Grant the spec an additional 15% passive haste buff.
This will solve these problems:
The highs being too high (VF cap) and the lows being too low (+15% passive haste).
The spec feeling terrible outside of voidform, at the beginning of the expansion, and generally feeling like it needs 25-30% haste 3 tiers into the xpac to start feeling decent / get off the runway.
The rest of the genuine damage issues can be fixed with minor tuning. Note that not every weakness is an âissueâ; some weaknesses are just downsides to a specâs strengths.
No, it doesnât solve the fact that shadow has a ramp, because the ramp will always be with shadow. Itâs a dot spec. The problem isnât that it has a ramp, but that the ramp shouldnât be this long, e.g., there shouldnât be double overlapping ramps (seriously) from Chorus-like buffs that only make the spec truly powerful during its second Voidform onward. A ramp-up shouldnât be any longer than 30 seconds max, and right now the ramp requires us reaching the height of the second Voidform, which is like 100 seconds into the fight. Absurd.
This wonât solve everything. But Iâm hard pressed to see how it wouldnât go a long way toward solving a lot.
itâs definitly a big step towards fixing the spec howeverâŠ
I donât understand why people think DoTs are ramp up. DoTs are not ramp up damage they are consistent sustain damage. Your DoT doesnât do more damage with each tick, it does the same amount of damage each tick on a timed interval. So DoT specs have nothing to do with ramp up.
the only ramp up mechanic that makes sense is how Aff locks are built. You place your DoTs(which are sustain damage) and then use unstable Affliction to make them ramp up but even there you have a choice on when to use your ramp up to create a sense of burst moment/window.
itâs ramp up in the sense that you arenât doing your full damage right when you press the button. Your damage builds as a dot class, whether thatâs from dotting multiple targets, and, in shadows case, they do actually do more damage the longer they are up as well. Once your haste builds in void form, your dots are ticking more frequently, doing more damage.
thatâs not ramp up at all. thatâs the definition of a DoT (Damage over Time rather than upfront).
your damage does not ramp up from DoTing more targets it actively increases. there is a difference ramp up means that your pre-established DoT damage out put increases with each tick. DoTing multiple targets is you actively producing more dps.
Based on your definition of ramp up Death and Decay would be considered ramp up too but itâs not. Death and Decay does not ramp up it just a huge DoT on the ground that consistently damages targets in it for the same amount each tick over a period of time.
thatâs very true and is one of my major problems with the spec. I especially hate that we have to rely on haste ramp up to do our dps. that means Blizz has to scale our core haste in relation to the ramp up haste. which makes us so slow and clunky. it also removes complexity and makes the class so brain dead because all you do is button bash Voidbolt and Shadow word: Void(lets be honest everyone has taken that talent) on cd to maintain vodifrom and rap up to do more dps.
I would also like to remind people that the reason we got voidform to start with is because Blizz thought we âfeltâ too much like Aff Locks yet Blizz insists on making our core mechanic rotate around ramping up just like Aff Locks.
I think Blizz needs to sit down and rework vodiform into something better that does not ramp up. like a fixed buff with a fixed drain that you get the moment you enter voidform
What you say makes sense that itâs not dots arenât necessarily tied to ramp. I guess Iâm so used to dot specs following the formula of âstep 1 apply dots, step 2 empower dots.â
In that sense, the Cata spriest design wasnât really a rampâŠit just had periodic light burst via spending shadow orbs.
Dots are not precedent for ramp. The only ramp is the gcds required to apply them. After they have been applied, they do the same damage in the first tick as the last one. That is not ramp.
DoTs are not inherently ramp. They do sustained DPS. If you have SW:P on the target and it does 300 damage every 3 seconds, thatâs 100 DPS. Same as if you push Mortal Strike on a warrior every 3 seconds for 300 damage, thatâs 100 DPS.
They also only do more damage the longer they are up on Shadow, in particular, because of VF. The spell power, haste and crit (CoI) buffs we get are what increase the DoT damage over the course of a long fight.
And then what? Maintain DoTs, press SW:V every 9s, and smash Mind Flay til your fingers bleed? Doesnât sound fixed at all, TBH.
EDIT: Unless youâre referring to only VF, and not its abilities as well. Because then I actually agree. If we kept VB, maybe had Void Eruption as a CD, and got some baseline buffs to SP and haste, weâd be ok.
Worth noting a majority of previous shadow iterations would suffer greatly from a lot voidform shadowâs problems. No previous iteration would have been good in mythic plus, no previous iteration would work with the amount of movement in modern encounters, though PvP would largely be better.
There was that stint in Cata (I think it was Cata?) where DoTless Shadow was a usable thing. With Mind Spike (when it consumed DoTs) and some other stuff. It was suboptimal at the time for raiding, but likely would have been better for M+ because it was more bursty. I hated it, and donât really know much about Shadow at the time because I was a Disc main, but yeah. I think it would have worked better in M+
I do largely agree with you though, and I think that a lot of earlier iterations of Shadow were relatively boring, to boot. Not enough buttons, too much Mind Flay.
All I want is for the spec to not ramp. The rotation we currently have might not be complex, but itâs more fun to play than a lot of previous versions. Itâs just the damn ramp that kills us.
If we had the same rotation today, maybe with Void Eruption as a CD, no Void Form, just having Void Bolt all the time, and some minor buffs to haste/spell powerâŠI think the spec would be in a good place.
This was WoD, mostly at the start Highmaul, and at the very end (HFC), it was optimal for single target with CoP but fell off very quickly as you added targets. It would not have been good in the slightest in mythic plus.
I think you should look at BRF shadow, with AS as the major 100 talent, and the BRF 4piece bonus.
Having looked up Mind Spike the one Iâm thinking about was definitely Cata. I didnât play much in WoD, so I wouldnât know about that.
I will look this up, but I misspoke. I meant to say âa lot of previous iterations.â Having read your quote, it sounded like I meant all previous iterations. I havenât seen them all, so I canât make that claim.
Mind spike was added in cata, but during that time (Outside of the tier 13 dragon soul opener with shadowfiend) it more just sort of existed. It wasnât a core rotational spell, it was just there to pump a bit of damage into a target that wasnât going to live long enough to dot. There was some meme builds in pvp around stacking mastery for big casted damage, but they didnât do more than create obnoxious battleground montages.
In MoP we gained from darkness, comes light, which made VT ticks periodically give you high damage mind spike procs that didnât consume dots, then in WoD we were given Clarity of Power, which fully realised the mind spike rotation as a genuine single target option and bored half the population to death.
Yes, Iâm aware of this. It was definitely suboptimal, as I stated above. It was simply more bursty than sustained damage, and I think that the nature of that version of Shadow â even terrible at the time â could have worked out better in M+ than the current ramp situation we have.
That sounds awful. Iâm going to Google this now. lmao
Which sounds awful?, from darkness comes light was beloved by many, especially in pvp, and saw some competition in pve alongside mind flay insanity.
CoP definitely was less enjoyable though.
If you want to google the time I enjoyed shadow the most. Look for Nayuâs Nihilum kill video of mythic blackhand. Shadow was still very much penned as an execute spec at the time, so the damage numbers look poor until about half way in, but the rotation was so engaging despite using the same basic tools, and had the most fun execute rotation this game has ever had. Dot management was also still a major component, whereas nowadays even in raids I dot each target maybe once, and then theyâre extended indefinitely.
So youâre telling me that Shadow needed to be mindful of its orb usage for both Mind Flay (Insanity) as well as DP, and think about how it wanted to use everything, maintain DoTs at a more frequent pace, even without VB extending them, and had more CDs? Sign me up. That sounds incredible.
Not quite, mind flay insanity was a direct result of DP. DP applied a buff that doubled the damage of mind flay and changed its name. It was a relatively small thing looking at it objectively, but it felt really good and provided shadow with the ability to craft âburst windowsâ where it could use its 5 orbs (+1 from a subsequent MB cast) to dump 2 DPs into a target and spam incredibly powerful mind flay into them.
Shadow also didnât really have cooldowns at this time either. It was a sustained dps spec able to craft burst windows within that by dumping resources.
Ah. Itâs difficult to find information on a spell called âInsanityâ when our current version is all about a resource with the same name. I found something that said you could spend 2 orbs to use Insanity. Assumed that was it. That decision making/planning sounded spectacular, as a knee-jerk reaction. Thinking about it more though, being unable to use our filler spell probably would have had a lot of consequences.
Iâm seeing black wings. Dark Archangel? Plus an ability thatâs allowing casting on the move. Still has VE. Certainly seems like more CDs than we have now.
Dark archangel was removed in MoP. A glyph was added to give us angel wings whenever we used DP. At this point in time shadowâs only damage cd is shadowfiend, it wasnât good then either.
The cast while moving is a hunter utility spell called aspect of the fox. Itâs raidwide cast while moving for I think 8 seconds. Shadowâs rotation at this time was very immobile, as were many casters, people relied on aspect of the fox to keep dps up during movement heavy encounters. Itâs one of the reasons I say MoP â WoD shadow transplanted exactly as it was wouldnât really work in BFA or SL.
That makes sense (and is honestly a little disappointing.) All-in-all, though, interesting stuff. Thanks for the history lesson and the chat.
Out of curiosity, as Iâve seen you on these boards quite a lot, do you have a link to changes that youâve suggested? Iâd be interested to read them some time.
