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

[Yunzi]

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 ?

It would succeed at making the spec more active. What it would do is raise the DPS output of Disc, thus encouraging players to spend more mana on DPS and less on PWRs. What it would also do since PWRs are still super valuable is really require double mana trinkets, since serious players would no longer be content to sit around regenning mana between PWS/Penances/Pleas on low-healing phases.

Given that Disc is already the highest output DPS+HPS healer by far (15.3% overall ahead of #2), this change is only going to increase the gap between Disc and the rest of the healers, so it would have to accompany a nerf to Disc.

[Yunzi]

Most people have heard people say, "Disc is really hard to play, but it's AWESOME if xyz..."

The simplest argument I have to counter that is, if disc is so awesome, why have we never seen a disc on a world first kill? Why, if disc does 90% of the hps of a healer and adds a bunch of dps, didn't method or serenity use a disc when they were wiping over and over to Star Augur's dps check? If it's as simple as "disc hps + dps makes them better than other classes", we should see disc everywhere on the cutting edge. The fact that we don't indicates that there's a lot more going on here, as many people on this thread have pointed out.

Even for top players Disc isn't easy to play as an alt. It takes work and dedication to excel at. So it's not like "well, Disc is good here, so let's have our Shaman healer bring his Disc". The extra HPS+DPS that Disc brings is only the average - players are going to be much better on their main than on an alt of perhaps the most difficult spec to play in the game.

Also, and this isn't brought up nearly enough - Disc is NEW. Every other healer spec had most of their gameplay carried over from WoD. Legion Disc is radically different from any healer spec not only in WoD but in any iteration of the game in it's history. Top players want to continue to BE top players, not be guinea pigs who might end up eaten by a snake, and in any case have to run extensively on a treadmill just to earn their food pellets.

So if Disc is very difficult to play as an alt and a new, complicated, very high-risk choice for top players as their main, why is it so surprising that very few top players play Disc?

HPS + DPS is horribly flawed because DPS is less valuable than HPS.

A simple adjustment to "HPS + DPS" that might work better is to adjust by the ratio of what a normal dpser does relative to what a normal healer does. On Gul'dan heroic the average dps is around 480k, average hps is around 350. So you have to adjust down your dps number by 350/480.

That's just as arbitrary as saying HPS and DPS have equal value.

Final edit: and I'm sure there's a lot baked into these numbers that we aren't seeing that makes this adjustment better but still not good - i.e. how many innervates are discs getting, etc.

That's a good point.

[Deleted]

It's the problem with making specs really unique in the tanking/healing world - it's too easy to end up with unique specs that dominate.

Yes I do agree that when you have something specific to only one spec then it creates domination. I guess Blizz screw up on their healer design by not going all in. Let me clarify what I mean.

The uniqueness of disc could have been a strength only if it was not unique. Imagine a world in which monk and pally went the same way as disc, meaning dishing out damage to perform their healing (what if beacon was instead healing for a portion of the damage you deal? what if way of the crane was a pve baseline cooldown ?). You would have ended up with half of the roster falling into that "hybrid" category and the other half falling into the "classic" healers.

[Deleted]

Most people have heard people say, "Disc is really hard to play, but it's AWESOME if xyz..."

The simplest argument I have to counter that is, if disc is so awesome, why have we never seen a disc on a world first kill? Why, if disc does 90% of the hps of a healer and adds a bunch of dps, didn't method or serenity use a disc when they were wiping over and over to Star Augur's dps check? If it's as simple as "disc hps + dps makes them better than other classes", we should see disc everywhere on the cutting edge. The fact that we don't indicates that there's a lot more going on here, as many people on this thread have pointed out.

Well, that's funny because disc was actually ~3rd best healer on Star Augur pre-nerf.

The reasons why it wasn't involved in any of the early kills are obvious:
1/ The DPS check in p3 was so tight that you cannot afford to have more than 2 healers and Paladin+Shaman were simply the best for the job
2/ Disc doesn't have as many healing CD's as shaman (CBT+AG combo, HTT, Ankh totem)
3/ Even though PW:B gives you more damage reduction than Aura Mastery, it's trickier to use in last phase
4/ Doesn't have immunity

After the nerf, last phase is a joke. I can totally see disc being good on this fight in 3 healers setup though, because of how fel and frost phases work now.

[Yunzi]

With regards to your comment above - I think the fact that the top 3 guilds have shied away from disc is very telling because those are the people who are searching for every edge, will try out every spec, and will wipe 200 times on a boss before killing it by maxing everything possible. And even they aren't bothering with disc. It suggests the spec isn't all that viable. You indicate that they stay at the top by sticking to what is familiar - it's really more the opposite. They are constantly switching from one tank to another, adjusting comp etc. If disc were good they'd use it.

Time exists for top players just like everyone else, and they are much more constrained by it since they need to maximize the value of their time spent, while non-top players have more leeway for experimentation and learning.

Complexity destroys the value of applied time - in other words, top players can't afford to spend two weeks learning a spec, suffering in their M+ farming efficiency, when they could play a "potentially less optimal spec" and gear up faster.

There's a simple metaphor for this - corporations. They do what's optimal in the short run, at the cost of long-term value.

What's the point in the course of an expansion that's the *most* constrained, when there can be no room for experimentation or learning among top players? Early on, when they are gearing up for the early raids. The best time for that experimentation and learning is *after* a progression race, when there's a period of relaxation (relatively) before the next grind.

Legion is unlike any other expansion because of the unlimited nature of Mythic+. By uncapping the rewards over time from Mythic+ and thus making ACTIVITY the prime focus of top end players, Blizzard ensured that those players had a terrible environment for learning.

And guess what Legion spec is the most in need of experimentation and learning? Yep, Discipline Priest.

[longxia]

... top players can't afford to spend two weeks learning a spec, suffering in their M+ farming efficiency, when they could play a "potentially less optimal spec" and gear up faster.

... There's a simple metaphor for this - corporations. They do what's optimal in the short run, at the cost of long-term value.

Come on man, be real. The best players in the world are so much better than you or I or anyone you know there is really no comparison. They also schedule time off work so they can raid full-time during progression. But they dont have the time or skill to work out the hidden potential of the Discipline spec? Bullshit! Haha that is ridiculous, if there was any hidden potential to be found in any spec these are the first people in all the world to find it and utilize it.

That they did not is because there is no such potential, just a tiny handful of Twitch streamers and aspiring Youtube celebrities that get good logs by feeding themselves a lot of Innervates, post the best logs and lap up that feeling of being special.

The best players in the world dont use Disc, and participation rates show that hardly anyone else does either, and for good reason - it's the worst spec in the game (yes even worse than Survival hunter).

[MendUS]

Most people have heard people say, "Disc is really hard to play, but it's AWESOME if xyz..."

The simplest argument I have to counter that is, if disc is so awesome, why have we never seen a disc on a world first kill? Why, if disc does 90% of the hps of a healer and adds a bunch of dps, didn't method or serenity use a disc when they were wiping over and over to Star Augur's dps check? If it's as simple as "disc hps + dps makes them better than other classes", we should see disc everywhere on the cutting edge. The fact that we don't indicates that there's a lot more going on here, as many people on this thread have pointed out.

- - - Updated - - -



HPS + DPS is horribly flawed because DPS is less valuable than HPS.

A simple adjustment to "HPS + DPS" that might work better is to adjust by the ratio of what a normal dpser does relative to what a normal healer does. On Gul'dan heroic the average dps is around 480k, average hps is around 350. So you have to adjust down your dps number by 350/480.

If you do that, disc is behind holy pally and mistweavers on gul'dan. They don't have much of a total throughput bonus on that fight. And the cost, as many people above have noted, is that they are complicated and require the rest of the raid to work around their playstyle.

Final edit: and I'm sure there's a lot baked into these numbers that we aren't seeing that makes this adjustment better but still not good - i.e. how many innervates are discs getting, etc.

We don't see a world first kill because the healers in those guilds don't want to play Disc, not because it's not worthy.

It's completely viable for the world first race.

[Yunzi]

Come on man, be real. The best players in the world are so much better than you or I or anyone you know there is really no comparison. They also schedule time off work so they can raid full-time during progression. But they dont have the time or skill to work out the hidden potential of the Discipline spec? Bullshit! Haha that is ridiculous, if there was any hidden potential to be found in any spec these are the first people in all the world to find it and utilize it.

That they did not is because there is no such potential, just a tiny handful of Twitch streamers and aspiring Youtube celebrities that get good logs by feeding themselves a lot of Innervates, post the best logs and lap up that feeling of being special.

The best players in the world dont use Disc, and participation rates show that hardly anyone else does either, and for good reason - it's the worst spec in the game (yes even worse than Survival hunter).

I don't know how you became so bitter about Disc, but there's always the chance to return to it, even if you keep your main spec Holy. As for healer balance, it's certainly debatable since there's no good way to value utility and DPS along with HPS, but it's not at all clear that Chris Potter, according to you someone who would have clearly found any hidden potential in Disc, valued it correctly in this Legion Beta video when he rated it last among healing specs.

[longxia]

I don't know how you became so bitter about Disc ...

Im pissed off because Disc is my spec! It has been since Wrath and always will be, and now its so shit its really sad. Further pissing me off is all the time and effort I have put into trying to make Disc work in raids for all of Emerald Nightmare - what a waste of time. To this day I still get excited whenever new patch notes come out, (maybe today will be the day Disc gets buffed and reworked!). And every time a disappointment.

A separate thing that pisses me off is the handful of wannabe internet celebrities that say things like "No-one uses the awesome and not-broken Disc spec in World-first races only because no-one enjoys playing Disc". So all the top tanks in the world just coincidentally rerolled to Bear all at the same time, because its so fun to play? Hahaha, I think these world-first progression guys would happily play a spec that required them to slowly tap nails into their heads if it put out 2% more DPS.

Really these pro-Disc arguments are so weak they're actually funny. The utter desperation to keep the spec exactly as it is, so the authors can maintain their own status as world authorities and super-important people whose opinion really means something. Also the page-views, and subscriber numbers, all that juicy ego-boosting attention!

They dont want to go back to being Joe Average so expect the "Disc if fine" bullshit to continue unabated. Meanwhile the reality is that Disc participation is at an all-time low, Disc HPS is at an all-time low, and no-one in the top guilds plays Disc because its shit not because of personal preferences.

[Supliftz]

Well, that's funny because disc was actually ~3rd best healer on Star Augur pre-nerf.

The reasons why it wasn't involved in any of the early kills are obvious:
1/ The DPS check in p3 was so tight that you cannot afford to have more than 2 healers and Paladin+Shaman were simply the best for the job
2/ Disc doesn't have as many healing CD's as shaman (CBT+AG combo, HTT, Ankh totem)
3/ Even though PW:B gives you more damage reduction than Aura Mastery, it's trickier to use in last phase
4/ Doesn't have immunity

After the nerf, last phase is a joke. I can totally see disc being good on this fight in 3 healers setup though, because of how fel and frost phases work now.

Sorta depends on your strat. If you did method strat (kill 1 add, then burn) disc was better than shaman. The burn strat was where shaman shined.

- - - Updated - - -

Come on man, be real. The best players in the world are so much better than you or I or anyone you know there is really no comparison. They also schedule time off work so they can raid full-time during progression. But they dont have the time or skill to work out the hidden potential of the Discipline spec? Bullshit! Haha that is ridiculous, if there was any hidden potential to be found in any spec these are the first people in all the world to find it and utilize it.

That they did not is because there is no such potential, just a tiny handful of Twitch streamers and aspiring Youtube celebrities that get good logs by feeding themselves a lot of Innervates, post the best logs and lap up that feeling of being special.

The best players in the world dont use Disc, and participation rates show that hardly anyone else does either, and for good reason - it's the worst spec in the game (yes even worse than Survival hunter).

You say best players in the world would know this, but i've gotten pms from the best players in the world saying "wow i didn't know disc was this good".

[kouby]

I can see retards, retards everywhere.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...hps&dataset=95

[Rife]

We don't see a world first kill because the healers in those guilds don't want to play Disc, not because it's not worthy.

It's completely viable for the world first race.

Says who? You?

This holier than thou bullshit is getting real old real quick.

World first raiders do not think Disc is a world first race viable spec as evidenced by them not playing it, at all, in world first races. Your opinion on the matter carries no weight while their collective choices on ignoring the spec do. Stop pretending you know better.

The level of pretension in Disc threads is so much higher than any other healer discussion and it's starting to get in the way of legitimate discussion of the short-comings of the spec.

Can we discuss why the damage/healing hybrid healer spec has been ignored for world first progression in a tier with many tight DPS checks rather than have someone uselessly claim that "[Disc] is completely fine for the world first race" and imply that the shortcomings of the spec is just that the players aren't good enough but the spec is fine?

[kouby]

Says who? You?

This holier than thou bullshit is getting real old real quick.

World first raiders do not think Disc is a world first race viable spec as evidenced by them not playing it, at all, in world first races. Your opinion on the matter carries no weight while their collective choices on ignoring the spec do. Stop pretending you know better.

It's beyond funny how you people think that approximately 50 to 100 people in the world are the world's most intelligent people. The major reason people get world firsts is the time investment, not their extraordinary intelligence or pro-gaming capabilities (hint hint, pro gamers get paid: cs, lol, dota, sc2, etc, those are pro gamers, wow raiders are entertainers AT BEST, there's nothing pro about playing co-op versus the computer).

This is wow, you can play whatever the fuck you want and make it work, or you can be a shit player and play anything and nothing will work.

[Rife]

It's beyond funny how you people think that approximately 50 to 100 people in the world are the world's most intelligent people. The major reason people get world firsts is the time investment, not their extraordinary intelligence or pro-gaming capabilities (hint hint, pro gamers get paid: cs, lol, dota, sc2, etc, those are pro gamers, wow raiders are entertainers AT BEST, there's nothing pro about playing co-op versus the computer).

This is wow, you can play whatever the fuck you want and make it work, or you can be a shit player and play anything and nothing will work.

The level of assumed authority in Disc threads is legit comical.

Inb4 the next guy posts the same bullshit assuming they know better than the worlds best raiders.

The reason Disc discussion usually gets nowhere is because threads like these offer the scintillating opportunity for people to pretend they're better than their fellow Discs by claiming the spec is fine, always, in all conditions and the only limiting factor to the spec is player skill. Thus claiming the spec is fine is tantamount to the poster saying they're super pro @ wow!!111!eleventyone git gud kid.

Nobody can get over themselves long enough to objectively discuss anything.

[Zhaelan]

/sigh at this thread

Well first thing I would like to say is that, after playing, watching and reading about basically all the other specs in wow, I feel (yes this is my opinion) that there is no spec even remotely as hard as disc. This comes from the fact (yes this is not my opinion but actual requirements of playing disc) that disc priest have to know a fight from multiple roles (dps and heals), have a functional ui (wow base ui is not only bad because of alt tabbing but because... healing), and (yes there is more) prepare the healing before being able to do it. All of this means that disc priests have to do a lot of preparing before the fight (or during the wipefest) in order to make effective use of their dps/cds/burst healing, which coincidentally is not very good for progression world first raiding (my opinion).

Second, well world-first progression raiders being the best thing this planet has ever seen (/sarcasm) and not using disc does nothing to make me see disc as bad... or even worse than other healing specs as I don't even see them as that good (read "they are great, but one of the biggest defining features of 'world-first progression raiders' is time and not skill and that devoting time to learn disc on each fight when X healer can get the job done with no prep saves TIME") hint: disc costs my most valuable thing therefore I don't want it

And third, while comparing disc to other healing specs is important from a balance perspective, as a disc priest I find my healing has very little to do with other healers and everything to do with if I did it properly or not. Disc priests are not reactive(every other) healers and are always worse than said healers in a reactive situation. I know that sounds snooty and obvious, but its the biggest thing to consider really; it's a mindset I guess I am trying to say.

But even after all those negatives, (here comes my actual response to op) I still love disc more than any other healing spec, simply because on no other healer do I feel I can grow as much (read masochist) while simultaneously getting better at the game.

[MendUS]

Im pissed off because Disc is my spec! It has been since Wrath and always will be, and now its so shit its really sad. Further pissing me off is all the time and effort I have put into trying to make Disc work in raids for all of Emerald Nightmare - what a waste of time. To this day I still get excited whenever new patch notes come out, (maybe today will be the day Disc gets buffed and reworked!). And every time a disappointment.

A separate thing that pisses me off is the handful of wannabe internet celebrities that say things like "No-one uses the awesome and not-broken Disc spec in World-first races only because no-one enjoys playing Disc". So all the top tanks in the world just coincidentally rerolled to Bear all at the same time, because its so fun to play? Hahaha, I think these world-first progression guys would happily play a spec that required them to slowly tap nails into their heads if it put out 2% more DPS.

Really these pro-Disc arguments are so weak they're actually funny. The utter desperation to keep the spec exactly as it is, so the authors can maintain their own status as world authorities and super-important people whose opinion really means something. Also the page-views, and subscriber numbers, all that juicy ego-boosting attention!

They dont want to go back to being Joe Average so expect the "Disc if fine" bullshit to continue unabated. Meanwhile the reality is that Disc participation is at an all-time low, Disc HPS is at an all-time low, and no-one in the top guilds plays Disc because its shit not because of personal preferences.

You caught me. I lie to people just to keep my status and have an agenda. /s

You're aware it serves me no benefit to lie about the status of the spec, correct? More people think it's broken than think it's working. If I really wanted more people to "follow" me I would simply jump on the bandwagon and state that the spec is not working as intended.

P.S. You linked heroic logs, which I've explained in previous posts why that's a pretty bad way to analyze Disc. Then again, you think there is some conspiracy going on with people who try to communicate facts rather then peddle misinformation like you are doing, so maybe you just don't care.

[Supliftz]

Can we discuss why the damage/healing hybrid healer spec has been ignored for world first progression in a tier with many tight DPS checks rather than have someone uselessly claim that "[Disc] is completely fine for the world first race" and imply that the shortcomings of the spec is just that the players aren't good enough but the spec is fine?

how come the good player in the top 20 can make up for the "short comings of disc" :thinking:

anyway the meme here is suggesting healer comp matters at all, or what the WF race plays is relevant.

[MendUS]

The level of assumed authority in Disc threads is legit comical.

Inb4 the next guy posts the same bullshit assuming they know better than the worlds best raiders.

The reason Disc discussion usually gets nowhere is because threads like these offer the scintillating opportunity for people to pretend they're better than their fellow Discs by claiming the spec is fine, always, in all conditions and the only limiting factor to the spec is player skill. Thus claiming the spec is fine is tantamount to the poster saying they're super pro @ wow!!111!eleventyone git gud kid.

Nobody can get over themselves long enough to objectively discuss anything.

If people quit making retarded claims / personal attacks and talked about what the actual issues are, I'd probably agree with them.

- Disc is not tuned for normal / heroic content when you have a raid over 20 people and that *is* a problem. I'm not sure how they remedy this but considering a majority of raiders play content under Mythic difficulty, it's something they are going to try to address.

- Disc DPS isn't scaling similarly to actual DPS classes, which makes its DPS impact less than desirable as the expansion goes on. I was doing 110-120k dps in EN, and am doing 150k in NH while bosses HP has increased drastically. Unless our healing output is increased to compensate (without external mana) it *will* be a problem moving forward.

- As Sigma stated in his post on the EU forums, Blizzard want to lower the skill floor at the lower end to make the spec more accessible. Adjusting how Atonement is applied can fix this while maintaining the current playstyle. My only concern here is that they keep the high skill ceiling for those of us playing at a competitive level.

I've said all this in various places at one point or another (official forums, H2P Discord, YouTube), but some people live in their own little bubble and read from only one source here on MMOC which makes them oblivious to what my actual opinion is (since I don't frequent here that often).

[Popokolara]

The level of assumed authority in Disc threads is legit comical.

Inb4 the next guy posts the same bullshit assuming they know better than the worlds best raiders.

The reason Disc discussion usually gets nowhere is because threads like these offer the scintillating opportunity for people to pretend they're better than their fellow Discs by claiming the spec is fine, always, in all conditions and the only limiting factor to the spec is player skill. Thus claiming the spec is fine is tantamount to the poster saying they're super pro @ wow!!111!eleventyone git gud kid.

Nobody can get over themselves long enough to objectively discuss anything.

Well if people who assume this better than you attitude have recorded logs and show good guild raiding progress to support it why must it be wrong? Did you try to analyze their logs and compare to yours? I mean that IS the logical and mature course of action: Examine and record test results.

[MendUS]

Says who? You?

This holier than thou bullshit is getting real old real quick.

World first raiders do not think Disc is a world first race viable spec as evidenced by them not playing it, at all, in world first races. Your opinion on the matter carries no weight while their collective choices on ignoring the spec do. Stop pretending you know better.

The level of pretension in Disc threads is so much higher than any other healer discussion and it's starting to get in the way of legitimate discussion of the short-comings of the spec.

Can we discuss why the damage/healing hybrid healer spec has been ignored for world first progression in a tier with many tight DPS checks rather than have someone uselessly claim that "[Disc] is completely fine for the world first race" and imply that the shortcomings of the spec is just that the players aren't good enough but the spec is fine?

Says Joshqt from <Pieces>. I talked to him directly, and considering he is the world 6th guilds Disc Priest, I'd take his word as moderately accurate compared to your assumption. The people healing in guilds ranked higher than his have Disc alts and have given it consideration, but they just don't want to play the spec for other reasons than it not being viable (AP grind required, harder spec, moderately dependent on raid comp at that level [external mana makes a big difference, yeah, I said it], etc).

You mention some holier than thou / assumed authority, yet you are probably the worst offender. :thinking: