New mechanic idea: Synergy

[chemicader]

I have played my priest as an alt for a while, and I kind of liked the idea of disc, but I found it lacking something. Too many encounters just don't require much in addition to atonement healing, which I find kind of boring and repetitive. I started thinking about how to improve the discipline spec and got an idea about a mechanic which would give some depth to the spec.
Every time you cast an atonement ability to damage the enemy, you gain a stack of a buff called Synergy. It caps at 5 and at 5 stacks, you can use the synergy for a new ability (or to empower an existing one but I find that a little boring) to cast a big aoe/st heal. Now, the catch is that it works the other way around also, after you have used your synergy heal, you can start ramping up the stacks again, but this time you gain synergy for healing spells. At 5 stacks of Synergy, this time you can use it to empower Holy Fire, to leave a long dot which does atonement healing.

To spice things up lets make Synergy also grant you a tiny amount of mana when you use it on a spell. To add more depth it could also be used to empower several different abilities, like PW:S to give out a huge absorb shield to the tank, or smite to give a strong pulse of atonement healing.

As a side note I also thought of another new ability.
Soul Heal: Instantly heals all targets with weakened soul debuff moderately.
Share your thoughts and ideas on this.

[Rilas13]

So in effect a balance bar like boomkins have? Except it works with direct heals & atonement? I like it, I think Disc has a unique healing niche compared to all other heal specs and I am worried a bit that they are trying to erode it with WoD with the atonement nerf. My only suggestion is maybe make synergy a talent, like if you are going to be an atonement healer have a certain talent do it like they have now with direct damage Shadow. Because I know if you setup Disc like that it would bother some people. But as an option that would be pretty awesome. I would probably do it.
Also I do like your heal idea but I doubt they would let it be instant. Maybe if it had a long CD? Biggest issue is Disc isn't lacking in single target right now so not a concern for current development for the spec.

[Larynx]

Blizzard has determined Discipline is not allowed to have interesting mechanical gameplay.

[chemicader]

I didn't mean the Soul Heal to be something you spam on single target, I thought it more of a very efficient heal on several targets, thus making PW:s worth to use on many targets, compared to its mana cost, it would add some complexity to preserving mana, but give the tools to do extremely powerful healing when needed, to 4-5 targets of your choosing.
And glad you liked the synergy idea.

[Dierdre]

Every time you cast an atonement ability to damage the enemy, you gain a stack of a buff called Synergy. It caps at 5 and at 5 stacks, you can use the synergy for a new ability (or to empower an existing one

Isn't that evangelism?

[chemicader]

Evangelism gives a passive 15% to all heals, this is something to replace it to add more depth.

[Mormolyce]

Too many encounters just don't require much in addition to atonement healing, which I find kind of boring and repetitive.

You need to increase the difficulty, you or the other raiders are overgeared for the encounter. Atonement is for low healing.

[chemicader]

Still, disc's toolbox can be improved by so much, and make ato healing not too repetitive.

[femur68]

I like this concept. I would say scrap the current archangel mechanic of flat healing increase and replace it with this. You could do things like:

Archangel: pw:S - your PW:S has 30% of its absorb amount copied to allies within 10 yards of your target.

Archangel: PoH - your prayer of healing affects each party member plus healing each ally within 5 yards of your party member for 10% of the amount.

Archangel: pom - your prayer of mending leaves a copy of itself on each target it bounces to. This copy will have the stacks it had when prayer of mending reached that player.

Archangel: holy fire: holy fire's dot now does 1000% more damage during its duration.

Archangel: penance - each tick of penance a target receives will cause them to take 10% reduced damaged per stack for 4 seconds.

Archangel: holy nova - holy novas range is increased by 250%.

[chemicader]

Yeah, these kind of changes are the ones I desire.

[Deleted]

Cool ideas all round but way too hard to balance. The Eclipse mechanic works (kinda, almost, it only gets redesigned every expansion now...) because you are just using a different spell to do, ultimately, the same thing. The issue with this (promote) Synergy (like a boss) idea is that you would have two different toolsets with one likely being better for one situation but absolutely no guarantee that you'd be in the right Synergy for dealing with the damage. Kind of like some of the concerns about (old) Chakra if I am remembering correctly.

Secondly, I would love Archangel to have unique effects but again, that would be incredibly difficult to balance and would either lead to Discipline sucking outside of Archangel or being way too good with it up. Fun read though~!

[chemicader]

I am not sure if its impossible to balance, since you would be forced to first use ato heals, then pick the type of heal you would like to use. Then you would/should use your basic heals, and then blow up a big atonement heal (For example a long dot on the boss doing ato heals.) And also Soul Heal I planned as the filler that would give out strong, but expensive heals outside of the synergy cycle.

[Amunrasonther]

I'd rather we just get synergy with our existing spells and new synergy added with new exciting spells. The last thing I want Blizzard to do with Priests is ruin them with an "interesting" resource bar like they did with Warlocks and Balance Druids.

[chemicader]

Well, the point was not in a resource bar, but I admit it would work similar. Though my idea of synergy is that it is not too potent, and you can ignore getting the stacks if the situation requires different types of heals, or to sit on the full stacks and unleash the healing powers when required.

[Rilas13]

I'd rather we just get synergy with our existing spells and new synergy added with new exciting spells. The last thing I want Blizzard to do with Priests is ruin them with an "interesting" resource bar like they did with Warlocks and Balance Druids.

This is why I like my option, because I am okay with having a boomkin esk bar as a resource for this idea. But if we just had it as a talent. Since talents are specific choice I think some of those choices should be able to change your rotation rather then interchangeable spells. So any given Disc Priest could have three different options on how they want to heal a raid.

[l33t]

Yeah, these kind of changes are the ones I desire.

The only problem is that your great idea automatically equals to second priest healing spec being even more bad, gimped and undesired.

[chemicader]

I suppose it would work wonders as a talent, not forcing people for this playstyle, but for people who like to expand their toolkit it might work wonders and make the spec more enjoyable and l33t, I honestly have little knowledge about holy and due to that I can't really respond to that.

[Rilas13]

The only problem is that your great idea automatically equals to second priest healing spec being even more bad, gimped and undesired.

I agree, and considering I do like Holy more it is a bit unfortunate. I think the key to making Holy more awesome lies with Chakras but I don't think they have it right yet. Not sure how to make it better.

[Basmothh]

There are ways to make Disc's toolkit more synergistic and interesting without adding new mechanics:

1) Change PW:S into a high output but low efficiency emergency shield.

2) Re-introduce Rapture since the changes to PW:S would make optimizing Rapture procs actually matter.

3) Change Borrowed Time to be a significant cast time reduction buff for HN that also allows its GCD to drop below 1s (kinda like MD) and allow it to stack to 3. It would encourage the weaving of HN between PoH casts.

4) Add Clearcasting to Disc's toolkit - good Priests who maximize its proc will be rewarded with more free PW:S and BT procs.

This would actually allow the better Disc Priests who can micro their abilities well distinguish themselves. IMO, for a spec to be fun or engaging, there needs to be a certain skill cap involved. It's a pity that Disc is currently so simple, and it looks to be even more bland come WoD.

[chemicader]

Like I already pointed out, my ideas are just ideas. I just think that disc should use way less atonement spam, and either make atonement more interesting or make the other heals usable instead of atonement. And of course, to improve the skillcap - reward the player for using a suitable amount of each type of healing.