Where Is My Mind?

Perhaps one of the least well known Priest spells to date is Mind Control.  Its obscurity is understandable, as it gets pulled out from the Priest’s bag of tricks less frequently than other choice tools.  However since Naxx’s resurrection and retooling in WotLK, Priests of every spec are being called on to exercise this rarely used skill more and more.

How does Mind Control Work?

To put it simply, the spell is a 3 second cast on a humanoid target with a 20 yard range.  Once cast, the player takes control of the target for up to 1 minute.
Whether or not the spell succeeds on the first cast is determined by the target’s level compared to the caster, and the caster’s chance to hit.  Untalented at level 80, a caster will need 6% hit to cap for a level 82 mob and 17% to cap for a level 73 mob.  All end game raid bosses are considered level 83, but since you can’t MC a boss, this is a moot point.

While the spell is in effect, there is a very real possibility of the target breaking free earlier than the 1 minute period suggested on the tooltip.  A resistance check continues to tick which calculates your hit rating and the target’s resistance levels.    There is currently no definitive data available on how often this check occurs, but it is generally thought to be between every 3-6 seconds.

When mind controlling, you will lose control of your target if you run them too far away from your character’s body.  MC target distance factors into the spell’s steady resistance check, so the general consensus is that there is a soft cap on the range at 20 yards.  Moving the target farther away than this increases the likelihood that the spell will break, and there is also a hard cap of 30 yards where the spell will break no matter what.

Use in Northrend

In WotLK, Mind Control most commonly comes up when talking about Razuvious and occasionally Faerlina in 25 man Naxx.  The most common problems people have with these encounters are early MC breaks.  As stated above, the usual culprits are range or low hit rating.  If your priests have a minimum of 158 hit rating with no talents and are not running mobs out of range, then in theory you should be fine.  If those conditions are met but you are still having issues, then there may be a bug related to this spell or specific encounter.  A lot of forum posts regarding this subject cite possible reasons for this phenomenon; the most common are listed below:

• Death Knights specced into Frost Aura are causing the MCs to fail resist checks early.
• Shadow resist buffs on the casting priest are bugged to share with the MC target, causing resist checks to fail early.
• Shaman tremor totems are causing the MC to cancel early.

These issues are all speculative, and the only blue response from blizzard regarding any of them is an acknowledgement of the DK/frost aura problem from back in beta testing.  It’s been difficult to gather any definitive metrics on MC problems with Razuvious specifically, since it appears to be a common occurrence to have terrible luck with breaks one night, only to return the next day and have no problems whatsoever.   Part of these anecdotes may simply be the result of Priests inexperienced with Mind Control looking for a scapegoat, varying levels of hit rating, undocumented bugs, or a confluence of several of these events.

PvE concerns aside let’s not forget that it’s also fun to MC players off the summoning stone platform outside Naxx, so if you find yourself getting frustrated with this specific problem, you can always relieve a little tension when zoning back in.

For further reading, please visit the following links:

Elitist Jerks General Priest Thread – Discussion on Razivious breaks, pgs. 6-16

Galadria’s Corner – Review of MC spell

Misery – A shadow priest blog

Plus Heals – Discussion on MC hit cap

Dwarf Priest – A review of Priest CC spells