So I have a hypothetic I want to ask. If as a Shadow Priest you could trade…
Mass DoT application, so no Shadow Crash/Tentacle applying DoTs.
Misery, so Vampiric Touch doesn’t apply Shadow Word Pain
No insta-cast Vampiric Touch procs
No Psychic Link
No DoT refreshes, IE no Mental Decay
But in exchange…
Your DoTs actually deal real meaningful damage. Would you take the trade?
I don’t think people realise how much damage those dots would have to do for this to be ever be a semi reasonable trade. On top of that the subsequent single target gameplay caused by the amount of power those dots would need to have would be dominated by those two dots and nothing else.
This sounds like Shadow priest back in TBC. They weren’t topping the charts but the dots were our main damage.
Unfortunately, losing all that would cripple our ability to perform in a modern version of wow. I would love for our dots to do damage on their own rather than solely powering our mastery.
Yeah I’m not really thinking about how viable it would be, just more wondering if people would prefer hard casted DoTs that hurt over the ease of application we have now with DoTs that are glorified debuffs.
Is this not a large part of people’s decision making when it comes to preference?
If I legit thought there was a chance for these changes to occur perhaps but more than anything this is just getting an idea for the playstyle people seem to prefer.
Not really. The question is if people would prefer manually dotting + massive dots vs. easy dot spreading + weak dots. People would play whatever degenerate madness if it is 10% more damage, even if they prefer a totally different playstyle.
To the original question:
I would love to have strong dots but if the cost of that is standing still and spamming vampiric touch 10 times on each pack in a dungeon, I’ll pass. That would be extremely boring and frustrating.
I like the mix of dots and direct damage that Shadow has been designed around since it’s inception.
However, the game has changed drastically over the last 2 decades which added more friction to managing the dot profile that some specs are designed around to deal with.
In a world where dots take time to deal their full damage while also being a fast paced game, you will naturally have friction.
In a world where you can easily remove dots with a press of a button without much if any determent aside from the GCD cost, you will naturally have friction.
In a world where the key to unlocking your specs procs and damage bonuses rely on maintaining your dots on the target, you will naturally have friction when you are unable to maintain your dots on the target.
Considering those points, the game needs to work around dots better or you need to be able to do what you are expected to do without the friction that dots bring to the table.
I would prefer a playstyle that focused more on DoTs dealing damage themselves, but I would above that prefer a playstyle that works.
So, for raid yes I would make that trade but for m+ no I wouldn’t make that trade.
The nameplates in m+ jump around and in big pulls it’s effectively impossible to track and maintain dots if you had to cast them individually.
So you mean would you rather be a Hellcaller Aff lock?
dots should do damage again.
If the issue is the instant cast, then make us cast it.
But make dots do damage again.
idk why blizz hates dots soo much yet inssits that every class has dots <.>
like every class has pets
every class heals…even rogues….