Shadow has two major problems. The first is an excessive amount of power within voidform. The second is an abysmally aoe rotation. Both problems can be solved with a few simple tweaks to the dragonflight talent tree.
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Modify Voidform. Remove the 10% increased damage buff. Remove all supporting talents to grant it further Crit chance and shadow vulnerability. Move it to the node currently occupied by shadow crash on the tree. Void eruption now costs 50 insanity. Void eruption now applies 5 seconds of vampiric touch to all targets it hits. Void bolt now deals damage on par with mind flay spam but still summons ghosts and extends dots. Voidform is now an aoe spender.
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Modify shadow crash. Reduce the cooldown to 20 seconds. It now generates 50 insanity. Move it into the place occupied by searing nightmare and prune searing nightmare out of existence.
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Replace voidform with dark archangel as a throughput cooldown. Keep dark archangel simple and have it’s cooldown be 1 min or 2 mins to better align with power infusion.
With these changes, the power of voidform is heavily neutered and we have a much simpler to balance throughout cooldown. We also gain an enjoyable aoe rotation.
Shadow Crash
Void eruption
Void bolt for ghosts and dot extension
Mind blast for ghosts and psychic link damage
Mind sear as filler.
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Seems to me like you just dislike Voidform and would like any reason to get rid of it.
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You caught me! I thought I was being so sneaky this time too.
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I love these ideas. It seems like it would just be a cleaner AoE rotation.
But here comes blizzard with the whole “void magic is unpredictable and chaotic so the rotation should be too” class fantasy that no one asked for.
Our rotation isn’t unpredictable, though. The only real rng we have is Dark Thoughts / Dissonant Echoes, and the former only procs at very specific (relatively predictable) times. Chaotic fits, not because of unpredictability, but because our rotation changes with mob count much more than most others. It’s not simply “single target, cleave, or AoE”, but half a dozen other variations. And it’s not simply switch on the fly, but spend several GCDs adjusting your damage every time the mob count changes.
At any rate, class fantasy is always subordinate to class design. Or should be. You can justify whatever you want, really. Sustained damage? Makes sense, void wears things down and corrupts over time. Bursty? Makes sense, void can appear quiet but then suddenly lashes out. They could give the spec any playstyle they want and it could make sense thematically. The larger problem, I think, is that they don’t know what exactly they want that playstyle to be - they just have a bunch of spells from over the expansions and are just trying to cram them all together, even though many of them are from different visions of the spec and don’t fit with one another.
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You nailed it on the head with this one!