| Healthstone:
What it tries to imitate: Conjure Mana Stone, various healing
spells, health potions.
Drawbacks: It costs more mana and heals for less health than any
"main" healing spell. It has a 3 minute cooldown, compared to
Conjure Mana Stone's 2 minute cooldown and a Healing Potion's 2
minute cooldown. In order to heal someone else, you have to prepare
and trade ahead of time.
Advantages: It can be shared, unlike a Mana Stone. The (mana
cost/health healed) ratio is better than the Mana Stone's (mana
cost/mana healed) ratio. Once it's created and traded, it can be
used instantly by the possessor and without screaming for a priest.
Conclusion: The three minute cooldown is pretty limiting. While it
has advantages over Mana Stones, its longer cooldown helps balance
it out. (As an aside, Mana Stones may be a bit underpowered.)
Healing spells have an advantage in every way except for the "be
prepared ahead of time" aspect. Why a Soul Shard? Are the other
limitations not severe enough?
Spellstone:
What it tries to imitate: Power Word Shield, status fixers.
Drawbacks: Removes beneficial buffs, only absorbs spell damage,
sizeable cooldown.
Advantages: A dispel and a shield combined in one, gives a small
advantage when trying to crit.
Conclusion: It must be equipped in the offhand, but there are much
better things to carry in your offhand than a 1% critical chance
increase. It dispels negative and positive buffs, making it rather
frustrating. It absorbs less spell damage than a Priest's Power
Word:Shield absorbs total damage, and Power Word:Shield has a much
shorter cooldown and no reagent. Since it absorbs your buffs, you're
left more defenseless against physical attacks. One would think the
cooldown is enough for a mediocre ability such as this.
Enslave Demon:
What it tries to imitate: Mind Control.
Drawbacks: Diminishing returns, reduces attack/cast speed by 30%,
can't be used on players, Demons aren't as prevalent as humanoids.
Advantages: Demons are powerful compared to many humanoids, lasts
longer than Mind Control.
Conclusion: Other than the fact that Demons can be more powerful
than some Humanoids, this spell is pretty terrible. Its random-break
nature makes the Soul Shard cost painful. If it didn't randomly
break and/or have diminishing returns, the Shard cost might be more
reasonable. Right now, it is not.
Shadowburn:
What it tries to imitate: Fire Blast, other instant nukes.
Drawbacks: Virtually every instant blast in the game is better in
some way, be it more power or added debuffs. Shadowburn requires a
talent investment.
Advantages: Warlocks don't have an instant blast spell, other than
Death Coil.
Conclusion: The shard cost should really be removed. The cooldown,
the weakness of the spell and the eleven-point talent investment
really eliminates the need for the shard cost.
Soul Fire:
What it tries to imitate: Any non-instant DD, especially aimed shot
or Pyroblast.
Drawbacks: It's the power of one and a half Shadow Bolts for the
price of one, with double the cast time of a Shadow Bolt, and a one
-minute cooldown.
Advantages: Pretty mana-efficient. And it doesn't require a talent
investment, unlike Aimed Shot or Pyroblast.
Conclusion: Aimed Shot has a significantly smaller cooldown.
Pyroblast requires a talent investment, but has no reagent, deals
more damage, and has the same cooldown. (That being said, Pyroblast
is almost certainly underpowered.) The one minute cooldown and the
enormous cast time seems to be enough of a drawback to make it also
require a soul shard.
Firestone:
What it tries to imitate: Various Shaman weapon enhancements, I
guess.
Drawbacks: There's a hell of a lot better things to put in your
offhand than something that increases your melee damage and gives
your fire spells a slight boost. It's very mediocre.
Advantages: Hard to say. At the highest level, you should almost
certainly have something better for the offhand than something that
gives you 21 extra fire damage and a melee bonus. And why are you
even fighting with a melee weapon?
Conclusion: Garbage. What's the real point of the spell, much less
the shard requirement?
Final Thoughts
Note that not a single Affliction spell requires a Soul Shard. This
reinforces the fact that we are supposed to excel at DoTs and
Debuffs.
Anyway, in the present form, I think the reagent for the Soulstone
is justified and the reagent for Demons and Ritual of Summoning is
somewhat justified. Every other spell that requires a soul shard has
plenty of limitations or weaknesses compared to corresponding spells
IN ADDITION TO the shard requirement.
If Soul Shards applied only to Soulstones and Demons, I'd be happy.
Furthermore, it'd make sense that you need to give an offering of a
soul in order to summon a demon, and it makes some sense that you
need to absorb someone's soul in order to store your own. Ritual of
Summoning should require either a shard or party members; the shard
doesn't make a whole lot of sense, although the party members
somewhat do.
Eliminating the Shard requirement for everything but those one to
three spells would make more sense, bring more balance to the
Warlock class, and eliminate a ton of whining.  |