Quote Originally Posted by eyogar View Post
I think the main idea behind the absorb portion of Smite is to make it more useful for smaller size content (dungeons down to solo) without making it too strong for raid sizes (with higher numbers of Atonement). The absorb amount scales poorly (not at all!) if the enemy is using abilities on a lot of targets unlike the Atonement portion, which you can scale arbitrarily. On the other hand, it gives solo capabilities in PvE to Discipline currently it's almost funny.

Of course, this is useless if we end up spamming Shadow Mend on any higher difficulty small size content in the end...
Right, if it was actually good at healing a low amount of targets then we would use it, but we don't care about an efficient, low healing spell in 5 mans where every 30 seconds you can press a button and start getting 5% of your mana back every second. Smite is basically only used in 5 mans because of the damage when there isn't enough outgoing damage to require Shadow Mend.

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Quote Originally Posted by Deja Thoris View Post
This, in a nutshell is the problem I have with disc. When the shit hits the fan you need to break away from being a "disc priest" (for want of a better expression) and start spamming shadow mend. Now you've started circling the drain. If people continue to take scary damage you can't afford to stop spamming even to throw pleas out, let alone PW:R. I just don't feel like disc has the recovery tools to break that downward spiral to get you back into the playstyle it was designed to be.

Now sure, the easy answer is "don't get into that situation in the first place" but shit happens and when it does Holy has the tools to deal with it. Disc doesn't.
You know Shadow Mend applies Atonement, right? You don't need to stop using Shadow Mend to use Plea... just Shadow Mend your group members instead, and once they all have Atonement, fire off Penance and Mindbender and they are all taken care of. Having to Shadow Mend doesn't mean you're "circling the drain" or that even anything wrong is going on; that's just simply the best way to play in 5 mans.