This, right here. It doesn’t or shouldn’t have one, at all. Burn phases literally go against what damage over time is; they make the spec unfun to anyone except maybe mythic raiding players, that’s it.
The DoT specs don’t need one and that’s just simply by design. Blizzard keeps trying to make and tune specs around top end players playing mythic raiding content when that’s a huge mistake all on their own, right there. Specs should be designed more towards casual playerbase, quality of life things, too.
They keep trying to go away from what damage over time actually is with damage over time specs and keep trying to get them into something that full on goes against what they are or originally were designed for; they aren’t really burst specs and if so, then it should be via DoT ticks, nothing more, literally.
Affliction would be in a much better state with execute DoTs, faster tick speeds, Rapid Contagion as shard spender, IF it had to even have one in the first place which it doesn’t.
Too many DoTs plaguing the spec so there can’t be mega DoT damage per DoT since there’s 8 DoTs or so to tune the spec around.
Too many GCDs required to be used to spread DoTs. I like the Misery talent from Spriests, this should be a staple in every DoT spec, a talent that makes it so you can use Agony or Corruption to spread the other.
As cool as Vile Taint is; it doesn’t need to exist in the first place or it can be used as a way to spread Curses to everything in an area, that would be fine, too, for those who want to play more towards utility lock. If that ends up being the case it should be moved into the class tree, itself, and not be a DoT just a way to AoE curse everything.
Like, there’s so much button bloat in the spec. Dreadtouch is really cool, but applying it and maintaining it is really awful. It shouldn’t require 4 MR spams to get it up, just 1 is all. Soon as you use MR on a target with UA on it it should be applied right there. It shouldn’t last 6 seconds but 16 seconds is fine. People do not complain much about Shadow’s Embrace now, right? So again, put it up there as around that length, not 6 seconds. Make MR reworked into forcing DoT ticks per cast of MR. Execute DoTs back as a talent, and now we fixed the spec. Congrats, the spec is more balanced now towards what it should actually be.
The devs won’t do that, though, because they get mad at us telling them literally how to do their job when most of their audience actually knows how to play their specs better than they do, but designer pride, ya know. Can’t admit they messed up. Can’t take responsibility for creating a bad spec, nope. It’s terrible, it feels terrible to play.