Repost from my PTR feedback.
The spec tree
The top section of the tree has been a problem since the initial talent rework. The utility picks have to be moved to the class tree as there really isn’t a choice when comparing dmg vs non dmg talents, the only real choice is between Mental Fortitude and Silence.
There is a lot of potential in the middle section, but most of the talents are tuned so weak that after the essentials you can pick almost anything and you don’t lose too much value, talent choice needs to matter more to create proper build diversity. Dark Evangelism is a perfect example and should be much stronger to really emphasize the dot gameplay. The idea should be choices that matter to impact the build, nerf the base abilities to compensate for stronger talent choices.
Unfurling Darkness could be reworked into another way to spread VT’s with a cooldown.
Dark Ascension lacks identity as a major cooldown, there should be some sort of interactivity aside from a flat % increase, comparing to Void Form which has; an extra ability with dot extension, mastery interaction and you can extend the cooldown through optimal gameplay.
I’m not sure what the logic was behind removing the Shadowy Insight temporary Mind Blast charge for 10.1, with it gone it forces us to keep both charges on cd as soon as possible because a proc when over 1 charge instantly loses value. With the temporary extra charge we had flexibility on when to use Mind Blast while the second charge was still on cooldown. Removing the temp charge made 0 sense.
The bottom section of the tree is designed really well but needs tuning to stop eg. Void Torrent from being optimal in every build. Each idol should emphasize the builds further (Y’Shaarj - Mindbender, N’Zoth - Mass Aoe, Yogg - Apparitions, C’thun - filler/channeling). Idol of Y’Shaarj needs a rework because there’s no real thought or choice when it comes to what buff you get. Idol of N’zoth should have a way to manually trigger a collapse and interacting with Shadow Word: Death could be the solution. Idols of Yogg and C’thun functionalities are great and only need to be tuned well.
Top section
- Move the utility picks over to the class tree. Suggestions below.
- Move talents such as: Voidtouched, Shadowy Insight, Mental Decay, Unfurling Darkness, Throes of Pain (from class tree) up to the top section.
- Suggestion to rework Unfurling Darkness: Vampiric Touch now has a 6 sec cooldown(hasted) but also applies Vampiric Touch to up to 3 nearby targets (so applies to the target and smart applies to 3 more around like Whispering Shadows for Shadow Crash).
- Bring back the temporary extra Mind Blast charge when Shadowy Insight procs.
Middle section
- Increase the power of talents to raise the impact they have on your build, nerf the base spells to compensate if needed.
- Add more talents to help flesh out specific builds.
- Mind Trauma added from pvp talents.
- Dark Ascension identity added. Suggestion: While in Dark Ascension casting Devouring Plague allows your next Mind Blast to be castable while moving. Stacks up to 2 times. Also while in Dark Ascension Mind Spike: Insanity activates from every Devouring Plague cast instead of every second cast.
- New Talent: Frenzied Phantasm: Every Shadowy Apparition has a 5% chance of becoming a Frenzied Phantasm, doubling it’s speed and causing it to explode when reaching the target dealing 200% damage to all nearby targets.
Bottom section
- Balance the first row better.
- Inescapable Torment reworked: No longer extends from Shadow Word: Death, But extensions from Mind Blast increase the Mindbender duration by 1 sec, Also the aoe damage component is no longer target capped but does reduced damage beyond 5 targets.
- Rework Idol of Y’Shaarj. Suggestion: Summoning Mindbender creates a connection to Ny’alotha, Driving nearby enemies to madness(visible 10yd circle around the mindbender), Reducing their damage done and increasing your damage done to them by 10%. There could be a visual semi transparent Y’Shaarj floating above the Mindbender for the duration.
- Idol of N’Zoth stacks should collapse when Shadow Word: Death is cast. Max Stack targets increased (ideally no limit because it’s already reduced dmg past 5 targets anyway).
The class tree
In DF beta we were basically told ‘no fun talents allowed’ in regards to Mind Bomb, Vault of the Heavens, Shining Force…There is no good reason why some or all these great abilities couldn’t make a return.
Mass Dispels power hadn’t changed in a long time so the nerf for 10.2 was a complete knee jerk reaction. Pushing the cooldown from 45/25 seconds to 2 mins without increasing the spells power is just gutting. Surely you realize the spell was uniquely impactful on Season 2 and is unlikely to be as effective going forward. With such a huge cooldown the spell needs to be much better to compensate. Ideally reduce the cd to a reasonable amount and uncap the targets. This ability is now a joke compared to Revival.
The problem with Vampiric Embrace is that it’s only usable for Shadow and only really shines on aoe, Creating the choice node was a good way to make the talent usable by all specs but a better solution is to make Vampiric Embrace a more consistent raid cooldown that all 3 specs can use.
The bottom section talents are extremely weak, a perfect place for some of the relocated spec tree utility options. Crystalline Reflection needs more power. Angelic Bulwark should be a real cheat death and proc on attacks that would overkill by less than 15% of max hp, also should heal for the amount consumed when it expires. Revert the Angel’s Mercy change back to cdr based on damage taken.
Top section
- Rework Void Tendrils to be competitive with mass entanglement (30sec cd ranged targeting circle) and have it be a choice node with Shining Force replacing Sheer Terror.
- Sheer Terror merged with Petrifying Scream and % increased further.
- Make Leap of Faith a choice node with Vault of the Heavens (reverse life grip). Any interactions that affect Leap also work for Vault.
Middle section
- Vampiric Embrace reworked: Fills you and your allies with the embrace of Shadow energy for 12 sec, reducing the damage you take and increasing your leech by 10%. Remove Sanguine Teachings.
- Mass Dispel cooldown changed to 1 min and affects unlimited targets.
- Silence replaces Void Shield, Silence now 30 sec cd base.
- Mental Fortitude replaces Throes of Pain but activates from a % of all dmg and healing when at max hp, 2 point node. Balanced to build at a similar rate as live version, but now valuable for all specs.
Bottom section
- Dispersion replaces Mindgames.
- Intangibility now a 2 point node replaces Manipulation.
- New spell: Door of Shadows replaces Shattered Perceptions, same ability as Shadowlands.
- Choice node between Mind Bomb (aoe stun version) and Psychic Horror replaces Void Shift/Essence Devourer.
- Angel’s Mercy reverted to previous version, CDR on damage taken.
- Crystalline Reflection reworked: Reduce damage taken while any absorb shield is active by 5/10% and reflect the amount reduced.
- Ancient Bulwark reworked into a real cheat death: It now triggers a 15% max hp shield on any damage that brings you below anywhere between 15% hp and overkilled by 15% hp. When the shield expires or is fully consumed it heals for the amount consumed. If the damage wouldn’t have been fatal the 15% hp shield triggers after the damage event, If the damage was fatal up to 15% overkill the shield will retroactively trigger (eg. an overkill of 10% hp will instead bring you to 5% hp and then heal for the absorb amount back up to 20% hp). Only the shield will function as a cheat death not the heal (so anything over a 15% overkill would be fatal). Hopefully this is explained in a way that isn’t too confusing.
Button Bloat
One of the reasons for the 10.1 rework was button bloat mostly from having 2 filler spells. While I agreed the spec had some button bloat it is more from abilities like Mindgames and Divine Star/Halo, just spells you can randomly cast when there’s a gap in your rotation and doesn’t mean a whole lot. If Mindgames gets removed the only real culprit left is Divine Star/Halo, and a solution is to shift the abilities more into healing than damage, making it a less attractive choice for shadow. Also since I do suggest adding more abilities throughout this post I consider core dps abilities and utility to be separate when it comes to button bloat.
- Remove Mindgames. Convert it into a pvp talent if necessary.
- Reduce damage and increase healing of Divine Star/Halo to make less attractive for Shadow.
Surge of Insanity and filler in general
In 10.0 Having 2 fillers allowed builds where you could take Mind Spike only to use the instant cast procs for movement while using Mind Flay while stationary, and if running Dark Ascension you would swap to Mind Spike during that cooldown period. I can see why there was a move away from having both but the upsides should have been kept. At the moment with flay/spike insanity they don’t really affect the gameplay at all, they do slightly more dmg and give slightly more insanity, they need to do something more/different.
Make Mind Spike: Insanity instant cast and Mind Flay: Insanity castable while moving.
Power Infusion
Shadow having access to Twins of the Sun Priestess really is in my opinion bad design because it means that we need to be balanced around the extra damage we provide to the group, and if we aren’t and are tuned well we will always be the best dps to stack after all the raid buffs. The idea of buffing someone else’s damage is only fun if it doesn’t come at the cost of your own (Unless your spec is literally built around that aka. Aug). The only way to keep twins and not have it be overpowered is to massively reduce the power you give others without reducing the priests personal benefit eg. half the base Power Infusion buff but increase the % from Twins up to 200%.
Nerf Power Infusion by half value and duration (of 10.1 version) and buff Twins of the Sun Priestess up to 200% (and also affects duration). Target gets 12.5% haste over 10sec, Priest gets 25% haste over 20sec.
OR
Revert Power Infusion nerf and make it self cast only, but rework Twins of the Sun Priestess to give a reduced amount of haste (5%) to up to 4 nearby friendly targets.
OR
Delete Twins of the Sun Priestess, revert Power Infusion nerfs and make self cast only.
Shadow Crash
Whether it’s a bit of terrain/tree/invisible wall sending the spell somewhere completely unintentional, crashing the middle of a pack not registering hitting anything due to weird z axis interactions or anything outside of your control causing the mobs to not be where you aimed it eg: Average Shadow Crash Experience, Shadow Crash can be very frustrating to use.
First of all there should be another option to spread dots, make the Shadow Crash talent a choice node with a new spell: Unholy Nova - Basically the same spell as Shadowlands except there’s no travel time and has 2 charges with a 30sec recharge, and also shares integration with the Whispering Shadows talent (applying vt to nearest 8 targets).
Secondly, The Whispering Shadows talent should also give (crash and nova) an extra charge (crash 2, nova 3), This will mitigate missing a crash and also help with massive pulls where we are falling behind other classes due to being heavily target capped.
- New Talent: Unholy Nova choice node with Shadow Crash.
- Whispering Shadows now also gives Shadow Crash and Unholy Nova an extra charge.
AoE in general
Speaking of being target capped, Mind Sear needs to make a return with the same functionality of 10.0.7 (insanity dump and spawning apparitions). It could be a choice node with Psychic Link so you have the option of focused ST dmg with spread cleave, or unlimited target square root scaled aoe. Psychic Link will likely still be taken in most situations but gives us the option for on demand uncapped aoe for certain bosses/dungeons.
Dot extension in aoe needs to be better than just re-apply with hard casts/Shadow Crash or extend with Void Bolt/Mental Decay. You shouldn’t need to reapply dots in aoe unless you’ve made a mistake. This was pretty much the case when Mind Sear was in and interacted with Mental Decay.
- Bring back Mind Sear, as a choice node with Psychic Link.
- Change Mental Decay to extend dots with Shadowy Apparition damage.
There is so much untapped potential with Shadow it’s just frustrating to see the design direction fall short every expansion/patch.