Reduce psychic link and increase dots?

Classes Priest
1

Often times in m+, there’s no large mob, but rather 1 or 2 beefy dudes before a boss. Psychic link isn’t really doing much. As well as on the boss itself

On a raid boss, if there’s no adds, you’re getting zero benefit from psychic link

In 3v3, but especially shuffle, as an sp it’s not uncommon to have to wait 10 seconds (or however long it takes for all the mini cc to go out) to start getting a little damage out, before enemy kicks are up again. What is psychic link really providing in this very common scenario?

Psychic link is great against other caster teams, large m+ pulls, and some bg fights, but there’s still a large chunk of our total gameplay that’s not getting a ton of benefit from psychic link. Despite this, PL is too valuable to not take. It’s pretty much locked in as a talent.

The solution: decrease PL value, increase dot value? Thoughts? I’m sure there’s something I’m missing in this thought process.

2

The problem with moving damage into dots is dots require time to tick. Psychic Link isn’t time restricted. just pewpew as much as you can and cleave damage.

Basically, moving damage to dots would mean our targets need to live the full dot duration to get the same damage we get via psychic link now. It would not be great for mythic+

On long lived targets yes it would probably be an overall benefit, but outside of that it wouldn’t. It would also decrease our aoe burst because more of the damage would be locked behind dot timers rather than generated via cleave.

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3

I would prefer Psychic Link grant more damage bonus from fewer spells. Like between 50-80% from these spells…

  • Mind Blast
  • Mind Flay
  • Mind Spike

This would make Psychic Link more meaningful / Impactful and as much as it would be upsetting to loose out on Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Death and Void Torrent not spreading damage, I think it would definitely be more thematic.

Then maybe a passive bonus of your Mind Spells deal 10% more damage to target added to Psychic Link because Psychic/Mind? Seems pretty related. This keeps thematic and buffs damage to a single target instead of granting nothing.

So obviously this would reduce our overall ability to deal consistent AOE damage if we had less spells that work with Psychic Link. That would then mean we need better AOE damage tools like…

  • Mastery Change so we can AOE with large target hitting spells like Halo or Mind Sear (If it returns) without damage being suppressed because you were not able to triple or even double dot all targets.
  • Mind Sear
  • Halo
  • Baneling Spirits (Shadowy Apparitions that deal spread damage to targets near enemy upon hit, should become Idol of Yogg-Saron)

I just know that Mages get Ice Lance that passively hits an additional target for 80% of the damage, but that target doesn’t need dots on it to activate that cleave. So I think having a higher damage percentage shared to other targets but lower the spells that share that damage would be both more meaningful/impactful and thematic if we are strictly only using Mind Spells. And with that said, should also affect both Mindgames and maybe also make your Shadowfiend/Mindbender also cleave it’s attacks through your Psychic Link targets and remove Inescapable Torment or simply be in addition to.

Not fully committed to these ideas, but would be interesting to see how it plays out. Could very well just make things worse though lol.

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4

I’m a big fan of the exploding spirits idea. Spirits that hit the primary target should detonate for aoe damage to decouple the aoe from the single target. It would be a step in the right direction of fixing the horrible damage tuning of our single target spells. I want Mind Blast to feel like it’s melting faces again.

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5

I pretty much stopped tracking how much damage Mind Blast does relative to the amount of health a target has beginning in Wrath/Cata and completely ignoring it after that.

But in classic, I can distinctly recall my Mind Blasts hitting for around 1000 and critical strikes hitting around 1500. This is with my warlord gear.

My health was just a bit north of 5200 and tanks when really geared up can hit close to 10k.

So I think it’s fair to say that Mind Blast was dealing 1/5 of the average players health.

Obviously we had a lot less list of spells doing damage and things have changed a lot over time.

So not sure how much players health percentage Mind Blast should be able to do but I think a good starting point would be 10%?

But that would be a really buffed up version of Mind Blast that only happens with your cooldowns and other synergies would align.

So by default, maybe around 5% of a targets health?

Not sure what is really a good amount to make it feel impactful but remaining within reason in terms of balance.

But this also leads into the question of which part of our damage should be the most pronounced? Periodic or Non-Periodic?

This is another example why I wish we had talents that can lean and shift more power over to one or the other side to cater to whatever situation you want be it short bursty fights or long drawn out fights?

This is why I believe having the central pivot/fulcrum to establish such a seesaw of power shifting should relay on your cooldown choice where the choice node would dictate your preferred damage profile route and why Voidform is just not it since it’s trying to do both Periodic damage with Devouring Plague and Non-Periodic damage with Void Eruption and Void Bolt.

If we free Voidform from this trying to play both sides aspect, we can actually give it a clear purpose that can then pave the road to cater to those that miss our dots doing actual meaningful damage and those that miss our casted spells doing actual meaningful damage.

Increasing one keeps the other low to preserve balance.

Too bad not enough people see these internal conflicts that Voidform cooldown presents lol. Because if Voidform increased only 1 side of its damage profile, then it calls into question the existence of the other side of its damage and since it’s doing both currently, we will never be able to detach our damage and make meaningful because we simply have too many sources of it and as such our damage is forced to be be spread out and thinned across all our damage sources.

But if we enhance one side or the other with enough talent options, then we can have the autonomy to make a portion of our damage profile be scary while the other is just passive and tickles or we can reverse that and make the other portion of our damage scary etc.

Doing this will make priests unpredictable in PvP to an extent as it will take you a moment to understand what is more scary facing every Shadow Priest as they could be different each and every time.

6

We didn’t used to need 1 enhanced at the cost of the other. When your mind blast was hitting for 20% your Vampiric touch was hitting for at least 30% over it’s duration.

7

Correct, however we also had a lot less sources of damage.

So we either need to remove extra sources of damage or things will need to be revised accordingly where every aspect of a damage source we have had some level of meaning and purpose.

Or the route I think is best, reduce the route of 1/2 of our damage sources impact and increase the other 1/2 and make that the center focus of the spec that can be switched around as the player desires.

I mean sure you could take a cooldown that enhances let’s say our Periodic damage and then just pick all your following talents to lean the Non-Periodic damage route and maybe that can find some play and purpose? Can’t say for sure unless we got something to test.

8

If we are talking pvp i dont think you would find much benefit in moving damage from link into dots, because dots are dispellable and can be countered by every healer in the game. Even worse when its a healer with disease dispel as they can take off DP. However link doesn’t help too much in these scenarios either, so I’d like to see link maybe reworked into something else that allows for cleave ideally.

If not reworked then maybe it can be on a choice node with something that allows for Mind blast or mind flay (and insanity) to cleave to x target amount and also comes with a small buff to VT/SWP.