Insanity mechanic

Would in not make more sense for the insanity mechanic to work in the reverse of the way it does now? Your character is using shadow/void magic which tend to drive it’s users to insanity. Shouldn’t you then be trying to keep insanity at bay in order to weild this magic and not have it use you (possibly against your allies)? Have shadow word pain build insanity and your direct spells ‘relieve the pressure’. Have capping insanity give you a punishing debuff. Then have a surrender to madness as a baseline cd themed into surrendering to the void and becoming an avatar of destruction for a short time.

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I always thought it didn’t make much sense. You should be fighting to not go insane from too much void magic, not the other way around.

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I actually pitched the original Insanity mechanic - and that’s exactly what it was :smiley:

My proposal was for a 2 resource structure. Willpower was to be our primary resource, and it is what became Mass Hysteria. The idea was that everytime our DoTs (edit: and channels) did damage, we would gain a stack of Willpower, which gave us 1% haste, stacking up to 100%. Since ramping mechanics were expressed by the devs to be a core element of Shadow’s design, I think this satiated it nicely.

The second resource was Insanity, which is what’s called a “Heat” mechanic in design terms. The idea is that our most powerful spells would inflict Insanity upon us, and our goal would be to space our most powerful spells out so that we had time to cool off. We would have multiple powerful spells which would inflict Insanity, like Mind War (became Void Torrent), Despair (Devouring Plague), and Shadow Crash.

If you ever hit 100 Insanity though, you would trigger Dark Apotheosis (became Surrender To Madness), you would lose all your Willpower (haste) stacks, wipe all your DoTs of all targets, lose health every second, but be able to spam your Insanity-inflicting spells free of charge for 10 seconds (and Mind War would gain a significant buff since it’s a channel), and your single target damage would heal raid members (Vampiric Embrace).

The cost was the risk of death due to the health loss, and having to wait another 100 DoT ticks to recharge your Willpower if the fight continued. It would not be desirable to trigger Dark Apotheosis on long fights, you would be far better off keeping your Willpower high to machine gun DoT ticks & channels.

Instead, if you absolutely needed to burst an add quickly, triggering Dark Apotheosis might be worth saving the raid. Or if your healer died, triggering Dark Apotheosis would be a good way to heal your group and burst the target down - but at the cost of your overall damage. Or at the end of the fight, the last 10 seconds - triggering Dark Apotheosis would be a good way to go out with a bang.

So they took most of those ideas clearly, but they made them their own, simplified it down to a single resource system (Insanity), but kept Mass Hysteria as the secret second resource. In Legion, this all worked out. Then in BFA they deleted the second resource (Mass Hysteria, aka Willpower), and they didn’t seem to understand how much that would wound the spec.

I believe, given their responses in 8.1.5 and 8.2, that they understand it’s not working anymore - so I expect changes in 9.0. Probably not to my last proposal, but I’m planning to make a new proposal for 9.0 soon - or they’ll just come up with something of their own. Either way it’s likely to be an improvement.

The simplest flavour fix would be to rename insanity to clarity. Once you have enough clarity you can delve deeper into the void. Once it runs out you have to surface before the void damages your mind.

But if Blizzard is planning on a rework for the next expansion I can’t see them making any changes before then.

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I think you guys are missing the point. You can compare the insanity mechanic to an addiction, whether it be drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, mania, whatever.

In the back of the person’s mind, they know this thing they’re craving is detrimental to them, but the allure is too strong. They begin to rationalize and tell themselves maybe just a little won’t hurt. That little bit only amplifies the urge for more. There is an internal struggle to maintain control, but that need for more is simply too great. Before long their will is broken and they have completely surrendered to that addiction.

Now imagine that addiction is a power that helps you to defeat your enemies. How quickly would you resort to delving into that power? How often would you resort to using it when you didn’t need it to win in the first place because you simply love the feeling of that much power?

I think the Insanity mechanic makes perfect sense.

Addiction is never mentioned in association with shadow priests. Yes both are mental disorders but that doesnt make them the same.