Disc nerf

[Noradin]

I used to be a proponent for adding in a "free" non-atonement AoE for Disc... however these changes for the spec already fill our GCD's up with either applying Atonement via Plea/Smend, or casting a DPS spell via Penance or Smite, that there isn't really time to use something else in AoE situations. I think it's perfectly fine that we are single-target with some ability to AoE through DoT's. Like someone else already said, other healing specs have AoE spells at their disposal. I'd rather not have any more homogenization than we already have with other specs (old MW, some Druid mechanics, etc).

I see no reason why there couldn't be some small, cheap, instant healing spell in place of Divine Star that procs splash AoE damage (and causes no atonement) with no CD.
It wouldn't be very good for healing, but something to use in certain circumstances.
It's not like we use the Divine Star talent spot for anything else.

[anon5123]

Yes, adding in a DPS spell just because other spec's have a DPS spell is in some way homogenization, not sure how you can debate that it isn't.

I'm not arguing that it's not homogenization, stop with the strawmen.

You're flinging around "homogenization" to imply that giving Disc an AoE is somehow a bad thing.

I don't think it's a bad thing, considering literally every other spec in the game has a baseline AoE ability.

I think we're fine not having an AoE since we can multi-dot effectively.

tab-targeting single target hardcasted DoTs is not "effective multidot", but whatever

There hasn't been any content besides clearing old raids where I said "man, I really need AoE here". In those situations, just respec holy.

"oh, this spec is broken and underpowered? lol just use the other one!"

not a very good argument

[MendUS]

I'm not arguing that it's not homogenization, stop with the strawmen.

You're flinging around "homogenization" to imply that giving Disc an AoE is somehow a bad thing.

I don't think it's a bad thing, considering literally every other spec in the game has a baseline AoE ability.


tab-targeting single target hardcasted DoTs is not "effective multidot", but whatever



"oh, this spec is broken and underpowered? lol just use the other one!"

not a very good argument

You know, not everything said on this forum contrary to what you believe is an attack on you personally. Not sure how you pulled from what I said that I was making a strawman argument out of this. You pointed out what I said regarding homogenization and I responded back that adding in any ability just because other specs have an ability like that is the literal definition of spec homogenization. As for if that's a good or bad thing, I think that's a matter of personal opinion, which we differ on. I'm simply providing my personal opinion that adding in an additional ability seems counter-intuitive to what their intention is (pruning abilities every expansion is a clear indicator of their intentions). If they were to rework DS to be a better AoE but not be broken, sure, that's fine. It's working with what we already have.

We don't need to hard cast a dot on multiple targets when Purge the Wicked is a thing.

How exactly is the spec "broken" and "underpowered" just because it doesn't have an ability you can spam in old raids to farm transmog? Last I checked this wasn't something they balanced specs around.

[Noradin]

The spec isn't broken, the talents are set up better than before.
But we still have that spot that is DS, which is obviously intended to provide some AoE and miniscule healing but has no place to use it currently due to its peculiarities.
Then we have situations where we would like som AoE to hit some mobs to tag them or lightly damage them all at once but nothing to do it without (unreliable) trinkets or abilities with long CD (DS' CD counts as too long here).

So we have a use and an unused talent spot to match to it--no reason to let either go to waste.

[smitey]

I wish some people here would stop acting like they are speaking on Blizzards behalf. If Blizzard wanted to add a Aoe dps spell that benefited to disc healing in some way whether its a buff or debuff, i'm sure Blizz can think of something. Saying its bloat, pointless to cast or whatever is pretty short sighted, I personally think having an Aoe spell to cast in an Aoe situation is more engaging and fun than sitting there with nothing to press. Tab target dotting is not Aoe and quite boring.

[MendUS]

I wish some people here would stop acting like they are speaking on Blizzards behalf. If Blizzard wanted to add a Aoe dps spell that benefited to disc healing in some way whether its a buff or debuff, i'm sure Blizz can think of something. Saying its bloat, pointless to cast or whatever is pretty short sighted, I personally think having an Aoe spell to cast in an Aoe situation is more engaging and fun than sitting there with nothing to press. Tab target dotting is not Aoe and quite boring.

There is a difference between "acting like you're speaking on Blizzards behalf" and offering up an opinion as to why they didn't just go ahead and add in this spell that you, and others have been clamoring for for months. It's not like this wasn't feedback in the feedback thread and that there haven't been threads made about this in the past. Hell, I made one of the threads several months ago requesting they add something in. I understand why people think they want it. I'm also understanding of why Blizzard doesn't like adding more buttons into the game just to figure out how to remove them in the next expansion.

If Blizzard wanted Disc to have something, we'd already have it is my point, I guess. Regardless of what you think is fun/boring, there isn't much difference between cleaving PtW with Penance and casting one ability over and over if >X number of mobs. PtW just doesn't require you to change anything from what you're currently doing and you get some passive "AoE" by sake of DoT's spreading to nearby targets.

If Blizzard added in a cool new AoE (Mindsear, Holy Nova, w/e) tomorrow, that's fine. It won't bother me and I'm sure I'd fine uses for it. However, I'm reading a bit between the lines and it's probably not their intentions based on previous behavior.

[Geschan]

There is a saying: "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it"

The Blizzard design team and their community team are reading forums. And not just the Blizzard ones. If enough people ask for an AoE spell and the idea gets traction the possibility of it being implemented rises a lot. Therefore it is every priests duty to really reason against bad ideas!

The problem with an AoE spell for Discipline Priest is that it is really at odds with the design philosophies of Legion. The possible solutions for a balanced AoE spell are pretty narrow. The solution used for Halo/DS is somewhat at odds with the core philosophy of Discipline. While it might be ok for spells with medium cooldowns to work that way, for core spells it is not. Adding it just for lulz and old content is at odds with the toolkit philosophy of Legion. There is a reason why Blizzard removed so many spells with Legion. Adding another spell just for it to be used in old content is a step backwards.
The argument that you can switch to holy for old content is quite valid actually. Since the content is utterly trivial in most cases, there is no real gameplay. 99% of the time it's just one shotting enemies with whatever button you fancy. Even if you stay in shadow or discipline they do have Shadow Crash and DS/Halo. Those are more than sufficient to clear old content with ease.

In the end what it boils down to is the following:
Please stop asking for an AoE spell. Blizzard might just be insane enough to listen. And in the following 2-3 patches discipline will go down the drain.

[Saiyoran]

There is a saying: "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it"

The Blizzard design team and their community team are reading forums. And not just the Blizzard ones. If enough people ask for an AoE spell and the idea gets traction the possibility of it being implemented rises a lot. Therefore it is every priests duty to really reason against bad ideas!

The problem with an AoE spell for Discipline Priest is that it is really at odds with the design philosophies of Legion. The possible solutions for a balanced AoE spell are pretty narrow. The solution used for Halo/DS is somewhat at odds with the core philosophy of Discipline. While it might be ok for spells with medium cooldowns to work that way, for core spells it is not. Adding it just for lulz and old content is at odds with the toolkit philosophy of Legion. There is a reason why Blizzard removed so many spells with Legion. Adding another spell just for it to be used in old content is a step backwards.
The argument that you can switch to holy for old content is quite valid actually. Since the content is utterly trivial in most cases, there is no real gameplay. 99% of the time it's just one shotting enemies with whatever button you fancy. Even if you stay in shadow or discipline they do have Shadow Crash and DS/Halo. Those are more than sufficient to clear old content with ease.

In the end what it boils down to is the following:
Please stop asking for an AoE spell. Blizzard might just be insane enough to listen. And in the following 2-3 patches discipline will go down the drain.

What the fuck is this whole post? Adding one AoE spell will ruin the whole spec? And are we all just pretending that m+ doesn't exist? Literally any time I'm in a 5 man, I am constantly saying "man I wish I could do some relevant fucking dps on 80% of these pulls, since Halo's cd is long as fuck and trinkets are all garbage for disc" and the solution is apparently to just play holy which is a boring spec in the first place.

When most dps are doing 2M+ dps on big aoe packs and 1M+ on smaller packs, Disc (which does a respectable 1/3 to 1/2 or more of a dps' damage on a single target dungeon boss) is often left at 300k or less without popping PI (which you're often not specced for) or having targets that live long enough for PtW to be effectively spread (which, again, you're often not specced for in a M+)

As for "design philosophy," the whole design philosophy of disc going into this xpac was supposed to be a dps/healer mix, so I don't see how allowing you to do dps is against that philosophy. And yes, Blizzard likes to scale down the number of buttons each spec has, and guess what? The game is completely in the shitter in comparison to MoP and pre-MoP because of this and other similar ideas Blizzard has about how the game should be changed. Just because they've historically just taken away buttons doesn't mean its a good idea for them to continue to do so.

[anon5123]

The problem with an AoE spell for Discipline Priest is that it is really at odds with the design philosophies of Legion. The possible solutions for a balanced AoE spell are pretty narrow. The solution used for Halo/DS is somewhat at odds with the core philosophy of Discipline. While it might be ok for spells with medium cooldowns to work that way, for core spells it is not. Adding it just for lulz and old content is at odds with the toolkit philosophy of Legion. There is a reason why Blizzard removed so many spells with Legion. Adding another spell just for it to be used in old content is a step backwards.
The argument that you can switch to holy for old content is quite valid actually. Since the content is utterly trivial in most cases, there is no real gameplay. 99% of the time it's just one shotting enemies with whatever button you fancy. Even if you stay in shadow or discipline they do have Shadow Crash and DS/Halo. Those are more than sufficient to clear old content with ease.

"it's against the design philosophy, it's against the design philosophy"

WHY is it? You keep saying it is, but never explain why. And you never explain what this "design philosophy" even is, despite mentioning it 3 times.

And for the 5th or 6th time, this is NOT "for old content", so I'm not sure why everyone keeps claiming that it is. I run Holy in random heroics so that I can spam Holy Nova and actually do good DPS on these packs that get melted super fast. Disc can't do shit because all you have is single target spells.

Even if Blizzard just copypasted Holy Nova and made it not proc Atonement, I'd love that.

And in the following 2-3 patches discipline will go down the drain.

Please, explain how adding 1 aoe spell will somehow destroy the spec

I'd love to hear it

[Supliftz]

Please, explain how adding 1 aoe spell will somehow destroy the spec

I'd love to hear it

I've explained to you what the problems that occur with adding aoe dps are to dps healers. I don't understand what is the purpose of creating problems for raiding/rbgs/dungeons (you know, the stuff where the game is balanced around) just because it's annoying for disc to do world quests.

You would think way of crane being cut in half would be enough to show what happens when you add aoe healing to aoe dps spells.

[Geschan]

As for "design philosophy," the whole design philosophy of disc going into this xpac was supposed to be a dps/healer mix, so I don't see how allowing you to do dps is against that philosophy. And yes, Blizzard likes to scale down the number of buttons each spec has, and guess what? The game is completely in the shitter in comparison to MoP and pre-MoP because of this and other similar ideas Blizzard has about how the game should be changed. Just because they've historically just taken away buttons doesn't mean its a good idea for them to continue to do so.

And that is just the thing: Discipline is not a hybrid dps/healer mix. Discipline is a healer that uses damage spells to generate healing. Nothing in that statement needs the discipline priest to do competitive dps.
Most of the time in m+ is spent on trash. A healer that is able to do competitive AoE damage and all the required healing is way to strong. If you have time to use holy nova as a holy priest during a m+ run you are at a level where blizzard doesn't want you to be. Look at the keystone changes. Blizzard doesn't want players at easy/low keystone levels. If you are ever bored in an instance, why not simply ask the tank to pull more stuff?
Limiting the toolkit available is important. More buttons means more complexity. More complexity means more potential output because of cost/reward. Since spec's are somewhat balanced around top performance, output at lower levels of performance becomes a problem. That means the class is a bad experience for beginners. If you want the game to be balanced, complexity between specs/classes needs to be somewhere in the same area. If you want the game to succeed, the game needs to be accessible for beginners. High complexity does not achieve that. Discipline is already at the high end of complexity. No need to add to it.

"it's against the design philosophy, it's against the design philosophy"

WHY is it? You keep saying it is, but never explain why. And you never explain what this "design philosophy" even is, despite mentioning it 3 times.

And for the 5th or 6th time, this is NOT "for old content", so I'm not sure why everyone keeps claiming that it is. I run Holy in random heroics so that I can spam Holy Nova and actually do good DPS on these packs that get melted super fast. Disc can't do shit because all you have is single target spells.

Even if Blizzard just copypasted Holy Nova and made it not proc Atonement, I'd love that.


Please, explain how adding 1 aoe spell will somehow destroy the spec

I'd love to hear it

It is against the philosophy because Discipline is not about the damage numbers. While we do use damage spells to drive our healing, those spells can't ever deal competitive damage for the sake of being balanced in all endgame activities. Blizzard is aware of that.
Holy Nova won't work since it has no connection to Atonement and Discipline is all about atonement.
Even if an AoE spell, that has a proper synergy with atonement, were possible to balance, why would Blizzard add that spell? The only benefit that spell would have is more damage. Blizzard is already trying to keep discipline damage as low as possible for the sake of balance.
So if it doesn't deal significant damage why add it all? One of the designs pushed with legion is to remove all obsolete spells/buttons to reduce complexity. If buttons have no real use/phantasy behind them they get removed. If they are pressed at the same time (cooldowns) and have the same cooldown they get merged. A spell with no real purpose other than obsolete content simply wouldn't make the cut. And heroic dungeons, when raid geared, are obsolete content.

Adding one badly designed aoe spell will destroy the spec. It is either a) shit or b) op.
In case a) it will never be used and Blizzard would have to buff it. Chances are high that would lead to b).
In case b) yeah well it's op. That might be fun for a short while, but Blizzard can't leave it like that and therefore it get's nerfed again. Chances are high that sooner or later blizzard will nerf the spell in the wrong way, which either leaves it op, or cripples the class as a whole.
We would constantly hover between op and shit, since the possible grey area in between is so incredibly narrow and dependent on encounter design.

[ReD-EyeD]

I may be just a noob disc priest (having 3 tank mains and disc being 4th alt), but I would be happy with an aoe spell that doesn't work with atonement. Just for convenience and it will be possible to use it during easy dungeons. Relatively strong aoe would be fine if it doesn't heal, right? Call it shadow-something-something and make it cost YOUR health to deal damage or whatever. It's very easy to go around lore/spec fantasy and make it understandable.

But let me repeat myself: Class without aoe is just plain wrong. From my noob spec-wise perspective its absolutely atrocious and makes me reconsider just simply playing it. It's not about gimmicky stuff or wanting a "cool spell" for no reason. It's mandatory in current WoW. I seriously want to kill myself every time I have to kill a pack of mobs for a quest (FUCK RAPTOR WQs) where I have to click every healthplate out of 20 to cast Pain on them, waste 30 seconds of GCD time when other classes (healers and tanks included) can just press 2 buttons.

[Atharaxie]

Penance is perfect to maintain PTW on three clumped targets (aka botanist) but it's not very efficient at spreading our dot on trash packs or word quest critters.
In M+, discipline DPS is noticeable on tyranical bosses.

[anon5123]

I don't understand what is the purpose of creating problems for raiding/rbgs/dungeons (you know, the stuff where the game is balanced around) just because it's annoying for disc to do world quests.

Because all the other healers having AoE has created so many problems in raids and dungeons......oh wait it hasn't.

/shrug

You would think way of crane being cut in half would be enough to show what happens when you add aoe healing to aoe dps spells.

That's only for PvP.

It is against the philosophy because Discipline is not about the damage numbers. While we do use damage spells to drive our healing, those spells can't ever deal competitive damage for the sake of being balanced in all endgame activities.

And the problem is that Disc's AoE damage is absolutely pitiful compared to all other healers'. Whereas its single target is not that much lower than other healers'.

Holy Nova won't work since it has no connection to Atonement and Discipline is all about atonement.

Halo and Divine Star also don't proc Atonement (only on the first target hit) but you don't see anyone having issues with that.

So if it doesn't deal significant damage why add it all?

People have explained again and again: not being able to do anything to large groups of enemies, because you only have single target spells.

And no, heroics are not the only place where it's used.

Adding one badly designed aoe spell will destroy the spec. It is either a) shit or b) op.

You have a really weird definition of "destroy". If a spell being underpowered "destroys" the spec, then I guess Disc is already destroyed because Shadow Covenant.

[Supliftz]

Because all the other healers having AoE has created so many problems in raids and dungeons......oh wait it hasn't.

/shrug

...?

Other healers' dps spells don't do healing...?

That's only for PvP.

I don't...the reason the talent was cut in half is due to SCK on 6+ targets doing insane amounts of burst hps which is 100% smart healing.


HOLY SHIT MAn i don't know if you're trolling or not with these responses

[anon5123]

Other healers' dps spells don't do healing...?

And I've said multiple times now that I'd be perfectly fine with Disc AoE not doing healing.

Thanks for continuing to conveniently ignore that.

HOLY SHIT MAn i don't know if you're trolling or not with these responses

Could say the same about you.

And with that, i'll stop feeding you.

[Supliftz]

And I've said multiple times now that I'd be perfectly fine with Disc AoE not doing healing.

Thanks for continuing to conveniently ignore that.

this makes a ton of sense. a dps healer with a spell that doesn't heal.

[smitey]

this makes a ton of sense. a dps healer with a spell that doesn't heal.

Suplift has spoken, he does not understand why a dps healer needs aoe dps therefore we don't need it.

[Supliftz]

Suplift has spoken, he does not understand why a dps healer needs aoe dps therefore we don't need it.

idk man i rerolled from a class with a history of problems created by aoe dps spells.

[Nurasu]

this makes a ton of sense. a dps healer with a spell that doesn't heal.

What we have now makes a ton of sense. A dps healer with no aoe dps, and the only spec in the game with no aoe dps, for that matter.

idk man i rerolled from a class with a history of problems created by aoe dps spells.

That healed. Aoe dps spells that did smart healing. I honestly thought you were trolling earlier, because it's been said since this started pages ago that no healing from it would be fine. You can choose if you want to actually heal or you can choose to do more damage. Seems like interesting gameplay, especially in M+.