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!