Balancing Disc in PvE?

[Heap]

am i the only one who hates playing the so called overpowered class? i prefer being underpowered and praised when performing well rather than all my performances being down to how OP my class is... even though i simply refuse to use spirit shell unless i absolutely have to.

Well in games with different balancing systems sure. In WoW however you'll just be extra weight, having to be carried by others if you play a bad spec.
I've been disc since i started playing my priest back in t11. I've dabbled with other specs and classes but always returned, 'cause OP or not, it's just the most fun to me.

My guess, based on your very last sentence there, is that you don't raid at all, correct?

[Ferin]

Would you say Heroic Garalon is the best fight for Monks? Constant AoE damage and, y'know, period crushes (every 35 seconds) so there's no certainty that SS will be active for each crush. Certainly Monks should perform well on this fight, right? Wrong: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=13845&e=14218

Yeah, monks are certainly competitive.

Linking your raids doesn't give a good picture of overall class balance, just how the specific players in your raid perform. And linking specific tries is even more likely to introduce bias.

You should at least link to something like raidbots that aggregates many kills so that you smooth out individual raid and fight variations.

For instance:
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garalon/2...00000000111111
Disc are top with monks in second across the top 100 logs, so I don't think monks are really as bad as you're saying here. Definitely not bottom of the pile. And while disc needs a bit of tuning (primary around rapture regen) they don't need the huge nerfs you're proposing.

Mistweavers are probably the second worst healer right now. Which would be fine if we had tools to save a raid. We don't. The class with the best raid CDs are also the best class for AoE healing on almost any, and I mean any, encounter.

Looking at the overall 25 man heroic score:
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...00000000111111
Mistweavers seem about where they should be; I wouldn't say they're desperately bad, just a bit overshadowed by disc atm. You're still way better than druids for instance. In fact with the exception of Gara'jal druids or holy priests are last on every single fight.

[HamSandwichFace]

Linking your raids doesn't give a good picture of overall class balance, just how the specific players in your raid perform. And linking specific tries is even more likely to introduce bias.

You should at least link to something like raidbots that aggregates many kills so that you smooth out individual raid and fight variations.

For instance:
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garalon/2...00000000111111
Disc are top with monks in second across the top 100 logs, so I don't think monks are really as bad as you're saying here. Definitely not bottom of the pile. And while disc needs a bit of tuning (primary around rapture regen) they don't need the huge nerfs you're proposing.


Looking at the overall 25 man heroic score:
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...00000000111111
Mistweavers seem about where they should be; I wouldn't say they're desperately bad, just a bit overshadowed by disc atm. You're still way better than druids for instance. In fact with the exception of Gara'jal druids or holy priests are last on every single fight.

I said second worst healer for a reason. Holy Priests have the luxury of being the most powerful healer by switching specs. Every other healer cannot do that. As I said, if you take raw HPS: Mistweavers are 2nd worst, over all. We also don't have any reason to be brought for a "raid CD". For example, even if Holy Paladins were awful and did 1/25th of the HPS they do now they'd still be a luxury on Sha of Fear HC due to Hand of Purity. Even if Spirit Shell was a 3 min CD most raids would still take 1/2 for Barrier/PS etc.

Why take a Mistweaver if all we provide is HPS, and everyone else generates more HPS than us? Also, those logs you're linking include pre-5.1 states (which shouldn't be accounted for).

[Ferin]

I said second worst healer for a reason. Holy Priests have the luxury of being the most powerful healer by switching specs. Every other healer cannot do that. As I said, if you take raw HPS: Mistweavers are 2nd worst, over all. We also don't have any reason to be brought for a "raid CD". For example, even if Holy Paladins were awful and did 1/25th of the HPS they do now they'd still be a luxury on Sha of Fear HC due to Hand of Purity. Even if Spirit Shell was a 3 min CD most raids would still take 1/2 for Barrier/PS etc.

You're not much worse than paladins or shams though - a couple of hundred hps out of 70k? You're not even going to notice that. Druids are 10k down on that. Forcing people to switch spec to be competitive isn't good gameplay either.

Why take a Mistweaver if all we provide is HPS, and everyone else generates more HPS than us? Also, those logs you're linking include pre-5.1 states (which shouldn't be accounted for).

The logs don't include pre-5.1. If you check how they're calculated you'd see that they aggregate the previous 14 days of logs to give the data points on the chart. The latest data point is thus an average (specifically the median) of the last 2 weeks. 5.1 came out more than 2 weeks ago, so there are no pre-5.1 logs in the current values.

[HamSandwichFace]

You're not much worse than paladins or shams though - a couple of hundred hps out of 70k? You're not even going to notice that. Druids are 10k down on that. Forcing people to switch spec to be competitive isn't good gameplay either.



The logs don't include pre-5.1. If you check how they're calculated you'd see that they aggregate the previous 14 days of logs to give the data points on the chart. The latest data point is thus an average (specifically the median) of the last 2 weeks. 5.1 came out more than 2 weeks ago, so there are no pre-5.1 logs in the current values.

Yeah, I was wrong about that. You're right. You aren't going to notice if we're 1-2k hps below Paladins/Shamans, but ... We don't provide:
- AM
- Clemency
- Hand of Purity
- Spirit Link Totem
- Mana Tide Totem
- Healing Tide Totem

We provide:
- Revival (half the strength of a fully utilised HTT/Tranquility)
- Life Cocoon (a very strong tank CD now)

Be honest, assuming equal skill, equal gear, which would you take: a healer who does more HPS and provides more raid CDs, or the healer who provides less HPS and has less raid CDs?

[Cookie]

You could argue that this is farm content and because we out gear a fight all absorb effects will naturally be a significant factor in damage absorption, but with crush this is unlikely, not to mention sub 30% we generally let the AoE tick for 40-50k-60k because of how insanely well Disc Priests scale under their mastery and, more notably, spirit shell. It's a complete joke.

Farming and overgeared content will favor absorb classes so heavily that you are unable to draw any conclusions for it (this is also part of the reason why disc are performing so well in raidbots and such). If you actually expect any result other than this when you are using 3 disc priests on farm content, well, I don't even know what to say. The fact that spirit shell can't mitigate the entire crush is irrelevant, what is relevant is that all the discs 'healing' go on the meter while the other classes don't since they have to 'share' the rest.

E.g. every second crush: A monk is doing 200k reactive healing after the damage while a disc does 150k proactive healing. If the raid takes 200k damage the result will be that the disc has done 150k healing and the monk 50k while if you had 2 monks they'd both do about 100k healing each. On some fights the fact that the disc heals the damage (for all practical purposes) 'instantly' is worth a lot (and should be kept in mind while balancing), on some fights this is irrelevant as long as the raid is topped before the next big aoe goes out and on fights with unpredictable damage it's even a disadvantage (since the 'healing' has to be done before the actual damage). Assuming that the damage is predictable disc will always top the meters assuming that the classes are anywhere close to equal output (or if there's not massive raid damage, even if they are way behind on output), unless blizzard actually designs a fight with so heavy damage that overhealing never occurs, which would be 100% impossible to beat.

[Whicker]

Yeah, I was wrong about that. You're right. You aren't going to notice if we're 1-2k hps below Paladins/Shamans, but ... We don't provide:
- AM
- Clemency
- Hand of Purity
- Spirit Link Totem
- Mana Tide Totem
- Healing Tide Totem

We provide:
- Revival (half the strength of a fully utilised HTT/Tranquility)
- Life Cocoon (a very strong tank CD now)

Be honest, assuming equal skill, equal gear, which would you take: a healer who does more HPS and provides more raid CDs, or the healer who provides less HPS and has less raid CDs?

For god sake stop being butt-hurt and go complain in your own damn forum. Monks were doubling everyone's hps for the first 2 months of the expansion. Yes disc needs some tuning but you dont even play one so you are in no position to even suggest anything. We needed some sort of buff because we were crap at the start just like we always are every expac, then they buff us a little too much in x.1 and then get us stable in x.2. Also you can blame your raid leader for stacking 3 disc priests and 2 paladins, with that much abs its no wonder your hps went to shit...

Just like ghostcrawler said this week on twitter, they cant nerf poh and DA because that is literally all disc has, 1 shitty ass 30yrd group restricted aoe heal. They will nerf the rapture external spirit gains and maybe the da portion of poh while buffing the healing from it. Either way the class itself is designed to steal your HPS and as long as you have 1 let alone 3!! in your raid you will have lower output and higher overhealing so get used to it.

[Tavin]

rapture gives too much mana and the main reason disc are crazy strong atm is only cause of Spirit Shell. It's a rediculous ability, just put a longer cd on it.

[Rivelle]

Mistweavers are probably the second worst healer right now. Which would be fine if we had tools to save a raid. We don't. The class with the best raid CDs are also the best class for AoE healing on almost any, and I mean any, encounter.

I'm honestly a bit shocked, because I saw you on monk forums for at least a week or two after 5.1 arguing with everyone who felt monks got overnerfed, telling them monks were fine, telling them they were all awful healers if they didn't agree with you. Telling people who were thinking of rerolling to just go and leave the monk forums.

Now you're here on the priest forums saying that monks are the second worst healers and disc are OP? Since all of this occurred after 5.1, I'm curious what has changed that made you come here to provoke discussion that wasn't evident two weeks ago.

[HamSandwichFace]

I'm honestly a bit shocked, because I saw you on monk forums for at least a week or two after 5.1 arguing with everyone who felt monks got overnerfed, telling them monks were fine, telling them they were all awful healers if they didn't agree with you. Telling people who were thinking of rerolling to just go and leave the monk forums.

Now you're here on the priest forums saying that monks are the second worst healers and disc are OP? Since all of this occurred after 5.1, I'm curious what has changed that made you come here to provoke discussion that wasn't evident two weeks ago.

The fact that my spot in a raid is wasted and useless. I feel literally worthless in most raids.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=4219&e=5029

Grand Empress Shek'zeer on HC is in no way a fight where you can "plan SS" outside of 2 phase 1s (and even then SS usage is "mediocre" at best), likewise Monks excel pretty well on this fight because you're able to constantly stay in melee and during the add phase you can heal the entire ranged with SCK/Renews/Uplifts. However look at those logs: 3 Disc Priests above all the Monks, and the 3rd place Disc Priest is playing in some pretty poor gear (he rerolled from his Mistweaver back to his Disc Priest). On this fight my "worth" comes once, in the last phase, where I can revival Visons of Demise. If Revival didn't have a dispell mechanic attached to it, needless to say it's a wasted raid spot: Paladins provide double HoPs (through Clemency) for Cry of Terror and provide amazing tank heals/CDs during the add phase.

Monks were "fine", what killed us was the needless mana increase. Look at the power gains, Mana Tea restores more mana than Rapture in the fight however Mistweaver spells cost almost double what Disc Priests spells cost.

[Spazzeh]

The fact that my spot in a raid is wasted and useless. I feel literally worthless in most raids.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=4219&e=5029

Grand Empress Shek'zeer on HC is in no way a fight where you can "plan SS" outside of 2 phase 1s (and even then SS usage is "mediocre" at best), likewise Monks excel pretty well on this fight because you're able to constantly stay in melee and during the add phase you can heal the entire ranged with SCK/Renews/Uplifts. However look at those logs: 3 Disc Priests above all the Monks, and the 3rd place Disc Priest is playing in some pretty poor gear (he rerolled from his Mistweaver back to his Disc Priest). On this fight my "worth" comes once, in the last phase, where I can revival Visons of Demise. If Revival didn't have a dispell mechanic attached to it, needless to say it's a wasted raid spot: Paladins provide double HoPs (through Clemency) for Cry of Terror and provide amazing tank heals/CDs during the add phase.

Monks were "fine", what killed us was the needless mana increase. Look at the power gains, Mana Tea restores more mana than Rapture in the fight however Mistweaver spells cost almost double what Disc Priests spells cost.

Your raid has no Resto Druids.

If you were playing one, then you might be justified in feeling "useless."

[Breflabb]

The fact that my spot in a raid is wasted and useless. I feel literally worthless in most raids.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=4219&e=5029

Grand Empress Shek'zeer on HC is in no way a fight where you can "plan SS" outside of 2 phase 1s (and even then SS usage is "mediocre" at best), likewise Monks excel pretty well on this fight because you're able to constantly stay in melee and during the add phase you can heal the entire ranged with SCK/Renews/Uplifts. However look at those logs: 3 Disc Priests above all the Monks, and the 3rd place Disc Priest is playing in some pretty poor gear (he rerolled from his Mistweaver back to his Disc Priest). On this fight my "worth" comes once, in the last phase, where I can revival Visons of Demise. If Revival didn't have a dispell mechanic attached to it, needless to say it's a wasted raid spot: Paladins provide double HoPs (through Clemency) for Cry of Terror and provide amazing tank heals/CDs during the add phase.

Monks were "fine", what killed us was the needless mana increase. Look at the power gains, Mana Tea restores more mana than Rapture in the fight however Mistweaver spells cost almost double what Disc Priests spells cost.

what is exact the problem? the boss where killed you got loot.. and your whining that you feel usless.. because your not on top of the meter?.. god sir my suggetion to you is, open up cmd.exe type Fdisk followed by a Format c: .. that will help you rise on the meters.

i mean if you feel so darn usless roll a Dpriest or what ever xxxclass that has more on the meteres.

also looking at the stats, removing the first Dpriest assuming that he is the main shiled guy, you can clearly see that all the healers are on par even the monks, i really cant see the issue your trying too convey

[HamSandwichFace]

what is exact the problem? the boss where killed you got loot.. and your whining that you feel usless.. because your not on top of the meter?.. god sir my suggetion to you is, open up cmd.exe type Fdisk followed by a Format c: .. that will help you rise on the meters.

i mean if you feel so darn usless roll a Dpriest or what ever xxxclass that has more on the meteres.

I feel useless in most boss fights because I can't do anything. The Mistweaver "niche", or "main focal point" is raid healing (our tank healing is still pretty poor, worse so after the Enveloping Mists nerf) and yet we're terrible at it compared to Holy Pallies with their 4 piece, Resto Shaman who can sustain UEd HRs and CH spam, Disc Priests. At the moment we're the second worst healer, which wouldn't be an issue if we brought worthwhile raid CDs... but we don't.

Anyway, 5.2 will be up on PTRs after Christmas so here's me holding out hope ^^ else I might reroll to my Resto Shaman which feels moderately overpowered.

[Breflabb]

ok i see the point you have chosen the wrong class to heal the raid with, then you should definitively roll the shaman or resto druid

[Thehealbus]

what is exact the problem? the boss where killed you got loot.. and your whining that you feel usless.. because your not on top of the meter?.. god sir my suggetion to you is, open up cmd.exe type Fdisk followed by a Format c: .. that will help you rise on the meters.

i mean if you feel so darn usless roll a Dpriest or what ever xxxclass that has more on the meteres.

also looking at the stats, removing the first Dpriest assuming that he is the main shiled guy, you can clearly see that all the healers are on par even the monks, i really cant see the issue your trying too convey

Are you even reading what he's saying? He doesn't have a problem with not being on top of the meters, he has a problem with the fact that his class is pulling low on the meters while having low, if any, utility to bring the raid.

The problem is that he feels like he's being carried because of how little his class contributes. Not everyone wants to kill a boss and get free gear, some people play for the challenge and fun, and not being able to keep up with other classes in terms of healing and utility is frustrating. The point in progression where you feel like you literally not being there at all would make a difference is the point where you can get upset.

[Ferin]

So the solution to monk's lack of utility is to nerf priests? Yeah that sounds logical.

[Rectitude]

Are you even reading what he's saying? He doesn't have a problem with not being on top of the meters, he has a problem with the fact that his class is pulling low on the meters while having low, if any, utility to bring the raid.

The problem is that he feels like he's being carried because of how little his class contributes. Not everyone wants to kill a boss and get free gear, some people play for the challenge and fun, and not being able to keep up with other classes in terms of healing and utility is frustrating. The point in progression where you feel like you literally not being there at all would make a difference is the point where you can get upset.

Playing a class that is generally considered "underpowered" is a challenge, as it requires that you play as close to perfectly as possible, in order to minimise the difference between yourself and others.

--------------

I main disc/holy, with about 30% of the time being the latter, I'd honestly prefer that was 100% but Disc is a little too good right now. However, as I've stated in this very thread already, balance is an ever present issue for the devs. What works well or otherwise in a 10, may not be anywhere near as OP in a 25.

For instance, Tsulong heroic: I play holy, in the night phase, our monk destroys me (even if I pay no heed to mana, I just do not have the throughput a monk does (in our group with our tactics), in the day phase it's not even worth doing a comparison. Yet here's the thing: we heal that fight holy priest, monk, paladin so use 2 of the class/specs that many people consider underpowered yet we clear the encounter with ease. I'm not saying it's an especially difficult encounter but people really need to quit their damn whining.

Unfortunately the game is played by a large number (in my experience) of kids who hear something, take it as fact then perpetually regurgitate the same crap ad nauseum.
Resto druids may be rather poor in 25's, but they do just fine in 10's. Monks are doing ok in 10's. Disc isn't as OP in most 10's as it is in 25's. Paladins seem decent in both. HolyPr has mana issues compared to other healers and seems a touch low on throughput in both 10 and 25. Shaman seem good in both.

Disc will get a nerf to one or more aspects, when that happens, I'll not be whining on the forum like a child because I'm now 5% below other healers, nope, I'll just be raiding all the same and clearing content anyway.

If your healing TEAM are able to clear content and you contribute substantively in doing so, what is the problem; I'll tell you: YOU.

[Rivelle]

The fact that my spot in a raid is wasted and useless. I feel literally worthless in most raids.

Monks were "fine", what killed us was the needless mana increase. Look at the power gains, Mana Tea restores more mana than Rapture in the fight however Mistweaver spells cost almost double what Disc Priests spells cost.

So it seems that as many of the other people on monk forums felt, monks really were not fine and you've now seen this and changed your stance. >.> All that arguing for nothing.

I rerolled back to my disc priest (my BC and Cata main) from my mistweaver the week following 5.1. I don't raid heroics, my guild is far too casual, but I did try out some raids on my monk and saw how it felt after the mana nerfs. It's part of the reason I haven't even touched my monk except to do profession dailies and Farmville since I last tried it.

I sincerely hope for you that 5.2 changes something so you don't have to feel like you've wasted your time on your monk if you do indeed reroll to your resto shaman. I'm just not sure coming over to the priest forums telling the priests (many of whom already know) that disc is OP and needs a nerf is the best course of action. It will just cause a lot of dissent here, while posting on the official forums might be more efficient.

[Saphiramoon]

I went through most of the replies in this thread - and I gotta say you can tell some of them are very driven by personal feelings .

1 - Rapture no longer benefits from short-term (trinkets, Mana Tide, etc) spirit bonuses
2 - DA nerfed by to be 20% absorption on all spells, but DA triggers from all spell hits, not just criticals
3 - Spirit Shell now has a 3 min CD but each time Penance is channeled entirely the CD is reduced by 3 seconds 90
4 - The Spirit Shell duration now lasts 30 seconds.
5 - Archangel now restores 5% mana
6 - Evangelism now includes Power Word: Solace
7 - Atonement now includes Power Word: Solace
8 - Prayer of Healing now has a 7% base mana cost (from 13500 mana to 21000)

To give my opinion on the OP suggestions

1. Rapture not benefiting from short term buffs - I think this one should idd be fixed, especially because of mana tide. Getting a rapture proc during trinkets proc is not as much of an issue as being able to blow all up with a mana tide. After playing disc since the beginning of wrath, I can tell using rapture cleverly with procs has always been a part of disc game play (we used to use it with HoH buff/weapon ench in cata). It didnt break things, just rewarded clever play. Mana tide though breaks the things too much. A little reward is ok, but thats just taking the entire cake and eating it.

2. I didn't understand the buff to DA. I dont think it was needed. I think it also basically forces disc into poh spam, because its just too good. I reckon they tried to think of disc as both a tank and raid viable healer and for tank healing, mastery has always been a poor stat for disc - too unreliable, especially in lower tiers of gear with not a lot of crit. The problem is that they buffed PoH so much, its pretty much a waste to put a disc on tank healing. Toss SS in and the fact we have quite few encounters with serious tank healing, and you get to see the endless PoH spam. It doesnt make me happy that most of my healing comes from poh in various forms - either itself (not so much tbh), DA, SS PoH. Do I have any other viable choice?

3. Spirit Shell - the thing that nobody saw at the beginning of MoP but it is now the monster that kills all the joy of life in other classes. Sure the thing got buffed together with PoH buffs, but that wasn't the moment it became THE thing. Heart of Fear and its numerous raid dmg on 1 min timers bosses did it. Problem is, HoF will be obsolete in 2 months, while we remain with SS for the rest of the expansion. My own feelings towards it? Yes, its a very good raid cd. Atm to be decent, a disc has to use it to death. I'm not sure how enjoyable it is to be constantly in the roll of charge archangel>watch timer>pop archangel> spirit shell/poh your ass off while every movement you need to do makes you feel like you spilled some of your favorite drink. However, I don't have a choice. That is my use in raids, to be a spirit shell bot on a timer. Ppl call it a raid cd, it doesnt feel like one, unless you can imagine yourself popping/preparing raid cds for half of the time of the encounter. Put it on a 3 mins cd? Sure, but then you'll have to give it some advantage other raid cds have: not costing more than any raid cd or not needing 15 seconds ramp up time. Compare SS cost and cast time to healing tide "plonk". I'm not saying SS is hard, but its surely fairly cumbersome to use.

I don't have special feelings about points 4/5/6. Atm solace is a dead talent for both holy and disc priests. It failed in the design of " get rewarded for more effort". You dont get rewarded with a spell that requires you to not heal for 15% of the time to get EQUAL benefits with one that req 1 gcd. Sure if you had encounters with 30% downtime, it would rock, but then again, you you have so much downtime, why you need mana? I'm a bit bias about spells replacing other spells, and in the idea of solace working with atonement/evangelism/arch it would just replace smite. I missed the 5% mana from archangel but not to the extent of thinking it needs to be there.

8. There is a serious issue with aoe heals being a lot more efficient than single target ones, and I don't think that is a priest only issue, to the extent of most of us rarely using single target spells. I think thats also something that reveals itself in the only class without a spamable aoe spell - and thats resto druids. The game is unbalanced in aoe vs single target, too much. It makes healers hate tank healing, because it makes them look bad on meters (as much as you know somebody has to do the shitty job).

[Saphiramoon]

Monks were "fine", what killed us was the needless mana increase. Look at the power gains, Mana Tea restores more mana than Rapture in the fight however Mistweaver spells cost almost double what Disc Priests spells cost.

This is a first hand example that mana gains dont always make you not have regen issues. In the start of MoP, as a disc priest, I was getting via rapture a lot more mana than all the other healers - however, I was ooming faster than them. After a few tries as disc I just switched to holy because it was pointless to even bother with disc (and I actually played disc in t11 start, so it takes some shit to get me to give up). As an offspec holy that barely played it in 2 years, I managed a lot better.

The problem is that disc surely gains a lot of mana - but it also spends craploads. Some ppl say - use shields for rapture only, but if I see a dps at 10% hp do you think I'll just check rapture and say " nah, not using it, wont get mana back"? No, I shield, even if he doesnt even take dmg anymore, because thats my role in a raid the way I see it. I sometimes shield for the speed boost on a kiter. Wrong? Maybe. For any aoe, disc only has poh: it doesnt matter if you have 3 ppl only hurt in a party, you're still gonna toss the mana for the full deal. Thats why they buffed poh to ludicrous amounts, it is hiding a massive efficiency issue for disc.

Most healers got new spells in the last 1-2 expansions, disc didn't really. We got barrier, which is a cd, but not a regular button to use that makes an impact on our healing "rotation". We got spirit shell which is just a toggle for existing spells. We got the level 90 talents, which also hide the problem - look at the amounts cascade is doing, another stupidly buffed spell. And we got atonement, a single target spell. None of these give us a viable competitor for PoH. I'd dare to say there isn't any other healer in the game that would be completely killed in pve by nerfing one single spell.

So, I think disc has design issues more than anything else, and its been band aided into almost a parody of a healer. Our actual healing is abysmal, comparable to wrath levels, and we know how that one went.

---------- Post added 2012-12-21 at 03:07 PM ----------

My apologies for the 2 posts, it's the first time for me on these forums and when I posted the first reply, it didn't get posted (got a message about it needing to be approved so I didn't insist, then the 2nd got posted and I guess something just went wrong with my first). I'd like to close the notepad with it now, so /sorry for the posts appearing one after the other instead at some distance as they were.

I went through most of the replies in this thread - and I gotta say you can tell some of them are very driven by personal feelings .

1 - Rapture no longer benefits from short-term (trinkets, Mana Tide, etc) spirit bonuses
2 - DA nerfed by to be 20% absorption on all spells, but DA triggers from all spell hits, not just criticals
3 - Spirit Shell now has a 3 min CD but each time Penance is channeled entirely the CD is reduced by 3 seconds 90
4 - The Spirit Shell duration now lasts 30 seconds.
5 - Archangel now restores 5% mana
6 - Evangelism now includes Power Word: Solace
7 - Atonement now includes Power Word: Solace
8 - Prayer of Healing now has a 7% base mana cost (from 13500 mana to 21000)

To give my opinion on the OP suggestions

1. Rapture not benefiting from short term buffs - I think this one should idd be fixed, especially because of mana tide. Getting a rapture proc during trinkets proc is not as much of an issue as being able to blow all up with a mana tide. After playing disc since the beginning of wrath, I can tell using rapture cleverly with procs has always been a part of disc game play (we used to use it with HoH buff/weapon ench in cata). It didnt break things, just rewarded clever play. Mana tide though breaks the things too much. A little reward is ok, but thats just taking the entire cake and eating it.

2. I didn't understand the buff to DA. I dont think it was needed. I think it also basically forces disc into poh spam, because its just too good. I reckon they tried to think of disc as both a tank and raid viable healer and for tank healing, mastery has always been a poor stat for disc - too unreliable, especially in lower tiers of gear with not a lot of crit. The problem is that they buffed PoH so much, its pretty much a waste to put a disc on tank healing. Toss SS in and the fact we have quite few encounters with serious tank healing, and you get to see the endless PoH spam. It doesnt make me happy that most of my healing comes from poh in various forms - either itself (not so much tbh), DA, SS PoH. Do I have any other viable choice?

3. Spirit Shell - the thing that nobody saw at the beginning of MoP but it is now the monster that kills all the joy of life in other classes. Sure the thing got buffed together with PoH buffs, but that wasn't the moment it became THE thing. Heart of Fear and its numerous raid dmg on 1 min timers bosses did it. Problem is, HoF will be obsolete in 2 months, while we remain with SS for the rest of the expansion. My own feelings towards it? Yes, its a very good raid cd. Atm to be decent, a disc has to use it to death. I'm not sure how enjoyable it is to be constantly in the roll of charge archangel>watch timer>pop archangel> spirit shell/poh your ass off while every movement you need to do makes you feel like you spilled some of your favorite drink. However, I don't have a choice. That is my use in raids, to be a spirit shell bot on a timer. Ppl call it a raid cd, it doesnt feel like one, unless you can imagine yourself popping/preparing raid cds for half of the time of the encounter. Put it on a 3 mins cd? Sure, but then you'll have to give it some advantage other raid cds have: not costing more than any raid cd or not needing 15 seconds ramp up time. Compare SS cost and cast time to healing tide "plonk". I'm not saying SS is hard, but its surely fairly cumbersome to use.

I don't have special feelings about points 4/5/6. Atm solace is a dead talent for both holy and disc priests. It failed in the design of " get rewarded for more effort". You dont get rewarded with a spell that requires you to not heal for 15% of the time to get EQUAL benefits with one that req 1 gcd. Sure if you had encounters with 30% downtime, it would rock, but then again, if you have so much downtime, why do you need mana? I'm a bit bias about spells replacing other spells, and in the idea of solace working with atonement/evangelism/arch it would just replace smite. I missed the 5% mana from archangel but not to the extent of thinking it needs to be there.

8. There is a serious issue with aoe heals being a lot more efficient than single target ones, and I don't think that is a priest only issue, to the extent of most of us rarely using single target spells. I think thats also something that reveals itself as a problem in the only class without a spamable aoe spell - and thats resto druids. The game is unbalanced in aoe vs single target, too much. It makes healers hate tank healing, because it makes them look bad on meters (as much as you know somebody has to do the shitty job).