That’s why I said default. Mind Spike should be, at best, equal in power to Mind Flay and come at zero cost to the spec. It should never be more powerful as it has been in Dragonflight. I recognize there are people that don’t like Mind Flay (though I don’t know why someone would pick up a class if they don’t like the primary ability that class has had since 2004), and am happy for Mind Spike to continue existing as long as I don’t have a reason to use it.
The current implementation of Mind Spike (and Dark Ascension) is bad for the spec, but that doesn’t mean Blizzard can’t fix it as I laid out before. Unfortunately, it’s looking increasingly likely they’re just going to triple down on Mind Spike being a strictly better ability.
Because once you taste greatness you can’t go back. I would love if some form of the WoD CoP playstyle came back. Talent trees are meant to let people play differently. Let’s not forget that.
Yeah no you can surely see you worded that originally pretty restrictively. But after your clarification yeah sure, they should do something to equalize the two “choices” (in your world mind spike would be the only choice I get it). Idk what they could realistically do. But I personally would love some easily distinguishable split in the tree for people that prefer more periodic damage (mind flay build), and people that want more bursty direct damage (mind spike build).
Can’t forget that yes, we’d need things to all feel viable no matter the choices made. That’s a balance and tuning issue it seems.
I think Balance Druid does a slightly good job at this exact thing actually. Every single build in Balance might not be viable, but at least they gave split choices with some periodic effects and burst effect talents.
This is all they need to do to fix the problem and make the abilities a true choice. Dark Ascension is a far stickier problem because no class has ever successfully had two different cooldowns as choices and had them be equally viable, but Mind Spike is easy peasy and requires zero change in Blizzard’s design philosophy.
Definitely would absolutely prefer to have shadowfrost damage on both spells. Going even more mono-shadow school would suck in PvP.
I really hate the fact Dark Ascension and Void Eruption have cast times on them. I can’t think of one other class cooldown that does this. It’s so inconsistent and wonky. Relegating Void Origins to a PvP talent in the first place for instant cast of these effects felt so obligatory and just outright weird… then it just got removed completely for some reason.
I’d also randomly love to see Dispersion get a talent somewhere that’s basically a rip-off of the talent “Ice Cold” that Mages get (in the class tree). I’m not sure how powerful it would be for Spriest to get an effect like this, but Dispersion is feeling more and more like a PvP talent as the years go on ironically. Stopping DPS just to survive feels really stinky (makes me feel bad for all the Druid players that need to go Bear Form just to survive).
—Another random thought—
People complain about Shadow Priest movement all the time which is valid. A proposed addition to the movement arsenal has been Door of Shadows. While yes, for Shadow Priests this sounds amazing, but for Discipline and Holy, this ability seems pretty thematically inconsistent. Maybe they could reskin the ability to be more “holy-like”, then add a cosmetic glyph for it to change it back to the “shadow-like” animation if you want?
I’d really just love to see a new ability that’s similar to Heroic Leap, except instead of leaping and slamming into the ground like a superhero, Priests would grow angel wings and “fly” in an arc to the targeted location with a ground reticle. Kind of like Vault of Heavens but I’d prefer to keep the utility of pulling teammates with Leap of Faith as its own thing, and also not be required to target an ally to use a movement ability. Could literally just call this separate new ability Vault of Heavens too.
Again, I’m not sure how adding new stuff like this might make a class too broken or whatever. Just stuff I’d love to see. It seems like Blizz doesn’t want to prune movement from any other class, so might as well bring movement-weak classes in line with everyone else at least slightly. They’re doing this with Death Knights in The War Within a bit more.
Shadow has historically always been the middle ground between the two styles you mention; some single target nukes with a few consistent periodic damage effects. If people want to heavily lean into one or the other playstyles, they can swap to mage or lock. I think when blizz attempts to appease everyone by adding choice node after choice node, it ultimately leads to no one being happy. And at the end of the day, whether any of us like it or not, one build comes out on top and most players flock to it. Coming up with a cohesive and well thought out spec is more beneficial to the class.
I think the playstyle we currently have (the most viable one anyway) is already pretty DoT light, and I love this way of Shadow Priest personally. I was saying Mind Flay people should be given more viable periodic effect talents to even things out and get back their prized “original Shadow Priest” feel again.
Spec puritans and gatekeeping choice is never the answer sorry.
With how our current mastery works in how you deal significantly less damage to targets without your dots on them, that makes the idea of Mind Spike doing burst damage on a target swap or to pick off weak targets a struggle because it’s just not as powerful as it could be… as it has been in the past.
If you want a PvE example, look at Firelands Raid in Cataclysm. Lots of good examples to showcase the value of Mind Spike where your dots just don’t do enough damage fast enough when you need a lot of target swaps with big burst damage.
Regarding waiting for a cooldown to mop up a lot of little adds only just highlights why we should have Mind Sear back as it’s such a horrible feeling to have to wait or manually cast your dots on these targets when you can’t really finish them off with a Mind Flay or Mind Spike itself to finish them off fast enough.
At this stage in the modern game, there should be no excuse for a DPS class to be weak against a lot of little non threatening adds and it’s especially annoying because that was exactly the major weakness of Shadow back in Vanilla since we had no AOE and we had to spec into getting Holy Nova in Holy Tree or use oil of Immolation potion. The later I did to get my Anathema Eye of divinity piece back in the day.
If all other classes are allowed to shore up their weaknesses then I see no issue to allowing Shadow and Priest in general to be given the tools to shore up our weaknesses as well, not double down on them.
The recent priest beta thread has people mentioning void torrent being centralized (similar to wake of ashes), dark ascension being removed (as well as spike), and shoring up our utility nodes in the spec tree. Can’t say I agree more.
The only reason I mention it here is to hopefully get more traction within the community to make a change. I know some people (maybe more, or even the majority, I don’t know) like dark ascension and mind spike. I think the aforementioned mind flay to spike morph during ascension accomplishes both goals. They really need to just do a once over on the spec tree. The proposed changes by the community are not that outlandish. We’re not talking about a full scale rework here.
1- this should have been done with the talent rework, good class designers have removed all utility from the class tree, it doesnt belong there
2- yes but id go further and make it cost insanity instead of a cd, make it learned baseline and add a passive baseline that sets insanity to 50 out of combat. Its our sole true aoe ability and the spec doesnt function without it.
3- this is a “you think you do but you dont” suggestion, you would probably end up with every talent in the center of the tree at that point, but id be happy for more distinct builds and some skill lines being optional
4- i can agree with this, it has great visual identity and is extremely thematic foe spriests
5- this is actually a fantastic idea, da has zero gameplay changes and is only liked for its visuals and because people hate void eruption, i personally strongly dislike mind spike currently it doesnt do anything for the spec. Personally id rather both da and void eruption deleted in favour of mind bender and its supporting talents as they had fun gameplay elements but thats just me.
6 sure why not?
7 i agree, do what hunter did with its capstones, pick one and make it actually part of the spec rather than a one off talent. Mind games and halo were just button bloat due to zero gameplay support in the rest of the spec.
Give divine star to holy in their tree, maybe add a talent to passively proc a divine star in shadow idk.
8 no dont remove angelic feather, its a cool support ability, just give us door of shadows for macro mobility, it fits the spec like a glove and wont risk turning us into a blinking mage. With its cast time its a slow dash.
Also bring back spectral guise that ability had so much flavor. I dont care how its done i miss that skill so much.