Lose Yourself To Madness
2 Sec Cast
6 Sec Cooldown
Increase all the damage you will deal during your current Void Form by 5%. Lose yourself To Madness can stack infinitely, and be cast while moving. Insanity does not drain during the cast of this ability.
I’m new to SPriest, but have read a lot of forums. Seems like everyone is complaining about how turret mode we are, and how it will only get worse in shadowlands. Here is something I thought would be fun.
The cast time, cooldown, and percent increase could all be changed to make the ability balanced. If the ability takes a talent point, then I would think the % damage would be higher. Maybe the % damage would be variable parallel to how many seconds you were in on void form.
I wrote a program that will calculate DPS over a period of time using the OP’s fictional spell as a base. Assumptions are 2 second cast time and 6 second cooldown, but stacking spell buff is infinite and the % increase to stack by is set by the user.
Program compares a standard rotation of a fixed DPS (EX: 100 DPS) compared to a rotation of Lost To Madness that casts the spell when off cooldown and continues fixed DPS rotation (EX: Climbs from 100 --> 105 --> 110 --> 115 DPS, etc.)
Why did I make this? I have no idea.
Like, I spent over an hour writing it and writing up unit tests (11) for it. I literally made a Git repo for it.
That’s pretty hardcore, Odinreborn. You really have a passion for shadow priest. I’m a developer, too, so I understand what you did… but I don’t think I’d ever have the passion to do something like that.
C++? Java? C#?
VB. When I get curious about stuff like DPS, I tend to crank out a program that’ll look at it, or I’ll automate something for ease of use.
My passion is programming, to be sure.
https :// i . imgur . com/cK9TQhm . png
Connect the link together, because that’s the best I can do without it yelling at me.
Edit: Testing some numbers, the default OP’s spell is too weak as-is, as it takes too long to reach a point where the damage increase from Lost to Madness overtakes a fixed rotation.
I am actually OP. I logged on to a different computer to write the first post, and it selected my alt. Thanks for making a formula! How does it look if you bump up the percent per stack to 8 or 10% ?
Also if it was baseline, I think it would be ok. It would be comparable to scorch, as a movement filler. If it was a talent option though, I think it would need more damage increase.
This is all obviously in-a-vacuum and purely theoretical, but with 25K DPS with 10% increases over 30 seconds, you still don’t exceed the fixed rotation (750K Standard vs 680K Lost to Madness).
You only start to break-even with the standard rotation with the same parameters if you bump it up to 15%, assuming you cast the spell as soon as it comes off cooldown. No GCD is involved, but there’s a 2 second “cast time”.
It makes sense if you mull it around since the % increase needs to compensate for the 2-seconds of 0 DPS, even if it stacks.
Look at you unit testing.
Any code coverage, even in small stuff like this, is better than no coverage, especially if I want to come back to this later for whatever reason.
Ugh, the thought of having no tests, sends shivers down your spine.
What’s the DPS drop off/gain in a fight circumstance where planting your feet to cast mind blast/flay is not an option?
Wouldn’t it be a gain under those circumstances or did I miss something?
I’m not sure. There would be a lot of factors you would need to take into consideration, far more than the scope of my program.
I almost convinced myself to draft up a program that would let you cast a sequence of spells using fabricated data but real spell power (Ex: Enter 1000 spellpower, but uses real Mind Blast % spell power calculations) in a turn-based manner.
Example: You set a timer for 30 seconds. You could then cast ‘Mind Blast’, which eats up 1.5 seconds and does X damage, leaving 28.5 seconds remaining. You could then select ‘Mind Blast (Interrupted)’, which would force a movement, doing 0 damage and leaving 27 seconds remaining. I could even look up the formula for calculating haste on the GCD and have the GCD affected by that…Pretty sure it’s just GCD / Haste %…
Almost.
Knowing code while not understanding how to link appropriately is amusing.
https://i.imgur.com/cK9TQhm.png
While it would be quite obvious that using a spell to utilise movement would be a loss in an optimum turret scenario, it would absolutely need to be tested in the setting it was intended.
Yes, there would be factors to consider while utilising an ability that promotes movement; like the player moving (being unable to turret, or shuffle casting)…
It’d be nice to have a pvp talent that could capitalize standing still, similar to fire mage’s Flamecannon.
“Solid Shadow”- after standing still while in combat for X seconds, damage you deal will be increased by X%, and damage taken is reduced by X%.
Or it could be leech gained instead of damage reduction to be more on-brand for s priest, you’d have to rename the talent something like “Sanguine Statue”. (lol)
It would be so cool!
It would be cool and theme fitting to work in conjunction of or similar to Fade.
So if you Fade and don’t move, you have that damage buff/reduction for the duration of Fade while not moving.
OR
Passive where it grants 2% damage buff/reduction, stacks to 10 and reset each time you move or are moved.
Of course, these should be OPTIONS / CHOICES as this is a very player specific way to play and should not be forced on everyone.
It’s not that I don’t know how to link. I don’t have Trust Level 3, so I can’t post links (??), unless there’s some workaround I clearly don’t know about. I just get a “You can’t post links in your post” message.
https://i.imgur.com/cK9TQhm.png
Almost…
https://i.imgur.com/cK9TQhm.png
Ha! I completely forgot that this is the same back-end as Discord??..And I don’t use Discord much at all.
Edit 2: Does that mean I can post code???
Dim LoseToMadnessCalculator As ILoseToMadnessCalculator = New LoseToMadnessCalculator.LoseToMadnessCalculator(DPS, 1.1)
You can basically ignore everything above.
This is mainly what I was thinking when I wrote this post. Something similar to scorch for fire mage, but more theme fitting for spriest.
I like it.
If it’s baseline there could be some cool talents too
It’s just another ramping mechanic which means you need to nerf base damage proportionally to balance peak DPS on a raid boss.
So lets say in the first tier we’re averaging 5 casts per voidform, and the average buff at any given time on a Patchwerk is working out to 2.5 (this is a very napkin math example).
Then what you are saying is, that we need to nerf Shadow’s base damage by an additional 12.5%, to balance out the additional 12.5% peak this causes in a prolonged boss fight.
This runs into the same problem that existing ramps cause. Let’s say it takes you 10 seconds to get into Voidform, and ~15 seconds (average) to reach the breakeven (2.5 stacks) for the additional ramp that this spell would create.
That means, that for all encounters less than 25 seconds in duration, you are doing even worse damage than Shadow already does on Shadowlands Alpha. If the encounter continues up to the 5 cast maximum you might get in BIS raid gear for the first tier, then this ramp doesn’t reach its peak until 40 seconds into a fight.
For all encounter durations less than this duration, this ramp makes Shadow worse. Now, next time you level as Shadow, do daily quests, world content, legacy content, or Mythic dungeons, check your damage meter for how many encounters end in less time than that breakeven duration.
This spell, like all such ramps in the Voidform model - is a straight nerf for all that content. It makes us worse 95% of the time to make us equal on the 5% of encounters where boss mobs don’t fly away, or phase transition, or CC you, or give you something else you need to do than stack your spell on cooldown.
All ramps are bad. All ramps must go. A spell that is castable on the move, or an instant cast spell in our rotation, or a mobility spell, are necessary to make Shadowlands Shadow functional - but another ramp is not helpful.
Edit: It’s worse than I initially thought.
The nerf to base damage would need to be even more extreme than this. Because we would be synchronizing all other ramping mechanics, and any cooldowns we have such as Shadowfiend and Power Infusion, and burst phases of each encounter - to overlap during a long Voidform. This means the multiplicative effect of this ~25% damage buff wouldn’t be 25%, but say, 50% or more potentially in ideal cases.
That is what Shadow will get balanced around. We will stack this up as much as possible, slap Bloodlust + Power Infusion + potions + borrowed power systems + Shadowfiend + new ramping mechanics they didn’t listen to me about + Lose Yourself together, and the effective bonus from this will feel like +70%.
So the devs will respond as they consistently do to ramping mechanics - lower the starting point, since the end point for the ramp is fixed at ~average DPS for all specs. They will nerf Shadows base damage by 35% potentially.
Oh also, all ramps must be nerfed each tier - as longer voidforms will make this ramp even higher - will mean we need to get nerfed by say, at least 10% per tier again, because if we’re getting 1-2 more stacks from longer voidforms each tier.
Say 
it louder for the people in the back
ALL RAMPS ARE BAD. ALL RAMPS MUST GO. 
Blizzard if you take nothing else from me this Alpha, drill the above into your brains. If you are not willing to allow ramps to exceed non-ramped DPS in long fights (boss encounters), then you must remove them as there is no upside in any scenario: they become terrible for short encounters, and average for long encounters.