Let me put it this way.
If you have both mind spike and mind flay. Neither has a cooldown, both interact with surge of insanity as they do now.
In what situations is mind flay better for damage, what rotational conditions have to be met?
In what situations is mind spike better, what rotational conditions have to be met?
Or is one of them just the better button to press?
I’m using the 2 set of increased Shadowy insight procs and 2 set of higher uptime on Shadow Word: Death and as such, I deal way more damage using both those buttons as they grant me more mobility and more Insanity to pump out more Devouring Plagues.
So between all those, I find myself when I’m casting Mind Spike to be low priority since it roots me and opens me up to interrupt and knock back effects.
I really only use Mind Spike during Dark Ascension. After that it’s rare with all my procs and resets.
I gotta be honest you still never have mind spike procs time out if you’re playing well.
You want them to kick you, so you can spam mind spike for mind trauma stacks, if you get 3 mind trauma stacks on all 3 arena targets its gg.
In this situation you can even force them to kick void torrent which i do all the time, especially when i have 2 surge procs ready to go. ( which is why i wish void torrent cast time scaled with haste )
As a caster you want them to get their kicks out the way so you can pump.
And always toss a flash heal on yourself when you get kicked for the 10% dmg reduction and 150k heal.
The content I’m playing is both quick and highly mobile.
Standing still to cast often leads to knock backs and interrupts and silenced etc.
Casting Mind Spike or Mind Spike insanity is both a liability when I can keep casting instant casts with getting resets on them constantly.
But regardless. This is a horrible excuse for terrible gameplay mechanics and you know it.
They can either fix the buff fading and thus interrupting issue or remove Surge of Insanity or change how it works for Mind Spike with instant cast.
Please focus on game design, not how one plays.
That’s more PvP leaning content.
I’m not partaking in PvP with the current game atm.
I’m simply talking about normal gameplay without another player influence on you and your reaction to it.
I’m talking about simply game design that exists in any environment, not specifically in PvP environment.
They should do this. I’ll make a note to include it in the bug list on GitHub, as well as on my spec thoughts going into TWW post on wowhead when the time comes for writing those.
The thing is season 2 shadow tree should to come back.
Mind sear was in a great spot, right in the spec fantasy - with mind flay; Instant mind spike, even when I personally hate it, was better than now.
We got the all the nerfs just because of PvP issue (no silence in the class tree, no shining force, remove of instant casts) and 2min mass dispel because poor dungeon design.
Which is part of the reason behind my idea of changing flay to spike during Dark Ascension.
This is kinda the premise of making spike hit hard during Dark Ascension. It’s a talent that competes with Void Eruption, an ability that gives you an instant cast damage button, dot extension, and max mastery. I think increasing the damage of spike during ascension could make it compete well with eruption and also give it some identity. It’s bad enough that ascension has no effect on activation. It’s similar to the old Ascendance for resto shamans…the button never did anything on button press so was changed to have a burst heal so it felt impactful. Dark Ascension should get the same treatment.
As far as the comments about Mind Spike being great as a filler when kicked…we also had Shadowy Insight nerfed into the ground due to too many instant cast procs of spike. Insight could be un-nerfed to make up for less access to spike. You could even increase the proc chance of Deathspeaker too, depending.
And seriously, Void Torrent in the middle of the tree. So many other classes had this same problem with buttons that felt core to the spec and were great to press being so far off the beaten path. Put it in the center because its a cool button that I love to press.
I have a slight difference of opinion with the entire Mind Flay becoming Mind Spike during Dark Ascension for several reasons.
First off, I trained my muscle memory to hit my filler button for years and years and knowing it will be my Mind Flay which is a single target channel spell. I use same keybind for my channels on other classes like warlock. So all the sudden it just becomes a different type of ability only “sometimes” is very jarring to me and I very much dislike that type of gameplay. It is the same reason I HATE Voidform as I hate that the button for Void Bolt is ONLY Void Bolt “sometimes” and the other times is a AOE/Cooldown button that I should NOT hit often sometimes and then I should hit often the other sometimes.
Second, I want to be able to use a burst spell that is quick and gets the job done without applying dots on target for very quick target swaps where the target wont live for more then lets say 10 seconds. With Mind Spike being tied to your cooldown, you wont be able to tap into its power as needed and as such you feel powerless outside of cooldowns which is the same feeling you have now when mass AOE needs to happen and Shadow Crash is limited to 8 targets + whatever you decide to manually dot up leaving the rest as just targets that your dealing ZERO damage too most likely.
I only use Void Torrent because it “can” be a great button for quick burst.
But I very much HATE Void Torrent. So I would prefer it being a choice that is NOT central to the entire spec.
Why do I hate it?
It is because its a giant red flag screaming KICK ME as well as VERY easy to mess it up because you got stunned or knocked back or any type of CC right when you used it and BAM its on cooldown with ZERO damage done.
As again, I rather have Mind Spike be the choice spell that fills the “Burst” window that allows you to use it as you need it and if you get knocked back or whatever then you can just use it again when you get the window. This is not the case with Void Torrent.
I personally like Deathspeaker where its at now. It feel good pressing it. Having said that, I think with Dark Ascension and its state of being seen as “bland”, I would much prefer tying Shadow Word: Death to becoming better during Dark Ascension.
Here are a few ideas of what to include into Dark Ascension…
100%
I hate mind flay, and I very much worry that Blizz will listen to people who say to remove spike. I dislike channeling my filler very much. I’d much rather that they make it a choice node like they are doing with Shadowcrash/Voidcrash. Just because I don’t like Flay, I wouldn’t want to see it removed from the people who like it. Just make it a choice node so both kinds of players can win.
This is fine IF:
They baseline Devouring Plague and move the Mind Flay/Mind Spike choice node to Devouring Plague’s current location.
They change Mind Flay to shadowfrost school OR change Mind Spike to shadow school.
They set the dps of each ability to be equal to the other and reduce Mind Flay: Insanity to 1gcd channel time.
Assuming they continue to insist Dark Ascension is good for the spec, they change Dark Ascension so that it either benefits both or neither ability.
Mind Melt also counts Mind Flay ticks.
Basically, they just need to remove all of Mind Spike’s privilege and force the choice node at the top of the tree by replacing another mandatory point so that the top of the tree isn’t even more insanely restricted with what would otherwise be baseline or class tree abilities. Mind Spike, as it is, is an unacceptable inclusion in the tree that only creates problems and solves none.
Yep. And that’s what Blizz has been saying. That they want to give the players choice.
I don’t mind channeling Void Torrent because it actually does big chunky DPS, and we can move while casting it in TWW which is going to feel awesome, but I DO NOT want Mind Flay back to have to contend with 2 channels again.
And it’s a channel set to a cooldown, rather than filler that is used when available. It’s essentially a scheduled period of time that I will be channeling, not filling in when I have nothing better to do.
Agree that its current incarnation is problematic.
But the solution is NOT to simply make it a choice with Mind Flay or Remove it outright. I mean sure, they can solve some issues… but more will crop up and I would argue those issues would be far greater than what we are experiencing now.
This is my biggest issue with Void Torrent.
Void Torrent was added in Legion which means that we had 2 single target channel spells to juggle around and as such they compete for the same button keybind imo.
With Mind Spike, its a functionally mechanically different button an a such I see a different keybind other than my Mind Flay Keybind.
What SHOULD happen is Void Torrent becomes a choice with more passive damage enhancing Mind Flay talent or simply “Channeling” damage is increased. So that you pick if you want a more bursty channeling cooldown or a more passive damage increase to your channeling spells.
The passive could either just affect Mind Flay or it can also affect Mind Sear (upon when/if it returns) and your Tentacles channeling Mind Flay and Mind Sear from Idol of C’Thun.
How does that solve not wanting to channel a filler?
Fixed. I think most agree this is a very sensible way to address the overlap of Mind Flay and Mind Spike.
Even better!
If this was the case, Shadow would have no real active button in their rotation. Beyond activating your major cooldown, the entire rotation would be passive and boring.
I also often see people mentioning that if we didn’t have spike, how would we do damage when kicked? I’m assuming they are talking about pvp…which could easily be solved by including more spell schools (or mixed spell schools) to the class. I see this point and agree though. It’s one of the main reasons I love flash heal instead of shadowmend.
Another point I often see is, “I use spike to damage low hp mobs that won’t survive long enough for dots.” I don’t think I’ve ever spiked low hp/minion mobs… they can easily be killed by your next shadow crash or halo/divine star. This is a non-issue in my opinion because those mobs will never kill you.
My opinions are not obviously going to be agreed upon by everyone in the community, but I think most, if not all of us, could agree the spec tree could use another once over. Tons of two point nodes that should be one, shadow crash being a single node (even if they have to reduce the damage), etc. Just my opinion though.
Having a channeled filler is the most enduring aspect of shadow priest as a spec. Playing shadow and saying you don’t like Mind Flay is like playing fire mage and saying you don’t like Fireball.
Mind Flay is, and always should be, the default filler for shadow. The best case scenario for Mind Spike should be that it gets nerfed to match Mind Flay and made a mandatory choice node. Mind Spike was almost always strictly better than Mind Flay during Dragonflight and did nothing but prove the accuracy of the warnings Blizzard ignored that Mind Spike and Dark Ascension being added for “player choice” would do nothing but functionally remove the inferior option from the game for months or years at a time.
And that’s your opinion. You don’t speak for me. I prefer Mind Spike and they let us have it as my filler spell for this expansion 
. Loving it!