So this week’s changes, overall they just puzzle me.
I don’t really understand the reasoning or the need for them.
I’m not sure we have any difficulty with Dread Plague?
Sure it’s awkward to have to cast Outbreak or Blightburst’d Putrefy if we want to Dread Plague a priority target, but its no where near as rotation disruptive as the extra Festering Strikes needed to support the new Soul Reaper for example.
The issue in my eyes is more that Dread Plague has two conflicting purposes:
- Single Target dot for priority damage.
- AoE exploding dot on low health targets.
So if there’s a M+ pack of one high health priority target, and lots of low health fodder mobs, you currently want to Outbreak the lowest health, and Putrefy the lowest health.
Dread Plague will bounce it’s way to the high health priority target eventually, assuming they all stay in range without any bugs.
This might sound good Quality of Life, but extending duration tends not to matter much, if it falls a fresh duration from Outbreak or Putrefy is just as good as a extended 1-2 minute duration.
I’m again confused why this is needed.
Extending the dots doesn’t matter for anything in current popular builds.
TWW San’layn used to have all the benefits of extending and consuming Diseases as a regular part of the rotation.
Midnight yoinked all of that theming, and left San’layn as a mess of little buffs to lots of different little things.
Since TWW Launch, San’layn was first known for random procing big damage Blood Beasts, that got tuned down, then it was known for the disease building and consumption, that’s now gone. All that’s left is Vampiric Strike being slightly stronger Scourge Strike, and little buffs to every spell.
It doesn’t really have a core hook anymore.
Meanwhile the core Unholy Tree has Blightfall (thanks for the rename, rip Pestilence).
But it was tuned down from 150% to 100% in the final batch of tuning from 12.0.0 to 12.0.1.
With only doing whatever damage is left in the Diseases now, its never been taken in live Midnight builds.
Reducing the extension mechanics just further makes Blightfall purposeless.
We’re also going to have to take all the right side Pet, Magus talents to properly utilise the new tier set bonus.
Without Blightfall, it really doesn’t matter if diseases last 1minute or 2 minutes, this week’s changes, kinda do nothing except give the illusion of clean balanced durations.
It could be a different world if we had more compelling DoT focused mechanics, but currently we only have increased ticking mechanics, vital for Sudden Doom and Apex procs from Dread Plague.
I feel like the current minion focus and rework of Army of the Dead keeps the spec’s focus clearly on that at the moment. Which isn’t so bad.