The great glyph famine: a call to arms

That rumbling noise you hear is my indignation rising to boiling point. Look away now if you hate to see a grown man collapse in a raging, impotent tantrum.

So with warnings duly noted, let's cut to the nub. I'm back on glyphs again.

Did you see the list of glyphs that came with the patch notes? Huge list of new and changing glyphs for most classes. We've got a shorter cooldown for fear ward, a shorter cooldown for fade, a two-second increase to psychic scream and a 50% increase to mind control.

Enough with the cheering already, these are not good. These are silly, insulting, novelty glyphs. If glyphs were hats, these would be the ones with fake boobs on the peak or piled high with plastic fruit. These are the glyphs you would wake up wearing after your stag do. They are the Norbit of glyphs.

The notes also list a glyph of dispersion, but the effect is described as removing snares — which the spell itself was given in the very same patch notes. So this only goes to show how little faith you should taken in early test builds. But what the hell, it fills a paragraph.

The only interesting glyph to die-hard raiding shadow priests is this:

Glyph of mind sear — increases the radius of effect on mind sear by 5 yards.

Finally, a glyph we can take seriously. But not for long mind you, because of the ridiculous mind flay issue. With the need to glyph for extra range, we are effectively gimped to two slots, and the mind sear glyph just isn't good enough to nab one.

Now I have no doubt it is possible to get through raids without the glyph of mind flay. But the only real alternative to date has been the glyph of shadow word: death, which provides a very small dps boost in return for a great deal of inconvenience. There are many things in Naxx you need to out-range and many things to target at a distance, and having the key spells in your rotation require different positioning is at best a headache for you, and at worst a headache for your healers. If you can live without it I applaud you, but that would be missing the point.

Mind flay should be 30 yards baseline. It should not require a glyph. That Blizzard chooses to avoid this problem by throwing a glyph at it is insulting and frustrating.

So this is my Captain Picard moment. The line must be drawn here! I will battle and rail and grumble and spit and make a general nuisance of myself until Blizzard finally recognises the insanity of this situation and gives us a standard range.

Even if that means removing the snare because, let's face it, this is not why we use mind flay. What if, with a baseline 30 yard range, the glyph of mind flay reduced the target's movement speed but also reduced the spell's range? There, you see! A little creative thinking and I've already fixed the damn glyph!

Wake up! Deal with this now please before my blood pressure requires medication.

And while you're at it, please stop with the joke glyphs and give us something decent for that third slot. Where is our glyph of mind blast? Where is our glyph of shadow word: pain (I mean the real glyph, you know, one that actually affects the spell...)? What about vampiric touch, devouring plague, even vampiric embrace?

I want choices and I want variety and I want them in 3.1. So consider the gauntlet duly dropped. And I beg and plead of all my readers to champion this noble cause in your own indomitable ways. Go forth and harangue till we get what we want. (Isn't that how it works?) Then I can stop qqing and start writing interesting posts about all our wonderful glyph options. And I won't have to worry about my blood pressure any more.