Mind Spike : Deals Shadowfrost damage and puts a debuff on the target that improves subsequent Mind Spike damage.
The intent of Mind Spike is to fill a niche missing in Shadow DPS, though it may be occasionally useful for healers as well. Mind Spike provides a quick nuke to use in situations where the priest doesn’t have time to set up the normal rotation, such as when adds are dying too fast or you have to swap targets a lot.
Spamming Mind Spike will do about as much damage as casting Mind Flay on a target afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain. The idea behind the debuff is that when you cast Mind Spike, we expect you to cast a lot of them; we don’t intend you to fit it into an already full Shadow rotation.
It also provides Shadow with a spell to cast when locked out of the Shadow school. (School lockouts will no longer affect both schools for multi-school spells.) 1.5-second cast. 30-yard range. No cooldown.
The first Shadow Priest change announced. I know that a lot will change between now and the release of Cataclysm and I really truly hope that it’s the name of this spell. I am willing to pay. Otherwise I’m forever going to be hearing Lord Marrogar saying “stick around!” like some kind of catchy horrifying remix by Mr Voletron.
Also, I don’t think Blizzard took into account that the Shadow Priest abbreviation for Mind Spike “MS” is already taken. Have you ever tried to read an Arcane Mage theory crafting article when 70% of the Arcane spells all abbreviate to “AB”?!
It’s glad that the developers have correctly identified that Shadow Priesting is pretty miserable in instances. Especially when your party brings a truckload of DPS in the form of a Mage or Hunter or Shaman or Paladin or… well you get the picture.
A year ago people would have said “who cares” and that feeling weak in one situation – a dungeon/raid trash – is a fair sacrifice for being so fun to play in other parts of the game. However, if Cataclysm follows the trend set in Wrath of the Lich King we’ll be running the Cataclysm heroics for the entire expansion. And for many players who don’t want to raid, they’ll be spending all their play time in dungeons wondering why their alt Mage still wearing level 80 gear can out-DPS their Shadow Priest.
People don’t really like Blizzard’s solution to the problem here. Partly that’s because Shadow Priests have been promised a new, no cooldown, nuke for Cataclysm. Something that will replace our channeled Mind Flay (with its snare utility) as our go-to spell in Cataclysm. people was really, really, looking forward to replacing the channeled part of our rotation with a direct damage spell that’s not so fussy. No more worry about clipping the spell too soon or being hampered by unpredictable latency. people was worried that Mind Spike will be this new spell. And that we’ll still be Mind Flaying during boss encounters.
People don’t want Shadow Priests, even with our annoyingly long ramp up time, to change into something we’re not: bursty, with front loaded damage and spammy, benefiting from casting one spell over and over again. People feel that Mind Spike will make it easier to play a Shadow Priest without thinking in a dungeon setting. But people don’t think anybody who chooses to play a Shadow Priest should be happy about that.
Perhaps this spell will be the one that makes all the Discipline and Holy Priests out there no longer hate Shadow spec for solo play? If so, they should have called it Mind Smite.