Is Disc broken?

[Acidz]

Man when I read some of the ppls statements of how easy they do mythics, undergeared and never go oom or never have problems I kinda can't believe it.

Those are people who play in an experienced guild or friends group and are basically being carried by the dps & tank. Ofc, its a hell of a lot easier then. The reality is though most people are not that privileged and have to cope in a suboptimal environment.

[Helelos]

Helya is the only fight I've ever went oom on, but she takes forever and has constant damage.

[Dejablue]

Is Disc broken?

It's complicated...

[Deleted]

Man when I read some of the ppls statements of how easy they do mythics, undergeared and never go oom or never have problems I kinda can't believe it.

I never said it was easy. Actually you have to work quite hard even in HC's; you cannot do the classic AFK-brain Flash Heal spam, finish Hc and queue again.

All the Mythics I did except one were with randoms, and until now I didn't go OOM. Maybe if you go with guildmates "rush style", you can have mana problems. But tbh, most of the times, when the bosses are down, I feel I could have spent more mana. Honestly, and this is maybe my bad, but If I need to use all my mana with SM spam because I cannot keep the dudes up with other spells, the party is already dead; I mean, when I wipe is usually because I fucked up (most of the times is this), people get comboed or I need to spot heal while the party and tank are tanking a lot of high/unpredictable dmg. Also the bosses with Inmune/Submerge mechanics are fucking annoying, because you rely entirely on SM spam, wich is shit and leave you with no mana. SO, in those situations I cannot go OOM because probably we are going to wipe.

The 2 main problems I have with disc are:

- You don't have time to do all you are supossed to do when the scenario is too stressful.
- Too slow bringing the party from 20-30% to 80%+ with atonement without CDs.

This problems shouldn't be problems in a raid, where there is more healers. Imagine we could bring up 9-12 dudes superfast with no CD's, that would be broken.

Oh! Well... also mobility isn't our strongest point.

All in all, I feel pretty confident with the spec, even tho for the moment other healers may be stronger. Let's see when the raid comes, I think we can do a decent job.

Edit: A final note; Use atonement heal and weave SM's when you think you need to do that, don't spam SM and weave atonement heal.

[Deleted]

Doing mythics now is perfectly doable, even with pugs. Especially now people have geared up quite nicely after their first round of mythic dungeon gear, it should not be a problem to get your loot out of the mythic dungeons.
The problem to me however is the reliance on shadowmend spam. If you outgear the content, you can rely on your atonement healing for alot. But the first few mythics and later on when Mythic+ comes around, we'll have to resort to mainly spamming only shadowmend again. Even though when I shadowmend spam, about 20% of my healing still comes from atonement from random SW:P's and the occasional penance. However in challenging content the only time you will really be able to rely on any atonement healing is when you've spammed the entire group with shadowmends to get them healthy again after which you can do some atonement healing to top em off since they all have atonement by now. This still leaves shadowmend spam at the core of our healing kit and there is more or less no alternative to it. Again, it works, but it's not what we would want out of a spec with the potential depth that Discipline has. Atonement is simply not good enough to be the primary method with which we heal dungeons, but rather a little cherry on top of the main way of healing 5 mans, which is spamming shadowmend until our fingertips bleed.

Discipline is simply balanced and designed around raiding. Like someone mentioned earlier, if you can top people with atonement off with 1 Penance+Light's wrath rotation, it would be much too powerful in raids. This does mean atonement will never be powerful enough to take the spotlight in healing challenging dungeon content, unless they do some really unorthodox balancing (i.e. different atonement values in 5 mans and raids). My solution to the 5 man problem, without making Disc too OP in a raiding environment would be to reduce the healing percentage from our damage per atonement we have running. Fx. We keep our full healing value up to three targets and any atonement after that reduces the overal healing we generate from our damage. This would discourage mindless atonement spread (and overhealing) and give atonement in 5man content a potential to be increased, while keeping atonement in a raiding environment in check.

[Deleted]

Those are people who play in an experienced guild or friends group and are basically being carried by the dps & tank. Ofc, its a hell of a lot easier then. The reality is though most people are not that privileged and have to cope in a suboptimal environment.

Yep, to contrast that you have to be a bit more geared to sustain a mythic with a pug! But it's doable

[Goshko]

Edit: A final note; Use atonement heal and weave SM's when you think you need to do that, don't spam SM and weave atonement heal.

Are we still talking about mythic? Because I also did all mythics (all but 2 with pugs) and it's equal parts SM spam and praying the dps move out of the bad because you can do fuck all if they don't.

Unless your group overgears the content you're doing by a significant margin Shadow Mend is your main source of healing.

[Vyuvarax]

I created a thread about this but figured I'd copy it here:

I've seen a lot of complaining about discipline priests and thought I'd share my experience as someone healing with discipline in mythic 5 mans.

First, disc is really good as long as you understand a few key things about the spec. You must have the following talents without exception: Castigaton, Twist of Fate, and Grace. I also strongly recommend Mindbender though it is not necessary.

Next, you need to understand that disc is a spot heal spec, meaning you will almost never cast Power Word: Radiance. I only use this ability if I need to apply Atonement to three targets and need to shave 1 second off application for some reason. So almost never.

Therefore, you should almost always be applying Atonement to targets individually, with targets with damage getting Power Word: Shield or Shadow Mend, and targets with little or no damage receiving Plea. Once you have Atonement on your group or at least the members who need healing, you cast Penance. If your group still needs healing and Atonement is still up you can cast Smite, Light's Wrath, or use Mindbender for strong sustained group healing.

Try to keep Shadow Word: Pain on as many targets as possible but do not go out of your way to apply to every target and do not dot if you should be healing.

You do these things and practice, then you can heal any mythic with a disc priest pretty easily.

[Deleted]

...and then you enter high mobile dungeons like Eye of Azshara and you do what? I find Disc completely unreliable if I can't stand still and spam. Would really know how you deal with it because now I'm on the edge of rerolling really. If you can't spam mends, you just watch everyone die...

[Deleted]

...and then you enter high mobile dungeons like Eye of Azshara and you do what? I find Disc completely unreliable if I can't stand still and spam. Would really know how you deal with it because now I'm on the edge of rerolling really. If you can't spam mends, you just watch everyone die...

You need to see this coming and have atonement prepared on the group so your on-the-move penance keeps the group alive long enough for you to go back to Shadowmend spamming. When you get caught with your pants down or simply didnt get the chance to, you can pop rapture to spam the group with shields on the move.

[Djriff]

Well yes, that's kind of the problem and the entire reason for this thread. Nobody wants to believe they aren't good at something or they are doing something wrong and need to improve. It's far easier to blame the spec and write off everyone that says otherwise as being liars than it is to blame yourself and take steps to improve.

To be fair there are some parts of NL that left me a little woozy as disc. The first boss has some really bad AoE that can absolutely truck the group and I've even heard my guild druid (who is phenomenal) complain about it. Granted we were ~820 at the time so undergeared, but it was still kind of scary.

There have been several occasions that even when I'm on the ball and have atonements out and everything is setup that I just barely keep up. Also I feel SM is a bit weak on tanks, however some DPS it's hilarious 1 SM to full from 50%, 4 SM from 50% to 75% on some tanks.

I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's not exactly easy for your average casual player to do, in a PuG or not.

[Goshko]

First, disc is really good as long as you understand a few key things about the spec.

Just not as good as you know ... other healers. And I understand all those things, disc is actually very simple, but no matter how much you sugarcoat it, currently discipline is the worst 5 man healer. Doesn't mean you can't do mythics, you can (and yes they are very easy when you overgear them). It does mean you won't do as high M+ as other healers though.

[Totaltotemic]

To be fair there are some parts of NL that left me a little woozy as disc. The first boss has some really bad AoE that can absolutely truck the group and I've even heard my guild druid (who is phenomenal) complain about it. Granted we were ~820 at the time so undergeared, but it was still kind of scary.

There have been several occasions that even when I'm on the ball and have atonements out and everything is setup that I just barely keep up. Also I feel SM is a bit weak on tanks, however some DPS it's hilarious 1 SM to full from 50%, 4 SM from 50% to 75% on some tanks.

I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's not exactly easy for your average casual player to do, in a PuG or not.

Yeah, that's called not doing mechanics properly. The AoE does almost zero damage if you focus the adds down because its damage is based on the total remaining health of all of the Skitterers. That literally has nothing to do with Disc and everything to do with being the first week of the expansion where people don't actually know the fights and how their mechanics work.

[Kilee25]

I recall reading or listening to an interview from Blizzard saying that healing in wod was too punishing to "average" guilds because the better your team was, the less healing you needed, which in turn meant you could bring more dps.

I feel like what I am reading in many of the replies in this thread is a "hyper-charged" version of this scenario. It sounds to me like disc does pretty good when you are in "awesome" groups, but it quickly goes downhill the worse the group is, or the harder the dungeon is, or the worse the disc player is...

[Goshko]

I feel like what I am reading in many of the replies in this thread is a "hyper-charged" version of this scenario. It sounds to me like disc does pretty good when you are in "awesome" groups, but it quickly goes downhill the worse the group is, or the harder the dungeon is, or the worse the disc player is...

Yes you're reading it right. Discipline is an amazing healer in groups that don't need healing. That's not a joke.

[Helelos]

He meant Disc is better when your group is less bad. A resto shaman or druid have a slightly easier time carrying scrubs in pugs

[pseudoJ]

After reading all these threads for a while now, I find the lack of understanding among local "pro discipline priests" mind boggling. Sure discipline is fine, as long as everything goes smoothly, people perform their duties, do have adequate gear... I believe that almost nobody is complaining about disc's performance when the bigger part of these aspects is fulfilled.

The thing which I feel is really luckluster for discipline is when there are people doing mistakes, when my play is not 100% optimal, etc... There are fights which feel kinda impossible to heal when something goes to shit... in contrast when I am in holy, I can often save the situation / compensate for some sub-optimal play by the shear power of brute-force healing.

EDIT: now I am not saying that you should be able to outheal stupidity... but you should be able to make the consequences less sever (which I would say you currently can do way less as discipline priest compared to other healers).

[Totaltotemic]

After reading all these threads for a while now, I find the lack of understanding among local "pro discipline priests" mind boggling. Sure discipline is fine, as long as everything goes smoothly, people perform their duties, do have adequate gear... I believe that almost nobody is complaining about disc's performance when the bigger part of these aspects is fulfilled.

The thing which I feel is really luckluster for discipline is when there are people doing mistakes, when my play is not 100% optimal, etc... There are fights which feel kinda impossible to heal when something goes to shit... in contrast when I am in holy, I can often save the situation / compensate for some sub-optimal play by the shear power of brute-force healing.

EDIT: now I am not saying that you should be able to outheal stupidity... but you should be able to make the consequences less sever (which I would say you currently can do way less as discipline priest compared to other healers).

Then don't play Disc if you are bad or are playing with bad players? I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept. Disc doesn't have to be the most OP thing in the game that is able to force you into success no matter how bad your circumstances are. If what you are looking for is a spec where you can just mash a couple of buttons constantly and always keep everyone alive in any random pug no matter what, go roll the flavor of the month (Druid, currently).

The spec is intentionally designed to appeal to players looking for a challenge and something different. If that's not what you are looking for... why are you playing Disc?

[pseudoJ]

Then don't play Disc if you are bad or are playing with bad players? I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept.

With all due respect, this is such an elitist bullshit... By no means do I claim to be good, nor to know the class nowhere near your level. However I would also say that I am not terrible -- discipline obviously can clear mythics and I have done it (for majority of them).

Disc doesn't have to be the most OP thing in the game that is able to force you into success no matter how bad your circumstances are.

Yet another thing.. whenever somebody say that the class is not balanced properly you (and others) start talking about this... Nobody (sane) wants a class to be OP...

If what you are looking for is a spec where you can just mash a couple of buttons constantly and always keep everyone alive in any random pug no matter what, go roll the flavor of the month (Druid, currently).

I don't think people want discipline to have the same raw healing as other classes, however it should be closer than it is now.

The spec is intentionally designed to appeal to players looking for a challenge and something different. If that's not what you are looking for... why are you playing Disc?

And there I was thinking that the difficulty of the class should be in its design and complexity. Not in disallowing it to deal with common scenarios. However I understand that you like the challenge of making it work. And partially do to... It seems to me that just because you like, you totally refuse to be objective in your judgement.

[Deleted]

it works fine, people are just not good enough (the majority) to handle the complexity