Set Bonus Feedback - Shadow Priest
With the help of the Shadow Community we would like to provide some rough feedback on the set bonuses that have appeared in the 9.2 PTR. The following is mostly focused on feedback for how the playstyle of these bonuses might work out, rather than tuning. Once we get access to the PTR and play with it we will make a follow up post with more hands-on experience based feedback.
- Darkened Mind (2p) - Dark Thoughts has an additional 15% chance to trigger for each Shadow damage over time effect on the target.
- Living Shadow (4p) - Consuming a Dark Thought causes your shadow to animate for 8 sec. Your shadow follows you, dealing (138.4% of Spell power) Shadow damage to your target over the duration.
Initially after reading the set bonus we are immediately concerned with the playstyle around Dark Thoughts. Since it is the central aspect of the set bonus a lot of our feedback is centered around issues this mechanic has and potential problems with getting more procs. One of the biggest red flags is the fact that Dark Thoughts only has a single charge. This effectively removes our ability to play around procs in a more meaningful way with the game effectively expecting us to use the proc ASAP. This becomes a challenge since to do optimal damage we usually want to be casting Mind Flay while consuming that proc. In a world where it had multiple charges we could use the 2pc increase proc chance to instead bank up charges for when we need them, rather than potentially just losing more charges. In order for the set bonus to thrive we need more charges of Dark Thoughts.
The other big problem with getting more Dark Thought procs is that depending on tuning of the 4 set bonus and other spells we could end up dropping casting Mind Blast on cooldown/when we do NOT have a Dark Thought proc. Right now during our cooldowns, casting Mind Flay is our lowest priority action. However with this change Mind Flay effectively stops being a filler and becomes a vessel for proccing more Dark Thoughts and therefore more 4 set uptime. This is also quite dangerous because it means we have less buffer to handle mechanics or move while fighting than we did previously, which is not a fun thing for a tier set to enable. While these problems are not necessarily directly related to the set bonus, since they buff Dark Thoughts, these problems are definitely concerning.
Regardless of tuning, another issue this magnifies is Voidform complexity. As we mentioned in our previous feedback post: Voidform is becoming increasingly overwhelming. Adding an additional layer to this already Insanity overloaded cooldown window with Dark Thoughts/Mind Flay weaving will make the spec harder to play optimally and make things even more chaotic. This set bonus actually gives Mind Flay + Dark Thoughts the exact same problem we mentioned in that feedback post with Mind Sear + Searing Nightmare. While Dark Thoughts does not have the same hard requirement, it effectively does when talking about optimal damage and all of those same problems get attached to it, especially with this set bonus with more procs and extra damage tied to those procs with the 4 set. Pending tuning this could end up with the player having to make decisions on whether to cap Insanity, delay Void Bolt, or use their Dark Thought proc which is not a fun choice to make.
In addition to general gameplay issues with buffing Dark Thoughts, this also has direct implications to our Covenant choice and Covenant balancing. Specifically this impacts Kyrian and Night Fae choices, for similar reasons. As a Kyrian Ascended Blast replaces Mind Flay, which because of these set bonuses is no longer simply a filler spell. Because of this Kyrian effectively gets less value from the set bonus compared to other Covenants. Comparing this to Necrolord specifically you lose between 5-7 globals of Mind Flay during cooldowns, which equates to roughly 3-4 T28 4-set spawns on Average.
Night Fae has a slightly similar problem but instead with Insanity gain per second. Due to the Wrathful Faerie, Night Fae’s naturally generate more Insanity during cooldowns than other Covenants. This in turn causes us to be overloaded with Insanity and we already have issues getting ahead of this, which typically results in choosing between capping Insanity or dropping important spells like Void Bolt. Giving players more things to do as Night Fae with more Dark Thoughts will either reduce the value of the Covenant choice, or reduce the value of the tier set bonus, neither of which is a good choice to make.
Moving on specifically to the 4 set bonus, since we are not quite sure how this works most of this feedback is more hand wavey until we get all the details. The big question for this is what happens when you consume a Dark Thought while the pet is already active. Does it spawn an additional pet, or does it simply extend the duration of the existing one? If it simply extends the duration of the existing pet we could be further incentivized to fish for more Dark Thought procs to make sure we keep it active as long as possible, which does not bode well for casting Mind Blast on cooldown. Furthermore based on scaling this could cause the player to get more procs than the boss will live for. What we don’t want to see is the player being forced to choose between fishing for procs, or ignoring them based on how long this pet lasts for in potential scenarios where we can infinitely stack this pet. This problem is even worse in AoE scenarios where we generally get more procs than we want to spend to begin with, effectively turning the set bonus into a maintenance buff rather than a fun interactive proc.
Speaking of AoE, we want to mention specifically that we are a bit disappointed that our set bonus has no interaction on AoE, especially considering so many other specs have set bonuses that do have single and multi-target components attached to them. This was by far our biggest issue we discussed in the feedback post and we were really hoping that our set bonus would have some interaction in AoE or even spread cleave to make the spec more desirable in those situations. This is actually a similar problem that we had with our Eternal Call to the Void legendary. That Legendary was tweaked to cast Mind Sear instead if you got a proc in AoE. An AoE component attached to this legendary would at least make it feel better in AoE, or maybe revisit how it works all together.
Overall without playing with the set bonus we are a bit saddened that it revolves around a mechanic that already has its own issues and does not provide us with any additional AoE or Cleave. If the interactions with Dark Thoughts and the rest of our kit get ironed out and there is some AoE component another pet based proc could be interesting to add to our existing pet-based cooldowns.
In the meantime we’ll hold off on numbers and more concrete feedback until we do some play testing.