The Disc Priest playstyle debate

[Popokolara]

I think you're disagreeing with something I never said. You asked me about analyzing the effectiveness of various styles and I pointed out that simply ignoring time spent in setup doesn't give an accurate picture.

accurate in regards to what? The full extent of ones preparation before the actual healing application? Then i apologise because i misunderstood your intentions, in "lessening" the meaning of atonement burst because of setup time.

[VigilantRose]

accurate in regards to what?

Accurate in regards to comparing it against other options.

[longxia]

Don't be an idiot.

I think your guide should start with the following provisio in large bold type:

This guide only applies if all of the following conditions are met
1) You have Druids feeding you Innervates
2) Every healer in the guild knows not to heal certain phases so your AOE-burst is not total overhealing
3) Every other healer will accept that, and not just pressure you to go Shadow
4) You are at least an officer or even GM, so that when people you didn't get atonement on drop dead no-one says anything
5) The other healers are fine with you padding the meters occasionally and the rest of the fight sitting on your ass while they carry you

Without these caveats I feel your guide is misleading, and is only going to lead to even lower participation rates for the spec.

[laplacedemon]

I don't understand how people expect to have a "Guide to survive in a bad guild/pugs". There is no guide for that, you just play it as you play any other healer does. Try to cover some AoE damage, don't overexert your mana because it will be longer than ideal and do spot healing expecting others healers to be slow. You just do what you need, like everybody else. Some dps specs are better at single target, but do they swap to adds if needed? So you do the same. Nothing special you need to know other than what each spell does.

In a better environment, every healer would play to their strengths. That's when you need a guide. What is the spec good for, how can you get more out of it, how do you optimize... Saying something like "I used disc as a spot healer and here's some logs" could be a valid discussion topic or "Here's the results for this completely different statweights I tried", but "This guide doesn't work in pugs" isn't.

[longxia]

"This guide doesn't work in pugs"

This is called a straw-man argument. You state a weak argument no-one said and then you argue against that.

I just gave 5 situations the guide doesn't work and all of them apply to being in a guild, none of them mentions being in a pug.

[laplacedemon]

This is called a straw-man argument. You state a weak argument no-one said and then you argue against that.

I just gave 5 situations the guide doesn't work and all of them apply to being in a guild, none of them mentions being in a pug.

Sorry for not typing out bad guild/pugs for the second time.

"Guide to survive in a bad guild/pugs".

[Supliftz]

I think your guide should start with the following provisio in large bold type:

This guide only applies if all of the following conditions are met
1) You have Druids feeding you Innervates
2) Every healer in the guild knows not to heal certain phases so your AOE-burst is not total overhealing
3) Every other healer will accept that, and not just pressure you to go Shadow
4) You are at least an officer or even GM, so that when people you didn't get atonement on drop dead no-one says anything
5) The other healers are fine with you padding the meters occasionally and the rest of the fight sitting on your ass while they carry you

Without these caveats I feel your guide is misleading, and is only going to lead to even lower participation rates for the spec.

1. You do not need innervates to burst heal as a disc priest. You're willfully ignore rapture/pi here to create your argument.

2. How is this a problem unique to disc. This should be the same thing as a resto shaman saying to his guild "Hey i'm HTTing here, please don't blow CD's here". I can only imagine this being a problem if you're too stupid to say anything to your guild.

3. Every other healer can accept raid cooldowns such as revival/tranq, why can't they accept light's wrath?

4. This statement does really even make sense, but I'll try to respond to it. You can spin this argument towards any class. "Hey I died over 2 seconds, but I didn't have rejuv/wild growth on me, kick the druid". Like I said, unless someone dies over a long period of time without you putting atonement on them, it shouldn't really be your fault.

5. This is also confusing. I'm pretty sure the things most likely to kill you are raid-wide bursts, not ticking raid damage. Most guilds would fine with a healer being gods of the raid damage that matters, and being average outside of it.

[Grimbolt]

This is one of the most toxic threads I've seen on MMO-C. I am surprised half of it hasnt been removed by mods by now.

Can we all behave and talk nicely to each other and discuss, instead of these tantrums? Maybe people are interrested in Disc Priest but when they see the shit show in this thread, its perfectly understandable why disc priest has the rep they have and why there is so little theorycrafting going on.

[Supliftz]

This is one of the most toxic threads I've seen on MMO-C. I am surprised half of it hasnt been removed by mods by now.

Can we all behave and talk nicely to each other and discuss, instead of these tantrums? Maybe people are interrested in Disc Priest but when they see the shit show in this thread, its perfectly understandable why disc priest has the rep they have and why there is so little theorycrafting going on.

When you have people be so willfully ignorant, and assert that they are in fact correct with stupid opinions about disc, it's very hard to take them seriously.

There's a difference between "little theorycrafting going on" and "no theorycrafting going on on mmo-c".

[BadguyNotBadGuy]

Im not gonna lie guys, i came here for the advice, stayed for the fantastic drama.

However, it seems weird to me that everyone is just like "burst disc only works if everything is perfect", ignoring the fact that popping PI/Rapture would save you loads of mana, and the sheer idea of the "burst disc" healing is that you just chill out after it and let your manage regen a bunch

[MendUS]

I think your guide should start with the following provisio in large bold type:

This guide only applies if all of the following conditions are met
1) You have Druids feeding you Innervates
2) Every healer in the guild knows not to heal certain phases so your AOE-burst is not total overhealing
3) Every other healer will accept that, and not just pressure you to go Shadow
4) You are at least an officer or even GM, so that when people you didn't get atonement on drop dead no-one says anything
5) The other healers are fine with you padding the meters occasionally and the rest of the fight sitting on your ass while they carry you

Without these caveats I feel your guide is misleading, and is only going to lead to even lower participation rates for the spec.

I'm not entertaining your attempts at trolling me. Your first post was enough.

[Deleted]

What I think is that if a healing spec needs other classes/specs buffs to do its best (Symbol of Hope or Innervate), there is something wrong there. Aka, that was not intended. What happens if in a raid a Disc priest is healing without any Druids or Holy Priests? Because if that was the playstyle devs wanted for Discs, they would have a similar mana-saving cooldown of their own when spamming PW:R. And again, we would be in an expansion where Disc is absoutely dominant (top healer also dealing damage?! Why picking other healers, then?). Moreover, do you really think that sitting most of a fight doing almost no healing is a good mechanic for a healer (even if only relying on Rapture+PI)?

[MendUS]

What I think is that if a healing spec need other classes/specs buffs to do its best (Symbol of Hope or Innervate), there is something wrong there. Aka, that was not intended. What happens if in a raid a Disc priest is healing without any Druids or Holy Priests? Because if that was the playstyle devs wanted for Discs, they will have a similar mana-saving cooldown of their own when spamming PW:R. And again, we would be in an expansion where Disc were absoutely dominant (top healer also dealing damage?!)

So, what if I said that tanks needing external cooldowns meant their class was bad. Would you agree? Of course not, sometimes you need it. Disc priests have the ability to dump mana in exchange for healing better than any other class in the game. It's not so much that we *need* innervate, it's that we are the best target for it.

I raid without SoH or Innervate in Mythic EN 50% of the time (we alternate people around and for Nythendra, Dragons, and sometimes Renferal, I don't have innervate depending on who was alternated, which is roughly 50% of the time). Innervate allows for us to do more than just one burst every 1.5 minutes and have more Atonement out through the encounter than we would normally. By no means is it *required*. If you don't have innervate, or SoH, you just handle less than you would with it. Instead of getting up to 18 Atonement's, you get up to 12 for your major burst. Instead of maintaining 5 Atonement's during downtime, you keep 2-3. Instead of trying to burst heal every AoE damaging ability, you do every other or every few. Even without innervate, I can outheal our rshaman and rdruid, you just need to be picky about what you're doing and not so liberal with your mana.

Protip: as a disc priest, your main goal should **always** be to keep your mana 5-10% higher than the bosses HP. If it dips below, conserve or drink a Leytorrent Potion.

[Deleted]

So, what if I said that tanks needing external cooldowns meant their class was bad. Would you agree? Of course not, sometimes you need it. Disc priests have the ability to dump mana in exchange for healing better than any other class in the game. It's not so much that we *need* innervate, it's that we are the best target for it.

Tank can tank properly without extra CDs from other classes; they need them to survive damage, which is typically a healer's job.

I understand your point and that this mechanic works for Discs priests. What I find *weird* is that Disc could have been reworked to be like that intentionally, because - again - the spec would still be mandatory for high progression (even more than in previous expansion, since now it also deals a nice amount of damage).

[Deleted]

What I think is that if a healing spec needs other classes/specs buffs to do its best (Symbol of Hope or Innervate), there is something wrong there.

So all dps speccs that arent shamans/mages/hunters are bad because they require heroism to do their maximum dps?

[Franarok]

So all dps speccs that arent shamans/mages/hunters are bad because they require heroism to do their maximum dps?

A bit silly comaprison hahaha. A dps doesnt need hero.

and sure you will no see a guide for a dps saying "on that moment you will need ask for hero to be able to do your job". Same that there are no healers guides but discipline one saying that a very important element is the innervate.

As well I read several "ask innervates on you" as answer for the "I have mana issues".


Think is very easy realices that there are a true mana problem since near every discipline (but someones that never will admit to keep the look of superiority) comment that the mana is a problem.



and the other solution of "well, then no cast until huge dangerous damage comes" is not valid...for that put other healer that wil lbe able to cast with no problems xDDD

[BadguyNotBadGuy]

As well I read several "ask innervates on you" as answer for the "I have mana issues".

Most of the folk who have mentioned having mana issues do not use both mana return/save trinkets. And the idea is that if you are required to spawn a lot of healing for frequent bursts, then asking for assistance to keep your whole god damn raid alive is pretty reasonable.

and the other solution of "well, then no cast until huge dangerous damage comes" is not valid...for that put other healer that wil lbe able to cast with no problems xDDD

And here you completely ignore the fact that the strength of Disc comes in healing a large amount of people at the same time. The amount of people we can heal and the throughput of healing we do in that time is greater than any other healer. This allows other healers to focus on all the rest of the damage, and save their CDs for unexpected emergencies.

[Popokolara]

A bit silly comaprison hahaha. A dps doesnt need hero.

and sure you will no see a guide for a dps saying "on that moment you will need ask for hero to be able to do your job". Same that there are no healers guides but discipline one saying that a very important element is the innervate.

As well I read several "ask innervates on you" as answer for the "I have mana issues".


Think is very easy realices that there are a true mana problem since near every discipline (but someones that never will admit to keep the look of superiority) comment that the mana is a problem.



and the other solution of "well, then no cast until huge dangerous damage comes" is not valid...for that put other healer that wil lbe able to cast with no problems xDDD

The whole reason this debate keeps going on and on is because people dont bother reading with detail what has been stated or purposely ignore pieces of information. IF as you say the other healers which have to do our work during our "rest" will end up with smaller mana consumption due to our great efficiency, its a valid argument, its a benefit for the whole raiding team to have and something you do not want only if you a) sabotage healing teams, or b) dont want to understand that there is actually something to learn here.

For the gazilion time i will repeat what others said: You do NOT need innervates, but IF you are selected specifically for them you can achieve a greater benefit than other healers. That is not a weakness. That is strength.

I have yet to see a person make constructive criticism against the burst type gameplay without ignoring serious parts of repeatedly stated facts, traits and other in game mechanics. If you try to force an old healer achetype tactic on a discipline of course you will end up with a problem.

Maybe its wrong, maybe i have boarded the hype train for burst healing and i am in for a big dissapointment, but there is no reason whatsoever for anyone to argument against it while deliberately ignoring 80% of the picture.

Edit: Ironic, but dpsers actually need heroism for progression much more than a disci needs innervates, at least in humble heroic raiding. If you dont then you shouldn't be using it right?

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Also this isnt about ego. You have innervates, heroism, symbol of hope, communication etc. You WILL use them, so use them smartly. Saying others dont need it while we would all always use them shows you only want to compare class epeen and not actual gameplay value.

If the most efficienct and progress benefiting way to use them requires a ton of mental preperation and coordination all supporting a disci priest in the raiding team (and i am overdramatising here), then you have a treasure in him. No you cannot find disci's true potential in an unorganised imature mob, and i understand this causes problems for some people. But that is not a problem of the class, is the problem of people not wanting to bother. Accept it instead of trying to find ways to deny the reality of facing a problem outside of the class design itself.

Hope i am not being too mean.

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Tank can tank properly without extra CDs from other classes; they need them to survive damage, which is typically a healer's job.

To be honest in legion tank and healer both have to focus on keeping the first alive, it was one of the dev objectives to make tanking more dynamic and interesting like that.

[MarcelMauss]

Let's clear up a bit of the discussion here.

It's impossible to claim that disc is abstractly bad at the moment. More than any other healer, its effectiveness varies from fight to fight (you feel great on Ursoc and pretty useless on Eye for example). Disc has some good and bad fights because it heals very differently than other (homogenized) healers at the moment. As a result, a Disc priest needs heavy support from both their raid and the raid encounter to keep up with other healing classes. In top end guilds the net efficiency gain you get on specific encounters by supporting a Disc priest is well worth it, in less cutting edge scenarios the management cost and rigidity of dics priests aren't worth it to the player or the raid.

I am currently 3/7M as disc, so I cannot speak to Cenarius or Xavius--much less raid content that isn't released yet. In the content I have seen, my personal feeling is that Disc is uninteresting to raid with. Unlike the other classes I've tested or work with Discipline lacks dynamism and gives the illusion of skill by imposing a fairly rigid and punishing checklist framework onto fights. Most damning, is the lack of variety in talents, gearing, and play styles. In raids, Disc suffers heavily from 3 major issues:

1) The Legion launch damage trinket nerf really killed interesting gearing for disc...most healing trinkets don't work the way we'd really like and the DPS trinkets are too weak. As a result, stat sticks are typically our strongest trinkets (ignoring mana issues and the regen trinkets needed to atonement blanket the raid).

2) Disc lacks interesting talents at the moment. Our lvl 100 talents are TERRIBLE. PTW is a very very small DPS increase over SW:P. It's main feature is that it saves a global or two. This is dull and adds nothing meaningful to the priest. Grace is incredibly boring. It is very strong in mythic+, and does little or less for our raid healing. Shadow Covenant needs to be reworked.

In addition, previous talent levels are poorly balanced, generally weak, and largely uninspired. Some of this is probably due to understandable design fear around atonement. It is a very powerful mechanic. That doesn't excuse our dull and poorly balanced skill tree.

3) Disc lacks effective choice of playstyles. Our current toolset is limited and lacks interaction between the pieces. Our artifact weapon is a large culprit here. The golden dragon and other traits do a poor job of bringing new nuances or depth to our healing (I'm looking at you Sins of the Many and POTDS). Traits like borrowed time try to make the spec feel dynamic and interesting, but aren't enough to impact disc healing in raids.

TLDR: Disc is *fine*, but very dull and uninspired in raid settings (super fun in m+). We deserve a raid spot on some encounters and not on others. We're less flexible and have fewer choices than other healers, but we bring some damage along with our healing. People complaining about the Disc playstyle are justified in many complaints but are incorrect if they are arguing that disc isn't good on some encounters.

[Djriff]

See the problem with healing specs, disc and holy both included in this is they suffer almost an identical problem that shadow has, trying to be viable in all aspects leads to stagnation in one. For example while the lvl 100 talent row is meh for disc (PtW or Grace that's it), they are intended for different styles of healing. Other than shadow covenant being in the row, that's a good row. I've yet to see a perfectly balanced row where something was an equal DPS/HPS increase while invoking a different playstyle, one talent or playstyle will always be the best with everything else being suboptimal. There's also a big difference between suboptimal and unviable that I don't think a lot of people realize when they argue.

For discs that play the burst healing playstyle with mana conservation between phases, that's the optimal way to play.

For discs that spam shadowmend (like Flint) it's a viable way to play disc, but not optimal as has been pointed out several times.

For discs that want to take shadow covenant and just spam AoE healing, while it's definitely not recommended and is an even worse playstyle than shadowmend spam in raids, it's still a playstyle if someone chooses to do it.

We can argue about which playstyle is better until we're all blue in the face, but unless you can present facts and logic in why one is better than the other this is just going to be a strawman's argument.