Mind Sear obliterated.

[Deleted]

I am aware that every class has had their AoE nerfed(and sp's was actually one of the least nerfed) but we are the only spec loosing the scaling of AoE with mastery.

We all remember a time when this spell was pretty much useless and seeing how MoP went down I don't want to see one of the aspects SP did decent in getting this much whack. I sincerely hope something will be done to compensate.

On a side note, nothing has been said on the level 90 talents.

[deviantcultist]

On a side note, nothing has been said on the level 90 talents.

I am personally more worried about that. Are they seriously happy with the current state of Shadow lvl90 Talents?

[Drye]

They said they were going to buff the dmg because as it stands with high mastery it will be more effective to mf over lvl 90s on single target.

[Kaesebrezen]

They said they were going to buff the dmg because as it stands with high mastery it will be more effective to mf over lvl 90s on single target.

Today's build nerfed MF far enough that even DS is an upgrade... ~80% SP per GCD for Mind Flay vs. 136% of DS.

But honestly - i don't see much sense in today's patch number changes:
- Turn MF into a wet noodle: MB + MF + FDCL are now even less of our damage breaking, the current Mastery value is nowhere close enough to hold as the "best" single target stat
- CoP: Only one valid talent option for single-target: CoP + Halo + ToF + Bender (You can't let DP tick, because MSp now even beats DP DoT + Insanity, DS and Cascade)
- VEnt massively nerfed, while DP was buffed.
- Massive buff to Asp. Spirits via DP buff and ShA nerf. (No direct tuning option for this talent is very bad)

I wonder if at some point they decide that 4 rotation affecting talent tiers is just too much to balance, without flat out restricting certain combinations. (e.g. some talent combinationscost so many GCDs that you simple can't use them for multi-dot - Asp. Spirits + DS + DI + FDCL leading the list, and any variation still pretty bad)

[Calamari]

Would love to imagine this means we are getting an AoE orb finisher spell of some kind that they are working on behind the curtains, and that this weaker Mind Sear would be used as an AoE filler attack inbetween.

But chances are they'll take the easy way out and are simply going to beef up T90 shadow damage to the point where it makes up for loosing our Mind Sear mastery scaling.

[Alanar]

Would love to imagine this means we are getting an AoE orb finisher spell of some kind that they are working on behind the curtains, and that this weaker Mind Sear would be used as an AoE filler attack inbetween.

But chances are they'll take the easy way out and are simply going to beef up T90 shadow damage to the point where it makes up for loosing our Mind Sear mastery scaling.

Would be a welcome change imo.

[Deleted]

Would love to imagine this means we are getting an AoE orb finisher spell of some kind that they are working on behind the curtains, and that this weaker Mind Sear would be used as an AoE filler attack inbetween.

But chances are they'll take the easy way out and are simply going to beef up T90 shadow damage to the point where it makes up for loosing our Mind Sear mastery scaling.

Similar to paladins? High damage single target, lower damage aoe?
I would love that, levelling disc atm and whilst the sustain is great, taking down a group of mobs is super arduous.

[Dierdre]

Lol we all saw this happening as soon as the mastery change was announced and even pointed it out to Celestalon, it just didn't make sense. Mind Sear is not obliterated, it just won't scale with our mastery and will be tuned accordingly.

[Greyce]

Shadow Crash, baybee!

[eErike]

Empowered Mind Sear

Consumes all of the caster's Shadow Orbs to deal 303 (+ 30% of Spell power) Shadow damage and an additional 120 (+ 13.1% of Spell power) Shadow damage every 1 sec for 6 sec.
Damage increased based on the number of Shadow Orbs consumed.

Or

Consumes all of the caster's Shadow Orbs to deal 303 (+ 30% of Spell power) Shadow damage and refreshes Shadow Word: Pain on 2 additional targets.
Damage and spread increased based on the number of Shadow Orbs consumed.


Pretty much what I want to see TBH. Refreshing would scale with 2 targets more per orb ending up refreshing SW: P on 6 targets in total if you used it with 3 orbs. This would allow us to keep SW: P up on long lived adds by using 1-2 orb mind sears because I really feel like we should have some kind of option on using orbs other times than when we are at 3, it would raise the skill-cap of shaodw priest (which I assume moste in here want, funnier that way) and bring utillity for add fights.

[Steehl]

Taking Mind Sear off of our Mastery makes me really sad. I wonder if there'll come a point now with enough mastery that Mind Sear won't be a dps gain when hitting multiple targets vs just continuing to single target.

[Drsolders]

Blizz what are you doing?

Its ok that your single target dps is low because your AOE is good and bring great utility,

Their aoe is decent lets go ahead and nerf that and nerf their utility from lvl 90 talents zzzz

[Minoan]

Probably they want to get rid of the fact that right now if you are not using insanity, using mind sear on 2 targets>mind flay, and new mastery was increasing this significantly.

[Deleted]

Blizz what are you doing?

Its ok that your single target dps is low because your AOE is good and bring great utility,

Their aoe is decent lets go ahead and nerf that and nerf their utility from lvl 90 talents zzzz

First of all Celestalon specifically said we shouldn't look too much into these numbers. Lets not do that.

Second, you can't be good at everything. If you do everything well then you are FOTM and everyone wants to be you (MoP Warlock).

I prefer Cata Shadow:

Good single target.
Great multidot.
Good utility.
Not good cleave (although Mind Sear got nerfed buffed nerfed buffed).

Aka Balance Druid in MoP.

If I had that good single target right now I'd be great on the end bosses Lei Shen and Garrosh...

For AoE you just need to have some classes doing that. Single target is always great to have. Multidot is situational and just not as strong as it was in Cata. Most classes excel at one of those three. Either they're top single target (Rogue), top cleave (Ele, Destro), or top multidot (Affliction). I think Shadow was more fun when multidot was OP. Mind Sear is rather bland, but multidotting requires some effort. Since Mind Sear is just one spell why would you want it to be strong while shrooms from Balance aren't anymore? Nerf it to the ground and give me back good single target and good multidot.

Since Ele's getting a bit more complex rotation instead of Chain Lightning spam maybe it'd be fun for us too to make Mind Sear more fun. I'd enjoy a talent tree devoted to that more than current T90. For example Mind Sear increasing over time (an overal 15% DPS increase but weaker at start), Mind Sear spreading dots, or Mind Sear applying weak versions of Halo on every pulse.

[Frmercury]

I love the language of the threads that pop up after every news ever.

Spec DESTROYED
Spell OBLITERATED
Life DECIMATED

Chill out on the Alpha numbers tuning, jeez.

Mind Sear being taken off the Mastery is discussion worthy though.

[Deleted]

First of all Celestalon specifically said we shouldn't look too much into these numbers. Lets not do that.

Second, you can't be good at everything. If you do everything well then you are FOTM and everyone wants to be you (MoP Warlock).

I prefer Cata Shadow:

Good single target.
Great multidot.
Good utility.
Not good cleave (although Mind Sear got nerfed buffed nerfed buffed).

Aka Balance Druid in MoP.

If I had that good single target right now I'd be great on the end bosses Lei Shen and Garrosh...

For AoE you just need to have some classes doing that. Single target is always great to have. Multidot is situational and just not as strong as it was in Cata. Most classes excel at one of those three. Either they're top single target (Rogue), top cleave (Ele, Destro), or top multidot (Affliction). I think Shadow was more fun when multidot was OP. Mind Sear is rather bland, but multidotting requires some effort. Since Mind Sear is just one spell why would you want it to be strong while shrooms from Balance aren't anymore? Nerf it to the ground and give me back good single target and good multidot.

Since Ele's getting a bit more complex rotation instead of Chain Lightning spam maybe it'd be fun for us too to make Mind Sear more fun. I'd enjoy a talent tree devoted to that more than current T90. For example Mind Sear increasing over time (an overal 15% DPS increase but weaker at start), Mind Sear spreading dots, or Mind Sear applying weak versions of Halo on every pulse.

I agree, but with the current state of the Alpha, we don't know where our "niche" is. We can just say it's not going to be AoE, I really don't know about single target damage, there seem to be too many variation ATM. As for multi dot, we will never be able to scale as well as other multi dot classes that have their mastery affect their dots while our's don't. So apart from single target target I am not that optimistic with WoD.
Scaling was a huge problem of our class during MoP, it seems to be the same case in WoD

[Aica]

Mind Sear is a mind spell, it should stay with mastery. It allows mastery to be less one dimensional.

[Venaliter]

Official patch notes make no note of this. May be a datamine error.

[Deleted]

I think seperating our aoe from the mastery is a good choice so mastery is only for single target damag and nothing else.

- CoP: Only one valid talent option for single-target: CoP + Halo + ToF + Bender (You can't let DP tick, because MSp now even beats DP DoT + Insanity, DS and Cascade)

The damag from MF insanity or FDCL will be prio to direkt MS during DP 6 sec uptime. You have to remember that we are getting an extra tick of MF as a perk. Together with mastery and CoP it will outscale a simple MS spam. On top of that we also get an extra 16% SP from DP per sec.

[Kaesebrezen]

Together with mastery and CoP it will outscale a simple MS spam.

Uhm, no. Mastery's existance is one of the problems CoP has:

Mind Spike has to deal more damage than Mind Flay. This means that by adding more Mastery, the damage gap between Mind Flay and Mind Spike will get bigger. Current value's are: 162.96% of SP for Mind Spike vs. 58% of SP for Mind Flay in one GCD. Add the 32.5% base raidbuffed Mastery and you get 215% of Mind Spike vs. 76.85%. At 50% Mastery you're looking at 244.44% vs 87%. At 32.5% Mastery the gap is 138%, at 50% Mastery the gap is 157.44%

The more mastery you have, the bigger the gap between the two spells get. Even with Insanity it's currently 215% vs. 153% in favor of Mind Spike.
DP's DoT is weak enough to not change that.

CoP wants you do Mind Spike outside of DP, while it wants you do Mind Flay during DP. To achieve this Mind Spikes damage has to be higher than Mind Flays, while DP + MF has to be better than Mind Spike. As Mastery does not affect DP, at one point Mind Spike + Mastery will beat DP + MF + Mastery.

Also i am NOT going for "hasn't been tuned yet" here. I'm questioning the possibility of it even being tuneable. Touching talent values and spell coefficients to get them working with CoP could(will) have major impact for the non-CoP specs.

Mastery itself also is problematic: CoP has 70%+ of it's damage affected by Mastery, while FDCL/Insanity specs have 40%. Mastery has to be the best single-target stat even for these specs. If that's the case, it will be overperforming for CoP.

The damag from MF insanity or FDCL

As written above, it does currently not, and at least for FDCL it's pretty hard to achieve. The 1.6 FDCL procs of DP would have to outweight 4*(Mindspike-Mind Flay per GCD) in damage you loose from casting Mind Flay. Currently FDCL is miles away from ever achieving it.

T45 talents are currently in a odd place anyway when combined with T100: CoP does not benefit from FDCL/Insanity at all, VEnt sees reduced benefit from T45 when adding more targets due to the Orb cost, while Asp. Spirits sees increased benefit from both when adding more targets until you run out of GCDs.

For T90 talents, you ideally you want them to fit during DP, not in the Mind Spike -> MB cycle (you're loosing out on the -1 sec MB CD). CoPs DP cycle is 19-20 second. Now which T90 talent has a cooldown that fit's the DP cycle? Answer: Halo (that's leaving aside that DS/Cascade currently deal less damage than Mind Spike anyways)

Divine Insight: Instant cast Mind Blasts are useless until you have enough haste to fit another Mind Spike between Mind Blasts. If you lack haste, Mind Spike being instant cast (Glyph of Mind Spike makes that part obsolete anyway - or the glyph is obsolete due to lack of haste) has no impact at all. You still have to cast the same amount of Mind Spikes between Mind Blasts, your average Mind Blast CD will be the same.
Cooldown reset? You cast 3 Mind Spikes between Mind Blasts. If you chain Mind Spike, you can use Mind Spike the earliest after your 2nd out of 3/4 Mind Spikes. That's effectively saving you 2 seconds of Mind Blast CD.

Power Infusion: The problem here is CoPs interaction with Haste. Haste changes the number of Mind Spikes you fit between Mind Blast cooldowns.
At 0% haste it's 3 - at 50% haste it's 4. (same for glyph of Mind Spike). You want to gear your haste around not having PI up, so having PI's haste effect is hardly worth it.