Honestly I don’t mind the level of debuff management affliction presents. I really enjoyed the spec when it was very debuff management heavy before. The problem is it’s debuff management AND entirely focused on cooldowns, so outside of those windows the debuff management doesn’t feel like it matters.
I’m a shadow priest, I’m pretty sad about the state of maintenance dot damage too. BFA felt like a turning point for me where Blizz saw that multi dotting was no longer a “unique niche” and was actively limiting their ability to design varied encounters that could still be balanced.
Having specs do +30-40% of their single target dps again because there was a second target 40 yards away just wasn’t justifiable anymore because of how often it happened. Every single patch there were nerfs to dots and azerite traits that facilitated multi dotting (Especially to shadow), so it was no surprise to me when in SL they’d done this.
It really feels like multi dotting is something bliz don’t want in their game anymore, but they’ve got 2 (Arguably 3) specs that are fundamentally built around it.
What makes me laugh is that I know most haven’t even t ried or looked at certain specs because they were convinced that they are horrible.
Just about every dungeon I go when there is a fire mage on my meter that I am so close to in dps that you would wonder why people say that frost is terrible.
I think that’s mostly because assassination isn’t necessarily a multi dot spec, just a dot spec. Same with feral really at least after bite build overtook rip. These are specs built on piling multiple dots (That cost resources) onto a single target, and they have alternate means of dealing aoe damage, often with some form of cleave based ability rotation.
The two, arguably 3, specs I was referring to were Shadow, Aff, and Balance. Specs with at least 2 damage over time effects that have no resource cost and are designed to be applied to multiple targets one target at a time.
I tend to think of multi dot as the sort of 'Thing spawns in range put both your dots on it" type thing. Maintaining multiple rips kinda fits into its own category. Not to mention being melee makes you naturally worse at dealing with two things 40 yards apart.
I’m also baffled by this move. The only rationale that makes sense is that they are raking in the money on boosted mages and druids. That said, I’d think they could do better by, I dunno, maybe buffing one of the specs that is garbage in raid and mythic plus?
You have the right legendary right now. Fevered Incantation is still our BiS. We don’t use Disciplinary Command until 9.0.5, and only if the changes go live as is.
This needs to be fixed. If there’s no set up requirement for this legendary that gives a benefit for satisfying a set up requirement then it’s broken in my eyes. Casting combustion for RoP should not count as casting an arcane spell.
I think they should rework it in two ways.
Give a damage bonus (instead of a critical damage bonus) so that all specs get the full benefit from it. Better yet, have it give a critical strike bonus so Fire doesn’t benefit from it during combustion.
Make the casted spells have to actually hit an enemy target. This would fix the RoP/combustion issue and force Fire/Frost mages to have to either polymorph, waste counterspell, or arcane explosion.
That’s not even the weirdest thing that counts as Arcane, if we heal ourselves with Diverted Energy that counts as an Arcane spell too.
Anyway, there is setup, the requirement is a Frost, Fire AND Arcane spell within 10 seconds. So to proc it every 30s, we’ll need to cast at least a Frostbolt. It’s not exactly automatic, but it is a small adjustment.
as an Arcane player I HIGHLY resent this situation. However, I would most definitely get banned from the forums if I were to elaborate on the extent of my feelings.
I am an arcane mage. I made it to floor 7 in Torghast recently. This week I cant even get through the 2nd floor of level 5. The boss on level 4 beat me. It feels like they nerfed arcane as I am not able to do what I did a few weeks ago.