[Legion] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Yunzi]

Yup, you got that great Schism uptime and Penance usage there. You've also burned a ridiculous amount of mana to heal 6 people for less than if you just used Penance on cooldown and stopped trying to tie it to this nonsensical rotation.

Mana is an issue, but that's not a problem with a disc rotation, but rather a problem with the much reduced mana regeneration in legion compared to wod. We can solve this by either doing the Vanilla thing of just stopping spellcasting altogether during slow times of the fight or using a mana-reduced rotation cutting out some of the atoned players, or perhaps radically altering our playstyle, forgoing damage and relying on The Penitent, Plea, PWS, Grace, Clarity of Will, and Shadow Covenant for healing.

Ironic that you'd follow this statement up with proposing to use Schism no more often than every 15 seconds and letting Penance sit off cooldown for at least 6 seconds at a time. It's almost like Legion Discipline has high priority spells that you don't want to delay for the sake of following some kind of sacred rotation or something...

Here's the math on Penance downtime -

Pen/Smi > Smite (no revelation, end of damage phase) > PWS > PtW > SM > PWR > PWS > Schism (start of damage phase) > Penance

In the worst case scenario revelation doesn't proc a single time during the damage phase. With 20% haste there's a 34.3% chance of this happening, with the damage phase being Penance > Smite > Smite > Smite (end of damage phase). A bit more haste allows another Smite cast and lowers the chance of no revelations to 24%.

In the worst case scenario there's a lot of Penance downtime, but 65.7% to 76% of the time Penance is the next to last (usually) or last spell cast during the damage phase. So in the usual sequence of Penance (revelationed) > Smite (end of damage phase) > PWS > PtW > SM > PWR > PWS > Schism > Penance there's only 2.2 seconds of off-cooldown between the two Penances at 20% haste.

There's a simple solution to reducing that downtime further - less atoned players (a shorter atonement phase). This can be accommodated in dungeons, but in raids it's probably preferable to maximize the number of atoned players at the expense of less penance casts.

One possible change to the rotation is just how amazing Schism is for *direct* damage in light of the recent nerf to Penance, and this would help with Schism downtime. Let's compare the direct throughput of Penance versus Schism:

At 20% haste with the artifact trait to raise Penance damage by 6%, end-of-damage phase Penance's throughput is 347.8 Spellpower/second. Schism's, amazingly, is 333 SP/second! So we could simply add Schism at the end of the damage phase, to not only provide good damage/healing in itself, but boost the strength of PtW/SWP ticks over the next 6 seconds. The damage phase would then be (worst case revelations):

Schism > Penance > Smite > Smite > Smite > Schism (end of damage phase).

The major advantage of this is rotation flexibility - if the existing atoned players continue to need healing we can extend the damage phase of healing to them further - otherwise we switch to the typical atonement phase.

The downside is that the above rotation doesn't quite work, since there's only 4.96 seconds of casting between Schisms while Schism's cd is 6 seconds. So we'd have to add another Smite, or perhaps a PWS. This extension of the damage phase increases the value of Contrition somewhat (especially with respect to the 1st PWSed player, if the PWSes were used on different players).

[Totaltotemic]

Mana is an issue, but that's not a problem with a disc rotation

Yes, using high mana cost spells like Shadow Mend, Schism, and especially Power Word: Radiance rotationally is a problem in and of itself. If you cannot grasp this now, then you will when you have a chance to play Disc for yourself. I have nothing to say about your number vomit because you refuse to acknowledge the possibility of just playing normally with other talents and another legendary, and as such are not making any point of quantitative comparison but are simply stating numbers to state numbers.

Anyway I guess I'll explain exactly why the idea of a healing rotation doesn't make sense.

Let's look why you would cast spells in such a sequence, spell by spell.

Pen/Smi > Smite (no revelation, end of damage phase) > PWS > PtW > SM > PWR > PWS > Schism (start of damage phase) > Penance > Smite > Smite > Smite > Schism

1. Penance - Very little can compete with the ability to Penance whenever you can, so that's good.

2. Smite - While yes it is a good idea to Smite immediately following Penance if you're using Cord of Maiev (the legendary that gives the proc), that's not necessarily always the case. If your Atonements were set up perfectly shortly beforehand and there's no risk of falling below the desired number of Atonements, and there's nothing else to set up for in the near future, and no one is in dire need of help, yes you should Smite. This is a good default, but there are many reasons why casting something else may be more beneficial even with Cord of Maiev.

3. PW:S - Like Penance, it's a very high priority spell so if Penance is down the next step should almost always be to use PW:S (provided nothing alters this paradigm, like Cord of Maiev does).

4. PtW - I really don't know why this spell is even included. Movement and target availability as well as having a decent window to refresh the DoT make it basically impossible to pin down an exact moment that you "should" use the ability once again. It falls outside normal casting patterns, as it's totally irrelevant what you cast before and what you cast after, can be used while moving, and when it needs to be cast is dictated by whenever it is you last used it (and there's no way you're following a rotation for an entire fight). This is actually a filler GCD.

5. Shadow Mend - Why Shadow Mend? That's an oddly specific spell to be using in a rotation, and as I've said you can't possibly maintain using it haphazardly just because you've convinced yourself that you're supposed to use it at this time. It takes 9 Atonements for Plea to be more expensive, so why not Plea/Shadowmend? Or maybe you don't need that many Atonements out at all and would rather save the mana and cast Smite? This is actually also a filler GCD.

6. Power Word: Radiance - And if you can't use Shadow Mend rotationally, you definitely can't use PWR rotationally. Burning 9.3% of your mana over these two spell casts is ridiculous to do consistently every single time you want to refresh Atonements. Baseline regen is 4% mana per 5 seconds, which means even with Contrition you only get 14.4% mana to play with in the duration of an Atonement buff, and you certainly can't afford to blow more than half of that on PW:R because you didn't feel like using Plea to maintain a mere 6 Atonements. This is actually also a filler GCD because you can't possibly say that you will be using PW:R this often.

7. PW:S - Sure.

8. Schism - In this case Schism isn't rotational but simply paired with Penance in the priority system. If Penance would be available, Schism the GCD beforehand. That's pretty standard Schism usage, but not tied to some kind of rotation.

9. Penance - Sure.

10. Smite - Sure, see above.

11. Smite - I guess if you have nothing better to do.

12. Smite - Using Smite when PW:S is off cooldown? Why not just use PW:S here? Sure you still have a 30% boost on Smite's damage but you're throwing away the cheapest source of Atonement which will also do almost as much healing as Smite on its own.

13. Schism - again it's just tied to Penance, however at this point your Penance should have reset at some point in the last 3 casts with no Schism debuff to help it, so you're either delaying Penance or.. well.. not using Cord of Maiev.

So in the ends your rotation actually looks like:

Schism > Penance > Smite > PW:S > Filler > Filler > Schism > PW:S > Penanace > Smite > Filler > PW:S > etc

Which in reality is just a priority system as follows:

Penance on CD (Schism 1 GCD prior)
PW:S on CD
Smite after Penance
Keep SW:P/PtW up
Apply Atonements/healing/extra Smites as needed

The only rotation is that if for whatever ridiculous reason you're using Cord of Maiev and the Schism talent, you have a Schism > Penance > Smite > possible 2nd Penance chain going on. It's still just a priority system unless you make terrible decisions by shoe-horning in spells that don't belong simply to try to force it into being a strict rotation.

[Deleted]

Haven't been paying that much attention to the changes, Schism is a cast now and we don't have the passive artifact power that has a chance to increase healing/damage based on holy/shadow spell usage anymore? Looks pretty good imo.

How does it actually feel to play currently? Am in the no beta club

[TirielWoW]

Haven't been paying that much attention to the changes, Schism is a cast now and we don't have the passive artifact power that has a chance to increase healing/damage based on holy/shadow spell usage anymore? Looks pretty good imo.

How does it actually feel to play currently? Am in the no beta club

If you've ever played Rift, it plays kind of like a hybrid between Chloromancer and Defiler.

[Djriff]

Haven't been paying that much attention to the changes, Schism is a cast now and we don't have the passive artifact power that has a chance to increase healing/damage based on holy/shadow spell usage anymore? Looks pretty good imo.

How does it actually feel to play currently? Am in the no beta club

Honestly? Very UI/Macro dependent. It feels awkward as hell to me. Swapping between applying attonement and DPS'ing to heal is very awkward without some target of target macros.

[longxia]

Thanks for all the feedback. To revisit something that we touched on back at Blizzcon, but perhaps haven't talked about since then: Discipline is the most complex healer to play in 7.0 by a wide margin, and is possibly the most advanced core rotation of any spec. We know this and are generally okay with it, even though we still want to manage it within reason. It is to some extent inevitable due to the mixture of DPS- and heal-type targeting that Disc has to frequently swap between, something that no other spec asks of you outside of specific talents. Also, Disc is intentionally positioned against Holy, which is one of the more accessible healers in 7.0.

Feedback from all players is still very useful for looking at potential skill-floor issues, but 7.0 Discipline is intended to be something you opt into if you are seeking out the mixed DPS/heal gameplay that it's built around.

That makes me even more excited at the prospect of playing Legion Disc.

Likewise I look forward to tanking on Brewmaster as well, to find a way to make something work and work well, that everyone else says is too hard.

[Deleted]

Loving the new discipline priest! I am getting Cataclysm feral druid vibes all over again in that it feels rewarding when you manage to do everything properly and you defeat the boss. However, I hope Blizzard will make a well-mastered Disc be capable of providing more healing than a well-mastered Holy. This correlation has not always existed among specs but I feel it should.

[Ulmir]

Is anyone else pretty disappointed that the lvl 90 talents stuck around? Halo and divine star seem so out of place with only one tick proccing atonement and CoW is just dumb in regards to soaking stuff. The CoW-bosses of WoD was boring beyond belief.

The last line of PvP-talents minus Power word: Fortitude would be so much better (obviously tuned for PvE). New 'Archangel' is sort of similar to the r-druid spell 'Flourish' adding 6s worth of ticks on all hots or in this case atonement. 'Dark archangel' would have had potential to be the damage innervate of disc. Having it work like 30% damage total split between X targets with a minimum amount of 3, i.e 10% for 1-3 atoned targets, 6% for 5 etc. Apart from the fact that such interaction with dps would be fun it would also add another level of atonement management to either maximize damage or healing.

More options to atonement management in general would make the spec feel better transitioning between 5 man mythic+ to 30man HC. Currently your best bet to provide spread raid healing is using the 6 targets of shadow covenant but there is no "fun" option the other way around. Picking up grace will obviously mitigate the issues of easily maintaining full atonements in a 5-man and needing more throughput but I can't help wanting stacking atonement instead for specific targets.

What I'm looking for is something along the lines of additional atonement applications to not only refresh the duration but also increasing the % of transfered healing. Perhaps stacking from different spells which would give a bigger stack on tanks from plea+PW:S+SM. PtW does fill that role if the dot can be spread since it'll provide more damage/atonement but that is mostly good for trash packs with group damage (big trash pulls in 5-mans is usually tank healing) and weak at bosses without permanent adds that require group healing.

Honestly? Very UI/Macro dependent. It feels awkward as hell to me. Swapping between applying atonement and DPS'ing to heal is very awkward without some target of target macros.

Isn't that solved with mouseover macros which most people use anyway? M/O for atonement, standard targeting to dps.

I can really see it being awkward without it though. Depending on targetoftarget from tanks to dps isn't all that great.

[Yunzi]

Yes, using high mana cost spells like Shadow Mend, Schism, and especially Power Word: Radiance rotationally is a problem in and of itself. If you cannot grasp this now, then you will when you have a chance to play Disc for yourself. I have nothing to say about your number vomit because you refuse to acknowledge the possibility of just playing normally with other talents and another legendary, and as such are not making any point of quantitative comparison but are simply stating numbers to state numbers.

Anyway I guess I'll explain exactly why the idea of a healing rotation doesn't make sense.

Let's look why you would cast spells in such a sequence, spell by spell.

...

The only rotation is that if for whatever ridiculous reason you're using Cord of Maiev and the Schism talent, you have a Schism > Penance > Smite > possible 2nd Penance chain going on. It's still just a priority system unless you make terrible decisions by shoe-horning in spells that don't belong simply to try to force it into being a strict rotation.

PtW is a waste to cast during the damage phase, since it does little direct damage and therefore barely benefits from Schism's 30% damage boost. That's also why PWS isn't cast during the damage phase, barring emergencies. We want to cast atonements as late as possible in the atonement phase in order to waste as little time as possible (have as little time as possible between atoning players and healing them with damage spells).

That's why PtW directly follows the first PWS in the atonement phase - it means we cast SM, PWR, and the second PWS as late as possible to maximize the amount of time they have to receive healing.

What we really should have is one more damage spell - it's ridiculous that we have nothing better to do than keep spamming Smite over and over before Schism's cast at the end of the damage phase if Revelation doesn't proc. But that's reflective of the system that Bliz has currently implemented.

That being said, barring the typical emergency where we need to heal a low health non-atoned player, casting Smite instead of your proposed PWS is much better. Assuming a typical 6 atoned players and 50% damage-to-healing conversion (no artifact talents assumed), each Smite heals for 225% SP times 0.5 times 6 or 675%, compared to PWS's 500%, plus Smite has two additional advantages of doing damage as well as damage debuffing the boss for 225% SP of his damage, which effectively acts as a healing shield upon whoever receives that damage (usually the active tank). The timing of PWS there is awkward for it's atonement effect, since it's at the *end* of the damage phase where we're then ready to go into Schism > PtW > (atonements), so the PWSed player won't receive much healing until many seconds later when the next damage phase rolls around.

Plea becomes more mana expensive than Shadow Mend at 7+ atonements, while we'll be close to that number at the time of the Shadow Mend cast (except at the beginning of the fight, when Plea is more viable). Plea is a much weaker spell - it's 225% SP while Shadow Mend is between 350% and 700% SP. Additionally, there are two artifact traits to boost the power of Shadow Mend (Taming the Shadows and Darkest Shadows), while nothing helps Plea. Plea's advantage is it's instant cast, so it's an emergency replacement for Shadow Mend when PWS is on cooldown.

Yes, Shadow Mend and PWR combine for 9.3% of base mana, to atone 4 players for a casting time of 3.2 seconds (20% haste). If we're playing badly and not keeping atonements up then Plea is certainly cheaper for atoning 4 players, but then our performance has bigger problems that need to be addressed. If we're maintaining 5-7 atonements, Pleas are maybe (barely) cheaper for mana but are very weak direct heals and take 4.8 seconds to apply four times.

Your vision of Plea spamming isn't going to work, at least during raid progression. We can't Plea-spam and perform well. Dungeons are different, since we won't ever cast Plea with more than 4 atonements. This rotation is only for raid-sized groups.

It will be interesting to see what the best solutions are to the mana regen problem, besides getting mana regen trinkets.

What we should bear in mind with mana regen, is that whether we cast a spell in a rotation or outside a rotation, it has the same mana cost. Not using a rotation is not a magic bullet to kill the mana regen issue.

[Ulmir]

What we really should have is one more damage spell - it's ridiculous that we have nothing better to do than keep spamming Smite over and over before Schism's cast at the end of the damage phase even if Revelation doesn't proc. But that's reflective of the system that Bliz has currently implemented.

IIRC mind blast used to have the enemy damage absorb that is currently on smite while also costing twice (?) the mana. I can see why that was cut since smite would become a completely useless spell in short fights or when mana is irrelevant. I do however agree that we need a one more damaging spell to feel complete.

An idea of mine:

Something similar to 'Mind flay' with a cooldown that would interact with atonement to become a very small Divine Hymn for disc. Say 4s channel, 45s cooldown so that you could fit a Penance + Mind flay combo in a schism window. I could also see it being atonement neutral with every tick adding one second of atonement as a way to freeze or extend a good atonement spread for incoming damage or lights wrath. It would obviously do better damage than smite-spam over the duration but not by a significant margin in terms of pure damage.

I do however worry about ability bloat when adding more stuff since there is already many short cooldown spells for disc as a healing class. Dps mashing more stuff of cooldown isn't really an issue since it's just about the damage but I'm a bit skeptical of such gameplay as a healer.

[Totaltotemic]

We want to cast atonements as late as possible in the atonement phase in order to waste as little time as possible (have as little time as possible between atoning players and healing them with damage spells).

Irrelevant. "Atonement phases" and "damage phases" do not exist in actual gameplay, only in your paper world.

That's why PtW directly follows the first PWS in the atonement phase - it means we cast SM, PWR, and the second PWS as late as possible to maximize the amount of time they have to receive healing.

This is assuming the rest of your rotation will go as you put it on paper. It does not.

What we really should have is one more damage spell - it's ridiculous that we have nothing better to do than keep spamming Smite over and over before Schism's cast at the end of the damage phase even if Revelation doesn't proc. But that's reflective of the system that Bliz has currently implemented.

Absolute nonsense if you've played Disc for 5 minutes. You are never spamming Smite over and over in a raid, only in your paper world.

That being said, barring the typical emergency where we need to heal a low health non-atoned player, casting Smite instead of your proposed PWS is much better. Assuming a typical 6 atoned players and 50% damage-to-healing conversion (no artifact talents assumed), each Smite heals for 225% SP times 0.5 times 6 or 675%, compared to PWS's 500%, plus Smite has two additional advantages of doing damage as well as damage debuffing the boss for 225% SP of his damage, which effectively acts as a healing shield upon whoever receives that damage (usually the active tank). The timing of PWS there is awkward for it's atonement effect, since it's at the *end* of the damage phase where we're then ready to go into Schism > PtW > (atonements), so the PWSed player won't receive much healing until many seconds later when the next damage phase rolls around.

..and here's why. Your math is wrong because it entirely ignores that PW:S provides another Atonement buff that will contribute an extra ~300% spellpower from the next Penance and even more from everything else in between (on top of Atonement multiplier being 0.45, not 0.5). The timing of PW:S is never "awkward" because it's the best spell in the kit aside from Penance.

Plea becomes more mana expensive than Shadow Mend at 7+ atonements, while we'll be close to that number at the time of the Shadow Mend cast (except at the beginning of the fight, when Plea is more viable). Plea is a much weaker spell - it's 225% SP while Shadow Mend is between 350% and 700% SP. Additionally, there are two artifact traits to boost the power of Shadow Mend (Taming the Shadows and Darkest Shadows), while nothing helps Plea. Plea's advantage is it's instant cast, so it's an emergency replacement for Shadow Mend when PWS is on cooldown.

Wrong again. Your Shadow Mend is before your PWR not after. Your rotation has you at 2, maybe 3 Atonements at the time of its cast. I'm not sure how you get 7 out of that.

Yes, Shadow Mend and PWR combine for 9.3% of base mana, to atone 4 players for a casting time of 3.2 seconds (20% haste). If you're playing badly and not keeping atonements up then Plea is certainly cheaper for atoning 4 players, but then your performance has bigger problems that need to be addressed. If you're maintaining 5-7 atonements, Pleas are maybe (barely) cheaper for mana but are very weak direct heals and take 4.8 seconds to apply four times.

Irrelevant. You cannot sustain this pattern, period. Strawmanning something about player skill does not change this whatsoever.

Your vision of Plea spamming isn't going to work, at least during raid progression. We can't Plea-spam and perform well. Dungeons are different, since we won't ever cast Plea with more than 4 atonements. This rotation is only for raid-sized groups.

I never said you Plea spam. You use maybe 3 Pleas every 18 seconds and also use 3 PW:Ss. This is incredibly sustainable and does not take up a huge amount of time. This is readily apparent as soon as you actually start playing Disc, or even check your own work on paper instead of trying to bend reality to fit your hypothesis.

What we should bear in mind with mana regen, is that whether we cast a spell in a rotation or outside a rotation, it has the same mana cost. Not using a rotation is not a magic bullet to kill the mana regen issue.

The entire point of decision-making is that you cast spells when they are needed, not because you have convinced yourself ahead of time beyond all reason and logic that it is the right thing to do regardless of the situation. You don't magically cast the same spells in a different order, you cast different spells or not cast at all and that is how you save mana.

I don't really know what point you think you're still trying to make. You came up with this ridiculous idea of a strict rotation, and I have pointed out again and again why it won't work the way you say it will and you only ever respond with more baseless claims using either outright faulty information or skewed reasoning based on your own presumption of what spells you will use. You seem to have lost track of any actual point a long time ago and are only still trying to defend a bad claim with more bad claims.

Just let it go. Disc decision-making functions based off of a priority system of good spells that have cooldowns on top with parallel tools underneath that have varying mana costs and healing delivery systems. Your idea of a healing rotation never has existed and never will exist in WoW as long as this is the way that every healer in the game is constructed at a fundamental level. Is it that hard to accept that you will actually have to make decisions on the fly and can't simply solve for an exact sequence of spells to use in the majority of situations?

[Djriff]

Isn't that solved with mouseover macros which most people use anyway? M/O for atonement, standard targeting to dps.

I can really see it being awkward without it though. Depending on targetoftarget from tanks to dps isn't all that great.

True, but I shouldn't have to use macros to be able to play my class you know? I'm going to use them anyways because I care about my performance but thinking about a brand new player picking up disc, it's not exactly intuitive on how to play it.

[Ulmir]

True, but I shouldn't have to use macros to be able to play my class you know? I'm going to use them anyways because I care about my performance but thinking about a brand new player picking up disc, it's not exactly intuitive on how to play it.

Warhammer online solved this in a pretty good way with offensive and defensive targets for similar reasons. (Several healers had mechanics similar to atonement)

I could see that work as a default option to give everyone a decent ground to stand on using only defaults. It would still require a lot of clicking to swap targets but since the offensive one is fairly static it could work pretty well.

[Totaltotemic]

True, but I shouldn't have to use macros to be able to play my class you know? I'm going to use them anyways because I care about my performance but thinking about a brand new player picking up disc, it's not exactly intuitive on how to play it.

You don't have to. If you poke around the Disc feedback thread you'll find a couple of videos of dungeons runs I did with no addons and no macros and it's entirely possible once you're practiced at target switching. It's obviously worse than having a proper setup with the right tools for ease of access and displaying information (like Atonement buff timers), but so is just about everything in the game.

If you want to be able to play like a god in your first dungeon on a spec you've never played before that's specifically designed to be one of the most complex in the game, that's really just not happening. Yeah there's a lot of shellshock going around from people being exposed to this playstyle for the first time ever, but if you expect to perform anywhere near the same level as you would on a spec you've played for years after a couple of minutes, you're going to be disappointed.

If you're brand new and picking up Disc and experience the feeling that the spec is very hard to play and different from anything else you've ever played before, that's great because that's exactly what the spec is designed to feel like.

[Djriff]

I agree, definitely not a master of this new disc by any means. All i'm saying is that it could have been designed better. Like I can make a macro that casts smite at my target or if it's an ally at my friendly targets target. If that target is also friendly, like I targeted a healer, then I can make it target last target, or use mouseovers. I understand the ability to do that exists and I plan on doing it when I play disc.

Just saw this which is actually about the exact topic we're discussing.

Thanks for all the feedback. To revisit something that we touched on back at Blizzcon, but perhaps haven't talked about since then: Discipline is the most complex healer to play in 7.0 by a wide margin, and is possibly the most advanced core rotation of any spec. We know this and are generally okay with it, even though we still want to manage it within reason. It is to some extent inevitable due to the mixture of DPS- and heal-type targeting that Disc has to frequently swap between, something that no other spec asks of you outside of specific talents. Also, Disc is intentionally positioned against Holy, which is one of the more accessible healers in 7.0.

Feedback from all players is still very useful for looking at potential skill-floor issues, but 7.0 Discipline is intended to be something you opt into if you are seeking out the mixed DPS/heal gameplay that it's built around. Source

[Totaltotemic]

Part of it is just that the game is not designed by default for the kind of interaction that Disc is fundamentally designed around. Everything is designed to make it easier to focus 100% on DPS if you are a DPS, 100% on holding aggro if you are a tank, and 100% on healing other players if you are a healer.

Your party frames are all off to the side so that they are close together to assess the group and heal, but out of the way for DPS and tanks to focus on their jobs. You don't see buff timers in the default UI because it's information overload for the vast majority of specs that just don't care if a HoT runs out in 5 seconds or 2 seconds because it's not terribly important second to second if it exists or not. If you're not targeting an enemy, your DoT timer is a tiny thing above its nameplate in the middle of your screen because that system is designed for multi-dotting DPS specs, not people jumping from the party frames to enemies.

Facing is another fun one, as DPS spells require you to be facing your target because you should know where the enemy is and be looking at it if you are a DPS, but the same cannot be expected of healers due to rapidly changing targets between allies which is why they have omni-directional spells. When you start doing both, now you have to constantly be facing the enemies as a healer which is an entirely different camera and movement paradigm in group play from normal healing.

It's just a natural consequence of deliberately designing something different that it will not work very well with the standard UI. The game isn't built to support hybrid roles, and Disc, in terms of playstyle, is the first fully functional (as in actually striking a near even split from second to second on enemies and friendlies) DPS-healer hybrid the game has ever had. There's not much they can change about Disc to accommodate that except to homogenize it, but as Sigma said, if it being too different is the problem, there's another spec to play that's a button press away.

[Sxq]

I rarely play heal spec, but when I do I tend to have the boss targeted to dps while using mouseover macros to heal players. My UI is solid and shows buffs easily. DPS-type positioning comes naturally. So I actually think that picking up disc would be pretty easy for me. And tbh I expect a lot of heal-only players to struggle with it; I find that healers who switch to off spec dps lack that killer instinct or something.

It's the same thing with shadow. It's fundamentally difficult to multidot/dot refresh and manage time-sensitive resources in the base UI. It's the same thing for some of the other more complex specs as well. At the end of the day it's obvious that accessibility to brand new players is not the priority for this kind of stuff if you want to max out performance.

[Symmone]

What I'm looking for is something along the lines of additional atonement applications to not only refresh the duration but also increasing the % of transfered healing. Perhaps stacking from different spells which would give a bigger stack on tanks from plea+PW:S+SM. PtW does fill that role if the dot can be spread since it'll provide more damage/atonement but that is mostly good for trash packs with group damage (big trash pulls in 5-mans is usually tank healing) and weak at bosses without permanent adds that require group healing.
.

This is something I thought would have been a fairly obvious choice in cooldowns for disc or special abilities to use during high damage phases. As of right now our only "big" cooldowns are mindbender, Halo, and our legendary use which are all kinda meh and are dependent on the amount of Atonements you already have up.

I wish we had some really awesome 3m cooldown ability that tied in the class fantasy perfectly in someway by unleashing a large amount of damage or like you said, something additional to help spread or extend Atonement.

[Ehrgein]

Hello, returning player here. I've played holy paladin in WoD and left midway HFC but I wanted to roll a disc priest since the start of WoD, can you guys give me a few comparisons between holy paladin and disc priest playstyles? which ones are pushing better numbers? I've seen a few videos but I haven't seen any gameplay on the alpha, etc.
Sorry if this has been answered before, I don't have much time to check page by page lately.

[tachycardias]

While the topic of targeting woes is brought up, I thought I'd share one of my favorite macros I made. I've been using it since MoP. I will show the penance one; a similar macro for smite works well too.

It maintains your target if you have an enemy target. It acquires the target of your focus as the target if you don't have one. I use mouse over for healing raid members, which I think many people do, so there isn't a need to change targets often. Then it casts penance on the target, or on your mouse over if you are holding alt. The advantage of this over using a "cast at focustarget" or similar macro is that this one only changes your target if you don't currently have a valid target.

I'm doing this from memory so I apologize for any syntax errors; I'll doublecheck it when I have access.

#showtooltip penance
/tar [@target, exists, nodead] [@focustarget, exists, nodead]
/cast [mod:alt, @mouseover] penance; penance