Blizzard, it is not the 1st of April yet! Please tell us that this is another of your out of seasons Aprils fools jokes!
I still find it hard to believe what Blizzard is planning to do to SP. I started playing SP with Dragonflight and never had more fun with a spec in my carrer since I started playing WoW back in 2005.
Here is a sumary of what made the spec special/viable and how Blizzard is planning to take away the viability and the FUN of the spec (in no order):
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Flooded rotation: I can see what blizzard means when they tried to address the flooded rotation where you had many choices to do when performing your rotation. For example a SP currently can realistically see themself being stacked on 2-3 stacks of SoD, have 80-100 Insanity, have an instant cast proc of Mind Blast AND have a Mind Devour proc. Blizzard sees this as a problem. I see this as the perfect example of what makes the spec fun to play. It is that now and then a SP sees themself in a situation in which they have to make a choice in which spell is the best to cast if there are multiple options. Once the first spell is cast, the choices reduce and a new choice has to be made etc… The fun part is that it highly depends on the situation which order is the best. In AoE, the order on what to do is different to single target, which is again a different order to focus AoE damage etc… Apparently Blizzard sees this as a problem and is trying to remove those aspects of gameplay to take away these choices, which differenciate a good SP from a great SP. From the 8 classes I have leveled to max level, the SP is the only one in which these choices exists or are as meaningful as they are and as rewarding (!!!) as with SP.
@Blizzard I hope your plan is not to change the spec to have a simple and meaningless rotation. -
Stacking Surge of Darkness stacks to cast instant Mind Spikes was a huge deal to compete in M+. The way it is designed is just perfect. The special thing about the talent is that you could gather them and use them when the time is perfect e.g. when we had to move. I remember when people were not aware of how crucially important the talent was until they tested it. I remember so many people saying “Oh my god, since I talented into SoD, my M+ runs are so much smoother since there is actually something to do while moving”.
@Blizzard I hope you plan is not to make hardcasting Mind Spike an integral part of the rotation. -
Mind Sear. I am not entirely sure what makes Blizzard think it would be a good idea to remove Mind Sear. My assumtion is that Blizzard has a tendency to listen to minorities with very loud voices, i.e. people who were not able to incorporate Mind Sear into their rotation and who were then frustrated that they were either missing out on dps in AoE or having to play an ability that they did not want to play. By removing Mind Sear, you will satisfy the loud 5% of people who are not able to incorporate Mind Sear but you will punish, disappoint and push away from SP the 95% of other people. I hope that the backlash of the silent 95% will make Blizzard rethink their design choice.
@Blizzard I hope your plan is not listening to the bad and unabled people few yet loud people who want every spec to be easy and simple enough for them to play. -
Keeping up your dots past 21 seconds in AoE. In conjunction with tossing away Mind Sear, a new VERY OBVIOUS problem arises, which is that in aoe you have no way of refreshing your dots. This means that after those 21 seconds of dot uptime after Shadow Crash, there are 9 seconds of downtime on the dots unless you actively do something about that. I Only see two options here. Either you have to tab through enemies and repeatedly cast Mind Spike or Mind Flay Insanity on them OR tab through enemies and repeatedly cast Vampiric touch. Both pose the same VERY OBVIOUS problem. I don’t hink I need to mention that this is not fun to do at all.
@Blizzard I hope your plan is not to make SPs having to manually tab through enemies and apply dots to them
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Single target rotation = Multi target rotation? Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I read, it seems like there is not going to be a difference between a single target rotation and a multi target rotation, other than maybe the (atrocious) tab+Vampiric Touch spam 21 seconds in to the fight after the dots roll off. I have played Fury Warrior and I stopped playing it because there is no real difference between single target and multi target.
@Blizzard, I hope you plan is not to make SP to a ranged Fury Warrior.
One last thing I would like to mention is that I kind of doubt that the people who are in charge of those changes actually play SP themself OR that they belong to the bad or unabled people. I just cannot belive otherwise, it just makes no sense.
@Blizzard, please care about Shadow Priests and please make sure you realize why people acutally play Shadow Priests and make sure that you do not change SP in a way that will make many people (like me) have to change the class again. I love SP but I will definetely not like it anymore after the changes.
Thank you