Mind flay, yet again.

[UnholyBlight]

Ok, why is it that our mind flay is 24 yard range, and we need something to make it the "regular" range of our other spells. I wouldn't mind this so much, BUT we lose the 50 percent moving snare.

Um... why? Other classes have long range moves to slow you down, from mages ice bolts, to hunters various shots and traps and warlocks Curse of Exhaustion (not picking on those classes, saying they are over powered or whatever - simply using them as an example) yet our mind flay doesn't get the same treatment?

[Nezoia]

Reason: Arena LOL

Not more else to say.

[UnholyBlight]

Yeah, but mages and others can slow us down.

If it bothers them so, make it the old diminishing returns... first mind flay = 50 percent slower, second 30 percent, next is 10 percent.

Heck even reduce the speed to 30 percent or something...

[lokarN]

Ok lets say you increase the range of mind flay and still keep the slow. Great for priests, but then the other classes would want a priest skill and keep saying "why dont we get the same treament". So mages get psychic scream, warlocks get flash heal, hunters get mind control, rogues get PW:S, warriors get SW, druids get PoM, Paladins get renew, shamans get PI.

I'll cut to the end, when you are done with the game there will only be one class so when you create a char the only thing you chose is your favorite colour.

[UnholyBlight]

Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't for example the frost mages ice bolts slow down the enemies? and has a 30 yard or something range?

[drakath]

Mind flay is also a channeled spell, therefor making it instant to snare. Frostbolt has a cast time. Curse of exhaustion does no damage, and you have to sacrifice utility from another curse. Hunter traps are situational, you have to run through them, and traps also have a cooldown. Conc shot also has cooldown.

Not only that, but mages and hunters have slows because range is essential to them. A mage has little survivability to melee in his face. A hunter can do no damage. Priests however have a recastable shield, and shadowform gives 20% melee mitigation, not to mention extra armor from inner fire.

You can't just isolate individual spells and scream unbalance. You have to evaluate a class as a whole when you compare them. Mind flay is fine as is.

[Luzipher]

Mages have frost nova to get out of melee, they can also blink out and that pwns shield imo.

[UnholyBlight]

Fine then, So nuke MF's snare completely, make it 34yards base. Give us a cast snare like curse of ex.

Also our armor is far worse than warlocks or mages armor, ours has 10 minutes, 20 charges and unlike theirs it can not be dispelled (theirs is how it SHOULD be honestly).

Our shield also aborbs little damage (certainly feels like it) SF stops 15 percent of damage and not 20, and we can't heal while in it, so need to drop out... meaning shifting back in is costly, and worse still our heals are pretty damn weak.

Worse still, our mind flay scales like garbage.

*EDIT* I even forgot to mention, mage armor even slows down attackers somewhat...

[Raptorg]

Mind flay is also a channeled spell, therefor making it instant to snare. Frostbolt has a cast time. Curse of exhaustion does no damage, and you have to sacrifice utility from another curse. Hunter traps are situational, you have to run through them, and traps also have a cooldown. Conc shot also has cooldown.

Not only that, but mages and hunters have slows because range is essential to them. A mage has little survivability to melee in his face. A hunter can do no damage. Priests however have a recastable shield, and shadowform gives 20% melee mitigation, not to mention extra armor from inner fire.

You can't just isolate individual spells and scream unbalance. You have to evaluate a class as a whole when you compare them. Mind flay is fine as is.

20 yard range on mindflay is stupid

period, you cannot say otherwise.. it just is

[Warriorspwnwithhealer]

Mind flay is also a channeled spell, therefor making it instant to snare. Frostbolt has a cast time. Curse of exhaustion does no damage, and you have to sacrifice utility from another curse. Hunter traps are situational, you have to run through them, and traps also have a cooldown. Conc shot also has cooldown.

Not only that, but mages and hunters have slows because range is essential to them. A mage has little survivability to melee in his face. A hunter can do no damage. Priests however have a recastable shield, and shadowform gives 20% melee mitigation, not to mention extra armor from inner fire.

You can't just isolate individual spells and scream unbalance. You have to evaluate a class as a whole when you compare them. Mind flay is fine as is.

1 sec cast pretty much is instant, and btw the mage can just run around and the slow is still on, while the priest has to keep channeling for it to snare, as soon as he stops casting, boom , snare gone

[Utal]

You can channel it through Pillars if you start channeling in LOS.

[katholas]

The only problem with that logic is that mindflay doesn't just have an instant snare effect, it also has something quite a bit more powerful. It has an instant root effect. If a 50% slower target is good a 100% immobile target has to be better right? The only problem is that the root hits the caster, not the target, so while they are moving slower we are standing still with a big target on our forehead.

frostbolt has a 1 second casting time and leaves a debuff that slows after it is cast. CoE is instant cast and leaves a debuff that slows. Hunter slows are all instant fire and forget that leave a debuff (or a persistent AOE slow). frost shock is instant and leaves a debuff. probably missed a ranged snare in there someplace but theres this interesting pattern. They all leave a debuff that continues to effect the target after the spell is done casting/being applied. Mindflay stops snaring the target the instant it stops being channeled. Not only do we have to root ourselves to apply and maintain our slow but we also have to be far closer than any of the above mentioned classes, yeah, it's not fine.

[Warriorspwnwithhealer]

You can channel it through Pillars if you start channeling in LOS.

For an amazing 3 seconds!

[UnholyBlight]

Katholas actually makes an excellent point.

PLUS, in PVE (which honestly I normally play) slowing enemies down really helps during kiting on adds and stuff. I mean come on now, 24 yards is silly.

I wouldn't even mind if 25 yards + = no snare, 24 yards or less = 50 percent snare. ANYTHING.

[Priderage]

Mind Flay has a 20 yard range to stop it from snaring someone 36 yards away until they can get to you. 36 yards while moving at 50% movement speed - in effect you're running a distance of 72 yards to get to the Priest. 22 of those yards you cannot trigger abilities like Intercept, either (Intercept has a 25 yard range).

The Glyph of Mind Flay isn't for arena usage, or PvP usage, if you value the snare at all. Has anyone even thought that perhaps it's entirely, utterly and thoroughly meant to be used for raiding, where you want the distance but couldn't care less about the snare?

[Doomwalker]

Mind flay is also a channeled spell, therefor making it instant to snare. Frostbolt has a cast time. Curse of exhaustion does no damage, and you have to sacrifice utility from another curse. Hunter traps are situational, you have to run through them, and traps also have a cooldown. Conc shot also has cooldown.

Not only that, but mages and hunters have slows because range is essential to them. A mage has little survivability to melee in his face. A hunter can do no damage. Priests however have a recastable shield, and shadowform gives 20% melee mitigation, not to mention extra armor from inner fire.

You can't just isolate individual spells and scream unbalance. You have to evaluate a class as a whole when you compare them. Mind flay is fine as is.

"Mind flay is also a channeled spell, therefor making it instant to snare. Frostbolt has a cast time" Frostbolts snare instant to when the bolt hits, and the snare effect dont go away if the Mage is damaged + the mage can run from the enemy.
"Curse of exhaustion does no damage" And you are not while they are trying to get to you? Do you just cast that curse and watch them? Spriests cant do anything else while casting MF.
"Not only that, but mages and hunters have slows because range is essential to them" And range isnt essential to Spriests?
"A mage has little survivability to melee in his face. A hunter can do no damage" Well, do i even need to comment this? Spriests have NO survability to meele in the face, hunters CAN do damage (read about the Hunterchange some patch ago)
"Priests however have a recastable shield, and shadowform gives 20% melee mitigation, not to mention extra armor from inner fire." mages got a shield to WITH a slow effect, Shadowform have 15% meele migation, extra armour from inner fire, you are joking right?

Mindflay was never fine as it is.

[Kamos]

Katholas actually makes an excellent point.

PLUS, in PVE (which honestly I normally play) slowing enemies down really helps during kiting on adds and stuff. I mean come on now, 24 yards is silly.

I wouldn't even mind if 25 yards + = no snare, 24 yards or less = 50 percent snare. ANYTHING.

I can't recall a single time where i used MF to snare adds, (bar vashj). I sure wouldnt describe it as useful

[katholas]

funny thing is, I'm a raider. I don't honestly give half a crap about PvP in this game at all. BUT that doesn't mean i can't stick up for my PvP shadowpriesting brothers. so it's not fair that melee have to run 60ish yards to get to us? then how fair is it that they have to run... well... as many yards as it takes for the warlock to forget to cast CoEx or for the mage to mess up a frost bolt timing. As long as we are casting mindflay the melee is 100% guaranteed to get to us eventually because we arent running away during the slow period. We are also prevented from using our burst damage capabilities while maintaining our self root.

Personally i don't find the glyph all that exciting, i've gotten quite used to the 24 yard range in raid encounters, sure some are made a little more tricky but none are overly difficult because of it. What i really wanted in exchange for the snare effect was proper scaling but yeah... that didn't happen.

[Sonic018]

Mindflay just prooves why shadow priests are turning in pve as in pvp just the other way around the clock.

In PVE the base dmg of Mind Flay sounds pretty nice at the beginning, the SP's are the best dmgdealers ingame. In the endgame is exactly the other way around.

Same for PVP, in low arena ratings or in battlegrounds, it's really useful, but in finally in the high brackets it's just embarrasing.

Personally I stopped playing Arena and PVP as shadow in TBC, and skilled therefore to discipline, and I doubt this is gonna change in WotLK.

Concerning PVE, I play shadow most of the time, sometimes Healer. Since 2 days, I'm testing some stuff in the Beta. There is a DPS increase. For example our Shadow Word Pain is quite amazing. Also Mindfly is doing more dmg than usual thanks to the new talents, but I doubt that it might be enough to reach the dmg amounts of Hunters Mages Warlocks...

I'll make some tests now trying to calculate the effective DPS increase...

[Raptorg]

what Sonic says is correct

i fought a t6/t6.5 quality geared shadowpriest on my warrior once, and her mindflay ticked for about 500-550 on me

i was like "lol, you trying to tickle me?"

my warlock using s1 gear hits harder with shadowbolt(non crit in affliction spec)

the SP in t6-t6.5
mind flay: 3sec cast is about 1.5k-1.7k cannot crit
my warlock in s1
shadowbolt: 2.5sec cast is about 1.5k-1.6k - has the potential to crit


currently, it honestly doesn't scale well enough, i hope that'll be fixed in WotLK