Talking about Beta / PTR only!
This is what it does:
“Surrender to Madness:
You instantly cast Void Eruption on the target dealing X amount Shadow damage and activating Voidform.
For the next 25 sec. your Insanity-generating abilities generate 100% more Insanity and you can cast while moving.
If the target does not die within 25 sec of using Surrender to Madness you die.”
Why would anyone use this ability?
It’s a useless ability usable only on adds (if you are absolutely sure they will die).
The 100% more insanity generation is useless since you are already generating enough Insanity as it is…more would be overkill and useless.
Can’t use this on raid bosses because you will die…and if you die your DPS would be equal to 0, meaning it’s useless.
So then what is the point of this crazy-crappy ability?
And why do youtubers call it so OP and awesome?
…it’s CLEARLY not OP and not awesome!
Legacy of the Void and Ancient Madness is x1000 times better in both PVP and PVE.
If Surrender to Madness talent would give Spell Power or Shadow Damage buff for 25 seconds instead of 100% insanity generation…then yes it would be a GOOD talent.
OR
If Devouring Plague dot would not overwrite themselves if you cast it twice in a row then maybe i would consider Surrender to Madness .
But as it stands…Surrender to Madness talent is: useless talent…sort of like San’layn or Mind Bomb.
What do you guys think about it?
Like you said, it’s designed to be triggered on adds. If adds are present, there are plenty of targets to dump insanity into (whether that’s using DP or Searing Nightmare) so the 100% extra insanity is useful as it minimises all the waste of doing actions like Mind Flay under VF. Of course, being able to cast while moving is also incredibly powerful and that alone could see it be used in certain situations.
And, obviously, S2M has some great potential in dungeon and open-world presence and essentially acts as a stronger 2nd VF on a longer CD.
It’s meant to be a situational talent - you take it when you want it, not to default to it. Whether or not it’s numerically beneficial I’ll leave to the mathemagicians to figure out, but design-wise it’s excellent.
Stronger than AM in mythic plus and any boss with adds present consistently, which is a lot. Personally I think the ability is possibly too strong given the raid testing we’ve done.
Me who uses all 3 of these : Angry as fuk
You got to be joking…right?
Ancient Madness and Legacy of the Void is way better then S2M…even if the boss do have the occasional adds…same goes in M+.
Number wise, AM and LotV is way better.
Do your raid testing with all lvl 50 talents and you will see that i am right.
Hmmm. Do I want a 15% damage boost during my voidform, or a 100% uptime increase on voidform and some amount of time with 100% increased insanity generation?
The voidform doesn’t go away if the add you targeted dies, you do know that right?
what do you mean 100% uptime increase on voidform? …voidform has a set amount how much it lasts…unless you take LotV talent.
S2M is a separate voidform cooldown, there’s some buggy overlap interaction at the moment but during Innerva darkvein testing I could VF on pull, s2m first adds, VF 2nd adds, S2M 3rd adds etc. Same with generals m, and while I didn’t try cuz it was the first night of new shadow, I probably could have done something similar on denathrius.
…sorry, but i don’t see it.
And the fact that there is a “death” factor in the talent, makes it even more repelling.
Voidform has a 90 second cd.
S2M has a different 90 second cd.
Pull starts, VF on pull.
45 seconds later, adds spawn, S2M one, get full VF on adds.
45 seconds later 2nd set of adds. VF is back
45 seconds after that, 3rd set of adds. S2M is back.
That’s how Innerva was going when I tested it. Double the voidforms.
Also let’s be clear. Ancient Madness is weak as hell. A 15% damage increase on a 16% uptime (Of admittedly slightly higher damage) isn’t hard to beat.
I’d love to see S2M cooldown reset on target kill.
aha aha…and what if the add that you dot up with S2M does not die in 25 seconds?
or you dot up the add that is killed last and your 25 seconds are up?
…you die…
You might get 2 voidforms …true…but the risk factor is to high. One wrong step, on a wrong add that you can’t kill…and its over.
To much risk for to little…
Then your spec gets tuned around its capability of having near 100% S2M uptime, and the spec sucks anywhere that using s2m isn’t possible.
I mean… I’m also not an idiot. I can just wait and not press surrender til the adds are a bit lower, or I can literally wait until they’re on 5% because I don’t lose the voidform if the adds die early. Also have you tested Innerva darkvein? Those adds melt when they spawn. There’s little to no risk at all when using surrender now.
Bottom line is I get a voidform every 45 seconds, which is significantly better than making my 90 second cooldown voidform 15% stronger.
I guess we will have to see if S2M would actually be good.
To bad you can’t test it out on a target dummy, to train your fingers on how to use S2M correctly…without the “death” part.
Anyway…for me…as it stands S2M is the weakest link.
And with higher haste levels LotV becomes even better.
Devouring plague actually does so much direct damage that lotv just kinda sucks once the dot extension bug is fixed, it’s still a DPS loss 
. The choices atm is AM for single target and S2M for anything with adds or M+
AM is still pretty damn weak regardless though.
I would argue that’d be the case if the ability was baseline, but knowing shadow balancing, you’re right.
Despite knowing how to utilise StM to it’s best, I still severely dislike the ability as a whole. Having such a ludicrous downside for a skill just feels bad, especially when things beyond your control can directly impact it.
Yeah I’m not gonna disagree with this either.
Thankfully, since the rework, one of the biggest variables which led to a sudden and unwanted demise in StM: Latency, has been all but removed.
I’d still love to see them outright remove the talent though and replace it with something else. Maybe taking some of the more favourable portions of StM, like the cast on the move and just make it into a Shadow version of Spiritwalker’s Grace.