Legacy of the Void needs to be baseline at this point. It’s just too required and has been for a long time. Free up that end tier slot. Dark Ascension is likely fine as is at that point. Need a rework on StM badly and definitely not that crap from the Alpha. that’s just doubling down on already bad design.
StM needs to be something that’s not so massively punishing to the player. And doing something to make it punishing on the healers in your group is equally awkward. Something that allows for increased insanity generation that has a short CD if you kill in a window, but a long CD if you miss the window allows the cooldown to remain relevant for both long fights and dungeons with lots of shorter fights.
Giving us a talent that allows the Twins Painful Touch passive would be very very welcome for M+. Even if you were to take away voidform right now and just give us some kind of shadow orbs, having to dot packs in dungeons is just way too slow, and mind sear doesn’t cut it. I think spreading the dots on a void form transition is way more interesting. Shadow Crash just doesn’t cut it sadly. Even for dungeons, spirits just overtakes it, and overtakes it.
Finally, the void form issue is mostly with the exponential scaling that occurs during the length of the voidform. Transition some of the power of scaling away from the form. There’s no reason it has to remain a stacking haste buff. Giving you empowered abilities, or several other options would make voidform feel meaningful enough, and then granting you lingering insanity after to keep the power up outside the form, and increase the transition could work. Essentially the issue is right now that void form is just a stronger benefit of base form, so being out of it just isn’t meaningful. Give the priest a mechanic that allows them to start fights entering void form, and then balancing the power between being in the form and out of the form would for me, solve a lot of the misery in feeling like base form is just a stepping stone with no upside.
That’s my view on it. I’m not a numbers person, I couldn’t tell you the best values to apply where or how to make those numbers work. But my thoughts are this in short:
Mind Sear should spread dots after a void form, talent most likely.
Insanity should be something you start the fight with and lose over time, allowing the cycle to begin at the top.
Transition the benefit of void form away from exponential scaling during the form, and into that scaling outside of the form. Grant a different benefit for being in the form, ex: empowered spells.
Voidform baseline is a shorter cast and can be cast at 70/100 insanity baseline.
StM shouldn’t punish the player or healers so drastically via damage. Punish it via cooldowns or some other mechanic. Give the player a way to mitigate or reduce that punishment through gameplay.