This is assuming Void Eruption will get moved to be a (Choice) Switch talent with Dark Ascension.
Since it is below Ancient Madness, granting crit buff going into Voidform. I figure it can apply to Dark Ascension as well and these are the 2 ideas I got for that Burst window.
Dark Ascension: Death (Replaced Surrender to Madness)
While under the effects of Dark Ascension, your Shadow Word: Deaths cooldown is reduced by 50% and does 100% additional damage to targets afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch & Devouring Plague.
OR Alternate Version
Dark Ascension: Death (Replaced Surrender to Madness)
While under the effects of Dark Ascension, Your Shadow Word: Deaths critical strike damage bonus is increased by 30% and it cools down 100% faster.
Shadow Word: Death deals damage as though the target is below 20% health during this effect.
Have you thought about syncing DA and Voidform? I personally like the playstyle we have now and I’m not a fan of mind spike, so DA could increase mindblast, SW Death, mind games (and what more does it increase?).
Just a thought occurred, what if Mind spike did less damage for each dot, based on mastery, but did not extinguish our dots? It would do the same amount of damage no matter what dot is up, meaning you could spike any target, so you wouldn’t lose damage because you didn’t have to apply dots, and wouldn’t lose mastery on the target for other spells that interact properly with our dots
Can’t post in beta yet, just going to collect a few thoughts here in the meantime.
The new tree direction feels significantly better than the old, that said, there’s a handful of things that jump out at me.
The biggest thing that sticks out to me more than anything else in the tree is the voidform/DA interaction. Simply put, it’s terrible. I’m not a fan of void form, I’m very happy to have DA back, but I’d rather just keep what we have than do this nonsense as it stands.
I see no reason you should be able to have both cooldowns, it feels awful and it doesn’t make any sense. Having to hard cast 2 cooldowns back to back feels terrible.
Speaking of cooldowns, I don’t like how Dark Ascension works against our mastery. I like the cooldown, I like the idea of having a hard cast bursty cooldown, but I don’t think it quite works yet.
It feels pretty awkward rebuilding stacks of dark evangelism. Personally I think you just shouldn’t be able to build them during DA, and I’m not sure what the end result of the rotation will be but I think there’s a very real possibility that we throw out dots only to immediately consume them during this DA window in some weird damnation/SC single target amalgam that will just be very convoluted to gain benefit from out mastery.
This leads me to mind spike (which btw, doesn’t seem to even have an animation?). I like the inclusion of mind spike back into out kit, but I do think it needs to be brought up with the times a bit.
Some things I think would make sense.
Mind spike deals increased damage to targets not affected by your DoTs instead of just removing them. During DA/Surge procs full damage is dealt even with dots.
During DA, increase the rate of surge procs gained by a large amount. That would let us keep dots up and still use mind spike, as well as giving us some mobility during the cooldown.
At the very least, mind spike shouldn’t eat Devouring Plague. It feels like wasting insanity to cast during DA even with the front loaded damage talent, and your spender should never feel like something you’re wasting. That’s an issue we already kind of deal with and it’s not fun.
My other large concern is the lack of mobility and an interrupt in the class tree. I don’t feel much more mobile in DF than I do now, and with the way mobility creep keeps going, it seems like we need something to help us out. Vault of Heavens seemed like an obvious choice, and it’s nowhere to be found. Spectral Guise is an incredibly highly requested ability that could be turned into some kind of movement cooldown.
Second point simply, why are priests the only healers without access to any kind of interrupt? Should be a basic 24sec interrupt in the class tree with a silence upgrade in shadow’s tree.
There’s probably more things I’ll think of but for now I just want to type something out before I lose my train of thought.
So how clarity of power worked back in WoD. I have been asking for this in my suggestions for a while now. I think the heavy leaning into Cata style of Shadow might suggest that they have no interest in the WoD clarity of power mechanic. But who knows, I’m game for a talent that can bring a clarity of power style of play back.
However, I really think that the Shadow Orb talents will be the fix for the non mastery scaling of damaging a target without your dots on it aspect. We shall see what they do.
I don’t think that will work out well.
If that did happen and in the class tree we got an interrupt… then in shadows tree, it would be a non functional node to pick if you didn’t get the one in the class tree. If you did and then for upgraded, shadow has to spent 2 points on something they already should only spent 1 point on. If they can get both an interrupt in class tree and silence in shadow tree, then it would be OP with 2 interrupts.
It’s a difficult task to dial in correctly if the intent is to not allow disc and holy to have a silence.
The only way I see this working is that it works mechanically different based on your spec. Just like some talents get mana back for holy and disc and shadow it’s insanity.
So if silence in class tree, it would have to only provide an interrupt for holy and disc while shadow gets the full silence… but then the name of the ability is misleading lol.
I think the what should happen is that DA to work like DA in Cata.
DA in Cata allowed Mind flay to gain the damage bonus alongside Mind Blast, Mind Spike and Shadow Word: Death.
This allows you to do what you normally do in DA windows while allowing Spike Procs to be used and able to quickly target swap to burst down while with psychic link and pain of death, you can still do damage to your primary target when you target swap to burst down a different target.
Look, I get that you’re excited about shadow orbs, but it’s really not worth discussing shadow orbs. We have no idea what this ability will be and it doesn’t make sense to say “well if this not yet implemented ability fixes it then it’ll be fine”
Two thoughts.
I don’t think this is actually a big deal, you don’t have to take either of them and if you don’t need them you free up points, it’s a trade off. Our spec tree is still pretty bloated so it wouldn’t be hard to find a place to put one node and one point.
They can also do something like a node that changes based on if you’ve picked interrupt in the class tree. A choice node that offers “Gain silence, if you’ve already selected interrupt, it’s cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds” or “gain interrupt, if you’ve already selected interrupt, reduce the cooldown by 6 seconds”
it can go in the exact same spot as silence currently does, and it doesn’t cost shadow anything else if they just want to pick it up in the shadow tree and ignore it in the class tree, but if you take it in the class tree, it’s just a little bit better if you take it in the spec tree as well.
Priests should not be the only healer who do not have an option to interrupt imo, and I think there are plenty of reasonable solutions.
The other solution that I think is the best one would be to make DA like DA in Cata.
Just include Mind flay alongside Mind Blast, Mind Spike and Shadow Word: Death.
This would then still allow Mind Flay some level of interaction in the spec as the rest of the time it would mostly be casting dots and using procs.
Dark Archangel (Dark Evangelism) - Instantly restores 5% of your total mana and increases the damage done by your Mind Flay, Mind Spike, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death by 4% for each stack. Lasts for 18sec. 90 sec cooldown.
Regarding interrupt / silence,
I just think that more complicated than it needs be.
Even though its called silence, I think the best case would be (if blizzard don’t want Holy and Disc to have Silence) is to just be a mechanically different button for Holy and Disc to NOT silence and to only interrupt. Otherwise if the silence aspect is not an issue for Holy and Disc, then just silence as it is.
Beyond the kick/silence issue, Discipline must also gain some kind of kick/silence avoidance window from an ability like Ancestral Gift, Obsidian Mettle, Zen Focus, Divine Favor etc…
Now that Shadow Mend has a 15 second cooldown, what is Disc going to do when kicked on penance, flash etc…
Ah yea that is an interesting issue that now has made an appearance.
Huh… I guess get good at baiting lol. Yea no that’s a problem… not sure what the solution would be other than maybe a talent in Disc that makes Shadowmend spammable at the cost of its power.
Or using Shadow Covenant temporarily makes your Holy Spells BECOME shadow spells and provide X benefit?
Maybe increased critical strike chance?
Maybe Holy Damaging spells deal MORE damage in that window?
As shadow you’d have 2 places you can pick up an interrupt, if you take both it gives you a better version of the interrupt you’ve chosen, that’s pretty simple.
Some of us would like the option to just have an interrupt. I don’t like silence for M+ very much, it’s just a really really terrible interrupt in a lot of cases because a lot of mobs are immune to the silence portion of it.
I think having a silence that doesn’t silence but sometimes does for different specs is just as confusing (which is to say, not very).
I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to just spam out heals if you get kicked on holy. Don’t get kicked? Having access to a secondary healing school at all is pretty huge.
I don’t think one ability on a 15 second cooldown is huge. It is not equivalent to the other healers’ PvP talents that I mentioned which does in fact allow them to spam out heals in a window on demand without worrying about kick/silence.
Its a complicated solution compared to just making it mechanically different like this example…
Throes of Pain
Discipline
Shadow Word: Pain and Purge the Wicked deal an additional 5% damage. When an enemy dies while afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain or Purge the Wicked you gain 1% Mana.
Holy
Shadow Word: Pain deals an additional 5% damage. When an enemy dies while afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain you gain 1% Mana.
Shadow
Shadow Word: Pain deals an additional 5% damage. When an enemy dies while afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain you gain 5 Insanity.
So for Silence…
Silence
Discipline & Holy
Prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec.
Shadow
Silences the target, preventing them from casting spells for 4 sec. Against non-players, also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec.
Going beyond something like that and adding an interrupt across the tree deep on Holy (left) side will be OP for shadow. I see many PVP builds that goes all the way on that side getting Spell Warding and Blessed Recovery.
There’s already precedent for this with evoker interrupt, and stuff like stormkeeper/Rune weapon charges. It’s really as simple as “choose button twice, get better button”.
Holy and disc take their basic 24sec interrupt in the class tree, shadow chooses to take a silence or a basic interrupt as a choice node in their spec tree like they already do, and then shadow has the option to improve their chosen silence or interrupt by taking the node again in the class tree or, most likely, just ignore that and nothing changes.
That’s really not complicated, and a much more complete solution that solves multiple problems. Healer specs get an interrupt, shadow doesn’t have to actually take anything extra to keep what they already have, and shadow also gets the option of blanket silence or classic kick.
I don’t understand what you’re even talking about here.
Discipline & Holy
Prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec.
Shadow
Reduces the cooldown of Silence by 15 sec.
Shadow Tree…
Silence
Silences the target, preventing them from casting spells for 4 sec. Against non-players, also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec.
Cause I see that can work… But that’s basically what I already said, have the “silence” in the class tree be mechanically different depending on spec.
No, the point I’m making is shadow should have an option between the basic silence or the blanket silence. You’re fixated on shadow only having the silence.
For example, the class tree has
“Quietus - Interrupt spell casts, 24 sec cooldown - if quietus is selected elsewhere reduce it’s cooldown to 18 seconds” traditional interrupt
Shadow has a choice node
“Quietus/Silence”
Quietus - interrupt spell casts, 24 second cooldown - If quietus is selected elsewhere, reduce it’s cooldown to 18 seconds
OR
Silence (replaces quietus) - Silence the target preventing them from casting spells, also interrupts blah blah - If quietus is selected elsewhere, reduce the cooldown of silence by 15 seconds.
Holy and Disc should have an interrupt, but as a primarily PVE player it’s pretty nonsensical to me that their interrupt is just automatically better than shadows in most situations because they don’t have to worry about the blanket silence portion.
The 6 second difference between 24 and 30 is pretty meaningful in PVE.
The only difference is that it allows Shadow to choose between an actual interrupt or a
Silence. But Silence already acts as an interrupt. So you would never take an interrupt as Silence is just better outright.
The only real difference is the wording, but the outcome is the same. Shadow will have to spend 2 points to get a reduced cooldown of Silence (better version) and Holy/Disc will get an interrupt.
The most simple solution is to combine what you said with what I said then.
Quietus/Last Word (choice) in Class tree
Silence in Shadow Tree.
But then the issue remains that the “interrupt” for Shadow has to compete with “throughput” choices in Shadow. Where as the other classes have the interrupt in the Class tree. I mean I guess that’s fine, its just again… more complicated by factoring in an interrupt when Silence already has that baked in to itself.
This is just blatantly incorrect. I would 9/10 times take a basic 18/24 second cooldown interrupt over silence for PvE. The silence portion is largely useless and a 30-45 second cooldown is an enormous amount of time to the point that you can’t even consider having it for most interrupt situations.