Shadow Word: Feedback - Searing Nightmare
Over the course of development on Dragonflight we want to spend some time talking about big topics plaguing Shadow Priest design in the new expansion. In this post I want to discuss Shadow Priest AoE design, specifically Searing Nightmare. Searing Nightmare is a simple talent in its design, and truly unlocks Shadow Priest into having an AoE rotation that does not rely on DoTs or Shadowy Apparitions while doing massive damage. This is a contentious point as many people in the community enjoyed previous iterations of Shadow Priest that did not have Searing Nightmare, simply because the spell does not fit with our toolkit in any way. Unfortunately for Shadow Priests, this spell is more or less our only real way of doing effective damage in most mythic+ or AoE situations. Shadow’s AoE lives or dies based on the strength of this talent and for most players the playstyle is not enjoyable. We would like to see some iteration on this spell or a complete rework of Shadow’s AoE going into Dragonflight.
TL;DR
Searing Nightmare dominates the Shadow Priest AoE playstyle without complementing our base kit. It does this while also requiring significant ramp up for each cast and investment that causes conflict with other parts of the game such as handling mechanics and interrupting enemy casts.
The Issue
Let’s focus on the primary point, why is the Searing Nightmare playstyle not fun as a Shadow Priest? For anyone that has not played Shadow Priest in an AoE scenario here is an image of a rotation snapshot of a pull in a Halls 22 key:
This playstyle showcases the baseline AoE rotation for Shadow Priest, following the below cycle:
- Mind Sear
- Searing Nightmare
- Searing Nightmare
This is a relatively simple cycle that has some variation to maintain Living Shadow uptime currently in Shadowlands, but this is extremely disengaging repetitive gameplay. Notice that during this burst window we do not cast Void Bolt, refresh DoTs, or optimize for Shadowflame Prism due to how rigid this cycle is with the Mind Sear cast while casting requirement.
Searing Nightmare Design
I wanted to show this to illustrate a few main negatives we have with the Searing Nightmare playstyle. Since this is a spammable ability that just costs a negligible amount of Insanity in AoE it completely dominates the playstyle as soon as you start pulling more than 3 or 4 mobs in a pack (most of Mythic+ trash). With this damage style you are now chained to spamming Mind Sear casts and trying to fit in Searing Nightmare’s hoping you do not need to move, handle a mechanic, or interrupt a mob as any of these actions would cause you to need to re-channel Mind Sear to get back into your “damage” phase. The lack of an ability to quickly interrupt a mob in mythic+ without losing damage is something relatively unique to Shadow, which adds a pain point to a spec that already struggles with representation in mythic+. The requirement on the spell to be cast only while casting Mind Sear also creates issues with interacting with the rest of our kit. This is because Searing Nightmare exists in a space completely disjointed from the rest of our spells, as it completely dominates what you do in an AoE environment. In the above screenshot you can see there is no room to spread our DoTs, keep them refreshed with Void Bolt, or maximize other parts of our kit like Shadowflame Prism. The only reason you see Mind Blasts weaved in throughout this example is to maintain the Living Shadow from our tier 4-set bonus, which deals a moderate amount of damage passively.
Discordance with Shadowflame Prism
Speaking of Shadowflame Prism, Searing Nightmare also does not play well when used in conjunction with what is now our top used Legendary in Shadowlands. I wanted to bring this up because Shadowflame Prism is returning in Dragonflight as a core talent in our main Priest tree. Not only is it returning it is also the capstone trait to the “Shadow side” of our tree, meaning we will use this more or less all the time in Dragonflight. Since Searing Nightmare is effectively spammable in AoE that means any time not spent in Mind Sear means you are giving up AoE damage in favor of something else. As we noted above this trumps any amount of multi-dotting we would normally do in our kit and has a similar problem with Shadowflame Prism. While we do cast a few Mind Blasts throughout to maintain the 4-set Living Shadow, we do not weave in Mind Blast on cooldown or Shadow Word: Death on cooldown to optimize Shadowflame Prism damage. Simply put, optimizing for Shadowflame Prism damage causes you to lose Searing Nightmare damage, and vice versa. This means the user needs to go through and calculate which playstyle they should optimize on pull to pull, and in almost every scenario Searing Nightmare works out to be the winner. This is partly due to Shadowflame Prism being target capped at 5 targets, but would surely face similar problems if tuned differently. The point is trying to make both of these playstyles work is a juggling act that is not fun, and feels like the playstyle is being consumed by these choices that have nothing to do with the core of our kit. We would rather have AoE components that complement our kit, not dominate it completely. Searing Nightmare could still exist as some sort of Insanity spender in our kit, but it being spammable and having a cast while casting requirement causes friction with our parts of the kit.
Rotational Feedback Cycle
The talent Searing Nightmare replaced going into Shadowlands was Dark Void, a relatively simple spell that after a short cast spread Shadow Word: Pain on all surrounding targets on a 30 seconds cooldown. In comparison to Searing Nightmare this sounds incredibly weak, how was this spell ever competitive when we now have access to a spell that is relatively spammable to spread Shadow Word: Pain? The answer here lies in tuning of the spec and the differences in playstyle, specifically with our damage over time effects. Back then this was also a conduit for triggering Shadowy Apparitions and since it did not dominate our rotation Void Bolt was more than enough to sustain our DoTs until Dark Void came back off cooldown. This created a feedback cycle where we could maintain DoTs on a pack for a long duration if you played your Voidform well. This post is not about asking for Dark Void back, but simply highlighting why something like that has worked in the past. If Searing Nightmare took lessons learned from that spell and was altered to add some sort of cooldown OR higher Insanity cost and a removed requirement of cast while casting it could alleviate some of the issues its playstyle now faces.
On top of that difference in playstyle over the course of the last several expansions Shadow has been plagued with repeated nerfs to our damage over time spells. This has caused us to stop spreading DoTs on targets in priority in multi-target, since they simply do not do enough damage anymore. In the current version of Shadow our DoTs exist as a conduit to activate our Mastery or our Shadowy Apparitions, but by themselves are extremely weak. In the log shown above Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch, and Devouring Plague all accounted for less 20% of our overall damage in the key. Putting these pieces together it makes more sense why a spell like Searing Nightmare can exist in this game, our dots by themselves are incredibly weak. Regardless, Searing Nightmare fills a valuable slot in our kit, it gives us burst AoE that otherwise we wouldn’t have, it just does not feel right in our kit with its current design.
Conclusion
The reason why we care so much about this is because we do not want our AoE rotation to be filled with spammable abilities without any sense of cooldown management. Whie Searing Nightmare does do a large amount of damage with this playstyle, the point is that it is simply not fun to play and does not complement our kit well enough to be satisfying. Having an AoE playstyle that centers around our base kit while giving us some form of burst aoe is solely needed, but we’d like a more engaging and less punishing rotation than we have today.
