[Legion] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Noradin]

Am I the only one who hates that shadow stuff with the Disci? I liked the Specc far more when it was more pure lightish, since I don't like that shadow stuff.

Same for me. It used to be holy priests who got extra shadow damage.

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Priest lore is about both Light and Shadow. Discipline like the word implies is about balance like it was indeed in Vanilla too with some Shadow influences. If you really wanna stay pure lightish, you can always stay Holy as that was what it was always about.

Nowadays it seems to be about Naaru and Insanity instead. I despise both.

[deviantcultist]

Same for me. It used to be holy priests who got extra shadow damage.

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Nowadays it seems to be about Naaru and Insanity instead. I despise both.

I get your point, but this is based on your preferences and not lore/fantasy. Shadow dmg used by Holy priests was simply a chakra mechanic that helped with soloing stuff.

As for Naaru and Insanity, Naaru are important Light figures in the WoW universe and the mental powers they've shown is very much alike the pure Light mentality of Priest, especially Holy. Insanity resembles the "risk" of approaching the Void mentally which is the source of Shadow's powers which have ALWAYS been Old God associated, hence the signature Mind Flay.

There appears to be some misunderstanding with the Priest theme. Priest had a pretty much unclear thematic identity before. However, people who followed the lore wished for the Naaru/Old God fantasy to come to fruition. It is natural for some people to have the idea of a generic Cleric in mind, but that is not WoW Priest and Naaru/Insanity are WoW Priest.

[Deleted]

Some numbers about the discussion from a few pages back.

Calcs are based off spreadsheet math. Very simple assumptions about cast rotations and GCD/CD usage. Overheal not taken into Account. I'll let the numbers talk and might add some more explanation further if you think it's not self explanatory.

The below considers Power of the Dark Side and takes an expected value of E[Penance(PPS)]=E[Penance|RPPM=1/(1+haste)]. Also 1 offensive target is assumed.




And for those who can interpret LOG-level increases:

[phyx]

Is anyone else concerned that raid leaders won't really care about Disc ability to do 1/3 of average DPS and 70%-80% of average HPS, and just run a comp that they have been running for years - 2 tank, 19dps, 4 heal -+1? I know the numbers are still being tweaked, and stuff, but it seems Holy is definitely going to be the stronger of 2 specs, and with our Preventing Damage utility going out of the window, I just don't see Discs being used all that much in progress raiding, at least not in top 200-300 guilds. I think the dps portion of our spec is going to be considered more of a gimmick, than a real utility, and frankly, I agree.

[Pearl1717]

I just don't see Discs being used all that much in progress raiding, at least not in top 200-300 guilds. I think the dps portion of our spec is going to be considered more of a gimmick, than a real utility, and frankly, I agree.

On progression on the top 200-300 guilds, many times bosses are pushed at certain times due to healers doing dps. Healers dpsing when they can is absolutely key on early progression. The fact that disc will be able to put out decent dps numbers consistently is going to be huge for progression. Couple that with the fact that they are doing competitive hps, there is no way they won't be even more mandatory in Legion than they are now.

[PosPosPos]

Is anyone else concerned that raid leaders won't really care about Disc ability to do 1/3 of average DPS and 70%-80% of average HPS, and just run a comp that they have been running for years - 2 tank, 19dps, 4 heal -+1? I know the numbers are still being tweaked, and stuff, but it seems Holy is definitely going to be the stronger of 2 specs, and with our Preventing Damage utility going out of the window, I just don't see Discs being used all that much in progress raiding, at least not in top 200-300 guilds. I think the dps portion of our spec is going to be considered more of a gimmick, than a real utility, and frankly, I agree.

Then you don't know much about cutting edge raiding.

Healer dps, and not throughput, has traditionally been pivotal to scoring the early kills.

[phyx]

I in fact do. I have almost exclusively been in top200 guilds, and literally none of them 'used' heal dps. Outside of top 50 guilds, there has been very little need for healer dpsing, because usually, the healing requirement is just as important so healers are not in a position to not heal really, and it's a more of a matter of execution rather than dps/heal checks. I'm not talking about first kills, I'm talking about top 100-300 that kill bosses relatively early.

[Pearl1717]

I in fact do. I have almost exclusively been in top200 guilds, and literally none of them 'used' heal dps. Outside of top 50 guilds, there has been very little need for healer dpsing, because usually, the healing requirement is just as important so healers are not in a position to not heal really, and it's a more of a matter of execution rather than dps/heal checks. I'm not talking about first kills, I'm talking about top 100-300 that kill bosses relatively early.

I still don't see how you think that doing competitive hps in addition to doing tank level dps would result in disc not ever being taken as a raid spot. If the only thing that mattered in fights was the hps of healers, then wouldn't bringing a disc priest be a good choice since they can do similar hps as every other class but are also capable of doing decent amounts of damage too?

[phyx]

In theory, yes, I completely agree with you. But then again, why would you bring a Disc, if Holy, by the looks of things right now, is pulling much bigger numbers. Just looking at the logs right now, it seems that Disc is lagging a bit behind more or less everyone. If it was pumping out the same numbers as everyone else, and doing tank dps, I wouldn't be that concerned.

[Deleted]

In theory, yes, I completely agree with you. But then again, why would you bring a Disc, if Holy, by the looks of things right now, is pulling much bigger numbers. Just looking at the logs right now, it seems that Disc is lagging a bit behind more or less everyone. If it was pumping out the same numbers as everyone else, and doing tank dps, I wouldn't be that concerned.

It really is a bit of a mind fuck how they are going to balance this issue, for instance they could make it so none of the fights are "dps checks" so having extra damage from disc is still important but focus more on HPS output within the mechanics, having higher overall dps however means finishing the fights quicker, so healers need less mana so still taking a disc is preferable as long as there are no HPS issues for the fights.

I don't envy their position in this!!

[Deleted]

Is anyone else concerned that raid leaders won't really care about Disc ability to do 1/3 of average DPS and 70%-80% of average HPS, and just run a comp that they have been running for years - 2 tank, 19dps, 4 heal -+1? I know the numbers are still being tweaked, and stuff, but it seems Holy is definitely going to be the stronger of 2 specs, and with our Preventing Damage utility going out of the window, I just don't see Discs being used all that much in progress raiding, at least not in top 200-300 guilds. I think the dps portion of our spec is going to be considered more of a gimmick, than a real utility, and frankly, I agree.

I think you're looking at it wrong. There is a few fights every tier that has a hard enrage, which means you would just need high average damage.
Most fights has a softenrage, and certain mechanics that hurt a lot if you don't kill adds or phase the boss etc. This is where disc shines.
You're not going to be able to keep both hps and dps high throughout the entire fight. You save your mana for radiance casts during high HPS phase, and save whatever you can to do dmg during important dps phases.
To give you an example: Mannoroth phase 1 on cutting edge progress, you wanted 3 Curses before you phased him, but with the gear we had we had a few problems doing that consistently. However the damage in phase 1 was way too low for our 4 healers, so if you had a legion disc in that raidcomp you could have saved a lot of wipes pushing the boss consistently, and you would be able to ramp up your healing over the course of the fight as it would do more and more damage.

Now this is just an example and every fight might not work like this, but I think you're mistaken when you try to compare disc's average hps and dps to the other healers/dps. Healing in general is never about your average HPS, Cooldowns and coordinated plays is what gets you through the fight.

[PosPosPos]

I in fact do. I have almost exclusively been in top200 guilds, and literally none of them 'used' heal dps. Outside of top 50 guilds, there has been very little need for healer dpsing, because usually, the healing requirement is just as important so healers are not in a position to not heal really, and it's a more of a matter of execution rather than dps/heal checks. I'm not talking about first kills, I'm talking about top 100-300 that kill bosses relatively early.

No, having people tell you what to do and you blindly follow, is not knowing anything about cutting edge raiding. You just do things and go through the motions, but you have never sat down and critically thought for yourself why people do the things they do.

I can also tell you, you are either lying through your teeth, or you are looking at the wrong guilds. Back during progression, I consistently saw healer dps(5k to 10k throughout the whole fight, usually much more for Mistweavers) on logs even within rank 100-300 for their early kills at least.

If theoretical output was ever the end-all-be-all for picking healers on cutting edge progression, disc priests would by far be the lowest on the totem pole.

[Deleted]

You're not going to be able to keep both hps and dps high throughout the entire fight. You save your mana for radiance casts during high HPS phase, and save whatever you can to do dmg during important dps phases.

Actually the variance in discs DPS during phases of low and high healing isn't that high. All of Penance, Purge and Mindbender are being kept on cooldown for both max HPS and max DPS. I would therefore argue that, when evaluating discs performance in that regard, we would only look at what difference we can make casting more or less Smite.
Just comparing two fights, Cenarius and Anomaly, with the former having significantly higher HPS requirements, Smite makes up 10% of my DPS on cenarius, while it is 20% on anomaly. This goes up to 30% of my DPS when I do nothing but deal damage (e.g. on pull).

The biggest fraction of Discs DPS is baseline. There is some variance to it, making the difference between 100k and 130k dps (during testing). But that is approximately the difference we have now, being level 100. It is far from the binary-choice difference of any other healer that decides to DPS instead of healing.


Also @Tekc, (completely unrelated) are you sure that "unparalleled knowledge" is the term you want to be described with? :P

[Yunzi]

In support of what Sixthumbs just said, Disc's damage is going to be *consistent* over the course of the fight - it would lead to zero healing if Disc went all-out on damage and except in VERY unusual fight circumstances which are very difficult to determine Disc does not want to do that.

Disc's rotation won't vary much - the core is Penance on it's 9 second cooldown, Schism if selected preceding that, PWS on it's 6-second cooldown, a single Smite following Penance if the legendary is equipped to proc Revelation - the variance occurs in the other spells, whether to cast PWR, PtW, SWP, or Shadow Mend.

Because we don't want to cast PWS *during* Schism's uptime, this leads to a "natural" rotation of PWS > Schism > Penance > Smite > Penance/Smite with PWS recast after Schism drops off, then followed by more atonement applicators, then again into the PWS > Schism > Penance > Smite > Penance/Smite. This means we have a two-fold back-and-forth rotation of atonement applicators and damage spells.

If we want a more flexible rotation we need to drop Schism.

[Deleted]

The biggest fraction of Discs DPS is baseline. There is some variance to it, making the difference between 100k and 130k dps (during testing). But that is approximately the difference we have now, being level 100. It is far from the binary-choice difference of any other healer that decides to DPS instead of healing.

I think this is where we're different, I was able to put out 200k+ dps, that stuff is going to matter on mythic progress.
I do however agree, most of your damage does come for DoT, penance and schism (if specced).
and usually you'll also be able to maintain the damage you're doing. What you can't maintain is mana, and the radiance casts.

Also @Tekc, (completely unrelated) are you sure that "unparalleled knowledge" is the term you want to be described with? :P

That would really depend on who thinks that. I honestly don't really care much about people who are trying to pad numbers. In the end HPS does not matter very much on cutting edge progress.

[Deleted]

That would really depend on who thinks that. I honestly don't really care much about people who are trying to pad numbers. In the end HPS does not matter very much on cutting edge progress.

Well thats from your guilds website and I had a god laugh and wondered who came up with that phrasing Thats not quite humble.

The number exmample was out of thin air. I was doing 180 without schism the other day during raidtesting. And right, I did not account for Schism as of yet.

[Deleted]

Well thats from your guilds website and I had a god laugh and wondered who came up with that phrasing Thats not quite humble.

The number exmample was out of thin air. I was doing 180 without schism the other day during raidtesting. And right, I did not account for Schism as of yet.

I see - my english is not my main language, so I am no where near capable of making website text etc.
I think there is a huge difference between knowing how to create a good cutting edge healing team, and knowing how to get rank 1 on farm.
I'll be the first to admit, not only do I not care about the ranks, but I don't know how to get them either. In my world they simply don't matter, but if ranking is what keep farm fun for some guys, by all means, let them do just that.

[Saiyoran]

From the Disc changes this patch, does Light's Wrath no longer have a cap? It was nerfed/buffed to 800% sp baseline + 10% damage per atoned ally, as opposed to 200% per ally up to 5 targets. At 5 targets it looks like its a buff, which is nice for dungeons, and if the cap is removed its even better in raids.

Edit: Random smite/swp nerf? Uhh, alright?
Second Edit: Combining the legendary ring that places Atonement on everyone inside Power Word: Barrier and the trait that increases atonement healing on people inside Barrier with a Light's Wrath seems like it would Lay on Hands the entire raid if you had them stacked...

[Yunzi]

I see - my english is not my main language, so I am no where near capable of making website text etc.
I think there is a huge difference between knowing how to create a good cutting edge healing team, and knowing how to get rank 1 on farm.
I'll be the first to admit, not only do I not care about the ranks, but I don't know how to get them either. In my world they simply don't matter, but if ranking is what keep farm fun for some guys, by all means, let them do just that.

This supposed divide between success and meters doesn't exist. People use meters because it's the best tool they have for evaluation. The meters *themselves* aren't great - statistical analysis in the sabermetrics era has come a long way while there hasn't been much progress in WoW.

HPS in general is much less telling than DPS, since unlike DPS it relies on the variability of player damage taken and the number of healers.

But if the top progression guilds had some OTHER metric they were using - so the cool kids were using a secret metric while the lamers used HPS, we would have heard about it by now.

All your words amount to is - we trust the gameplay of our raiders for reasons that were metriced in the first place so we don't need to keep metricing them. That's fine, but don't pretend there's some great divide, some way of existing outside of metrics.

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From the Disc changes this patch, does Light's Wrath no longer have a cap? It was nerfed/buffed to 800% sp baseline + 10% damage per atoned ally, as opposed to 200% per ally up to 5 targets. At 5 targets it looks like its a buff, which is nice for dungeons, and if the cap is removed its even better in raids.

Edit: Random smite/swp nerf? Uhh, alright?
Second Edit: Combining the legendary ring that places Atonement on everyone inside Power Word: Barrier and the trait that increases atonement healing on people inside Barrier with a Light's Wrath seems like it would Lay on Hands the entire raid if you had them stacked...

Yep - Light's Wrath however has a 90 second cd and Barrier 3 minutes, so the other Light's Wrath can be setup with 2-3 PWRs, atoning lots of players prior to the Schism > Light's Wrath healing bomb leading into Penance > Smite.

[Saiyoran]

My only concern with that is that PW:R costs a shit ton of mana, and I was already ooming on some of the raid test bosses near the end not using PW:R extensively at all. I don't know how sustainable that's going to be on long fights where you have to set up Light's Wrath with schism 6 or 7 times in a fight.