I know the days of wotlk and cataclysm are over, but I do miss my favorite class being a DoT class. Of all the DoT specs out there, affliction warlock is the only one that remains true to its purpose.
I dont really like spriest being a bursty ranged spec, why don’t we have a leggo that positively interacts with our DoTs? ECTV (eternal call) is the only leggo that can be considered a DoT leggo but its unusable in PvP besides being weak.
We lack the mobility warlocks have but why do our DoTs hit so low? Why did you remove Everlasting Plague? Why don’t we have a trait that synergizes with our mastery? Why is that dispelling our DoTs less punishable?
I wouldnt mind leggos like Talbadars or Shadowflame if only we could play as DoT spec too. VT no longer triggers SA and thats bad. SW:P hits low and DP lacks the extra duration to maintain pressure in PvP.
At least in BfA I could stack 3x Death Throes, but in Shadowlands I need to cast mind blast over and over to see my enemies hp bar drop. The overabundancy of shields also make things a lot worse for us. And by the way, 9% base mastery is a joke, specially in PvP.
TLDR, but no way, affliction warlock is the only true dot class, spriest is and should remain half dot half nuke.
Isn’t affliction’s major damage malefic rapture right now? AKA not DoT damage but a more straightforward version of what shadow does right now where your DoTs act as an amplifier for your damaging spells?
Your main spender is a DoT, ours is a nuke. They seem scared to make either specs dots deal damage, so we end up with wonky spells like Malefic Rapture and Shadowy Apparitions to throttle them.
But why? The nuke part throttles our DoT potential for dmg and thats bad for the spec.
Things would be better if we could get extra baseline mastery like affliction locks. Spriest is very haste thirsty, specially in PvP. Heck you cant even use ur DoTs to pressure the enemies anymore for they hit too low, we need to nuke, nuke and nuke.
Worth noting two things.
1: Blizzard seem to have developed a game wide disdain for multi dot / dot pressure. Shadow managed to sidestep it due to broken azerite trait interactions but it’s been impacting pve for some years already. Speculation would suggest it’s because having strong spread target cleave in the game limits encounter design, and they want to avoid situations like queen’s court.
2: prior to legion, shadow was firmly a dot nuke hybrid, with significant damage coming from mind spike, instant cast blasts, and devouring plague as a spender that dealt damage over 6 seconds.
Could shadows maintenance dots stand to be stronger? yes. Could some of the weird abstractions from direct dot damage in both aff and shadow (Malefic rapture, auspicious spirits from direct damage spells) stand to be redesigned? Yes.
But I wouldn’t ever expect a return to the fully dot based spread cleave damage of legion and BFA. In terms of PvP that was a massive departure from what we’d had prior.
Indeed worth noting, I just miss Legion and Wotlk, they were my favorite xpacs, even though we didnt have DP in Legion, spriest was still a solid DoT spec. I fear the lack of DoT dmg hurts spriest in pvp. I cant help but compare it to affliction warlocks, they have amazing mobility, their DoTs hit for good amount and dispelling them is not a good thing. Spriests though…just nuke cause your DoTs wont do its job. Sad.
I didn’t say I liked it, or that it was good or fun. It’s just how they’re designing the two DoT specs.
I’d personally rather have UA back as a spender, part of me feels like they replaced UA with Rapture because they didn’t want it to feel too similar to DP, your new spender.
Our two specs are very similar in a sense. Shadow Weaving increases damage based on how many DoT effects are present on the target, much like Malefic Rapture, and I won’t say anything on us getting “more baseline mastery” because each mastery is its own tuning knob and more or less rating required per point gain is on a spec by spec basis.
No no no. Until they find a way to give dot classes decent burst, this is a bad idea…
I think part of the problem is that encounters are overly favored toward heavy burst damage profiles so sustain damage profiled playstyles naturally underperform. Something about strong sustain damage like dots limiting encounter design.
Do what???
“Make SP a DOT class” was the BFA mantra to get DP back. Glad we got it back.
I think what you’re really asking for, and what I can agree with, is VT and SWP buffs in the dmg numbers tuning and PVP punish for curing DP.
ick…I detest DoTs…lol.
Just give me a good old fashioned blunt object to the face, lol
I would love a talent to remove void form but gain increased swp vamp touch dam
I’m in favor of removing Power Infusion and just redistributing that damage into the dots.
I’m not a PI hater (as in, hating that spriests are often asked to give PI to others), but I do like powerful dots. And I don’t like CD bloat, especially when they are all different timers. Fiend, VF, PI, and covenant ability is a bit much to stack all at once.
its 4% 5head
All of sp dmg is vt/swp which blows and then there’s the burst cooldowns. I would like to see prepatch bfa version with sa and dp doing load of dmg, I hate this passive playstyle and then there’s this massive burst every min.
Same. Along with removing shadow fiend.
Also want them to throw dark thoughts into the garbage bin next expansion and buff mindblast back to respectable damage. Use to hit hard.
Necro Assa rogue in its current iteration is probably the strongest DoT class in the game right now.
Four bleeds rolling when you kidney + instant poison does a lot of damage on their own.