Just came back after a few months off and I notice everyone on the forums talks about how garbage searing nightmare is. While I do agree it’s a garbage mechanic, with garbage damage, I never hear anyone talk about how weak devouring plague is.
A rogue can build five combo points in less than 10 seconds and dump a 30K envenom/eviscerate. Same with a Feral (and whatever their dump is called). Affliction has a super powerful spender.
But devouring plague?
If void form cd is what we’re sticking with, then shouldn’t devouring plague be buffed significantly?
3 Likes
It makes me sad to think of the MoP days when DP was one of the hardest hitting abilities in the game. This unstable affliction imposter needs to be redesigned.
#removevoidform
7 Likes
And from a PVP perspective, besides the dwarf racial, I can’t think of any class off the top of my head that can get rid of bleeds, whereas nowadays 50% of all classes have a cleanse/purge. So on top of devouring plague being weak, it can also be cleansed lol. What happened to shadow priest?
4 Likes
I remember when it was -re- introduced it hit like a truck. But we can’t have nice things.
7 Likes
A rogue can build five combo points in less than 10 seconds and dump a 30K envenom/eviscerate.
It’s funny that those are the numbers you went with because I just checked a log from last night and my average DP was about 15k damage and I cast it about every 5 seconds on average.
But yeah, that’s optimal PvE build, and you’re probably talking about PvP. I’d certainly be in favour of it being a more impactful button on its own, since a lot of its current value is tied to proccing mind blast for 4 set and maintaining maximum mastery bonus for your other spells.
2 Likes
If you’re talking about PvP, Devouring Plague is not very impressive on it’s own, but it can sort of stack(not completely). All of our pressure seems comes from spam-stacking DP as much as possible during damage CDs.
Yes this post was from a pvp perspective. Never the less, if current voidform is going to stay, then I think a significant Dp buff is needed.
I get it, we have really nice utility (perhaps the best in pvp), but I would also like to run some keys once in a while and not have to level a mage on the side to run them
Dp got nerfed by about 20% over the course of shadowlands, they should absolutely revert that as a priority and try to keep it in mind when / if tuning is needed in dragonflight.
2 Likes
Part of the problem with DP, as with all of our kit, is that relative to many, we have a lot of active damaging abilities. On a single target fight, you have: DP, SWP, VT, MB, MF, VB/Eruption, SWD, and Mindbender. That’s 8 (plus notable passive sources like Apparitions, 4p tier, shadowflame prism, etc). To make any single one feel meaningful on its own is difficult without something else then feeling really weak on its own. DP (or our dots as a whole) hitting harder would need to draw the numbers from somewhere else.
The other “problem” is our mastery. Sure, maybe DP - and our other dots - don’t feel like they hit particularly hard. But they each buff our damage by ~15% during their duration. If that additional damage was attributed to the dot itself, then the numbers would look a lot more favorable to them. But it doesn’t, of course, and so DP might only do 10k damage on its own, when actually it’s increasing your damage dealt by another 10k over its duration. Makes DP feel less strong/satisfying than it is.
Obviously changing our mastery isn’t going to happen (and I’m not saying it necessarily should), so what do you do? Buffing DP means nerfing something else, but what in our kit would you want nerfed number wise? Nothing really has the “numbers” to spare.
1 Like
I don’t really care about the damage. Devouring Plague is underwhelming in and of itself. The animation is basically non-existent. The sound effect is unsatisfying. I don’t feel good pressing it because it doesn’t do anything for me. And no Mastery it not a factor in that because it does not influence my gameplay in any way.
I rather enjoy Devouring Plague in s4 because it can proc Dark Thoughts so there is a reason behind casting it. But that is going away in Dragonflight and its replacement, Vampiric Insight, does nothing to add interaction to the spell.
There was a time when DP hit for 30% of a player’s health up front and ticked for another 30% over 6 seconds. Mind Blast and SWD would hit for roughly 20%. VT + SWP would tick for about 55% over there duration. SP used to be able to kill someone with DP into double blast and SWD while having incredible sustained rot. The problem is voidform.
You can’t just tack this onto the end of every grievance you have like it’s fact. Stop contorting issues with your biases.
1 Like
I mean it does have some merit.
With Voidform, you get 20% increased damage and access to another button that both enhances the proc rate of Shadowy Apparitions and streamlines the dotting effect thus saving a lot of GCD in redotting.
So that moves a lot of the power budget into Voidform and as a result has to make the non Voidform part of gameplay do less damage.
I think it would be better if Voidform just changed the gameplay and got rid of the +20% damage. I think that would then allow more power budget to be baked into the base spec.
Or if we do get multiple types of gameplay, the more classic shadow gameplay can have more enhancing’s buffs to our spells that would then move Shadow into a more consistent damage gameplay loop.
2 Likes
Voidform actually has an incredibly weak power budget on single target, which is what the post is complaining about. It is only a 10% damage increase (or technically 9.09 because Shadowform increases damage by 10% already).
The actual reason why Devouring Plague hits for so little is because we cast it so frequently. The reason our DoTs hit for so little is because Blizzard intentionally nerfed DoTs to not deal sufficient damage.
I can’t really give an argument for Mind Blast hitting for little, maybe because of Dark Thoughts cast frequency?
Is this wrong then?
-
Voidform
Instant 1.5 min cooldown
Requires Priest
Requires level 10
Activated by casting Void Eruption. Twists your Shadowform with the powers of the Void, increasing spell damage you deal by 20%
Mind Blast
granting an additional charge of Mind Blast, and refreshing Mind Blast’s cooldown.
Lasts 15 sec.
I figured the +20% is in addition to Shadowform… If its not, then that’s another issue with the lack of clarity on so many aspects surrounding Shadow lol.
Edit:
You know what, I think having a Choice Talent between Voidform and Shadowform might be a solution in Shadows Talent Tree.
Then have separate legs going into the bottom section that lean towards more Voidform required abilities vs the classic choices on a different leg.
1 Like
You can like voidform and I respect that. You can think it’s not a problem and I can disagree with that. Pretending that you don’t know more than half the effects of voidform on your damage, however, loses all respects and makes any disagreement absurd.
Me 2 bro 
It’s also incredibly boring in PvE. SPriest being a build / spend class is lame and they should have never done away with the Legion insanity
I played my Priest as a Shadow Main from 2004-End of WoD. I never felt bored. It was a fun spec to play in every iteration up to that point.
The Legion changes made me absolutely despise playing Shadow.
I don’t mind the new way of Shadow since Legion… just as long as we can get to a more Pre Legion type of gameplay as well.
If it was one or the other… Then the Pre Legion Redesign up to current should be trashed. That’s my opinion on the matter anyway.
2 Likes
#removevoidform #giveusshadoworbs!
1 Like