The reason that people are attached to Mind Flay is partly because of nostalgia yes, but moreso because it was a very unique and iconic ability. No other caster really had a channeled nuke as part of their mainstay abilities in vanilla, and it set Shadow apart from other casters mechanically and visually. Mind Spike is a QoL improvement in a lot of ways sure, but it turns Shadow into another generic caster with standard nukes as well.
I’d say the addition of Mind Spike is a example of a very frustrating trend by the Devs in SoM; instead of iterating on the unique features and mechanics of each playstyle in classic, they’re just shoving abilities in from future expansions and homogenizing abilities and playstyles.
Instead of improving Mind Flay to counter-balance its downsides just shove in a standard nuke to sideline it completely. Instead of building on the iconic 2-hand enchancement shaman playstyle shove DW in there like the standard melee dps plays. Instead of balancing the rogue combo-point building abilities around their different energy costs and combo point generation just homogenize everything to 40 energy ect.
There are so many cool things they could do with it. Sitting and channeling feels super dated with the current runes. They should make it like warlock drain life ruin. Where you can move white it’s channeled into essentially making it a dot, or what I would prefer is a channeled mind flay that does damage and increases your dot damage when it’s channeled. Since mind spike increases your mind blast, mind flay would be a good pick for choosing a dot play style by empowering your dots.
I enjoy trying to move the goalposts from “has channeled abilities” to “has them as a core part of their kit” - because Warlock has five of them.
I would argue the polar opposite. Removing Mind Flay removes the problematic issue Priest faces of forced mana consumption for non-returned DPS on moving for raid mechanics. Spending the entire cost of Flay to move 10% into it is unrewarding and would immediately solicit negative feedback loops/complaints.
Spike is superior in every single way once you take the nostalgia goggles off. Who told you that you should be a beautiful unique snowflake with a toolkit unlike anyone else’s? Every caster has to cast to dps. It’s in the name.
Because 2h enhancement becomes insanely problematic late game. For PvE you’re either slot-machining massive DPS, or completely worthless with no middle ground. For PvP you’re just stalling until Windfury procs enough times in a swing to zero someone off the map. So you’ve got PvE players unhappy they can’t provide consistent DPS - and PvP players unhappy they’re being chain nerfed over instantkilling people. So PvP gets nerfed because it’s horrible, then PvE suffers more… it’s an instant negative feedback loop - how do we solve it and make them viable? Take slot machining out of the equation - and provide a consistent dps avenue… Unfortunately, it’s way over tuned atm.
It feels to me that you’re the guy who wanted to play the edgy fringe-case classes in WoW classic but due to their suboptimal performance couldn’t. You then hoped this would be the revitalization that would let you play all those fringe cases… and you’re realizing that there’s a reason they were suboptimal: the toolkit doesn’t work without massive changes.
Ah yes Drain Soul and Rain of Fire, the iconic spec defining abilities everyone feared to face in Classic wow.
Alternatively channeled spells like Mind Flay tick instantly. So if you if you have to move 1 second into a cast Mind Flay would have done 1-2 ticks of damage, while a spell like Mind Spike or Fireball would have done 0 (and Mind Flay is dirt cheap to cast too). So its a trade off between mana loss and dps loss. Wow imagine that, a spec that has unique mechanics and tradeoffs to consider when playing it. The horror; better just make everything the same.
I’m not being snarky when I say this. This is literally the point of having classes in a RPG. Unique toolkits, unique playstyles.
You understand that Mind Flay was a standard part of the Shadow Rotation in TBC and Wrath right and that Shadow was fine then right ? There’s nothing intrinsic about it that prevents shadow from being a functional dps spec,it just needed some QoL updates like increased range and number tweaking. Same goes for Rogue builders, Backstab was competitive with Sinister Strike in classic despite the different energy costs. You’re making excuses for lazy design decisions.
It forsure needs literally a 100% dmg increase to even potentially be a possibility for PVE usage. It’s not terrible in PVP. When i was shadow i used it. Mind spike is absolutely useless in PVP and any SP using MS is bad. They really should increase the range from 20 to at least 30 yards baseline. Empowered renew is bis in PVP.
Except historically this has been extensively complained about the massive mana loss of having to interrupt the channel early equating to missed dps and mana starvation. It hasn’t lead to “quirky we’re so cool 1-2 ticks! this is dope!” feedback, but “omg I spent 8 seconds of mana for 1 second of damage.” feedback.
You’re missing the entire point of the three pillars of gameplay RPG - Healers, Damage, Tanking. Casting spells as a damage form alternative carries a cost occurrence - casting. When casting doesn’t require casting, the paradigm breaks. Wanting your specific brand of broken to be the unique special “main character” is some heavy handed narcissism that ignores every other class exists, and middle ground has to be found for class balance: casters cast.
I remember EXTENSIVE complaints from every Shadow Priest about how they would have to clip their flay for mobility equating to big DPS losses. I remember nearly 20 consecutive years of Shadow Priests losing their marbles because channeled mechanics don’t work on boss fights that require anything but turreted DPS.
I remember hundreds of threads crying for Shadow buffs across expansion to expansion because DoTs are weak and channeled flay does zero dps if you can’t channel. I remember hundreds of people complaining MF:I clipping due to mechanics being a colossal dps drop.
Or are you choosing not to remember the thousands and thousands of priests complaining about having to turret Flay to be DPS? About how up until literal current content retail Priest couldn’t be viable because channeling flay just flat out sucked?
I love pressing Mind Flay, it’s what I enjoyed most about playing SP. That feeling of sucking the life out of your opponent like some mad Sith Emperor!
I hate that they made Mind Spike the preferred talent in retail, and now SoD. It’s so fckin underwhelming to press. Crap sound. Crap Animation.
This has nothing to do with anything I wrote. Are you hallucinating ? I just think different classes should play differently bro, chill.
kek I didnt realize there was a civil rights movement of priests yearing to break free from the shackles of mind flay. I mean really, this is ridiculous.
You’re just wrong. Mind Flay was part of the TBC and Wrath rotation and Shadow was fine there. You couldn’t even refute that Mind Flay has some upsides compared to cast-time spells because of the instant damage-ticking.
It’s almost like you missed the entire notion of forced ooming and twenty consecutive years about channeled dps incurring a loss on movement scenarios due to damage to mana inefficiency.
So poorly that i wonder if it was a mistake. It is one of the few, if not the only offensive spell in vanilla that doesn’t follow the standard spell power scaling. It should have a 85% spell power coefficient, but it is only 45% in game for some reason.
You don’t play soccer with a baseball and then complain that it hurts to kick. It’s an entirely different thing.
This is either A) Retail, B) Classic, or C) A combination of the two - all of which Mind Flay was garbage/non viable in and was replaced by Spike explicitly because of move/cast fights and channeled dps resource deprecation.
Sorry your personalized variant of nostalgia glasses got upgraded. If Mind Flay is that important to your nostalgia - you’re free to talent and use it… Except oh wait, you want all the QoL/increase damage Spike provides… for free… without spending a rune spot.
Boring to talk to.