Do Priests actually like Surrender to Madness?

[l33t]

Dislike STM, mostly because of the spec being shit everywhere except for raids thanks to it. Like you know, mythic+ - nobody wants a shadowpriest, and even with guild group I constantly feel like I am dragging my group down. Also, dem $$ bills... 1 pull of farm boss = over 1000 extra gold for me, because of rune and food costs.

[D4n13le]

I think Surrender to Madness is the main reason I took a break from this game.
I've mained a Shadow Priest since I started playing, what I liked about the spec was the consistency and not being reliant on CDs. That went out of the window with StM: your dps only depends on how you'll play when it's active, you can't talent out of it you want to be anywhere near competitive and the whole "can't miss a GCD for 2 minutes straight or you'll die" introduces a lot of stress, which frankly I wasn't looking forward to deal with every raid night.

[Kilee25]

The lack of an alternative option to StM is the sole reason that I will probably not come back to the game and that I let my account expire. I am fine with StM - it's a a very cool idea and I hope it stays. What I am upset about is having a singular talent and play style forced down my throat, and the entire meta that exists in the game that says you are a bad player and a bad person if you don't play the best set of talents at all times. I want options on how I get to play the game, and StM took that away from me. If there was a viable alternative set of talents, I would be fine with it. The problem is that its design almost ensures that can never happen.

People complained that CoP took away the essence of what an Spriest was, but personally I feel this expac was the one that truly fundamentally changed what Spriests were about. If you liked the steady, reliable damage, hard-to-kill nature that was a staple of the class for almost a decade... well that is completely and utterly gone now. They are now a meme of the term one-trick-pony, glass canon.

Also OP can you make a poll?

[marathal]

The lack of an alternative option to StM is the sole reason that I will probably not come back to the game and that I let my account expire. I am fine with StM - it's a a very cool idea and I hope it stays. What I am upset about is having a singular talent and play style forced down my throat, and the entire meta that exists in the game that says you are a bad player and a bad person if you don't play the best set of talents at all times. I want options on how I get to play the game, and StM took that away from me. If there was a viable alternative set of talents, I would be fine with it. The problem is that its design almost ensures that can never happen.

People complained that CoP took away the essence of what an Spriest was, but personally I feel this expac was the one that truly fundamentally changed what Spriests were about. If you liked the steady, reliable damage, hard-to-kill nature that was a staple of the class for almost a decade... well that is completely and utterly gone now. They are now a meme of the term one-trick-pony, glass canon.

Also OP can you make a poll?

Totally agree. I won't use it. No matter how overpowered the potential damage may be. Long ago when I first started raiding someone told me. Not to worry about your DPS, a Mage bursting to 50k for 30 seconds and then dead because he stood in stupid is not an asset to the team. The player that stays alive the entire encounter, the one that pops a shield on the tank when a healer is stunned, that dispels an effect because the Shaman is taking a dirt nap, the player that is the last man standing DPSing their heart out until the end is the one that is valuable to the team. All this focus on being top DPS, topping the meters, means nothing if you are dead and those others on the team are too. Raiding is a team effort. Having 20 people competing to be the top DPS, ignoring mechanics so they can rank, means nothing if the boss does not die.

I won't use it. I would rather be mediocre than tabbed out because I slipped up and are dead on the ground.

[Deja Thoris]

I don't like it at all.

I don't like being "forced" to play that talent. I don't like losing food / runes after progress attempts.

I don't like how it punishes people with high latency. I don't like how people only see top parses but they miss the 1000 other where the SP fails because he gets MC'd on nythendra or feared on dragons or rooted for that one second when the tank kites the boss away to swap.

This is only raiding. It's useless on all but tyrannical bosses in M+. It's useless in the open world and pvp. If hes touting its virtues as a developer he should fucking well acknowledge where it falls short.

[Tojara]

Honestly I think it's an amazing ability, it's just overpowered.

Shadow priests who perform it excellently should be top tier DPS, the problem with it right now is that the gap between those shadow priests and the next in line is pretty large. Shadow isn't even reliant on legendary items (I'd argue this is also a good thing), even though they help. I mean you can find some of the best shadow priest logs that have fucking sephuz and the boots equipped, essentially just stat stick items.

Ideally the ability should be baseline, and a bit less powerful, or still the best option in the tier "generally" but not by such a gross margin that it's the best in every single circumstances. Right now the only time it's realistically bad is if there are silences, stuns or long periods of RP where you can't actually generate insanity. This can happen in dungeons (which makes shadow frustrating in dungeons at times) but generally not in raids. Shadow is incredibly sturdy once S2M is going, you can cast while moving and you do absurd DPS.

[Deleted]

I hate it with guts. Shadow was my main in 3 expansions pre Legion. I switched to shaman after reading about Legion shadowpriest at the end of WoD.
I hated even Archi class trinket - and the whole idea of tunneling gameplay around it. There was some hidden lag spikes, during encounters altho my latency didn't change. If it's my connection, bad addons or in blizzards side - it doesn't even matter, the point is i can't play shadowpriest anymore, when it is tied heavily with milliseconds and good connection. I do not live in France next to blizzard server clusters.

[tiptopmemer]

The amount of button mashing required to play the spec is inherently unskillful and even detrimental to health.

[Deleted]

In this thread, people talk about how S2M affects the other talent specs rather than S2M.

I love S2M. I like that it really rewards you for playing well, and punishes you for playing poorly. I'll freely admit that it might be a bit on the overpowered side at high stacks, but the playstyle it self is, to me, fun and rewarding right now.

I don't buy how people say it takes no skills to do a lot of dps. That is not the case at all. Sure, if you're a very good player (which some of you are I'm sure), its probably the case, but a lot of priests are not getting to 3 VOITS often. I play on Silvermoon and I rarely find see priests actually survive long enough to get 3 VOITS on training dummies. Sure, in the hands of a great player its probably too good at the moment, but stop making it sound like this talent makes every single Shadow Priest a DPS machine unrivaled in the history of this game - for the vast majority of players thats simply not the case. That said, I know that we tend to judge an entire class or spec based on what the 10 or 20 best guilds in the world bring to fights.

All that said, I can easily understand why some don't like it. Its probably true that in the grand scheme of things it makes balancing the other specs extremely difficult, but thats not what was asked.

[Itisamuh]

I for one do not enjoy it. I see no appeal in killing myself. That whole talent row is crap.

[Deleted]

Yep, STM is the only reason I rerolled to priest.

[Deja Thoris]

In this thread, people talk about how S2M affects the other talent specs rather than S2M.

.

In this thread people understand that talents interact with each other and can look at the bigger picture. Or would 2 pages of yes/no replies not tax your brain too much?

[Deleted]

In this thread people understand that talents interact with each other and can look at the bigger picture. Or would 2 pages of yes/no replies not tax your brain too much?

You weren't asked to sort out the priest class. Ion said S2M was a cool talent and Blizzard liked it, and OP wondered if the community felt the same way. Thats got nothing to do with the other specs, and hating S2M because LOTV is weak is irrational.

As for whether my it would tax my brain too much, no, but thanks for being a dick. It is very possible to actually give more elaborate answers than yes/no - you know, things such as explaining why one like it or dislike it within the scope of the question. We have PLENTY of posts already discussing the other specs in relation to S2M.

[KaPe]

It's even more annoying as an offspec. Before Legion I thought "finally, all three specs are available for free, I can do random grinding, dailies and dungeons in an actual dps spec." Except S2M is nearly useless in those scenarios - because really, who's going to kill themselves over some rare mob - and everything else is balanced around it. Even normal voidform is annoying to use while running from mob to mob, doing pitiful damage until you finally enter your supermode for few seconds.

Raiding is better, but highly stressful and requires knowing when to use it properly for maximum benefit. Not very friendly for some "casual offspecing", simply because it can pull absurd numbers when played by the very best. And even with those "very best" there's a possibilty of "welp, player X had a split second lag and is now dead, we won't make the dps check, wipe it."

And then there's looking at final talent tier and wondering who designed the other two talents? You could make both of them baseline and most people wouldn't even notice. There's way too much power thrown into a single button, with no alternatives, making everything else suffer. It's clearly some developer's precious baby and they keep trying to make it relevant for as long as possible.

[Deleted]

Kinda off topic, but is there any record of anyone running Mind Spike in it's current state?

[Shaiandra]

As some others have said, it causes so many issues which make it and everything around it broken, and I don't think it's a balanceable talent, but I do enjoy the rush while using StM.

[Deleted]

I love it.

[Deleted]

I main a mage and play an spriest alt, but I love StM. I feel that it is by far the most challening, rewarding and intense play available in this game at the moment. Good highs and awful lows make it more fun to me.

[Naga Coatl]

I loathe StM.

1) It's a balance nightmare and everyone knows that. I will not comment on this.
2) Its fantasy suggests that the priest in order to become strong has to 'surrender to the old gods'. It makes me feel like my character's power depends on being a puppet who can't control his power. To me, that's not being powerful. The concept of being a powerlusting machinegun fits more a mage or a warlock in my opinion. There are many ways to make us feel connected with the old gods, deciding to become unable to contain our excessive power to me feels awful.
3) Its playstyle focuses too much on the last moments of the fight and punishes too heavily for stuff that may be beyon the player's control. Personally I hate having to time it knowing that the 'right time' varies because of a lot of factor, including other raid member's performance (which in a casual guild may be an issue).
4) Devs speak about it like is the top fantasy-defining thing about SP - see point 2. Also, if they can't shut up about how defining it is (and for me is everything except 'iconic' - it's a new controversial thing, i'd reserve terms like 'iconic' for other skills), why is it an optional talent? I don't want it baseline, actually I want it removed, but if it's really so 'iconic' why isn't it a core mechanic? More over, it's easy to claim that it's fantasy-defining when almost every other talent/skill is bland and generic passive/void stuff without creativity or identity.
5) It makes uninformed people think that the spec as a whole is OP. It makes people think that if you are good, it's only because of StM.
6) Personally I feel that many of those who like/defend StM like it only because it's OP and have fun topping meters, and go on boards asking blizz to keep StM because 'of the 'fast paced gameplay/risk-reward' when they could be asking for something equally fun but functional. A fast paced gameplay can be made with different mechanics, many have proposed different variations of StM who keep part of that gameplay without all the hassles due to the extreme reward needed for the extreme risk. I'm not talking about someone in particular here, no offense to anybody intended.

[Hodag]

I despise it. I don't play often, so I'm not seeing these fights a whole lot. It's so boom or bust depending on what happens during a fight. I'm also not hitting 3rd VoiT very often, so that hurts even more. I'm very close to just going with Legacy.