Some overarching feedback on some of these set bonuses:
Continuing the discussion from Midnight: Curse of Ula'tek PTR Development Notes:
This set bonus is inoffensive but still painfully boring. If the end goal is to make a more gameplay-altering series of set bonuses, this one fails miserably. I don’t think Blood DKs are actively interested in pressing more Marrowrends, and the Shadow damage proc needs to be incredibly strong for this set bonus to feel as impactful as the stated goals above imply it should be. It also seems to heavily incentivize Deathbringer over San’layn (since the former presses Marrowrend a LOT more than the latter), making the set bonus seem very restrictive on paper. Even if the Shadow damage proc is strong, this is just an incredibly passive, unnoticeable set bonus that has no major impact on the spec’s gameplay.
Please go back to the drawing board for this one; Essence Break is a very unpopular ability and the last thing many Havoc players want is to start using Essence Break again, let alone use Essence Break more often.
2pc is great, but the 4pc isn’t going to be very impactful beyond some specific burst damage scenarios (which you’re explicitly nerfing next season). This isn’t something that’s gameplay-altering and nerfing Aug’s current 2pc (which is, of course, extremely strong) isn’t going to make this 4pc more interesting.
…surely you can come up with something more impactful than this, right? These are just the simplest passive damage increases with no rotational impact whatsoever. The other two specs have much more interesting set bonuses than this, even if BM’s is also entirely passive.
This one also needs to go back to the drawing board. I get that the focus is intended to be on Tentacle Slam, but we’re not pressing Tentacle Slam for its upfront damage. With current tuning, you could bump this up to a high three or even low four-digit number and its upfront damage would still be pathetic. At the moment, it’s less than half a percent of our damage, but we’re incentivized to cast it due to our extremely strong Apex Talent and because it applies our DoTs, especially in AoE.
The 4pc has a neat idea behind it by virtue of bringing back a form of Unfurling Darkness, but it just doesn’t work out well in practice. Apparitions aren’t doing THAT much damage, and hardcasting Vampiric Touch in any capacity feels awkward with this current iteration of Shadow to the point where it doesn’t come close to capturing what made MT feel good with Voidweaver.
Perhaps some sort of interaction between Tentacle Slam and Shadow Word: Death would be a bit better? SWD is an ability that has been ignored for quite a while (outside of eating shields alive as Voidweaver, which is a hyper-specific interaction that only comes up very briefly and on a small handful of bosses, i.e. Queen Ansurek and Gallywix) and a set bonus that keeps the focus on Tentacle Slam but synergizes with SWD over Vampiric Touch would keep the spirit of this set bonus but feel a bit stronger numerically, since as it stands this one is providing triple-digit increases to abilities that involve some extremely low base numbers already.