.
I have nothing against harder fights – for all classes. But if my class is panting and stumbling from one fight to the next while the others happily pull entire hordes of enemies together, then I feel bad about it.
That’s frustrating.
Rescue only comes in Patch 8.1 – so in autumn
The fact that Blizzard basically said “it’s too late for major changes, you’ll have to wait until Patch 8.1” makes me angry. It’s selfish, but I don’t want to wait until Patch 8.1 for my class to be at least fun. I don’t want to feel like I’m playing with one hand, no mouse, and no screen while leveling – because that’s about how effective I feel.
I want to emphasize again that the areas of Battle for Azeroth are absolutely amazing. I love the Tiragarde Sound and Drustvar was damn interesting. But I couldn’t enjoy both zones as a Shadow Priest. It was a torture. Not a fun, challenging challenge but a pure torment. Playing the Shadow Priest is simply not enjoyable in the leveling phase unless you have a very masochistic streak.
I’ve now reached level 119 and will probably hit 120 today. And then I will delete my Shadow Priest and check out the Horde areas – but definitely with a different class.
For those like me who are very attached to their Priest, I can only give one piece of advice at the start of Battle for Azeroth: Level as Holy. It really is easier – even solo.
