resto druid garbage compared to disc

[Kilma]

The struggle most of the time is getting disc priests to heal tanks(which they're rediculously good at) instead of padding raid numbers with PW:S constantly.

PW:S should have a 3+ second cooldown rather than just weakened soul restricting it.

Disc Priests don't have a healing cd, only mitigation, if disc priest mis-times that 'oh so precious' bubble dome, it is worthless. As is if they spam sheild everyone and it doesn't actually absorb any damage.

I'm sure priests still top meters even if they are just healing tanks. The reason they top heals becuase 'overhealing' does not factor for them.

Disc priests will always be strong on fights that require low healing. Which is probably where this complaint is coming from, easier, lower-damage content. In more difficult content, as damage can spike, is where you can determine for yourself that Disc priest is not One-bit OP.

[Shiftyfish]

Healing isn't about meters - it's about synergy with your team.

I don't pay attention to HPS, I pay attention to mechanics and alternating cds with the other healers.

As for overhealing - Druids are the healer most apt to overheal, just don't look at it. Good raid leaders don't look at that metric, why are you?

pretty much this, the only time you should concern yourself with your overhealing is if you are going oom halfway through the fight and have outrageous overhealing, then you might need to tone it down a bit otherwise overhealing is just something druids do

[Tiberria]

Disc Priests don't have a healing cd, only mitigation, if disc priest mis-times that 'oh so precious' bubble dome, it is worthless. As is if they spam sheild everyone and it doesn't actually absorb any damage.

I'm sure priests still top meters even if they are just healing tanks. The reason they top heals becuase 'overhealing' does not factor for them.

Disc priests will always be strong on fights that require low healing. Which is probably where this complaint is coming from, easier, lower-damage content. In more difficult content, as damage can spike, is where you can determine for yourself that Disc priest is not One-bit OP.

If a Disc can't time Barrier correctly, that's their own damn fault. Do you really think they should be compensated for poor play by having it just be ignored from a balancing perspective? You can also make the same argument about Tranq. If a Druid uses Tranq at a stupid time and then has to move just as it starts channeling, it also does 0 healing. Are you going to argue that Druids should be buffed to compensate for this difficulty too?

Also, it's hardly a matter of "Disc just being strong on fights with low healing". If you look at BRF aggregate logs, Disc is currently #1 on 8 of the 9 fights that have a significant amount of available logs. On an overall basis, there is also a bigger distance between Disc and the #2 healing than there is between the other 5 healers combined. This is pretty disgusting for a spec that also has a raid cooldown that is not included in that balance.

Hopefully, they will look at the week 1 numbers and nerf the living bejesus out (20%+ nerf) of Disc going into Mythic next week when they review class balance.

[Zetlizard]

Disc Priests don't have a healing cd, only mitigation, if disc priest mis-times that 'oh so precious' bubble dome, it is worthless. As is if they spam sheild everyone and it doesn't actually absorb any damage.

I'm sure priests still top meters even if they are just healing tanks. The reason they top heals becuase 'overhealing' does not factor for them.

Disc priests will always be strong on fights that require low healing. Which is probably where this complaint is coming from, easier, lower-damage content. In more difficult content, as damage can spike, is where you can determine for yourself that Disc priest is not One-bit OP.

What do you think happens if a druid misses their tranq?

They also dominate on fights with burst dmg, or any sort of predictable damage, dosn't have to be low dmg content, and so far it looks like 90% of the fights are spent in phases with high predictable burst.

[Arainie]

The struggle most of the time is getting disc priests to heal tanks(which they're rediculously good at) instead of padding raid numbers with PW:S constantly.

PW:S should have a 3+ second cooldown rather than just weakened soul restricting it.

Everyone can agree that Disc priests are OP, but a huge issue with your idea is that if you disallow PW:S spam disc priests really don't have anything left other than tank healing. The spec is both OP and broken at the same time, and unless redesigned all you can do without breaking the class is nerfing the numbers. However, when you nerf the numbers too much disc priests become useless at both challenging content and 5man content, while they'll still be fine in every average heroic and partial mythic guild.

There's no easy solution, and if you believe there is I can say without a doubt that you've never really played a priest.

[Tiberria]

However, when you nerf the numbers too much disc priests become useless at both challenging content and 5man content, while they'll still be fine in every average heroic and partial mythic guild.

No, they won't. Disc already brings something that no other healer can really bring in that their healing puts an effective health buffer on their targets, allowing them to survive mechanics that would otherwise kill them. This is enormously valuable in Mythic progression, because it increases the margin for error and reduces the chance of deaths from mistakes/imperfect play. Sure, it's not 100% required with perfect play to have that effective health buffer, but it is practically required, beacuse people don't play perfect - especially on progression. If you could assume perfect play, top guilds would 1 shot most bosses.

Even if Disc throughput was reduced to the point they were 20% behind every healer - you would still probably bring one to almost every progression group - absorbs are that powerful. Absorbs are also more valuable point for point than HoTs/direct heals, because raw healing doesn't add that buffer/utility. There is no reason why Disc should have to be balanced to be 1:1 on throughput with throughput healers, and god forbid, there is absolutely no reason why they should be misbalanced in such a way that they have more throughput than every other healer - on top of a cooldown that doesn't get included in that calculation.

[Vanaline]

While I try to refrain from hyperbole I have to say that the current incantation of Discipline is probably the worst healing design I've ever seen. They have absolutely no idea what to do with that spec.

The Scholar from Final Fantasy XIV is what I want Discipline to be, which is amusing because it was probably somewhat inspired by an older incantation of Discipline to begin with. Uses barriers for tank healing and AoE padding, uses instant hp% based spells for burst and movement and uses a fairy pet to add utility and complexity to it's otherwise simple nature. You'll rarely catch me praising that game in this regard as it's very often very poor mechanically and may as well not have an end game but I really liked the Scholar. Great class.

[BananaHandsB]

Even with the gap in overhealing (which is not an accurate assessment of healer balance to begin with), resto druids can keep up and beat disc priests, and what that really shows you is come mythic, when the dmg is much higher, resto druids will do even better b/c they have a higher throughput cap, which will become evident when there's more dmg and less overhealing.

[Tiberria]

While I try to refrain from hyperbole I have to say that the current incantation of Discipline is probably the worst healing design I've ever seen. They have absolutely no idea what to do with that spec.

Well, the time to fix that was during beta, and they are pretty much locked into the current design for this expansion outside of minor changes. Before they do anything, they need to get Disc's numbers nerfed down to a more reasonable place so they aren't wreaking havoc with the entire design of the healing meta game. A spec being boring and horribly designed/1 button spam doesn't justify it remaining grotesquely overpowered - especially after it already spent the entirety of the last 2 years also overpowered.

- - - Updated - - -

Even with the gap in overhealing (which is not an accurate assessment of healer balance to begin with), resto druids can keep up and beat disc priests, and what that really shows you is come mythic, when the dmg is much higher, resto druids will do even better b/c they have a higher throughput cap, which will become evident when there's more dmg and less overhealing.

That the situation suddenly becomes less of an issue in Mythic is a fallacy that is not supported in actual numbers. Let's compare aggregate logs of Heroic Highmaul to Mythic Highmaul

Heroic Highmaul - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#metric=hps&aggregate=amount&difficulty=4
Disc is 3% ahead of the next highest healer and 5% ahead of Resto Druids

Mythic Highmaul - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/6#metric=hps&aggregate=amount
Disc is 2% ahead of the next highest healer and 3.2% ahead of Resto Druids

There is little to no difference in the gap between Disc and other healers as you move to higher difficulty levels. That dispels the notion of ignoring the problem as "not enough damage to heal" and squarely points the finger at fundamental problems with healer balance.

[Kopp81]

The healing isn't the issue. It's the kiting and CC. Druids can kite for days while ccing and never run out of mana while insta healing with hots.

[Deleted]

Imo they could roflstomp disc to a point where they are only brought to raids for the inherent strengths of absorbs, not for their numbers (kinda what Tiberria said, their numbers don't have to be absurb for them to be valuable).
Then buff/nerf/change holy priest into a position where they can compete in 5man/cm/etc content so priests got a viable healing spec for all content.

I still think they will never solve the issue as long as 'absorb healer' is a theme they support, but that's another topic.

[twistedmynd]

Threads like this exist because of a psychological problem. Look at the title. There is not mathematical basis for that decision. If you're looking at a fight's total healing done without context, then whatever. Convince yourself that Disc is better.

My experience across raiding as all healers is that Disc feels really good if you can predict things. Druids can actually recover heal and predict things. Best of both worlds. And druid cooldowns power is one of the best. Being mobile and spread recovery healing is best handled by druids.

The constant meter-maiding from healers in this cycle of WoW is completely moronic. Most healers on that train of through should be playing dps.

[Tiberria]

Threads like this exist because of a psychological problem. Look at the title. There is not mathematical basis for that decision. If you're looking at a fight's total healing done without context, then whatever. Convince yourself that Disc is better.

My experience across raiding as all healers is that Disc feels really good if you can predict things. Druids can actually recover heal and predict things. Best of both worlds. And druid cooldowns power is one of the best. Being mobile and spread recovery healing is best handled by druids.

The constant meter-maiding from healers in this cycle of WoW is completely moronic. Most healers on that train of through should be playing dps.

I would buy the argument that it's an issue with Disc only dominating predictable damage if aggregate logs on a per fight basis actually supported that. They do not. Disc dominates fights where there is little to no damage to heal (which is expected), but they also dominate fights with heavy damage/low overhealing too. Also, the exact same healer balance curve takes effect regardless of what raid difficulty you are looking at. If Disc was dominating say Normal mode but balanced with the other healers on Mythic, you would have a point, but it isn't. It's the same exact picture across the board, which is indicative of a broken spec and a fundamental flaw in healer balance.

Besides, if people are going to justify Disc numbers around them dominating healing in low damage periods, they are also doing themselves a disservice. If you are going to give one spec (like Disc) the ability to smash everyone during low damage, why are they also 100% competitive (and usually above) with everyone when there is a lot of damage to heal? If they are as high as they are during low damage, they should be completely outclassed during high damage phases to compensate. And no, that wouldn't make Disc garbage/unviable. For one thing, soaking lots of healing when there is little to heal has value, because it lets other healers conserve mana/DPS. For another, even if Disc didn't have equal burst/high end effective throughput during high damage periods as every other healer, they would still be imminently valuable because of the effective health buffer they provide and because the output they provide is more valuable point for point than HoTs or direct heals. They don't need to be able to dominate some healing patterns and then still be as good as every other healer on less favorable damage patterns. They need a significant across the board nerf.

[Deleted]

I crush our disco priests in HPS nearly every fight. And they have the same gear and i believe them to be quite skilled players. Well placed tranqulity blows every other healer away. You might want to look into your own healing first, before stating that other classes are OP.

I'm not saying that disco priests are not strong, but resto druids definitely can compete.

[Pyrianis]

Amazing that there are still people who say "Disc is supposed to always top the meters because of their design." Guess what, it wasn't like that in Cata, where they had actual weaknesses and strengths like every other healer and it was generally understood that their raid cooldown was outside of meters.

We are where are are today purely due to the introduction of massive AoE absorbs. In MoP, it was Spirit Shell and ultra-Atonement. In WoD, it's cheap ultra-PW:S. Absorbs haven't been reined in at all; they just take less buttons now.

The developers attempted to correct things in SoO and the WoD raids by adding huge raidwide damage to every boss. Hopefully they'll eventually realize that this only makes absorbs even more attractive, not less.

[Reivur]

I'm not about to claim that Disc is useless, because the reality is absorbs are some of the safest forms of progression you can have because being able to fluff up someone's health higher than their current stamina is very useful until you gain more ilvl, but... Other than that niche, they are pretty damn overrated in comparison of the other healers.

They're excellent meter snipers. If you're to be concerned about anything at all in terms of hps, don't look at hps from a healer's personal standpoint but look at effective rhps. Whenever you sit or don't have a disc priest for the week, rarely does anything change other than personal hps rising/being more evenly distributed among your healers. Effective rhps stays more or less the same, with slight increases due to Tranq, Revival, Healing Tide Totem, etc. getting more value from no Disc Bubble.

I would go so far as to say that the further along you get in a tier, the less value Disc gets and the only reason it gets its praise is too much emphasis on personal meters. It may end up different this tier, but High Maul there really wasn't that much stacking to justify the bubble. Or even Shaman's niche, whose cool-downs are quite frankly better.

/signed, a Mistweaver.

[fredsterr]

Umm... it's still doesn't heal anything..

To be fair neither does power word shield, but counts as a heal on the meter....

[Deleted]

To be fair neither does power word shield, but counts as a heal on the meter....

PW: S is an Absorb, Barrier is 'Damage Reduction'. It's exactly the same as, Barkskin doesn't show as healing on meters, because it's a damage reduction spell. Neither does Ironbark. Neither does damage mitigated from Divine Protection from Paladins.

[Kilma]

It's pretty clear in most raid settings when a druid should tranq - when most of raid is below certain health. PW:B also doesn't show up on meters.

There is no re-iteration of this: Disc Priest don't worry about the overheal mechanic. It is simply not apart of their class. This simple fact is what 'boasts' their meters.

You can't even stack disc priests. i would think that if you throw disc priest in the gutter like some of you are suggesting, i bet you would see a whole lot more druids/paladins in raid. Hell people might even stack mistweaver for Revival Spam Then you would start complaining about that.

Anyone that thinks Disc Priest needs anymore of a nerf than what it has already recieved (15% PW:S nerf in jan) really needs to look at healer classes as a whole rather than their output. Disc has pretty significant drawbacks when you place them alone. Any output healer just applifies Disc's Usefulness since it allows PWS's use more often. It's actually inefficent for disc priest to use Prayer of Healing outside of evangilism proc. Blizzard made any kind of actual healing a weakness for disc priest.

Blizzard has made priest specifically for the 'health-buffer' niche, no one else can do it as well. When you have fights like Blackhand, where tanks get whitehit for more than half their life and mechanics streching into 75%, need a class that brings a health buffer.

[Deleted]

It's pretty clear in most raid settings when a druid should tranq - when most of raid is below certain health. PW:B also doesn't show up on meters.

There is no re-iteration of this: Disc Priest don't worry about the overheal mechanic. It is simply not apart of their class. This simple fact is what 'boasts' their meters.

You can't even stack disc priests. i would think that if you throw disc priest in the gutter like some of you are suggesting, i bet you would see a whole lot more druids/paladins in raid. Hell people might even stack mistweaver for Revival Spam Then you would start complaining about that.

Anyone that thinks Disc Priest needs anymore of a nerf than what it has already recieved (15% PW:S nerf in jan) really needs to look at healer classes as a whole rather than their output. Disc has pretty significant drawbacks when you place them alone. Any output healer just applifies Disc's Usefulness since it allows PWS's use more often. It's actually inefficent for disc priest to use Prayer of Healing outside of evangilism proc. Blizzard made any kind of actual healing a weakness for disc priest.

Blizzard has made priest specifically for the 'health-buffer' niche, no one else can do it as well. When you have fights like Blackhand, where tanks get whitehit for more than half their life and mechanics streching into 75%, need a class that brings a health buffer.

Someone who understands <3. Disc is fine, each class has their own role, expect to see Disc at the top of meters the majority of the time. But, at the end of the day. Meters mean nothing, if the boss dies, then it's a win win for everyone.

If you have a disc doing 300k HPS, and you wipe, that healing means nothing. If you have a disc + rest of team doing 30k each, and the boss dies, it's loot for everyone and further progress, that's the whole point of PvE as a healer, heal stuff, watch stuff die.

Meters mean almost 'nothing' as a healer, because it is specific to every raid, there's too much to consider, Raid damage, which boss it is, spell breakdown of all healers etc.


Stop looking at meters as a healer, unless your raid is wiping due to lack of healing. If the bosses are dieing, you're doing fine.