Spriest Void Entropy - LvL 100 talent

[Deleted]

Two of the Spriest lvl 100 talents sound like they will add different playstyle and much more burst into our rotation, but then there is Void Entropy; another dot?
Will this dot either be a very very powerfull dot because it consumes orbs?

-What do you think?
-What talent will you choose?

[Nestar]

The strength in that dot is the length. At the cost of your more bursty Devouring you can put a 60 second dot. This will be a strong option for multidot, Especially at the start of the expansion when crit is low. The Audacious spirits may gain more power in the same situation once we start seeing strong crit levels, Provided of course we aren't getting more than 3 orbs ever 6 seconds (if kept as it was originally this would be the case) They were doing quite a bit of tuning with this option last I looked.

[Alanar]

The strength in that dot is the length. At the cost of your more bursty Devouring you can put a 60 second dot. This will be a strong option for multidot, Especially at the start of the expansion when crit is low. The Audacious spirits may gain more power in the same situation once we start seeing strong crit levels, Provided of course we aren't getting more than 3 orbs ever 6 seconds (if kept as it was originally this would be the case) They were doing quite a bit of tuning with this option last I looked.

If this talent is dispellable it would be such a dissapoitment if it wouldnt have any dispellprotrction.

[Yvaelle]

I see basically no way a 60 second DoT would be useful in PvP. Obviously it makes no mention of dispel protection which is bad - but what kind of dispel protection would make it useful? If it were immune to dispels - it would still deal damage over 60 seconds - which isn't very useful for bursting people down (which is how 3s work) - and it would break CCs.

So unless they are saying, "This talent is a non-option for pvp" - I'm pretty sure they will revise it.

[Dishonoured]

Complete immunity for it would break stealth classes that get one of them cast. Not a fan of being able to completely remove a key aspect of a class with 1 Shadow Orb for a minute.

[Yvaelle]

Complete immunity for it would break stealth classes that get one of them cast. Not a fan of being able to completely remove a key aspect of a class with 1 Shadow Orb for a minute.

Right, but they would never make it immune to dispels - the point was that even if it were completely immune to dispels - it would still be pretty much useless.

[Dishonoured]

Outside of the keeping stealthers out of stealth, yeah. I'm not really a fan of the lv100 talents as far as PvP choices go. You have the choice of going DoTless -- and depending on melee's annoyingness in WoD, it'll be completely... meh. Then you have the option to reduce your damage in one area of AoE(which can get pretty ridiculous, or at least it could when I was still playing) for a Single Target increase. That could be either insanely good or insanely bad. Then you have a niche talent that doesn't really seem like it'll have any use except for cheesing stealthers with 1 orb -- I could see all of them having a use in Arena, RBG, or both. Personally though, I don't like any of them though(at least for the PvP aspect)

[Yvaelle]

Listing Void Entropy as "Your level 100 talent is Faerie Fire / Hunter's Mark, but it will steal up to 3 Shadow Orbs on use" is really not an argument in its favour - even situationally that isn't a benefit worth mentioning: even fighting a rogue Auspicious Spirits and/or CoP will be better.

Further, in the event of potentially using Void Entropy to make it annoying for rogues to stealth, probably 90%+ of 3v3 restealths occur via Vanish - and last 3 seconds or less (during which Vanish prevents dots from breaking stealth) - the other 10%, for high-end players - will occur the way they used to - where the rouge waits for a tick, stealths, then saps/ambushes before the next tick - at least at the high end of pvp. Which leaves it as a useful tool either against unskilled rogues, or in battlegrounds - neither of which really counts IMO.

[Minoan]

Long DoTs might be really good in terms of tunneling. Playing a UH DK style is not a dead option.
Assuming that with new Glyph we will have 3 orbs for each target, keeping these dots on 3 targets in 3v3s is not a problem, 2 GcDs each unless you are focused, then just play in whatever you feel to burst!
Maybe I am wrong and that glyph won't work in PvP...But so far Isee it like, put 3 super strong dots and SWPs/VTs, and with some othr dots/bleeds from teammate, just roll on whoever you want, in first 60 seconds everyone will be underpressure of DoT cleave and then you focus-DP)+insanity or FDLC/DI procs burst into it.

Feels like a very viable option if it won't be very dead on low ilvls. Pretty much trying to zerg rush something within seconds.
Of course we might consider CoP a better option for PVP due to superexecute Direct Damage on target without DoTs...Are you planning to leave someone without DoTs in PVP, anyway?

[Frmercury]

Oh it's VEnt for short BTW. AS and CoP for the other two.

[Aeriel]

PVE Viewpoint based upon current numbers and Celestalon's tweets:
He tweeted that Void Entropy would be much, much higher dmg/orb than DP. They will need to increase the base coefficient or lower the time between ticks or total time for that.
Currently DP is 337.5% SP upfront, and 337.5% SP over 6sec for 3 orbs. This comes to 675% SP per cast.
VEn is 36.45% SP every 3s for 60s. This gives 20 ticks for a total of 729% SP per cast. Which is a 7.4% increase over DP with 3 orbs.

Granted you will be able to reapply DP during VEn, but I am not sure if I would say that is "much, much higher". This is alpha, so both numbers will change many times, but it looks like VEn would be a long slow "cast and forget" DP.

[Yvaelle]

I did a post like this back when Entropy was first announced, but they haven't given us anything new about it work with yet - so I'll restate my criticism from back then:

Currently it's definitely not higher because of the decreased functionality - you play a risk using Entropy that the mob will die during that time. Secondly, because there is no DoT snapshotting in WoD - the Shadow meta-game will become to predict upcoming proc peaks and time our DPs to match these proc peaks - because of this we will assuredly gain more than 7% power off a well-timed DP over an Entropy cast (even if it also is cast during a proc peak).

That makes Entropy a loss over Devouring Plague. So, Entropy needs to not only out-damage Devouring Plague by the value of the decreased functionality of Entropy versus plague, and by the value of snapshots - but also by the synergistic benefit of Insanity with Devouring Plague that Entropy also costs us. Then entropy needs to provide us some value to compensate for the healing of Devouring Plague (which isn't worthless).

Lastly, Entropy needs to be worthwhile on Council Fights more so than Auspicious Spirits (which is also good at multi-dot council fights), and Clarity of Power (which is also good at multi-dot fights via DI and FDCL). For it to ever be viable, it has to markedly outperform Auspicious Spirits and Clarity of Power during council fights or we will just use the one that is more likely to keep us alive (Auspicious Spirits via DP self-healing), or the one that gives us higher mobility on council fights (CoP+DI+FDCL).

Devouring Plague
+ (decreased functionality difference)
+ (lost Insanity synergy)
+ (lost proc peak damage concentration)
+ (lost DP self-healing)
+ (level 100 niche overlap for multi-dot fights)

= It's not inconceivable to me that Entropy could deal triple Devouring Plague's damage (~2100% of Spellpower) and still not be worth taking under any circumstance (because if it's not good at PvE council fights, it's not good at anything).

[Bullettime]

It's largely a talent that looks more interesting than it is feasible. As Yvaelle stated, the dot snapshotting changes puts a damper on things. Shadow Priest Doom would have been interesting if dot snapshotting were kept around, but it will take an incredible amount of damage to make it worth using over Plague which would then load too much of Shadow's damage into it. Also keep in mind that Entropy also causes you to lose access to Insanity.

The main area where it could be good on is a lengthy council encounter where you can run it on all targets but not only does it still have to compete with Plague but now also has to compete with Auspicious Spirits.

It will likely go through a few large changes during the beta test.

[Dishonoured]

Listing Void Entropy as "Your level 100 talent is Faerie Fire / Hunter's Mark, but it will steal up to 3 Shadow Orbs on use" is really not an argument in its favour - even situationally that isn't a benefit worth mentioning: even fighting a rogue Auspicious Spirits and/or CoP will be better.

Further, in the event of potentially using Void Entropy to make it annoying for rogues to stealth, probably 90%+ of 3v3 restealths occur via Vanish - and last 3 seconds or less (during which Vanish prevents dots from breaking stealth) - the other 10%, for high-end players - will occur the way they used to - where the rouge waits for a tick, stealths, then saps/ambushes before the next tick - at least at the high end of pvp. Which leaves it as a useful tool either against unskilled rogues, or in battlegrounds - neither of which really counts IMO.

I honestly don't mean for it to come off like that at all. It's one of the few uses I can really think of. While it's damage may end up being really good over an entire minute, I don't see it being worthwhile outside if very few PvP uses. That's one of the few I can honestly think of though. I don't want to talk about a debate of if it could be a worthwhile Faerie Fire because it's a terrible use for it.

In the current state of PvP with full Grev PvP(I quit before Prideful was released) to take in to account the damage of SWP + Apps, once applied enough(especially if going for 10k haste at the time and taking a favour of more crit than mastery) you could pump out insane amounts of pressure between SWP+Apps+VT with multi-dotting and using DPlague+FDCL/DI procs on your focus in RBG/5S. I'm not sure how much I'd really like a switch of orbs for damage loss for single target focus. Healers were able to handle things relatively easy even being a focus and having good multi-person pressure. It's an interesting concept but honestly seems like trading AoE for ST/Burst. We have good enough of the other two in RBG and 5s. It could be a godsend in 3s but the Arena brackets need so much rejuvenation that it just seems too late.

CoD just is really awkward to me in practical usage. It could be used like I saw you state months ago as putting procs on a person is FDCL/DI with no dots on them with lots of multi-dotting but I see that being destroyed really quickly via multiple nerfs unless WoD is turning Shadow in to Warlocks in terms of damage and favouritism. I see good use for them in PvE, I see really gimmicky or even trading one good benefit for a mediocre benefit(as with AusSpi).

I like everything I've seen that is being done with Shadow outside of the lvl100 talents(again only in PvP). They seem of clumsy design or just that the devs didn't know what to do with us. I guess only time will tell when beta releases as I could be absolutely wrong.

[Shamanegans]

I personally cannot wait to try Void Entropy. From what blizzard have said it will deal more damage per orb than DP will, We also won't be hard up on orbs either since we can bench 5 of them. with 60 seconds on someone is insane amount of time especially if you consider the RBG scene, you can have that rolling on alot of people. Only thing that I can being wrong with that talent is we have yet to hear about dispell protection.

I love playing with DoTs and this talent will REALLY work well with how I enjoy playing, Also with higher haste levels we will need to see how the extra ticks plays out etc. We also have no idea what our 4 piece and mastery is yet too. No idea how VEnt is going to work with multistrike etc too, some really fun stuff happening with WoD and I can't wait to try this talent out.

[Dishonoured]

I personally cannot wait to try Void Entropy. From what blizzard have said it will deal more damage per orb than DP will, We also won't be hard up on orbs either since we can bench 5 of them. with 60 seconds on someone is insane amount of time especially if you consider the RBG scene, you can have that rolling on alot of people. Only thing that I can being wrong with that talent is we have yet to hear about dispell protection.

I love playing with DoTs and this talent will REALLY work well with how I enjoy playing, Also with higher haste levels we will need to see how the extra ticks plays out etc. We also have no idea what our 4 piece and mastery is yet too. No idea how VEnt is going to work with multistrike etc too, some really fun stuff happening with WoD and I can't wait to try this talent out.

With a lot of our self-healing being taken away and this amount of damage being spread out over a minute with no dispel protection, I don't really see it having a precedence over DPlague ever outside of niche/gimmick situations. VTouch dispel protection would have to be ramped up or they'd have to add one to this as well, and it would have to do A LOT of damage and have a really good protection. We already have too much of a "meh" situation with choosing when and how to use Horror. 2 orb banking won't make these choices easier(without AusSpir).

[Deleted]

PVE Viewpoint based upon current numbers and Celestalon's tweets:
He tweeted that Void Entropy would be much, much higher dmg/orb than DP. They will need to increase the base coefficient or lower the time between ticks or total time for that.
Currently DP is 337.5% SP upfront, and 337.5% SP over 6sec for 3 orbs. This comes to 675% SP per cast.
VEn is 36.45% SP every 3s for 60s. This gives 20 ticks for a total of 729% SP per cast. Which is a 7.4% increase over DP with 3 orbs.

Granted you will be able to reapply DP during VEn, but I am not sure if I would say that is "much, much higher". This is alpha, so both numbers will change many times, but it looks like VEn would be a long slow "cast and forget" DP.

729% is a joke. If we target dies before those 60 sec its almost useless. The Hole Talent right now bringts only 54% of SP over 60 sec per target. even with three target its only 162% SP. It would only work out good if its at least twice as strong as DP or something. Right now its seems like the Damag per tick is only a placeholder. Otherwise Blizzard is doing horrible.

[Deleted]

Its a given certain T7 talents are going to be bad or downright useless for certain situations. For example while doing your (pseudo) dailies or lvling to expansion after WoD you'd be a fool to run with VEnt. AS could be interesting if you can pull off some multidotting (and kiting? or group questing?) and CoP would mean you don't have to dot stuff up which is going to be shredded in 4,846 seconds on the mark. As a solo quester with quick access to good gear, CoP is likely going to be my fav. For CMs the T7 will add depth. There will be CC, so AoE is less of a big deal, but that allows for interesting multidot and focus target (think about MSP 2nd boss here). VEnt tho, would only be useful on boss fight at best.

Currently DP is 337.5% SP upfront, and 337.5% SP over 6sec for 3 orbs. This comes to 675% SP per cast.
VEn is 36.45% SP every 3s for 60s. This gives 20 ticks for a total of 729% SP per cast. Which is a 7.4% increase over DP with 3 orbs.

That is without taking into account the benefits from the other T7 talents.

VEnt seems great for movement. Its a fire and forget thing, like Mindbender. The other T7 talents like their synergies with movement friendly talents like SoD and DI. Ignoring movement of a fight for a moment as that complicates discussion, as well as talking PvE here:

Remember dot snapshotting is gone. You would reapply your dots during downtime (no procs) and try to time your bursts (Mind Blast, DP, MFI) during procs. Pandemic should make it considerably easier to get perfect dot uptimes which works in advantage with MFI and DI as well as AS and the Glyph of Mind Harvest. I like that because it allows me to easier assess how good a player did via logs and Skada.

If you're sporting VEnt you don't need to use it during procs either; on the contrary. It lasts too long for that, and has no burst component. It would work similar as you're reapplying your dots with the notion you would want to time your next bursts (Mind Blast, DP, MFI) during procs. One question is, if you got procs, would you then use those for DP and accept less uptime on VEnt, or would you want to use DP during the proc? Which % is the breakpoint?

Ideally, VEnt would need some kind of TTL of a target for it to be beneficial and this is maths/theorycrafting which requires knowledge of tuning like the ones I quoted above. In that sense, its similar to Demonology's Doom (formerly Bane of Doom). I don't know at how many ticks Doom is viable tho.

If Blizzard does a similar job as with our T3 its going to bring versatility to our play, something I already like about Shadow as it is. They're tuned close to each other, and MFI is often better, but also requires a little bit more skill. Mindbender is arguably the easiest, and it seems VEnt also requires the least maintenance.

Because of the synergies with T3 and T5 this tuning is going to be a challenge.

All the above while completely disregarding the mechanics of the fights.

On other hand they can forget about T6.

The mention of getting more DP for off healing is an interesting one but especially for soloing. For triage healing model it is useful (less overheals) but a lot of the healing it does isn't going to be crucial.

Surely tho, T7 is going to offer us 3 cogwheels for unique playstyles and this is something the only DPS spec of a hybrid sorely needs.

It's an interesting concept but honestly seems like trading AoE for ST/Burst.

Look, no class can be good at single target, multidot, and cleave (except Warlocks they're special snowflakes). Our cleave has the least amount of depth and weak single target is not desirable on the last bosses of a tier which are often tight DPS checks where single target matters (you only need so much AoE on fights like Lei Shen and Garrosh; same is also true for multidot). So I very much welcome a trade of less AoE (Mind Sear returning wet noodle) versus gaining more single target damage whilst multidot remains our core business because it has the most depth and is the most difficult to master. That could still make T6 + AoE interesting, for ToF procs. If I could buy this version of Shadow right now (even without T7) I'd go for it right now. It would make farm a lot more fun.

[Dishonoured]

and[/i] cleave (except Warlocks they're special snowflakes). Our cleave has the least amount of depth and weak single target is not desirable on the last bosses of a tier which are often tight DPS checks where single target matters (you only need so much AoE on fights like Lei Shen and Garrosh; same is also true for multidot). So I very much welcome a trade of less AoE (Mind Sear returning wet noodle) versus gaining more single target damage whilst multidot remains our core business because it has the most depth and is the most difficult to master. That could still make T6 + AoE interesting, for ToF procs. If I could buy this version of Shadow right now (even without T7) I'd go for it right now. It would make farm a lot more fun.

All of my responses are from a pure PvP perspective, that is all I'm really willing to discuss on the subject of them as they each will (most likely) have applicable PvE uses and probably vary from gear to playstyle to encounter. What my focus on is how they are really... lacklustre from a PvP standpoint. I think that's all Yvalle has commented on towards me and really all I've commented on in general. I'll go over them each from a standpoint of each talent.

CoD: If this is turning out to be what it seems like, it'll be to where we most likely put DoTs on everyone but our kill target and spam Surge procs, Divine Procs, and DPlague on our kill target. It's not really much different in RBGs/5s than what we do today but with our new Mastery and the Talent itself we will have way too much burst and the talent will probably end up needing to be changed(ala Kil'jaeden Cunning) or our damage will be nerfed.

VEnt: You're trading burst/self-healing for what can be equated to a faerie fire that could possibly be really good if it lasts for the entire minute... but we already are choosing between a CC/Interrupt/Disarm and our burst/healing with a mostly slow building resource. Also unless we have some form of Dispel Protection on this DoT itself or it's completely immune to dispel(insanely overpowered for dropping 1orb VEnt on a stealthier and forgetting them for a minute), this is pretty much useless outside of niche situations.

AusSpi: Since our spirits will no longer do damage but provide orbs we will be trading what can be/is really good AoE pressure(especially in RBGs/5s) for more burst. What I pointed out that unless healers are actually pressured by this, then it's more gnat-inducing. When I was last playing there wasn't a class in the game other than Rogue that didn't have STRONGER DoTs than SPriest. The only thing honestly keeping our DoT damage on par/considerable was the massive amount of Spirit Spam with Crit/Mastery favouritism after hitting the 10k haste cap. So we will be trading our cleave pressure for single target pressure. In some situations this could be awesome/overpowered. In most situations it's just... also inane and lacklustre.


From my perspective and a lot of SPriests I've talked to: our lv100 talent choices are not really choices and don't offer anything but gimmicky/ridiculous single target at the loss of our cleave potential. I really can't fathom wanting to use any of these as the changing of gameplay with these talents is weird. We either go for being Orb starved(VEnt) to place a DoT that has NO protection, or to taking CoD to try to focus healers and hope we don't currently have DoTs on the kill target when it's switched to that person in the middle of an RBG, or to losing A LOT of cleave potential and a lot of pressure to try to have more orbs for DPlague focus(which I honestly could see lining up really well with Insanity over Surge unless our MSpike procs are really good).

TL;DR -- Shadow talents are OP, useless, or gimmicky for rated PvP where we are truly already hurting.

[shamantime]

If anything, they should make it consume 1 orb and last 30 secs, Ele can manage with having a 30sec duration dot so I don't see why Shadow can't!