Disc priest rebalancing

[PosPosPos]

Assuming this isn't empty words, or another buff to disc priest like the implementation of 5.4, what sort of changes are you predicting or looking forward to in the future for disc priests?

[Deleted]

Atonement nerf (dumb down the smart heals slightly)
Rapture nerf (make it run on spirit again)
DA nerf/change (make crit less valuable)

Uh, that's pretty much all i can think of atm. I've not read any (possibly) already announced changes btw.

[Noradin]

I don't see where there is a need to post a quote such as this. It could be about any class or spec in the game and the answer would always be yes as long as the game is still alive.

That being said, since they want to reduce the reliance on smart heals I exspect them to change atonement (like all smartheals) and PoH at the very least.
I'd also like for them to make IF a bit more fun again (make it double the heal but prevent crits for example, or go back to 100% mana reduction and 25% critchance) and thus bring GH back into the game for disc.

[Adinora]

Atonement nerf (dumb down the smart heals slightly)
Rapture nerf (make it run on spirit again)
DA nerf/change (make crit less valuable)

Uh, that's pretty much all i can think of atm. I've not read any (possibly) already announced changes btw.

You've mentioned nerfs but don't you think we could use a couple buffs in some areas?

I agree that crit is far too valuable, however don't you think it's bizarre that haste is awful for discipline but there seems to be an awful lot of haste on healing gear? I think something needs to change there, especially since I've heard that they're removing reforging for WoD. What on earth will I do with all that useless haste unless they rebalance the spec?

[Deleted]

Haste now reduces the cooldown on rapture and weakened soul.

[Fluttershy]

Disc needs 70% spirit regen and all direct heals need to auto convert 50% into a shield to even stand a chance against brainless 0 skill afk specs like resto druid and R shaman after the atonement(and almost guaranteed t90) nerf.

[PosPosPos]

I don't see where there is a need to post a quote such as this. It could be about any class or spec in the game and the answer would always be yes as long as the game is still alive.

Not true, blizzard feels that there are quite a few classes which don't need changes at this time.

[Adinora]

Haste now reduces the cooldown on rapture and weakened soul.

... I don't understand.

[Larynx]

"Rebalance" is a nice word to use here.

As I've said before, you can't nerf the fundamental gameplay mechanics of disc without changing everything else. You can't nerf atonement, because Disc has nothing besides atonement. Disc has the worst triage healing in the game, and without atonement is basically just PoH spam. So what's worse? PoH or atonement spam? Both are shit. PWS spam is probably worse than either though. You need to buff Disc absorb even more, hopefully reallocating it a bit (such as with the new absorb greater heal talent) or make their triage healing useful. Neither will happen this expansion, because the actual raids don't support the slow and steady damage intake triage healing is useful for. Right now its blanket, spam, and smart heals. All of which disc can do well.

I would personally, next expansion, like to see some sort of Offensive and Healing stance for Disc like with MW. Conceptually, it would be something to "overcharge" atonement for a few seconds on a short CD or just allow offensive healing. Consider something like, passively atonement heals for 50% of the damage done to a nearby (30 yards) injured target (no smart healing). On a short CD, maybe Archangel, the Disc gains a buff that increases the healing from atonement by some large number (like 80-150%) and maybe increase damage as well. Perhaps add in a mechanic to discourage non-atonement healing for the duration, such as increased mana cost for other skills, so that is doesn't become a use on CD type ability.

That being said, since they want to reduce the reliance on smart heals I exspect them to change atonement (like all smartheals) and PoH at the very least.

You do realize PoH is the exact opposite of a smart heal?

CoH is a smart heal, but is not a Disc spell.

[wrynil]

"Rebalance" is a nice word to use here.

I would personally, next expansion, like to see some sort of Offensive and Healing stance for Disc like with MW. Conceptually, it would be something to "overcharge" atonement for a few seconds on a short CD or just allow offensive healing. Consider something like, passively atonement heals for 50% of the damage done to a nearby (30 yards) injured target (no smart healing). On a short CD, maybe Archangel, the Disc gains a buff that increases the healing from atonement by some large number (like 80-150%) and maybe increase damage as well. Perhaps add in a mechanic to discourage non-atonement healing for the duration, such as increased mana cost for other skills, so that is doesn't become a use on CD type ability.

As always i love your thought on that point!

[Docta]

From a 25h perspective I would really like to see attonement healing range dropped down to maybe 25-30yd & something done to shift our healing away from t90 talents into our casted heals. Ideally I would like something done to rework prayer of healing but I feel like that will not happen for WoD. I would love them to perhaps rework archangel stacks to give us like 2-3% gauranteed aegis per stack or something, please just anything to cast besides dpsing til spirit shell/90 talents.

[Deleted]

leave us alone, i like being top healer. ive always been top healer. all you peasants lower than disc , pull your finger out & stop moaning.

[voidillusion]

They need to nerf disc into the ground, absolutely skilless healer spec, and it's retarded how strong it is.

Tell me on how many boss fights in SoO HC 10 and 25 do you have a Disc priest on top10.

[Deleted]

I like disc how it is right now.
I feel like I'm usefull because I add some damage in raid and I can very well prevent the raid from being hit too hard.
Except Larynx proposition here, all propositions seems wrong and too hard.
I played disc since end TBC/begin WotLK, I'm surprised to see the spec need to be balanced. I'm top healer on some fights (perhaps little less than half Soo), there are other I'm not.

The only thing I noticed since MoP is that yes, it's a little less brainy to play since you Atonement most of the time. If I remember well, Atonement was only used to get Archangel before and once we were buffed we used to cast some other spells. Now, I Atonement heal even with Archangel buff active because I feel it's more effective than casting a GH. But perhaps I'm wrong and/or don't play my priest well, dunno.

[Freia]

Tell me on how many boss fights in SoO HC 10 and 25 do you have a Disc priest on top10.

Have to even looked at the logs?

[Deleted]

Yeah, disc certainly requires no skill. Unlike shamans that drop a totem every 30 seconds or MWs that keep ReM on cooldown. I don't play a druid, but looking at healing done logs it doesn't look much different. Paladin looks at least somewhat complicating.

You do realize that Disc's healing done with atonement being 70%+ come from 1) atonement being required and 2) everything else being garbage, right? There literally is no other useful tool left to Disc that we could use to replace atonement with.

If I look around myself I only see Disc priests that have no clue about anything. Those priests really just sit there and do their three spell rotation and then wonder why they can't down Garrosh normal. They don't know why to choose crit over anything else, why the 4-set might not be desirable, use PW:S and other bad glyphs, have no clue when to use SS and PoH, I doubt any of them know what rapture is and how to track it.
And that's exactly the same for resto shamans. I see people ignoring crit, not dropping HST on CD, not knowing what their totems and talents/glyphs are about.

I already said it in other threads, but the reason Disc is so strong isn't absorbs or atonement on their own, it's both combined with terrible encounter design that favors smart heals in a ridiculous way. If you didn't have a smart healer on Galakras during tower 1 or during P1 of Iron Juggernaut, well, too bad for you. The only reason I always got taken to progression encounters over either our paladin or druid was solely because random people died to almost instantaneous damage. With a Disc you just stand there and each smite has a big chance to throw a ~200k heal on the right person just milliseconds after he got hit and again milliseconds before being hit again. Penance can almost be regarded as a 9 second raid cooldown on these encounters. If people die within 1 GCD and out of range, that's when Disc becomes completely overpowered. That's partly a problem with disc, but mostly one with encounters. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to have people die just because you were casting an instant on another person and still being on GCD looking at someone else dying.

Just looking at HPS, disc actually seems to be in a good place, namely underneath all the actual healers (sorry paladins), at least until the encounters are outgeared. ToT was full of Disc dominating HPS but I can't recall hearing so much outrage as I do now. Looking at the top 10 on WoL I don't see anywhere as many Discs as a lot of people would make there seem to be.

It's hard to tell what they're going to do to disc. As others have pointed out, if they take atonement away (be it completely or a nerf/stance/CD) that's when disc will die if everything else stays as is. We'll only see somewhat real balance if encounters shift away from two people being almost killed while the rest stays at 100%.

[Isheria]

It will go like this:

Beta starts, disc will be nerfed because stats will be low, expansion launches every disc priest will rush to the forum to qq how disc is bad and demand buffs. Few weeks later blizzard will apply some overboard buffs and disc will remain the top spec due to superior scaling. It happened in cata, it happened in mop it will most likely happen in wod as well.

If you want to keep disc and absorbs in check especially passive ones all you have to do is add diminishing returns on them and increase actual healing to compensate.

[Freia]

Yeah, disc certainly requires no skill. Unlike shamans that drop a totem every 30 seconds or MWs that keep ReM on cooldown. I don't play a druid, but looking at healing done logs it doesn't look much different. Paladin looks at least somewhat complicating.

You do realize that Disc's healing done with atonement being 70%+ come from 1) atonement being required and 2) everything else being garbage, right? There literally is no other useful tool left to Disc that we could use to replace atonement with.

If I look around myself I only see Disc priests that have no clue about anything. Those priests really just sit there and do their three spell rotation and then wonder why they can't down Garrosh normal. They don't know why to choose crit over anything else, why the 4-set might not be desirable, use PW:S and other bad glyphs, have no clue when to use SS and PoH, I doubt any of them know what rapture is and how to track it.
And that's exactly the same for resto shamans. I see people ignoring crit, not dropping HST on CD, not knowing what their totems and talents/glyphs are about.

I already said it in other threads, but the reason Disc is so strong isn't absorbs or atonement on their own, it's both combined with terrible encounter design that favors smart heals in a ridiculous way. If you didn't have a smart healer on Galakras during tower 1 or during P1 of Iron Juggernaut, well, too bad for you. The only reason I always got taken to progression encounters over either our paladin or druid was solely because random people died to almost instantaneous damage. With a Disc you just stand there and each smite has a big chance to throw a ~200k heal on the right person just milliseconds after he got hit and again milliseconds before being hit again. Penance can almost be regarded as a 9 second raid cooldown on these encounters. If people die within 1 GCD and out of range, that's when Disc becomes completely overpowered. That's partly a problem with disc, but mostly one with encounters. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to have people die just because you were casting an instant on another person and still being on GCD looking at someone else dying.

Just looking at HPS, disc actually seems to be in a good place, namely underneath all the actual healers (sorry paladins), at least until the encounters are outgeared. ToT was full of Disc dominating HPS but I can't recall hearing so much outrage as I do now. Looking at the top 10 on WoL I don't see anywhere as many Discs as a lot of people would make there seem to be.

It's hard to tell what they're going to do to disc. As others have pointed out, if they take atonement away (be it completely or a nerf/stance/CD) that's when disc will die if everything else stays as is. We'll only see somewhat real balance if encounters shift away from two people being almost killed while the rest stays at 100%.

I don't see atonement being 70% of the healing done on good disc logs. It usually is DA then level 90 talent. And no disc is above most of the healers. The only fights you do not see this are fights like Immerseus and Malkorok. Saying disc is balanced at all is completely off the mark.

[voidillusion]

I don't see atonement being 70% of the healing done on good disc logs. It usually is DA then level 90 talent. And no disc is above most of the healers. The only fights you do not see this are fights like Immerseus and Malkorok. Saying disc is balanced at all is completely off the mark.

Nobody in his right mind would dispute that Disc is strong. The issue is that we're at a weird point where every healer is just overboard strong.

Most of the fights in SoO are being dominated by other healers HPS wise. This doesnt mean that we're not needed, or that the value of Disc is negible, but in no way are Discs more powerfull than Resto Shammies, or Resto Druids, hell or even Palas.

Furthermore, we dont benefit the same way other classes do from things like the Legendary cloak proc (hell we're even using the dps one to raise our uptime on ToF), multistrike or cleaving trinkets.

My point is, yes discs are strong, but in no way stronger than some of the other healing classes/specs out there.

[Adinora]

They need to nerf disc into the ground, absolutely skilless healer spec, and it's retarded how strong it is.

Riight... cause it's so hard to drop healing rain or blanket the raid with hots...

Go into any LFR and watch the healing metres: you'll see that disc is not easy to play - if you play it properly. It's about knowing the fight, knowing when damage is coming, knowing what to use in which fights (divine star/halo/cascade) and when to use your big cooldowns. Sure you can atonement spam your face off and do decently well, but to be really good you have to know everything about your class.

I'm not saying I'M a good disc priest :P Just that it's actually not mindless. Some disc priests choose to use only a select few spells but we have a plethora of amazing abilities in our arsenal, many of which are unused.