There’s only really one talent build per hero tree unfortunately. Blizzard didn’t really balance the tree very well so there’s a lot of talents that just don’t really provide any value at all.
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Thank you will screen shot here. I suspect that I was using suboptimal talents. I use the rotation assist but don’t know if using my long cooldowns correctly, I need to go back to wowhead and read the rotation again.
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I dont care if they remove or keep psychic link, but i aint pressing more buttons. That’s for sure.
No psychic link works well…
What if they reworked psychic link to cause our vt & swp to deal increased damage. That way it ramps our aoe with our direct single target input. Brings back the viability of our dots as a reward for playing well
That would make our core problems even worse. DOT management with Shadow Crash is not the most reliable thing ever. It constantly bugs and won’t apply dots on uneven terrain and it mostly dots up tiny mobs that die within 10 seconds. Then you can start casting VT manually to start your ramp all over again and in that time you did 0 damage.
The LAST time a dot class was considered “broken” was Affliction Warlock at the end of Legion in 2018. DoT classes don’t work and are almost always low DPS.
Not true. Shadow was broken during Battle for Dazar’alor and Eternal Palace. Could be argued that it was during Ny’alotha, as well. I don’t remember if affliction also was at those same times, but it’s possible.
The thing is that they weren’t universally broken; they just did like 30% more damage than other classes on council fights and fights with prominent add components promoting split cleave. That strength is exactly why Blizzard nerfed DoT damage into the ground and started shifting damage into things like Psychic Link.
For shadow specifically, Shadowy Apparitions were a component of our DoT damage and they were reworked to trigger off direct damage spells, had all their “scales harder with stats” mechanics removed, and AoE moved into Psychic Link, which specifically excludes DoT damage but only triggers through DoTs, which means that the priest needs to be active and effective to do good damage in AoE whereas the damage being purely DoT would make them mindless like in 10.0 when Mind Sear was a spender.
Psychic Link didn’t solve that issue though. If Shadow has a somewhat decent Single Target damage, spread cleave with not-instantly-dying adds will shoot Shadow towards the top of the meters. See One-Arm Bandit.
To keep Shadow in the mid range on average, our ST damage suffers big times. See Fractillus. It’s a movement-heavy fight if you are unlucky and pure ST. Shadow is dead last on that fight which is pretty sad imo.
By that point aff was either bad or not a good multi dotter. It was VERY good in Uldir but that was because you could abuse damage windows with Drain Soul.
When I can hit a 26mil voidblast, and cleave 30% of that onto every dotted target within 40 yards, I don’t really need strong dots
I dont think any classes #1 damage dealer is a dot but a lot of others have dots that actually do damage. Most of them have a single dot that will out damage the combo of VT and SWP together
Psychic Link solves a lot of the issues because its damage is completely based on shadow’s direct single target damage and its scalability is based on how easily shadow can maintain dots on targets. It still has the same general AoE and cleave profile it had previously, but it can’t scale out of control like it did during BFA.
The reason Psychic Link gets adjusted all the time is specifically because changing that one value can bring shadow’s AoE up/down as needed whenever shadow’s single target damage is fine.
That’s not to say that Blizzard does a good job with it, but their goal is sound. They just need to stop nerfing shadow if it performs well on a single encounter.
I’m glad I didn’t express confidence that affliction was still good at that point. I remembered them falling off hard, but couldn’t remember exactly when it was.
In BfA the spec moved away from a heavy, sustained DoTs to focus towards more immediate AoE and direct damage. Thos was the start really of us leaving our DoTs in the past and we don’t deal damage with our DoTs moreso they trigger effects. Like Shadowy Apparitions, like you stated.
S1 DF was actually pretty great.
Just needed to make a choice node between link and sear, improve a few things here and there and it would have been the perfect base to improve upon with hero talents.
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I switched from Shadow back when Evoker first came out because I was so sick of playing a spec that felt so neglected and lacked any real identity. So I don’t really know how it was back in S1 of DF.
The current one works ‘fine’, I guess. It just feels kind of boring doing the same rotation in both Single Target and AoE/Cleave. And clipping one of the hardest-hitting abilities in our kit, Void Torrent, just to access Void Volley, feels awful.
Shadowy Apparitions were a function of your DoTs until Shadowlands. They did not do damage over time themselves, but none of your direct damage abilities influenced them at all. In my book, they were basically alternative crits for your DoT ticks and count as DoT damage until Shadowlands, when they were changed to supplemental direct damage that requires Vampiric Touch. They also lowered DoT damage and shifted AoE into things like Searing Nightmare.
BFA shadow was very much a DoT spec, it just didn’t look like one on paper because Void Bolt was cast constantly, refreshed DoTs, and VT/SWP weren’t #1 and #2 on your damage breakdown.
Pretty much this. BFA shadow’s damage pattern is largely the result of a bug with some of its azerite traits that ended up left unchecked for too long for bliz to come up with an alternative.
Shadow got to retain its multi dot fire and forget playstyle for 1 more expansion than aff or balance, but the writing was supposed to be on the wall.
Wow, so impressive that you spout some arbitrary, literally meaningless statistics.
Any class can do a bunch of damage in unrestricted PvE with sufficient gear and against appropriate enemies.
Wait, that wasn’t the point of my post. Maybe lets get some class identity with shadow priests that make them a shadow priest. Such as DoTs that are not so easily made useless, and maybe some DoTs that are instant application beyond SWP (which is almost useless in the current tree).
The identity of DoTs with a mixture of single target damage, decent off heals and utility are what make a shadow priest a shadow priest.
It hasn’t been for multiple expansions now and that has nothing to do with PvE. Blizz just hasn’t liked strong dots for a long while. Affliction doesn’t even really have strong dots either without several other things that they need to cast to activate the dots they put on a target.
The idea that DoT damage itself has been a primary feature of Shadow’s identity is what’s incorrect here. Even through the last like 4 iterations of Spriest. Of your listed features only off healing is something that’s been consistent, and it’s been at very different power levels too. DoTs have been important to get on a target, but only for mastery/link’s sake. I agree it feels weird and a far cry from where the spec started. But there was a clear shift in Blizz’s design towards DoTs and I wouldn’t really say strong DoTs exist in any form besides Feral rip.
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