If you had to redesign shadow AOE what would you suggest?

Classes Priest
1

Lets give blizz some ideas! any suggestion is welcome! wacky to mundane. just needs to be centered around aoe

2

  1. Remove the cd from shadow crash, increase its damage and add an insanity cost.

  2. Allow void eruption to spread swp to all targets it hits.

  3. Add a talent to reduce swp damage to 20%. But have it deal damage to each target afflicted by it every time it ticks.

  4. Simply remove all aoe except mind sear and add power back to the dots. Multidotting and mindsearing was fine before and dungeons are not enjoyable anyway.

1 Like
3

Add Spectral Guise in Class talents.

Shadow Talent

  • Binding Shadows
    Your Living Shadow and Spectral Guise replicate your next 3 single target Shadow spells on targets your currently in combat with. Spectral Guise now last 6 sec or until killed.

Basically, when Living Shadow procs or you use Spectral Guise or both, it will replicate you next 3 spells. If you use Vampiric Touch + Misery x3 then you could have 9 targets (With Spectral Guise and Living Shadow) all have your Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain applied within 3 spell casts.

4 Likes
4

Quick fix would be to make Searing Nightmare a copy of Mind Sear that spends Insanity instead of generating it and dealing significantly more damage. Probably make that baseline/something picked up in tandem with Mind Sear, then have a talent (competing with Misery) that allows it to spread DoTs every time it ticks to mimic some of its current functionality.

So basic gameplay would be to alternate between Mind Sear and SN. Super simple, but functional.

2 Likes
5

Make the auspicious spirits talent cause your spirits to explode and cause an aoe when they hit their target. Also make them spawn from swp crits again.

Searing nightmare redesign. Using mind sear on a target will spread any damage over time effects applied by you to enemies hit by the aoe pulse of mind sear.

6 Likes
6

New AOE idea - Timely Awakening

  • An instant cast with either a cool down or a resource cost (I want insanity gone, so if we have a shadow orb system, I would say it costs a shadow orb, if not I SUPPOSE we could make it cost insanity)
  • Instantly summons and propels at accelerated speed a number of apparitions that speed towards all targets afflicted by SW:P. Mastery could increase the number.

Recalls the importance of SW:P, re-invests in the apparition aspect of shadow and could integrate with whatever resource we will be using.

1 Like
7

Just buff DoT damage. Remove most of the AoE things, keep Mind Seer as your AoE, make it so that it forces all DoTs to tick every time it deals damage. It can be for a % of their normal damage, or it can be full damage.

Make apparitions spawn from DoT crit hits, so SW:P and VT crits spawn them. To reign DoT damage in from being ultra mega powerful just make DoT damage be reduced beyond X targets, say 5 or even 8 targets, each DoT is reduced by 20%-30% since you’ll have a lot of apparitions spawning, too.

Spriest damage should be: Apply DoTs->Mind Seer, nothing else is actually needed honestly. Keep reapplying DoTs to targets, then keep Mind Seering.

Give all DoT specs the ability for their DoTs to tick faster for every 1% missing health from the enemy, starting at 100%. So at 99% enemy HP, your DoTs tick 1% faster. At 1% HP, they tick 99% faster.

I don’t think there needs to be more buttons, DoT specs just need faster ways of spreading DoTs, faster ticking DoTs and to be about the actual nature of their DoTs. Mind Seer forcing DoTs to tick makes Mind Seer hit like a very wet noodle but it helps make it more fun because you’re making all DoTs tick every time Mind Seer deals damage, so yeah.

Everything becomes about DoTs: spawning apparitions based on DoT crits, AoE DoT ticks through Mind Seer, keeping DoTs up, execute DoTs, everything is all about those DoTs.

5 Likes
8

so for example, 7 targets. each with 7 SwP. each target takes 7 ticks individually?

very rad ideas ngl.

2 Likes
9

I was thinking about spirits exploding for AOE too with however they need to balance it. Would be super fun and you’d work to spawn as many as possible.

10

Screw insanity, give me back shadow orbs.

2 Likes
11

Yeah, each one would take damage individually basically every time Mind Seer was going off and doing the tiny bit of damage to them.

If you guys played Affliction when it had Malefic Grasp, basically I was trying to turn Mind Seer into an AoE Malefic Grasp, but for Spriest.

Every tick of Mind Seer would force all SW:P DoTs to tick again in that moment, plus their individual ticks, too.

12

I already posted my thoughts in another topic, but I’ll TLDR it here.

  1. Shadow needs to have an AOE rotation similar to how other casters work. Locks, Mages, and Boomkins all have AOE they refresh every 8s or they simply spam one AOE ability the entire time. You can effectively play your class for the entire duration. If you look at logs you’ll see that some of these specs do 50% of their damage from just one AOE ability.
  2. AOE via DoTs doesn’t work unless you have the means to quickly spread the dots on everything. Right now by the time you spend 3 GCDs on tab dotting things you’re already 100k dps behind everyone else. DoTs would also need to be massively buffed which ends up buffing Shadows single target damage.
  3. Channeling via Mind Sear just sucks in general.
  4. Shadow can only do AOE damage via picking a talent that denies you access to Misery (bad design).

So what do I propose? Really don’t have anything other than suggesting Searing Nightmare gets deleted and Mind Sear gets changed to an ability that does AOE damage over 8s.

2 Likes
13

Your swp ticks have a chance to proc dark reverberation causing your next swd to deal damage as though the target were in execute range and to also deal that damage to each target affected by swp.

14

Why does SWD need to be usable outside of execute range? That’s one of the things I don’t get about shadowflame prism. Execute abilities are cool, but what makes them cool is that execute aspect - pushing them into other aspects of our gameplay such as AoE or cooldown windows feels strange.

Besides, what you propose is already covered by Vampiric Touch + Psychic Link + Mind Blast. You dot up as many mobs as you can, then your Mind Blast cleaves them. You even have Vampiric Insight to proc and give you more Mind Blasts! It’s a playstyle that I think has promise, the issue is the ramp - it takes time to VT everything, and you can only maintain it on so many mobs while also maximizing MB. Shadow Crash seems an easy answer. Have it cost insanity, let it apply VT, adjust the cooldown, maybe even let the cooldown be reduced every time you cast Mind Blast, and bam. Your AoE window becomes a smooth Shadow Crash - Mind Blast - SWP as filler priority list, with apparitions all over the place and all that good stuff. Toss Mind Sear (with or without SN, it’s annoying trash), get rid of SN, etc. AoE rotations don’t need to be super complex, as there’s already a level of complexity in adjusting from single target to cleave to AoE depending on target count, duration, etc.

15

This is why I’m a tad confused on why Shadow has two conflicting styles of AOE available. You can get Shadowflame Prism and Searing Nightmare which are apples to oranges.

Holy and Disc can also get Shadowflame Prism and will likely be using it for M+ AOE damage if its damage is actually decent. This takes away from the whole Divine Star playstyle as well.

16

I think baseline SW:D should only be usable at or below 20% HP. But I think talent choices should open up its capability to have it used more rotationally. But the reasoning to have it able to be used anytime regardless of targets health is imo the feedback effect to break cc on yourself. That is a skill that should be present.

But having talents or tier set bonuses could contribute to things like…

  • Cleave / AOE targets via proc or DPS cooldown modifier or via targets with dots acting as a conduit.
  • Usable regardless of targets health percentage
  • Reset cooldown from dot procs or Mind Blast usage
  • Resource generation
  • Damage enhancement
1 Like
17

I think the biggest win for Blizzard is moving Shadow AoE into Apparitions because they look cool, are flavorful, and can be integrated into standard rotation.

Obviously not going to be perfect because I’m not going to give it the time that a designer would through iteration, etc. but:

  1. Shadowy Apparitions moved to baseline, or earlier in the talent tree.

This is already a pretty necessary talent for single target, and now with it as the basis for AoE, it shouldn’t be something skippable.

  1. Replace Searing Nightmare with Shadow Word: Nightmare.

Shadow Word Nightmare: 50 insanity cost, about double the damage of current Searing Nightmare. Still causes SW:P to spread. No longer need to be channeling mind sear to cast. When cast, sends shadowy apparitions to each target hit. Added passive - Shadowy Apparitions now float toward targets inflicted by Shadow Word: Pain, instead of Vampiric Touch.

  1. Target cap Mind Sear’s insanity generation (or even make it equivalent to flay).

Main goal here is to take away the incentive to constantly sear for generation, rather than using it as filler.

  1. Remove void bolt spawning Shadowy Apparitions

Goal here is to slow down Void form generation, and evenly smooth out the damage profile so it isn’t so heavily weighted.

  1. Shadow Crash and Mindgames now spawn Shadowy Apparitions on cast (and 2 on crit).

Goal is to add more generation towards things that don’t necessarily require void form, but keeping them away from channeling abilities.

  1. Psychic Link: Mind Blast deals 10% (from 30%) damage to all other targets afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain (was Vamp Touch). Generates 5 insanity per target hit (up to 30)

Bring back a bit of the insanity gen lost by target capping sear, but only significantly increase it in AoE scenarios. There’s ST bosses that this MIGHT affect in add phases, but that’s why the cap is there, so nobody wants to take this talent outside its intended purpose

This is just my current thoughts on what would need to be done for an SA focused build to work.

2 Likes
18

Since the class is all about insanity, why not steal the frenzy idea from Skyrim? We already have mind control - an aoe version that causes enemies to just attack each other for x seconds would be amusing, a mass mind control, basically.

19

This is my version of that type of interaction…

20

I think every non-channeled direct damage and every spender ability should proc Apparitions. I’m talking Mind Blast, SW:D, Voidbolt, Mindgames, Devouring Plague, Searing Nightmare, and Shadow Crash. Those should all be spitting out ghosts.

They should have it so each dot spawns an apparition. If you only have SW:P on a target, it spawns one ghost. If you have VT and SW:P you get two. If you have SW:P, VT and Devouring Plague on the target you get three ghosts.

Shadow Crash should spawn 1-3 Apparitions (1-3 for how every many dots are on a target) for each target you hit with it.

The only things that shouldn’t spawn apparitions are Mind Flay, Void Torrent, SW:P, VT and Mind Sear.