I’d like to see Vampiric Touch converted to shadow’s mastery that add bonus damage to every hit and heals you for an amount. The greater the mastery, the greater amount of damage and healing.
This would have the bonus of freeing up a talent slot on the tree as misery would no longer be needed. I honestly have a difficult time on the spec without it as I always choose this talent more for QoL.
Thoughts?
I always say, just make Mass Hysteria from our legion Artifact our mastery bonus. Have it scale that every 20% equals .5 - 1% dot damage increase per void for stack. Making Void form have a purpose.
Do not get me wrong, I have a love hate relationship with Void Form, it feels good, but without the legion artifact weapon, it feels like a shell of its past form. That would give Shadow a funner ramp time, while also being able to have a good amount of rot. This would not solve their Single target problem or Burst AoE problem, but would allow for funner play style again.
I am just wondering what they are going to do for the spec in ShadowLands, if they are taking on a class Identity system again, Shadow is going to feel terrible. At that point, void form will feel kinda out of place, as if feels in BFA already. However, Chorus has helped it feel less out of place, but still out of place none the less.
I don’t think SP kit has enough interactions between each spell. Everything just contributes to the insanity bar and that just gives a periodic damage buff. It’s too passive.
Our spells dont proc anything for us to do, and the only passive outside VF is Shadowy Apparitions and, again, it is entirely passive. At least it is something but VT has no interaction outside of the Azerite traits. Nothing actually in our kit.
I suggest on another thread that our Mastery could be changed to how much damage of Shadowy Apparitions do. Whether they would still proc on a crit is debatable.
I felt that this change would make getting mastery on gear not a huge let down, but make mastery most useful in areas with multiple targets. EX: BGs, Mythic+, maybe arenas. Also roll our current base bad mastery like vers into core dmg.
If mastery determined shadowy apparitions proc rate then they would need to be able to proc on any spell. Damage would have to be determined by intellect though.
If mastery only increased the damage that a spell that only has a chance to proc on a crit then mastery would be worthless as you need to stack haste and crit to even get them to spawn.
I’m all for getting a ghost army though, like end of legion with crusible letting every SWP crit spawn an apparition.
I didn’t go to far with the thinking. It was a simple idea that could be tweaked. I mostly went with “Why not have mastery control what our Shadowy Apparitions do?” They rest could be brainstormed with the community.
Either way we need a different mastery going forward.
I don’t know how much effort Blizzard puts into mastery as far as DPS specs are concerned, because at the end of the day it’s basically no different from the other stats (more damage); the only thing that differs is its damage value relative to the other stats.
Mastery seems more like it’s designed to be interesting for tanks and healers, as the devs get to be more creative with it for these roles since they’re not as ‘rotational’ as DPS tends to be.
When it comes down to stats: Int/Agi/Str, Crit, Haste,Vers, Mastery.
Any item upgrade that increases them higher “Should” be an upgrade. However that thinking falls flat on the basis of some classes where primary stat upgrades do the worst DPS. Secondary stats rule this bracket. When you get 6-5 dps per crit or haste point (example: shadow priest) and only 2 per intellect point it ends up being sad.