[7.0] Legion Discipline Priest Guide and Discussion

[Saiyoran]

We did the math last night, a couple single target trinkets are actually fine, the aoe ones aren't worth using. We still have the ability to use healing trinkets that ALL OTHER HEALERS have the ability to use.

It's fine.

Yes its totally fine that equipping a "your damage spells cause damage" trinket is a damage loss over a "your healing spells give you stats" trinket. Makes sense

[Noradin]

It's only a downside if you're consistently hitting your Smite key <.1 seconds (latency dependent) before your Penance ends, right? With the caveat that, if you ever mistime it or your connection hiccups, you could clip a Penance bolt and lose far more damage than you gain by optimizing.

I'm not quite sure I understood you correctly, so I will just reword that part of my post.

If you use that macro to cast Smite directly after Penance, then there will always be a delay of at least twice your latency between the end of the Penance channel and the start of the Smite cast. (This has been tested in the past.)

[spungebobby]

Only Discipline Priests could have their trinkets nerfed by 80% and go "this is fine, everything is fine".

Priests take nerfs like men.

[Totaltotemic]

Priests take nerfs like men.

No, it's more like it's actually not very relevant at all and people that never contribute and only show up to troll act like it is.

[Saiyoran]

No, it's more like it's actually not very relevant at all and people that never contribute and only show up to troll act like it is.

I post here and on the Disc feedback thread pretty frequently. I'm not trying to troll. The thing is, people tend to act like only raiding matters, and thats fine for them. I raid too. Its not a huge deal for raiding. The only fight we'll see a huge hit on is Tichondrius, and maybe Skorpyron, but it doesnt make THAT much of a difference.

But for 5 mans, which is a content type that a decent amount of players want to do at a high level, it IS a pretty big change, because if you're just bringing Disc to shadowmend you should be bringing a resto druid. The DPS loss is very real and not negligible, and also prevents us from using Atonement on harder trash packs because we no longer have that big 30-50% dps boost to help keep the tank up through the spike damage without spamming SMend every global. Its both a playstyle and numbers change for competitive Mythic+. Thats why I'm upset.

[Totaltotemic]

I post here and on the Disc feedback thread pretty frequently. I'm not trying to troll. The thing is, people tend to act like only raiding matters, and thats fine for them. I raid too. Its not a huge deal for raiding. The only fight we'll see a huge hit on is Tichondrius, and maybe Skorpyron, but it doesnt make THAT much of a difference.

But for 5 mans, which is a content type that a decent amount of players want to do at a high level, it IS a pretty big change, because if you're just bringing Disc to shadowmend you should be bringing a resto druid. The DPS loss is very real and not negligible, and also prevents us from using Atonement on harder trash packs because we no longer have that big 30-50% dps boost to help keep the tank up through the spike damage without spamming SMend every global. Its both a playstyle and numbers change for competitive Mythic+. Thats why I'm upset.

I wasn't talking about you.

I'm aware that it's a major reduction in the damage for M+, but Sigma said they were going to reduce it months ago. I never considered AoE trinkets that allow you to do the same level of damage as a DPS in M+ to be something that would actually go live. It was always just a matter of when they would be nerfed and by how much. Now, the "how much" is a bit too much and the "when" is quite a lot later than we would have liked, but if you were planning on playing Disc on the assumption that you could get a specific couple of trinkets and have the same DPS as a group that didn't even run a healer, I'd say that was pretty naive.

I also think the assertion that AoE trinkets not being good anymore means everyone should play Resto Druids is pretty ridiculous. Almost nobody will be deciding what to play based on how good specs are in Mythic dungeons. If you're the type of player whose end game goal in WoD was pushing Challenge Mode leaderboard times, maybe that's what will impact your decision, but for people whose end game is raiding, PvP, or just playing casually, we never needed OP trinkets to make Disc work just fine in M+.

But LUL DISC NOT VIABLE is a stupid meme, and this change doesn't suddenly make it true.

[Saiyoran]

I also think the assertion that AoE trinkets not being good anymore means everyone should play Resto Druids is pretty ridiculous. Almost nobody will be deciding what to play based on how good specs are in Mythic dungeons. If you're the type of player whose end game goal in WoD was pushing Challenge Mode leaderboard times, maybe that's what will impact your decision, but for people whose end game is raiding, PvP, or just playing casually, we never needed OP trinkets to make Disc work just fine in M+.

But LUL DISC NOT VIABLE is a stupid meme, and this change doesn't suddenly make it true.

Interestingly enough that was actually what I spent most of my time doing in WoD. My guild is a mid-level Mythic guild, and will clear the content eventually, server top 2 or 3 but not anywhere fast. That's the reason I don't care too much about the raid nerfs. I play well enough that I will still do my job in raids at the level the guild is at.

Its also true that Disc is viable as a healer for dungeons, but pretty much objectively inferior to RDruid in that department, and the DPS trinket cheesing was a nice way to give it its own niche. You could form a comp around your disc primarily dpsing (double tank, or a prot warrior, and some dps with occasional offheals ala Enhance) and it would make things go a bit faster and allow more room for errors later since your trash was so much faster.

I'm just bummed out that they nerfed it this late into the beta I guess, after months of testing and eventually assuming what I was doing with my M+ group was going to work and be an alternative to the Vengeance/RDruid/Fire/BM/whatever meta that everyone else competing for world/region/realm first 15 is doing. I'm sure it'll still be fine.

[lcs]

• Penance damage is now 190% of Spell Power (was 175%).
• The Penitent now heals 300% of Spell Power (was 275%).
• Shadow Word: Pain (Discipline) damage increased by 7%.
• Purge the Wicked additional damage increased to 48% of Spell Power (was 42%).
• Dominant Mind cooldown reduced to 2 minutes (was 3 minutes).
• Schism now deals damage equal to 425% of Spell Power (was 400%).
• Developers’ notes: We recently identified a bug that was causing Discipline Priests to gain far more benefit than intended from caster DPS trinkets. While we do intend for Discipline to benefit from caster DPS trinkets (including through Atonement), and will be tuning those appropriately, we are slightly increasing the spec’s damage to account for the bug fix. We will continue monitoring the issue.

Some buffs to damage. Don't think this will offset the changes to the trinkets but it is better than nothing.

Edit: Actually, I think I'll take the damage buffs. Cheesing with DPS trinkets is fun and all, but mana regen / stat trinkets and more higher (and more consistent) damage seems better.

[Deleted]

I don't really mind trinket nerfs, since there's alot of other alternatives. Some of which may be even more appealing in regard to our burst healing.

Damage buffs are nice though.

[ambident]

Saiyoran is right, this is a huge nerf for disc in 5 mans. It was pretty obvious it was coming though, with how they handled divine star atonement.

[Atharaxie]

That's nice buffs. Now the real questions would be :
can we expect a Mindbender/Light'wrath/mastery fix before long ?
can we expect a Sins of the Many not benefiting to heal fix before we reach 17 points ?

[Deleted]

Hey,

whats you guys opinion on Schism over Castigation? I feel it's an okay dps increase, but it costs quite a bit of mana and a large investment of overal global cooldown usage, which might be crucial if you're doing Mythic+ when I think (i haven't played beta) you'll be casting alot of Shadowmend. So in situations like that where you're shadowmending and finding gaps to keep some atonements going on the group and dpsing, is Schism just worth taking over castigation? And how about in raids, when you can forego shadowmend spamming in favor of setting up the perfect burst moment for heavy aoe with Schism and Light's Wrath?

[Gorsameth]

Hey,

whats you guys opinion on Schism over Castigation? I feel it's an okay dps increase, but it costs quite a bit of mana and a large investment of overal global cooldown usage, which might be crucial if you're doing Mythic+ when I think (i haven't played beta) you'll be casting alot of Shadowmend. So in situations like that where you're shadowmending and finding gaps to keep some atonements going on the group and dpsing, is Schism just worth taking over castigation? And how about in raids, when you can forego shadowmend spamming in favor of setting up the perfect burst moment for heavy aoe with Schism and Light's Wrath?

Early on the consensus was 'to mana intensive in raids, possible in dungeons if the group gives you time to drink'. Haven't hear anything to indicate that has changed.

[Saiyoran]

Early on the consensus was 'to mana intensive in raids, possible in dungeons if the group gives you time to drink'. Haven't hear anything to indicate that has changed.

Pretty much this, but I'd say it's pretty much a no brainer for dungeons. It's a lot of damage on single target. Raid fights it only works on fights where the duration is <3 minutes or so

[Arazen]

Schism is the throughput choice. It's good, because it makes your burst cooldowns stronger. It's a no-brainer for 5-mans at least.

The mana cost only matters if there's a steady stream of AoE damage coming in, which is when Castigation outshines Schism.

Note, that both Penance (Castigation) and Schism are mana-inefficient for single-target healing.

[Puupi]

I assume there isn't a clear "go-to" way of leveling the disc artifact as all of the golden dragon thingies are rather poop. Well, the barrier thing is rather nice, but it's surrounded with crap that is inferior to the right side of the artifact. Amirite?

[Deleted]

I assume there isn't a clear "go-to" way of leveling the disc artifact as all of the golden dragon thingies are rather poop. Well, the barrier thing is rather nice, but it's surrounded with crap that is inferior to the right side of the artifact. Amirite?

http://www.wowhead.com/artifact-calc...M38DOAAzgQFUEB

This is how you should level up your artifact pre-EN.

Get 3/3 Confession first, then go all the way to Sins of the Many (which is a crucial golden trait), after that pick 3/3 Burst of Light and Power of the Dark Side as your 2nd golden trait.

Barrier for the Devoted is nice, but the other two golden traits are just better.

[Jimjam38]

Oy...coming in here to ask about the state of Disc Priests...and this last page doesn't look so hot.

I was disappointed by Holy Paladin's abandonment of the "dps healer" concept, so was wonderin if Disc has fully realized this?

I HATE being a passive grid clicking healer. So the thought of being able to play a very aggressive class that is dealing damage while also keeping my group up is VERY appealing to me.

So flat out...can I do Mythic+/Raids as Disc in the fashion that I want? As in playing like an aggressive DPS spec, while also adding in the fiddly bits of healing?

Or has Blizz failed yet again to produce a useable dps/healer hybrid?

Refer to the Disc FAQ or Totaltotemic's Guide, it should contain most of the information you're after.

- - - Updated - - -

The small buffs to our spells were nice (mainly penance and PWS/PTW), but the trinket nerf actually has me both very worried and very salty. It doesn't seem justified to me, by no means were we overpowered in 5mans before, and there's no denying that without it we're now sorely lacking suitable ways to deal with heavy trash pack damage. I knew they had said they would adjust DPS trinkets for disc (although I really don't think there's a justification for that in the first place) but I was under the impression that they'd do so by nerfing the RPPM, not the actual damage...

[Totaltotemic]

The small buffs to our spells were nice (mainly penance and PWS/PTW), but the trinket nerf actually has me both very worried and very salty. It doesn't seem justified to me, by no means were we overpowered in 5mans before, and there's no denying that without it we're now sorely lacking suitable ways to deal with heavy trash pack damage. I knew they had said they would adjust DPS trinkets for disc (although I really don't think there's a justification for that in the first place) but I was under the impression that they'd do so by nerfing the RPPM, not the actual damage...

They couldn't nerf the RPPM without making them total RNGfests. They nerfed single target trinkets by 33%, imagine a 1 RPPM trinket suddenly only proccing every 3 minutes, that would be really stupid because it would swing wildly in effect from pull to pull.

As for them being nerfed in general, there are 2 problems with them being as good as they were. One is that they automatically become the best trinkets for Disc if they work for Disc the same way they work for DPS, because they are guaranteed to be at least double the effectiveness for Disc (if it increases a normal spec's DPS by 5%, it will be upwards of 10-15% for Disc). This horribly skews the power balance between upgrades and awkwardly makes DPS trinkets more valuable on Disc than any other spec in the game (because you get the SAME DPS in pure numbers... plus HPS). The problem problem is that it forces Disc to be balanced around the existence of DPS trinkets that powerful, and in some cases there is no way to balance that at all (see dungeons and also why Dominate Mind was eventually knee-capped).

In the end, they had to be nerfed. I think they were nerfed slightly too much (as in, they should probably be like 40/20 instead of 33/16.5), but it is in the ballpark and a lot closer than they were at 100% effectiveness (nevermind the fact that 75% of the trinkets did no healing because Atonement wasn't proccing off of Arcane/Nature/Frost damage).

[Hitei]

http://www.wowhead.com/artifact-calc...M38DOAAzgQFUEB

This is how you should level up your artifact pre-EN.

Get 3/3 Confession first, then go all the way to Sins of the Many (which is a crucial golden trait), after that pick 3/3 Burst of Light and Power of the Dark Side as your 2nd golden trait.

Barrier for the Devoted is nice, but the other two golden traits are just better.

Is the 3/3 confession really worth more than pushing towards shield of faith and darkest shadows? It seems to me you'd be better off with the increased PW:S and Shadow Mend for 5 mans, which is what you'd be mainly doing leading up to those first two goldens.

I had been considering going straight around the outer edge towards Sins and then confession > Burst of Light > Power of the Dark Side.

Although I guess taking Confession first would be nicer for leveling.