Discipline in Legion

[Jimjam38]

"Still filling a healer role in group content, they aim to strike a balance between healing allies and damaging enemies in a unique gameplay style."

• Atonement (Passive):
  Plea, Power Word: Shield, and Shadow Mend also apply Atonement to your target for 15 sec.
  When you deal spell damage, you instantly heal all targets affected by Atonement for 50% of the damage done.
  Developer comment: Healing is not split between Atonements—the more allies you have Atonement on, the more total healing that a damage spell will cause.
  
  
• Mastery: Absolution
  Increases the healing transferred through Atonement by 28% (with Mastery from typical gear).
  
  Defensive (Healing Spells)
  
  
• Plea
  1.2% Mana, 40 yd range, Instant
  A quick, efficient plea to heal an ally for a minor amount.
  
• Shadow Mend
  3.0% Mana, 40 yd range, 1.5 sec cast
  Wrap an ally in shadows which heal them for a large amount, but at a price.
  The ally will take minor damage every 1 sec, until they have taken half that amount of total damage from all sources, or leave combat.
  
• Power Word: Shield
  3.5% Mana, 40 yd range, Instant, 6 sec cooldown
  Shield an ally, absorbing a large amount of damage. Lasts 15 sec.
  While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be delayed by damage.
  
• Power Word: Radiance
  7.0% Mana, 40 yd range, 2.5 sec cast
  A burst of light heals a friendly target and their 5 nearest allies for a moderate amount, and applies Atonement for 50% of its normal duration.
  
  Offensive (Damage Spells that cause Atonement)
  
  
• Smite
  0.75% Mana, 40 yd range, 1.5 sec cast
  Smite an enemy for moderate Holy damage.
  
  
• Mind Blast
  3.0% Mana, 40 yd range, 1.5 sec cast
  Blast the target’s mind for strong Shadow damage.
  
  
• Penance
  2.5% Mana, 40 yd range, Channeled, 9 sec cooldown
  Launches a volley of holy light at the target, causing huge Holy damage over 2 sec.
  Channelable while moving.
  
  
• Revelation (Passive)
  Your Smite and Mind Blast casts have a 30% chance to reset the cooldown on Penance.
  
  
• Shadow Word: Pain
  2.0% Mana, 40 yd range, Instant
  A word of darkness that causes minor Shadow damage instantly, and an additional huge amount of Shadow damage over 18 sec.
  
  Additionally, to give you an idea of how some talents may build upon this, here’s an example of one of their Discipline-specific talents:
  
• Grace (Passive)
  Increases your non-Atonement healing and absorption by 30% on targets with Atonement.

Furthermore, they've mentioned that we will retain Power Word: Barrier and Pain Suppression, as well as a new cooldown: Rapture which temporarily removes the cooldown on PWS.

Other information (Dev Tweets):

The current plan is to remove Weakened Soul.

how long is the atonement buff supposed to be?
Currently 15 seconds, with a talent available to extend that to 20 seconds.

is atonement a buff that gets renewed or extended? for example, casting plea 2x in a row on same target = 15 sec or 30?
It gets renewed. We're considering having it behave similar to DoT effects, which have some leeway on when you refresh.

In Legion, will Shadow Mend overhealing still trigger the DoT? Basically, is it possible for it to be a net loss?
Nope! Only the effective healing will turn into a DoT.

Disc's 70/30 - how will healing be competitive without damage being significant. Guaranteed Disc raid spot still exists?
Those were just off-the-cuff examples. Goal is that they provide respectable damage and healing, and we'll iterate as necessary.

Notable points:

• ALL spell damage will cause Atonement healing, including from SWP (and SWP is supposed to do strong dot damage).
  
• Plea, our basic heal, is instant cast.
  
• Healing is not split between Atonement targets, i.e. all targets receive the full Atonement amount.
  
• Power Word: Radience (PWR) applies Atonement to 6 targets for 7.5 seconds.
  
• Mastery will increase the amount of damage converted to healing through Atonement

Some final thoughts:
They've said 70/30 heal/dps but I'm pretty confident this will end up with disc being fully competitive with other healers.
As people have already mentioned elsewhere, it's quite likely that this will need several iterations before it's smoothed out, particularly the Atonement duration will probably need adjusting.
What I'm very hopeful to see is Smite/MB apply some kind of buff or debuff which interacts with the other and/or penance, in order to ensure we mix up which ones we cast not just the strongest.
No mention of Divine Aegis, it has probably been removed. Sad but probably necessary. Keep in mind that Holy Paladins (supposedly) don't have Illuminated Healing any more either, so with PWS and the new Rapture CD, Disc still retains its unique ability to shield better than any other class.
There's also no word on Archangel. I'd be really keen to see Archangel and Dark Archangel return as part of our new gameplay in some form or other. They are quite possibly talents at this point.
Overall I'm extremely happy with these changes and I'm very excited to find out more and to start testing it out on Beta.

[kellek]

"Firstly, as many of us predicted, Disc is quite clearly not designed to be a 50% healer, 50% dps, but rather a 100% healer who uses 50% dps spells."

Please show me where they say this or even hint at this. What they have said is that we will sacrifice a portion of our healing in order to deal respectable damage to the boss. What you have there is misinformation. Not matter what we do, heal or atonement via dps, we will at most heal for 70% of a "pure" healer. These numbers may change (maybe it ends up being 80%) but we are clearly a hybrid class now. The pure healing spec for a priest is Holy. If there has been new information posted where a dev has said Discs will be doing 100% healing or balanced around other healers in terms of throughput, please show me.

[zito]

I like it, it's very interesting. Disappointed the artifact weapon is staff though. A mace would of made more sense for the Disc "theme" they are going for.

Priority seems to be just keep up SW:P - Penance - MB - Smite, nothing complicated and that's how it should be. Atonement duration is too low imo

- - - Updated - - -

"Firstly, as many of us predicted, Disc is quite clearly not designed to be a 50% healer, 50% dps, but rather a 100% healer who uses 50% dps spells."

Please show me where they say this or even hint at this. What they have said is that we will sacrifice a portion of our healing in order to deal respectable damage to the boss. What you have there is misinformation. Not matter what we do, heal or atonement via dps, we will at most heal for 70% of a "pure" healer. These numbers may change (maybe it ends up being 80%) but we are clearly a hybrid class now. The pure healing spec for a priest is Holy. If there has been new information posted where a dev has said Discs will be doing 100% healing or balanced around other healers in terms of throughput, please show me.

Except Disc will still retain their strong shields. While other healers like paladins will get theirs removed. So that kinda makes up for the thoughput loss in raw healing because we will have absorbs. Which is what we do now anyway.

[Helelos]

Looks like Power Word: Shield will be "the spell you put on tanks and nothing else".

[dextersmith]

I'm not too impressed with the idea of wasting mana and gcd's to mark those you want to heal effectively, constantly renewing short lasting beacons.

[OrcsRLame]

Looks like Power Word: Shield will be "the spell you put on tanks and nothing else".

Or you can put it on priority targets, like dps or healers that are about to take a large spike of unavoidable damage like Arcane Wrath on Mar'gok or Impales on Blackhand P3.

[zito]

Looks like Power Word: Shield will be "the spell you put on tanks and nothing else".

Well rapture removes it's cooldown... so... also you should also use it on someone specificlly who is taking huge amounts of damage. It's easy to put it on the tank because he will always being taking damage but if someone gets a specific debuff or something that inflicts a lot of damage it would be good to do that.

I'm not too impressed with the idea of wasting mana and gcd's to mark those you want to heal effectively, constantly renewing short lasting beacons.

Yea they don't last long enough

[kellek]

"Except Disc will still retain their strong shields. While other healers like paladins will get theirs removed. So that kinda makes up for the thoughput loss in raw healing because we will have absorbs. Which is what we do now anyway."

Oh I understand that but it's not what the OP has posted. I do think this should be the very first question that needs to be 100% spelled out by the devs though. There is too much confusion on what 70/30 means. Also, the devs have said:

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Disc's 70/30 - how will healing be competitive without damage being significant. Guaranteed Disc raid spot still exists?
Those were just off-the-cuff examples. Goal is that they provide respectable damage and healing, and we'll iterate as necessary.

Respectable does not mean competitive. Needs clarification.

[zito]

Respectable does not mean competitive. Needs clarification.

We don't know, neither the devs currently, what kind of setting legion will be that any healer will be more "optimal" then the others. If the only thing we are taking seriously is raids then Disc will still be a hugely strong Tank healer - even more than holy paladins if they don't get a 3rd beacon while providing a dps push if needed. I can see any other tank healers taking a back seat for a disc priest if guilds are wiping in that 1% margin.

[Iannis]

So, does anyone know if Disc will still step on each others toes in raids like they do now?
Will multiple Discs in a group gimp each other? That's honestly my biggest concern I'd like to see
addressed. Wouldn't it be a slap in the face if you cannot have more than one priest's Atonement on a target at a time..

[Jimjam38]

So, does anyone know if Disc will still step on each others toes in raids like they do now?
Will multiple Discs in a group gimp each other? That's honestly my biggest concern I'd like to see
addressed. Wouldn't it be a slap in the face if you cannot have more than one priest's Atonement on a target at a time..

No, Weakened Soul is being removed, and that was literally the only reason it was sub-optimal to have two disc priests. There's no way they'll make it so that two priests can't both have atonement on the same target.

[zito]

No, Weakened Soul is being removed, and that was literally the only reason it was sub-optimal to have two disc priests. There's no way they'll make it so that two priests can't both have atonement on the same target.

Why? It would be no different than 2 healers healing one person at the same time. This isn't beacon of light - It's their source of healing. I'd imagine atonement stacks from different sources.

[OrcsRLame]

Why? It would be no different than 2 healers healing one person at the same time. This isn't beacon of light - It's their source of healing. I'd imagine atonement stacks from different sources.

You misread what he/she said. You're both saying the exact same thing.

[Genzen Han]

I worry about Disc's ability to heal 5-mans/challenge modes/thing where you need a strong source of healing rather than a bit of extra damage. I still want to be able to carry 5-mans with bad tanks and stupid dps, rather than have to suffer their failings. I also don't want to be an automatic pass-over when it comes to looking at the harder challenge modes, because disc isn't strong enough to heal the hardest parts.

[dextersmith]

So, does anyone know if Disc will still step on each others toes in raids like they do now?
Will multiple Discs in a group gimp each other? That's honestly my biggest concern I'd like to see
addressed. Wouldn't it be a slap in the face if you cannot have more than one priest's Atonement on a target at a time..

They gimp themselves because there's a lot of ramp up before they can start healing or they'll suck with no mobs to dps, other healers just start healing. By the time they're done marking and ready to heal, the first ones will have fallen off.

[Amaravati]

As has been said, this will probably need a few iterations before it's even close to smoothed out but these are my initial thoughts:

1. 15 seconds of Atonement or 7.5 seconds from Radiance is not going to be long enough, it will probably need to be more around 20s and 10s or if other healers have more effective raid healing tools (which they most definitely will) even longer.

2. Shadow Mend requires the target to take damage to be optimal, this is bad design in my opinion. I understand how this is good for tanks who are supposed to take damage, or PvP, but you don't really want to have your DPS and other healers hoping in and out of damage to optimize the spell.

3. Power Word: Shield and Shadow Mend don't appear to have synergy unless Shadow Mends 'absorb' takes priority of PW:S absorb. If it takes away from it that's going to be pretty lame.

4. Plea sounds terrible, hopefully it is not terrible. A minor amount is the terminology used to describe the initial heal on Renew, which is pitiful even if it is primarily for the buff.

5. Mastery only affecting Atonement is not going to scale as efficiently for us as any other healer and will probably have to change at some point, similar to how Shield Mastery increases absorbs but also heals.

The offensive aspect of Atonement seems interesting, it would be nice if SW:P had some additional synergy with the toolkit that added to the duality flavour (maybe eating away at weakened soul or something?)

It would be nice to have a way to put atonement on a large number of targets (like having PW:B apply it or through a talent) as a psuedo-cooldown.

The Grace talent sounds like a great way to allow players to use Disc as a pure healer instead of a damaging healer, hopefully there will be a few more talents like that to make it a true alternative playstyle. Otherwise I just don't see many people taking Grace barring encounter mechanic reasons. Will be interesting to see what other changes to the talent tree there will be.

[Nurasu]

The Grace talent sounds like a great way to allow players to use Disc as a pure healer instead of a damaging healer, hopefully there will be a few more talents like that to make it a true alternative playstyle. Otherwise I just don't see many people taking Grace barring encounter mechanic reasons. Will be interesting to see what other changes to the talent tree there will be.

As it stands, we have nowhere near enough tools to be able to heal normally... no PoH, Renew, Flash heal, Binding heal, or even Penance. They could, of course, add more with talents, but overall Grace seems pretty useless with as much as they will have gutted our straight healing abilities. Excited to give it a try, but not super optimistic.

[PosPosPos]

Except Disc will still retain their strong shields. While other healers like paladins will get theirs removed. So that kinda makes up for the thoughput loss in raw healing because we will have absorbs. Which is what we do now anyway.

No, a 6 second CD single target shield isn't worth a sharp drop in overall output.

- - - Updated - - -

Well rapture removes it's cooldown... so... also you should also use it on someone specificlly who is taking huge amounts of damage. It's easy to put it on the tank because he will always being taking damage but if someone gets a specific debuff or something that inflicts a lot of damage it would be good to do that.

Yeah, and it's going to be like a 3 minute cd or something similar.

That is still not worth a sharp drop in output.

[Dracodraco]

2. Shadow Mend requires the target to take damage to be optimal, this is bad design in my opinion. I understand how this is good for tanks who are supposed to take damage, or PvP, but you don't really want to have your DPS and other healers hoping in and out of damage to optimize the spell.

That's likely not how it works. Imagine that it heals for 100K. Your heal-target will now have a DoT ticking, that will fall off when (s)he has taken 50K damage from any source - including the DoT. If (s)he is the tank and takes 50K+ the next swing, well, that's just dandy, it was an effective 100K heal. If it's a dps that doesn't take anymore damage for the next 20 seconds, well, they got healed for 100K and then lost 50K due to the dot.
You don't need outside sources to damage them to stop the damage - and for it to be "optimal" is pretty much irrelevant due to random HoTs working against the dot (if they're taking no other damage). It's not fatal in any way, so there's no harm in it.

[Floopa]

https://twitter.com/WarcraftDevs/sta...83852419493888

pretty worth mentioning :P