#1 - Dec. 1, 2016, 6:35 p.m.
Since Legion launched, most of the changes we’ve seen to Shadow have revolved around the balance of Surrender to Madness (S2M). The main issue with S2M is the amount of damage happening at high stacks of Void Form (VF). This gives Shadow a significant damage lead over other classes when played in the top 10 or so percentiles. This is illustrated in the WarcraftLogs analysis I made the week after the Mythic Emerald Nightmare opened: http://imgur.com/a/B84cl The top percentile players are able to extend their S2M the most, allowing them to spend a significant period of the fight at 100 stacks of VF, which wasn’t the intention when designing the spell.
S2M DPS definitely needs to be addressed. However, the methods being utilized right now are not only affecting top end players but also those at the lower ends of the spectrum. The drain formula change in the 7.1 hotfix (8+0.55 per stack) and the proposed change on the 7.1.5 PTR (6+2/3 per stack) "fix" the issue of the top end damage of S2M but also make S2M more difficult to play. This means that players who were struggling before may now find it impossible to reach decent S2M uptimes and as a result the gap between top performers and the rest will widen.
A different approach, to address the exponential growth of damage between the two groups without negatively affecting gameplay, would be to limit the stacks from Mass Hysteria (MH). Consider Mythic Emerald Nightmare gearing over a 300s fight, using the 7.0 drain formula (9 + 0.5 per stack). A change to MH’s cap from 100 to 50 stacks would reduce overall S2M single target damage by around 5% while reducing the peak DPS (100 stacks of VF and PI) by around 16%. The PTR proposed drain, and leaving MH capped at 100 stacks, reduces the overall damage by around 16% but only reduces the peak DPS by around 4%. This happens because, while they won’t be able to maintain 100 stacks of VF and MH for very long, high percentile players will still be able to reach that point and, combined with PI, they'll reach a similar peak DPS.
Bottom line, increasing the drain rate has a larger negative impact on VF as a whole than it helps to curb the extraordinarily high DPS achieved at high stacks of VF.
2. Void Bolt
The changes to Void Bolt (VB), having it interact with an area rather than only one target, are long overdue but they hurt Voidform's gameplay more than help in the current state. The main issue here is that by making it possible for DoTs to fall off during VF, you're stealth nerfing VF's average duration. When they fall off, we have to replace GCDs that would be used by Void Bolt, Mind Blast, or Mind Flay with Vampiric Touch or Shadow Word: Pain, both of which are poor insanity generators.
DoTs will fall off during VF with the current design because VB is only extending all DoTs in the area by 2 seconds. In order to keep a DoT duration the same, VB would need to have a 2s cooldown, which only happens at 125% haste [( 4.5 / 2 ) - 1 ], a value virtually unreachable at low stacks of VF.
For spread targets, Council-style fights (the ever famous niche of Shadow), the situation only gets worse; now we're having to refresh many different sets of DoTs, making the whole idea of VF being a "burn" phase a fallacy because we’re spending most of time inside VF refreshing DoTs instead of using nukes.
A possible solution would be for Void Bolt to refresh the duration of DoTs on the main target while increasing the duration of DoTs on nearby targets by a flat amount. That way we would have an improved version of today's multidotting for Dungeons and stacked groups, but wouldn't be punished on single or spread targets.
3. Legacy of the Void
Right now Legacy of the Void (LotV) has no feeling around it. It’s just the talent that you pick when you don't want to S2M; it offers nothing special and gives an almost negligible benefit. As a lvl 100 talent it needs to be spiced up and should offer the player something noticeable. In addition, prior to the 7.1 drain change, LotV was more of a trap than a benefit because if you entered at 70 insanity in a non-execute or multitarget situation you would likely never reach 100 insanity, effectively reducing your VF duration.