[Legion] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Yunzi]

It does not. It will overwrite itself everytime you cast PWS. A crit PWS share in the light can be replaced by a non-crit one xD

Rapture really sucks. Fights can't ever be designed to require a health buffer since only Discs can provide it, so fights won't ever be designed to require Rapture, and PWS spamming isn't a great way to apply atonements.

If Rapture either reduced or eliminated the mana cost of PWS during it's duration it would be a lot more valuable.

- - - Updated - - -

So to people who have tested disc extensively in beta. What do you think the T100 talent will be most viable come legion? I think Purge will probably be our best bet. Shadow covenant just seems clunky and could cause some problems, maybe as a snap heal when people are almost dead. And Grace just seems like a quality of life and for someone who struggles with the dps to heal mechanic.

Also, What is your position on CoW in legion? Kind of seems like it makes 0 sense to keep CoW in legion as it kind of goes against the new mechanics of the class

The power of Shadow Covenant threatens the viability of the "correct" way to play Disc, through atonement healing. Grace is for dungeons to help with tank healing.

CoW is worse in Legion than in WoD due to Disc's largely reduced mobility. Right now we spam PWS and can move however we like during that, so taking time-out to stand in place for 2 seconds isn't a big deal. We'll have little opportunity to move in Legion raids, so it's questionable to stand there casting a spell for 2 seconds which has such a mild throughput value. Only Power Word: Radiance has the same long cast-time/mobility issue as CoW, but it's far superior on throughput.

Despite the popularity on these forums for Purge the Wicked in Legion raids, we'll have to see once Legion goes live how it compares to Shadow Covenant.

[Melchey]

So to people who have tested disc extensively in beta. What do you think the T100 talent will be most viable come legion? I think Purge will probably be our best bet. Shadow covenant just seems clunky and could cause some problems, maybe as a snap heal when people are almost dead. And Grace just seems like a quality of life and for someone who struggles with the dps to heal mechanic.

Also, What is your position on CoW in legion? Kind of seems like it makes 0 sense to keep CoW in legion as it kind of goes against the new mechanics of the class

Purge is good, grace is good. Grace is more than just QoL or for bad players, it's strong in mythic+ because you need the ST healing. It serves it's purpose. Covenant is weird because it's not bad anymore and could be good but I think most will just stick to Grace/Ptw. CoW on the other hand is super trash because shadowmend is better and you can't abuse the absorb like you could in wod.

Rapture really sucks. Fights can't ever be designed to require a health buffer since only Discs can provide it, so fights won't ever be designed to require Rapture, and PWS spamming isn't a great way to apply atonements.

If Rapture either reduced or eliminated the mana cost of PWS during it's duration it would be a lot more valuable.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything related to the question. Rapture has no impact on whether Share in the Light is good (it's awful) or overriding itself.

That being said, Rapture isn't bad. While there's no design for health buffers (as they don't really exist), rapture is fine for preparing burst, which is basically all PWS does. It's also cheap while also severely less risk of overhealing than any other atonement applicator. The only downside is yes it's worse atonement per cast time than Radiance, but you have other benefits. It's fine.

[ryan11d7]

So you are saying you think we will end up getting forced into shadow covenant and use that alot instead of the actual way to play disc?

[Totaltotemic]

The power of Shadow Covenant threatens the viability of the "correct" way to play Disc, through atonement healing.

No it doesn't... You can never possibly mainly heal through Shadow Covenant because it costs way too much mana to do that. It's an emergency group heal, and that's all.

CoW is worse in Legion than in WoD due to Disc's largely reduced mobility. Right now we spam PWS and can move however we like during that, so taking time-out to stand in place for 2 seconds isn't a big deal. We'll have little opportunity to move in Legion raids, so it's questionable to stand there casting a spell for 2 seconds which has such a mild throughput value. Only Power Word: Radiance has the same long cast-time/mobility issue as CoW, but it's far superior on throughput.

Interesting that you pull out this convoluted explanation that 2.5 second casts can't be used due to some kind of mobility concern when Holy Paladins exist in Legion. The far more simple answer is that Disc no longer has a mastery that excessively boosts CoW more than other spells, and once that is taken away it is simply just a low throughput spell with a high mana cost.

Despite the popularity on these forums for Purge the Wicked in Legion raids, we'll have to see once Legion goes live how it compares to Shadow Covenant.

You mean you will have to see. If you have some sort of reasoning for why you think Shadow Covenant is so good you can go ahead and share it, but any conclusion that it is anything other than an emergency group heal would have to have some seriously original thinking to explain away the high mana cost.

I am getting quite tired of having to clean up after the rampant misinformation being distributed to people actually asking for informed facts.

So you are saying you think we will end up getting forced into shadow covenant and use that alot instead of the actual way to play disc?

There is no logical basis for thinking that, so I would not listen to any such claims. Even if you take Shadow Covenant, the mana isn't available in the game to replace Atonement healing with it.

[Yunzi]

No it doesn't... You can never possibly mainly heal through Shadow Covenant because it costs way too much mana to do that. It's an emergency group heal, and that's all.

You mean you will have to see. If you have some sort of reasoning for why you think Shadow Covenant is so good you can go ahead and share it, but any conclusion that it is anything other than an emergency group heal would have to have some seriously original thinking to explain away the high mana cost.

We've talked about Shadow Covenant before, so this is a repeat of previous information:

Shadow Covenant is 1250% SP (after accounting for the debuff - the initial cast is 2500% SP) at 5% base mana for a 1.5 second (0% haste) cast. Holy Priests' Prayer of Healing is 1000% SP at 4.5% base mana for a 2 second cast (also, Shadow Covenant's range from target is 30 yards - better than PoH's 20 yards). Shadow Covenant's throughput and mana cost are fine and viable for use (at it's current tuning).

If you don't believe you need to pay attention either to what's been previously said on this or tuning changes that could affect Shadow Covenant before (or after) Legion's launch then I can hardly help you.

I am getting quite tired of having to clean up after the rampant misinformation being distributed to people actually asking for informed facts.

There is no logical basis for thinking that, so I would not listen to any such claims. Even if you take Shadow Covenant, the mana isn't available in the game to replace Atonement healing with it.

Wow. Such arrogance. If you're really convinced that Shadow Covenant is so underpowered, then talk to Blizzard about it - they've stated they want it to be a viable Tier 100 choice for raiding.

[Totaltotemic]

Shadow Covenant is 1250% SP (after accounting for the debuff - the initial cast is 2500% SP) at 5% base mana for a 1.5 second (0% haste) cast. Holy Priests' Prayer of Healing is 1000% SP at 4.5% base mana for a 2 second cast (also, Shadow Covenant's range from target is 30 yards - better than PoH's 20 yards). Shadow Covenant's throughput and mana cost are fine and viable for use (at it's current tuning).

Ah the old Yunzi Shuffle, intentionally neglecting information that disagrees with your pre-supposed conclusion so that you can feel that you were right no matter what reality is.

Let's see, what is it this time?

-PoH is affected by Echo of Light, Shadow Covenant is not affected by Disc's mastery
-PoH triggers Serendipity, Shadow Covenant procs nothing
-PoH is not a talent, Shadow Covenant is
-PoH does not replace another spell to have, Shadow Covenant does
-When using PoH frequently, it will have an 18% bonus to its healing via the trait "Power of the Naaru", Shadow Covenant gains no such bonus (aside from the 10% increase traits both spells have)

If PoH was only a 1000% SP heal for 4.5% base mana for a 2 second cast that did not scale with mastery, it would be absolute garbage and no Holy Priest would ever use it. Let's not be dishonest when making comparisons now.

If you don't believe you need to pay attention either to what's been previously said on this or tuning changes that could effect Shadow Covenant before (or after) Legion's launch then I can hardly help you.

Wow. Such arrogance. If you're really convinced that Shadow Covenant is so underpowered, then talk to Blizzard about it - they've stated they want it to be a viable Tier 100 choice for raiding.

I don't need your help because your information is wrong. It is not arrogance to repeatedly stamp out blatant misinformation that is only geared towards appearing correct and not representing reality. Arrogance would be continually asserting that your ill-thought conclusions that are missing most of the relevant information are correct and that people with actual experience playing what you are talking about cannot possibly have a better viewpoint than you, someone with absolutely zero experience with what we are discussing.

For reference, Shadow Covenant is fine as a talented emergency heal when the player feels that it would be needed more frequently than planned setup for raid-wide healing or passive healing increases. That is its purpose, but it in no way "threatens" the way that Disc is designed to be played.

[davesignal]

I would think the fact that you have to resort to spamming Shadow Mend in dungeons threatens the way Disc is designed to be played. Atonement is the reason for the spec, and you can't even use it in dungeons because it flat out does not produce enough healing to keep a tank up.

[Totaltotemic]

I would think the fact that you have to resort to spamming Shadow Mend in dungeons threatens the way Disc is designed to be played. Atonement is the reason for the spec, and you can't even use it in dungeons because it flat out does not produce enough healing to keep a tank up.

I'm not sure what dungeons you do where you can't use Atonement at all, because you fall very far behind on group healing if you don't utilize Penance and SW:P. Dropping Smite from your spell selection when single target damage gets heavy doesn't mean that you're not using Atonement, it just means you're no longer using the single most efficient spell in the kit because it is designed to counter multi-target damage.

Single target healing just gets boring because the talents that make that more versatile and interesting (CoW and The Penitent) are dysfunctional and worse than their competitors and Shadow Mend even when you want heavy single target healing. You're supposed to be able to take these talents, but can't because they're just very bad in general even compared to other spec's single target heals.

[ryan11d7]

How do you guys think we are going to look in legion as a raiding spec? Viable or on the weak side?

[davesignal]

I'm not sure what dungeons you do where you can't use Atonement at all, because you fall very far behind on group healing if you don't utilize Penance and SW:P. Dropping Smite from your spell selection when single target damage gets heavy doesn't mean that you're not using Atonement, it just means you're no longer using the single most efficient spell in the kit because it is designed to counter multi-target damage.

Single target healing just gets boring because the talents that make that more versatile and interesting (CoW and The Penitent) are dysfunctional and worse than their competitors and Shadow Mend even when you want heavy single target healing. You're supposed to be able to take these talents, but can't because they're just very bad in general even compared to other spec's single target heals.

I'm doing heroic dungeons where I have to spam Shadow Mend on the tank non-stop to keep him up basically through 80% of a trash pull or boss fight. When I start spending GCDs spreading around Pleas or channeling a full Penance the tank's HP usually starts to dive real quick. Sometimes I get errant GCDs to throw out a Plea or a PW:S on other people but rarely even enough to keep Penance on CD.

Invariably, the best course of action for keeping everyone alive is to just use my brief free GCDs to throw Shadow Mends on the other party members instead.

The only time this seems to abate and I get to play the actual spec is when the tank is so ridiculously powerful that I don't even need to heal him at all, like well played Blood DKs for example.

[Totaltotemic]

How do you guys think we are going to look in legion as a raiding spec? Viable or on the weak side?

We know now that Disc is intended to be on the below average side of healing output, so assume that is where it will end up regardless of whatever is going on right now (a lot of numbers can change between now and September).

The question you really have to ask is whether that's okay or not, and I think that's a very subjective topic where each person is generally going to have to make up his or her mind about it. The tools are there (raid cooldown, tank cooldown, marginal side benefits in Grip, potential speed boosts, and maybe some absorb cheesing at some point), but we're looking at less overall healing done in exchange for more damage done automatically. Is that something raids want? Maybe.

As shown above though, the idea of maintaining 2 specs that are comparable to someone pouring all of their power into one spec will only leave you ~3% behind everyone else on the 2nd spec (if you take that 1 trait = 0.5% effectiveness increase), so it's definitely possible to switch to Holy if absolutely required or vice versa.

I'm doing heroic dungeons where I have to spam Shadow Mend on the tank non-stop to keep him up basically through 80% of a trash pull or boss fight. When I start spending GCDs spreading around Pleas or channeling a full Penance the tank's HP usually starts to dive real quick. Sometimes I get errant GCDs to throw out a Plea or a PW:S on other people but rarely even enough to keep Penance on CD.

Oh yeah I've been in dungeons like that. That generally has less to do with you and more to do with people not interrupting, stunning, or using mitigation abilities properly. What you're describing is when you have to carry everyone else through the content, which I totally agree gets very boring and frustrating. If it's any consolation, that goes away eventually with enough gear and at some point you won't be doing dungeons with randoms anymore unless you outgear them (as you'll do Mythic+ with your own group) and you can avoid these unfortunate situations where your enjoyment pays the price for no one else playing well.

[ryan11d7]

I am just worried about the "jack of all trades" or "hybrid" theory. You don't excel at one thing, as in we won't be good healers, and we won't be good dps. I can see alot of people thinking it won't be ideal to waste a spot on that.

[Xiaojin]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Here's the numbers on what happens if you decide to try to keep an off-spec weapon up. The colorized columns are how many traits your off-spec weapon would be behind a fully-committed one if you choose to be behind 1 or 2 traits on your main spec weapon.

Thanks for that useful spreadsheet. Just a quick question to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly:

Let's take row 14 (number of traits = 13). I have to interpret it this way: if my main artifact is at level 13 and I choose to put all the Artifact Power I would need to get level 14 into my second artifact, I'd end up with level 4 in my second artifact (column D) which is 10 levels behind (= (13+1)-4) my main artifact if I chose to put all the AP into the main artifact instead, correct?

And columns E and G tell me the same information but when looking at how far my second artifact would go if I put all the AP into it that would bring my first artifact from 13 to 15, right?

- - - Updated - - -

As shown above though, the idea of maintaining 2 specs that are comparable to someone pouring all of their power into one spec will only leave you ~3% behind everyone else on the 2nd spec (if you take that 1 trait = 0.5% effectiveness increase), so it's definitely possible to switch to Holy if absolutely required or vice versa.

You're right, most traits only give a small bonus, but I'm worried that you might feel being behind more than you actually are if you're missing certain traits which only have 1 level (both, golden and non-golden). Or maybe I'm worrying a little bit too much due to the circumstances I'm in (I'm considering to play a disc priest as my first alt and wanted to level the shadow artifact as my second artifact for more flexibility for PUG raids).

[Atharaxie]

Less about numbers and more about gameplay, non beta priest heard about the difficulty of Disc but how is it actually ? Fluid ? Clunky ? Enjoyable ?

Can it be compared to current Raid Disc, current Dungeon Disc, more like a Shadow weaving dots, like Cataclysm WyrmBreaker Disc, like Mop MeastWeave, like a DPS or a Tank, like solving sudokus while unicycling above a fire pit ?

Is there videos of beta priest commenting their gameplay in raid or mythic dungeon ?

[Deleted]

You understood all that by the 5 words sentence "Disc will fill a healer role" that he just typed? Cause that sure as hell doesn't say that disc will do equal healing to all other healers, filling a healer role and performing at the same capacity as other specs are 2 entirely different things.

I understand from that sentence as much as not to trust Slootbags words on the topic. Thats it. I said nothing more. Which is also why I said

"He could have been a little bit clearer on the topic though.",

meaning that I am well aware that this says nothing about the relative performance to other healers, and that I still wish them to make some comitted statement about where we can expect Disc to be.

[Totaltotemic]

Thanks for that useful spreadsheet. Just a quick question to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly:

Let's take row 14 (number of traits = 13). I have to interpret it this way: if my main artifact is at level 13 and I choose to put all the Artifact Power I would need to get level 14 into my second artifact, I'd end up with level 4 in my second artifact (column D) which is 10 levels behind (= (13+1)-4) my main artifact if I chose to put all the AP into the main artifact instead, correct?

And columns E and G tell me the same information but when looking at how far my second artifact would go if I put all the AP into it that would bring my first artifact from 13 to 15, right?

You are reading it correctly. In long form the spreadsheet is saying "I have this many traits, and I could either go one trait further in my weapon or I could instead use all of the power to level up my off-spec weapon. How far would that get me?" with the second colored column being "..what if I invested TWO traits worth of AP?" and the colored columns tell you where your new off spec weapon would be in relation to not just your main if you had not invested, but every other player's main weapon as well.

You're right, most traits only give a small bonus, but I'm worried that you might feel being behind more than you actually are if you're missing certain traits which only have 1 level (both, golden and non-golden). Or maybe I'm worrying a little bit too much due to the circumstances I'm in (I'm considering to play a disc priest as my first alt and wanted to level the shadow artifact as my second artifact for more flexibility for PUG raids).

No you're absolutely correct. I would not advise keeping both weapons at the same level all of the time because as you've said, there are breakpoints where traits are worth far more than the minor ones leading up to them. For example, we can see in row 19 that if you have 18 traits as Disc, you can get 11 traits as Holy.

Disc 18 traits - http://legion.wowhead.com/artifact-c...fwM4ADOBAVQQEA
Holy 11 traits - http://legion.wowhead.com/artifact-c...TSQM0sDNRA1QgE

That's a very good breakpoint and a good time to get your Holy weapon up to par instead of going for that 2% extra Penance damage.

Another is at 21 Disc traits you can go get 18 Holy traits instead of 2 more Disc traits, except if you already used the previous breakpoint it's only one more trait that you fall behind. I believe these to be the two best points to catch up a Holy weapon which will allow your Holy spec to remain raid-viable (if not amazing, it's at least pretty good when Disc is for some reason totally undesirable), just make sure you maintain the 2 Holy and 1 Life relic in your Holy weapon so the actual weapon stats aren't terrible (you can easily get these from Heroic raid mode by this point).

[fallenangel-succ]

Honestly they should make the total artifact points you've accumulated be a property of your character, and allow you to assign these points to whatever spec you pick when you respec. It is after all an extension of the talent system. You shouldn't be perma-penalized for picking the spec they didn't manage to balance. As it stands right now, never before has it been harder to respec your character, vanilla included.

[Totaltotemic]

Less about numbers and more about gameplay, non beta priest heard about the difficulty of Disc but how is it actually ? Fluid ? Clunky ? Enjoyable ?

Can it be compared to current Raid Disc, current Dungeon Disc, more like a Shadow weaving dots, like Cataclysm WyrmBreaker Disc, like Mop MeastWeave, like a DPS or a Tank, like solving sudokus while unicycling above a fire pit ?

Is there videos of beta priest commenting their gameplay in raid or mythic dungeon ?

In raids, it plays like juggling many Beacons of Light on many different targets, constantly applying or re-applying them on the targets that need them while also leaving you enough time to pump out the spells that make them do their healing. Imagine live Mistweaver's 4p set bonus expanded into being the core of an entire spec's healing kit (sorry if you don't have experience playing with that) with the driver of the healing towards those buffs just being damage spells targeted at an enemy instead of non-targeted buttons you just push to do the healing.

The gameplay is in surgically picking out who is going to need the most healing over the next short timeframe and deploying Atonements on those people without compromising your mana or available GCDs to do damage in. It is a constant race against time and mana to balance the damage and healing spells properly and on the right targets that punishes you hard if you screw up that balance.

In dungeons... well.. it doesn't work so well. Balancing mana and time spent applying Atonements kind of goes out the window because you have nearly infinite mana in 5 mans (drinking between pulls) and there's a very hard cap on how many Atonements you can even have out. This leads the free time (which despite some claims there actually is not that much of after DoTs, PW:S, and Penance upkeep) to be largely spent either spamming Smite or spamming Shadow Mend instead of thinking about your Atonement usage.

On the plus side you get to do some fun shenanigans with Dominate Mind, which I think balances out the damage done to the playstyle by the 5 man format because it adds a whole new dimension to the spec that you don't get to see in any other kind of content except solo questing.

If you want to actually see some dungeon gameplay, I have 2 Normal mode runs and 1 Mythic run recorded but the quality isn't very good because this is my first time producing this type of content. I also planned on doing more Mythic runs and might a bit later on, but I kind of ended up overgearing Mythic and it's not very representative of what most players will experience now that I'm at 840 ilvl in beta and Mythics are jokes.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7K...3O8cN2mOXvTdzA

[Noradin]

The nice thing about ToF is that it procs when you need it, so it boils down to uptime. It also affects damage which is nice - I assume no double-dips for atonement, sadly.

The bad thing about ToD is that your claim is not true. Most of the time it procs just after you would have needed it
They should just have it proc on damage again for healers. The reason they reomoced that was boguy anyway.
(They took the triggering on healing from shadows to prevent them from procking it on some group member and have it available for the lusting at the beginning of the figth. Then they decided to be "fair" and take away the triggering on damage from healers which made it useless, since it does not proc on shields either.

[Slootbag]

Guys just popping in a second here to trump any hatred or misinformation or something.

I'm not a disc priest. Never have been. And I've played the spec once in my life. When it was released in early alpha. My apologies if some of you got rubbed the wrong way thinking the info I was putting on my stream was trying to boast that I know about it and that's how it is. Seems to be some miscommunication here.

I've given opinion on disc to people on stream spot based on one thing. My experience with the ones that play around me. Of course there's a huge consideration of skill etc here so when I asked its always "in my experience from the ones I've played with or the ones I've talked to ---" etc.

The recent insights offered maybe didn't make sense to people (so I tried to clarify it the next day) and here as well. This wasn't my nonexistent expert opinion on disc or something. This was literally from the class design dev teams mouth about disc priest. So sigma calling out bullshit isn't true entirely, it was trying to put some perspective on something I may have worded poorly on the spot after a long stream. Because technically what he said is right. My words just went into more detail as to THEIR expectations and design goals with disc at higher levels and what to expect/what is intended. So is disc literally a healing spec etc like what sigma said? Yes that's their intention. But the more details on increasing difficulty (again from them) is what I was trying to express.

Sorry for any misunderstandings!