[7.0] Legion Discipline Priest Guide and Discussion

[phyx]

Then use full words instead of abbreviations to try and refer to something that's less common the other use(s).

In what world would serious guilds copy what Heroic guilds do? What? Also, this just derailed everything. My concern still stands. If serious, mythic guilds don't start bringing us in to raids, no one will, no matter what we claim and say. For the very top guilds, everything is about math, and if it doesn't check out, that's it for us.

[PosPosPos]

In what world would serious guilds copy what Heroic guilds do? What? Also, this just derailed everything. My concern still stands. If serious, mythic guilds don't start bringing us in to raids, no one will, no matter what we claim and say. For the very top guilds, everything is about math, and if it doesn't check out, that's it for us.

That's assuming "serious mythic guilds" don't bring disc priests to raid. And a really big assumption at that.

Also which your personal anecdote about having some sub 1000 ranked guild that didn't kill archimonde until extremely late into the expac or worse, only killed it after prepatch wouldn't qualify as.

Try PMing better guilds next time if you wish to appeal to authority.

[Yunzi]

Looking at the numbers, it appears that Plea on the tank for atonement, followed by Smite would be considerably more mana efficient than PWS and Shadowmend on the tank. Of course you might need PWS + Shadowmend/CoW to keep the tank alive, depending on your healer comp, but it's not what I would do if I wanted to conserve mana.

Smite's problem is throughput - it's base 225% SP (boss damage reduction) + 225% SP * Atonement modifier in direct healing to the tank for 1 GCD of time at 1% base mana. If the atonement modifier is a reasonable 0.5 then Smite base heals for 337.5% SP.

Shadow Mend is base 750% SP of healing at the same GCD at 2.8 times the mana cost of Smite.

I don't think a situation is likely where a low throughput sequence (Plea, Smite, Penance, Smite, etc) can be used to heal the tank while simultaneously the rest of the raid isn't taking enough damage to warrant regular atonement healing. This sounds like an issue with too many healers if the raid is so comfortable. The situation I was considering was a damage phase where the tank was taking most of the damage, and a sufficient amount to require medium to high throughput - at that point the low throughput of healing the tank through atonement is a problem.

Lol okay. Sure.

I don't understand what you have against Shadow Mend in this situation - the value of using Clarity of Will in a raid is that we don't have to worry about the overhealing of Shadow Mend - Clarity of Will can't be sniped.

[phyx]

That's assuming "serious mythic guilds" don't bring disc priests to raid. And a really big assumption at that.

Also which your personal anecdote about having some sub 1000 ranked guild that didn't kill archimonde until extremely late into the expac or worse, only killed it after prepatch wouldn't qualify as.

Try PMing better guilds next time if you wish to appeal to authority.

I was definitely under the impression that the general consensus among top guilds is "Disc? Nope." Am I wrong? Because everything so far, including this very topic, points to Disc sitting this one out.

[PosPosPos]

I was definitely under the impression that the general consensus among top guilds is "Disc? Nope." Am I wrong? Because everything so far, including this very topic, points to Disc sitting this one out.

If that is true, you should be able to extensively quote said top raiders in top guilds instead of pulling shit out of nowhere.

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I don't understand what you have against Shadow Mend in this situation - the value of using Clarity of Will in a raid is that we don't have to worry about the overhealing of Shadow Mend - Clarity of Will can't be sniped.

And if you are worried about overhealing, the actual correct answer is to open your mouth on voice and communicate who gets to heal the tanks.

Instead, you are pointlessly arguing over a shitty talent that is pariah for raiding under most circumstances and have no synergy with the rest of the kit. This is also ignoring the fact that it directly competes with Halo, which is so strong in its current iteration.

Even if you pick into Clarity of Will for Iron Maidens style mechanics, you wouldn't and shouldn't touch the spell unless it's for those said mechanics.

[phyx]

Well, beta is usually a pretty good indicator how the raiding environment will look like. Things could change, but I wouldn't hold my breath. And right now, everyone is outhealing us and no one cares about our damage. As I said, I really, really, really hope I am wrong because I love my discs.

Ps. You don't have to be agressive in your replies. It definitely wasn't called for.

[fallenangel-succ]

Yes, if disc's damage is totally disregarded, then it will not be a desired spec. It certainly has the lowest HPS of all healers, and a rather situation raid CD. That's just the design of the spec, and I wouldn't expect it to change much, not for the first raid tier anyway.
Seeing the extents high end raid groups go to to optimize their setups, I don't see how they can possibly ignore the damage though. It's certainly possible disc won't be desired / optimal on some encounters, but it will shine on others that can benefit from the healing->damage tradeoff. Considering priest has a 2nd healing spec, I think it will be expected to be able to play both, and that's also the reason Blizzard will feel they have more headroom to let disc be an outlier.

[Djriff]

I'm just not convinced that evaluating PW: Shield without taking into account the absorb value of the shield is a way to get an accurate idea of whether it's more or less HPM than Plea.

From what totem has said in regards to PW:S it should always be on CD. As for HPM, I think the absorb portion of it makes it more than worth it as you're saving your other healers mana (or yourself if you're in a dungeon).

Really you should look at Plea + Smite or Penance in regards to HPM + GCD's spent.

I was definitely under the impression that the general consensus among top guilds is "Disc? Nope." Am I wrong? Because everything so far, including this very topic, points to Disc sitting this one out.

From everything I've gathered through discussion here and actual game play disc's niche is burst healing. There is at least one fight I will definitely prefer disc to holy on (Ursoc), outside of that, we'll see how things go.

[Pearl1717]

Well, beta is usually a pretty good indicator how the raiding environment will look like. Things could change, but I wouldn't hold my breath. And right now, everyone is outhealing us and no one cares about our damage. As I said, I really, really, really hope I am wrong because I love my discs.

Ps. You don't have to be agressive in your replies. It definitely wasn't called for.

People also love to only compare the average hps of healers, in which case yes, disc is the lowest. But disc provides incredible burst healing on a relatively short CD (around 1 minute). Our artifact ability alone is the strongest raid cd in the game on a 1.5 min CD. So yes, outside these burst windows we do relatively low healing, but we can provide some insane hps when its needed (and that's what really matters). The problem lies with RL's who cant accurately judge the effectiveness of healers, and only go by what the meters explicitly say. And anyone who cannot grasp the fact that we have insane burst healing, and do decent damage, and does not realize the potential in that is a moron and should not be RL.

There will definitely be fights that disc shines on, and there will be fights that disc will not. But that is the case for all classes.

[Totaltotemic]

It certainly has the lowest HPS of all healers, and a rather situation raid CD.

No, see this is a common misconception that both of these things are true as separate facts. The reality is that the only reason Disc appears to do less healing overall even among equal skill levels is because of Barrier not directly providing any healing whatsoever.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...=99&metric=hps

Here's Mythic Archimonde for example. Statistics show that when you account for people being about as good at a spec as they possibly can be (99th percentile), Disc does 15% less HPS than the top spec of Druid right here. What you will find, however, is that every other spec is using a raid cooldown that grants them 10-20% more healing done while Disc uses Barrier. The rest of the time, Disc is not doing less healing at all, we just don't get to push a button and heal the whole raid for 20-40% of their health.

This is similar to some discussions during WoD where people would point to statistics to show that Disc and Paladin were not OP, but they only appeared to be close because neither spec's raid cooldown showed up on healing meters. This is in that exact same vein.

What you're getting with Disc isn't a healer that heals less except in the absolutely strict sense that it is lower on the meters. You're just getting a healer with a pretty bad raid cooldown that doesn't show up on meters and trading that for doing 2-3% of the raid's damage.

This is of course assuming you're healing with people that are on the same skill level as you. If you were being carried by Disc being OP and easy to play in WoD then it will be much worse in your individual raid, but the other side is true that if you were already better than people you heal with than you won't even be doing less healing at all.

[anon5123]

Yeah, Disc has always gotten the short end of the stick, when it comes to cooldowns. I'd at least like Barrier to have a larger radius, as right now, it's pretty useless outside of mechanics where the whole raid is stacked. I often end up just throwing it on melee to use it as a tank cooldown. No other healer has that problem, as their cooldowns are 40 yard heals.

[Yunzi]

And if you are worried about overhealing, the actual correct answer is to open your mouth on voice and communicate who gets to heal the tanks.

Instead, you are pointlessly arguing over a shitty talent that is pariah for raiding under most circumstances and have no synergy with the rest of the kit. This is also ignoring the fact that it directly competes with Halo, which is so strong in its current iteration.

Even if you pick into Clarity of Will for Iron Maidens style mechanics, you wouldn't and shouldn't touch the spell unless it's for those said mechanics.

We're assuming a high tank damage fight or phase where multiple healers are healing the tank - the tank's health yo-yos between high and low and if the Shadow Mend hits at the wrong moment, it will be mostly or entirely overhealing, while CoW in that situation has 0% overhealing. Also, since CoW is an absorb it helps smooth out the health changes of the tank and creates less stress for both the tank and the healers.

I agree with you that there's no other advantages of CoW over Shadow Mend - with the artifact trait Shadow Mend is nearly as strong as CoW for the same mana and 1.67 times less cast time.

[fallenangel-succ]

Except barrier is not fully equivalent to Tranq or DH or AM or Revival or HTT. There are many cases where the raid can't clump up or the damage doesn't pile up in one big burst window (where other raid CDs can help you catch up on a declining raid).
It is interesting to try and figure out how effective barrier is a per-case basis. It should also be pretty trivial for log parsing sites to do.
This is more interesting in the context of Legion, at any rate. Gutted HFC is rather a different beast.

[Sxq]

Someone should make a weakaura/addon (similar to what we had with the leech trinket?) where the effective value of barrier is totalled on the basis of damage prevented. Should be a simple calculation based on damage taken while the barrier buff is present.

It's kind of annoying when you need to make decisions between dps/hps numbers and maximum raid benefit! Would be nice if this kind of stuff was just tracked as healing by default.

[Davryn]

If you're trying to be more mana-efficient during the conservative phase, wouldn't it make sense to cut Penance from your rotation before you stop casting Smites? Unless I'm missing something major, Smite is higher HPM than Penance, especially with fewer atonements.

[Yunzi]

If you're trying to be more mana-efficient during the conservative phase, wouldn't it make sense to cut Penance from your rotation before you stop casting Smites? Unless I'm missing something major, Smite is higher HPM than Penance, especially with fewer atonements.

That's a really good point.

[Krazzorx]

Except barrier is not fully equivalent to Tranq or DH or AM or Revival or HTT. There are many cases where the raid can't clump up or the damage doesn't pile up in one big burst window (where other raid CDs can help you catch up on a declining raid).
It is interesting to try and figure out how effective barrier is a per-case basis. It should also be pretty trivial for log parsing sites to do.
This is more interesting in the context of Legion, at any rate. Gutted HFC is rather a different beast.

I don't think he was comparing raid cds. Just stating that because Disc's cd doesn't appear on meters it makes disc's hps look worse than it is.

[PosPosPos]

We're assuming a high tank damage fight or phase where multiple healers are healing the tank - the tank's health yo-yos between high and low and if the Shadow Mend hits at the wrong moment, it will be mostly or entirely overhealing, while CoW in that situation has 0% overhealing. Also, since CoW is an absorb it helps smooth out the health changes of the tank and creates less stress for both the tank and the healers.

I agree with you that there's no other advantages of CoW over Shadow Mend - with the artifact trait Shadow Mend is nearly as strong as CoW for the same mana and 1.67 times less cast time.

If the tank's health yo-yos, manage externals better, and stick a paladin/druid/shaman on them. Not run a vastly inferior talent for no other reason than to brood over hyper-fringe situations.

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Well, beta is usually a pretty good indicator how the raiding environment will look like. Things could change, but I wouldn't hold my breath. And right now, everyone is outhealing us and no one cares about our damage. As I said, I really, really, really hope I am wrong because I love my discs.

Uh no. Really. Considering how many major balance changes have gone through before disc arrived even in the prepatch state.

Also, stop shifting goalposts, I called you out on your inability to support your claim that it's the consensus of the top raiders that disc is unviable, and you are now deflecting off to representation on beta.

Ps. You don't have to be agressive in your replies. It definitely wasn't called for.

Sorry, if all you do is whine, groan and moan over how disc is unviable in your book, without any supporting evidence whatsoever, it's my right to lambaste you for it.

So far, my impression on Disc's state is this: There are few people here vigorously defending the spec saying it is actually viable for raids - it almost seems they have a hard time of letting go of the spec, and facing the reality that Disc will probably sit the 1st couple of tiers (if not the expansion if they don't fix it) of Mythic progression out. And then the rest of the people (including a boatload of RL's) saying it's utter shit.

The problem here is, in my opinion, that Disc's skill cap is way, way, way higher than that of the other healers, and one does not get enough in return. As much as it pains me to say, my prediction is that all the high skill discs will switch to holy because it holy can just pump out more healing (if the player is equally skilled in Holy), and Disc will sit this one out. Until Blizzard realizes that the spec is broken and fixes it in 8 to 10 months.

Thanks for the answer guys, but I still couldn't shake of the 'vigorously defending' the spec feeling. I really hope I'll eat my words, as I've played Disc for years, and even though they've butchered the spec, I still want to play it. But the general sentiment so far seems to be 'don't bring Disc' and most people probably won't bother convincing everyone that they in fact don't suck all that much.

I'm more interested in what RL's and healing officers from top guilds have to say. So far, it just seems like disc's are convincing themselves that there is a spot for them in mythic progression, at least for the good ones, but on the other hand there's a pretty hefty chunk of top raiders literally saying that disc is, and I quote, "pure garbage". I want to stay disc, and continue progressing to mythic raiding as one, but I don't see that happening without convincing everyone that the spec is actually superb.

Had a couple of interesting conversations with RL's of guild that are not all that highly ranked - >1000. As I expected as soon as the spec was announced - we will definitely be ignored in favor of the Holy spec, except the lucky few disc that will remain raiding in the favorite spec. We are not in the worse position than we were with spamming shields - if they bump up our healing we will again be the OP spec, if they don't, any serious guild (not even that serious) will just copy HC guilds and ignore discs. Sad story.

In what world would serious guilds copy what Heroic guilds do? What? Also, this just derailed everything. My concern still stands. If serious, mythic guilds don't start bringing us in to raids, no one will, no matter what we claim and say. For the very top guilds, everything is about math, and if it doesn't check out, that's it for us.

That's all you do, cherrypick anecdotes(not even good ones), then use those anecdotes to fit into your skewed worldview. You claim to be interested in the consensus of top guilds, but you solicit advice from sub-1000 ranked guilds. Speaks volumes about how ludicrous your idea of what constitutes "top guilds" is.

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Yeah, Disc has always gotten the short end of the stick, when it comes to cooldowns. I'd at least like Barrier to have a larger radius, as right now, it's pretty useless outside of mechanics where the whole raid is stacked. I often end up just throwing it on melee to use it as a tank cooldown. No other healer has that problem, as their cooldowns are 40 yard heals.

Personally? I would rather they just remade barrier into devotion aura.

If disc had to have a throughput cd with the likes of tranq etc, which I don't necessarily agree with, it should just place a half duration atonement on the whole raid that's off the GCD.

[Totaltotemic]

Please stop feeding the nonsensical notion spewed out by some people that Disc is "not viable." It's pretty clearly an ignorant and horribly misinformed statement and anyone that far down the rabbit hole away from reality isn't going to listen to any kind of reason. It's basically just hate speech at this point, and the best way to deal with that is to ignore such cries for attention.

[phyx]

If the tank's health yo-yos, manage externals better, and stick a paladin/druid/shaman on them. Not run a vastly inferior talent for no other reason than to brood over hyper-fringe situations.

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Uh no. Really. Considering how many major balance changes have gone through before disc arrived even in the prepatch state.

Also, stop shifting goalposts, I called you out on your inability to support your claim that it's the consensus of the top raiders that disc is unviable, and you are now deflecting off to representation on beta.



Sorry, if all you do is whine, groan and moan over how disc is unviable in your book, without any supporting evidence whatsoever, it's my right to lambaste you for it.











That's all you do, cherrypick anecdotes(not even good ones), then use those anecdotes to fit into your skewed worldview. You claim to be interested in the consensus of top guilds, but you solicit advice from sub-1000 ranked guilds. Speaks volumes about how ludicrous your idea of what constitutes "top guilds" is.

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Personally? I would rather they just remade barrier into devotion aura.

If disc had to have a throughput cd with the likes of tranq etc, which I don't necessarily agree with, it should just place a half duration atonement on the whole raid that's off the GCD.

You called me out? What? Ok. I see you see yourself as a master debator, which is kind off ironic since you haven't provided not a shred of evidence that discs will be as desirable as any other healer. Mine are at least anecdotal, yours are non existant. You are using a bunch of ad hominems to drive your points home, when in fact, if you look closely enough, you haven't adressed literally any of my concerns. 0. You claim I don't have evidence of my claims? Go to beta and try to argue that disc is superior, not even to any healer, but only to holy. And go look at the logs. Behind every single healer. Before you say 30%-50% Dps, I have yet to see anyone doing that much DPS, as well as anyone caring about our DPS.

And let me spell it out for you since you obviously need that. Top guilds, as in Top 100, are more or less decided on what they want in their healing roster, and the couple of posts I read around wow forums including mmo champs, supports my concern, and no, I definitely won't try to link find and link them here. You obviously have enough free time to do it on your own. I went to top 1000 to prove my point that even those guilds are being picky and just copying what top (again, top 100 so you don't get confused again) guilds do. I hope I cleared that up for you.
@Totaltotemic Do you have some other experince talking to rl and officers? 'Nonsensical, ignorant and horribly misinformed' is kind of a stretch, since Disc is at the bottom of the charts atm. I know Hps is not measurement of one's skill, but we are usually judged by that.
If Discs are currently unreplacable in 4healing Mythic Legion progression than my concerns are indeed ignorant, but I don't think they are. I would be happy to eat every single of my words if the evidence is there.