I was incredibly happy to see Shadowbolt return as filler this expansion, Malefic Grasp had been causing issues ever since the MOP revamp, it ate into DS’s niche as a channeled spell and caused rampant issues with DOT damage when they became dependent on MG ticks to do damage and did very little on their own.
The return of SB was one of the better changes I’ve seen to affliction over the years.
I was incredibly sad to see how the actual implementation of SB was carried out though, with it being carved up into multiple talents, all of which were suboptimal and DS also being relegated to a talent.
With 8.3 the DS talent is getting a notable buff that drives it straight into the top spot. This worries me for two reasons, the first in that it likely kills SB, the second in that Shadowlands promises unpruning and the return of some iconic abilities - if Drain Soul is being given attention at this late point in BFA’s life cycle, I worry that DS will remain a talent in Shadowlands.
I really think Drain Soul should be a baseline execute ability for affliction. Part of what makes it an enjoyable ability is the change in the rotation as you hit execute and can start channeling a heavy hitting execute spell, being able to channel it from 100->0% provides none of this and turns into monotony.
Likewise, the partitioning of Shadowbolt is criminal - even as far back as TBC it had things like Nightfall and Shadows Embrace as baseline, now to get SB back to the complexity of a TBC / WOTLK spell, you’re requires to take 2 talents that are both suboptimal and mutually exclusive with other iconic abilities like DS / Haunt.
I understand that making these things baseline is probably a headache since it requires replacement talents to be thought up, tested and implemented - but these (alongside SL being made a talent) are some of the biggest issues I’ve had with affliction pruning over the years alongside the removal of curses.
Ever since the MOP revamp there seems to have been mutual exclusivity between DS execute and SB filler, that really shouldn’t be the case - the reason execute / DS felt enjoyable was the rotational change and compensation for ramp, hence why it was incompatible with MG when it was an arbitrary number change.