Disc for the next exp.

[Mazzeric]

As much as people might not have fallen in love with Disc's current iteration (myself included), I think it's important for this spec to stay as-is and... to simply exist. There needs to be a BM Hunter-difficulty level healing spec just as there needs to be a Feral Druid-difficulty level healing spec in the game. This spectrum of skill requirement is necessary for the game's health, especially as the player base becomes more skillful as a whole and addons become more robust. If you made the argument of "well I liked the absorb style better it has nothing to do with skill cap" well... I hate to break it to you but that style is dead 100%. For these reasons, while the design of the spec is extremely polarized from a player enjoyment perspective, it's a brilliant design from a pure game design standpoint. Disc is now a "skill shot" healer much in line with the hardest LoL champions or HOTS heroes.

It also makes sense for them to have the healing spec with the highest skill cap also be part of the Priest class. Holy is way easier to pull off without having finely tuned execution and deep knowledge of the spec, and will always be there as an option for people who enjoy it more than Disc.

[Yunzi]

Since 7.2 Disc isn't much more difficult than the other healing specs, and it's becoming even easier once we get our 4-pc Tier 21 which links Power Word: Radiance and Penance. We're a long way away from the "most complex healing spec in WoW history" that was 7.0 and 7.1 Disc.

[Geschan]

As much as people might not have fallen in love with Disc's current iteration (myself included), I think it's important for this spec to stay as-is and... to simply exist. There needs to be a BM Hunter-difficulty level healing spec just as there needs to be a Feral Druid-difficulty level healing spec in the game. This spectrum of skill requirement is necessary for the game's health, especially as the player base becomes more skillful as a whole and addons become more robust. If you made the argument of "well I liked the absorb style better it has nothing to do with skill cap" well... I hate to break it to you but that style is dead 100%. For these reasons, while the design of the spec is extremely polarized from a player enjoyment perspective, it's a brilliant design from a pure game design standpoint. Disc is now a "skill shot" healer much in line with the hardest LoL champions or HOTS heroes.

It also makes sense for them to have the healing spec with the highest skill cap also be part of the Priest class. Holy is way easier to pull off without having finely tuned execution and deep knowledge of the spec, and will always be there as an option for people who enjoy it more than Disc.

While that is true in general, there are some issues that need fixing.
One thing that should be easy to fix is to add a damage component to our mastery. Currently our damage spells scale way worse with gear than our healing, simply because of how mastery works. The higher the itemlvl gets, the higher the difference. Tanks for example get Attack Power from their mastery. I personally would simply change the discipline mastery to "improves the damage of all spells". It would still only buff atonement healing, but the damage would scale as well.
Another issue is the artifact skill. It's to my knowledge the sole skill in the game with exponential growth depending on the number of atonement buffs.
Thanks to that the skill is almost useless in 5 man dungeons, ok in 10 man raids and insane in 20 man mythic raids.
Additionally it punishes the priest to an unneeded degree if the maximum amount of possible atonement buffs was not reached.
Removing the 10% damage buff per atonement and buffing the base damage of the skill should help a lot.

[theburned]

While that is true in general, there are some issues that need fixing.
One thing that should be easy to fix is to add a damage component to our mastery. Currently our damage spells scale way worse with gear than our healing, simply because of how mastery works. The higher the itemlvl gets, the higher the difference. Tanks for example get Attack Power from their mastery. I personally would simply change the discipline mastery to "improves the damage of all spells". It would still only buff atonement healing, but the damage would scale as well.
Another issue is the artifact skill. It's to my knowledge the sole skill in the game with exponential growth depending on the number of atonement buffs.
Thanks to that the skill is almost useless in 5 man dungeons, ok in 10 man raids and insane in 20 man mythic raids.
Additionally it punishes the priest to an unneeded degree if the maximum amount of possible atonement buffs was not reached.
Removing the 10% damage buff per atonement and buffing the base damage of the skill should help a lot.

LW isnt that bad in dungeons, its not great by any means either, but lets say you buff it, what would it even do? You do a tad bit more with LW, it doesnt help you with any weaknesses, disc still suffers when there is heavy spot healing and group healing needed at the same time, when paladins have beacon of virtue + heavy ST, druid have hots and regrowths for spot healing. Discs have to pick between shadow mends or dps, offensive or defensive penance. While being pretty good at both isolated, when it requires a lot of both and reaches a point where you are pushed to your max, you will suffer. While your first suggestion would fix this to some extent, because it would make it a better stat in dungeons (it would have to be some half and half, otherwise it would butcher your healing contribution from the stat.) I think the better solution to make mastery a valuable stat for dungeons is to have grace scale with mastery, knock it down to 20-25% (ideally around 23%) this would make mastery a lot stronger for the healing in dungeons.

[Geschan]

Just compare Light's Wrath with Penance.
If there are 5 active atonement buffs Light's Wrath deals 720% SP * 1.5 = 1080% SP damage.
The spell has a 2,5 sec base cast time and 90 sec cooldown, no mana costs.
Thanks to talents and setboni Penance currently deals 950% SP damage.
2/5 of that value are dealt instant, 3/5 are dealt over the next 2 seconds (base channel time).
The spell can be used while moving, it has only a cooldown of 9 seconds with medium mana costs.
In 5 man dungeons penance is basically better in all regards. The only aspect where LW is better is the mana cost, since it's free.
With the addition of the Antorus raid Penance will become even better. Every second time Penance can be buffed, to deal 1567% SP damage.
Using the old 2 piece and the new 4 piece will be mandatory.

Concerning the mastery, I think you misunderstood my suggestion. Currently mastery works only on healing, since it increases the transfer percentage of atonement. Baseline atonement has a value of 40%. With mastery that value can be increased. So 10% mastery equals 44% atonement.
My suggestion would be to change mastery to "damage spells deal x% more damage". I.e. it would increase the damage and thanks to atonement it would increase atonement healing as well. The only benefit in dungeons and raids would be a higher dps. Healing wouldn't change at all.

The thing I miss most as discipline priest in 5 man dungeons is that "oh snap" button that other healers have.
Sure we have Power Word: Barrier, but that spell is rather limited in dungeons.
Light's Wrath is too clunky and too slow.

In Raid's Light's Wrath is insanely strong. Less random damage (no mythic+ modifiers) and in a 20 man raid ~ double the damage 8 times the healing.
But it is a high risk, high reward move. If you screw up the atonement window, it drops a lot in healing power.

Discipline is already complex enough thanks to the atonement mechanic. Making LW scale that strong with the number of atonement effects is unneeded in my opinion. Don't get me wrong. I'm fine with atonement. I just think that LW doesn't need that additional 10% damage per atonement modifier. Simply buff the base damage to a balanced value, restrict the buff for pvp and remove the 10% modifier. Result should be more healing in 5 man dungeons and less punishment if you screw up, for the non perfect players.

[Supliftz]

the reason light's wrath scales in damage, is because there needs to be a frequent "big pay off" for going to high atonements.

[Nief]

[..]less punishment if you screw up[..]

High skill, high reward - to me this seems like it's exactly working as it should.

[Niwes]

i wouldnt assume much changes to disc.

normally blizzard is very conservative. they wait a long time and until something is REALLY heavily broken before they even change it. since half of the disc players hate it but half of them love it, and it is balanceable, playable and works, there is litterally no chance in my exp that blizz will touch it besides some fine tuning stuff.

if either the whole community hates it, the played disc class numbers are horrible low, or it has been horrible to balance while Legion, THEN they would think about big changes. but nothing of that happened. so there is totally no reasons to change this spec again, before others of the 36 specs, in blizzards point of view.

which is understandable. but personally sad for me, cause i hate new disc. but thats just me.

[Geschan]

the reason light's wrath scales in damage, is because there needs to be a frequent "big pay off" for going to high atonements.

High skill, high reward - to me this seems like it's exactly working as it should.

You would still be punished if you completely screw up your atonement window and drop some of them before using Light's Wrath.
I'm not talking about removing the scaling completely. I just don't think an exponential scaling is a good choice. Double the Healing for double the atonement buffs should be reward enough to make going high atonement interesting.

[Supliftz]

You would still be punished if you completely screw up your atonement window and drop some of them before using Light's Wrath.
I'm not talking about removing the scaling completely. I just don't think an exponential scaling is a good choice. Double the Healing for double the atonement buffs should be reward enough to make going high atonement interesting.

why shouldn't you be punished ?

[Nief]

I just don't think an exponential scaling is a good choice.

The exponential scaling is what differentiates Lights Wrath from all other spells - this is the reward, this is what makes it special. Are you really arguing that less variety improves the gameplay? *sigh* I don't, I enjoy choices and different options, and I think that doing what you suggest makes LW redundant, hence it's a really bad idea.

[zlygork]

I just want an ability to AoE my attonment to a party of 5, it can have a big CD I don't care.

[blackblade]

i wouldnt assume much changes to disc.

normally blizzard is very conservative. they wait a long time and until something is REALLY heavily broken before they even change it. since half of the disc players hate it but half of them love it, and it is balanceable, playable and works, there is litterally no chance in my exp that blizz will touch it besides some fine tuning stuff.

if either the whole community hates it, the played disc class numbers are horrible low, or it has been horrible to balance while Legion, THEN they would think about big changes. but nothing of that happened. so there is totally no reasons to change this spec again, before others of the 36 specs, in blizzards point of view.

which is understandable. but personally sad for me, cause i hate new disc. but thats just me.

This was true up until about MoP. Lately they've become more and more aggressive at mauling the classes to fit whatever their vision is.

Comparing what we have today to what we had in Cata/Mists is like night and day... many if not most classes are similar in name only.

I would be incredibly surprised if they put the breaks on next expansion.

[Geschan]

The exponential scaling is what differentiates Lights Wrath from all other spells - this is the reward, this is what makes it special. Are you really arguing that less variety improves the gameplay? *sigh* I don't, I enjoy choices and different options, and I think that doing what you suggest makes LW redundant, hence it's a really bad idea.

Here is the thing. The proposed changes to LW don't reduce options. For Raids (if balanced correctly) nothing would change. You buff everyone with atonement, you cast LW, you heal a ton. But in dungeons the spell would now actually be an option since it wouldn't be crippled that much because of the missing atonement buffs. Currently if you would remove LW from the spell book in dungeons, nobody would notice and/or care that much, since it almost has no impact. That should never be the case. Light's Wrath is the ability that we get, because we use THE discipline artifact. An artifact so volatile and powerful that most people can't even touch the thing. Such an ability should never have the impact of a wet fart. Because the second you cast it with only 5 atonement's active, that is what it feels like.

I get that payout feels great if you execute properly and are in a raid group. But thanks to that scaling, the spells sucks in any content other than raids and big battlegrounds. And it sucks if you are not one of the few top players, that can execute the perfect Light's Wrath.

[nietz]

I get that payout feels great if you execute properly and are in a raid group. But thanks to that scaling, the spells sucks in any content other than raids and big battlegrounds. And it sucks if you are not one of the few top players, that can execute the perfect Light's Wrath.

I don't think that you need to be one of the "few top players" to use Light's Wrath appropriately. You do have to line up some abilities properly, especially in a larger raid size, but it's really not that difficult depending on the fight. And the higher the raid difficulty, the easier it gets.

[Memento1]

I would argue against "it sucks if you are not one of the top few players." I have badly misused it with only 7 atonements out before, and it was not at all sucky. It would have been much better with the full raid covered, yes, but giving those 7 a nice health boost was noticable.

But I would agree I would like if it hit harder in dungeons. As is, it is relegated to little more than filler there. Like Tranquility and Divine Hymn got buffed in dungeons.

[Nurasu]

Those are also 3 min CDs; I think barrier is fine for when you need it, otherwise you have Rapture. It wouldn't be balanced to have Revival in 5 mans with half the CD.

[Deleted]

tranq and hymn arent relevant in dungeons either

[Mazzeric]

TBH you can be fairly sloppy with LW right now provided you have Velen's to redistribute the overheal to targets you didn't manage to Atone and provided the raid is still missing a significant health%. You can be an "okay" disc priest this way.

Disc is much more of a time puzzle than an Atonement puzzle. Applying Atonements is easy. Managing your time spent against abilities going out from the boss is the complex part. How much time do I have and how many Atonements can I get out before the next big boss ability? Which cooldowns can I use and also have available to me for a later mechanic? Do I do a plea ramp-up or does the incoming damage justify ramping with Rapture instead? These are the hard questions when playing Disc much more than "who should I atone?" Target selection is something every healer deals with. If you can't press plea (or rapture pw:s) on everyone in the raid before incoming damage, then you probably also sucked at blanketing the raid with shields in previous expansions.

[Raiz]

I just want an ability to AoE my attonment to a party of 5, it can have a big CD I don't care.

But you have it ? That's called Power Word: Radiance ? Unless there's something I'm missing ?