Shadow Crash sucks

Classes Priest
26

Mind Sear was and has been a great spell for AOE.

However, several issues have come alongside Mind Sear over the years.

Base Spell

  • As a channeled spell, it reduces mobility.
  • Base damage needs to be relevant enough for AOE but not more powerful than Mind Flay else you just default to Mind Sear and once again have another odd redundancy conflict between 2 similar spells.

Legion influence

Legion ushered in the beginning downfall of Mind Sear imo.

  • Legion brought a more fast pace gogogo mentality into the game with Mythic Keystones which highlights the reduced mobility even further on top of the new changes forced onto Shadow with the whole Voidform mechanic making any damage you do absolutely pitiful unless your in Voidform and if you have been in voidform for a bit.
  • While in Voidform, with the haste stacking affecting GCD’s and the ever need and hunger to generate as much Insanity as possible and as fast as possible, I don’t recall Mind Sear being a good spell to spend time on using as that would tank your insanity generation and toss you out of Voidform.

Shadowlands influence

Shadowlands made Mind Sear a pain to work with because of the entire Searing Nightmare talent mechanic where you only has access to it during Mind Sear’s “channeled” state.

Dragonflight influence

The redesign of Mind Sear becoming a much faster casted spell that channeled its full duration very quickly allowed for less downtime when it comes to mobility. But the added insanity cost to Mind Sear now being a resource consumer and if not used at proper amounts of insanity resulted in almost a waste of a GCD because it would do none to very little damage.

I think both personally and what the devs probably thought was that it was too much to deal with / juggle on top of all the other aspects of both Shadow’s toolkit and the general Priest utility.

Conclusion

Mind Sear is a good spell for Shadow to have access to. But I think all the tweaks and tinkering throughout the years on top of the radical changes to Shadow over the last decade have at least for the time being, put Mind Sear on the backburner and just leave out of Shadows toolkit completely because I think they either didn’t know what to do with it or didn’t have time or the drive to make it work.

Solution

I think Mind Sear should first and foremost be added back into Shadows tree and be placed as a choice node with Psychic Link.

So how can Mind Sear become a fun button to press?

  • Redesign Malediction to make ALL your channeled damage spells channel the damage 33% faster similar to WoD Leveling Perk: Mind Flay
    • Mind Flay
    • Mind Sear
    • Void Torrent
    • Idol of C’Thun Tentacle spawned when it casts both Mind Flay and Mind Sear

WoD Shadow Leveling Perk…
Mind Flay: Your Mind Flay deals damage 33.3333% faster.

  • Add new talent choice to Void Torrent
    • Void Ray (New / Choice with Void Torrent)
      Mind Flay deals 10% increased damage for each of your damage over time spells on the target.
      • Added to ensure Mind Flay and Mind Sear damage wont compete on single target. Void Ray Mind Flay will be the primary talent that enhances Mind Flay damage instead of Mind Flay and Mind Sear damage.
  • Add choice Node with the redesigned Malediction to make your Channeled damage spells actually channel in less time similar to 10.0 version of Mind Sear.
    • Make it a percentage based proc chance when you consume insanity from casting Devouring Plague. Similar to Surge of insanity in it procs from Devouring Plague but similar to Mind Devourer where its just a proc chance and NOT a charge accumulation based on a criteria amount of Devouring Plagues used.
  • Make it channel on the move?
    • Make it proc based from either Surge of Insanity or with my redesign idea of Idol of Y’Shaarj where each of your Mind Spells gets enhanced in a specific way while your Mindbender is out.
      • Idol of Y’Shaarj (Redesign)
        • Mind Flay becomes casted while moving.
        • Mind Blast Grants 1 addtional charge.
        • Mind Spike Cast time is reduced by 30-50%.
        • Mind Sear Spawns a shadowy Apparition each time it deals damage to a target afflicted with your Shadow Word: Pain.
        • Mindbender attacks 20% faster and applies a Shadow Vulnerability to the target lasting 15 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.
          • Shadow Vulnerability causes the target to take an additional 1% damage from your shadow spells. Upon reaching 10 stacks, your [non-boss] target becomes Horrified for 3 sec.
        • Mindgames Duration is increased by 1 second each time the target takes damage from your Mind Spells up to a maximum of 10 seconds.
        • Mind Control becomes instant cast.

tl:dr results…

  • Mind Sear can be channeled on the move (Maybe).
  • Mind Sear can be channeled in less time.
  • Mind Sear damage delt is faster.
  • Mind Sear can spawn Shadowy Apparitions.
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