Alpha testers come here ! (Priest discussion)

[Jimjam38]

Smart heals, and that includes atonement and fistweave and everything shamans have on live, become uninteresting when they're just a maintenance you need to use on CD. This is where absorbs have potential. They need to have a downside: limited amount of them, long CDs, expensive to use, single target only, limited range, need to spec for at expense of throughput healing are all downsides. Smartheals (as well as instant heals, like Saving Grace) also need a downside because else its just a matter of using WG/CoH/HTS/whatever on CD. That's not fun. Why not? It doesn't add depth to the gameplay. Putting hots on everyone, same. If it doesn't have much depth tho at least do swap it around every patch or so, then that itself kills the boredom and brainlessness of it. I won't deny something like atonement or fistweave can be fun, but it is hard to balance and after they've been strong they're now erring on the cautious side ie. weaker rather than stronger. You can always buff a class, but nerfing is met with frowning. Good solutions to problems like these are difficult to find, perhaps in a year we say to each other "eureka, why did we not think of this solution before?"

Fistweaving is a weak joke at the moment in MoP. Takes too many CGD's and doesn't have much throughput outside of AoE. Its still fun to do, especially since MW doesn't top the meters anyway unless your other healers aren't playing right. And I wouldn't really categorize atonement or fistweaving as something 'you just use on cooldown'. Elements of them, maybe, but what in WoW doesn't have elements that you just need to maintain uptime on. And I actually find fistweaving rather interactive. You have two buffs to maintain (Tiger Power and Serpents Zeal) as well as a psudo-maelstrom stack to manage, you are melee, so you have to actually remain in melee range, one of your attacks is a cleave, so you need to monitor for adds or additional targets to make the best use out of it, and with the LMG you also should be watching for its proc to generate free chi (and hence mana tea). The warlords version is even better in a lot of regards. I think the stance dancing element was warranted (but the chi reset isn't) and a good addition, and the addition of the RSK and its respective buff to further flesh out the rotation, and most of all the way they realized the Vital Mists psudo-malestrom just makes fistweaving almost a perfect model for what a 'damage to heal' spec/style should look like. Its viability as a method of healing is purely a numbers issue.
Atonement needed to be fleshed out in a similar manner to this, and could easily have been. With ToF you had something akin to maintaining a buff, if it could only proc from atonement related spells you'd have almost been on the money, and the improved focused will was very promising before it all turned to shit. IMO they should have incorporated some of the shadow spec dot elements into disc (eg if solace and insanity had been: SW:P becomes Power Word: Pentecost, a DoT that procs atonement), as this would have addressed its lack of interaction with AoE damage. Archangel could have stayed the same, but evangelism needed a little work (not as much as the WoD version does), Train of Thought added a little to the rotation (not a lot, could have been better, but removing it was dumb), and it would have probably felt rather complete with an atonement dot like mentioned above, and depending on the effectiveness of the atonement dot, could have addressed the haste values issues too.

Its such a shame though, its like half the devs had the intent to make it (FW) an intentionally viable method for healing, and the other half only considered it in terms of it being a damage supplement for healing downtime, and the first half managed to implement their mechanics changes, but the 2nd half did the numbers tuning with their vision in mind, and the result is that it doesn't work for either.

Also, smart heals aren't always just something you use on CD. In SoO, the difference between a good disc and a bad disc was if they knew when to hold off on their level 90 talent. You still use it frequently, and you don't hold it long, maybe a few seconds at most, but its still not a matter of using it roboticly on cd. Some, like healing stream totem or holy fire, were and always will be a maintainence thing, but not all smart heals are. Light of Dawn with selfless spec, for example, wasnt in either, it wasn't a hold for burst or use on cd ability, its was a spam the rotation for absorbs ability and maybe someone will get healed too. Agreed, not at all interactive or interesting, but you can't just clump all smart heals into the maintainence category.

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it's not even about healing, it's specifically about disc, like a dozen other threads are, sadly.

I believe the thread is called "Alpha testers come here! (Priest discussion)"
Check and mate.

[Deleted]

PWB is situational, as is Holy Nova, or rshammy's SLT. It seems Blizzard wants to make Disc strong during stack phases (having played all fights it looks there will be various of those), and allow them to specialize in tank healing, too. About the former, its a niche resto shamans currently have but for them it doesn't work very well. To a Disc you can say, "go spec Holy" (something Hpriests certainly heard in SoO). You can't tell a resto shaman this. So unless you hate Holy, it doesn't seem much of an issue to me. You can learn to play Holy, its a rather traditional healing style.

I have always played both Disc and Holy.

The point is, I can't see the utility of a 3min raid cooldown that "you can only use IF": that's exactly what a talent - in the new Blizzard's vision - should be, fight-situational. PW:B simply does not compare to other healing specs' "oh-crap" cooldowns, that's why I'd like to see SS as our strongest one. Removing it from the talent row in which it was put would *probably* leave the spot to something more useful and interesting to Disc, since lvl 100 talents look unsatisfying to me (only CoP for Holy is nice)... Not to mention the fact that current SS's buff is simply to short and too mana unefficient.

[twistedmynd]

The only thing is that crit should be 112 points for 1%, which with the 5% bonus should be 107 not 105.

For haste you need to include the new borrowed time along with a factor for BT uptime.

Can you check that again? It should be 110 crit rating per 1% for all at lvl 100.

Borrowed Time is a dropdown toggle with all the other temporary buffs. The sheet's purpose is to look at individual spell behavior, and it currently matches every spell value you could cast in this current build. So you can say things like, "Atonement is a loss of hps because this spell rotation does X and this alternative does Y"

That means it also accounts for the random 1.01 multiplier on crits and the bugged spells like heal during Spirit Shell.
Download link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Edit: That's one way of modeling healing, pretty cool.

[Jimjam38]

Twisted, can you please check over my 2nd round of atonement rotation calcs, its in a separate thread.

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Oh, I've just noticed something Twisted. In the spreadsheet you have the penance co-coefficients as 100.8% and 200% offensive/defensive respectively. I assume this means that the data for these spells is per tick in that case? So for my calculations should i be using 3x penance data per cast?

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Ah nevermind, sorry, just found where you incorporated it.

[Deleted]

Can you check that again? It should be 110 crit rating per 1% for all at lvl 100.

Borrowed Time is a dropdown toggle with all the other temporary buffs. The sheet's purpose is to look at individual spell behavior, and it currently matches every spell value you could cast in this current build. So you can say things like, "Atonement is a loss of hps because this spell rotation does X and this alternative does Y"

That means it also accounts for the random 1.01 multiplier on crits and the bugged spells like heal during Spirit Shell.
Download link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Edit: That's one way of modeling healing, pretty cool.

I was just looking at your spreadsheet and the contribution from multistrikes seems a little off. Looking at heal

29,893 total healing 1,414 multistrike average is 0.047302044

The average multistrike should be 2*multistrike*0.3, which in this case is 2*0.0827*0.3 = 0.04962

The aegis is more or less correct. Aegis% should always be crit*(1+mastery)/(1+crit*(1+mastery), which in this case should equal 0.113834043. It equals 0.113419647 from your numbers so it is ok.

[twistedmynd]

I was just looking at your spreadsheet and the contribution from multistrikes seems a little off. Looking at heal

29,893 total healing 1,414 multistrike average is 0.047302044

The average multistrike should be 2*multistrike*0.3, which in this case is 2*0.0827*0.3 = 0.04962

The aegis is more or less correct. Aegis% should always be crit*(1+mastery)/(1+crit*(1+mastery), which in this case should equal 0.113834043. It equals 0.113419647 from your numbers so it is ok.

In both cases, I believe you're missing the 1.01 multiplier on critical heals, which would slightly change the averages in the formulas to what you're stating. We don't know why there is a 1.01 additional multiplier, but we suspect it's from the new racials. Hopefully it will be removed.

[Well]

Let's hope tuning will be done this week on the beta servers. It has been slow up until now I feel.

[Noradin]

Let's hope tuning will be done this week on the beta servers. It has been slow up until now I feel.

Let's hope not, because when tuning is underway mechanics are almost set in stone - and current disc mechanics are on a level where I wouldn't bother getting a game on my mobile phone.

[Well]

Let's hope not, because when tuning is underway mechanics are almost set in stone - and current disc mechanics are on a level where I wouldn't bother getting a game on my mobile phone.

That's very true, and I completely agree. On the other hand, I read two days ago a blue tweet about how it's too late to change mechanics

[Deleted]

In both cases, I believe you're missing the 1.01 multiplier on critical heals, which would slightly change the averages in the formulas to what you're stating. We don't know why there is a 1.01 additional multiplier, but we suspect it's from the new racials. Hopefully it will be removed.

That should not affect the average, it just affects the crit modifier slightly but the crit modifier is the same in both cases.

the formula with the wierd 1% crit bonus is

(1+crit*(1.02+1.01*mastery))*(1+2*multistrike*0.3)*(1+versatility)*(1+0.5*mastery)*modifie rs

As you can see the proportion contributed by the multistrikes is exactly the same regardless of the crit modifier.

I notice that you are double dipping for versatility on crits. Is this a confirmed bug or did you make a mistake.

Actually I noticed the problem. I was making a mistake. The formula for calculating the multistrike bonus should be 2*0.3*multistrike/(1+2*0.3*multstrike)

So this is 2*0.0827*0.3/(1+2*0.0827*0.3) = 0.047274251634, which is exactly what you are getting for holy nova. As you can see the crit multiplier does not appear in the calculation, because it is the same factor for multistrike as it is for the total so it just cancels out.

The 1% crit multiplier is only responsible for the slight variation in aegis.

Looking through the spreadsheet is quite painful because you don't sum up the formulas.

Personally I would use the compacted form. So rather than

crit*base*modifiers+(1-crit)*base

you can sum that up as

Base*crit*modifiers + base - crit*base = base*(1+crit*(modifiers-1))

Multistrike crits independently so it it is simply

2*0.3*base*(1+crit*(modifiers-1))

I calculate the total in one go in my spreadsheet, but if you want to explicitly calculate everything using the most compact formula makes it easier for others to check your spreadsheet.

[Noradin]

That's very true, and I completely agree. On the other hand, I read two days ago a blue tweet about how it's too late to change mechanics

I feel like they never even tried.
All changes they made after deleting a lot of stuff were maintenance, not design.
(And I do not agree with the notion that deleting entries from our spell book makes specs better or more intuitive when it comes along with page long tool tips that hide changes between specs and omit a great deal more.)

[Well]

I feel like they never even tried.
All changes they made after deleting a lot of stuff were maintenance, not design.
(And I do not agree with the notion that deleting entries from our spell book makes specs better or more intuitive when it comes along with page long tool tips that hide changes between specs and omit a great deal more.)

Yeah, very true.

Disc is a mess now, I feel. Holy Nova is just... out of place for me.

[Jimjam38]

Yeah, very true.

Disc is a mess now, I feel. Holy Nova is just... out of place for me.

The almighty HN took a nerf today too, it might not have been particularly compelling gameplay but at least it was keeping us on par with the other healers. Sad to see that there are still no changes to atonement.
For anyone who missed it, my updates on the atonement calcs I was doing found that just Penance + Holy fire on cooldown were doing 60% of the hps of the full "atonement" rotation and that even if you held off penance for an extra second to exactly match the time of the full rotation, those two spells alone were still doing 52% of the rotation (i.e. more than the combined healing of 5 smites). And thats not to mention that we're still well below where celestalon thinks it should be. I also found that we would get to where we should be by buffing all 3spells, and that doing so wouldn't overshoot the intended dps mark either, so no need to change the atonement passive conversion factor.
I also concluded that with the state of smite, its throughput will never warrent casting it, and without any other incentive to use it (eg Train of Thought), once the t17 set bonus has been obtained you will never want to cast smite, since archangel can easily be built using 1 offensive penance and 2 holy fires every 30 seconds.

The crudest but simpelist solution is to buff smite to the point where it provides either enough dps or enough throughput to warrent its use, but that will likely also require a mana cost reduction too, and it would still not be essential and would truely only provide a dps benefit (since its not even a proper smart heal).
The most effective solution is simply to return the Train of Thought mechanic (I think 2 seconds reduction on penance per smite would be effective) so that we would be inclined to weave smites in between all the other stuff we do in order to cast more penances. I am yet to do the calculations, but I suspect that returning ToT would also significantly improve the throughput / dps of the atonement rotation and eliminate or largely reduce the ammount that they need to be buffed by.

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Also, if someone with beta wants to either mention this on the beta forums or compare it to ingame logs or both, I'd really appreciate it. I'm not sure if it is something I can sim or what the state of the disc simcraft is, but if it is possible I'll do that too.

[Deleted]

They buffed CoW and nerfed nova it seems. Also they nerfed the 2set for disc (weird). It is now 8s of 50% reduction to PoH mana cost.

The 2set and 4set for holy remain the same so far, but after the PoM buff I just can't see them staying like this. A DI PoM will jump 7 times in just over a GCD and it has 7x40% chances of procing serendipity. The chance of getting at least one sernedipity proc from 7 jumps is 1-0.6^7 = 97.3%. The chance of at least 2 serendipity procs is (Chance of at least one proc) - (chance of exactly one proc) = 97.3% - 0.4*(0.6^6)*7 = 84%

Now factor in that you can have several PoM's active at the same time and that you have 2 talents to bypass PoM CD, which means you can theoretically. Get 3 active PoMs on the raid before a burst, then store up a DI proc and a WoM proc, so you can have 4 PoMs jumping everytime the raid takes damage during the burst and one PoM ready to make 7 jumps in quick succession. That is a lot of serendipity procs.

since archangel can easily be built using 1 offensive penance and 2 holy fires every 30 seconds.

Do you mean that offensive penance has reverted to 3xevangelisms per cast?

For me the simplest solution for disc is a buff to borrowed time along with defensive penance and flash heal generating a stack of evangelism. Also I think it would be nice to buff disc damage but reduce the % of the damage healed by atonement.

[Jimjam38]

Do you mean that offensive penance has reverted to 3xevangelisms per cast?

My mistake, its still 2 evangelisms from the set bonus. Either way, that only means an extra holy fire within the cooldown of archangel, which is easily met.

For me the simplest solution for disc is a buff to borrowed time along with defensive penance and flash heal generating a stack of evangelism. Also I think it would be nice to buff disc damage but reduce the % of the damage healed by atonement.

No, I think that wouldn't really work. Flash heal generating a stack of evangelism not only defeats the purpose of atonement, but also causes all kinds of issues with the necessity of flash heal vs its mana cost. You sound like you're one of the people who dislikes the atonement side of disc, but there are a lot of people, including myself, for whom it is the reason they play disc. Most people seem to fall into one side or the other and there's not a lot of middle ground, which is why I think the solution is actually to make atonement something you can pursue in the talents. There are plenty of talents orientated towards shielding, but none that are orientated towards the atonement side of the spec. ToF would fall into this side if it still procced from our damage. Solace would too, but I'd personally completely redesign solace to make it a choice for a much more in-depth atonement style (one idea is that it replaces SWP with an atonement dot). I think evangelism also needs more to it than it is now; it was better in MoP when it increased damage and lowered mana, but there was still room for improvement.
Also, if they buffed the damage but reduced the heal % then we'd end up even worse off, with atonement doing pissy healing but still being necessary for archangel, and doing far more damage than it should yet still not be anywhere near the value of a proper dps. The entire approach for atonement to be about the dps contribution is just misguided. Much of the flavor and identity of disc as a spec that is truly separate to holy has come with atonement, I don't feel like it's something that should be brushed over

[Basmothh]

The most effective solution is simply to return the Train of Thought mechanic (I think 2 seconds reduction on penance per smite would be effective) so that we would be inclined to weave smites in between all the other stuff we do in order to cast more penances. I am yet to do the calculations, but I suspect that returning ToT would also significantly improve the throughput / dps of the atonement rotation and eliminate or largely reduce the ammount that they need to be buffed by.

I actually feel that Atonement is in a very good spot because it provides a proper trade-off for using it. For instance, the current values for offensive Penance still makes it generally better, but using defensive Penance to burst someone is now equally viable (notably when AA is up). This provides us with a lot more flexibility in how Penance is used in WoD, which is a big improvement over how offensive Penance is the clear cut choice for every situation in MoP.

As for HF and Smite doing low amounts of healing, it's something that I'm fine with. The biggest problem with those two spells in MoP is that they are being spammed without much consideration for anything else, which then further encourages using AA perfunctorily since Evangelism stacks are so easy to come by. However, in WoD, it's a throughput loss (even after factoring in the benefit from that Evangelism/AA stack) to use a Smite or HF when there's actual healing to be done.

The main concept for Atonement and AA has been one of it being completely optional. The current incarnation of Atonement in WoD introduces sufficiently steep trade offs for that to be accomplished. Atonement's flaw in MoP is that it is too good, which means that there isn't enough of a trade off in using HF or Smite that it essentially turns AA into a CD that we have to use on CD. However, in WoD, if there's heavy raid damage, you're now better off focusing choosing the proper raid heals for the situation and just going with whatever stacks of Evangelism/AA you're able to generate beforehand. This makes Disc feel a lot more fluid, especially on fights without many lulls in damage, because it's not longer necessary to clunkily interrupt our raid heals to cast HF or Smite.

Still, HF and Smite still have their place in our toolkit, namely as filler and Evangelism builders during lulls in damage. The usage of these two spells now have to be met with higher discretion if one is to optimize their output. That doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing.

Anyway, I'm not saying that Atonement is perfect as it is, and it could certainly do with a few changes, namely reducing the cost on Smite slightly so that it functions better as a filler and allowing these spells to proc ToF and WoM again. I just don't see why it's necessary to buff the healing for HF and Smite. The concept of Atonement as a core part of Disc's heals really only came about in MoP, it's honestly not Disc's main flavour.

[Deleted]

For me the simplest solution for disc is a buff to borrowed time along with defensive penance and flash heal generating a stack of evangelism. Also I think it would be nice to buff disc damage but reduce the % of the damage healed by atonement.

I like the idea of defensive spells also giving evangelism stacks. It has the drawback of making archangel something mandatory though. And that could lead to some kind of chakra style gameplay that a lot of people dislike and also already exists for our holy spec...
Still, having surge of light proccs generating 1 stack of evangelism (flash heal always generating 1 stack seems off balancing wise) would certainly make our L45 talent somehow more of a choice : atonement oriented playstyle or direct heals.

Also, I don't really understand why you would want to buff borrowed time. In 1 of your previous posts, you've expolained that we could currently cast 3 BT hasted PoH during archangel with 700 haste because BT is not currently consumed. Care to explain what to nerf and why ? Don't get me wrong, I'm really not trying to argue here, I'm just curious about your PoV on the matter.

Anyway, I'm not saying that Atonement is perfect as it is, and it could certainly do with a few changes, namely reducing the cost on Smite slightly so that it functions better as a filler and allowing these spells to proc ToF and WoM again. I just don't see why it's necessary to buff the healing for HF and Smite. The concept of Atonement as a core part of Disc's heals really only came about in MoP, it's honestly not Disc's main flavour.

I like the idea of having an optional atonement rotation doing 60% heal and 40% dmg of a direct heal rotation (HN on multitarget and heal with surge of light proccs on single target since we don't have anything else :/ and then ofc defensive penance on CD).
Atonement's calculations seem to indicate we're not really there so it needs tuning.

If we want atonement to become a core part of the spec (not talking numbers, just talking feeling and coherence of design), it definitely has to synergise with ToF and WOM. Just make atonement dmg trigger ToF, with tof only affecting healing done. tweak ToF % if necessary ...

Even if it's something optional, atonement should be a core part of the disc's spec ; just as fistweaving for MW monk is.

[twistedmynd]

That should not affect the average, it just affects the crit modifier slightly but the crit modifier is the same in both cases.

the formula with the wierd 1% crit bonus is

(1+crit*(1.02+1.01*mastery))*(1+2*multistrike*0.3)*(1+versatility)*(1+0.5*mastery)*modifie rs

As you can see the proportion contributed by the multistrikes is exactly the same regardless of the crit modifier.

I notice that you are double dipping for versatility on crits. Is this a confirmed bug or did you make a mistake.

Actually I noticed the problem. I was making a mistake. The formula for calculating the multistrike bonus should be 2*0.3*multistrike/(1+2*0.3*multstrike)

So this is 2*0.0827*0.3/(1+2*0.0827*0.3) = 0.047274251634, which is exactly what you are getting for holy nova. As you can see the crit multiplier does not appear in the calculation, because it is the same factor for multistrike as it is for the total so it just cancels out.

The 1% crit multiplier is only responsible for the slight variation in aegis.

Looking through the spreadsheet is quite painful because you don't sum up the formulas.

Personally I would use the compacted form. So rather than

crit*base*modifiers+(1-crit)*base

you can sum that up as

Base*crit*modifiers + base - crit*base = base*(1+crit*(modifiers-1))

Multistrike crits independently so it it is simply

2*0.3*base*(1+crit*(modifiers-1))

I calculate the total in one go in my spreadsheet, but if you want to explicitly calculate everything using the most compact formula makes it easier for others to check your spreadsheet.

Yes, versatility is functioning this way with crits. We are unsure if they are acknowledging it as bug behavior, but myself and others have posted and reported it.

I appreciate the validation and the feedback. Averaging spells by a single line formula would be easier to follow. The reasons I didn't do it this time was because this is going to be the platform in which I build upon for the expansion. At some point, range behaviors will be implemented. This means I need to be able to show the exact number of the theoretical maximums and minimums of each spellcast, and the frequency at which they might occur. If I were to do something like average multistrikes, I wouldn't be able to pull specific values by command when doing these types of calculations.

Either way, I'm glad for yourself and the many others who have gotten in touch with me about it. A few fellow posters simply compared their spell values in game and let me know that something didn't match. This was really helpful for ironing out the buggy crits behavior, heal under spirit shell, and versatility.

**The 1.01 crit modifier mysteriously vanished. The sheet has been updated to reflect that and it has the proper holy nova spell percent. DL here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing


****Also, Clarity of Will was not buffed. The new percent that was datamined is simply the old percent * base shield mastery value.

[Deleted]

I actually feel that Atonement is in a very good spot because it provides a proper trade-off for using it. For instance, the current values for offensive Penance still makes it generally better, but using defensive Penance to burst someone is now equally viable (notably when AA is up). This provides us with a lot more flexibility in how Penance is used in WoD, which is a big improvement over how offensive Penance is the clear cut choice for every situation in MoP.

As for HF and Smite doing low amounts of healing, it's something that I'm fine with. The biggest problem with those two spells in MoP is that they are being spammed without much consideration for anything else, which then further encourages using AA perfunctorily since Evangelism stacks are so easy to come by. However, in WoD, it's a throughput loss (even after factoring in the benefit from that Evangelism/AA stack) to use a Smite or HF when there's actual healing to be done.

The main concept for Atonement and AA has been one of it being completely optional. The current incarnation of Atonement in WoD introduces sufficiently steep trade offs for that to be accomplished. Atonement's flaw in MoP is that it is too good, which means that there isn't enough of a trade off in using HF or Smite that it essentially turns AA into a CD that we have to use on CD. However, in WoD, if there's heavy raid damage, you're now better off focusing choosing the proper raid heals for the situation and just going with whatever stacks of Evangelism/AA you're able to generate beforehand. This makes Disc feel a lot more fluid, especially on fights without many lulls in damage, because it's not longer necessary to clunkily interrupt our raid heals to cast HF or Smite.

Still, HF and Smite still have their place in our toolkit, namely as filler and Evangelism builders during lulls in damage. The usage of these two spells now have to be met with higher discretion if one is to optimize their output. That doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing.

Anyway, I'm not saying that Atonement is perfect as it is, and it could certainly do with a few changes, namely reducing the cost on Smite slightly so that it functions better as a filler and allowing these spells to proc ToF and WoM again. I just don't see why it's necessary to buff the healing for HF and Smite. The concept of Atonement as a core part of Disc's heals really only came about in MoP, it's honestly not Disc's main flavour.

I hope it will be like you describe. There sorta was a time when it seemed to be true in MoP too before Atonement got out of hand and I really liked disc healing at that time. Then at some point I mostly respecced holy and told my guild that I'd like to play disc, but if I want to enjoy playing, I can't be the best I could be, cos to be the best you could be you needed to abuse atonement excessively and that just wasn't fun. I fondly remember back to those times when I would use HF/Smite/AA in the way you described.

[Noradin]

I hope it will be like you describe. There sorta was a time when it seemed to be true in MoP too before Atonement got out of hand and I really liked disc healing at that time. Then at some point I mostly respecced holy and told my guild that I'd like to play disc, but if I want to enjoy playing, I can't be the best I could be, cos to be the best you could be you needed to abuse atonement excessively and that just wasn't fun. I fondly remember back to those times when I would use HF/Smite/AA in the way you described.

It is not, there is no reason to ever use smite and be disc, chatting with guildies is more fun and has approximately the same effect.
If you want damage, be holy or heal druid.