Atonement became mandatory?

[Vashi]

Hello there fellow priests,

what I was worried much of is really happening. Does anyone of you feels like DPS/Healing style Atonement provides became a bit mandatory in this patch. Like I mean I was never fan of it and never used it. You could choose to heal the same without and with it.

But hey, every fight in 5.2 I feel like Atonement healing is the best way to do it.

My point is. Is it really way we wanna go? I mean when POH spamming was boring this is stuff you found fun in it? I mean spamming Smite without even clicking on GRID. Hell guys I can even tank heal without using healing spells. I just spam smite and push spirit shell and cascade when its on cooldown as in 5.1, then back to smiting.

Gaaaaah. I wanna go back to cast some heals . Anyone also feels the pain with me? Or all of you enjoy your smitelol? Sorry my enlish is not superb.

[Dorfie]

Was the same in 5.1 if you did 10 mans. Only fight I can think of where I didn't use a tonne of atonement was Empress. I did more damage than healing on H Sha. Regardless of when it became mandatory, it is. If you don't want to spam smite go holy imo.

[Vashi]

I never used atonement in 5.1. Only on Garajal HC in first week of raiding. And oh Lei Shi HC.

[Wuga]

Disc playstyle is pretty horrible in 5.2, between the penance buffs and poh nerfs it's hardly ever worthwhile doing anything else but atonement. I barely even look at health bars anymore. 5.1 was bad too with regards to just atonement spamming everything, but at least poh was still worth casting then...

[Dorfie]

Then you were playing sub-optimally

[Vashi]

Then you were playing sub-optimally

I mean its not about going # 1 on WOL. I dont give a flying fkuc when boss bites the dust. But at last I got a choice. But really now in 5.2 there is no other way how to heal if you wanna compete with other healers. Just DPS the bosses. And as Wuga says yea I dont even watch grid anymore only for PWS if someone is nearly dead.

Its just boring more than watching grid and spamming POH. Actually I could choose DPS class if I would like to DPS no?

[Noradin]

Then you were playing sub-optimally

Which doesn't matter if it was more than good enough. Depending on the definition it would have been optimally even - if you include fun for example, which is good against burnout even if you only care for progress and not about whom you play together with.

[Deleted]

I'm pretty sure that if you don't care about playing optimally, then you can still avoid atonement by a large degree.
Otherwise, yes, it seems to be more towards what blizzard intends us to do. Between poh spam and atonement spam, I think I mildly prefer atonement - atl east it has 3 spells involved. Still, I feel I can use other spells plenty - raiding 25 mans here. Shields are still good, spirit shell is still good, cascade is still good, even the odd gheal on the tank is still good. I use prayer of healing a lot less than I used to in 5.1 (mostly in conjunction with spirit shell), but with 1 min cd on spirit shell, I push that button often enough. I'm still adjusting to 5.2, but so far I'm oki with disc - even if I dont auto-top meters anymore (which tbh is a relief, I'm quite tired of all the hate). I'm a bit worried my max output rarely seems to manage to pass 100k, so wondering how viable disc will still be in hc modes where atonement wont cut it (at least I dont believe it will for 25 mans, unless massive gimmicks involved) but we'll see.

[Nanaboostme]

I don't understand how horrible or frustrating it could be to you. It doesn't take much thinking or change in rotation. You just smite 1-5 times during any filler moments and when its nearing its CD activate Archangel for its 5% bonus. The great thing about it is that its okay if you fail to activate it at crucial times but there are still moments where you dont need that much healing going out, and thats the best time to just smite get the healing bonus. Like its been said, it's not mandatory, yet its not suppose to be a burden thats why you can activate it even with less than 5 stacks. Just smite when you have nothing else to cast and use Archangel when you need stronger heals

[Noradin]

I think his complain was not about it being to hard to incorporate into his healing to get AA, it was about it being what we cast the most, due to how unvieldly PoH is and how slow our other heals feel. Atonement chooses a target the moment the heal goes of and with the amount of smartheals flying around from all healers hard casting anything can be quite frustrating and the moment to swith from atonement to direct heals feels shaky since it takes some time until the healing from our direct heals gets there. If, for example, five or so people take damage that needs to get healed before some AoE hits and they don't happen do be all in the same group atomenemt might be best, but if it is just a tiny bit less than whats needed we would have had to switch to something else quite some time ealier. We can't just catch up with our AoE healing, we have to know before and feel out of options in emergencies.

[Wuga]

It's horrible because atonement is basically shield spam from lk reincarnated, you press the same button(s) over and over since it's very rare for any other spell to be worthwhile. I guess at least in this case it's penance (hf) smite smite instead of just pws pws pws...

[Bangable]

It's horrible because atonement is basically shield spam from lk reincarnated, you press the same button(s) over and over since it's very rare for any other spell to be worthwhile. I guess at least in this case it's penance (hf) smite smite instead of just pws pws pws...

Agreed....I did a lot of atonement healing back in 5.1, but not to this degree. A couple of fights, like Horridon and Tortos, are great for atonement because of the damage increase these bosses take and it pretty much makes me feel like I have no reason to cast anything else besides to get rapture procs. Now that I think about it....that is all I do now, use SS when needed, keep PWS on the tanks and whoever else since now it's cheaper to cast, and then atonement spam.

[Altariaz]

I mean its not about going # 1 on WOL. I dont give a flying fkuc when boss bites the dust. But at last I got a choice. But really now in 5.2 there is no other way how to heal if you wanna compete with other healers. Just DPS the bosses. And as Wuga says yea I dont even watch grid anymore only for PWS if someone is nearly dead.

Its just boring more than watching grid and spamming POH. Actually I could choose DPS class if I would like to DPS no?

I agree that Blizzard have promoted a boring play-style, by buffing Atonement healing too much. As a healer I want to use my direct healing spells to keep players alive, not faceroll a boring as hell dps rotation on some boss to proc atonement heals, over which I have no control. The smart heal might not even land on the best target.

[Deleted]

It looks like atonement got a nerf: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8197860502

[Rivellana]

I agree that Blizzard have promoted a boring play-style, by buffing Atonement healing too much. As a healer I want to use my direct healing spells to keep players alive, not faceroll a boring as hell dps rotation on some boss to proc atonement heals, over which I have no control. The smart heal might not even land on the best target.

I agree with this.

I love discipline, I love bubbles, and I've been pretty much overall satisfied so far with the changes they made to the spec with 5.2 but when someone needs to be healed I prefer to actually use a direct heal rather than spamming dps spells and hoping it lands the heal on them that they need.

Pre-5.2 I only used atonement when I needed to get archangel buff up or when there was simply not much else for me to do but attack the boss. I anticipate my atonement play style will probably never change much from that. Perhaps it will make me a bad disc priest and I'll end up having to go holy instead, who knows.

[Deleted]

This was my biggest issue with the nerfs in 5.2 (and I've been crying about it more times than I can remember). It was completely obvious that atonement would be the only valid choice in so many of the situations (I have yet to have a fight where atonement isn't at the very least 50% of my healing, if not much more, in 5.2) and it's the most boring playstyle I can imagine. Before 5.2 there was still too much atonement usage (in 10 man) for me to be completely fine with it, but at least you used a fair bit of other spells (esp. during progress), now you have no choice but to use atonement for the majority of the globals unless you want to gimp your raid significantly. Well, at least my resto druid is approaching 90^^.

[Vashi]

This was my biggest issue with the nerfs in 5.2 (and I've been crying about it more times than I can remember). It was completely obvious that atonement would be the only valid choice in so many of the situations (I have yet to have a fight where atonement isn't at the very least 50% of my healing, if not much more, in 5.2) and it's the most boring playstyle I can imagine. Before 5.2 there was still too much atonement usage (in 10 man) for me to be completely fine with it, but at least you used a fair bit of other spells (esp. during progress), now you have no choice but to use atonement for the majority of the globals unless you want to gimp your raid significantly. Well, at least my resto druid is approaching 90^^.

I think its too early for me to talk about the reroll. Priest is my main for like 5 years already. To be honest I am not crying we not faceroll meters anymore. But this way is simply not for me anymore. Also the crit/aegis change is so much pain for my eyes. I so loved the situations like bah tank on 20% -> penance, inner+gheal bam full! Now you just need to shield him, holyfire+penance on boss and hope it will top him and not heal stampede pets. We can also completely throw Heal from the window (cataclysm BLUE - we want you to think moar about your healing TO BE IT LIKE TRIAGE - here is Heal)

They should just nerf the AEGIS procs amount since it was our top healing spell, to get us to the line with others.

Question for others - anyone of you killed SHA HC in 5,2 as DISC (10 mans only)?

[Szer]

Question for others - anyone of you killed SHA HC in 5,2 as DISC (10 mans only)?

Yep. Was easier then usual (11min total fight lenght)
Whats up?

[Deleted]

I still faceroll the meters, I beat them by a slightly lower amount but by basically spamming a 3 button rotation on the boss (slight exaggeration). For all I care they could just nerf atonement to the ground, not playing disc at all (since it'd have no viability without atonement atm, which just is sad) beats playing it in this retarded state.

Regarding sha hc in 5.2 as disc I imagine that it'd be significantly easier than in 5.1, the fight was basically 95% atonement healing even before 5.2.

[Dorfie]

I think its too early for me to talk about the reroll. Priest is my main for like 5 years already. To be honest I am not crying we not faceroll meters anymore. But this way is simply not for me anymore. Also the crit/aegis change is so much pain for my eyes. I so loved the situations like bah tank on 20% -> penance, inner+gheal bam full! Now you just need to shield him, holyfire+penance on boss and hope it will top him and not heal stampede pets. We can also completely throw Heal from the window (cataclysm BLUE - we want you to think moar about your healing TO BE IT LIKE TRIAGE - here is Heal)

They should just nerf the AEGIS procs amount since it was our top healing spell, to get us to the line with others.

Question for others - anyone of you killed SHA HC in 5,2 as DISC (10 mans only)?

I killed Sha in 5.1 and did more damage than healing while barely casting a PoH/SS, just used atonement nearly all of the time, PW:S on the huddle targets that didn't get a hand of purity and maybe some PoM before the huddle. Then back to atonement. I imagine this style would be a lot more effective in 5.2. Divine Star and Twist of Fate are great for that fight.