Was thinking about this talent and it made me wonder, why dont you turn it into a dot that ticks over the the 5 seconds duration? That will make the spell a lot more useful in PVP and also in M+.
Currently SR is useless in PVP and useful sometimes in high M+ keys.
They are trying to not just copy execute, hammer of wrath, shadowburn and any other execute and keep this bad time delay design it has.
Just make it like the other executes and be done with it.
the spell is most fun in pvp where you can style on someone with it, line up a kill, hit them with SR, then sheath your weapon and /say something cheesy before they die.
unfortunately it does piddly damage for the rune/gcd cost atm, so you have to line them up so close to death someone else will sneeze on them and steal your kill.
if i was going to overhaul it, i would make it stop all incoming healing on the victim for 5 seconds, the pooled healing then returns 50% to them, 50% to the DK when it wears off. 15 second cooldown.
I have a crazy idea.
Make it absorb all healing for 6 sec then explode for the healing that it absorbed. ONLY usable on targets below 30% health.
So any mindless healing gets them killed.
Soul Reaper was quiet scary in MoP I believe and because it dealt excellent damage. We don’t need a functionality change, it just needs to be worth pressing over anything else when sub 35% health.
The Deathbringer talent granting a free SR that procs regardless of health needs to be baked into the Class tree somewhere as our pseudo Sudden Death style proc.
Definitely needs to do more damage, and needs to be undispellable, or have some dispel protection. Like if dispelled explodes for 50% of it’s damage and transfers to closest target.
Frankly, with the current amount of damage it does, I wouldn’t mind it being something you can just slap on people at any time.
This would be so utterly broken that every team comp would run a dk in every bracket.
Couple that with a kidney against any spec without a wall that can be used in stun, and you just nuked half the roster out of viability.
I love the idea, but a 50% reduction seems a lot more reasonable
well i was thinking that the issue with SR is that either it doesn’t do enough damage to be worth taking/pressing or it does so much damage that you have to go out of your way to minmax its use which feels awkward and clunky. and in pvp when its balanced up healers know about it and will blow CDs to push the target above 35%, which isn’t hard to do when you have 5 seconds.
if SR is a modified execute spell and that spell’s original goal is to finish off the target, then rather than achieving the damage in a round about way, instead achieve the goal in a round about way such as creating a kill window. this would give the spell evergreen value without constantly being compared to other spells for its rune/gcd cost vs return.
As a PvP player one of my favorite ways to use soul reaper is actually to apply it before the target gets to <35% and then try to get them down to <35% just in time for the debuff to explode, as a gameplay loop I find it quite rewarding.
That said at the current damage level I don’t even notice if the explosion went off or not on their healthbar, I can find it in the logs but the damage isn’t anything to write home about, and this is with unholy’s reaping talent.
But then on the other side, soul reaper explosions are the damage source that is responsible for many of my killing blows, so I still find it effective. It’s just more of a push down those last couple of health % than a actual threat when someone is just below 35%.
I love the ability thematically, and would be quite disappointed if yet another unique mechanic got homogenized. I think the only problem is the damage is too low, but I blame a good portion of that on our damage profile spiking too much during cooldowns and us not having enough damage budget left for the rest of the rotation.
I recognize how easy it is to counter soul reaper in PvP, and think it would make an excellent target for a positive PvP modifier that actually increases it’s damage beyond PvE numbers, turn it into something that needs attention, and punishes people for not countering it/rewards players for finding ways to sneak it in.
I’ve suggested making it a dot before too. Then just make it do combination when below 35% of 200% damage, heal for a %, be free, apply a ms. It could even be turned into a dot then applys another effect when below 35%. Anything besides the ridiculous amount of planning we have to do for so little damage.
I like the sound of these options.