I was disappointed that it wasn’t VT and I worry that Mind Flay (one of our most iconic spells) will be replaced and made irrelevant, turning our rotation into Mind Spike spam.
On the other hand, Shadow Priests may become insanely bursty spec with a 90% Crit chance on MB as well as a roughly 90% increase to MB damage (Shadow form + darkness + shadow weaving + Twisted Faith). What are your thoughts?
they are unkillable pvp gods now
Happy it isn’t the version that stripped your dots.
Unlike conflag for warlocks /cry
I’m sure glad I did not roll a Shadow Priest for SoD. I hated when they brought Mind Spike back to retail and I hate it even more that they are sticking into SoD.
If Mind Spike doesn’t completely replace Mind Flay then I think the rotation will look like
Apply all your DoTs or reapply if needed
Mind Spike x 3
Mind Blast
SW:D - use whenever possible
Mind Spike x3
Mind Flay until Mind Blast is off CD
Mind Blast
Repeat
Of course, if MS replaces MF would just be
Apply DoTs or reapply if needed
MS x3
MB
SW:D - use whenever possible
MS until MB is off CD
It is hard to tell which one will happen because we don’t know how much MS will cost or what its spell coefficient will be but base damage-wise it will be doing more than Mind Flay unless you take Twisted Faith.
I’ve been thinking about this since the announcement last night.
4 Thoughts first:
I’m going to assume It is damage shown at 25, low mana Cost (1-6% Base Mana), no CD, 1.5 Second Cast.
With those assumptions, I think Mind Spike would completely replace Mind Flay in PvE rotation and situationally replace Mind Flay in PvP. The slow in PvP is great. The slow in PvE is not never, but rarely useful.
IF it is in fact low mana cast, I think it would indirectly help Mana Issues in that Mind Flay is our most casted ability, and if we got a spell that replaced it at lower mana cast (with casting time/frequency casted in mind) it could mean we go OOM slower.
The other nice thing is that Mind Flay of course does not Crit, so it would be nice to have our default filler spell in PvE be able to Crit and in extension increase our Damage output that much more.
BONUS: Presumably Mind Spike has a better range than Mind Flay and you wouldn’t have the awful experience on some Raid Bosses of having to stand out of range of Mind Flay and not be able to use it.
I agree that it would feel bad in some ways to have Mind Flay outright replaced as it does feel “iconic” to the Spec. But I do think Mind Spike would be an improvement, and probably one we would come to enjoy.
Though, perhaps there is a 2nd option where Mind Spike has a low CD like 3 seconds. So you alternate:
SW:P --> [
VT(?!) -->
VP -->
SW:D -->
MB -->
MS -->
MF -->
MS -->
MB -->
MS -->
MF -->
SW:D
] *Roughly Repeat this*
It would actually be a really engaging PvE rotation of juggling 3 DoTs, one Big 12 sec CD, One less Big MB CD, Alternative filling MS/MF.
My only thoughts is they could have just made Mind Flay cheaper/free and make each cast of MF give you increased MB crit chance.
They add a rune that allows “periodic damage from your spells” to crit, which I assume includes MF.
Yes, it would include MF, it would be a huge change tbh.
Previous classic you would downrank mindflay to keep casting during a long raid fight to then refresh swp and mana pot for more mindblasts. Now with the mana changes you might be able to use a higher rank mindflay, and have the increased dmg through the twisted faith rune while getting more reward out of your mindflay with its crit potential. When before it was just mind blast that benefited from crit.
also more threatening than warriors in pvp