Disc Priest. Shadow Covenant. Debate.

[Yunzi]

No its not. Shadow Mends DoT gets chipped away if the target takes damage, Shadow Covenants absorb has to either be healed away or the debuff has to be waited out.

Shadow Mend is a "375% SP heal" with an aditional 375% SP "damage absorb" so to speak. If you heal the target and he immidiately takes damage equal to the DoT, you've effectivly gained a 375% SP shield from it.

Shadow Covenant heals for 550% SP but leaves a HEALING absorb, which is the dangerous part.

Ideally you want to cast Shadow Mend and Shadow Covenant in opposite situations - Mend when the player is highly likely to take immediate additional damage (tanks, damage debuffed) and Covenant when the player is unlikely to take near-future damage, hence allowing for the 6-second timer to run out and the healing absorb to go away with no additional healing needed until after the 6 seconds.

[vertigo12]

Ideally you want to cast Shadow Mend and Shadow Covenant in opposite situations - Mend when the player is highly likely to take immediate additional damage (tanks, damage debuffed) and Covenant when the player is unlikely to take near-future damage, hence allowing for the 6-second timer to run out and the healing absorb to go away with no additional healing needed until after the 6 seconds.

Well done! You have mastered the concept of pain and wielded shadow magic as a tool for doing good and not harm. Shadow Covenant is also good for dungeon mechanics where healing must be in check. Either a boss or mobs get healed from your over healing or bad condition comes up that would hurt the party/raid group.Such situation is present in mythic dungeon with an affixed monster having such effect. Expect to see such achievements and mechanics in the future. Discipline is indeed enforced and regulated in a raid group when a masterful discipriest is around.

[cardinail]

so how is shadow covenant on the 7.1.5? Its now instant cast so maybe useful in some special circumstances?

[lcs]

so how is shadow covenant on the 7.1.5? Its now instant cast so maybe useful in some special circumstances?

The cast time was never really the problem with SC. Instant is obviously better than casted though.

The bigger change is that it no longer replaces PW:R. So picking SC will no longer cripple Atonement healing. The issues with applying an absorption shield are still present however.

Overall 7.1.5 SC looks to be a better ability than it is currently on live. It still seems unlikely that it will find widespread use, at least in my opinion. The core design of the ability is just counter intuitive. The situations where you would want a powerful, reactive AoE heal are the same as the situations where you don't want to be applying a healing absorption shell to the people you're healing.

Who knows though, maybe some situation will arise where SC is beneficial. That is at least more likely with the 7.1.5 version of the spell.

[MendUS]

The cast time was never really the problem with SC. Instant is obviously better than casted though.

The bigger change is that it no longer replaces PW:R. So picking SC will no longer cripple Atonement healing. The issues with applying an absorption shield are still present however.

Overall 7.1.5 SC looks to be a better ability than it is currently on live. It still seems unlikely that it will find widespread use, at least in my opinion. The core design of the ability is just counter intuitive. The situations where you would want a powerful, reactive AoE heal are the same as the situations where you don't want to be applying a healing absorption shell to the people you're healing.

Who knows though, maybe some situation will arise where SC is beneficial. That is at least more likely with the 7.1.5 version of the spell.

If they lowered the mana cost (or) increased the spell power of the heal (or) reduced the absorb, maybe. Still not worth using.

[longxia]

Well done! You have mastered the concept of pain and wielded shadow magic as a tool for doing good and not harm. Shadow Covenant is also good for dungeon mechanics where healing must be in check. Either a boss or mobs gets healed with overheals, bad condition comes up that would hurt the party/raid group and such situation is present in mythic dungeon with an affixed monster having such effect. Expect to see achievements, mechanics in the future. Discipline is indeed enforced in a raid group when a masterful discipriest is around.

I have heard that Google Translate has recently become 100x more effective, you should really just use that tool to translate from your native language then copy/paste the results onto MMO-Champ, because honestly you communicate like Yoda on LSD.

(TL Didnt Understand: No-one understands you, use Google Translate its good now).

[Raiz]

I have heard that Google Translate has recently become 100x more effective, you should really just use that tool to translate from your native language then copy/paste the results onto MMO-Champ, because honestly you communicate like Yoda on LSD.

(TL Didnt Understand: No-one understands you, use Google Translate its good now).

Speak for yourself In case it still wasn't obvious (because there are still many people who still can't see it), he was being sarcastic.

[PosPosPos]

Speak for yourself In case it still wasn't obvious (because there are still many people who still can't see it), he was being sarcastic.

That's really not what sarcasm is. Please don't use words you don't know the meaning of, just to sound hip. Also, you can check their post history if you are unsure of their posting habits, there's no need for you to make up bad excuses for them.

[Raiz]

That's really not what sarcasm is. Please don't use words you don't know the meaning of, just to sound hip. Also, you can check their post history if you are unsure of their posting habits, there's no need for you to make up bad excuses for them.

I didn't have time to check their post's history, but thanks to your post I've had some doubts. My point still stands. If he wasn't being sarcastic, then I owe you a in-game beer.

Also "to sound hip" ? I don't even know what that means but I guess it's kind of a hipster thing (you guessed right, english isn't my native language) ? If that happens to be the case, then really ? Coming from you that's ironic.

I don't need to make up bad excuses (for what anyway ?), you can only blame my english. Let's keep on topic.

[PosPosPos]

I didn't have time to check their post's history, but thanks to your post I've had some doubts. My point still stands. If he wasn't being sarcastic, then I owe you a in-game beer.

Of course he may very well be sarcastic, after all it's difficult to detect tone in written form, but given his post history, no, it's not sarcasm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Sarcasm is "a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter gibe or taunt."

Considering his post is yet another pseudo-philosophical wall-of-text in the pile he has posted so far, I am inclined to say, no, he's just high on something. And again, you used another word(ironic) wrongly.

[vertigo12]

Considering his post is yet another pseudo-philosophical wall-of-text in the pile he has posted so far, I am inclined to say, no, he's just high on something. And again, you used another word(ironic) wrongly.

It entirely depends on perspective,honestly. I'd rather like to view my post as practical-philosophical PoV. If you guys are having hard time understanding what I'm saying then let me put it in simple terms:

If you are a a disc-priest wanna be healer and you don't want to be called moron because everyone gets fucked up with shadow covenant, basically not knowing what it does or how to use it properly, better be shadowmend spam bot on everyone or better go holy because it's plain simple and healing style.

Or if you wanna be cool and be part of the majority go play atonement-all-the-way healing.

discipline priest is the most advanced,complex, and versatile healer as compared to the remaining others: holy paly more on spot healing, druid more on over time and leave on hots, monk shaman and holy priest on more diverse toolkit to switch from on-demand spot healing to group wide party/raid heals.

[Shahsei]

The talent is not that great imo.

[PosPosPos]

It entirely depends on perspective,honestly. I'd rather like to view my post as practical-philosophical PoV. If you guys are having hard time understanding what I'm saying then let me put it in simple terms:

If you are a a disc-priest wanna be healer and you don't want to be called moron because everyone gets fucked up with shadow covenant, basically not knowing what it does or how to use it properly, better be shadowmend spam bot on everyone or better go holy because it's plain simple and healing style.

Or if you wanna be cool and be part of the majority go play atonement-all-the-way healing.

discipline priest is the most advanced,complex, and versatile healer as compared to the remaining others: holy paly more on spot healing, druid more on over time and leave on hots, monk shaman and holy priest on more diverse toolkit to switch from on-demand spot healing to group wide party/raid heals.

I have no problems understanding what you are saying, the way you insist on putting it in though, that I don't understand.

[longxia]

It entirely depends on perspective,honestly. I'd rather like to view my post as practical-philosophical PoV. If you guys are having hard time understanding what I'm saying then let me put it in simple terms:

If you are a a disc-priest wanna be healer and you don't want to be called moron because everyone gets fucked up with shadow covenant, basically not knowing what it does or how to use it properly, better be shadowmend spam bot on everyone or better go holy because it's plain simple and healing style.

Or if you wanna be cool and be part of the majority go play atonement-all-the-way healing.

discipline priest is the most advanced,complex, and versatile healer as compared to the remaining others: holy paly more on spot healing, druid more on over time and leave on hots, monk shaman and holy priest on more diverse toolkit to switch from on-demand spot healing to group wide party/raid heals.

Omg you are actually a native English speaker (!), thats fine WoW is for everyone.

Your most recent post though attempts to portray "understandable English" as akin to "retarded mumbling" but I feel that simplicity and stupidity are very different concepts. As the great Steve Jobs said, "Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple". This is the concept he built Apple on.

So what Im getting at is that if you really had any ideas worth sharing you could do so in plain language, and that using waffle and pseudo-intellectual babble is just a sign of poor communication skills rather than the authors huge IQ.

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Shadow Covenant: I think the arguments have gone around in circles, yes it *seems* bad but we will all get to try it and know for a fact very shortly. I fully intend to abuse it to top meters because my raid lead solely judges healers by HPS (and not dying), so fuck him and fuck the "good of the raid" Im going to top those damn meters so Im not forced into DPS.

[Supliftz]

Shadow Covenant: I think the arguments have gone around in circles, yes it *seems* bad but we will all get to try it and know for a fact very shortly. I fully intend to abuse it to top meters because my raid lead solely judges healers by HPS (and not dying), so fuck him and fuck the "good of the raid" Im going to top those damn meters so Im not forced into DPS.

You sound like a great player. I would really like to have someone in my raid who's playing bad on purpose in order to get my raid spot.

The comedy here is proper play with atonements provides better healing on the hps meters regardless.

[longxia]

The comedy here is proper play with atonements provides better healing on the hps meters regardless.

How would you know that before 7.1.5, thats just conjecture stated as fact a.k.a. bullshit. As I said

...yes it *seems* bad but we will all get to try it and know for a fact very shortly.

Heres my worthless conjecture: SC will improve HPS numbers because it is 63% of a HW:Sanctify (or 173% of Circle of Healing) and spammable. However it will probably be 'poor-quality' healing that doesnt save anyone from death - further underlining the shortcomings of HPS meters.

[pseudoJ]

Is this topic for real? This is how it went.

Sc supporters: SC is great spell
Other priests: No it's not, it isn't efficient
SC supporters: But I can top meters
Other priests: You have to subtract the healing absorb
Other priests: Even then the necrotic effect is just bad design because of other healers
Sc supporters: It will be great in 7.1.5, you can't know it won't be

[Supliftz]

How would you know that before 7.1.5, thats just conjecture stated as fact a.k.a. bullshit. As I said

Heres my worthless conjecture: SC will improve HPS numbers because it is 63% of a HW:Sanctify (or 173% of Circle of Healing) and spammable. However it will probably be 'poor-quality' healing that doesnt save anyone from death - further underlining the shortcomings of HPS meters.

you should probably just not play disc at this point mate.

[davesignal]

At this point I'm kind of hoping Blizzard orients the entire spec around the Shadow Covenant mechanic next expansion, because Blizzard always revamps Disc, if only to piss off the aggressively dickish current crop of Disc players.

[longxia]

you should probably just not play disc at this point mate.

Now that I have read your thoughtful analysis I see the inescapable logic leading to your conclusions! And your numbers really back up your ideas as well, thanks for enlightening us all.