Hello fellow Cats, Trees, Bears, Owls & blizz-staff.
Let’s see first what the announced changes were
(Necrolord Ability) jump range has been increased to 50 yards (was 25 yards) and will now jump to a friendly target if it expires on a friendly target and there are no valid hostile targets within 50 yards.
and then
Command a swarm that heals (157.5% of Spell power) or deals (150% of Spell power) Shadow damage over 12 sec to a target, and increases the effectiveness of your periodic effects on them by 25%.
Upon expiration,jumps to a target within 25 yards, alternatingfinds a new target, preferring to alternate between friend and foe up to 3 times.
So what do these PTR changes actually mean for us?
The Range Changes:
The Upside
- It now allows for 50y “jumps” instead of just the old 25y, this is a major fix to make it feel less clunky because it means that you don’t randomly lose a 5-Stack swarm because a friend walks away too far with it, losing you a lot of performance.
The “Downsides”
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The swarm being able not only to jump back to your target (let’s say a raid-boss) from a friendly target, also means that the swarm on your target can now also jump into the furthest rows of your raid at 40y~ range without you being able to do something about it.
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This means that the swarm at its current unfixed-traveltime takes around 1s per 10y traveled which breaks the current already extremely difficult ping-pong strat which hurts the uptime extremely which is enhanced if the swarm targets are moving on top of it, as it ads to the travel time.
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The slow flabbering swarm flying through the fight especially for multiple seconds is very distracting for the player and his teammates and further clutters the visuals.
The Bugs
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The range is currently inconsistent and not at full 50y
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During my testing the swarm sometimes just didn’t jump even tho the range didn’t change, I also had to just stay at 44y~ range for the swarm to travel back at all.
The Fixes
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Obvious range & consistency fixes
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Making the swarm have a fixed travel time of 1s
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Maybe shrinking its visual size or opacity during flight to not take up so much of your screen.
The Target Changes:
Upon expiration,
jumps to a target within 25 yards, alternatingfinds a new target, preferring to alternate between friend and foe up to 3 times.
The current description isn’t as clear as it could be so I explain what the new swarm logic behaves like.
In short, it can now jump to friends, foes if swapping from heal/dmg is not possible
This also applies to yourself/a friendly target/ an enemy if there is no other target to fly to meaning you can have a 3x 12s swarm on yourself / enemy if there is no one in range to jump to, it will consume a stack and restart the dot/hot.
How does that work out ingame?
Example 2 friendly units:
- Druid A casts a swarm on Druid B.
- The swarm on Druid B runs out and jumps to Druid A.
- The swarm on Druid A runs out and jumps to Druid B.
- The behavior continues until it runs out.
Example 1 friendly target:
- Druid A casts a swarm on themselves.
- The swarm runs out, loses a stack, and starts the second stack.
- The second stack of swarm runs out and starts the 3rd stack.
- The behavior continues until it runs out.
Example 1 enemy target:
- Druid A casts a swarm on an enemy.
- Druid A moves out of the new range.
- The swarm runs out, loses a stack, and starts the second stack.
- The second stack of swarm runs out and starts the 3rd stack.
- The behavior continues until it runs out.
Example 1 enemy 1 friendly target:
- The behavior is just like on live.
This get’s spicier if we mix the covenant legendary into it
Example 2 friendly units:
- Druid A casts a swarm on Druid B.
- The swarm on Druid B runs out
- split proc happens
- Druid B receives a swarm
- Druid A receives a swarm
- The behavior continues until it runs out.
This behavior works similarly with another enemy target giving 1 swarm to the enemy and 1 swarm to a friendly unit, not double-swarming the unit.
The Upsides
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It brings a gigantic QoL change for solo content when you finish fighting a mob, are on your way to the next but your swarm runs out on you, you can now carry the swarm to the next mob which just feels right.
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The same QoL applies to M+ which feels way better when you build swarms and they don’t drop off during the time you move from group to group which feels absolutely awesome in comparison.
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Same as point 1 but especially important during raid when you have swarm on an enemy, have to perform mechanics and thereby outrange the target, instead of the stacks falling off they just consume a stack and are still present when you return to the enemy, just fantastic and fair.
The Downsides
- Currently there aren’t any outright downsides to this change that are intended.
The Bugs
The solo-target jumps are current for some reason bound to being in LOS of the target even if it is out of range / solo.
I will give examples that I could replicate 100% during testing.
- Druid A casts swarm on Druid B
- Druid B walks behind a wall and is out of LOS of Druid A while being only 5 y away.
Expected behavior
- The swarm on Druid B has no enemy or another friendly target other than himself as Druid A is out of LOS.
- The swarm runs out and restarts on Druid B.
PTR behavior
- The swarm on Druid B has no enemy or another friendly target other than himself as Druid A is out of LOS.
- The swarm runs out and fizzles out/drops of completely.
The same happens even if Druid B is out of range.
- Druid A casts swarm on Druid B
- Druid B fly’s 60y away into the air
- Druid A walks behind a solid wall thereby being out of LOS of Druid B while 60y+ away.
Expected behavior
- The swarm on Druid B has no enemy or another friendly target other than himself as Druid A is out of LOS and is out of range 60y+ away.
- The swarm runs out and restarts on Druid B.
PTR behavior
- The swarm on Druid B has no enemy or another friendly target other than himself as Druid A is out of LOS and is out of range 60y+ away.
- The swarm runs out and fizzles out/drops of completely.
This shouldn’t happen as the swarm in both cases should just restart on the swarm-host and shouldn’t be tied to the LOS of the caster.
The Fixes
- Fix the current LOS-bound logic as it shouldn’t be tied to it.
General Feedback to the changes:
Overall I am very happy with the current changes to Swarm as they solve a lot of very very heavy problems that made the covenant not only extremely weak but also super unfun to play.
I also take for granted that my mentioned bugs and weird behaviors will get fixed which means that the QoL gameplay changes will drastically decrease the number of frustrating moments happening during play.
There are still a lot of significant changes needed to make Necrolord a viable covenant especially for the DPS-Specs but those aren’t today’s topic.
TL;DR
New targeting fixes are big QoL improvements and generally very positive
There are a few bugs that need to be fixed but it’s looking significantly less frustrating to play than the current version on live.
Thanks for reading and I wish you a wonderful day 