Soul Shards: Issues and Possible Fixes
Read this post first for a better overview of the issues with the Soul Shards, then come back here.
According to Ghostcrawler Blizzard is actually working on several solutions related to Soul Shard mechanic, so it’s not (just) a whine post but rather a few suggestions I found and came up with. There’s actually a few dozen suggestions scattered on the official forums but most of them are either too complex and would require a complete overhaul of the system, or just plain dumb.
Since Blizzard is obviously trying to convince us changing the Soul Shard mechanic is rocket science, we’re going to prove them wrong. There is one suggestion below which I think is near (if not) perfect. Others only fix one of the two biggest issues, which are space and annoyance.
Facts:
- Shards take huge amounts of our inventory space. Yes, hunters have arrows and other classes have more sets of gear, but we’re talking 50 shards per raid here.
- It’s annoying to kill mobs just to be able to kill mobs.
- Rogues have had their entire poison skill removed because it took too much of their bag space. Yes, Blues actually said that, and no I won’t stop mentioning it every chance I get.
- making Soulshards less of a pain in the ass would NOT do anything about game balance in any way
- no, we can’t just farm a hundred shards while doing dailies because we usually don’t have that much free bag slots, especially when doing dailies! Get real.
Possible solutions:
Make Soul Shards Stackable
Probably the easiest fix, however hardly the best one. It would fix the number one issue, which is bag space.
Possible alternative: make them stack only in Soul Shard bags.
Doesn’t fix the part where we still have to farm the damn things.
Make Soul Shards Conjured
Giving us a new spell which we could use whenever out of combat to conjure SSs. Yes, conjure them just like we conjure Healthstones or mages conjure Mana Gems. We wouldn’t have to undertake boring and unnecessary rituals of killing worthless mobs over and over again after a raid or a dozen arena matches.
Possible alternative: after conjuring (or even draining it from a mob) the Soul Shard would NOT be consumed when we use a spell that requires it, but rather stay in our inventory until logged out for 15 minutes. It would sort of work like shaman totems (not the spell, the item!), just that those are permanent. Personally, I think this would be a PERFECT fix: simple, efficient, and everyone would be happy.
Different mobs create more Shards
Suggested by Kasha on Smatter’s post, higher level mobs could yield more shards per kill. For example, killing a level 80 elite mob would give for example 5 shards, while a normal level 80 mob would give three or whatever.
Sounds cool and there’s even some logic behind it, but there’s still the issue of — you guessed, bag space.
Shadowburn & Soul Fire
I can’t think of one remotely good reason why Shadowburn would require a reagent cost, especially since we have to invest 11 points in the Destruction tree to get it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing spell but the reagent cost is simply not justified. Fire Blast is a trainable spell, more powerful and without the reagent cost.
Soul Fire is yet another spell that uses a SS. It is more potent than Pyroblast but come on!
Reagents are usually required for buffs or other spells like Rebirth or similar: never for damaging spells, especially not the ones which are as commonly used in PvP as Shadowburn.
Soulshatter
Soulshatter is an important spell without a doubt, but arguably the worst aggro dump in game. It’s often resisted and has a five minute cooldown, but other than that it’s such a powerful ability which we obviously must not use very often because it deals billions of damage and causes players to tremble in fear when we use it, especially in PvP. Rumors say it can even cause Ozzy Osbourne wet his pants and Chuck Norris pop a painkiller. The reagent cost is obviously there for a reason, right?
Stones
We love the Stones but I’m talking about something else here, okay. I don’t mind Healthstones, Firestones, Spellstones and Soulstones requiring shards to conjure, but they should have charges and we should be able to put them into our soul bags — can you tell me one reason why not? Suggested by Beboshi, thanks!
Doesn’t actually help with either of the main issues, but makes sense and having a few more free inventory slots isn’t exactly overpowered.
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I don’t know where he got his insider info, but I sure hope WLambros is right: if GC or any other blue is actually reading our rants and whines here, at least he has plenty of ideas.
I would be more than happy if;
A) Shards became stackable inside soul bags.
B) Shadowburn and Soul Fire no longer require shards.
That would really be fine for me. I don’t think its too much to ask.
As usual…good post Horns…
Fear is OP, so we have to balance it somehow, right? I mean, Warlocks can faceroll through all PvP and PvE content,
Lulz, it’ll never be fixed. It took us 4 years to get Instant Corruption.
As shards are a type of ‘currency’ for us locks, why not make them appear in the currency tab. Seems to solve all the problems we are having with them. Or does this make to much sense, as things that make to much sense and are actually more productive always the wrong answer?
i’ve been praying for stackable shards since day 1. soul bag was blizz’s solution to shards problem. wonder what’s their next solution?
I think the person who came up with the soulshard concept was a recovering crack addict. Thats how I feel at least when I spec for shadowburn.. Before I quit I could easily have used 4 or 5 in one arena game. Battlegrounds could be even worse.
Ah, quitting the game has never felt so good. Happy shard farming boys and girls.
Good post but, are we not losing objective here? GC got us out of subject with the shard issue while warlocks top the tables in deaths.
It’s coming & it’s massive
The state of the warlock class and even more the general trend to dumb down the game down caused me to quit.
Suggestions were and are plentiful, they just did not bother to do something. Unless you are addicted to WoW, just quit. It is the only language Blizzard understands. Why get angry about a game that is already quite dated.
Of course we can wait 1-2 more expansions when the tables might turn in favor of other classes, maybe warlocks are among them.
I have come to the point where I gave up on MMOs, so it was not much of a problem to stop funding Ghostcrawler who has ideas that might screw up the game even more than an even more screwed class ever could!
Great post. I’m not a big fan of stackable shards only in soul bags. I’m still losing an entire bag there. To me there’s no gain there except that I could farm a TON of shards once in awhile instead of a few as I go along.
When Hunters whine about losing a bag space I am quick to remind them that 1) at least their ammo is stackable and 2) at least their specialty bag gives them a bonus. I’m not saying that this would be a fix, but if soul bags gave some type of bonus (SP, Haste, etc) at least that’d be a little icing on the poop-cake of soul shards.
i have few others ideas… what about talents procing from some spells like “when target afflicted by immolate, soulfire cost no shard” … or choatic mind that used to be with us for few days “if you hit target with chaos bolt which is already afflicted by immolate than is xx% chance to cuase you to enter chaotic mind state - chaotic mind causes that your next soulfire spell cost no mana or reagent and will be instant cast” - just few for soulfire, many others are in my or yours head certainly
than i have nice other idea that its not mine but already in game but just modified for warlocks - dunno its name but its charger for potions.. so for exp engineer/jwc/blacksmither would at low cost of mats make soulshard chargers that can hold certain stack of SS, say like 25-50 … so you need no soulbag, 25-50 SS would hold just one bag space or even could be farmed and than stored in bank or who knows where, some special ultra secret warlock soul storage place which u visit when u run out of shards etc etc.. and if given to engineer/blacksmither could be some more profit from this gold-dump professions
pardon my grammar
I don’t think I’ve ever played a warlock past 15 but even I can see how stupid the system is now. There is no real reason for such an archaic system to still be in place after the game has had so many “nerfs” to ideas that were just plain dumb in the first place.
Never get rid of the shard system..that is something that is cool and unique about locks but it needs some serious overhaul that is long overdue.
Make Soul Shards Stackable — Yes great idea !!
Different mobs create more Shards — good but how about different type of instance creates more shards
ie (reg instance 2x, heroic 4x, raid x8) that would solve problem of farming still we need to have Soul Shards Stackable.
Shadowburn & Soul Fire — Glyps? give us glyph that will have 50% chance to create shard on hit!
Soulshatter - careless if I need shard for it or not but CD is royal pain
The biggest problem as you said is that you have to kill mobs to kill mobs. That becomes a big problem in raids where there are relatively few mobs and you spend a lot of time (and shards) on them - not to mention if you are still working on a boss you can go for awhile without killing anything. I don’t think stacking shards really does much - you still have to farm them and 28 slots should be sufficient. Removing shard cost also doesn’t solve the core problem either. My pet is my biggest shard cost, but I can’t see them getting rid of the shard cost of that.
What we really need is a way to generate more shards, and to generate them even if we don’t kill anything. I don’t think this is too much of a stretch, and it definitely doesn’t unbalance anything. This could be done several ways but I like the idea of a new dot which I will call “Destabilize Soul”. The tool tip would read something like “Destabilizes your targets soul, causing x shadow damage over y seconds. If the spell completes without being dispelled it generates a soul shard.” It seems to fit with the concept, it would give us a small DPS boost, and it would allow us to be constantly generating shards in a raid or pvp setting. The only downside is that it would add to an already complicated affliction spell rotation. However the spell would only be used as needed to regenerate shards, so it doesn’t have quite the maintenance hassle of other dots. Also the duration could be long with low damage (similar to siphon life) to avoid this.
i aways think about this…
HealtStones, Soulstones, Firestones, Spellstones, shoul be capable to be placed at soul bags… even people who don’t know anything about the game consider this obvious.
ShadowBurn should CREATE an ADDITIONAL soul shard if target is killed with this spell…
and soulfire should create one shard if target dies with this spell… (is that too much?)
and, about multiple stones, i thinks is not logic in there cause, each mob have one soul right?, well, theres a glyph
of drain soul http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43390..
well.. EXCELENT SITE, im a noob, just 5 months playing,
greetings from méxico.
http://www.wowarmory.com/chara.....=Mortemcel
They are soul shards implying that it is a fragment or piece of soul therefore there could be more than one. In raids you have more opportunity to use shards then to replace them. That will still true as long as you need shards for pets, soulstones, soulwells and other maintenance spells.
What about making soulshards a currency. Apply a bag to the currency tab to make it possible to store soulshards.
That bliz might want to have a limit on the amount od ss locks cary I can imagine, but let it be realistic. On a decent wipe night (sarth 3d) i use an average of 80 shards.
The curent max we can cary if we stick to the bag is 32.
So make it a currency with a 100 shard limit or something.
Just make them stackable and easier to farm, for Cenarius’ sake! That’s all I ask!
soulbag should be like the ghost collecting toaster in ghostbusters…when someone dies in the near suroundings it sucks it soul and collects it as a soulshard.
Stackable shards wouldn’t that be nice . But a cap??? Why Blizzard Why???
Please explain the thought process for limiting the number of shards we can hold. Oh and folks, did you realize that the 32 max includes what you have in the bank too?? Estupido.
I am a high ranking guild member and often help lower guild members out with instances or 20/40 man raids. Between the summoning spells, making healthstones, Soulwells, and SoulStones I can easily use 12+ shards. If I do 2-3 of these in a row in areas where I cannot generate new shards this is a severe blow to me. Well I suppose I could now use it as an excuse why I can’t do too many of them. Sorry folks, Blizzard has handicaped me I can’t do another run in Azshara until I go farm some more back in Northrend.
BTW I do NOT do power leveling. But I will go with a group of “younger” toons into instances to help them learn how to play together as a group.