Shadowlands PVP talent changes

[Warning]

So I think there's some room for improving Destruction and Affliction in PVP via the PVP talent spots that will be opening up with the baselining of Curse of Weakness and Curse of Tongues. I'm not too knowledgeable about demo so I'll leave that out for now. I'm pretty happy with the already added Amplify Curse, even though I still think curse of recklessness is probably not great and its extra effect feels a little forced.

Affliction:
Imo the main issue with affliction is that simple DoT damage isn't very strong anymore. Because we have dark glare (which I don't like in general) and other multipliers like Death Bolt, a lot of our damage is focused into a burst window that is hard to realize in PVP because of how much casting is required. Furthermore many classes have at least a little selfhealing, enabling them to more or less passively outheal our weakened rot.

To address this I'd suggest adding a new passive PVP talent that stacks up a minor healing absorb whenever agony or corruption deal damage. Basically countering healing without making dot damage so high that it gets out of hand when you can freecast or against classes that have no selfhealing.

Fel Afflictions: When your corruption agony or doom deal damage, they apply Fel Afflictions, reducing all healing taken by the target by 3% of your spellpower, stacking up to 5 times).

I made it a flat amount to hit little heals like leech and hots harder, without affecting bigger casted heals too much.

Destruction
Imo Destruction in PVP suffers from a similar issue to affliction, which is a high amount of damage concentrated in in a burst window in PVE (Grimoire of Supremacy +Infernal).

1. Focused Chaos.
Instead of blocking its use on havoc this now adds a 15 second cooldown to chaosbolt, spends all shards and increases its damage by 50% plus an additional 20% for every soulshard spent. The goal here is to break the synergy with grimoire of supremacy in PVP or at least make it less potent, and make the gameplay more focused around setting up for one solid burst, without being too reliant on long cooldowns.

2. Shadowflame Then to replace Weakness/Tongues I think bringing back the old Shadowflame would be very nice:
Inflicts 150% spell damage plus an additional 240% over 6 seconds to all enemies in a cone in front of you and slows all enemies struck by 70% for its duration. 20 second CD.

3. Improved Shadowfury Lastly I think destro should have an option for a better shadowfury, since its originally a Destruction ability. I would go with a passive that decreases its cast time (and GCD) to 0.5 seconds and makes it deal a decent amount of damage.

[Sylar Hao]

I'm all in for these Destruction suggestions.

[Gaidax]

I'm not sure why would anyone want to change Destruction for PvP seeing it clearly works. One trick pony? So are half the specs in PvP frankly and thankfully this trick is a good one.
'
Besides, it will be naturally nerfed with VoP and CD reduction out of the picture, so I'm not even sure why "change" it further there.

[enigma77]

Shadowflame sounds good but it needs to root instead of slow. Slows are useless when you are yourself slowed all the time.

[Lulbalance]

I'm not sure why would anyone want to change Destruction for PvP seeing it clearly works. One trick pony? So are half the specs in PvP frankly and thankfully this trick is a good one.
'
Besides, it will be naturally nerfed with VoP and CD reduction out of the picture, so I'm not even sure why "change" it further there.

Typical dragonslaying mindset, its strong so must be good to play 24/7?

It's a boring meme spec. Anyone who's been playing arena at a decent level for longer than a few xpacs would rather be playing a strong aff spec. Ofcourse people are going to want push their luck and change the lowest skill cap spec we have, even though its strong atm. Having to play this garbage is literally killing braincells.

[Gaidax]

Typical dragonslaying mindset, its strong so must be good to play 24/7?

It's a boring meme spec. Anyone who's been playing arena at a decent level for longer than a few xpacs would rather be playing a strong aff spec. Ofcourse people are going to want push their luck and change the lowest skill cap spec we have, even though its strong atm. Having to play this garbage is literally killing braincells.

I know it's a hard concept to grasp, especially on MMO-C, but the thing with having 3 distinct specs is exactly that - having potentially 3 different playstyles for everyone.

You seem to have some beef with Destruction as it plays, apparently it's "boring" for you, but guess what - plenty others disagree - me included. For me it's pretty fun to be able to turtle, wait out and then blow shit up in a burst of power. If you don't like it - great, you have 2 other specs that play differently.

You don't HAVE to have ALL specs do shit YOU like. It's fine you let others have their fun too with straightforward gameplay, instead of juggling plates all day long because that's your idea of fun.

- - - Updated - - -

For example, for many years I play Warlock - I simply don't like Affliction as a spec - to me its gameplay is akin to putting layers or paint on a wall and then watching it dry. Yet I never screamed on top of my lungs that this is "teh boring shit" and rework it nao and so on.

I just accept the fact it's not for me and move on to other 2 specs, which are much closer to what I like. That's life, it's ok to have alternatives you don't enjoy just for sake of those who do.

i prefer clean specs that don't have 3 versions of same spell with slightly different duration parameters. Others on the other hand do want to juggle 3 copies of the same old dot with slightly different text, that are effectively same spell with different durations and slightly different perks, so I mean - OK, be my guest, as long as you don't force it down my throat.

[Amariw]

About your affliction suggested, its not the main issue. The problem is we can only cast instant dots vs double interrupters or more in pvp, and instant dots can't be too strong cuzz they have no counter. But you can never cast the hard hitting spenders that makes dot hurts cuzz we only have one spell school.

The way legion and mop dealt with it is by giving us weaker hut instant options to spend soulshards (instant Seed of Corruption proccs in legion, Soulburn:Soulswap in mop). Mop's soulburn also gave a ton of useful instant utility at cost of soulshards, and Legion's activable artifact gave a choice between empowering sustained dots, UA burst windows or self healing and survivability. Lastly, Legion had a 30 sec cd Casting Circle which greatly reduced but did not cancel interrupts, allowing us to force enemy into difficult choices at key moments, but also allowing counterplay that's more intricate then BFA's "stun the lock when you see purple circle".

Bfa has no such options and so far neither does shadowlands. We're stuck hopelessly trying to cast spenders which will never work vs endless interrupts. Curse of exhaustion and teleport baseline might allow for some casting windows and actual decision making, but the specc desperately needs an instant but weaker shard spender so we wont sit on 5 shards for 80% of the match, and to allow us to think if we can afford to hardcast or nor.

As for dest, i agree with the chaosbolt changes, but nigh instant sfury is a bit too much i think and without good reason. Double coil and seperate school fear is strong enough if cbolt actually hits good outside cds.


On a more global note, 5 secs pet summon is retarded for both pvp and m+. Blizz should return it to 3 secs, change the cd to instant sum them to 1 min instead of 3 min on alpha, and make it cost a shard for extra decision making.

[Malikath]

nah, i think the damage allotment ratios need to be re-adjusted so that DoTs and Dot derived reactive damage are higher contributors to affili's DPS.
destro needs reverted to it's MoP iteration with the current SL beta iteration of utility curses.