Bugs I've seen with Mind Flay (aside from the fact that you can interrupt it being pressing a new spell cast button):

1) The first tick takes too long to land. The other two ticks seem to take haste into account better than the first. This effectively increases the channel time of the spell.

2) The last tick usually happens after the spell has finished casting. This usually means we drop ticks even with [nochanneling] macros. It effectively lowers our DPS.

3) The Misery debuff randomly falls off the target (even if the debuff limit isn't reached) and it can take a whole second more than the Shadow Weaving refresh/apply combatlog entry before Mind Flay reapplies the debuff. I'm pretty sure this is what is causing a lot of the SPELL_MISS "misses".

4) There's a lack of combatlog entries for some of the Mind Flay events making it a fair bit harder to determine if something is going wrong.

5) I've occasionally run into the problem with Mind Flay seeming to be "stuck" being unable to cast even though I'm not in the GCD. Lots of "spell is not ready yet", despite not having cast anything. Though it's possible this is caused by constant SPELL_MISS's or resists on the initial cast of Mind Flay and it's lacking in the proper animations or GCD pulses etc.

6) I've seen *Resist* combat log entries on the initial Mind Flay application (as opposed to the Miss sub-type of SPELL_MISS. The mob in question I don't think had any particular +shadow resist so it might have been the level based partial resist thing, but given that Mind Flay isn't a binary spell anymore (each tick can be partially resisted), the partial resist check should probably be removed from the initial cast. Of course it's possible that the purposes of the partial resist check on the initial cast is to see if or not the snare debuff is applied. If that's the case though, it shouldn't effect the calculation to see the damage ticks should happen or not. And I had the Glyph of Mind Flay that removes the snare anyway.



On a slightly different topic: From an AQ40 run the other day I noticed that Emperor Veklor (the caster one) seems to be immune to the Misery debuff. heh.

There's also the fact that turning to face away from your target mid-flay prevents damage from occurring. As far as I know other channeling spells will work regardless of the direction you face after the initial cast.

I believe thats intended, since its no longer a dot spell and is now considered a direct damage spell. The whole crit thing. I dont believe if you turn away from the target AM will keep firing but if it does i call shenanigans.

I bet you it would keep firing but not do any damage. That's what Mind Flay does now. Mind Flay isn't Arcane Missile and they were a bit lazy to try and reuse the code for it.

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I think they reused the code in order to make it crit.

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Exactly. Which is fine, except there is no visual indication as to when each tick should go off. The no channeling thing is a problem as well, but i doubt it was ever realized since mages rarely spammed arcane missiles before 3.0. As for missing at hit cap the problem is if the mob is debuff capped, the mind flay debuff cannot be applied, causing mind flay to miss.

I cannot comment with regard to the random miss issue (I'm not hit capped for PvE content, nor do I believe I'm still hit capped for PvP content any more) but I would like to add my confirmation of the issue of Mind Flay hitting at the end of it's channel rather than at evenly spaced 1 second intervals throughout the channel. I have also been able to test and confirm that it's possible to cancel one of those delayed ticks even though the actual channelling of the spell has elapsed. I'm also utilizing the [nochanneling: Mind Flay] macro.

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There's also the fact that turning to face away from your target mid-flay prevents damage from occurring. As far as I know other channeling spells will work regardless of the direction you face after the initial cast.

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I think this might be fixed in 3.0.3 already.

I'm not 100% sure but while I noticed the problem on live, I wasn't able to replicate it on beta after some very quick testing.

Sorry shadow priests, your in a long line for spell bug fixing. I.E. pyroblast's ignite if casted after gaining a hotstreak and used right after another crit never goes off, dampening our DPS output a fair bit. Its been like that for awhile, unless they fixed it and i havent relised

Only read the first message so I don't know if it's been brought up.
I notice that when I cast mindflay on a rogue using Cloak of Shadows, that when the spell does connect that the mindflay ticks now have their own individual chance to hit. Don't know if the same happens with mages using Arcane Missles, but it's slightly disheartening when I actually do get a mindflay channel going on a rogue using CoS only for all 3 ticks to miss.
Not as big of a deal as the ticks taking too long or falling off the channeling bar (I've noticed it a lot too) but it's still an issue to me when I PvP.
Anyone else notice this and is it working as intended now our Mindflay can crit?

On Beta, MF still does no damage if you are facing away from the target. Dont expect this to get fixed.

MF is still very buggy with the damage intervals, 1st tick happens around the 1.5-2sec mark, 2nd tick happens right before the channel ends, 3rd tick does not register until the cast is over , well after the cast bar has disappeared. In its current state you'll never get credit for the 3rd tick if you cast in a normal fashion.

I haven't seen any issues with misery staying up, but I will say it is kind of annoying when I try to flay and it fails and I dont get a resist or miss or anything on the SCT. It also does seem like the 2nd tick is more towards the 3rd tick rather then comfortably between the 1st and 3rd, but if thats what you intended for my only complaint is the random "failed" mind flay.

Edit: ...and buff dispersion :)

/Sign. I noticed this too after the patch but sometimes felt it was attributed to overall server lag. Then I went back to running Disc.

It turns out that this wasn't the case at all from reading your posts. Our mindflay just doesn't go off at all (even when hit capped) - they're not even resisted and it happens quite frequently. Other times it seems to be ticking after the spell had been channeled.

It really seems like no one is dedicated to really testing Shadow Priests beyond a few beta testers...

im at 17.07% chance to hit with my gear/aura/talents and misery up, and i have been seeing many resists on boss fights. we do not have a moonkin druid that raids with us atm, and the only way i should be seeing resists is if misery falls off, or if there is some unknown thing that is causing my spells to be resisted, when that should not be able to happen it also mainly seems to be on mind flay, as odd as that may sound. either misery is falling off, or mind flay is not being applied due to the debuff limit or something like that.
and my armory has not updated recently apparently. i sit at 127 hit rating, not 122.

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Just as an update...

We rebuilt Mind Flay to make it work under the new system. It's now much more like Arcane Missiles, so the possibility does exist you can clip some of the ticks. It's possible for us to rebuild the spell again, but that will mean changing a lot of talents (which introduces the possibility of bugs) so we need to make sure this is absolutely necessary first.

Can anyone else comment on Misery falling off? It could get overwritten by Improved Faerie Fire and if you're playing with a sloppy Moonkin, it's possible they put the debuff up and then let it fall off.

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Does Blizzard have a cafeteria or bar in its office building?

If they do, they NEED to sell a drink called "The Sloppy Moonkin".

However, on topic... The problem with Mind Flay is I THINK there is a travel time associated to it right now. However, there is no way for a Shadow Priest to see the travel time... maybe modifiy the graphic to show a pulse or something running through the beam?

just a side note about mind flay:
since the last two ticks currently come near the end of the cast, it works really really poorly with the way spell pushback works now. it is possible to sometimes have two out of three ticks cut off.

Can see that Mindflay just waits longer than 1 second from the time it is cast to start dealing damage. So it then tries to get off 3 ticks in the last 2 seconds.

What should happen is Mindflay should produce a damaging tick immediately at the start of the channel and then one tick per second there after. That is currently not what happens.

Anyone using Quartz or other cast bar lag fixes is clipping one or two ticks off the back of their Mind Flay currently. Thus in your 3 second channel you are only getting 2 ticks of damage. Its a 30% dps nerf to the spell.

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Just as an update...

We rebuilt Mind Flay to make it work under the new system. It's now much more like Arcane Missiles, so the possibility does exist you can clip some of the ticks. It's possible for us to rebuild the spell again, but that will mean changing a lot of talents (which introduces the possibility of bugs) so we need to make sure this is absolutely necessary first.

Can anyone else comment on Misery falling off? It could get overwritten by Improved Faerie Fire and if you're playing with a sloppy Moonkin, it's possible they put the debuff up and then let it fall off.

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Not exactly the issue your referring to but there is a related issue between misery and Faerie fire, specificly the feral version. the gist of it is if FFF is applied before misery any subsequent attempts to overwrite FFF get a more powerful effect error. if FFF is applied after misery it can be overwritten. most anoying for feral tanks as they like the threat from FFF. haven't otherwise noticed misery falling off however except when a boomkin applys iFF and we normaly tell them not to do that if the spriest is around.

Mind Flay also get canceled when the target uses a PvP trinket (or when druids shape shift, or various other abilities that remove snares), even when we have the glyph of mind flay. I know this is because of the snare effect, but with the glyph, there is no snare, so the spell should not be canceled, right?