Delete mind spike
that is all thank you for listening.
5 Likes
please dont
when I get kicked on shadow I can still cast mindspike bc its shadowfrost
4 Likes
I like Mind Spike. Vastly prefer it over Mind Flay actually. Thanks for listening.
4 Likes
I’ve never understood why they didn’t change Mind Flay to also be Shadowfrost.
It slows enemies.
Random silly thought, you could even have a talent that stacks Brain Freeze each time it does damage, and at 6 stacks the enemy is frozen in place. 
5 Likes
tbh I dont understand why mindspike is shadowfrost either, but I dont want it removed, since I can plan my casting abilities better with it
instead of removing stuff, why dont add our old stuff back? mind bomb(great aoe stun), mind sear, spectral guise…
Mind Bomb replaced Psychic Fear in Legion and if they did bring it back it would be awkward with all the Psychic Fear synergies both in the talent tree as well as other aspects of the game like the Conduits and Anima powers in Shadowlands which requires them to make sweeping changes to make sure things just don’t end up as dead weight.
Then if Mind Bomb was added similar to Void Tendrils then it might be a bit too powerful with Fear + Stun + Another stun with Psychic Horror + Silence.
However some of that may be mitigated if Mind Bomb was a choice talent with Void Tendrils even if that’s not really a choice since they pale in comparison.
If anything, Mind Bomb would mostly come back in the form of how it was in BFA when it got its stun removed and replaced with a disorient which frankly is just like Psychic Scream in terms of effect as its only a very short temporary stopping of acting and breaking on damage.
So if Mind Bomb does return, most likely it will just be treated like a ranged Psychic Scream which at that point is it really worth it being brought back?
Conclusion:
It just seems in regards to what we have currently and to keep things in perspective with balance concerns, I don’t see much space for Mind Bomb returning.
However, I do agree with the return of Mind Sear and Spectral Guise.
Considering that Shaman now have both a 25 second CD KU and a 45 sec CD 5 sec ranged stun+damage, giving Priests a brief ranged AE disorient is not at all out of line.
Of course the devs will surely tell us to go pound sand, then steal Fade and Power Word: Life and give them to Druids(who are already crying about their class tree).
It’s shadowfrost because it was intended that you could cast it while shadow-locked. It was not intended to do much damage but was just a button to press.
In terms of it dealing meh damage, that was not the intention when it was initially introduced back in cataclysm nor was it the intention when it was reintroduced in Dragonflight.
It just happens to be in an awkward state design wise because it was both severally misunderstood and its actual initial intention did not jive well with our current mastery as it was supposed to be an alternative form of dealing quick damage without needing to get your dots on the target and it continued this playstyle rather well and only got better during its Cata/MoP/WoD run.
But they changed things so drastically up to the point of Dragonflight that now just shoving in Mind Spike without actually changing some major features as to how Shadow functions was a very poor thought out plan and we are left with this awkward up in the air confusion as to where Mind Spike fits best.
This, wasnt it put in originally so priests had another spell school for when they were kicked? spike wasn’t meant to be a big hitter, it was an alternative to when you couldn’t flay. Also love the irony that the spell that does “shadowfrost” damage doesn’t slow, but the one that only does shadow damage does lol
Mind Spikes initial implementation in both Cata and Dragonflight had the defining feature of ripping your dots off the target.
Now you might ask the question why the heck would that happen? What is the point of that?
The reason being is that it dealt so much damage that if you had both its base damage and dot damage on the target going at the same time then it would be ridiculously overpowered. So the balance affect was to make Mind Spike rip your dots off.
This was not a big deal in Cata because our mastery was Shadow Orbs which increased the damage of both Mind Blast and Mind Spike and when you consumed your Orbs, you also gained a temporary buff that also increased your periodic damage.
So this created a dance of burst and dot back and forth.
This opened up the option to burst on targets without dots on them and feed your burst with other targets with you’re dots on them and then on single target you just didn’t use Mind Spike and instead kept using Mind Blast as you normally do with it being amped up by Shadow Orbs occasionally.
But going into DF, this concept would not work because our mastery is directly tied to our dots being on the target and without dots on the target, you’re damage is severely diminished which leads to the conflict of wanting to use Mind Spike for burst but we simply could not do so because it had a hard conflict with dots in both its damage being severely diminished if the target doesn’t have your dots on them and it ripping the dots.
So they changed it to not rip dots anymore which then lead to its damage being normalized since it’s no longer competing against dots which finally sees itself as a spell without a cooldown or resource cost just like Mind Flay which is why you see the current conflict of the 2 spells competing to be a filler because that is the end result of all the changes that were made.
The Shadowfrost damage aspect was more of a bonus since Priests have always been slow and susceptible to being locked down because we don’t have a warlocks pet and tankiness or a mages way to kite and remove hard cc. We are to just take it. So with the backlash damage from Shadow Word: Death and Access to frost damage school with Mind Spike are the ways we have to still continue doing things as we are getting trained on.
1 Like
Not sure why it has to be an option. Why not give us both mind spike and mind flay?
2 Likes
I agree Mind Spike should just be removed it no longer fits the Shadow Priest. All it does it make Mind Flay awkward because they have to design talents around if the priest either has Mind Flay or Mind Spike.
The only reason it still exists is for PvP. So that Shadow Priests have the ability to cast, at the very least, 1 damaging spell if they are locked out of Shadow. This used to be important because shadow could just be trained forever and not be able to do any sort of damage. (imagine 2 melee rotating their kicks and a shaman wind sheering you). And casting Smite would drop Shadowform.
But now in PvP there are so many instant casts available as Shadow I dunno really if its still needed.
it is, you build up your surge of insanity and if they interrupt you, burn your overpowered mind spike.
we have 3 schools atm, holy, shadow and shadowfrost, and its great we always have something to use, heals, purge or damage.
if they remove mind spike it will be a total L for shadows in pvp, since every other caster have better mobility and tools to kite melees
I prefer the snare from mind flay because it’s much more useful in group combat for snaring a flag carrier. It also does decent damage.
I loved the fact that spriest damage was in channels, not in your typical casted spells like mage warlock etc. that was our niche
void torrent/mindflay
dont make me be like a mage!!!
2 Likes
As do I.
But I also like the Mind Spike Shadowfrost feature.
This is another reason why having access to both simultaneously would be a great addition to our utility capabilities.
Was never a problem having both from Cata, MoP and WoD.
2 Likes
Why? Channeled abilities are at a disadvantage at all times. They get interrupted by knockbacks, knockups, stuns, interrupts, having to move, opponents moving out of range or sight, etc.
1 Like
They do have one advantage in that you never lose damage with them by being interrupted.
What I mean is, if you get interrupted half way through you still got half the damage out. Where as mind spike being interrupted half way through means you got no damage and all that time was wasted.
Channeled fillers are good because they can fill any gap in the rotation without worrying about clipping them short. Something you cannot do with casted fillers
2 Likes
Ah, yeah, thats true.
1 Like