After testing the new dungeons on ptr it seems pretty obvious that some of them are absolutely god awful to try and manage dots (meadery is an actual nightmare). Why is shadow crash still targ capped to 8 mobs? I don’t mind having to dot but spending 15s spamming vt before I can begin sending cds just for the mobs to be half dead already feels so unrewarding and unfun. The class would feel much less like a slog if blizzard actually added another shadow crash charge, removed the cap, or even added a cd reduction to shadow crash (maybe per insan spent).
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I keep asking myself the same question. Its not like the forums haven’t asked Blizzard for a second charge or a 10 sec CD since it first cane out.
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That’s still the wrong solution. Shadow Crash was never designed to spread dots, it’s radius is small and doesn’t scale with enemy hitboxes like other on target aoe abilities. If you launch it on a fat nerubian lord, it won’t hit any of the adds around.
-Just turn Shadow Crash back into a burst damage spell.
-Give Shadow Priests a baseline AoE dot that merges SWP and VT into a single spell.
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Tbh either having it lower cd with haste or have a second charge is what I vote for. Currently your only option is to get mechagon bracers and use crash then use the bracer to remove some of the CD. Not ideal but thats all we got right now. Tab dot targetting and see the entire pack mostly dead when everyone else is just going full blast with no build up sucks.
They could just make the DoTs themselves better so that it doesn’t feel like a waste of time and effort making sure each mob has your DoTs manually. Maybe uncap Idol of N’zoth?
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Having a choice talent to compete with Misery that passively increases the damage of either your damage over time spells or all periodic damage would be a elegant solution imo.
Then taking that talent would essentially make Shadow Crash worse since it won’t apply both Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain.
So to accommodate the lack of quick applying your DoTs since you have to spend x2 as much GCD to get both dots on per target and you can’t make much use of Shadow Crash, increase the damage from that talent being a choice with Misery somewhere between 20-50% should be sufficient to start and adjust from there as a needed.
So something like this…
- Atrophy (Choice with Misery)
Your periodic damage is increased by 40% (or something between 20-50%)
The side effect would essentially make this a mandatory talent for Single Target boss fights. But I don’t know if that’s really a bad thing.
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Interesting enough SP and Affliction Warlocks have been complaining about this for some time… not to mention applying DoTs it’s not visually that great or appealing compare to other spec or its rotations.
DK unholy seem to be they only class that seems to have abilities to spread their Dots doing normal rotations (specially if you spec for it), however the irony of it all its that they are Melee! When I play a DK I always think on my SP and Affliction Warlock spec and how nice it be if they have their own version to spread the Dots that feel more organically and less clucky, specially for new players as I know that for vets they have their own ways to make it work. (IMO)
Trying to do Bunkjunker with the adds spread out everywhere and Shadow Crash being basically useless is incredibly frustrating. Having some other kind of AoE would be nice.
I’m on the fence about this, because I think getting rid of dot management/SC would make Shadow too strong and also too easy to play. I love PL cleaving and smart SC usage. From a numbers perspective target capping also makes it reasonable to balance classes, and it’s especially pertinent for MDI type pulls where no target cap means shadow can scale beyond any sort of reasonable damage limit.
On the other hand, it doesn’t feel good to be punished for even a single SC mistake, many of which are caused by tanks not pulling fluidly, bad Z axis, adds that spawn from other adds (Meadery).
We need a rework anyways. They could reduce the amount of enemies that can have dots on them to 6 max. Maybe buff Idol of Nazoth or give us an exploding Apparition capstone instead.
Our Mastery is bland and investing heavily in it means it’s extra punishing to not be able to dot enemies.
I really hope the reason we’ve seen no Shadow changes in the last few patches, other then a flat damage increase, is because they are seriously reworking the spec. I’m probably deluding myself though.
We absolutely don’t need a rework. The spec is overall in a really good place. We have good ST dmg, incredible small target cleave damage, amazing off healing, are incredibly tanky, bring lots of utility (MD, PI, MS, Fort, Grip).
You can’t expect a spec to be the best at everything. There are 36 specs for them to make unique and balance, everyone has to have some tradeoffs/stuff that isn’t as great.
Fort isn’t “utility” it’s a party buff and pretty much everyone has one. Grip is for healers, Shadow can’t waste points without sacrificing better options.
I agree our tanking and self healing is exceptional for a dps caster. However, we are a dps spec and need to be able to do reliable dps in any situation. That means short aoe fights and movement.
Everyone knows Shadow Crash is unreliable both in its cooldown and radius. The fact that even in long raid fights with high hp mobs, where our dots have 100% uptime we still aren’t breaking the meter, is a testament to how useless we are when we have to manually apply dots on each targets. It’s 2025, this kind of ramp time should not happen.
Our Mobility is better than 10.1 due to being able to move while casting Void Torrent and gaining a charge on Devouring Plague, but that’s litterally just for one hero talent spec and requires choosing both talents.
Uh… what? You either take Terror/Tendies or Grip for PI. Terror/Tendies is terrible for M+. Grip is incredibly useful for shadow, very rarely is a key done perfectly and not timed because of just DPS, LOTS of keys aren’t timed because someone is standing in the wrong place.
See, I disagree with this. Specs need to have niches. Can SC be better? Possibly yes, but it’s not unusable. I disagree that the game should be balanced around MDI super pulls.
Agreeing or disagreeing doesn’t change the fact that the modern game is a far cry away from back in classic when the only AOE we had was Holy Nova and in the earlier patches you had to talent for it and it was still pretty terrible.
The modern game is geared/designed in mind with deathballs being a common occurrence and the players are taught that the bigger the death ball, the better the outcome in addition to just seem more and bigger numbers is satisfying.
Long gone are the days where you have to CC one or more mobs per pack of mobs else risk getting utterly decimated.
With each tank having numerous methods to mitigate incoming damage or even self heal as well as other classes with their own methods to reduce / avoid damage and cooldowns that scale with the more targets you have, it teaches the player base that more is better and so the outcome is always pushing the limit as to how many mobs can you stack together before it becomes to much to handle.
The issue at hand for Shadow is that Shadow is quickly hard capped with how many mobs it can deal with due to the cooldown/target limit of Shadow Crash applying dots and the loss of time (wasted time) when applying dots manually since dots don’t really do that much damage as they did in the past since the role they play is more geared to activating Shadows spec and less about the damage.
So in essence, Shadow suffers quickly the more targets are being added to the deathball far faster than any other class/spec in a world that is designed and pushes everyone that more is better.
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Is anyone else experiencing Shadow crash not applying dots reliably ??? It seems it’s been an issue in the past but more prevalent this season, seemingly “miss” 1-4 times per dungeon. I’ve noticed if you launch a crash at a near dead mob, the mob dies, no dots on nearby enemies. Ok I get that. Also, someone commented “if you target a fat Nerubian lord it won’t hit the mobs around that.” I’ll try to target a smaller mob in the future and see if that makes any difference. However, I thought the crash was an area around the targeted mob…? The issue seems difficult to replicate and I can’t pinpoint if it’s a bug or something similar to what was mentioned above.
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Yes. I’ve posted about this many times before. The spell was never designed to spread DoTs, it has a preset small radius that doesn’t increase based on your target’s hitbox.
DoT spreading spells are supposed to increase based on a targets hitbox like with DKs. If you hit a Nerubian Lord, the spell would hit every mob withing 8 yards starting from the circumference of its hitbox.
Shadow Crash however, doesn’t do that, it was originally designed as a hard hitting boss mechanic from Wrath of the Lich King that was ment to be dodged, hense its low radius and slow speed, despite doubling the missile speed, it’s remains slow.
Again, Shadow needs to have AoE dots baked into the spec. Merge the properties of Shadow Word Pain and Vampiric Touch into one spell via the Misery talent. Reduce its targets to 6 max.
Turn Shadow Crash back into an optional AoE burst spell, increase its radius and speed.
Change Idol of Nizoth into something useful like exploding Shadowy Apparitions for a more interactive AoE.
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Is it reasonable in a game that has rain of fire, blizzard, earthquake, and Starfall?
That’s why I make sure to VT my primary target because you can SC a pack and everyone else will be dotted but the primary because cap. A few times I’d unroll my whole rotation before noticing the target I casted shadow crash under wasn’t dotted so my damage from mastery is terrible.
If Blizz wants to keep the DoT management playstyle alive, they need to make DoT management rewarding to do.
The issue right now is that Shadow Priests REAL damage and gameplay is conditionally gated behind their DoT application. In other words, you have to do the tedious work of dotting everything before you can really engage with the rest of Shadow’s spells. This doesn’t really work with the modern pace of gameplay in WoW PVE.
A fix for this would be to either make mass-DoT application easier by uncapping Shadow Crash and reducing its cooldown, or change Shadow Priests rotation in a way that makes DoT management an actually fun and engaging gameplay loop. Either make DoT management easy so that we can do the fun stuff faster, or change it so that the fun stuff includes DoT management itself.
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Nah its definalty a bug, a number of times in M+ ive shadow crashed onto my target and yet not one add has had my dots applied not even my own target … then on mobs that are spread out … i get 6 targets that get my dots … like WTF