I think its safe to say that spriest has failed in every way in SL. It doesn’t have a high potential for the amount of effort required to put in and all around has virtually no identity. Add in the limited utility, and there’s no real reason to bring them. Some changes are clearly in order, but how do we bring them in line with other classes or make them excel in the areas they’re intended to excel in?
M+ SUGGESTIONS:
1.) AOE (or lack thereof)
I have 2 ideas for this. The first is to make it so that targets that get hit by auspicious spirits spread all dots currently applied to the target to adjacent targets. If there are no adjacent targets without dots then auspicious spirits explode dealing x amount of damage in an area around the target. This idea would almost require void form to no longer be a CD and go back to the insanity mitigate (an idea I am in favor of) otherwise you lose too many auspicious spirit applications.
The second idea I had was make a talent that makes void form have a shorter duration the CD is also reduced and is further reduced by the amount of ghosts that hit the target. Essentially the idea being that you’re focusing on spamming ghosts as fast as you can so that you can continuously recast void eruption in am aoe scenario. This would still be pretty strong in single target too, but would meaningfully impact your play style.
2.) Single target
For a class that only does damage we do far too little and it is way to unforgiving if we mess up a portion of our rotation. Revert the damage nerfs, give us stacking haste again and let us be the immobile cannons we want to be. Don’t want us to be doing damage on a fight? Make it movement heavy. Patchwork stand and burn fights though? Let us bring the heat.
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IDK about failed in every way. The nerfs sucks.
I adore this SP iteration. Was Great in CN. OK to Good in SOD. OK to Great in M+. Great in PVP. Great HPS output as DPS with Sanlayn. There are some things that SP offers that is desired other caster DPS. I mained Mage/Lock this expansion but kept SP closely as an alt/co-main.
Where SP is desirable to play is that it can do damage in every damage profile while keeping the same talent set up (rougly). ST, stacked cleave, spread cleave, and mass AOE. Not saying it’s S tier in all these, but where another caster spec excels, it can be F tier in other damage profiles.
To address your points though
• AOE
I like the idea of AS exploding similar, but different, to Implosion.
I am into idea that Shadow Crash or Searing Nightmare should be baseline. If this were a thing, talents can used to apply SW:P and VT via AS, Crash, or Searing Nightmare. I cannot go back to BFA, the gameplay and community perception of SP was gutter-tier.
I do like the idea of more Void Eruptions, but I’d do it differently. I’d get rid of STM, IDKY they made STM’s Void Eruption only hit 1 target… replace it with talent that can be 2 charges of Void Eruption with a 30sec or 1min recharge time. Think about 2min VF CD, and you can bank charges for it OR save it every pull.
• ST: They nerfed Pallid Command and 4p. A buff to our 3 DOTs would be rightfully so to counteract this. Going into 9.2, we’ll be straight up weaker with Pallid Command nerf being pretty drastic. If they were to remove STM, simply allow SP’s to cast while moving in VF. Only MB and Flay are casted/channeled. VB, DP, SWD, fiend, are all instant anyway.
I personally view it as a fail because it garnered a lot of popularity due to the changes and then most people stopped playing it due to it being unfun and unrewarding. unrewarded. You play it flawlessly, you’re still likely not the top of the charts, and if you play it sub optimal, you’re stuck to the floor of the dps charts.
I personally mained SP in BFA and through CN in SL. I did good numbers in single target, but hated the feel. I dont like how it feels and plays very closely to a fire mage where you blow everything with your void form up and then sit and wait for procs of mind blast or whatever else in the interim. This is a loose description that isn’t 100% accurate, I recognize there’s more to it, but as a generalization it’s decent.
I also hate going from a primarily dot based class to a pet based. SFP, pallid command, and the tier set all give us pet interactions. Who likes that?
Back to the improvement suggestions though:
I dont mind crash being baseline, I don’t like SN being baseline. I think there’s got to be a better way to plant dots efficiently than SN. Maybe bake it into void eruption so that each target hit by VE gets a dot planted on them or refreshes duration if it already had a dot. Or maybe make it so shadow crash deals damage equal to the remaining damage left on all dots planted on the target(s)? That would be pretty huge, damage but I’m not sure if that’s a tool we would want as it would likely mean a tradeoff on damage of individual dots.
I also hate this. If I wanted a pet based class similar to SP, I’d continue to play my warlock.
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For mythic+ they need to give it the spell damage debuff and the spec would be so much better.
It makes finding groups hard when you have to have a demon hunter and a mage in order to get the most potential out of your class.
If they aren’t going to give shadowpriests lust or a brez, they should get the next best thing.