While the upcoming buffs will help us in AOE, it won’t fix the actual problem. We’re target capped like melee specs when it comes to our dot spread, which limits PL, but unlike melee who don’t care if a target dies like we do, as their AOE isn’t tied to a dot like we are. As soon as one of the enemies with VT on it dies our AOE falls off, while melee’s AOE simply just hits another target. And from where I stand, I can see 4 possible ways to keep our AOE from falling off of a cliff
Reduce TS CD and make it hasted - so we can cast it more often, and could be added as a secondary functionality to Idol of C’Thun, as that’s literally our tentacle based capstone
Give PL a secondary functionality: When a target with VT dies, VT moves to another target for the remaining duration. Prefers targets without VT
Change PL to just hit all targets around the main target for X% damage done, reduced beyond 6 targets - Basically making it an independent AOE not tied to anything to function
Uncap TS dot application and just add a damage reduced beyond/applied to more than 6 targets tag to PL VT and SW:P - Potentially SA and VA as well
The problem is easily seen in the 2nd half of Magisters Terrace, where there’s a lot of minion mobs who tend to soak up all our dot application: Leaving us out of juice for the important mobs for 15 secs or till they’re dead rather. We can ofc hard cast VT in those 15 secs, but let’s be honest, that won’t help keep our damage up as our dot’s tickle enemies
So that’s the spec’s actual problem, is it? Not the fact that its AoE is handled by the exact same spells as its ST, and chat-gpt cant balance it, right?
It really is, and if you bothered reading on you would’ve seen reasoning and solutions to it. As our AOE is essentially harder capped than melee’s hard capped AOE, which I did explain in the last bit, using this seasons dungeon, where it’s the most obvious…
I know some other casters have hard caps as well, but none of them are tied to a dot having to be on the target to function. So while everyone else’s hard cap stays full, ours drastically diminishes with kills, as we either have to hard cast VT or wait out TS CD to continue our AOE and doing either of the two means no real damage is being dealt
So the idea behind my proposed changes 1-3-4 is to actually let our AOE function like caster AOE, and 2 function like melee AOE
All in all, what I’m trying to point out with this post is that Damage scaling is a minor problem, while our damage profile is the major problem. So if they implement any of my proposed ideas, PL would become a simple tuning knob for AOE, rather than the thing that makes us impossible to balance.
They could also delete PL and add cleave functions to our abilities, but my ideas would in general be easier to manage, as 1 balance knob is easier than several. Like there’s a reason they made spec auras back in the day, so they could balance from 1 or 2 knobs rather than the entire kit individually
So if I were a dev I would certainly choose making 1 change rather than several and a whole new aura, as my proposed changes would basically just make PL a spec aura that we talent into
Please clarify? Being left as a mess or some of the changes i proposed?
Single target 7 out of 10 - I miss the high APM we used to have, which we only really have every 2 minutes now, so if they made us faster again it would be 10 out of 10
AOE 2 out of 10 - because our AOE profile is the only one that really hard suffers from how the game is played now a days. When they made Shadow Crash 2 charges and 15 sec recharge rather than 1 charge 30 sec CD, was a step in the right direction. They just need to finish the walk, rather than leaving it at 1 step
paladin can macro their Ultimates which has no cast time meanwhile shadow has cast time on halo which used to be instant cast and also void form which used to be dark ascension which was also instant cast there lies your problem like 5 secounds to even start doing any dps look at any other class their ultimate’s are instant cast on the move the devs hate this class to the core.
on other topic please add a barber shop fix or glyph so we can use Dark ascension as a look im bored of void form. also the rotation is so boring we have to wait for a 12 stack mind blast to even deal damage like what is this specc anymore.
I can understand mind flay is a cast i can understand void torrent etc but a cast time on void form is like a slap in the face can’t blizzard make Pi appear when we do void form? would make opening faster like i couldn’t care less for Pi
Make Halo and void form instant cast.
make Halo pop out from our dots or something and make halo stack with PL
shadow needs tons of help especially single target - biggest problems right now is it hits like a wet noodle and on top of that if healers spamdispel they are going to do less damage than a healer. Needs a much much stronger dispel protection and buffs to single target
this is fact true while all other classes can move and shot strong abilitys shadow has an weak mind blast and a weak shadow word death and an undertuned devouring plague (shadow word madness)
