Shadow in 7.1.5

[Shyzhi]

Annnndddd we just got nerfed again.

LOL.

have you even been on PTR to test its current state out? Its the FIRST patch info and things can change before 7.1.5 go live. Im about to go on PTR now and give them a try.

[Ilfayt]

Annnndddd we just got nerfed again.

LOL.

I was about to say 'click on the spell changes' but at the time of your post, they were on the same page. Go back to the main page now and you'll see "Spell changes", click on it and you'll see....

Mind Blast Insanity generation up by 3(+25%)
Mind Flat Insanity Generation up by 4(+50%) and all SWP dot damage while flaying the target pulses to nearby targets
Shadow Word: Death insanity Generation on non-kill(most of what non-Reaper of Souls builds get in execute) up by 5(+50%)
On cast insanity generation of Vampiric Touch up by 2(+50%)
Void Bolt now refreshes dots on all targets nearby(multi-dotting still a part of the class, but maintaining them not as hard, allowing us to focus on staying in Voidform more)
Shadow Crash buff by ~+50%

Only other nerf was to AS, down to 3(-25%), which I'm curious to see how much of an effect that has when paired against all the baseline insanity increases.

[Deleted]

Its funny how people thought they'll actually make s2m baseline and nerf it, well wrong, its nerfed and not baseline in fact none of the talents went baseline and some actually should be.. no changes to the other 2 lvl 100 talents.. Look at the bright side, you still die in s2m. I guess we gotta wait for 7.2 for an actual dps talents in 100 row, hype for 7.2!

[Ilfayt]

Its funny how people thought they'll actually make s2m baseline and nerf it, well wrong, its nerfed and not baseline in fact none of the talents went baseline and some actually should be.. no changes to the other 2 lvl 100 talents.. Look at the bright side, you still die in s2m. I guess we gotta wait for 7.2 for an actual dps talents in 100 row, hype for 7.2!

Except with massive baseline insanity generation buffs Combined with LotV now increases your uptime of Voidform itself by a massive amount, as well as helping with the duration VF itself non-S2M. I imagine we'll spend a vast majority of our time in Voidform now instead of 'ramp up, ramp up, ramp up, BOOM'. I'm curious to see how much of an effect they have myself though. Might actually download PTR for this one.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't call the insanity generation buff massive, especially with today's hotfix.. at the end of the day our damage comes from staying in voidform at high stacks (mass hysteria) you can be in voidform much as you like, but if you keep dropping at 20-25 stacks that wont matter, none of those insanity buffs will matter. Besides, we all know they'll revert it, I wouldn't be surprised if they nerf us some more

[Gemazarus]

I don't just hate STM because it's stressful. I hate it because it turns a one-second lag spike into an inevitable death. I hate it because a "high risk, high reward" ability that kills you when you make a mistake cannot possibly have a reward that matches its risk while still being balanced. I hate it because a large portion of its users don't realize that the only reason it feels satisfying to them is because it's more powerful than one ability can ever be permitted to be. But most of all, I hate it because it's a pernicious monstrosity of design and when it's inevitably nerfed back to middle-of-the-pack while still being the best choice in its tier, it will in all likelihood doom my spec to being a frustrating and unsatisfying mess for the rest of the expansion. Although I would love to be proven wrong about that.

This. So this.

[Vained]

I was about to say 'click on the spell changes' but at the time of your post, they were on the same page. Go back to the main page now and you'll see "Spell changes", click on it and you'll see....

Mind Blast Insanity generation up by 3(+25%)
Mind Flat Insanity Generation up by 4(+50%) and all SWP dot damage while flaying the target pulses to nearby targets
Shadow Word: Death insanity Generation on non-kill(most of what non-Reaper of Souls builds get in execute) up by 5(+50%)
On cast insanity generation of Vampiric Touch up by 2(+50%)
Void Bolt now refreshes dots on all targets nearby(multi-dotting still a part of the class, but maintaining them not as hard, allowing us to focus on staying in Voidform more)
Shadow Crash buff by ~+50%

Only other nerf was to AS, down to 3(-25%), which I'm curious to see how much of an effect that has when paired against all the baseline insanity increases.

Void bolt doesnt refresh dots anymore though, only extends them by 3 Seconds. I Wonder how this will play out in practice, just how much manual dot Application we must do while in voidform. Also lingering insanity got nerfed to the ground, and void lord is no longer a thing.

[davesignal]

Void Bolt extends ALL dots nearby the target now, though, which is nice. Combined with SW:P pulsing damage to all nearby targets we might actually flip from strong ST and shit AOE to mediocre ST and strong AOE.

[Vained]

We still have no burst tho, only decent sustained aoe. If mobs die fast, pulsing dot damage wont exactly matter much. Idk, we'll just have to wait untill we get reports from People who've actually tested the changes on PTR.

[Baelic]

I, for one, am very eager to get on the PTR after raid tonight.

[Deleted]

Overall, major changes from what I can tell:

Mind sear is no longer a thing. Instead, when you channel MF onto a target you have SWP on, that SWP damage hits everything in 8 yards. The artifact skill says it increased SWP and VT damage spread by this, but I can't find anything which says VT actually spreads. Maybe this part is incomplete. Means our AoE doesn't get affected by Void Ray anymore, but it does scale with MH.
VB back to extending duration rather than refreshing, but does it as a cleave. Brilliant for maintaining clumped multidot. Get your dots up, then chain MF and VB into your primary target, rather than the manic target switch VBs which was near-impossible to maintain properly without enemygrid.
Surrender nerfed to 100%. As long as this is compensated for somehow, great. No matter how good damage you can do if you nail it, its a shit talent.
Void lord changed to having lingering insanity decay by 2% per sec after you go back into voidform.
Base insanity generation buffed by quite a lot (20-50%) on almost every spell. This helps compensate for the StM nerf, reduced ramp-up time and makes getting decent VF lengths through the rest of the fight much easier.
AS nerfed from 4 to 3 insanity. I thought they said they'd be buffing to bring stuff up rather than nerfing talents that everyone was taking, but oh well.
Shadow crash buffed by 50%. Probably not enough, but we'll see.
SWP nerfed by ~10%.
Void Eruption CD down to 1.5s Hopefully this means we can cast void bolt immediately after, rather than having to fill a couple of GCDs. Great QoL change for having dots not fall off as much.
Mania increased movement speed at every 3 insanity, down from 5. Useful, but probably still massively worse than B&S

I've probably missed something, but overall I'm pretty happy with this. I'd like to see ToF made baseline as its been mandatory for about 17 expansions now.
I'd also like to see something done about the utter awkwardness that is Mind Spike. Get rid of all this stacks bullshit that makes it so difficult to properly use and just make it do its full damage and 33% splash when you cast it. I also hope it interacts with the new MF-channel-SWP-thing, doesn't say anything specifically about it so far but I can't imagine it going live without it.

[Deleted]

Overall, major changes from what I can tell:


Void lord changed to having lingering insanity decay by 2% per sec after you go back into voidform.


I've probably missed something, but overall I'm pretty happy with this. I'd like to see ToF made baseline as its been mandatory for about 17 expansions now.
I'd also like to see something done about the utter awkwardness that is Mind Spike. Get rid of all this stacks bullshit that makes it so difficult to properly use and just make it do its full damage and 33% splash when you cast it. I also hope it interacts with the new MF-channel-SWP-thing, doesn't say anything specifically about it so far but I can't imagine it going live without it.

You missed something: lingering insanity doesn't exist anymore. Void Lord is the new lingering.

[Ilfayt]

Void bolt doesnt refresh dots anymore though, only extends them by 3 Seconds. I Wonder how this will play out in practice, just how much manual dot Application we must do while in voidform. Also lingering insanity got nerfed to the ground, and void lord is no longer a thing.

Yes, I saw that afterwards, but still I'm not bothered by it. You do realize that in 'general' 3 second extend will mean refresh in a majority of situations right? The CD of Void Bolt right now in my '860' gear is just over 3.1 seconds, and in about 5 seconds it becomes 3 seconds. It's well below 3 near the end of VF, actually adding duration per cast. Unless you're dots are a fraction of a second from running out, they will not end in voidform if you're VB-ing your targets.

The situations I can see this hurting on is fights where you have multiple targets not near eachother that you're dotting up, which is a shame, but I'm still glad to see us finally have decent cleave while good non-S2M buffs.

[Annesh]

You missed something: lingering insanity doesn't exist anymore. Void Lord is the new lingering.

That was my impression as well, and it seems like a gigantic dick slap to the face.

[Feorn]

That was my impression as well, and it seems like a gigantic dick slap to the face.

Unless the remaining haste bonus means you have that many stacks when you re-enter voidform. Would obviously have to be simmed out, but it could end up being a nice DPS increase, paired with LotV.

[Vained]

Unless the remaining haste bonus means you have that many stacks when you re-enter voidform. Would obviously have to be simmed out, but it could end up being a nice DPS increase, paired with LotV.

I'm really curious about this as well.

[Annesh]

Unless the remaining haste bonus means you have that many stacks when you re-enter voidform. Would obviously have to be simmed out, but it could end up being a nice DPS increase, paired with LotV.

Umm, I seriously doubt it.

[Theed]

How could they possibly make it worse? Lingering insanity and voidbolt dot refresh were very cool mechanics and they completly destroyed the both

[kalaratic]

Unless the remaining haste bonus means you have that many stacks when you re-enter voidform. Would obviously have to be simmed out, but it could end up being a nice DPS increase, paired with LotV.

no, lingering insanity no longer exists at all without the talent

[Deleted]

How could they possibly make it worse? Lingering insanity and voidbolt dot refresh were very cool mechanics and they completly destroyed the both

Totally agree, these were some of the aspects that made shadow really fast paced and cool to play. And still no word about mind spike....I'm speechless....they fix the wrong talents and and the mechanics that made sense. Of course it's only a 1st PTR glimpse, but it's a bad start nonetheless.