Unholy Clawing Shadows damage has been changed to 130% weapon damage

[Maxweii]

There's really no reason it should be changed imo, if it does cool but it works perfectly fine as is.

[Delkerramak]

There's really no reason it should be changed imo, if it does cool but it works perfectly fine as is.

I would prefer that clawing shadows be a baseline ability... so I will be genuinely upset when/if it's not the highest throughput (or real close).

Also, I did a bunch of testing. Looks like with my 2,752 mastery and a 730 ilvl weapon, I get about 15% more CS damage compared to my average SS testing. Not sure if that's enough to make it surpass Castigator + current SS crit bug procc'ing up to 2 wounds regardless.

[Krabkilla]

My CS is critting in the range of 34-36k with IL 693. SS is hitting for 18-24k. CS definitely hits harder.

[Galathir]

CS does hit harder than SS but SS still wins out for me due to the popped wounds.
However CS is close enough that it might be the right choice on fights with lots of movement and downtime on the boss, i.e. Mythic Archimonde.

And that is the perfect place for it to be in my opinion. Slightly worse than Castigator but better when movement is involved.

[Deleted]

Reading all the post just comparing CS and SS i would say its more important to compare SS+Castigator and Haste/Crit build vs. CS and Haste/Mastery build. I would say if CS i close enought with SS it will be better for us to stack Haste/Mastery gear and go for CS becouse of benefits to AOE fights where most of the damage is from epidemic and virulent plague + dnd&CS combo is also better for AOE.

[Rothulean1]

I have no math to back this up, but Im guessing they are probably tied right now. Feast of Souls (10% shadow damage from our artifact) is going to likely put CS back over the top.

There are a lot of factors when comparing the talents. My guess is if you have high crit (28%+) Castigator is probably better. If you have high mastery (70%+) CS is probably better. Again, I HAVE NO MATH TO BACK THIS UP. Pure guesswork at this point. But CS is showing to be pretty significantly stronger than SS atm.

Being pure shadow and only a one part strike makes a big difference.

Edit:

And as the poster above me noted...CS builds are haste/mastery. Which makes our already really strong AoE that much stronger. And legion is ridiculously cleave/aoe happy.

[witchking7]

I have 2400 crit and 2150 mastery, ye CS hits harder then SS a little bit (5-7%), but w/o Castignator my rotation feels so slow... and when we get legendary bracers (i hope we get) it will be difficult without Castignator to up wounds stack to 5+ faster.

[0verdose]

I feel the same way, rotation seems way slower without castigator and I find myself having more downtime. I have finally began to like playing with castigator and now blizz goes on and makes cs equal power lvl now. I have 33% haste, 71% mastery and only 13% crit so I think cs will be more effective for me. I feels like castigator is a bit better st when talented into bursting sores, pp and infected claws. Cs does much better with ebon fever + shadow infusion for me. Note that this only based on target dummies, I'll test both builds in hfc later this week.

[Darklurker]

As long as it remains slightly competitive I'll be happy. I like having more ranged abilities. It's probably the closest to a necromancer I'll ever get.

[Rooskie1993]

I think even if CS ends up being better overall at 110 with the 10% shadow dmg from artifact it will come down to did you get lucky rng and proc the right legendary piece (if you even get 1 to drop), will most likely make your talent choices from there regardless of what stats you went for.

[Piz813]

I think even if CS ends up being better overall at 110 with the 10% shadow dmg from artifact it will come down to did you get lucky rng and proc the right legendary piece (if you even get 1 to drop), will most likely make your talent choices from there regardless of what stats you went for.

Before the vendor was up in beta u seen a handful get legendary pieces off world bosses and heroic dungeon bosses. I think people having one or two pieces will be pretty common by the time nightmare opens up

[Rooskie1993]

Before the vendor was up in beta u seen a handful get legendary pieces off world bosses and heroic dungeon bosses. I think people having one or two pieces will be pretty common by the time nightmare opens up

still thats beta drop rate and you can only have 1 equipped

[Drakonskyr]

Using CS does mean you have to watch your rune/rp much more closely than you do with Castigator, but last night I was doing a final H archi run for the guildies that didn't have the moose yet and damn it felt great having that range/ranged cleave again. The damage I put out looked pretty good and the fact that I didn't have to constantly plod after everything and everyone (still mourning the loss of DA here) was awesome, so I hope this is a viable choice for raiding come T19, even if it's more of a cleave/movement choice.

[Emophia]

EU must have been delayed, because now both the tooltip have gone up and in testing CS hits decently harder than SS, nice.

[Maxweii]

EU must have been delayed, because now both the tooltip have gone up and in testing CS hits decently harder than SS, nice.

It was before as well as most people didn't take into account armor on bosses reducing damage even more on SS. For example, my SS, after armor, will hit for 4K less than every CS I do. That's with rune/flask.
CS also has less rng to have it (as a standalone ability) do full crit damage, since it's one part compared to two.

[Tellof]

CS also has less rng to have it (as a standalone ability) do full crit damage, since it's one part compared to two.

This doesn't really matter. If you have 1 ability that does 1000 dmg split between 2 strikes and another ability that does 1000 dmg in 1 strike and both benefit from the same crit rating and crit multiplier they will average out to the same DPS with a proper fight duration.

[Maxweii]

This doesn't really matter. If you have 1 ability that does 1000 dmg split between 2 strikes and another ability that does 1000 dmg in 1 strike and both benefit from the same crit rating and crit multiplier they will average out to the same DPS with a proper fight duration.

Considering the abilities aren't doing the same damage for me, and CS is doing 4k more (or 400 more in this case), this doesn't apply. SS is reduced by armor, which means the physical portion even if it crits is low. CS bypasses that. With the current tuning you just can't say "well if this and this both does same damage" because they don't.

[Tellof]

Considering the abilities aren't doing the same damage for me, and CS is doing 4k more (or 400 more in this case), this doesn't apply. SS is reduced by armor, which means the physical portion even if it crits is low. CS bypasses that. With the current tuning you just can't say "well if this and this both does same damage" because they don't.

You were commenting about the interaction between the number of swings and critical strikes for Scourge Strike, and so my response to you was exclusively about that standalone ability. Consider in my response that ability #1 is SS with 1 swing and ability #2 is SS with 2 swings. In that scenario of comparing apples to apples, since we already know that Clawing Shadows does different damage, it would not make any difference for SS to have 2 swings and it would all average out - not going to explain the math but it's true. I want people to avoid making the mistake of believing that more swings in a skill is an inherent advantage because it is not.

[Maxweii]

I was saying that more swings in SS makes it a disadvantage, because more things have to align to get "full" damage on it. Which was pretty clear in my first post.

[Tellof]

I was saying that more swings in SS makes it a disadvantage, because more things have to align to get "full" damage on it. Which was pretty clear in my first post.

So basically you don't get it, because it literally makes no difference how many swings it has.

Crit chance: 25%
Crit multiplier: x2


Single-swing Scourge Strike: 1000 damage per 1 hit
(0.75 * 1000) + (0.25 * 2000) = 1250 average damage per ability use

Double-swing Scourge Strike: 500 damage per 1 hit, 1000 damage total
Zero crits: (1 - crit_chance)^2 = 0.75^2 = 0.5625
1 crit: (0.75 * 0.25) + (0.25 * 0.75) = 0.3750
2 crits: .25^2 = 0.0625

(0.5625 * 1000) + (0.3750 * 1500) + (0.0625 * 2000) = 1250 average damage per ability use