Shadow Buffs.. lol

[Annesh]

Wrong. They have the strikethrough over them. See: blue post. All nerfs reverted. Only buffs now. Shadow wasn't good enough. Because reasons.

You'll understand if I consider you an unreliable source of information.

Okay, after reading a little deeper I agree. Cool!

[Knifttar]

Why does StM even exist tho.

It shouldn't. They need to just scrap it and come up with something new. If you like StM, you are just wrong.

[Bad Management]

It shouldn't. They need to just scrap it and come up with something new. If you like StM, you are just wrong.

Truth! Hear! Hear!
No, I'm not being sarcastic.

[Relapses]

Truth! Hear! Hear!
No, I'm not being sarcastic.

I think the developers are realizing how badly they fucked up by introducing S2M. The issues the devs have with the talent are exactly what we told them when it was tested in Alpha/Beta. I guess they though they could just pull levers and fix things but the note about S2M's dominance kind of leads me to believe they're more likely to completely overhaul our level 100 talents than they are to ever find anything resembling balance as long as it exists in its current form.

Sometimes I wish I could get off Blizzard's Shadow Balancing Wild Ride, but I'm somewhat used to it now. It'll be interesting to see where they ultimately take the spec but I wouldn't be surprised if S2M is removed at some point in this expansion.

[Clavicle]

Surrender to Madness Talent
Instant 1 patch cooldown
Requires Priest (Shadow)
Requires level 100
You go slightly insane waiting for Blizzard to decide what the hell they want your spec to be.

Then you are committed to an asylum. Permanently.

[Annesh]

It shouldn't. They need to just scrap it and come up with something new. If you like StM, you are just wrong.

If you disagree with this, you are also wrong

[Thra]

I don't understand their thoughts on dispersion.

1. If they are trying to reduce our time that we can possibly benefit from S2M, why not just reduce the buff's duration from 3min to 2min?

2. If they are trying to get people to stop using dispersion as an offensive CD rather than one used to increase our time in S2M, then they need to compensate with more insanity generation somewhere while in VF

[Vultoric]

It shouldn't. They need to just scrap it and come up with something new. If you like StM, you are just wrong.

What an ignorant statement. Many people have mained shadow priest for this very spell. It is one of the most unique spells in the game that rewards good players who are able to maintain Voidform.

[Bad Management]

What an ignorant statement. Many people have mained shadow priest for this very spell. It is one of the most unique spells in the game that rewards good players who are able to maintain Voidform.

Allright, please, enlighten us "ignorant" people then: How do you balance it?
This is is gonna be interesting.

[davesignal]

Here's a question: Surrender is obviously still the hotness for raiding, but is Mind Spike now better than Legacy of the Void for dungeons? If you're just comparing Mind Spike to Legacy, Spike's looking a lot more rosy now.

What an ignorant statement. Many people have mained shadow priest for this very spell. It is one of the most unique spells in the game that rewards good players who are able to maintain Voidform.

Yeah, those are FOTM people. They, like you, are no pillars of the community.

[Rumstein]

Honestly, as a shadow priest I'm always happy to see buffs, but the Mass Hysteria nerf should have stayed. The damage STM is capable of <35% with 100 VF stacks is absurd and needed to be toned down. This is just kicking the nerf can down the road at best.

They noted that are going to change it later, but they can't do a quick fix without screwing the class. S2M will likely have a much shorter duration & cd, but without the death penalty.

Here's a question: Surrender is obviously still the hotness for raiding, but is Mind Spike now better than Legacy of the Void for dungeons? If you're just comparing Mind Spike to Legacy, Spike's looking a lot more rosy now.

No it isn't. Mind Spike is a damage and insanity loss in Void Form (Due to Mind Flay's 3 ticks in 1st GCD nature), and barely a gain when you run 2 GCDs back to back. 2+ Targets Sear outperforms both Flay and Spike (Flay = 240%/target over 2 GCDs, Spike = 270% MT + 90% OT over 2 GCDs ignoring the detonation requirement, Sear = 216% per target over 2 GCDs and generates 6 insanity PER TARGET vs 4 flat).

Mind Spike has no place, period.

The dispersion change is welcomed by most people. It returns our only defensive cd, instead of using it offensively. You can still use it exactly the same, it just delays 100 stacks by a few seconds. They don't really need to compensate with more insanity gain atm, higher haste and crit levels will do that for us, and then theres T19 2P for more coming up. People could already sustain 2m30s, so with the extra stats and 2p they can get even higher.

[Vultoric]

Here's a question: Surrender is obviously still the hotness for raiding, but is Mind Spike now better than Legacy of the Void for dungeons? If you're just comparing Mind Spike to Legacy, Spike's looking a lot more rosy now.



Yeah, those are FOTM people. They, like you, are no pillars of the community.

I didn't realize they reworked whole specs every month.

[Clavicle]

They noted that are going to change it later, but they can't do a quick fix without screwing the class. S2M will likely have a much shorter duration & cd, but without the death penalty.

Or maybe with something like.

"Then you explode in a torrent of shadow energy, doing [x% of spellpower] damage per stack of Voidform to all allies in a 15 yard radius, including yourself."

[ttylol]

~1.5% dps gain from Mind Flay buff... Is MH/VoiT revert worth ~10%? If not, all 3 mage specs will still beat S2M :|

[bloodmoth13]

lol 80% mind sear buff, they had that tuned REAL bad!

wont expect any gameplay changes till we get a real patch, but i have 1 idea for mind sear

i think a low damage mind sear (half mind flay damage) that doesnt hurt the main target (like it originally did) but bounces off shadow word pains (like virulent plague) would be neat, so it deals exponentially higher dps depending on how many targets have shadow word pain up, dealing 0 damage to 1 target, mind flay damage on 2 targets and 3x mindflay damage on 3 targets and 6x mind flay damage on 4 targets and 10x mind flay damage on 5 targets. would feed into their intended gameplay well imo. The formula would be (X* (X-1) )/2 *MF damage where X is the number of targets with shadow word pain on them.

[Bad Management]

I wouldn't mind if they just made Mind Sear a "short" CD (30s-2m) that spread all dots from main target to all Mind Sear hit.
Would be quite simple, and not OP imo.

Or leave Mind Sear as it is, but it adds a debuff, on targets hit, that empowers our dots.

[davesignal]

No it isn't. Mind Spike is a damage and insanity loss in Void Form (Due to Mind Flay's 3 ticks in 1st GCD nature), and barely a gain when you run 2 GCDs back to back

Uh.. what?

[Video Games]

What was even the point of beta? Everybody said the talent was too good and no fun and NOW they finally see/listen?

[GT4]

The dispersion change is welcomed by most people. It returns our only defensive cd, instead of using it offensively. You can still use it exactly the same, it just delays 100 stacks by a few seconds. They don't really need to compensate with more insanity gain atm, higher haste and crit levels will do that for us, and then theres T19 2P for more coming up. People could already sustain 2m30s, so with the extra stats and 2p they can get even higher.

You're underestimating just how big the dispersion change alone is. In addition to that, you're somewhat contradicting yourself by first stating that it now returns as a defensive CD when later admitting you can still use it effectively at high stacks.

In the end, however, it doesn't matter too much anyway. Just the sheer fact alone that Xavius favors S2M so extremely much means that Blizzard simply can't reasonably balance S2M this tier anyway, unless they're willing to pseudo-remove it by making it bad enough not to be worth taking.

[big deal]

So when will these changes come to live? Is it already implemented or after the reset?