I am not even a priest player, but I feel bad for priest runes (warlock main)
I came up with a pretty cool idea imo for a new priest rune to solve mana issues
Spell Name: Mind Possession (Replaces Mind Control)
Description: Mind Possession is a powerful and versatile spell that allows the priest to temporarily inhabit and control the mind of an enemy target. Unlike the traditional Mind Control, this spell is instant-cast and has a range of 30 yards. Upon casting, the priest’s physical form vanishes, symbolizing their complete immersion into the enemy’s psyche. If the target is immune to mind control normally, it will only deal the damage but not allow the player to control the unit.
Key Features:
Instant Cast: Allows for swift and strategic gameplay, perfect for reactive or preemptive control.
Range: Effective up to 30 yards, offering significant reach in combat scenarios.
Duration: Lasts 20 seconds.
Cooldown: 1 minute, balancing its powerful effects with strategic usage considerations.
Damage Over Time: The controlled enemy suffers continuous damage, representing the mental strain of possession.
Mana Regeneration: Damage inflicted on the enemy is converted into mana for the priest, offering a unique resource recovery mechanism.
Tactical Versatility: Can be used for offensive control, self-preservation, resource management, or a combination thereof.
This can be used as a dps cd, mana recovery, cc, or oh s**t button to be invulnerable for the duration (granted your target doesn’t die)
Cool strat would be to fully dot someone in 1v1 and then use this spell so they rot and can’t hit you (maybe if a pally using exorcism or shaman uses purge it will remove the spell and force the priest out)
spirit tap on any xp kill reguardless of last hit would help some. perhaps even a manual use of it. just thinking of something already in their kit that doesn’t seem non class fantasy.
Personally I’d love WotLK Spirit Tap some how makes it way into SoD.
Improved Spirit Tap (in WotLK) - Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes have a 100% chance and your Mind Flay critical strikes have a 50% chance to increase your total Spirit by 10%. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 33% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec.
Since in Classic DoTs do not Crit it could be changed to fit Classic/SoD.
Improved Spirit Tap (SoD) - Your Mind Blast critical strikes have a 100% chance and your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay damage have a 50% chance to increase your total Spirit by 10%. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 33% rate while casting. Lasts 8 sec.
Essentially giving SW: Pain and Mind Flays DoT tics chance to proc the effect.
Alternatively they could give Void Plague the Vampiric Touch mana regen from TBC which I personally think is an easy change playing off a Rune we will be already getting then introducing a complete new one.
Void Plague (Currently) - Afflicts the target with a disease that causes 234 Shadow damage over 18 sec.
Changed too,
Void Plague (edited) - Afflicts the target with a disease that causes 234 Shadow damage over 18 sec, causes all party members to gain mana equal to 5% of any Shadow spell damage you deal to the target.
With Void Plague getting the additional Vampiric Touch bonus, it greatly increases the value of speccing into the Shadow Tree for Mind Flay for Shadow Priests giving that utility of being Mana Batteries that we get in TBC/WotLK.
We also need to remember Runes are universal not spec based, so Void Plague will also help Disc and Holy Priests get some mana regeneration through SW: Pain tics and Mind Blast.
Both Shamans and Paladins have received Runes that give Mana to themselves and the party/group, this was a Shadow Priest thing, at minimum should come back in some form in SoD for us.
Honestly Priest should have been the ones to bring replenishment in the first place. I understand they wanted to change things up which i understand but shaman and pally already bring so much utility
I don’t see them doing anything quite that different given how other runes are (most are recycled abilities from other expansions).
I could see fiend/mind bender, replenishment or maybe even a free to cast mind spike. Mind spike has a lot of possibilities buff wise. It could give you a stacking buff making mind blast faster and cheaper up to free and instant at 2 stacks. Or they could use the Legion version to debuff the target and detonate with mind blast.
Because of how Vampiric Embrace functions, any mana recovery turns Shadow into a bottomless mana healer. Shadow needs it to do damage but there must be a cost…
Instead, it is more likely to have Vampiric Touch – Vampiric Embrace no longer heals and grants you mana instead.
I think it needs to be changed to only grant the Priest mana return instead of the party.
Look at Druids, the completely removed the mana cost entirely of Wrath, let’s compare it vs Mind Flay
Wrath Rank 4 learnt at lvl 22 - 2 sec cast time, free cost with Rune, Causes 69 to 79 Nature damage to the target. Can Crit. 30yd Range.
Now if a Druid fully invests into the Balance tree up to lvl 25, they’ll reduce Wrath’s cast time to 1.5 seconds, and get a 20% bonus damage on Crit, yes it can Crit. Spammable with zero down sides.
Mind Flay Rank 1 learnt at 20 (via Talent) - 3 sec channel, 45 mana, Assault the target’s mind with Shadow energy, causing 75 Shadow damage over 3 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%. Cannot Crit, 20 yd range, improved by 20% with Rune if SW: Pain is applied.
Wrath essentially will do double the damage baseline in 3 seconds (they’ll get 2 casts off), even more when it Crits, requires no set up, free cost and has more range, Druid will benefit from MP5 when spamming as it’s free and can proc an instant heal.
Just let Void Plague only restore mana to the Priest rather then party, would be an excellent change.
It creates its own gameplay loop, SW: P → Void Plague → Mind Blast → Mind Flay get your mana back and keep going. With the occasional off heal.
AoE you’d Void Plague one target but Mindsear the other to proc the regen of mana.
Whatever decision regardless Priest need a way to get mana back, currently the only way is through Paladin Runes and Blessing of Wisdom and Shaman Runes.
You misunderstood my comment about Vampiric Touch. You cannot have infinite mana and a massive always-on Vampiric Embrace healing the party. In Classic, Vampiric Embrace has 100% uptime.
The only reasonable solution is to make Vampiric Embrace give the Priest mana back instead healing the party. Otherwise the best healer will be Shadow.
I could see where Vampiric Embrace still heals but at a reduced amount, to more closely line up with Chrono Mage “healing while damage” with Arcane Blast.
Either way, Shadow getting infinite mana supply equals a healer with infinite mana, and is probably not a good result.
Unrelated to Priest, the Druid Stormrage power is a bit overwhelming and fundamentally changes Druid leveling from a methodical struggle to spamming Wrath for virtually all specs.
I understand you worry in future phases but this is for phase 1, I’m assuming as phases progress further Runes would be added to most likely replace Phase 1 runes to be a better/competitive choice.
For example yeah in phase 2 with the rune I mentioned, makes Shadow a great off healer with Vampiric Embrace, but we already know Blizzard is going to tune NPCs and content to counter the power creep so the world continues to be even more “dangerous” is that 20% off healing for VE even going to be considerate in phase 2? Simply because we have more mana?.
But yes, in later phases 30% conversion to all party members (Improved VE) on a 100% baseline and infinite mana would be insane. In spread cleave, you can apply to multiple targets too. Every other Priest would be left behind.
Letting Shadow Healing go nuts is fine overall. It reinforces that Priests are THE healer of choice, regardless of spec. It also does a great job “flipping the script” that Discovery teases.
That said, leaving out a lot of mana recovery in P1 also seems fine. A lot of early damage comes from wands so you could be going Discipline for damage at first, wrapping around the class. Only Druid is going to get free damage and healing, and that’s a Druid problem–if it seems to be the dealbreaker, play Druid then for this phase and keep Shadow ready as an alternate.
We can’t stop a mathematical best, and we shouldn’t ask to be it because that’s an equal disservice to other classes. If anything, thats what flattened class design in Retail and will make SoD veer too far off the Classic design, where you rely on others to fill gaps in your kit.
My issue is exactly that, Runes so far have completely changes non viable specs to be playable from the start, essentially creating a whole new leveling experience and game play that’s not available in classic.
Druids essentially would level through Feral, it’s by far the smoothest experience but now can experience Classic as Balance and Resto, something people would call you crazy to do and non viable early on.
Same goes for Shaman, Elemental and Resto both through runes can level up from the get go rather then Enhance.
That’s my issue, you’ve put it perfectly, nothing is going to change, you’ll play literally the exact same just with a new button to press. It’s going to be lvl as disc/holy then respec at 40 for Shadow Form, just like in Classic as that’s the most viable way.
I’m not asking for Shadow to be a complete power house, healing and killing machine, I’m asking simply for a way that changes the spec to be viable from the get go rather then the same old way.
Nearly ever class has gotten new ways to experience the early game, yet priests are literally going to be the exact same, just Wand.
Sentiment around the entire community, especially on video, has been Priest is getting the short with what was revealed a month ago. Either the internal group at Blizzard didn’t agree on a vision for it (e.g., Retail Monk) or there’s a plan and it’s meant to be one of those hat-tip surprises.
I used to believe that “no mana recovery for Shadow equals dead on arrival.” But in playing my hardcore Priest more and more, I no longer believe that. The friction is still there and Priest isn’t (that we know of) getting the white glove treatment like Retribution, and that seems okay. Even Time Mage is going to play a mana management mini game.
Reading a lot of the comments here, there are some cool suggestions. My favorite is giving Mind Blast a proc of Spirit Tap, but that’s also because it would play into a melee unarmed Spirit variant I’ve been developing on my own (via mechanisms of psychokinesis and biofeedback). And Blizzard has all this info available to them too. Based on what’s been going on, I think they’ll see and react to some of it… we just gotta stay tuned.