Continuing the discussion from Midnight Beta Test Development Notes:
Just want to point out a couple things here and thank Blizz for listening!
And a change I personally like, but understand if others don’t, the removal of Shadowfiend as an active ability. Lower ramp time with our cds.
Shadowfiend wont be missed imo. Good riddance. Making them proc based is such an improvement to the flow of our kit. Very grateful for this change.
Last thing on my list at the moment is a little more love for Void form to make it feel like a proper CD. Otherwise I’m very pleased with where we are right now.
It is interesting though, it seems that Shadowfiend, Mindbender, and Voidwraith are all seperate now and don’t replace each other.
Meaning, if I cast Voidform and SW:D on a low health target as Entropic Rift ends… all three could be active at the same time.
They’ll be a nice addition we don’t have to think much about rather than having to invest several resources into only getting one.
Good they’re undoing the SWP thing. Now do it for Holy.
But what’s with the Ancient Madness nerf? I guess it depends how the math works but I assume it means you can only extend by 7.5 seconds. Sounds like a dead talent.
None of these changes solve any major problems (unless you count SWP). Tentacle slam is still a rotational ability that’s also the aoe button… Stupid design.
In season one gear, according to priests in the discord, people are able to maintain Void form almost full time. The nerf is targeting that issue as permanent VF isn’t intended.
It’s multiplicative not additive. So 3 seconds x 0.75 x 0.75 x 0.75.
It’s an extremely convoluted way to do it but I think I appreciate the decision. We did not need nor want a rotation centred around up keeping a 60+ second cd that doesn’t actually do anything.
Just remove the extention all together at this point.
Make Voidform an actuall Instacast CD with a set duration
Why do they keep reinventing the wheel every expansion.
I just installed a new addon for my wheels the other day. Huge improvement.
Because Voidform taught Blizzard that a cooldown that just does “you do +X% more damage for 15s” is boring.
People loved Voidform because it had gameplay. Blizzard has been slowly stripping the gameplay out of Voidform since Shadowlands and now the gameplay is completely gone and the only thing Voidform does now leans into the biggest problem shadow had after Blizzard slopped it together in a few minutes before Dragonflight launched - that every ability has the same priority and every ability feels exactly the same to press as one or two other abilities.
Pressing an Uninspired Big Dam Instant Blast once every 15 seconds isn’t gameplay even if Uninspired Big Dam Instant Blast is a powerful button - especially when the spec already has Slightly More Inspired Big Dam Instant Blast on a 15s cooldown - and allowing the player to press that button is literally the only thing Voidform does at present.
Has there been any other CDs thats been like Voidform played in Legion besides Devour DH coming in Midnight?
Nope. Legion VF was the first.
People will say Breath of Sindragosa and Demo Meta but they’re both not the same.
No, but they’ve been diversifying how cooldowns work as time goes on. They’ve been steadily changing cooldowns so that they do something that increases your damage, but do so by letting you do more or by changing your gameplay in some way. Only a few cooldowns haven’t been changed in this way (think Bestial Wrath).
Frost mage and windwalker monk are good examples of what they’ve been doing. Icy Veins being a flat percentage increase is gone and Ray of Frost now plays directly into their new mastery and Zenith doesn’t do damage or increase the damage your abilities do, but lets you use way more of them.
Now I dont know how either WW Monk nor Frost Mages CD work in Midnight.
So like transforming your normal abilities to enhanced versions of it?
They tend to play into some of the class’s selling point.
Ray of Frost applies 8 stacks of Freezing which frost interacts with to deal damage.
Zenith reduces chi costs and makes your rotational cooldowns shorter so that you use them way more.
I would say mage talent trees feel so good too. I’m enjoying mages for the first time since wotlk. I’m planning to main DPS frost.
Same for mw monk. They executed it very well, nicely done. Can’t wait to main it this expac too.
Class theme feels good too
Warlocks looking solid too. Great work being done there
Then I go to priest and I’m like wtf is this mess. Like it beckons the question why are we not given the same treatment?
Providing some Beta feedback so far.
With the changes in the most recent build it has good changes with apparitions extending dots. The quality of life of only having to press VT and also having the ability to shadow word pain on those rare cases was good. I know I can still do that now with the latest change and picking Misery, but now my concern is the damage increase with Invoked Nightmare for Shadow Word Pain might be too good to pass up, effectively losing misery… but I guess they said they want dot management to be a thing again so I guess I will have to manage no misery unless im doing high aoe content…
I also appreciate the shadowfiend into a proc rather than CD. It does help with the ramp up.
I think the biggest thing for me at this point is too many boring talents related to Fade. They could be consolidated easy to keep all the afformentioned benefits and then have more interesting and fun class capstone things on the Class side.
Lastly is Voidform damage increase not technically increasing your damage and the cast time associated with it. Voidform gives you 10% damage but you aren’t in “Shadowform” anymore so you dont get the 10% from that as well.. so basically voidform replaces the shadowform damage modifier for the same value and just does damage with the volley upon cast and then turn it into void volley for a few more casts with it all with no increase to general spell damage. It would be exciting and feel more impactful if 1. It was instant cast and 2. the damage was +20% so that you could essentially feel like you have both the baseline shadowform bonus 10% and then the void form 10% bonus as well.
There are definitely way too many talents for Fade. Wholeheartedly agree.
This is also odd to me. So our cooldown essentially just unlocks our ability to use Void Volley. No damage or haste increase.
Can someone confirm whether we still get the full Mastery bonus to all targets? It doesn’t say it does on the tooltip anymore, thought it used to.
But if we do still get the mastery bonus with Voidform, to my understanding, the damage from Psychic Link is based on the primary target, which you should have all DoTs on anyways, and it’s not boosted again by our Mastery when hitting the other targets.
So then the only damage that’s getting boosted by Voidform’s Mastery bonus is coming from our pets, Apparitions, Vamp Touch, SW:P, Tentacle Slam, and either Entropic Rift or Halo. That sound correct? I suppose an 8-15% bonus to those sources on all secondary targets adds up, but still feels weird.
It’s on the mastery tooltip not voidform. The rest of your post is correct