[Disc] Thoughts on why I think its is the best spec.

[Qualopec]

Hey,

So as you can tell from the title, I highly rate the new disc priest. I think Blizzard did a great job at giving it an identity as a battle healer and making it a meld of both the holy and shadow specs. Here are just my thoughts on the spec and where its at currently.

Overall I feel like disc priest is a DPS class with a super simple rotation that transfers its damage into healing. When played well you are able to DPS the boss (and adds!) while weaving in some shields and small heals into the raid or dungeon to transfer more damage into heals. If it can be pulled off it is highly rewarding and very fun to play! It still retains its shielding potential (with rapture) that it had in WOD however now I feel like shielding it is much more defined and impactful. Yes I get it, you no longer spam shields and its a different class to what it was in WOD, but I think it changed for the better.

One thing I will agree with is that it has gone from one of the easiest healers to play in WOD to one of the hardest. If not played properly it can easily fail at both healing and keeping up in DPS. I'll be honest, this is what I did at first. I found that all I was trying to do was maintain atonement on as many people as possible while trying to find time to DPS and then just ended up just not doing either. I was very scared/cautious to use Shadow Meld due to the downside. Maintaining atonement on priority targets and using Power Word: Shield on cooldown is how I feel like it should be played. Also, In my experience keeping up with heals in a mythic dungeon was actually challenging. It required me to be constantly thinking about what I was doing, not just mindlessly spamming 1 or 2 buttons.

My recent discovery (and kind of why I'm writing this) is Shadow Covenant. What a spell! If you are unaware, it is an upgraded Power word: Radiance that heals 5 injured allies for 500% spell power but then gives them a healing absorb shield of 250% spell power. To put that in perspective Flash Heal, heals for 475% spell power, 1 target, longer cast. Shadow Covenants AOE healing potential is huge albeit at the cost of large amounts of mana.

So that's my thoughts, super fun, very rewarding, huge AOE potential and a battle healer at its core. I'd be curious as to what you think about it and if you have any questions.

Thanks

[Saiyoran]

While I'm happy you're enjoying Disc, keep in mind that Shadow Covenant has a pretty high cost. First of all, it places a healing absorb on everyone that it heals, so its really only half as effective as it appears in a situation with more than one damage event. Second, you lose your only AoE atonement application spell, which means that blanketing more than 5 or 6 people before aoe damage happens becomes pretty difficult and inefficient. I pretty much never find a use for it in its current state with how good Grace is for healing 5 mans and the extra damage and lower maintenance on cleave DoTing from Purge the Wicked.

[anon5123]

The problem with Shadow Covenant is that it does negative healing with the shield debuff

and it doesn't apply Atonement.

So with SC, you literally have 0 AoE methods of applying Atonement.

It's pretty bad.

[Jimjam38]

While I'm glad you like the new spec, keep in mind that Blizzard's intention for disc is to be primarily a healer who's ability to dps is integrated into its healing. It is not really intended to be a DPS spec who throws out some random side heals, and if played as one you'll often find yourself far behind the DPS and healers, and also running out of mana. I will say that playing it like you've described works quite well for PvP though, especially with heavy multidotting.

Disc's true potential is actually AoE Burst healing using cooldowns (Rapture or Power Infusion + PWR) to put Atonement on 12+ people and then burst healing for a few seconds with dps. Check out Totaltotemic's guide if you're interested in learning more about Disc.

[Franarok]

The problem with Shadow Covenant is that is horrible and bad as hell. Not only the heal shield, it doesnt apply atonement.


And Blizz still doesnt know what to do with discipline hahaha. The actual class is a sample since still not nice defined and in some moments you are not sure what should do. By the moment I dislike the new atonement style, lets see with time

[SirreASDF]

In several threads now people are bashing Shadow Covenant. Now, to be fair, I agree that it is not by any means great, but I think it might have it's uses.

In raids it's probably a no go, and in PvP it's trash. But in dungeons, if you have no need for grace, I think it would serve well for burst aoe in cases where you don't have atonement ready on the entire group (Which obviously would be the prefered way to do it). People are so focused on the healing absorb part of it, which yes, has a downside.

But the absorb is half the value of a 500% spellpower heal, which means, if you spam it, it still ends up being a 250% spellpower heal, while consuming every healing debuff previously put. It ends up doing more than spamming prayer of healing. On the downside, if it crits one target 1 the first time, and not the second time, it will heal for 0 pretty much, which could be an issue. If the debuff wouldn't be increased on crits it would be a viable spell though in my opinion.

I could be wrong somewhere in the above thoughts, and I for one, will most likely never pick SC either way.

[PosPosPos]

But in dungeons, if you have no need for grace

If you don't have a need for grace, then it doesn't matter what talent choices you run. You simply aren't doing content difficult enough to make any of these matter.

So all the playing devil's advocate for SC is moot.

[anon5123]

if you have no need for grace

except Grace is the best talent in 5mans, since in 5mans you're mostly spamming Shadow Mend / PWS on the tank, and Grace gives both of those a fat 30% bonus.

And if you can heal fine without Grace...then PtW would be better, for the extra DPS/spreading mechanic.

[SirreASDF]

If you don't have a need for grace, then it doesn't matter what talent choices you run. You simply aren't doing content difficult enough to make any of these matter.

So all the playing devil's advocate for SC is moot.

except Grace is the best talent in 5mans, since in 5mans you're mostly spamming Shadow Mend / PWS on the tank, and Grace gives both of those a fat 30% bonus.

And if you can heal fine without Grace...then PtW would be better, for the extra DPS/spreading mechanic.

Yeah, you guys are right about that. It would have to be a very specific matter where you have low tank damage and high aoe damage in a dungeon I suppose. Which won't really happen.. I will let my stance on that SC isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be though. However, the alternatives on the same tier is way better making it a worthless talent in its current location.

Can we agree on that?

[PosPosPos]

Yeah, you guys are right about that. It would have to be a very specific matter where you have low tank damage and high aoe damage in a dungeon I suppose. Which won't really happen.. I will let my stance on that SC isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be though. However, the alternatives on the same tier is way better making it a worthless talent in its current location.

Can we agree on that?

It's the worst option, that's what makes it bad. It doesn't matter how far behind it is.

[anon5123]

It's a combination of SC itself being bad, and the fact that it replaces PWR.

If they made it apply Atonement, it'd be fucking amazing in raids. But as it is right now, it's pretty bad.

[Deleted]

Disc is not a battle healer. This is the holy paladin who is right in the middle of the pack. Disc is a strange hybrid now, and I don't know if I will stick to this spec any longer. It's strange that they mostly remove the dps-healing from the Monk, but force this into the Disc spec.

[Franarok]

Blizz told time ago dont want dps playstyle on healers. Discipline was an exception because you have holy to heal.

Now is a healer that his main mechanic is not strong to be able to heal by her own the tanks. Few people talk about this, but on a hard raid, if other healer die and left the discipline...they are fucked. On a raid with 3 healers, if one dies and discipline left, the heals will be seriously weakened. But if the discipline die, well...better the discipline than any other healer.


And the discipline dps is meh...and the mana is a serious problem for him.



Guess and hope they will buff the disicpline or change some spell.



Also about grace, I saw some disciplines going on some bosses with grace instead purge...and heal more, healing some doing damage and msotly spamminh shadow mend

[Kraide]

Shadow Covenant is more powerful than the rap it gets, for sure: the heal is very large for (relatively) cheap, EVEN with the absorb (that is, even if you are spamming SC, the first one is freakishly powerful and the rest are still stronger-than-normal-aoe-heal powerful). It's certainly a much better AoE heal than Radiance. The loss of AoE atonement is a pretty big negative, however, as is the loss of Grace.

In a non-raid scenario, however, a "shadow healing" spec with shadow mend and shadow covenant ain't too shabby... but in many cases you may find yourself preferring to use grace and use more shadowmends instead, because it will apply atonement and then you can shoot out a simple penance for a (fairly) solid multi-target heal on-demand.

A lot of people here say that SC is "bad" but we both know that's completely incorrect. It's easily the best spammable non-setup AoE heal we have access to, and it's pretty potent, absorb or no. It's just... it's not reasonable to balance a decent amount of atonements without radiance, and most of the situations you might use SC can be reasonably covered with just Grace instead.

[Totaltotemic]

Shadow Covenant is more powerful than the rap it gets, for sure: the heal is very large for (relatively) cheap, EVEN with the absorb (that is, even if you are spamming SC, the first one is freakishly powerful and the rest are still stronger-than-normal-aoe-heal powerful). It's certainly a much better AoE heal than Radiance. The loss of AoE atonement is a pretty big negative, however, as is the loss of Grace.

In a non-raid scenario, however, a "shadow healing" spec with shadow mend and shadow covenant ain't too shabby... but in many cases you may find yourself preferring to use grace and use more shadowmends instead, because it will apply atonement and then you can shoot out a simple penance for a (fairly) solid multi-target heal on-demand.

A lot of people here say that SC is "bad" but we both know that's completely incorrect. It's easily the best spammable non-setup AoE heal we have access to, and it's pretty potent, absorb or no. It's just... it's not reasonable to balance a decent amount of atonements without radiance, and most of the situations you might use SC can be reasonably covered with just Grace instead.

I'm pretty tired of people that have absolutely no grasp of numbers trying to defend Shadow Covenant.

You think Shadow Covenant is even a strong heal? How about the fact that it doesn't scale with Mastery whatsoever? It's actually one of the worst AoE heals in the game. It's less HPS and HPM than Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing once you take into account artifact traits, and those spells aren't even good. It's much, much worse than Wild Growth, Essence Font, Chain Heal, or Light of Dawn.

It's not even a spell you would use even if it didn't replace PWR. 1375% SP for 5% mana is terrible, literally less efficient than taking Grace and spamming Shadow Mend. Shadow Covenant IS bad, and if you think otherwise then you have absolutely no clue what the power levels of normal AoE heals in this game are at.