If Spriest was to be given real aoe, what it would be?

[Deleted]

Cascade was one of the reasons why I finally decided to swap to priest after many years of having thought about it.

[Sxq]

Cascade was good, and exactly what I'd like to see return to shadow (without having to sacrifice a core talent to take it)

[Yvaelle]

Cascade was good, and exactly what I'd like to see return to shadow (without having to sacrifice a core talent to take it)

They should remove Mind Sear and just give us Shadow Crash baseline, and then give us Cascade as a talent that replaces Crash

That, or call it like Prayer of Malice, and let it ping back/forth between mobs when we damage them, like Prayer of Mending, but Malice-y-er.

[Baelic]

They should remove Mind Sear and just give us Shadow Crash baseline, and then give us Cascade as a talent that replaces Crash

That, or call it like Prayer of Malice, and let it ping back/forth between mobs when we damage them, like Prayer of Mending, but Malice-y-er.

Or just merge the two into something like Shadow Cascade.

[varren]

make Shadow Crash not terrible and baseline

[Kyranna]

Was it during Cataclysm that Mind Sear didn't suck?

[pyrofull]

end of wrath

[Spicymemer]

The suggestions people are making dont make sense under the current design philosophy.

[Yvaelle]

The suggestions people are making dont make sense under the current design philosophy.

Sounds like a problem with the design philosophy!

[Archpriest]

"What kind of aoe would shadow priest have" is a good question. As much as I liked cascade and the current shadow crash Im not sure they would be the answer. As shadow is designed currently burst damage is not really what we do and both cascade and shadow crash would fall under "burst damage" I feel and perhaps not work well with the rest of the kit.

Is there instead a way to make surstained aoe, that fits shadows kit and is interesting? Well there properly is but finding it can be tricky. Old Mind Sear ticked some of the boxes - surstained damage that worked great as an insanity generator - but it was kinda boring. New Mind Sear is the same... but clunky to use and thus worse. Surely something better can be designed? Then there is also the whole debate on what the specs "niche" should be... if our aoe becomes more interesting and/or complicated, surely there should be a payoff in damage?...

I personally like the idea of some kind "black hole" aoe ability that consumes your Void Bolt when they fly by, causing the hole to damage nearby enemies for some % of the voidbolts damage, perhaps 30%? By tying it to voidbolt it would make Voidform an important part of the aoe rotation and since frequency of voidbolts ramp up the longer you are in voidform it would fit the playstyle of "stay in voidform as long as possible for max damage". But... how would the ability be cast? Ground targeted? That would pose it's own host of problems. Would the black hole follow a target we cast it on? Would be cool if you could cast it on friendly targets like the old Mind Sear.
...
Man I dunno. Glad Im not a game designer.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Cthulhu-inspired insanity aura.

[MisterBigglez]

Make shadow crash baseline, replace talent with reduced cd on shadow crash and enemies hit apply pain and touch.

[Felfuhrer]

Shadow crash baseline for some burst aoe. Replaced with Psychic Link form the honor talents and would synergize greatly with the misery talent. For fantasy reasons, I enjoy the thought of linking your targets minds together and just blasting them all. Psychic Link ftw

[Cracked]

Was it during Cataclysm that Mind Sear didn't suck?

It wasn't fully terrible, but multidotting was still the way to go. Thing is, if you needed aoe during Cata, it didn't mean deleting something in 4 seconds, so multidotting was actually pretty good, it was when I enjoyed shadow the most throughout all types of content.

And Cascade was really nice too. Even Halo, as it had an additional layer of skill to do max dps with proper positioning.

It's not about the class design, it's about the game design as well.

[Yvaelle]

Was it during Cataclysm that Mind Sear didn't suck?

Yea we had Shadow Orbs at the time (a buff not a resource) and casting Devouring Plague(or Mind Blast? I forget) empowered all our shadow damage for a short time afterwards - increased by our mastery. So if you had high mastery and waited until you had 3 orbs before a burst phase, expended your shadow orbs, then used it on Mind Sear - Mind Sear could do some serious damage in the start of Cataclysm.

I think it was slime AOE on Maloriak (Blackwing Descent), where I was actually pretty consistently top burst AOE damage in our raid, using Mind Sear. What a time to be alive ^.^

I can't remember exactly how it worked, it involved gaming some procs to ensure it all worked out - but Shadow could burst AOE once upon a time.

Cataclysm remains probably my favorite Shadow design of any expansion, even after I feel like they nerfed Mind Sear during BWD and just made us a multidot or single target spec depending on talents and item sets (but we could do both well, given the right talents+items).

[benjaminandjen]

Just bumping this thread, praying Blizzard will see. It's so awkward to be without aoe. Please Blizzard help!!!

[TyrannicalPuppy]

Giving Mind Sear back and having it do actual significant damage. Maybe have it spread your DoTs to all targets in range just in case you stumble with multidotting. Make Shadow Crash baseline. Cascade, as others have suggested.

[Syenite]

Yea we had Shadow Orbs at the time (a buff not a resource) and casting Devouring Plague(or Mind Blast? I forget) empowered all our shadow damage for a short time afterwards - increased by our mastery. So if you had high mastery and waited until you had 3 orbs before a burst phase, expended your shadow orbs, then used it on Mind Sear - Mind Sear could do some serious damage in the start of Cataclysm.

I think it was slime AOE on Maloriak (Blackwing Descent), where I was actually pretty consistently top burst AOE damage in our raid, using Mind Sear. What a time to be alive ^.^

I can't remember exactly how it worked, it involved gaming some procs to ensure it all worked out - but Shadow could burst AOE once upon a time.


Cataclysm remains probably my favorite Shadow design of any expansion, even after I feel like they nerfed Mind Sear during BWD and just made us a multidot or single target spec depending on talents and item sets (but we could do both well, given the right talents+items).

Orbs in cataclysm buffed the damage of mindblast- which on its own did horrible damage (with 3 orbs it was arguably the hardest hitting spell in the game. For 15 seconds after casting a buffed mindblast your mastery was active (buffing all damage over time by. %)

Devouring plaque in cata a dot with upfront damage and no cooldown. It had a 1 target cap and was removed from your previous target if re-applied somewhere else. Keep in mind that mindflay at the time was refreshing pain. So the number of dots you had to juggle wasn't any higher.

With regards to early mindsear. In cata all aoe was obliterated early on, only few classes had noticeable aoe damage. Frost dk, hunter and boomkin.

Most classes received a 300% aoe buff soon after The first tier started.

[Nyel]

I just hope for another SP redesign in the upcoming expansion. It's laughable that SP is stuck with no AoE (or abysmal AoE) at all, I really don't get it. Who thought this design would be desirable or okay? It's horrible. Mind Sear as a skill was horrible at well but what we have now is like the worst iteration of SP AoE ever since... I don't know, they first introduced Mind Sear.

[tikcol]

hentai tentacles