I like that Blizzard took a risk with shadow priest with the insanity mechanic and risk/reward playstyle with Surrender to Madness, however suiciding for a temporary steroid buff is a little dull. IMO keep the corrupted gear idea for shadow priest going into the next expasion.
- Rework Insanity to be a bar you balance by either building insanity or removing it.
- Higher insanity comes with bonuses and risks, like corrupted gear
- Make a cooldown that plunges you deep into high insanity with some resist toward the negative side effects.
- Enter Void Form whenever at high insanity.
From here you can extrapolate on this mechanic with a slew of different beneficial/negative procs/effects but not too horribly RNG or frustrating.
Negative Effects:
- Heal absorbs/vulnerability instead of self nukes (Thing)
- Thing mechanic that chases you (slow walk) forcing more movement
- Delusions making use of phasing mechanics that blinds you to your allies and enemies not in combat, making you tunnel vision.
- Sitting at max insanity for 3-5 seconds makes you lose control, gain massive haste and attack (in combat targets within range) at random with only a handful of select spells (Mind Flay, Mind Blast, etc), but this also âccâsâ you.
Positive Effects:
- Tentacle proc chance that scales with insanity
- Void Form
- Enter any other fun/useful/consistent boons
4 Likes
Can I start insane?
Aside from the effects, doesnât this âbar balancingâ sound a lit like the old druid eclipse meter? Didnât we all sufficiently agree this was a less-than-fun design?
1 Like
So, I donât like the Balance bar system proposal. That system is not as fun in practice as it sounds like it could be in theory - Ellipsis and I explored this pretty thoroughly awhile back.
My guess, though slightly off topic, is that the resource pools for balance needed to be MUCH larger than they were, and more dynamically adjustable, with more distinguishing aspects to each extreme (both positive and negative). Something closer to Holyâs Chakra model, but with effort put into it (which Holy didnât get).
What I do like, is the idea of making Void Tendril / Twisted Appendages into a mastery proc - that would be MUCH more interesting than the current âbad versatilityâ mastery we have.
It would also be a single target focused mastery, which would mean itâs configurable to be better than haste/crit for single target fights (where for the last 2 expansions its been worse for all fights).
2 Likes
Yeah I did think of it being similar to balanceâs bar, but that mechanic was lame because it was just a back and forth casting of 2 sets of spells that basically do the same thing. There was no decisions being made, no risks, etc.
What I was thinking here was more in line with Bright Wizard from Warhammer Online, they build up more and more heat for bigger crits but also start killing themselves.
So the decisions for managing the bar has more to do with risk/reward and how ballsy you feel as opposed to just bouncing back and forth on the bar to cast a different colored spell.
2 Likes
Ah I see!
Sorry it seemed you were describing something where you always wanted to fill your bar to enter Voidform whenever you werenât in it, but had additional negative effects while in it: which is why it sounded like Balance to me. Two phases you wanted to cycle through.
Instead, what I think you are describing is called a âHeatâ mechanic, itâs when your spells accumulate a negative resource, and if you exceed the limit something different happens (both negative and positive).
I actually proposed Insanity be a heat mechanic during the Legion alpha, and again during the BFA alpha. I still stand behind that general idea. If you are interested, hereâs my old pitch:
mmo-champion com/threads/2338863-Shadow-Proposed-Revamp-for-Battle-for-Azeroth
Add a period after âmmo-championâ, before âcomâ,to fix the link - since they donât allow links here.
2 Likes
I would 100% main my Shadowpriest again if this were how they worked.
2 Likes
You can encapsule full link with backticks. It wonât link, but makes it easier for copy-paste.
mmo-champion.com/threads/2338863-Shadow-Proposed-Revamp-for-Battle-for-Azeroth
Edit: I read the suggestion and had a hard time understanding it. When I went thru the comments, I got the underlying idea but I can really identify with the requests for less high-paced mashing⌠Getting a RSI just because your favorite pastime had a mechanical change is no bueno.
1 Like
I absolutely love the idea of corruption effect as the trade off for staying in void too long. Like crazy genius idea and it adds so much fantasy flavor.
1 Like
Just wanted to comment and say bright wizard is really fun
2 Likes
This is a wonderful idea that Blizz should absolutely consider. High insanity should be a bad thing⌠Like yes you are melting enemies faces but there are some pretty severe risks as well. Love the concept!
I love the idea of corruption gear effects replacing the dying part of surrender to madness, however I strongly oppose baking negative effects into the core spec.
The way risk/reward system works is through the individualâs choice to risk for the rewards. This is were the mental games and excitement lays. If you remove the individuals ability to choose whether to risk it for the reward then it is not a risk/reward system anymore it turns into beating the odds system.
you have a set destination that you need to reach and as you progress to it the odds get stacked against you. in this model it would be that you are generating insanity as a core part of your spec mechanic however by doing that you will get negative effects stacked against you.
this is why having negative debuffs should be locked behind a cd because the whole excitement behind it is whether you should take the choice to risk it or not.
my suggestion is something similar to what Yvaelle had proposed.
A heat/build up/tier type of mechanic. There will be a fixed drain rate that would increase slightly with each tier (say 3insanity drain per sec + 1insanity per tier). there will be 5 tiers in total that break down into:
tier 1: insanity between 1-20 (3insanity drain per sec)
tier 2: insanity between 20-40 (4insanity drain per sec)
tier 3: insanity between 40-60 (5insanity drain per sec)
tier 4: insanity between 60-80 (6insanity drain per sec)
tier 5: insanity between 80-100 (7insanity drain per sec)
each tier will give you %3 haste and damage buff to a total of %15 haste and damage buff.
think of it as you start in voidform rather then building up to enter voidform.
Voidform becomes a 1min cd for 15sec that will lock the drain in the tier you are in when you caste it but allows you to go into the next tier. so if you are in tier 3 and you cast voidform your insanity will not drain below 40 but you can generate more insanity to get into tier 4 and 5.
surrender to madness if chosen would modify Voidform( maybe add more haste or crit or another additional buff that has to match the risk factor) and take its place implementing your idea of risk/reward using the corruption gear negative effect.
1 Like
But my idea is 100% about constantly making that choice, sitting at 100% insanity shouldnât be the goal 100% of the time nor should it be normal/easy. You should have just as many ways to dump Insanity as gain it to have full control over it. I also wouldnât want it to be balanced around sitting at full Insanity all of the time in order to compete with everyone else, then Spriest just has to deal with a bunch of annoying side effects that no one else does. Ideally having to deal with the negative side effects from insanity should indirectly hinder the huge dps gained from it.
For example, having to kite/stutter step from being chased, failing to immediately swap to a new enemy from the tunnel vision. The loss of all control of your character to randomly blitz out damage has risk of dying but could also be a window for a free dps boost when paying attention âOk all adds are down for the next several seconds and itâs just the boss by itself and I know theres not gonna be a random boss aoe, time to cap insanity and lose control so my charâs berserk focuses entirely on the boss.â Then afterwards dump insanity because the next dangerous boss phase is happening.
Alternatively hovering partly insane should be easy to deal with and still be relatively competitive with other DPS still if you want to sit there.