[Legion] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Djriff]

I do think it's alright if disc can't move past a certain point, unlike all the other classes, you have the option to go holy. Sure your artifact/gear will be a bit different, but that's part of playing the class is swapping specs when need be. The argument could be made that I want to play assassination all the way to mythic +8, which most likely isn't feasible, so I would swap to a spec better suited for it.

[Yunzi]

I do think it's alright if disc can't move past a certain point, unlike all the other classes, you have the option to go holy. Sure your artifact/gear will be a bit different, but that's part of playing the class is swapping specs when need be. The argument could be made that I want to play assassination all the way to mythic +8, which most likely isn't feasible, so I would swap to a spec better suited for it.

That's not what Blizzard has claimed they want for Legion - they want everyone to play the spec that they enjoy. If it ends up being true that Discs have to swap to Holy for a good chunk of Legion content Blizzard will have failed in their design for the spec. Also - of the 36 Legion specs, are ANY other specs in this condition? A player might swap from Arcane to Fire Mage to do 5% more DPS on a certain boss, but except for cutting edge progression that's by no means necessary.

Finally you've got the predictions themselves. Who takes damage? Everyone - can't cover everyone, pick and choose the fragile or the best performers and hope it works out. Some of them? Good luck figuring out who that is ahead of time enough to spend your GCDs setting them up with atonements and timing everything perfectly to heal them back up, for essentially the same amount other healers do by peeking at low health bars and just tossing something on them.

This isn't an entirely fair criticism. All HoTs have this issue - druids using Rejuvenation have to predict how effective it will be, and mostly just apply it to the player with the lowest current health while maintaining it on the active tank. Granted, Disc *feels* a lot different, since Rejuvenation is one GCD while a single atonement GCD results in several more healing spells cast on the player.

[Gorsameth]

The difference between Hots and atonement is that a Hot is fire and forget. Either they make use of the healing or it overheals. Your attention and gcd go to something else.
Atonement requires you to spend GCD and attention in dpsing to heal the person. It is a much more involved action and as a consequence it has a much harsher punishment in lost HPS when you waste it.


I hate to say I told you so but Disc is heading the same direction Monks did during MoP. Both in moving away from being dps healers and by the additional steps required to perform basic healer functions. (Renewing Mist + uplift vs Atonement + dps). I guess atleast atonement doesn't get applied to random raid members ><

[Pearl1717]

I guess atleast atonement doesn't get applied to random raid members ><

At least with MW you could basically blanket the raid in RM. Sure it is somewhat random, but you could easily get 15+ people with TFT back then. Its much harder and costlier to blanket the raid as disc.

[drtrann]

At least with MW you could basically blanket the raid in RM. Sure it is somewhat random, but you could easily get 15+ people with TFT back then. Its much harder and costlier to blanket the raid as disc.

yeah I really feel like the lack of that ability really takes atonement down a peg over MW. I remember feeling powerful in my raid because I could heal when it counted in an interesting way, but also provide meaningful DPS. RM was also significantly easier to manage, RNG of it sucked, but you could reliably spread it across the entire group and reap the benefits of a good setup by being able to top an entire raid. disc gives us a higher skill ability, but I feel like the duration is just barely too short to feel like you really get to utilize it.

in the same number of actions it took to spread RM across the raid, you can maybe get 6 atonements out, and by the time you have 6 atonements out, you are already 50% of the way through your first atonement, so you need to start DPSing or you haven't actually done anything with it, but now you have to stop dpsing so you can reapply atonements. vs RM where applying to 6 targets took 2 GCDs and a wait time where you could make use of your other abilities.

That's not what Blizzard has claimed they want for Legion - they want everyone to play the spec that they enjoy. If it ends up being true that Discs have to swap to Holy for a good chunk of Legion content Blizzard will have failed in their design for the spec. Also - of the 36 Legion specs, are ANY other specs in this condition? A player might swap from Arcane to Fire Mage to do 5% more DPS on a certain boss, but except for cutting edge progression that's by no means necessary.

this guy gets it. this was the expansion to end this kind of mentality. you were suppose to pick one and always be roughly in the same ballpark as the other 2 specs, with holy being extremely strong and disc losing the value of it's added damage the moment actual healing is required, its almost impossible to justify not going holy (even popping all cooldowns and maximizing throughput, it doesn't even get within 100,000 HPS of the other healers, and it's damage is almost entirely lost in the process removing it's one benefit).

[Ryeshot]

Hey guys, first time posting. I absolutely LOVE the new disc playstyle (I'm a dps at heart) and even though I've read through the full 80 pages of this forum, I still have a few things I am curious about.

I did the lfr raid testing for today as disc and got some surprising results. I was able to keep up with a holy pally and holy priest until I went oom relatively quickly. My initial thought of disc was that we are a constant HoT healer, but with the amount of atonements I applied during it, I oomed pretty quick. This makes me wonder, are we just best for tank healing via smite and PW:S and applying atones before important mechanics come out to burst them with a ( Schismed ) penance?

My gear is looking like haste/crit (since my main spec is shadow) and it seemed, at least on paper that you want to get as much haste to reduce gc/ds and get more atonements and reduce the c/d of PW:S, as per a few 10 pages back in this post. However, at the beginning of an expansion is this wise? There aren't that many mana restoring trinkets out right now so our only form of mana conservation is MB and PW:Sol. Should be instead be striving to go more toward other throughput stats, mainly versatility and mastery?

My thought on versatility is that, even though we only get 1% per 400 points, unlike crit it effects both PW:S AND SM, our two highest throughput abilities w/o atonement (SM absorbs are unaffected by crits). I did a little math and, assuming a whole artifact weapon, mastery is the best stat for pure atonement healing (although not unatoned healing like PW:S, SM, and Halo). Although, this difference may not matter so much when our PW:S is as bad as it is right now and atonement should be most of our healing anyways.

I'm hoping more adept disc priests can provide my insight on how they think the new class works, since I'm just a novice.
Thanks!

[croghan]

Wich healer are better than holy ans discipline ?

[Nycros]

Sorry if this has been asked already, but I've been following shadow thread through from page 1...

What is disc's role in 3s? Is there a place as a pseudo DPS for disc, either in a double healer comp or a triple DPS comp with other hybrids?

[Levelfive]

That's not what Blizzard has claimed they want for Legion - they want everyone to play the spec that they enjoy. If it ends up being true that Discs have to swap to Holy for a good chunk of Legion content Blizzard will have failed in their design for the spec. Also - of the 36 Legion specs, are ANY other specs in this condition? A player might swap from Arcane to Fire Mage to do 5% more DPS on a certain boss, but except for cutting edge progression that's by no means necessary.

this guy gets it. this was the expansion to end this kind of mentality. you were suppose to pick one and always be roughly in the same ballpark as the other 2 specs, with holy being extremely strong and disc losing the value of it's added damage the moment actual healing is required, its almost impossible to justify not going holy (even popping all cooldowns and maximizing throughput, it doesn't even get within 100,000 HPS of the other healers, and it's damage is almost entirely lost in the process removing it's one benefit).

They actually pretty much said if you don't like it, go Holy:

Thanks for all the feedback. To revisit something that we touched on back at Blizzcon, but perhaps haven't talked about since then: Discipline is the most complex healer to play in 7.0 by a wide margin, and is possibly the most advanced core rotation of any spec. We know this and are generally okay with it, even though we still want to manage it within reason. It is to some extent inevitable due to the mixture of DPS- and heal-type targeting that Disc has to frequently swap between, something that no other spec asks of you outside of specific talents. Also, Disc is intentionally positioned against Holy, which is one of the more accessible healers in 7.0.

Feedback from all players is still very useful for looking at potential skill-floor issues, but 7.0 Discipline is intended to be something you opt into if you are seeking out the mixed DPS/heal gameplay that it's built around.

[drtrann]

They actually pretty much said if you don't like it, go Holy:

if you don't like it != only viable on 1/4th of the fights.

holy is the fallback in the event disc fails, you wouldn't expect every holy player to HAVE to play disc to keep their raid spot. every disc player WILL have to also play holy (or i guess shadow if they are the 5th healer).

so they failed in that design.

[Levelfive]

if you don't like it != only viable on 1/4th of the fights.

holy is the fallback in the event disc fails, you wouldn't expect every holy player to HAVE to play disc to keep their raid spot. every disc player WILL have to also play holy (or i guess shadow if they are the 5th healer).

so they failed in that design.

You're preaching to the choir.

[Gorsameth]

They actually pretty much said if you don't like it, go Holy:

What blizzard said was that Disc is the most complex healer spec but that is fine because Holy is easy so you can be Holy if Disc is to hard for you.

The second bit says that Disc is for those who want the healing through dps style.

Neither says that a Disc should be ready to spend half or more of their time playing Holy instead.

[Levelfive]

I actually don't think they particularly give a shit at this point WHY you might feel compelled to go holy. If you don't like disc, for whatever reason, they're telling you you have another spec, just like they told holy for years. Which I think is shitty from a design perspective, among other things, but I don't think they care much about that either.

[Franarok]

Hope they quit the insane CD to Dominate Mind. I am ok with not use it on players, but be a healer with a "pet" was very very adictive and fun, as well original and unique

[Deleted]

Hope they quit the insane CD to Dominate Mind. I am ok with not use it on players, but be a healer with a "pet" was very very adictive and fun, as well original and unique

Well they wanted it to feel like a cooldown probably, and not an actual permanent pet, which it clearly shouldn't be since you're dragging this poor sod along for the entire dungeon beating the crap out of all of his dungeon comrades... Still, I don't think DM was the issue for disc, I'm ok with being able to pick one add from several and have it help out until I'm through with it and dps it down with the rest, can help alleviate the pressure from big pulls as well, sort of like a super effective form of CC.

The core issues are application of atonements, healing acquired through them, dependence of single target healing - and what in hell is exactly a discipline priest supposed to be. Too many vague descriptions of 'mix', 'hybrid' and 'complex' and no actual direction of "In a competitive raiding scene, in a pvp scene and finally in a dungeon and more casual scene, you can expect disc priests to fulfill this and that". It's all been kept very vague as if they themselves don't know where this is going to end up, and they just tried to get rid of the discipline's absorbs since it was (justfully so) a pain to deal with, but no real idea what to swap it in as instead.

Or maybe this is all just conjecture and discs are extremely viable given some gear and a specific role of "keep these 6 blokes alive in our raid no matter HWHAT". /shrug.

[Gorsameth]

Increase atonement healing so that it is equal to the single target healing of other specs. Then have it be reduced by a % per active Atonement. Add a cd spell that removed all active atonement and applies a new one to a single target so your not forced to wait out the durations when someone needs a lot of healing asap (like a tank).

Remove Barrier and instead have a spell that applies atonement to the entire raid at a healing % that equals other spec 3min cd's.

You still have the extra gcd's needed to spread atonement but your not forced out of your 'dps to heal' gameplay.

[Overdispersion]

Increase atonement healing so that it is equal to the single target healing of other specs. Then have it be reduced by a % per active Atonement. Add a cd spell that removed all active atonement and applies a new one to a single target so your not forced to wait out the durations when someone needs a lot of healing asap (like a tank).

Remove Barrier and instead have a spell that applies atonement to the entire raid at a healing % that equals other spec 3min cd's.

You still have the extra gcd's needed to spread atonement but your not forced out of your 'dps to heal' gameplay.

Good luck getting those changes. No point in fantasizing about new abilities and drastic changes to mechanics this far into beta.

[Deleted]

They actually pretty much said if you don't like it, go Holy:

ummm, can you link the page where I talked out that, I really cant remember anything about it and there is no blue arrow to take me to the post.

[Overdispersion]

ummm, can you link the page where I talked out that, I really cant remember anything about it and there is no blue arrow to take me to the post.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...237?page=9#172

[Deleted]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...237?page=9#172

hmm, looks like there is a bliz developer with my name!