I know it’s just another idea thrown in with everyone else’s idea of how to improve shadow priest but with how often Misery has been around and how much of a must pick it is, plus shadow crash, I feel like it’s time to just be done with the two dots and make them one.
Same way holy fire is holys version, make vampiric Touch shadow’s. Up it’s damage and then just be done with misery and weird talents to spread shadow word pain.
To add more, I hope to see a focus on shadow crash and shadowy apparitions I’m the future for Spriest as options for cleave and AoE. Also I hate mind spike.
I’d agree that misery effectively being mandatory has somewhat meshed swp and vt into a single blob, but I don’t really agree that that means they should just be a single dot.
Spriest fantasy has always been about dots. Removing one of our dots, even if there would largely be no mechanical change, would still be a stab at our identity.
Both SW:P and VT have been around since TBC. I’d hate to see either of them go.
That’s a fair point. I only usually use it to tag bosses about to die in open world.
Though just because it isn’t frequently important to hard cast it doesn’t diminish it’s part in the theme and flavor of the class. Wouldn’t it be better to find a place for such a core piece of Priest identity?
Correct, we do. Presently. I wouldn’t want to see either of our two base dots removed.
Plague is a remnant of a forsaken racial. Truth be told, I’d be happy for devouring plague to be removed, or to be renamed with a different tooltip and a better modifier to our rotation.
Could be replaced with something like “void infestation”, a dot that costs insanity and adds some sort of interaction to our rotation.
Like, suppose “while the target suffers from void infestation, you can access to void bolt”, as an example. I think this would be pretty cool.
“Plague” is an unholy death knight fantasy. It doesn’t really make sense for a shadow priest. Shadow word: pain and VT, however, are far more in-line with the fantasy.
Apparitions aren’t really dots so I’m not too concerned with them.
Talent trees are a mess, sure. I think three dots is actually a fine number. I don’t know if we need more, but I certainly wouldn’t want less.
I think this is fair, but that’s more a mechanical issue than a fantasy issue. I’d just argue that “current design doesn’t require we cast this ability” isn’t a strong argument for removing a core spell that’s been a part of the priest identity since Vanilla. I think it’s more a point that current design just sucks.
I think the times when Misery has been a “must pick” is because there haven’t been other compelling options to compete with it.
Right now, Dark Void is a useless talent in its current state. I’d love them to uncap it and eliminate the cooldown (even if that meant it cost a small amount of insanity). It would make it a compelling choice against Misery in largescale aoe like M+.
In Showlands, there were very few cases where you used Misery. You took Searing Nightmare for aoe or Twist of Fate for single target the vast majority of the time.
In BFA, the other talents in Misery’s row were similar to Dark Void now: undertuned or not useful, so not something you’d ever take, especially since at the time our aoe/cleave was 100% dependent on Misery to our spread dots.
Removing SW:Pain or merging it with VT would be a bad idea, in my opinion. For one, our mastery depends on it. Secondly, SW:Pain on its own is a useful spell, especially in heavy movement since it’s the only instant cast spell (excluding procs) that does damage on hit and has no cooldown. Most dot classes have a high value dot (VT) and low-value dot (sw:p) for a reason. What we need is a way to spread SW:Pain so it would do a similar dot-spread role in aoe as Searing Nightmare did in Shadowlands (without the pain of cast-while-casting or taking over our rotation). This would also make tormented spirits potentially worthwhile and open up more apparitions-focused builds.
Okay then maybe I should say that misery is a crutch talent and vampiric touch and shadow word pain shouldnt have the exact same function and application method. Everyone seems to be caught up on the class fantasy of it all and that we’re a DoT class but I don’t really think we have much of an identity anymore. But regardless of that even, why can’t it just be, changed. It literally is just a plain dot. It’s not a shadow priest thing it’s on all priests.
Why not just fuse the two dots together, and open up room for something else. Or change it’s function a little. Regardless something needs to change lol
I understand what you’re saying but I don’t want to hard cast SW:P ever, even in pvp you proc catharsis with the 1min cd instead of hard casting SW:P afaik
Ah yes, saying one ability should be removed and compensated with more interesting abilities and interactions is the same. On top of the fact Shadow priest already has a ton of buttons.
More buttons doesn’t always mean better design. While I disagree shadow should consolidate down to one maintenance DoT, the spec definitely does have a lot of spells that feel like they exist in pve just to be pressed on cooldown.
Doesn’t have to be just one DoT but SW pain and VT function exactly the same. There really isn’t any DoT maintenance right now anyways. Between Misery, Shadow Crash and Mental Decay you don’t even need to hard cast your DoTs beyond the first application.