Disc having more shadow

[Regia]

If this goes through, I'll be really excited. Disc was SUPPOSED to be hybrid dps/heals from the start and lorewise. Holy is holy. Shadow is shadow. Discipline is BOTH. It's in the description of the spec!!! You exercise BOTH DISCIPLINES. And regardless of how long it's been this way...there is nothing about "discipline" that implies shields.

If you want to know what will happen with disc in terms of being accepted into raid groups...Disc is going to receive the treatment that shadow got in MOP. Remember??? Shadow was "That low DPS class that we bring for the utility of its superb raid healing (for a DPS)." And that was a TERRIBLE model for priests. We had 3 specs: Heals, heals, and DPS that is expected/only brought for HEALS. It wasn't really fair to priests because if you wanted to shine as a DPS, you just couldn't. (And if the group was struggling with DPS, the healers would have picked up a little bit of slack and then that would have been you getting booted [at least, assuming all DPS in the group are playing at a similar skill level].)

This incoming Legion model actually makes a LOT more sense, both gamewise and lorewise. It means shadow will be able to act as a normal DPS (and not be bogged down by "They have to be the lowest DPS since they have so much healing too and that wouldn't be fair"), and priests will have the ability to DPS competitively again (hopefully). And instead of having 2 redundant heal specs, we will have MOP shadow again, except it will be called Discipline. And groups will take Discipline priests for the same reason as they used to bring Shadow priests.

Disc might become the situational offspec. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing..."priest heals" don't have to be named discipline just to have the same abilities. Holy could take over where disc is now and have some mix of absorbs and hots (but most likely more absorbs, since hots are already covered better by other classes). There is nothing wrong with our class obtaining a situational offspec, the way that i.e. locks have Aff and mages have Fire. (and monks have windwalker *cough* )

The thing I am curious about is what will be done with PW:Barrier and Divine Hymn. Will they remove Barrier? (I STRONGLY doubt it) Will disc priests be like MOP shadow priests except with PW:Barrier where Vampiric Embrace used to be used? Will they merge current disc+current holy and give it barrier instead of hymn, or even give Holy both abilities?? If holy had 2 big raid CDs the way most healing classes had one, that would certainly make it unique, though it would probably account for lower healing overall (as seems to be the trend -- but it could potentially make up for it). We'll see!!

[Yunzi]

All the information we have at the moment is that it will have a heavy attonement tie in. Im not asking for any of the fundamentals to change, or making assumptions that it will be unsatisfactory, but rather asking that discipline have more shadow abilities that tie into it, differentiating it further from holy paladins and priests, carving out its own unique unexplored niche, playing as a sort of yin yang archetype.

The gameplay that i asked for is already what they have chosen, im not asking them to do something they arent already doing, all im asking is for discipline to use shadow and light magic, thematically using shadow for offense and holy for defense with a little variance on it (a shadow ability used to heal/mitigate, a holy for offense) and more lore support to explain how raw void style shadow energy ties into light energy, with heavy influence from the naaru etc.
This will draw stark differences between shadow priests and warlocks, who currently have some unfortunate overlap, and would also make shadow priests feel not only welcome in the priest class halls, but instrumental. they are already major outcasts, and from an objective perspective, simply do not belong as a spec on the holy dominated class.

This is all in an effort to really clarify what the priest class is as a whole, and why priests use shadow magic and understanding its necessity for even holy priests.

I don't share your view of discipline priests - our atonement spells right now are all Holy and that's a lot better thematically than Shadow. There's nothing Shadowy about Disc - they are merely the "stern, tough love" type of healer as opposed to the all-encompassing compassionate love of the Holy Priest.

I'd rather establish another school of magic for Disc to draw from (perhaps something martial shared with Mistweavers) than have them using Shadow, although I'm happy with a core use of Holy spells. It would be a very bad thematic choice to put an emphasis on Shadow spells.

[bloodmoth13]

Called it

Infracted