[Discussion] Disc Healing Compared To Other Healers [Comparison][Raiding][Mythic+]

[Rife]

I personally think people put far too much stock into parsing as a healer and forget the goal of a healing team is to coordinate in order to succeed in an encounter.

Like with most things; it's a balance. Healing has become just as much about parsing high as coordinating cooldowns. Coordination might allow for progress and kills but high parses and huge HPS covers for mistakes, allows for more varied mechanical strategies, allows raids to drop a healer or two in favor of DPS on tight enrages etc.

If healing coordination of cooldowns was paramount we'd see multiple Rshams in every raid comp.

I'd say Discs are in the unique position of not needing to parse exceedingly high or bring a plethora of cooldowns to be viable. LW on a 90 second CD and bringing non-trivial damage with the healing they bring is enough to secure a raid spot given the player skill is there. If scaling keeps up the way it is the damage Discs bring relative to other healers is going to lessen but we're not there yet. I'm waiting to see what Blizz do with atonement application, SC and damage output after the blue post made a few days ago.

[Supliftz]

They'll most likely just buff artifical damage if dps is too low, and call it a day. That exists for this reason.

[Desmonda]

I personally think people put far too much stock into parsing as a healer and forget the goal of a healing team is to coordinate in order to succeed in an encounter.

Well being that several high level Discs have used high parsing as a defense to the specs viability, I really don't see how we can take the quoted attitude seriously. Healers have now moved into the the parse competition due to many using parses to demonstrate how good they are against other healers. The mindset of "it it dies, you did your job" is now gone mainly due to the aforementioned. An environment was created that gave rise to parsing being an important part of judging a healers viability. Thanks...I think.

[Yunzi]

Well being that several high level Discs have used high parsing as a defense to the specs viability, I really don't see how we can take the quoted attitude seriously. Healers have now moved into the the parse competition due to many using parses to demonstrate how good they are against other healers. The mindset of "it it dies, you did your job" is now gone mainly due to the aforementioned. An environment was created that gave rise to parsing being an important part of judging a healers viability. Thanks...I think.

The problem is limited metrics, or an overreliance on existing metrics. The only metric that exists for raid success is progression on bosses, and since raiding is a team sport it's very difficult to determine individual contribution toward that success *without* the use of metrics.

For healers HPS is the overwhelmingly prime metric, but there's no "HPS bonus" for, let's say, applying an emergency heal that saves someone's life. Taking someone from 90 to 100% health is treated the same as taking someone from 10% to 20%, and in fact it's worse to heal a badly injured player with a targeted spell with a cast time, since if he dies during the cast you waste a GCD, thus lowering your HPS compared to a healer who recognizes this and refuses to heal that player, consigning them to death while he takes the High HPS route of healing a more healthy player.

A corollary might be found in professional sports. A coach might say "scoring isn't everything" but the reason Kobe Bryants exist is that scoring is the highest prestige statistic in basketball. In fact, the PRECISE METRICS used in sports and the prestige each one receives helps determine how players behave on the court. Before Saves were introduced in baseball there was no "closer" role, and no recognition that the end of the game was particularly valuable. The quality of the last pitcher on the mound in close games was recognized *in conjunction* with the introduction of the Saves statistic, and Bill James's Sabermetrics radically changed the game of baseball - that is to say, radically changed how players behave on the field and how coaches coach.

A change to healer metrics, both in terms of the precise metrics used and the degree of prestige each metric receives, would change healer behavior.

[Geschan]

But here is the thing. Discipline does not excel at spot/emergency healing.
They actually suck at it. Grace only applies for the second heal. Atonement only heals when casting damage spells.
PW:S was nerfed to the ground in value. Any other healer is better at spot/emergency healing.

And let's face it. Current encounters don't require spot healing.
Tanks more or less heal themselves. Most damage in raids is either raid wide or on multiple people at once.

I was really looking forward to a triage/mana starved healing meta. (Spirit removed)
Instead we got the same whack a mole insanity as before.

The reason HPS is so imporant is that you really need the maximum amount of healing possible at all times and as fast as possible to counter burst.

The current iteration of Discipline is in the end a one trick pony.
We are good vs. burst in moderate timeframes without randomness.
But we most definitely suck at sustained healing.
On top of that the big raid cooldown is more or less unusable in ~50% of the encounters.

[Jaigar]

Well being that several high level Discs have used high parsing as a defense to the specs viability, I really don't see how we can take the quoted attitude seriously. Healers have now moved into the the parse competition due to many using parses to demonstrate how good they are against other healers. The mindset of "it it dies, you did your job" is now gone mainly due to the aforementioned. An environment was created that gave rise to parsing being an important part of judging a healers viability. Thanks...I think.

Disc has some core scaling issues preventing from being a true hybrid. Right now its just 100% healer, 20% damage. They simply cant tune up disc dmg without drastically changing atonement and breaking scaling again in either high or liw end gear

[lcs]

Disc has some core scaling issues preventing from being a true hybrid. Right now its just 100% healer, 20% damage. They simply cant tune up disc dmg without drastically changing atonement and breaking scaling again in either high or liw end gear

And you have arrived at the fundamental problem with hybrid classes in a holy trinity. Once a classes total output starts to outclass the output of a "pure" class (ie, 100% healer + 40% DPS for 140% total output) you hit the point of them being required and a better choice to bring than anything else

[Desmonda]

And you have arrived at the fundamental problem with hybrid classes in a holy trinity. Once a classes total output starts to outclass the output of a "pure" class (ie, 100% healer + 40% DPS for 140% total output) you hit the point of them being required and a better choice to bring than anything else

VERY TRUE. This is precisely why the best "Hybrid" specs usually have a system where the player can "switch" roles as needed. Lord of the Rings Online handled this well with the "Rune Keeper" class:

In pure game dynamics, Steefel (former Executive Producer) said that the Rune-keeper is "...a third light armor class that offers viable healing or DPS alternatives." True to the game's "hybrid class" design philosophy, the Rune-keeper compares well to the primary healing class (Minstrel) by utilizing heals-over-time, and focuses its DPS capabilities by the application of powerful, stackable damage-over-time effects. Players choose their role via a new "Attunement Meter" that provides bonuses to healing skills while removing access to damage skills and vice-versa, depending on the current role the Rune-keeper is being asked to fulfil. Attunement resets while out-of-combat, and there are several skills/consumables available that make it easier to switch attunement (and temporarily open skills from the opposite attunement).

I think making Disc have a "shadow" or "Holy" attunement design may have been an interesting experiment to try throwing in new spells so as not to invalidate pure Shadow or Holy specs. But perhaps that was too much work for Blizzard..../shrug.

[cpukiller]

To make long story short, there is no reason to play harder to master and less likely to be good disc priest unless you are a pain enjoying masochist. End of story.

[Floopa]

To make long story short, there is no reason to play harder to master and less likely to be good disc priest unless you are a pain enjoying masochist. End of story.

disc priest is easier to play than 5.1/2 MW ever was fwiw.

[worcester]

disc priest is easier to play than 5.1/2 MW ever was fwiw.

That may be true. So where is it now? Same for yellow chakra holy or tidal waves based resto. Blizzard are obviously not okay with skill gaps being large.

[Yunzi]

That may be true. So where is it now? Same for yellow chakra holy or tidal waves based resto. Blizzard are obviously not okay with skill gaps being large.

If there was ever a Blizzard game in which they *were* ok with it, it's World of Warcraft. It's been out for 12+ years, so the playerbase is ancient by the standards of any non-classic game, meaning the playerbase is experienced with the mechanics of the game and as ready as any playerbase for complexity and difficulty.

There's 36 specs - so plenty of room for a variety of complexity and skill to be required for the different specs.

Variety is one of the strengths of the game and the reason for it's success. Crafting, socializing, auction house, PvP, raiding, questing... by providing many different activities players can enjoy the game who only enjoy a couple of the various activities.

Likewise, there's people who enjoy Tic-tac-toe and those who enjoy chess. Those who enjoy Bejeweled and those who enjoy Starcraft 2. By differentiating specs by complexity more players can find the spec that's right for them.

[Atharaxie]

Variety is one of the strengths of the game and the reason for it's success.

Is it to say that Disc isn't tuned for every difficulty ?
NM to low Heroic : not enough damage (and healer coordination) for Disc particuliar style of healing.
Heroic to Mythic : just the right spot
Bleeding Edge Mythic : Not reliable enough compared to fellow healers.

Surely Disc complexity isn't the only problem with the spec.

[Archpriest]

In my experience Discipline is quite bad at responding to random damage but very good at countering predictable raid damage... which have been the case for years anyway. When I play disc I usually end up doing less healing that the other healers but more damage, which is perfectly fine. By utilizing Light's Wrath to heal everyone up after raidwide damage I save the other healers mana and they can do what they are good at - spot healing.
Ultimately disc works really well together with other healing specs. I would however imagine there to be some trouble if you ran with several disc priests.

Also - the extra damage really helps in mythic + dungeons!

[Rilas13]

To make long story short, there is no reason to play harder to master and less likely to be good disc priest unless you are a pain enjoying masochist. End of story.

I have wondered this same thing, because I enjoy disc a lot and I have wondered if it would make sense to just do Holy for consistent performance. But I just think it is a lot less fun. To those who enjoy holy more power to you. But I think it boring compared to Disc. Soo I guess call me a masochist.

[worcester]

If there was ever a Blizzard game in which they *were* ok with it, it's World of Warcraft. It's been out for 12+ years, so the playerbase is ancient by the standards of any non-classic game, meaning the playerbase is experienced with the mechanics of the game and as ready as any playerbase for complexity and difficulty.

There's 36 specs - so plenty of room for a variety of complexity and skill to be required for the different specs.

Variety is one of the strengths of the game and the reason for it's success. Crafting, socializing, auction house, PvP, raiding, questing... by providing many different activities players can enjoy the game who only enjoy a couple of the various activities.

Likewise, there's people who enjoy Tic-tac-toe and those who enjoy chess. Those who enjoy Bejeweled and those who enjoy Starcraft 2. By differentiating specs by complexity more players can find the spec that's right for them.

That's obviously what you think and while I do agree with you and your justification is sound, we can't just ignore that they did the largest pruning since WoD where almost every spec got gutted yet disc ends up with more spells and passives than before.

Plea is a great example of a spell added to alleviate the redundancies of the spec that really went overboard with its singular mechanic, but is almost immediately made useless by another spell. Current atonement mechanic itself also has problems with its non-linear scaling where each additional enemy increases the value of each applied atonement. One of the primary reasons disc does not have an aoe damage spell and also the reduction of dps trinkets to near un-usability. (Currently only multidotting uses this aspect which we can see from Spellblade/Botanist and Cenarius before)

It's clear to me that disc is a failure as a well rounded healing spec, and is desperately grasping on to its one niche strength (which it is surprisingly good at) to keep itself relevant. Other aspects such as sustained healing/spot healing/tank healing are all very mediocre. Caused due to the mana constraints of regular healing which in turn is curbed by the healing potential of Light's Wrath. There's no denying good players will obtain good parses no matter what, but you often don't consider the trade off the healing team or raid as a whole made or the additional risks you incur when things don't pan out the way as planned - something bleeding edge guilds probably recognize.

If variety is really a strength of this game, where is my chakra: serenity playstyle? Where is my mw hybrid fistweaving playstyle? Telluric currents/conductivity resto? Like many said previously, they've made disc complex for complexities sake (you could tell how stoked the devs were about introducing an "advanced" class) which was further reinforced by the communities hatred for "brainless" healing which at the time had nothing to do with atonement. As if spamming rejuv/chain heal/flash heal is any more skillful.

[Rilas13]

@worcester, I disagree with most of what you said but I'll defend to the death that you are right to say it. I don't want Disc to be redesigned but I do think it would benefit more than any other healer from someone sanity checking everything. A lot of talents for example could use work. I like Disc and its place in the world, and so far I have been comfortable healing in every situation I have been in so I don't think it is a failure.

Now the variety thing is a bit more broad of a question which is down to class design. How much variety should talents offer? Should Feral/Guardian still be the same tree? Or Glad be a talent within the Prot tree?

I don't like those things being talents because it always comes down to what performs slightly better. Now if your choices are between what the game currently offers, you are still probably playing the spec in a fairly similar way. But if the choice is between fistweaving and something else you are always going to have people playing something they really don't like to be competitive. I think S2M is a terrific example. Shadow kept being balanced around that talent and everyone either did incredible dps with that talent or fell of a cliff. And that became a much different way to play the spec.

[PosPosPos]

disc priest is easier to play than 5.1/2 MW ever was fwiw.

The theory is easier, the practicalities are not.

[Supliftz]

5.1 mw is a bit different. The challenge came from the gameplay. It was very hard to perform well.

Disc's difficulty comes from understanding a fight perfectly and executing perfect mana managment.

[Deleted]

The best way to handle smite if dps during downtime is such a big thing is to just have a separate dps spell with no cd that doesn't get transferred via atonement, because even if smite's cost scales it's still a very significant buff to disc.

I would suggest the following to handle smite and downtime:
- make smite free and remove the atonment part (keep the absorb)
- add a new talent on row 15 to give back a cost to smite as well as the atonment effect (to keep the current gameplay if so desired)
- make schism baseline
- add to schism an effect that would grant smite atonment healing

So what would that mean ?
- smite could be used for free with a small absorb during downtime without any healing transfer
- burst heal during schism using smite for free resulting this time in healing, please note that on schism-smite-smite sequence, the mana cost would be about what 3 smites cost currently
- with the new 15 talent it would grant double atonment healing during schism

Do you think that would break the spec ? Do you think that would resolve some of the concern ?