The recent changes on the Alpha are quite unexpected and overall have me feeling quite disappointed and sad that we lost certain interactions. Overall these changes create more problems than they end up solving in the first place and my inclination is to revert back to previous iterations. More details below, starting from the top of the changes.
Collapsing Void
as well as to make Collapsing Void more relevant for encounters with lower health enemies
Overall this is actually a positive change, the length of the Rift was certainly opening the spec up to challenges in shorter lived content so it being balanced around smaller windows makes a lot of sense depending on tuning.
Devour Matter and Void Empowerment
In addition, Devour Matter felt like an odd choice against Void Empowerment, so now it is a node that you are guaranteed to have.
In regards to Devour Matter I'm still unsure how exactly the Shadow Word: Death nodes fit with the Voidweaver theme, but point wise the choice node does make more sense to move it. Devour Matter itself still feels out of place on the tree.
For the new choice node the duration extension now is effectively a choice against Collapsing Void size expansion and damage, which feels like a weird choice depending on where tuning comes into the picture. If the goal is to have shorter lived windows I don't think extending by only 3 seconds is really enough to notice much of an impact considering Void Blast has such a long cooldown.
Overall I think Darkening Horizon makes less sense in this version of Voidweaver, a small amount of extension just isn't enough to feel powerful and feels weak in comparison to Void Empowerment, especially if we are going to have smaller rifts more of them with this design.
Entropic Rift
Entropic Rift duration reduced to 8 seconds (was 10 seconds). This change by itself seems okay along with the goal posted above, however it does have some knock on effects with other changes (see below). In addition this also means Shadow has an even harder time empowering the rift and expanding its size since we can only do this with Devouring Plague casts. More than ever it desperately needs to also work with Devouring Plague ticks in order to feel rewarding.
Entropic Rift is now summoned by Shadow Crash instead of Void Torrent. With Shadow Crash being a 20 second cooldown and the Rift only lasting 8 seconds baseline you will now be strongly incentivize to only cast Mind Blast during Rift windows, this can create gameplay that makes Voidweaver much less intuitive. Overall this feels more awkward than it did with being attached to Void Torrent. Having the Rift reset the cooldown of Mind Blast could solve this, but would likely be way too strong and I'm not sure of another way around this that feels healthy.
The spec in general doesn't feel right locking into Shadow Crash everywhere, especially single target. Void Torrent feels good to press almost everywhere so it did not have this problem. Reducing the ramp time of the Entropic Rift (don't have to wait for Void Torrent channel) is slightly improved, but the change from last week felt like a great solve to this in my opinion and I'm sad to see this change from Void Torrent and I personally preferred the older version instead of the Shadow Crash one.
This also creates a lot of problems with damage pattern inside of Mythic+ environments, similar to what was observed during Season 3 of Dragonflight where we pressed Shadow Crash for damage. Adding damage to Shadow Crash makes it really frustrating to play with as its our DoT application spell. If we are trying to get prepped for a pull and DoTing enemies Shadow Crash is now a full-blown damage spell (way more than it was in Season 3). This is also even more frustrating mid-way through a pull when you are faced with a choice of pressing Shadow Crash for damage on this pack vs. holding it for the next one to get your damage going. The spell doesn't create rewarding gameplay when its used for both DoT application and damage.
This change is basically opening up the can of worms of problems with Shadow Crash and personally I think its less fun than when the rift was attached to Void Torrent because of all of this.
Inner Quietus has been redesigned – Shadow Crash deals 400% additional damage to its primary target (was Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 20%).
This is similar to the points above, adding damage to Shadow Crash just doesn't feel good since we use it for DoT application today and not for damage reasons.
Shadow Crash
Shadow Crash now centers on your target, rather than using a reticle to target a position on the ground.
This change overall is extremely polarizing. While this does make the spell easier to target in some cases, it also makes it significantly less useful in other cases. Often times we are able to pre-cast Shadow Crash to time it with mobs spawning (i.e. Sarkareth or 2nd boss Brackenhide), but this is no longer possible with this change. The travel time on the spell also now requiring a target is just solving the problem of it being difficult to target while creating a new problem of being less useful in certain situations.
Instead of making this change I would personally rather have the old version. If this new functionality is the direction the spec is going in I would strongly like to have a similar choice node in our spec tree to what Windwalker Monks have with Skytouch and Skyreach. Give us the ability to choose a cast-on-target Shadow Crash or a ground-target Shadow Crash so that we don't lose our existing functionality but gain the accessability advantages.
Tree Cohesion
After these changes the tree feels more directionless and we have a lot of nodes working with unrelated abilities. While the Entropic Rift was changed to Shadow Crash, we still have a node that makes Void Torrent cast while moving, which is still a cool node but now feels way more random unless we revert that change. Personally would love for this to be more focused to make building around Voidweaver feel more distinct. Shadow Word: Death and Mindbender nodes in particular still feel out of place, equally so with Void Torrent/Shadow Crash conflicting.
Point Categorization:
- Void Torrent - 1
- Shadow Crash - 2
- Mind Blast - 4
- Devouring Plague- 2
- Shadow Word: Death - 2
- Shadowfiend/Mindbender - 2