[Legion] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Franarok]

I find the tier bonus really bad.
The shield on tanks (Noe the main target of that spell) usually broke really soon by damage, specially now that our mastery doesn't increase it. So the heal increase is anecdotic.
And the second... Well, since the main target of shield are the tanks, on bosses with great tank damage you will put the shield on CD, so not really great thing.

Also find funny a tier focus on shield since now the main of the disci changed..... Strange and odd.

Also a shame the plea change. No other healer have a cost increase in a spameable heals

[Kilee25]

I'm trying to remember the last time meaningful damage was occurring when there was literally nothing you could DPS.

Nothing in HFC comes to mind (although Iron Reaver air phase could get awkward if your DPS wreck all of the bombs near you).

I can't think of anything in BRF.

Not in Highmaul...

I think you have to go back to SoO and ToT to find examples of this being an actual problem, and even then it wasn't a very common thing. I think the concern is pretty unwarranted.

I was thinking about this, and I can think of a situation where this would've been an issue in HFC (Mythic). There have been a few times our raid was asked to stop DPS while waiting for a certain mechanic, because they didn't want us to push a certain phase (Iskar, Mannoroth, Archimonde). It doesn't happen often, but it can happen.

I assume that Disc has "other things to do" when there are moments like this, though.

[PosPosPos]

PW:S on cool down, rotating between 3 targets (as I've seen suggested) already throws out 3 Atonements that increase Plea's cost.

The change to Plea also possibly discourages refreshing any Atonements via Plea. Atonement didn't have a Pandemic effect, but still something else to consider.

2-set bonus seems awkward.

The resultant mana cost is still painfully small, especially if you consider the fact that disc priests are just sitting at near full mana the entire time during testing.

Even if you just spam Plea from start to end without hitting a single dps spell with 50% haste, it's like what, 15*30 = 450% which is 5.5% mana.

If you take a more reasonable value, namely 20% haste, maintaining maximum of ~8 targets with atonement(lol), it's like 8*30 = 240% which is 3.4% mana. This is mostly only during burst, when the raid isn't taking damage. Let's also not go into other healer's base mana cost on their spammable heal is usually significantly higher at 2-3% or even more.

Now maybe disc priests can somewhat oom if they spam hard enough for no real reason, whoop dee doo, cry a river about not being a special snowflake and having to manage mana like everyone else are supposed to.

[Yunzi]

2-set bonus seems awkward.

That's one way to put it. Let's examine what's going to happen.

With the change to our mastery, our PWS is nowhere near as strong in Legion as it is in WoD. Put on the main tank, the PWS is not going to last more than a few seconds - after those few seconds the Tier bonus is ZERO on the tank. When the off-tank isn't active it will be ok on the mild damage he takes, and the 3rd PWS cast on a random player will have some small positive effect.

It's a bizarre tier bonus, because the more damage a player takes, the faster he uses up the shield and the quicker the healing bonus is eliminated - but it's precisely when the player takes a large amount of damage that we WANT the bonus - if a player doesn't use up the PWS over the entire 15 seconds then he surely doesn't need ANY bonus to his atonement healing.

We might think - "Well then, we'll just use PWS on the active tank every 6 seconds". This is certainly the way to maximize the value of the tier bonus, but the cost is that we lose out on applying atonement to two other players.

All of this can be solved by changing the tier bonus to apply to all players who have an atonement buff FROM Power Word: Shield, which also applies a much needed change to Rapture. If this makes the tier bonus too powerful, then simply nerf it to 15 or 10%.

There's good reason right now to view Rapture as primarily a tank healing tool during periods of very high tank damage - just imagine if it was available to disc priests in phase 3 Tyrant. We pop Rapture, and get 8-14 seconds (depending on trait rank) of spamming PWS on the tank - the tank's not going to die during that time, and we still have 8 seconds of Pain Suppression to use after that. The other way to use it - casting it on all different players, is a questionable strategy since PWR applies atonements much more quickly.

But with our 4-piece Tier 19 bonus, the calculation changes. During Rapture (with Contrition), atonement through PWS lasts for 24 seconds. There's now a high price of using Rapture for tank spamming. The 4-piece Tier 19 bonus makes Rapture an interesting ability.

Is PW:R still a "dumb" heal in terms of it will overwrite atonement's??

There's no reason to believe otherwise. So if we're keeping atonement up on tanks through PWS we're stuck casting PWR on ranged - if we cast it on a melee player there's a decent chance it will overwrite a tank's, or other melee's, atonement.

[Anastacy]

The resultant mana cost is still painfully small, especially if you consider the fact that disc priests are just sitting at near full mana the entire time during testing.

Even if you just spam Plea from start to end without hitting a single dps spell with 50% haste, it's like what, 15*30 = 450% which is 5.5% mana.

If you take a more reasonable value, namely 20% haste, maintaining maximum of ~8 targets with atonement(lol), it's like 8*30 = 240% which is 3.4% mana. This is mostly only during burst, when the raid isn't taking damage. Let's also not go into other healer's base mana cost on their spammable heal is usually significantly higher at 2-3% or even more.

Now maybe disc priests can somewhat oom if they spam hard enough for no real reason, whoop dee doo, cry a river about not being a special snowflake and having to manage mana like everyone else are supposed to.

Yeah, I wasn't making trying to make a big deal about it. It is something to consider, though.

And weren't Disc good on mana during raid testing because of bugged talents?

[Moistie]

I find the tier bonus really bad.
The shield on tanks (Noe the main target of that spell) usually broke really soon by damage, specially now that our mastery doesn't increase it. So the heal increase is anecdotic.
And the second... Well, since the main target of shield are the tanks, on bosses with great tank damage you will put the shield on CD, so not really great thing.

Also find funny a tier focus on shield since now the main of the disci changed..... Strange and odd.

Also a shame the plea change. No other healer have a cost increase in a spameable heals

Welcome to being a mistweaver monk! Please enjoy your stay. Your 6 sec cooldown mini cocoon makes me sad for you.

[Symmone]

Ahh I see. Looks like they want to encourage less Plea use and more PW:R...however that three target cap is still not very helpful. Does anyone know if it will refresh atonement or will it "smart heal" and cast it on someone who doesnt already have it? Possibly answered somewhere already in these 43 pages.


Question to Disc's who have done a good amount of Raid Alpha testing:
How many targets is typical for atonement spread via Plea at any given time? In other words, how often are you casting plea to maintain a certain # of atonement buffs?

[Melchey]

Ahh I see. Looks like they want to encourage less Plea use and more PW:R...however that three target cap is still not very helpful. Does anyone know if it will refresh atonement or will it "smart heal" and cast it on someone who doesnt already have it? Possibly answered somewhere already in these 43 pages.


Question to Disc's who have done a good amount of Raid Alpha testing:
How many targets is typical for atonement spread via Plea at any given time? In other words, how often are you casting plea to maintain a certain # of atonement buffs?

PWR applies to your target and its 2 closest allies. It's not smart and will just refresh.

Plea made up about 50-70% of Atonement applications, largely depending on your PWS/Rapture And Smend usage.

[shanthi]

That will never make it to live. The duration could, but the atonement full duration to everyone inside would never be an option since it would be BiS for entire expansion.

I think that's the general idea for the legendaries. Low drop rate/hard to get, but powerful for the whole expansion.

I'm not endorsing the idea, I'm not a huge fan, but I don't think "it will be BiS for the entire expansion" runs counter to Blizzard's intentions and thus is a reason that they'll kill it.

[drivec]

yikes hope blizzard reverts some of these changes. I thought disc felt great. I hate that we are already receiving nerfs. I would mach rather see them buff other healers. The whole adding cost for each plea sounds neat but really it just makes things more complicated if it was to cheap I wish they would just up the base cost.

I know its still early and nothing is set in stone but its hard not to react when it feels like there has been so little in testing.

Edit: ugh just hard because I don't know the thought process behind their changes or goal for the class.

[Melchey]

yikes hope blizzard reverts some of these changes. I thought disc felt great. I hate that we are already receiving nerfs. I would mach rather see them buff other healers. The whole adding cost for each plea sounds neat but really it just makes things more complicated if it was to cheap I wish they would just up the base cost.

I know its still early and nothing is set in stone but its hard not to react when it feels like there has been so little in testing.

Edit: ugh just hard because I don't know the thought process behind their changes or goal for the class.

Outside of the flat atonement nerf, we didn't really see any flat out nerfs, just more playstyle changes. It was needed though.

The nerf to plea logically makes sense, but it's not planned out well. Plea becomes worse mana per atonement than every other spell after four or more applications, and you won't really cast Plea past the first few seconds of a fight because with Rapture, PWR, Smend, PWS, you'll likely always be having a solid amount of atonements out at any given time. It would be better to give plea the Arcane Blast style treatment, making repeating casts incredibly more expensive so the spell actually gets used, just not being spammed like it was last build.

On the brighter side, PWR is actually useful now (and it's decently good) so the change to that was good. We also saw some mana nerfs in Smite and PWS which kinda offsets the PWR/Plea "gains", so overall not really a nerf.

[PosPosPos]

Yeah, I wasn't making trying to make a big deal about it. It is something to consider, though.

And weren't Disc good on mana during raid testing because of bugged talents?

1% mana every 6 seconds doesn't automatically make the difference between infinite and not, tbh. It came from other parts of the kit.

[Yunzi]

What the change to Plea does is makes Disc a whole lot less mobile. Disc used to have mobility on the 6-second PWS cooldown, the 9-second Penance cooldown, SWP or PtW, and Plea. The "normal" use of Plea was 3 casts every 18 seconds, or 1 cast per 6 seconds. Now most of those are going to be replaced by the non-mobile Shadow Mend and non-mobile PWR. Shadow Mend and Plea have nearly the same mana cost when 4 existing atonement buffs are out (the cast applying the 5th). Shadow Mend however is a far more powerful heal - ranging from 350% to 700% spellpower as opposed to Plea's 225%, for the same cast time. Besides it's mobility, the loss of Plea increases the degree to which we compete with other healers for sniping.

Melchey's criticism is completely valid - this is not an interesting or dynamic change to Plea. Since a large majority of the time we'll be maintaining several atonement buffs throughout a raid encounter, the value of Plea will not vary much over the course of the fight - it will always be bad other than at the very beginning of the encounter except when it's mobility is highly valued.

Another key aspect of the recent build is the change to Power Word: Radiance. It's no longer clear what Tier 100 talent should be chosen, but my feeling is that we're back to Purge the Wicked, since PWR is good enough now to make Shadow Covenant optional. Let's compare PWR against it's primary competitor for atonement application (Shadow Mend), given that PWS will be used on cooldown on melee (assuming Contrition):

One PWR - 54 seconds of atonement application for 900% SP healing at 2.5 seconds of cast time at 7% base mana.

Three Shadow Mends - 54 seconds of atonement application for 1050% to 2100% SP healing at 4.5 seconds of cast time at 8.4% base mana.

The raw numbers highly favor casting PWR over Shadow Mend, but PWR has a couple key weaknesses - it can overwrite atonement and only one of three atoned players are targeted by the spell, so it's much more likely to have overhealing on the initial cast than does Shadow Mend, where each individual player is targeted.

But in this particular alpha build, PWR is the recommended method of applying atonement, and since it can't be cast on melee due to overwriting concerns this yields a situation where PWR is to be used on ranged, where we need to have an idea where the ranged players are standing so as to avoid overwriting atonements when multiple PWRs are cast. PWS can be used on cooldown on melee and if individual melee need to be atoned when PWS is on cooldown they should receive a Shadow Mend, not a PWR.

Because PWR is the most complex single common ability (notwithstanding abilities with long cooldowns) in our toolkit, for "easy mode" or inexperienced disc priests can select Shadow Covenant, and spam that when several players need healing, just as Chain Heal is to Shaman or Prayer of Healing is to Holy Priests.

[Noradin]

In the end, it's the depth of said buttons that matter. Quality over quantity is a thing in game design.

While that is true there is no reason to take those spells taht do not get used (by design) out of the spellbook entirely.
Id love to keep them for RP and for set bonuses and legendary items to do something with them.

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Does it matter? It's literally happened every expansion since LK. Spirit might be going away, yes, but we don't know how trinkets effect regen. Then you have things like innervates and Hymn of Hope, so the discrepancy still would exist either way.

And what is wrong with having some spells just sitting in the spellbook where you can use them for RP and/or some gimmicks (like soloing old content - where is my AoE damage spell as Disc?) or set bonuses?

[Deleted]

While that is true there is no reason to take those spells taht do not get used (by design) out of the spellbook entirely.
Id love to keep them for RP and for set bonuses and legendary items to do something with them.

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And what is wrong with having some spells just sitting in the spellbook where you can use them for RP and/or some gimmicks (like soloing old content - where is my AoE damage spell as Disc?) or set bonuses?

Expectation vs Utility?

Nobody throws out that weird looking spoon in the utensil drawer because they know every now and again they are going to need it to fish pasta out of the pan.

The trouble is you will get those type of ppl who expect everything to be meaningful 100% of the time and because they can't use the pasta spoon to eat pizza they throw it in the bin..............................2 weeks later tho while making a Carbonara

My point is i agree some spells even tho they don't get used still add flavour to the class or provide a unique roll, they are not hurting anyone apart from the OCD maniacs who demand to use 100% of their spell book, but hey those guys just need beaten to death...................................with a pasta spoon

[tachycardias]

I wish they had kept mind blast and made smite the efficient atonement "heal", and MB a higher cost "burst" atonement heal

[deviantcultist]

I personally love the idea of Disc turning into an Atonement-based Light&Shadow wielding spec. Is it me or starting with removing Mind Blast and providing the option to have Purge the Wicked replace SW: P they are diminishing the shadow part of the spec?

Hopefully they don't push Disc to a traditional Holy healer cause that's the crap we've been dealing with for the last 8 years. (1 shadow dps spec vs 2 holy healing specs)

[Jinxz]

I personally love the idea of Disc turning into an Atonement-based Light&Shadow wielding spec. Is it me or starting with removing Mind Blast and providing the option to have Purge the Wicked replace SW: P they are diminishing the shadow part of the spec?

Hopefully they don't push Disc to a traditional Holy healer cause that's the crap we've been dealing with for the last 8 years. (1 shadow dps spec vs 2 holy healing specs)

Disc was quite fun last build, the latest build just made it awful

[Deleted]

mind blast must come back

they can't base all their expansion and artifact on " fantasy class", and make disc a - supposed - shadow+holy caster using 95% holy spells

[Melchey]

Disc was quite fun last build, the latest build just made it awful

Just curious, what changed your mind? Not spamming plea 24/7?