To be fair, Mind Control can be extremely powerful in organized groups that are pushing their highest keys. Especially in stuff like Inspiring, where you can be cheeky and mind control the inspiring on pull and have the rest of the mob pack kill it. It’s also got some niche use in mind controlling particularly annoying mobs in packs that are hard to survive. IE: The mender in the pack before the second boss in Spires. Keep in mind that you can Mind Control - use their most annoying abilities - then cancel MC and fade. This puts the abilities on CD for them, too.
But man does it suck in pugs - because every single reason to use it in PvE requires your group to know what you’re about to do and play around you. It also can actually slow you down or get you killed if you’re not careful. That makes it super hard to even experiment with, too. You pretty much need to bring friends to see what you can do with it.
Dominant Mind is one of those things that sounds fine on paper, but really doesn’t have much practical use in M+. It’s too risky to have the priest MC an Inspiring mob for 30s because most trash pulls usually last longer than that. It’s safer to just CC the add off to the side.
If Dominant Mind lasted like 1 minute than yeah… it’d be pretty clutch then.
I wasn’t referencing Dominant Mind. That talent is… not good. It forces a 30s MC and the mob you control does little to no damage while under that MC. It basically reads as “this mob is CCed and untargetable for 30s, and once that ends, the priest will have aggro. It also cannot be re-CCed.”
There’s no way to make that good. It’s just a worse version of everyone else’s CC.
Base Mind Control though, is actually kinda clutch. Easier to use - when it’s used to pull the other mobs will aggro the one you MCed immediately, and it’s just far more effective overall. Dominant is just a nerf for some reason. In Mechagon I used to like MCing the goblin trappers, dropping their trap then hitting escape. It both got rid of the threat and did massive damage to the pull. There’s things like that all over the dungeons, but finding them isn’t worth breaking runs for pugs.
power infusion, gives party members 1% haste for 10 seconds per ability cast/used, stacks of buff don’t renew duration, passive, or make it larger % and on a cooldown, fixed?
or even each damage event/heal event has a x% chance to give a stack to incentivize keeping renew out/dots out/atonement out
Wowheads review on the Class and Shadow talent trees…
Overall, I agree with all the issues they talk about, but I would argue that those issues stem from a further problem as those issues are just symptoms of the class identity crisis that I think the Priest in general has.
The shadow tree does seem to be the most bloated compared to Holy and Disc. Also, sticking us with Searing Nightmare still isn’t a fun option. Having to choose between doing 50% less AOE damage vs less annoying single target rotation is yeah.
The WoWhead post on Shadow feedback, when read in its entirety, is pretty devastating to the current Shadow talent tree design. It’s also rough because some of the new talents - the idols in particular - show promise.
To adress a common complaint at least seeing in the priest discord about haveing so many non damaging abilities aka bloat in the shadow spec tree would be to baseline more of it.
Shadow having sharing a class with two healing specs places it in a rather unique spot for the class tree, how do you put in the utility that most dps bring without absolutly making the the healers become busted in my opinion is do something shadow has had done before make it overbudget, add more than average to its baseline for its spec, it will be fine, cause its needed for shadow to actualy compete.
of course this could be completly irrelevant if things like dungeon and encounter design have had a major change with dragon flight where you dont need a kick ever 3 seconds from the group, a stun every 10 seconds or so, a group cc every 15 to 30 seconds or so, enough healing cooldowns availailble where you dont need a non healer healing cooldown etc, changes like those could make it a moot point.
Agreed. Its a difficult balance to give healers the same level of utility that DPS or in this case… Shadow has. Shadow has always brought a lot of utility to the table from the very beginning. So in trying to move “utility” from Shadow into the class tree, its met with an Uh-OH moment.
I’ve seem these so called 1% people talking about moving Vampiric Embrace, Dispersion, Silence and others into the class tree. But that would simply break Holy and Disc… espically disc since they can tap into Shadow spells more and make use of Vampiric Embrace. So we end up needing to keep a lot of Shadows utility… well in Shadows tree.
The only other option is to move them to baseline abilities but to be quite frank, having a baseline Shadowform just already feels off. In Classic, that was our endpoint game changing talent… now it just adds 10% more dmg… whooo. They have to water down everything to the point where its downright pathetic in order to preserve “balance” for other classes. So Shadow gets gutted time and time again (Good bye instant cast short cooldown defensive dispel now named Purify).
So yea, in a result we got Shadow being bloated up because we cant really give healers access to Silence and Dispersion without breaking the game and making them Overpowered and at the same time, taking away the few things shadow has left to stay unique. But then this makes the Shadow side of the class tree quite barren and not much if any creative ideas can take form.
Which is why I am dumbfounded that we don’t have the following in the Shadow side of class tree…
Spectral Guise
Your shadow blurs into the darkness, leaving your true form behind. As a shadow you are stealthed, but remain in combat. Lasts 6 sec or until your true form is hit by 3 direct attacks.
Void Tendrils
Tendrils come out of the ground under up to 5 enemies within 8 yards, immobilizing them for 20 seconds. Killing the tendril cancels the effect. 30 second cooldown.
Paralysis (2)
When you critically hit with your Mind Blast, you cause the target to be unable to move for 2/4 sec.
Blackout (2) (Modified to only proc on Mind Blast as all our shadow spells would make it OP imo)
Gives your Mind Blast a 5/10% chance to stun the target for 3 sec.
Phantasm
Activating Fade removes all movement impairing effects and prevents your movement speed from being reduced for 5 sec.
Death and Madness (Wod version)
If your Shadow Word: Death fails to kill the target at or below 20% health, your Shadow Word: Death’s cooldown is instantly reset. Damage increased by 250% to targets below 20% health.
Mind Bomb / Psychic Voice moved over to class tree
Mind Bomb
Inflicts the target with a Mind Bomb.
After 2 sec or if the target dies, it unleashes a psychic explosion, disorienting all enemies within 8 yds of the target for 6 sec.
Psychic Voice
Reduces the cooldown of Psychic Scream by 30 sec.
Shadow Crash (We can move this over from Shadows tree as IMO its more of a utility than a AOE DPS ability. You can use it in Arena / PvP to keep someone in combat that is Line of Sighting you behind a pillar etc.)
Hurl a bolt of slow-moving Shadow energy at the destination, dealing Shadow damage to all targets within 8 yards. 30 sec cooldown.
We have ideas that the class had access to in the past that I don’t think would break the game to the levels that things like Silence, Dispersion, Vampiric Embrace would if the healing side had access to them.
I tried incorporating most of what I just mentioned into a modified version of the class tree myself…
Detailed out here in my latest take on the Class and Shadow Trees…
So something I realized about the bloat of talents the Shadow tree has is I HIGHLY suspect it’s to prevent us from being able to get two Idol talents. I mean that’s fairly obvious right? But the thing is, if those 3 point nodes just before the Idol nodes were both turned into 2 point nodes, we’d still be able to get only 1 Idol talent. See this tree that beelines it straight for 2 Idol’s for reference. It has one unspent point left that would go into only one of the Idol nodes if the previous two talent nodes were made into 2 point nodes. https://www.wowhead.com/dragonflight-talent-calc/AABsAAABmNVQGBAFQlZRiggBA
I’ve also been thinking about what they could do with Surrender to Madness since in it’s current form, there are very, very few instances at which a spriest take that talent over Hungering Void. So given that the spriest is “Surrendering” to the madness of the void, perhaps S2M can just give the them permanent Voidform or access to Void Bolt but it no longer gives them 20% increased damage, but 10% or maybe none if perma Voidbolt is that strong? This also helps shift away from having to prioritize Mindflay.
Ancient Madness would have to change if paired with that S2M. So for that I figure why not Ancient Madness give 2% crit with every Void Bolt hit, stacking a maximum of 15 times, with a duration of 6s but refreshed with every Voidbolt. So 30% crit after at minimum 15 gcd’s into combat. This makes it so we’re not immediately staring a fight with 30% extra crit, which would be super broken in PvP, but allow the fairly small ramping to have less of an impact on longer sustained Boss fights. The 6s duration helps make it so you can’t just walk around with 30% all the time, you have to actively be hitting something with Voidbolt.
This is exactly what I was concerned with.
In the beginning of these talents release, people were hyper focusing on just a small portion of the standout talents… mainly the Idols.
Problem is, if you take away the idols and look at the tree without those as a distraction, its very odd and disjoined and just messy / sloppy.
The talent tree really does feel like its build to restrict you to only pick 1 Idol. But that leads to a balancing nightmare imo. Because you have to factor in all 4 idols in various different talent combinations.
What I foresee is the Idols being the new Voidform debacle all over again… meaning the Idol talents are “propped up” in a way by the rest of the tree… meaning the tree is BUILD AROUND the Idol talents. That is horrible.
That is why I think we clearly separate out each playstyle (I mentioned several in various posts) and put all 4 Idols into a single talent that is locked behind having Voidform (Void Eruption) talent and can only activate during Voidform. Then they can balance around that knowing they wont have to make each Idol as similar in strength as possible.
I tried to draw attention to the Idol concerns on the the Preview forums here… But I got some emotional reaction to say the least lol.
I hate how Voidbolt is tied to a DPS cooldown button and an AOE button.
I think Voidbolt should do 1 of 2 things…
When in Voidform, Devouring Plague becomes Voidbolt and now Voidbolt costs insanity to use but hits like a truck.
When in Voidform, Mind Blast gets empowered and becomes Voidbolt. Keeping all the synergies that Mind Blast gets like resetting and damage scaling but also doing more damage, generates more insanity and retains that extra charge Mind Blast gets in Void Form. Maybe even extends your dots as well I dunno.
It would basically work like Havoc Demon Hunters Chaos Strike gets empowered and becomes a better version of itself in Annihilation while in Demon form, just for Shadow it would be Voidform.
Both of those versions can still benefit from Void Touched proc outside of Voidform.
No comments here. But then again, I don’t really dabble into the “Void” side of things and get to know them so my opinion on status of that side will most likely be lacking.
I would tend to agree.
Sadly, I don’t think that wil happen.
So I would at least like the option to avoid Voidform and get something akin to WoD Clarity of Power or Auspicious Spirits Build. Or before Voidform or Shadow Orbs were a thing and go back to Mind Flay, Mind Blast and dots. But with Dark Archangel for burst.
Another thought occurred to me… Why was Cascade taken away from Priests yet abilities like Chill Streak for Frost DK’s and Chi Wave for Monks. Cascade is fairly similar to those, if the splitting part is what makes it OP, then just make it not split.
“No changes for disc priest please its perfect and has been perfect since Legion pre-patch. What a home run guys. You did it for the 4th expansion in a row. 6-stars”
Original silence was too strong but you guys just went to the other extreme and removed kick altogether. This will make disc pretty much the only healer that doesn’t have some form of silence/interrupt/stun, which are important for m+.
I hope you can find some middle ground, add some form of kick back to the wicked star. For example, you can make it silence/interrupt the first target hit. Alternatively, change the aoe silence to kick (without spell lock for that school I guess).
Otherwise, please consider to give disc a kick/stun/silence somewhere on the tree.
lock the second charge of radiance behind shining radiance is really bad. Either you have to buff shining radiance to make it worth TWO talent points, OR change the order like it was originally.
please give disc mindsear back. it is an important filler button for aoe dps without having to select holy nova (or make holy nova a choice node between sear and nova). Also the holy nova needs to be buffed on its damage component.
I’ve just seen the new version of Wicked Star, and I’m a little bit sad the silence is gone. Perhaps the silence could be brought back and only silence them if the star hit the targets both times. Though it seems disc is going to be super fun and do much more damage than live.
