Going into Shadowlands with none of the major player expressed concerns addressed. Bringing over some of my comments from the Beta forums before their erased. Not that they made much difference there either. Any of these changes would go a long way to improving the spec. Long read but some very good ideas to improve the spec imo. I would also like to say I know the spec is expected to perform well in Mythic plus ( due to damage ) but I would gladly give up some damage for the spec to be more functional / fun.
Mastery complaints have been well vocalized
Active mitigation complaints have been well vocalized
The emptiness of the baseline spec has been well vocalized
Unintuitive duel resource play has been well vocalized
The uninteresting legendaries have been well vocalized.
Legendaries:
Fiery Soul and Razelikh’s Defilement need to also work with Spirit bomb. If Spirit Bomb continues to exist as a spender and replacement option for Soul Cleave then the legendaries should interact with it. The only two worthwhile legendaries should not prevent us from playing the rotation we want.
Dark Glare Boon - Change the random proc chance to a flat guaranteed reduction. No tank wants their defensive to be RNG . A flat 10 sec cd reduction for fel devastation and 5 seconds for eye beam would be better imo giving us some much needed control.
Fel Flame Fortification - Change this to reduce all damage instead of just magic damage and lower the % from 15 down to maybe 10. This would help with the AM gaps plaguing the spec. This would also make some of our less taken talents more attractive / viable.
Vengeance Covenants:
Sinful Brand - Buff damage slightly and make it hit all targets by default, with the damage being split equally between all targets. So if only one target is present they take the full damage. If multiple targets are present the damage is split between each of them. Increase the casting / attack speed debuff portion to have a longer duration ( maybe 20 seconds ). These debuffs over 8 seconds do not really equate to any significant reduction ( I think it was 1 less melee swing over 8 seconds? ).
General Feedback:
Talent - Burning Alive - With our continuing lack of AM, Burning Alive should be changed to hit all targets immediately even if by taking the talent the damage reduction component is reduced to 25% giving us a good mythic plus defensive option. By the time you get a full spread with the current design the last mob tagged is almost dead already. I can’t think of a single other tank defensive that only affects one target and not the tank. Changing this talent would at least level the playing field.
Soul Rending - Will never be used. Making meta more powerful is bad design. Change it to Grants 5% leech and your auto attacks have a chance to rend lesser soul fragments from your target.
Baseline Fracture. This is an example of a talent that will always be chosen b/c the spec doesn’t play well without it. Shear could become a filler that generates fury. If not add a fury component to throw glaive to make it a little more exciting to use as a filler.
– Feedback : Our rotation feels extremely empty especially if not playing spirit bomb. At least with spirit bomb you have soul cleave as kind of a filler. Threat is also more of an issue with only soul cleave and having a directional effect on a tanks main aoe threat grab is terrible.
- Request: Make Spirit Bomb baseline. Use souls only, not fury. Soul Cleave changed to use fury only, not souls. By having SpB use souls and SC use fury you create flow in the spec where you can use SC in-between fracture / SpB gaps fixing the " competing resources " complaint. This would also elimitate the issue of the only two viable legendaries not stopping us from using spirit bomb.
– Feedback: We can’t death grip adds baseline. We can’t offheal, BOP, or remove curses, bleeds, disease. We don’t have a stun option or a baseline slow option.
- Request: Sigil of chains baseline. Replaced with Enlarged Sigils
Making it baseline allows for actual options and bigger sigils imo is an interesting choice comparatively to the other talents and makes more sense on this row.
– Feedback: I realize the idea behind the spec is self healing and they don’t want a lot of defensive cds, but the spec NEEDS another external that affects the player, not one add ( lookng at you fiery brand ). We have the Demonic option but see next item for that feedback.
- Request: Make Soul Barrier Baseline at 1 min cd. Replace the talent with Soulmonger. ( though would prefer a version of Soulmonger as our mastery ) Soul Barrier is not very strong and competes with primary resources. It ISN’T viable on the same row as Demonic. Would fill the gap of adding a baseline CD the spec desperately needs without being to powerful.
– Feedback: Demonic - Having the defensive tied behind essentially a dps cd which is tied behind resources feels bad. Making it controllable was a good start. Binding it to a controllable defensive is better and we are way to vulnerable when stunned so it should be usable while stunned.
- Request: Separate Demonic from Fel Devastation. Attach Demonic to Soul Barrier ( the 1 min baseline version I mentioned above ) making it Demonic Barrier which would no longer require souls but instead draw upon your demonic powers to protect you for 6 seconds and be usable while stunned. Soulmonger could also be tuned to be much more competitive on this talent row than soul barrier creating more interesting options. This would allow Fel Devestation to be tweaked with Legendaries or soul binds for cd reduction b/c as it is now they don’t want to reduce the CD b/c it would give us to much time in Demonic.
– Feedback: For a class based on mobility, not having a cc break is terrible. Not having a slow is also terrible ( you get a slow with Sigil of chains, but on a 2 sec activation and that’s only if you take the talent which our Kyrian covenant choice is leaning us away from for Quickened Sigils.
- Request: We need Vengeful Retreat if not baseline, at least as a talent option with a slow component tied in. If its going to remain havoc only change the name to Chaotic Retreat and stop teasing us. This would be a decent replacement for Fel Blade on the first talent row.
– Feedback: Have you tried fighting in the water as Vengeance? Or tanking in tight corridors? Or kiting during Mythic +? Accidently consuming your souls or having them out of range FEELS BAD! Yes souls still benefit you if accidently consumed but not as much as if they were used with a SpB or SC as intended.
- Request: Have souls encircle you for 20 seconds instead of landing randomly. I’ve seen comments to make them like Holy Power or Combo points but I am partial to the bone shield style.
– Feedback: We simply don’t bring the raid utility that other tanks do. AMS, Shout, Aura’s and off healing, speed boost, BOP, BOF
- Request: Darkness or a similar effect like a Sigil of Protection/Absorption. Or a battle rez. Something like Soul Splice: Use 5 severed souls to empower the fleeting soul of a comrade, allowing the soul to return to the body
I would really like to see Mastery changed to a form of the Azerite trait soulmonger.
For reference, in the 190 pvp gear ( was the baseline for starting beta testing at one point ) I had roughly 8% Mastery. The per soul absorb could scale with health/mastery. So essentially something like every 2% of mastery = .1% ( 1% mastery = .05% ) of total health as an absorb for each soul consumed. Of course less effective after 20% mastery. For instance, I have approximately 60k hp. If I have 2% mastery - 60k x .1% = 60 absorption per soul. So at 10% Mastery ( .5% ) each soul would would absorb 300 damage with a 5 cap absorbing 1500 damage. Health and Mastery would scale this as the expansion progresses. For instance later on at 100k health and 16% Mastery ( .8% health ) your looking at 800 absorb per soul and 4,000 absorption for a 5 cap. To balance maybe change shattered soul healing from 6% to 5/4%.
I’m definitely not a numbers guy so this could be way off base but in my head it works. This type of mastery would make us less squishy outside of AM ( Demon Spikes ). It seems like this would make us tankier outside of AM and put us closer on par to other tanks on harder content. As a tank, one with demon traits, I want to be able to take some damage not run spend more time kiting than tanking.
Most tanks seem to be getting some kind of absorb option and this would make us a fast paced small absorb small heal tank where a DK is a slower big heal small/medium absorb tank. It would make our higher health pool and soul consumption feel more impactful.
- Edit - looking numbers again .05% per point of mastery might be to low and would likely need to be somewhere between .06% and .08% to be impactful enough to make a real difference.