13 August 2009

The whole 30 yards

Luciano pointed out a recent forum discussion about the glyph of mind flay (thank you!) Somebody suggested the glyphed snare was now reducing movement by 50 per cent (instead of the intended 10 per cent), and ghostcrawler responded to clarify.

I'm almost positive that the way it works is the glyph leaves a 10% snare on mind flay today on live (the glyph didn't change in 3.2). The reason is because we thought it might cause a lot of bugs related to whether a target was officially snared or not. A 10% snare isn't particularly useful but it is noticable.

What we're talking about is changing the glyph to not affect the default snare at all. The glyph would just boost range.
It's simply confirmation of what was hinted at in the class Q&A.

So Blizzard is now happy for us to glyph to extend the range of a spell which they previously thought would be overpowered at 30 yards. Yet they apparently think it would still be overpowered with a baseline increase because they continue to refuse to even entertain that option. I don't get it. I mean, it's not like we're loosing dps by glyphing for the range - because WE HAVE NO OTHER DECENT GLYPHS.

Will someone please remind me why mind flay has a 20-yard range because I've been temporarily rendered braindead by the shaman shock boost to 25 yards.

Edit: changed confirmed in the patch notes for 3.2.2, released today: "glyph of mind flay: this glyph no longer reduces the magnitude of the movement reduction on the mind flay victim." Which, in English, means the glyph no longer reduces the snare. Blizz, if you're reading, I'm available for translation services, very reasonable hourly rates...

3 comments:

Cobra said...

Luciano here (btw, you're welcome, Merlot :D). I'm not even going to comment on how stupid it is that MF still has a 20yd range -- that was TBC's design, and so many other things were changed WAY more drastically than a mere 10yd increase in range, so I really don't see why it would be such a problem (hum, guess I ended up commenting anyway...).

What I wanted to say, actually, is that despite what GC is saying, it did seem to me that my glyphed MF now has its 50% back, after 3.2 hit. While doing some dailies, I saw the mobs slow down A LOT more than they used to before when affected by MF. Anyone had the opportunity to confirm (or disprove) it?

Either way, I'd be fine without any snare whatsoever if Blizz would just boost the baseline spell's range to 30yd and gave us a 3rd useful raiding glyph. Hell, make it the other way around: have the glyph reduce the range and add the snare -- it would make for a nice PvP glyph, I believe. No PvE Shadow Priest worth his or her salt would ever worry about the snare, since it doesn't work on bosses anyway.

Off the top of my head, I'd say change the Glyph of Shadow Word: Death to convert that spell into an Execute mechanic for us (e.g. increase damage by 300% -- without increasing the backlash -- and allow it to be used only after the target has less than 30% health), or into a decent cooldown to be blown on burn phases.

Cheers,
Cobra.

Kelist said...

I stumbled onto this from 2fps (Shayzani's blog) and figured I'd throw in my 2 cents to confirm or semi-confirm what Cobra has been experiencing. I don't have any scientific evidence to back it up, but the snare on a glyphed mind flay currently feels like much, much more than a paltry 10%.

Until Blizzard confirms, I can only assume it's one of two things - a bug or my imagination. Either way, I saw the most obvious difference in Ulduar while MFing the charged spheres that big guys in front of the watcher rooms let out. If that's 90%, I can only imagine they would actually go in reverse if it was a full 50%.

I guess we'll have to see what develops.

Cat said...

Don't forget the whole map paladin stun too!

-disclaimer- post may contain slight exageration.