Shadow Domain Cleric

 Buckle up and manage your expectations.

In WoW, there are several "hybird" classes, which are classes that can perform roles other than Damage. (In fact, only four classes our of its 13, the Rogue, Hunter, Mage, and Warlock, are DPS-only classes). Priests are not the only ones with just a single DPS spec - the same is true for Paladins and Monks, and when the Demon Hunter and Evoker came out, each only had two specs, so they also only had a single DPS option, though each has since been given a second dps spec. But what makes Priests unusual is that they still only perform two roles - healing and DPS - but they have two healing specs, Discipline and Holy.

Furthermore, until the Demon Hunter's Void-themed Devourer spec was added earlier this year, most classes had a pretty consistent aesthetic and theme - a Paladin was a wielder of the Holy Light regardless of whether they were a tank, damage-dealer, or healer. Similarly, a Shaman was calling up on elemental magic. But Shadow Priests take a class that looks quite classically heroic and good-aligned and went very dark, embracing dark magic, driving foes to insanity, and consuming them with necromantic plagues.

Over time, admittedly, Discipline has started to take on this "balance of light and shadow" theming, but Shadow Priests have only changed as the game has sort of narrowed in on what Shadow magic really is - initially kind of a catch-all for dark magic, but now more specifically related to the Cosmic, Lovecraftian Void, playing up the madness angle (interestingly, one of their key spells, Devouring Plague, was recently reflavored as Shadow Word Madness) and also having a lot of weird aberrant creatures emerge through their spells.

Thus, if we weren't getting any new subclasses in this book, you might actually consider playing something more like an Aberrant Sorcerer or Great Old One Warlock. Given how I understand this subclass will wind up looking... you might still want to consider that.

But let's try not to let others' opinions shape ours and look at the features on their own terms.

Domain Spells:

Level 1: Dissonant Whispers, Shadow Word: Pain

Level 2: Crown of Madness, Mind Spike

Level 3: Summon Undead, Vampiric Touch

Level 4: Evard's Black Tentacles, Psychic Horror

Level 5: Dominate Person, Void Eruption

    Few things - Shadow Word Pain, Psychic Horror, and Void Eruption are all new. I believe that SWP is basically a DOT - which as I've mentioned before, doesn't work as well in D&D as it does in WoW, and I think the damage is quite underwhelming even for a 1st level spell. Psychic Horror if memory serves is a Fear/Stun spell, possibly with some damage along with it. Void Eruption is a big burst of AoE damage. Note that while I think Summon Aberration would have arguably been more appropriate here, Shadow Priests also do have a thing where they periodically shoot ghostly apparitions at their foes. This is all on-theme, and Summon Undead is really good (good damage and really good debuffs on foes). Dissonant Whispers is also quite good, though not all the spells here are as amazing.

Level 3:

Shadowform:

As a bonus action, you can expend a use of Channel Divinity to take on a shadowy form for 1 minute, or you can dismiss it early. It also ends if you become incapacitated or deal radiant damage with a spell.

    This last part is a bit rough - in WoW, the original version of this (which lasted until cancelled) would prevent you from casting healing spells. But in modern WoW, where they can curate the spells that each spec gets, it no longer does that. This will shut down a lot of great Cleric spells, though if you have your Spirit Guardians doing Necrotic, I think you can manage this.

Shadow Stealth: When in an area of Dim Light or Darkness, you can take the Hide action as a bonus action.

    I don't really see this shadow stealth come up a lot, to be honest. And we can't use this on the turn we activate it.

Void Empowerment: When you cast a spell using a spell slot that deals Psychic or Necrotic damage, you can add 1d6 to one damage roll of the spell.

    Ok, this could be pretty good, but let's also break down how it will work: does this buff Spirit Guardians? Only for one damage roll. Used on an instant-cast AoE spell (like I believe Void Eruption will be) this will be pretty good. I'd have just let this be added to cantrips as well. Toll the Dead getting an extra d6 would be pretty great, but alas.

    Really, I feel like this should do more - a d6 on all Necrotic and Psychic damage would be, I think, appropriate given that this isn't even an always-on subclass feature and still requires a resource. I also think something like Temp HP or a higher AC would be a better defensive feature (granted, Clerics in D&D are much better-armored than Priests in WoW).

Devouring Plague:

When a creature within 30 feet of you that you can see fails a saving throw, you can cause the creature to take 1d10 Necrotic damage. If you do, you regain HP equal to the Necrotic damage dealt. You can do this Wis times per long rest.

    Ok. The damage here is pretty low given that it's limited uses, though we'll see if this gets better. We are of course also getting healed with it, so the damage shouldn't be that high. I do like that there's A: no action required and B: doesn't have to be a fail against your spells and abilities. I'm going to keep an eye on this - if it sticks at this damage/healing to level 20, I think it starts to look kind of useless, though I will say that without any action required, it's not like you'll ever stop using this - it'll just be kind of a marginal benefit.

Level 6:

Dispersion:

When you are hit with an attack roll, you can use a reaction to disperse into shadowy energy. Until the end of your next turn, you have resistance to all damage (including the damage of the triggering attack), but you also cannot take any action, bonus action, or reaction. While dispersed, you gain a fly speed of 40 feet. When the effect ends, you can spend up to half your total Hit Dice, regaining HP as if you had finished a short rest.

You can do this once per short or long rest.

    First off: weird feature to translate into D&D, of all of the Shadow Priest abilities. But also... I kind of hate this. And part of the reason I hate it is because there could be situations where it's useful, but it's a real feel-bad ability. I mean, you are sacrificing your turn, more or less. You don't even get a free disengage with this. You can, sure, fly away from a foe that just hit you, but not as part of the initial reaction, and you also literally cannot disengage to avoid an opportunity attack. Is this actually going to really save you that much pain? In WoW, this feature does prevent you from using other abilities for a couple seconds, but WoW is so much faster-paced than D&D. A full turn without an action is utterly brutal. I hate this.

Level 17:

Vampiric Embrace:

While Shadowform is active, whenever you roll the d6 to add extra damage to a spell, one creature of your choice within 30 feet of you regains that many hit points.

    I try to keep my tone civil and constructive with these.

    Are you fucking kidding me?

    This is a d6 of healing, 3.5 average, at level 17. On a limited-resource buff you place on yourself, which also requires you to expend spell slots.

    As a point of comparison: the Life Domain at this level gets to just treat every healing spell like they rolled the maximum amount. A 1st level Cure Wounds with a +5 to Wisdom will thus go from an average of 14 healing to 21, or 7 extra healing, which is more than you could possibly get with this ever.

    And by level 17, you're probably not casting a lot of 1st level spells in combat.

    Truly, this is just a tiny little F-you for sticking with this subclass to tier 4.

Overall Thoughts:

    This whole subclass feels like a real missed opportunity, which makes me pretty sad.

    I think you could have built it as a Cleric that really focuses on damage-dealing. Giving us ways to heal allies when we deal damage does, sure, match a very minor theme in the WoW version, but that's the primary vibe of the Discipline Priest/Cleric. Instead, this should have been all about pouring out damage and eldritch madness.

    Broadly, my main critique of the WoW book's new subclasses is that by focusing on bringing recognizable spells and abilities from WoW into D&D, they've forgotten that these games just work very differently. But in this case, the actual Shadow Priest abilities they've chosen to recreate here are also not what I'd consider defining traits of the spec.

    Shadowform, certainly, is an iconic Shadow Priest thing, but to be frank, it's mostly because of the visual. You enter Shadowform and you will look like you're perpetually in vaguely purple darkness. You just click it on and forget about it.

    Much like Affliction Warlocks, though, this is a spec that in WoW is very much focused on stacking up multiple damage-dealing effects (though Affliction goes far harder on this,) which is just not something that works very well in D&D. If this subclass were instead focused around something like frightening creatures when you deal psychic damage to them (not entirely unlike an Undead Warlock's Form of Dread,) or something where you could, say, as a bonus action, send out Shadowy Apparitions to any creatures of your choice in a given range and deal either low guaranteed damage or perhaps have them save to take damage scaling with your Cleric level (and maybe limit it to a certain number of uses per day,) this would have, I think, better captured the actual feel of this spec.

    I also think that we need more dark-themed Cleric subclasses, and while we have the Grave Domain, sure (though I think Horrors Within tried to fix what wasn't broken and wound up nerfing it) I think Shadow in general would be a really evocative domain to play with. It's a shame that this is what we wound up with.

    I think the Oath of the Holy Paladin is also available to check out, which I'll visit next, but which I also suspect that I'm going to not love, as I think that it again tries to make something that makes sense in WoW work in D&D when it probably shouldn't (echoes of the Alchemist Artificer and trying to make half-caster healers).