I’m working on leveling one of my toons, a Shadow Priest I hadn’t played much since I leveled him for the Legion Priest mount.
Going into Torghast recently, a lot of power boosts were for Shadow Word: Death, an ability that a friend of mine told me not to use because of a good probability of it backfiring on you. Given that Shadow Priests don’t have healing to speak of, I took that advice and put it on a far bar and ignored it.
Until Torghast. Since there kept being buffs for it being the best of the options in this run, I used it. It was useful in that instance as all the buffs added together fairly well to make for a quickish kill.
But is it useful in general, or was my friend correct and it should be avoided? I know I had tried it in ZM recently and had it bite me, but I’m wondering if there’s something I’m missing.
It’s an execute (enemies under 20% health) ability.
There are a few times we use it outside of execute range though.
In PvE if you’re using the Shadowflame Prism legendary.
In PvP if you use the Painbreaker Psalm legendary.
If you’re quick, you can use it to break CC, like sheep, that break on damage with the backlash damage from it. Always feel like a big baller when you make that play.
Outside of execute and the two examples above, it’s not worth using because it doesn’t hit hard enough and it doesn’t generate insanity on its own.
It has synergy with the Death and Madness talent on the first row if you’re leveling/questing and pretty much any content where you can snipe a killing blow for the extra insanity which means more Devouring Plagues.
As you’ve noticed, there’s quite a few Torghast powers that involve Shadow Word: Death, the most significant one is Voidwraith Signet, which creates a Voidwraith anytime you kill something with SW:D. The Voidwraith hit hard! Sometimes they’ll out snipe you on killing blows, but if you’re good enough you can amass quite a few of them. I don’t recall if they carry over when you ascend floors, it’s been a while since I’ve been in Torghast.
I don’t think they do come to other floors because I remember building around them a few times and getting to the last boss and not being able to make use of an entire build. Fun times:(