Clarity of Will - Have I missed something here?

[Noradin]

I would have rather have a spirit Shell in place of PI, with DI as a still accessible talent.

Want me to be a tank healer? Okay. Give me incentive to cast defensive penance (and DI was perfect for this.)

How so? It worked with offensive penance just as well and you would use penance on CD anyway.

[Thirteen]

I would have rather have a spirit Shell in place of PI, with DI as a still accessible talent.

Want me to be a tank healer? Okay. Give me incentive to cast defensive penance (and DI was perfect for this.)

The thing is, no one really used DI as disc, though this had more to do with ToF being in the same tier, not PI.

[Sillychan]

How so? It worked with offensive penance just as well and you would use penance on CD anyway.

In that if we're being pushed into single-target tank healing (not that I agree we strictly are) you could circumvent the WS debuff every penance (or every other if you wanted to weave in offensive damage since Grace would be up on the tank.) Plenty of people used DI in PvP though. I suppose what I was trying to get at is it should have stayed defensive only, and kept DI as a talent in the tier to compete with SS / ToF. They can't seem to really give us a good reason to cast Penance defensively-- no intelligent gameplay there. They have an opportunity to provide choices, wish they'd find a way to incentive it.

I think it's good competition for ToF to be in the same tier as SS, unfortunately PI and SS work so well together and not able to have them simultaneously.

[Noradin]

Still wether you had that talent or not had nothing to do with defensive penance, they were both good for tank healing, but thats about it.

[Sillychan]

Right, what I'm saying is that they had an opportunity to make it dependent on defensive penance again or otherwise give us some decision making there.

I'm still not convinced via raid testing that tank healing is even a thing again or worth forcing a healer into that niche anyways. I just feel like DI had more potential than PI.

[Deleted]

In a perfect world with a perfect encounter you might be able to do that, but unless there is no incoming damage within those 20 seconds prior to the spike, and the tank or a selected target isn't in need of attention, the effective shield for that spike will likely just be contributions from Spirit Shell.

The strength of Discipline currently comes from Divine Aegis refreshing which is made immensely powerful by Divine Star. From anyone in beta, does CoW pre-shielding stack up to that?

Look at something like brackenspore. Its just tank damage for a little bit then he nukes your raid rinse and repeat. Spirit shell has a 10sec duration and it lasts 15 seconds. That means you only spend 10s out of 20 casting spirit shell (if its available) and spirit shell is best used with a PWS before to get more casts in and archangel. The rest of the time you can roll PWS/CoW. You will also be rolling PWS/CoW on the tanks during the tank phase and that will let you a large chunk of that healing too.

In SoO, all the level 90 talents heal too much, for discpline that also means very large dviine aegis. It has little to do with refresh. It is just because you can put large absorbs on before the damage happens and then even though you have all that healing banked you can still use 100% of your time during the spike to heal even more. Again its the fact that you heal future damage with the abosrb that matters.

[Jimjam38]

I really laughed when OP stated disc has never been a good tank healer. Really, I don't know about MoP but before that disc used to be a great tank healer.
Healer balancing in beta hasn't happened yet, so it's too early to worry about spell balancing.

oh... oh look... my, my what could this be:

Update: I stand corrected, it has at times been a tank healer spec. Doesn't really change its current position :|

Sup brah.

[Deleted]

From my PoV, being strong in stack phase and tank healing are two niches which are certainly both important and interesting. When I played healer, tank healing didn't really attract me, but its been a big thing in the past. Tanks still have self healing, and resolve affects it, but its more about throughput on themselves helping out the tank healer.

CoW gives Discipline indeed that choice back to become tank healer (Grace also helped there, and was only active on one target back when tank healing still existed). SS becomes a talent instead. So they took away the big AoE absorb CD which requires PoH, still allow you to go for it, and allow you to specialize in extra single target absorb stackable with PWS. If you're not going for SS, you can afford (or it "just happens") to let the tank go to <= 35%, ToF would increase the throughput. If you couldn't, SS would be more attractive as a choice, and PI depends also on mana (I do agree PI and SS are in similar boat, not necessarily a bad thing though). Make no mistake about tank healing relevance. Tank healing is going to be more important once again, and topping the raid off generally isn't. The healers who keep snipe healing the raid are clueless morons who read too much alone in the world.

SLT being default (with no choice, but situational) for rsham is akin to Disc having by default PWB.

[shanthi]

CoW gives Discipline indeed that choice back to become tank healer (Grace also helped there, and was only active on one target back when tank healing still existed). SS becomes a talent instead. So they took away the big AoE absorb CD which requires PoH, still allow you to go for it, and allow you to specialize in extra single target absorb stackable with PWS. If you're not going for SS, you can afford (or it "just happens") to let the tank go to <= 35%, ToF would increase the throughput. If you couldn't, SS would be more attractive as a choice

Not to mention, Spirit Shell can be a tank healing tool. It really depends on the damage patterns, but if, for example, there's a regular enrage period where the boss does significantly more damage to the tank, you could potentially use Flash Heal with Spirit Shell to preemptively put a big shield on the tank, to stack with CoW and PW: S. I did that at the end of the heroic Horridon encounter during progression, when the only risk was the tank eventually getting one-shot. That was about the only time I used Spirit Shell with anything other than Prayer of Healing this expansion, as every other fight incentivizes blocking big raid damage, but the damage patterns in WoD could potentially make that choice (which spell to use with Spirit Shell) more interesting.

[Deleted]

Not to mention, Spirit Shell can be a tank healing tool.

SS can only be a tank healing tool, since you do not have the time or the mana to use PoH with it to shield the whole raid.

[Deleted]

SS can only be a tank healing tool, since you do not have the time or the mana to use PoH with it to shield the whole raid.

Don't forget about the two-set. You will use archangel with PoH/Spirit shell.

[Deleted]

Don't forget about the two-set. You will use archangel with PoH/Spirit shell.

The fact you can do a nice combo while wearing a given set for a certain period of time doesn't mean spec mechanics are in a good spot.

[Deleted]

The fact you can do a nice combo while wearing a given set for a certain period of time doesn't mean spec mechanics are in a good spot.

The set bonuses are a major determinant of class balance. So being able to cast PoH at 50% reduced cost for 18s every 30s, which includes a 100% guaranteed PoH crit, means that this statement you have made:

SS can only be a tank healing tool, since you do not have the time or the mana to use PoH with it to shield the whole raid.

is completely false. SS is not just a tank healing tool (in fact it will rarely be used that way now that CoW is avaialble) and you do have both the time and the mana to use PoH to shield the whole raid.

Synching spirit shell with archangel and other CDs is something that every good player is already doing as a matter of course.

[Kitmajere]

It's terrible design to need a set bonus to make our only spread raid healing tool (PoH) viable.

Classes need to be balanced and viable without set bonuses. Set bonuses should be exactly that. Bonuses.
It's not an issue unique to disc though, quite a few of the set bonuses are hugely crucial to class's play (BrM 4p, prot pally, prot warr, etc). I guess they're trying something different this time around with making hugely OP set bonuses, but that just seems like a terrible idea for anyone trying to do very early progression and best distribute them. Also, if they aren't equally crucial to every spec, why don't I just play a spec that doesn't rely on their 4p quite that much and as such is stronger for early progression? It's going to be a headache and a half to deal with these incredibly strong set bonuses >,<, far more than it usually is.

[Deleted]

It's terrible design to need a set bonus to make our only spread raid healing tool (PoH) viable.

Perhaps, but the set bonuses have historically been very dominant in determining playstyle. The set bonuses for holy this tier are even more dominant, since they completely change spell and talent priorities.

Also you don't know what will happen after this tier is over. Perhaps things will be redesigned. The important thing is that within the current tier you will have plenty of chances to get the set bonuses as disc before entering mythic and with the set bonuses PoH (and spirit shell) are going to dominate your aoe rotation, especially if you are going for a haste/mastery/crit combo to allow CoW/PWS stacking.

You can be certain that blizzard will provide a means of using PoH for both specs every tier like they have done for this one.

[Kitmajere]

Plenty of chances? 1 normal/heroic clear? 2 if you do normal/heroic before hitting mythic (which you likely will)? Maybe a world boss drop if that's even a thing?

How can we at all be certain that Blizzard will provide a means for using PoH every tier? Isn't that boring anyways?

Just make PoH more usable for disc baseline. Holy has a means to make it cheaper (serendipity) and we do not, and we're far more reliant on it for spread raid healing than holy is.
Redesign the set bonus in any number of ways. There's absolutely no reason it has to stay this way, nor should it.

[Noradin]

Perhaps, but the set bonuses have historically been very dominant in determining playstyle. The set bonuses for holy this tier are even more dominant, since they completely change spell and talent priorities.

No, they have become more and more dominant in recent times - which is a bad thing.
You should start out with a balanced spec without any set bonuses, afterwards you can design sets which change playstyle without destroying the balance.
If you do it the other way around and design your classes for your gear and not your gear for your classes, then why have gear at all - just substitute some "loot 1000 tokens from random mobs in instance XY" atunement and it will have the same effect (oh wait, then you have to spend ressources on gear again, so I guess it's cheaper this way).

[Jimjam38]

No, they have become more and more dominant in recent times - which is a bad thing.
You should start out with a balanced spec without any set bonuses, afterwards you can design sets which change playstyle without destroying the balance.

I agree, and I reckon its not necessarily a bad thing. They do it in order to switch up the rotations for DPS specs, as well as simultaneously using it to try out potential new mechanics. HOWEVER, our set bonus doesn't switch anything up. We WANT to use PoH either way, and instead of them just tuning it to be viably used without going oom in 3 casts, they give us a set bonus to allow us to use something we should be able to use anyway.
A good example of a set bonus is the t16 holy paladin one. The Divine Storm proc seriously changed their playstyle, but it wasn't necessarily something they SHOULD have had either way - it made the use of an aoe ability a priotity in single target in certain situations, but there was no NEED for divine storm to be part of single target.
This is completely different to the t17 disc set bonus - we still NEED to use PoH for spread healing, and we still NEED to use it for spirit shell, but we cant because it costs an incredibly stupid amount of mana. Yes its meant to be the high cost high throughput ability, but its TOO costly, and that's NOT something they should fix with a set bonus, but rather something that should be a baseline change. A set bonus should be something like "for 10 seconds after archangel ends, atonement will heal two additional allies for 100% of the damage done". That is something that would really change our playstyle (i'm not saying its a good idea (but i reckon it would be), but its a bonus rather than a mandatory fix).

- - - Updated - - -

Okay maybe it wouldn't really change our playstyle that much, but you get the idea.

[Deleted]

A set bonus shouldn't enable a desired play style but instead should enhance it! For two examples of this, Discipline T16 2 piece is a good example along with the Nightsong Regalia for Druids. In both cases you were going to use the abilities because they are essential to healing and the tier bonus only serves to improve something you are doing anyway.

The T17 bonus is an enabling style bonus presumably because Blizzard don't want us being too PoH happy in the first tier and expect increased spirit gains later to allow us to be more liberal with PoH in the second and third tier of WoD. The only issue here is that it is a pretty essential bonus so 2 x T17 needs to be pretty easy to come by.

[Jimjam38]

A set bonus shouldn't enable a desired play style but instead should enhance it! For two examples of this, Discipline T16 2 piece is a good example along with the Nightsong Regalia for Druids. In both cases you were going to use the abilities because they are essential to healing and the tier bonus only serves to improve something you are doing anyway.

The T17 bonus is an enabling style bonus presumably because Blizzard don't want us being too PoH happy in the first tier and expect increased spirit gains later to allow us to be more liberal with PoH in the second and third tier of WoD. The only issue here is that it is a pretty essential bonus so 2 x T17 needs to be pretty easy to come by.

While I agree that the disc t16 2pc is awesome, it has been a rather dull set bonus in the grand scheme of things. I don't feel that a set bonus should have zero impact on the gameplay, which t16 has because we'd be using archangel on cooldown either way.