[Legion] Discipline Priest Discussion

[drtrann]

If it weren't for the mana consideration schism would always be better. I think that how relevant mana costs are at this stage for a spell with a medium cost like schism is very difficult to assess. The cost itself isn't that high, but maintaining high uptime would be somewhat costly. And unlike previous expansions, mana cost will likely remain a consideration throughout legion.

this is my issue with schism.

it adds another thing to manage, it feels like it makes the rotation more hectic, and you can't even use it on CD due to the mana cost so the actual value is iffy to me.

as to our single target healing potential:

what if clarity of will instead was:
instant or 2 second cast , 30 second cooldown
gives a buff that redirected x% of atonement healing to the bearer for 35 seconds.
recasting before 30 seconds cancels the buff.

this would mean you would still need to balance atonement on the group, but you could effectively keep a single target taking massive damage alive. you don't gain any healing, but you can redistribute it to the person who needs it. you also must pick the right target well in advance as you are locked to that target for 30 seconds, which IMO creates an interesting decision.

[PosPosPos]

That's kind of the point, though. Having to maintain a DPS rotation to heal a tank would be more variety than mashing your Shadow Mend key.

Yeah, and look how MoP turned out.

[davesignal]

.. with Discipline ludicrously powerful, yet more varied than it was in WoD?

[Totaltotemic]

this is my issue with schism.

it adds another thing to manage, it feels like it makes the rotation more hectic, and you can't even use it on CD due to the mana cost so the actual value is iffy to me.

I have no actual basis for this, but I suspect that as we put in dozens of attempts on bosses, Schism gets more and more viable because fights get more and more predictable the more you do them. Currently the thing that makes me not use it is that I need to be flexible and react to unexpected things and can't play in full strategist mode. I think that Schism (and Disc power in general) gets better the more familiar you are with your group, the encounter, and your experiences with them.

[Saiyoran]

Luckily, for dungeon content where you effectively have infinity mana, keeping Schism up max uptime is doable and optimal.

Disc's weakness for mythic dungeons is single target burst healing, and the fact that we only have one spell to deal with it and if it's not enough then there's nothing else we can do. To combat this, I've been doing some dungeons with 2 tanks to see how incoming damage feels, and so far we've managed to get triple chests in multiple level 3 dungeons by just yolo pulling entire hallways for fast clear times. Disc's dungeon weakness almost entirely disappears when you have a pair of tanks that can split the damage and are self-sustaining in many situations, and it becomes a lot easier to focus on dps, which makes bosses much faster. I know there will be people that hate this, and it may not remain optimal at higher levels, but for just farming pre-raid gear, running 2 dps 2 tanks 1 disc is extremely powerful, since you can get the dungeons down under 20 minutes for extra loot chests.

[Isheria]

Well good luck farming pre-raid gear in mythic+ dungeons that won't be even available until the raid opens, which is 3 weeks after the expansion launches if schedule remains the same and mythic level 1 has a weekly lockout.

[PosPosPos]

.. with Discipline ludicrously powerful, yet more varied than it was in WoD?

Varied what?

The number of buttons you hit now and in MoP were almost identical.

PWS at the top of the meters by a long shot is not conclusive evidence that your tools were limited or otherwise.

[Deleted]

Is there math posted anywhere on Castigation v. Schism?

yes there is but I abandonded it because there is to much room for misinterpretation. I will release am updated version somewhere in the future.

generally speaking: As long as you find yourself casting smite quite regularly and can manage to cast Schism always before penance without delaying penance, Schism is the better choice. Once you find yourself in one of these two situation:
"oh shit penance is up but I didnt cast Schism before"
"I actually cant afford to spend this GCD for Schism before Penance because I must apply another atonement/must cast a SM on the tank"
you might want to consider to switch to castigation

[longxia]

Disc's weakness for mythic dungeons is single target burst healing, and the fact that we only have one spell to deal with it and if it's not enough then there's nothing else we can do. To combat this, I've been doing some dungeons with 2 tanks to see how incoming damage feels, and so far we've managed to get triple chests in multiple level 3 dungeons by just yolo pulling entire hallways for fast clear times. Disc's dungeon weakness almost entirely disappears when you have a pair of tanks that can split the damage and are self-sustaining in many situations, and it becomes a lot easier to focus on dps, which makes bosses much faster. I know there will be people that hate this, and it may not remain optimal at higher levels, but for just farming pre-raid gear, running 2 dps 2 tanks 1 disc is extremely powerful, since you can get the dungeons down under 20 minutes for extra loot chests.

Thanks for this post, I have been thinking for some time about the potential for non-standard Mythic+ compositions. I had been thinking that Disc + Holy might be good for very heavy damage like Tyrannical 15. But your composition of Disc + double Tanks makes a lot of sense because Atonement will always be on two tanks simultaneously, just from PW:S. So the composition itself is doubling Atonement throughput automatically and without extra cost.

[Totaltotemic]

I know there will be people that hate this, and it may not remain optimal at higher levels, but for just farming pre-raid gear, running 2 dps 2 tanks 1 disc is extremely powerful, since you can get the dungeons down under 20 minutes for extra loot chests.

I just want to clarify here that Keystones won't be available before raids, they will come out at the same time. This will still be a good way to climb levels to get up to where it gets challenging though.

[TirielWoW]

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!

I really don't think anyone is out for your blood. Granted, I only read this thread sporadically, but I doubt anyone is super offended and will print out a picture of you and throw darts at it.

[Saiyoran]

I just want to clarify here that Keystones won't be available before raids, they will come out at the same time. This will still be a good way to climb levels to get up to where it gets challenging though.

Completed three lvl 6 dungeons today with the same double tank setup. The only even remotely challenging part was Bolstering, since it countered our huge AoE pull strategies a bit, but I still don't see a disadvantage to tank stacking anywhere in the next few levels of Mythic. Maybe things will change when we hit lvl 10 and Tyrannical causes boss fights to be simply too long for my mana pool to last, but up to 9 I think this comp is very strong.

I honestly feel like Disc dps in this context is almost too high. I am doing well over half of what the dps are doing in single target situations, due to very little gcd expenditure on healing because of the sturdiness of our group comp. I expect with heroism/pots/flasks this ratio wouldn't fluctuate too much since its mostly burst that matters in Mythic+ until you hit Tyrannical.

I'm really glad Disc is working alright in Mythic+s after how negative the initial impressions people gave were. We ran some level 3s with only 1 tank and they were still pretty easy to do. Our set of CDs is very strong for dungeons, as PS and Barrier are great for tank damage mitigation, Rapture is good for preshielding (or, as I have started using it, single target throughput on the move as we group up mobs before stuns or I need to move while the tank is getting destroyed), and the Bottled Hurricane trinket (basically a melee-range tranquility that's usable about every minute or two) provides huge on-demand throughput without the need for Atonements. PI and Light's Wrath are significant damage cd's that allow me to open upward of 250k dps in a group who's dps only open around 300-400k. We really feel good for these initial levels.

I'll post again with my impressions once we get to Level 10 and have to deal with the big affixes, if anyone's interested. I know a few others have done that level of mythic+ and I'd be really interested to see if you guys are getting a totally different feel from Disc.

EDIT: Also our hidden passive can proc in Mythic Dungeons. Any dungeon above about 17 minutes you can expect a proc of it at the end. I opened over 1M dps on the last boss of BRH today (before the big damage buff phase) due to that, allowing all our dps to save CDs for P2 and skip an extra Dreadlord's Guile phase. I'm not sure if Blizzard is aware that it works in these dungeons, or wants them to be, but for now its pretty insane damage for last boss pushes.

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry for the double post, and I'm sure Total or someone has touched on this before, but

How does Versatility interact with Atonement? I doubt it double-dips, but does it increase damage and increase healing separately, or does it just increase damage and that transfers to atonement? It's not entirely clear which damage increases (artifact rank damage ups/flat damage increase buffs/etc.) are atonement-friendly and which arent.

[Deleted]

Sorry for the double post, and I'm sure Total or someone has touched on this before, but

How does Versatility interact with Atonement? I doubt it double-dips, but does it increase damage and increase healing separately, or does it just increase damage and that transfers to atonement? It's not entirely clear which damage increases (artifact rank damage ups/flat damage increase buffs/etc.) are atonement-friendly and which arent.

Once you realise that Atonement healing is actually not a function of damage done but each damaging spell has two outputs, damage and healing, that occur simultaneously, you realize that versatility can't double dip, and so can't any other buff that increases your damage, except those that directly impact the spellpower coefficient of a spell (Artifact traits).


As in regards to M+: No healer can currently heal M+10 without two tanks. That is not a disc specificum. And some healers can't even heal +8 with a single tank, which Disc clearly can. It's just a little hard of mana, but that is okay since you save time by having additional damage.

[Deleted]

Think its pretty awesome disc was expected to had to be ran with an other healer but shows that 2 tanks will probly be better from what has been writen.

[Noradin]

as to our single target healing potential:

what if clarity of will instead was:
instant or 2 second cast , 30 second cooldown
gives a buff that redirected x% of atonement healing to the bearer for 35 seconds.
recasting before 30 seconds cancels the buff.

Could even transfer that as stacking absorbs and you'd get a very interesting mechanic out of it.

- - - Updated - - -

Varied what?

The number of buttons you hit now and in MoP were almost identical.

PWS at the top of the meters by a long shot is not conclusive evidence that your tools were limited or otherwise.

Varied in what you saw of the scenery, looking at the boss is more fun than looking at health bars and while I wouldn't want to look only at the boss a bit less of the health bars was nice when the content was a joke already, anyway.

[Fragnance]

As in regards to M+: No healer can currently heal M+10 without two tanks. That is not a disc specificum. And some healers can't even heal +8 with a single tank, which Disc clearly can. It's just a little hard of mana, but that is okay since you save time by having additional damage.

Done lvl 11 w Single Tank but thats ok :_)

[davesignal]

I can't help but think the two tanks thing is going to get nerfed, and Blizzard will insist on having the usual 1 tank/1 healer/3 DPS setup somehow

[Pearl1717]

I can't help but think the two tanks thing is going to get nerfed, and Blizzard will insist on having the usual 1 tank/1 healer/3 DPS setup somehow

This was addressed before with current cms and blizzard said they were fine with that set up since it's a very rare thing and doesn't cause any game breaking issues.

[davesignal]

Right, but do you think it's going to be 'very rare' when Mythic+ becomes a legitimate gearing path and the full force of the subscriber base is actively attempting to maximize rewards and minimize effort? The Challenge Mode audience is much smaller than the intended Mythic+ audience.

[Saiyoran]

Right, but do you think it's going to be 'very rare' when Mythic+ becomes a legitimate gearing path and the full force of the subscriber base is actively attempting to maximize rewards and minimize effort? The Challenge Mode audience is much smaller than the intended Mythic+ audience.

I mean, I've been loving the double tank thing, but most groups are still running single tank comps at the same or higher levels. I don't see why they would nerf it when you can accomplish the same without cheesing with any other healer, and probably with disc with better play.