Mind Sear: here we go again

[Deleted]

I love multi dotting, it's great. But as time goes on (especially in my guild) I'm lucky to have a few seconds of that DoT even tick, the whole nature of multi dotting being great assumes the spell will have a full duration and in all when it doesn't that just pulls the DPET down. Mind sear was a good go-to button to compete when fast AoE damage needed to be done, also when you knew refreshing DoTs on some targets wouldn't be worthwhile. Jesus, could you imagine dotting up Cho'gal adds in T11? The first mobs would have a few ticks perhaps, but you'd only be able to cycle through a few and a lot of ticks would be wasted.

Mind sear wasn't as dull as it seemed; It still required an active empowered shadows and shadow priests had to work in orbed mind blasts if the AoE was needed was for a longer duration than empowered shadows and the lack of ~x ticks of an unpowered mind sear was worthwhile.

In all looking back, when has any AoE This expansion really taken longer than ~20 seconds? Yor'sahj maybe and heroic madness before bloods were mindlessly aoe'd. But thinking: That 20 seconds, yeah you'll get maybe 2 mobs to endure a full round of DoTs, what about the rest? The total tick counts on each mob are going to fall the more mobs you attack.

I enjoyed the current mind sear, perhaps it was still a bit too mindless, but it's a tool required in my honest opinion.

They've done a lot to screw over shadow priests. I don't rate the new orb system at all. [Slightly off-topic, sorry! It's short I promise and I stop!]

Currently, we're casting DP on EU live every ~24 seconds.

With the new system, providing it's used at 3 orbs and we haven't the extra orb talent..

Mind blast CD * 3 = 24.

Damn, it's exactly the same, DP every ~24 seconds, nice expansion to that playstyle. Why does Blizzard feel to make a song and dance about this 'new and unique' class change. If anything It's hindered me when under heavy movement. (DP -> SW -> DP..DP .. etc)

There's more that really grinds me, but I'll stop going off topic.. I love shadow priest, I don't need top damage, I just want a fun play style and be seen as viable by my guild in certain situations .
Right now all I see Is all the micromanaging taken from my class; the only 'skill level' the spec really had. You won't tell a decent shadow priest from a few weeks old one now.

I haven't kept up to beta as much as I would have liked and In all I am [mostly] applying beta changes to current content. Feel free to correct me and tell me my opinion is invalid just don't go crazy at me!

[DiGG]

...the whole nature of multi dotting being great assumes the spell will have a full duration...

Just gonna say on that tiny bit, that Twist of Fate (TOF) will be on almost 100% of the fight, you at LEAST get something good and constant out of just dotting around.

[Deleted]

Just gonna say on that tiny bit, that Twist of Fate (TOF) will be on almost 100% of the fight, you at LEAST get something good and constant out of just dotting around.

Yeah that will be a great benefit.
Edit: Yep 100% :3

But to clear up any mis-interpretation I don't mean multi dotting is useless, I just like the threshold value we have now, and that's mind sear at 4 or more mobs. I feel multi dotting should be confined to just extra mobs and not AoE situations. With MS designed to be used with dotting, MS alone will be very weak when it's not really plausible to use dots (and that's often many situations)

One of the only times [Don't quote me] it's ever been viable, DoTs alone in Cataclysm has been Maloriak before mind sear was buffed. They stood standing a good while alright.

[DiGG]

Yeah, I wonder on heroic spine if we'll be doing any significant damage to the BLOODS. We either sw:p and they die pretty quickly, or we... mind sear, weak pathetic mind sear?

[Hesp]

The biggest problem with a weak mind sear is that for most encounters, the roles of mind sear and multi-dotting are mutually exclusive. In a total of 31 raid bosses this expansion, there was only 1 fight where I appropriately used mind sear as a filler spell between keeping dots on every target. This was heroic Maloriak, and it doesn't help mind sear's case that the mechanic wasn't even present on the normal mode of the encounter. The fact is that the situations where mind sear was best used as a filler (3-5 adds, high health, close range), were few and far between. It can be argued that this is more of a problem with encounter design and not mind sear itself, and I would agree with that assertion given that Maloriak's black phase was a good opportunity for a skilled shadowpriest to shine. However, unless more of these fights which are optimized for mind sear present themselves, shadowpriests aren't going to be so hot for general aoe situations. Given that the past has shown most aoe tends to be on a high amount of low health mobs (Magmaw, Maloriak green phase, Halfus, Cho'Gall, Sinestra, Anshal, Occuthar, Rhyolith, Beth'tilac, Ragnaros, Yor'Sahj, Spine and Madness, ie 12/31 (39%) of the expansion's bosses), I don't have a lot of confidence going into mists that the paradigm will change drastically.

Looking towards mists, if things don't change I expect to see shadowpriests being benched by top 100 guilds on aoe fights for world firsts since we don't bring the necessary aoe to the table. This isn't a complaint, as cutting edge guilds rightly need to take advantage of their larger depth charts in order to gain the greatest edge over new content. Just as non-mages and non-rogues were benched for the first heroic spine kills, I would expect priests to be benched if aoe is the determining factor of a fight and we don't offer another an equally desirable raid benefit. There's nothing wrong with this mentality, but the problem is that it starts a trend that eventually trickles down to the masses that shadowpriests shouldn't be brought to "x" fight. I'm certainly not worried about my raid spot, but I would rather not see this stigma ever come to light.

Planning on making a detailed post on the official forums tonight comparing the damage on fights such as Yor'Sahj and Madness both pre and post patch in order to work towards a buff, hopefully the shadowpriest community can get together and change GC's mind.

[Deleted]

Pretty much what above said. During the beta the mindsear was outdamaging 4-5 mobs scenario over dots but thats because dots were weakened: it takes more effort and time to juggle dots over the 5 mobs with barely some room to target main dps target (heroic boss in heart of fear with the cc part comes into mind) , dodge crap and mass dispel, compared to casting mindsear with same results. Now that they reduced the aoe it becomes impractical to have a use for it. It is useless when burst aoe comes where adds have to die fast, multidotting in that scenario is not worth the time either. In a sustained aoe part you'll be spending your time multidotting things with no time to utilize ms as a filler.

[Venaliter]

Is anyone else reminded of Lich King when Spriests were benched from Ulduar to Frozen Throne? Yeah. It's happening again.

I can't believe how STUPID GC's post was.

[Yvaelle]

Is anyone else reminded of Lich King when Spriests were benched from Ulduar to Frozen Throne? Yeah. It's happening again.

I can't believe how STUPID GC's post was.

O.O

Priests were awesome in Ulduar and ICC, we lagged a little in ToC sure - but ToC wasn't long and wasn't hard - so it wasn't big deal IMO.

[Celentes]

Its not the same - in Cata before 4pc t13 you could either get ES up almost right away (and thus, your initial set of DOTs were buffed with it) or go upwards of a minute without an orb proc which means 1-2 sets of DOTs were unbuffed. DP is big but I don't think its going to be as big as a full set of unbuffed DOTs.

Looking at the numbers, it is.

Also, there's a point that since we have had all of the mind flay utility stripped, there would be no reason for us not to cast mind sear as a filler in cleave situations. They're making sure it isn't the case by nerfing it to oblivion. So much for a better design.

[Reith]

You're basically whining for nothing because Shadow Priests are topping (or nearly topping) everything that doesn't have super gimmicky mechanics (Hagara, Spine). Your multi-dotting capability right now is even better than before the patch.

[Yvaelle]

You're basically whining for nothing because Shadow Priests are topping (or nearly topping) everything that doesn't have super gimmicky mechanics (Hagara, Spine). Your multi-dotting capability right now is even better than before the patch.

Our multi-dotting isn't better than before the patch, but ya - we're not doing terribly. People gotta whine sometimes though, otherwise they get rusty from all those salty tears building up inside them. But then your a ret paladin, so you know all about that ;p

I once saw a ret paladin whine during Vanilla that the seal stacking bug that allowed rets to one-shot-kill ANYTHING, should not have been nerfed, because it took a long time of pressing their seal button to build up that much damage. Remember that day earlier this tier where rets were doing 400k DPS because of bugged seals? Rets whined en masse after that got hotfixed. You guys take the cake for whining, and to be fair to the OP - Mind Sear scaling is pretty terrible right now (even if multi-dotting is still mostly effective if you take the right talents).

[Veiled]

Mind Sear is fine, multi-dotting is fine, doing both at once is fine.

[Kelesti]

Mind Sear is fine, multi-dotting is fine, doing both at once is fine.

Veiled is fine?

[Reith]

Our multi-dotting isn't better than before the patch, but ya - we're not doing terribly.

That's pretty much a lie. Our Shadow Priest never did this well in comparison before.

People gotta whine sometimes though, otherwise they get rusty from all those salty tears building up inside them. [insert retarded, irrational ranting here], and to be fair to the OP - Mind Sear scaling is pretty terrible right now (even if multi-dotting is still mostly effective if you take the right talents).

Oh no, Shadow Priests can't just spam Mind Sear on 2 (3?) targets anymore. It's the end of the world. Don't you just wish you had another way to damage multiple targets with significant damage at the same time? Perhaps with damage that doesn't happen all-at-once.. maybe.. over time? Nah, Blizzard would never give you anything like that AND give you extremely competitive single-target damage.

Mind Sear is fine, multi-dotting is fine, doing both at once is fine.

This guy knows what's up. Shadow Priests are better off than most right now.

[Deleted]

Spamming Chain Lightning is fun on my Shaman, I wonder what their stance is on that. The problem with multi dotting is it's only strong on targets that will be alive for long enough, Mind Sear should be the ability we go to for 3-4+ mobs for quick AoE damage. Maybe they should do something that increases it's damage if used on more than 3-4 mobs.

[Celentes]

That's pretty much a lie. Our Shadow Priest never did this well in comparison before.


Oh no, Shadow Priests can't just spam Mind Sear on 2 (3?) targets anymore. It's the end of the world. Don't you just wish you had another way to damage multiple targets with significant damage at the same time? Perhaps with damage that doesn't happen all-at-once.. maybe.. over time? Nah, Blizzard would never give you anything like that AND give you extremely competitive single-target damage.


This guy knows what's up. Shadow Priests are better off than most right now.

In current gear, with everyone else not knowing how to multidot and what to spec for it (idk, is it really that hard?).

If you compare him on blackhorn with the previous run you did last week, his dot damage did not change as a percentage from his total damage. Except for the part where in the previous run he had 60% dot uptime on targets and in this run he had 80%. SWP started hitting harder, sure yeah, especially with the priest t13 change. His VT tick crits dropped from 22k average to 13k average. SWP damage raised a little, within the range of the t13 bonus. We did get mastery, but VT damage nerf is enough to offset it completely.

Let your warlocks and whoever else relearn how to dps properly and we'll see the results. Shadowpriests have been axed in terms of complexity, that means that by default any decent shadowpriest is now playing to the maximum. We'll see how all this plays off in t14.

-----
Now, what we're talking about mindsear is - if the mindsear was in the current state for a fight like ragnaros, shadow's main role would be to sit benched and bring alts or watch everyone else do the job. In DS there's little aoe and much space to multidot.

What we're talking about multidotting is just a rant, for a few targets we haven't been nerfed outside the range of everyone else.
Single target sustained damage has always been competitive, noone's saying it's not. On sims it's lower than most, and we've lost a lot of damage on the move. We don't have burst for the boss vulnerability windows, that was the case before, it will be worse or not any better now.

[Blackmorgrim]

Just to reiterate this since a lot of people tend to not account for it, but we're one of the few classes whose mastery effects their aoe.

[Celentes]

Just to reiterate this since a lot of people tend to not account for it, but we're one of the few classes whose mastery effects their aoe.

Yes, but with this scaling, base damage and in the first tier, that doesn't help much, sadly.

[halfawake]

Keep complaining about your aoe, fire lost all its aoe, (3 target spread limit) making blizzard the choice (flamestrike/blizzard I guess)? At least you kept your multi dotting and have an aoe that isn't tied to one spot (really making us cast blizzard? really? who in their right mind thinks thats fun ?) my point is the grass is always greener on the other side... I realize that even for my mage and the number of times I have wanted to drop him since using the level 90 talents...

In lfr on beta priests were doing very very well despite what the precious sims say (blah blah mages topping the sims, it's not playing out that way with the way fight mechanics are, although I'll admit we haven't tried it in heroic gear). Running 5 mans priests were always doing very well on trash packs when aoeing. The sky is not falling, its not even raining. Enjoy the overcast skies though, most of us are dealing with them. Changes, that's just the way it is...

[Blain]

Keep complaining about your aoe, fire lost all its aoe, (3 target spread limit) making blizzard the choice (flamestrike/blizzard I guess)? At least you kept your multi dotting and have an aoe that isn't tied to one spot (really making us cast blizzard? really? who in their right mind thinks thats fun ?) my point is the grass is always greener on the other side... I realize that even for my mage and the number of times I have wanted to drop him since using the level 90 talents...

In lfr on beta priests were doing very very well despite what the precious sims say (blah blah mages topping the sims, it's not playing out that way with the way fight mechanics are, although I'll admit we haven't tried it in heroic gear). Running 5 mans priests were always doing very well on trash packs when aoeing. The sky is not falling, its not even raining. Enjoy the overcast skies though, most of us are dealing with them. Changes, that's just the way it is...

But Fire can spec into Frost/Arcane (whatever does more AE).

I would like to see MS being buffed if it effects 5+ targets, i think this would be the best solution.