DF Mind Spike Thoughts

Classes Priest
1

Mind Spike

What I like:

  • A tool for lower health mobs/pvp that allows us to have something worth casting without dots
  • Proc is an interesting addition to the gameplay of shadow when we aren’t in the specific low health/pvp situation
  • Mind Spike buffs Mindblast crit chance, making MB hit hard

What I don’t like:

  • Does not scale with mastery in the situation we are most likely going to want to be using it without the proc, low health mobs/pvp (really problematic as the xpac goes on and we get more stats, particularly given how important mastery typically is as a stat for us). If the spell isn’t worth using in the low health/pvp situations because it is built to be used as a proc, then I feel like it might as well be removed and just increase mind blast procs or something.
  • Mind spike has been integrated into several talents and mind flay has not. Why do PLink/manipulation/mastermind/fiending dark have Mind Spike integrations and not flay? Why are we creating a disparity in our generators? Do we want to be dotting all but 1 target in an aoe pull so we can funnel via PLink to everything but our dotless target? Do we only want to be using Spike because of the weird cdr talents and not because the ability itself is worth using for procs/pvp/low health situations?

Potential solutions:

  • Build Mind spike scaling into our mastery, maybe it deals damage as if the target had 2 dots or just whatever makes sense. Then getting procs would allow it to double dip from mastery in a way that would likely feel powerful/fun: potentially the 50% bonus in Surge of Darkness could just be removed at that point because it would just be incorporated more elegantly into the design itself.
  • Mind spike buffing Mind blast is a cool effect for our rotation: I worry about tying so many talents into a builder when it really doesn’t seem necessary. Anything that is proccing off of MSpike/MB could just be changed to MB at a greater effect. I think it would feel better and make spike feel more like an optional choice for situations where you want what it offers you rather than something you 100% need. If you want to push the spike gameplay element, making MB crits be a more important element for those effects seems like an elegant solution since spike increases MB crit chance dramatically.
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I agree with your thought out response .

To me im conflicted cuze I like mind spikes return but I hate its current rendition.

Doesn’t work with mastery and it removes your dots. It’s like an anti flow system in your rotation. It also locks out my mind blast fuel dmg potential if I don’t get mind spike.

Right now on live, I can trigger an huge amount of free MB procs with some DP procs into more MB. It’s fun, easy to use and flows.

Now we have a system that makes this complicated to use and less interactive, basically clunky.

Sometimes, I would even agree on your thoughts for MB to not be associated with mind spike like the original DF build.

They need to modernize this spell if they want to keep it. I personally feel like the dot removal aspect of it must go away

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Yeah, I have mixed feelings about spike. I think the strongest feeling I have is that if they’re going to introduce a new builder, it has to have a clear use case that makes sense and solves a problem. Having a decent spell for situations where it doesn’t make sense to DoT/we just can’t because of dispells, to me, seems like a good niche to try to fill for spriests. To me, though, that’s a niche, and not something that should warp what being a shadow priest is around it in the way that it feels like they’re trying to do with the talent tree atm.

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Hopefully, we get an update this week for better clarification on all these messes lol

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