How do you feel about Disc

[Deleted]

To preface: I haven't really played that much this expansion

- I don't really like the atonement mechanic and how we're balanced around getting just a few heals off on 10+ people at once while doing little in-between, I think maybe I'd like it more if we had a set limit of how many you can have active or if certain spells just had a set number of healing targets even without atonement so we were more in line with other healers abilities and wouldn't need to be 'held back' from healing the entire raid at once using atonement
-I think there should be some smart healing, perhaps if smite were made much lower in mana cost and didn't proc atonement but instead provided a small trickle heal to injured allies on the same level as healing rain and other aoe smart heals
-I like it a lot more in pvp, where you take the talent for only having 3 atonement targets but it lasts a lot longer, feels a lot more fluid

[Sam the Wiser]

How to kill a spec in 1 easy step by Blizzard Entertainment! Inb4 the disc priest from fairy land fly in to tell me how much better the class is now. Yeah, no. This use to a popular spec and look where it is now. Right in the gutter where Blizzard wanted it.

[Yunzi]

Discipline is playing chess, while the other healers play checkers. It's an amazing spec requiring planning, foresight, and deep judgement. "I think I'll pick up Discipline casually as an alt" is an approach not likely to result in success.

So let's say a single player needs healing in a raid. Every other spec uses their Flash Heal equivalent. Done. But not Disc. That's just one option (Shadow Mend). Maybe Power Word: Shield is up and we can use that instead. Maybe we feel it's ok to use Pain Suppression. Maybe we anticipate greater upcoming raid damage and cast Power Word: Radiance on him. It's precisely because Shadow Mend is *not* mana efficient that it opens up real options, allowing for real judgement.

Mana is said to be a "problem" for Disc, but one's man's trash is another's treasure. Precisely because Disc can use an enormous amount of mana we have to constantly judge and adjust our spell selection before and even during a fight. Did the off-tank go down, thus being unable to taunt swap resulting in the main tank taking more damage than usual? Now we have the option of Shadow Mending him, taking away from Power Word: Radiances later in the fight, or letting the other healers adjust their spell selection instead.

Plea's variable mana cost is helpful with respect to judgement. Are we anticipating upcoming damage to random players? In that case we keep our number of atonements low so that we can cheaply Plea players who need it. Normally we maintain 5-6+ atonements constantly.

AoE healing is simple for every other healing spec. Chain Heal, Wild Growth, Circle of Healing, Essence Font, Light of Dawn/Holy Prism. What all of these spells have in common is that none of the spells the healers cast subsequently impact them - they have separate effects. Discipline is much closer to an integrated system. Power Word: Radiance isn't so much an AoE healing spell as a 3-person healing enabler - subsequent damage spells do most of the actual healing. Or maybe not - if other players take damage the Disc might adjust his plan and cast more PWRs, delaying damage spells and thus doing less healing than expected to the initially damaged players.

Legion Discipline has combined the most complicated aspects of healing developed earlier in the game. HoTs such as Rejuvenation require a druid to anticipate that player's health over the next 12 seconds, to judge the degree of overhealing likely. Mistweaver Monks before Legion have done limited healing through damage and had a sequence of integrated healing spells (Thunder Focus Tea, Renewing Mists, Vivifies). Holy Paladins use Beacons to increase healing done to specific players.

Legion Discipline has brought most of that together, creating the second Advanced healing spec in the game (after MoP and WoD Mistweaver Monks). One key aspect of simplification though was the dropping of a secondary resource (Chi for MoP/WoD Mistweavers).

[Deleted]

@Yunzi, with all due respect, the general trend I noticed around here and in other places where the spec is debated is not that:

Did the off-tank go down, thus being unable to taunt swap resulting in the main tank taking more damage than usual? Now we have the option of Shadow Mending him, taking away from Power Word: Radiances later in the fight, or letting the other healers adjust their spell selection instead.

Plea's variable mana cost is helpful with respect to judgement. Are we anticipating upcoming damage to random players? In that case we keep our number of atonements low so that we can cheaply Plea players who need it. Normally we maintain 5-6+ atonements constantly.

There is little choice in disc really. Spot healing is not our forte, neither is tank healing. You do raid healing, more or less bursty kind. You're seriously overcomplicating a rather simple spec: you setup atonements at specific times, dps to produce the actual healing. The hard part is learning the right moments and having your team working with you, not against you. This whole philosophy you're trying to develop with shadowmend being a choice in raids is simply not there. When I debated our spot healing, the simple reply from the disc community was "roll holy". Both shadowmend mana cost and plea design are things that keep us locked into radiance the vast majority of time in raids, and quite frankly, alienated me from raiding as disc.

[Raiz]

When I've tanked with my Monk and DK, disc priests are always the ones moaning that they have to use a dedicated healing spell to keep me up.

So my priests are Holy and Shadow now, exclusively.

I can understand for DK but Monk ? It's like the best tank for disc priest. Sounds like either you're not playing the monk correctly, or the disc priest panic way too much.

[Popokolara]

@Yunzi, with all due respect, the general trend I noticed around here and in other places where the spec is debated is not that: " Did the off-tank go down, thus being unable to taunt swap resulting in the main tank taking more damage than usual? Now we have the option of Shadow Mending him, taking away from Power Word: Radiances later in the fight, or letting the other healers adjust their spell selection instead.

Plea's variable mana cost is helpful with respect to judgement. Are we anticipating upcoming damage to random players? In that case we keep our number of atonements low so that we can cheaply Plea players who need it. Normally we maintain 5-6+ atonements constantly."

There is little choice in disc really. Spot healing is not our forte, neither is tank healing. You do raid healing, more or less bursty kind. You're seriously overcomplicating a rather simple spec: you setup atonements at specific times, dps to produce the actual healing. The hard part is learning the right moments and having your team working with you, not against you. This whole philosophy you're trying to develop with shadowmend being a choice in raids is simply not there. When I debated our spot healing, the simple reply from the disc community was "roll holy". Both shadowmend mana cost and plea design are things that keep us locked into radiance the vast majority of time in raids, and quite frankly, alienated me from raiding as disc.

How often do you come to such scenarios of having to spot heal for such extended periods of time, that your atonement wave suffers?In a vacuum the argument can hold very well, but i am in a below average guild, on most if not all aspects and i dont face such problems. I do turn my attentions to things like time release or tanks health dropping unusually low, but never encountered the difficulty you are describing.

[Deleted]

How often do you come to such scenarios of having to spot heal for such extended periods of time, that your atonement wave suffers?In a vacuum the argument can hold very well, but i am in a below average guild, on most if not all aspects and i dont face such problems. I do turn my attentions to things like time release or tanks health dropping unusually low, but never encountered the difficulty you are describing.

I never said it was a difficulty, just that the picture painted with choices and flexibility is not really there. Sure you can use Plea and Shadowmend, but it's not optimal, and if you are doing it too much, it's detrimental. This is why I prefer dungeon healing on my disc priest, because I'm free to use all my toolkit, as opposed to raids where using Plea/Shadowmend feels more like a mistake. Feel free to show me some logs of a disc priest performing well while liberally using shadowmend and plea - I would very much like to see such a scenario (no sarcasm btw).

That whole "now we have the choice of Shadowmending him, taking away from PW:Radiances later in the fight, or letting the other healers adjust their spell selection instead" doesn't really sound like a choice - unless I'm completely misunderstanding the entire post :P.

[Popokolara]

I never said it was a difficulty, just that the picture painted with choices and flexibility is not really there. Sure you can use Plea and Shadowmend, but it's not optimal, and if you are doing it too much, it's detrimental. This is why I prefer dungeon healing on my disc priest, because I'm free to use all my toolkit, as opposed to raids where using Plea/Shadowmend feels more like a mistake. Feel free to show me some logs of a disc priest performing well while liberally using shadowmend and plea - I would very much like to see such a scenario (no sarcasm btw).

That whole "now we have the choice of Shadowmending him, taking away from PW:Radiances later in the fight, or letting the other healers adjust their spell selection instead" doesn't really sound like a choice - unless I'm completely misunderstanding the entire post :P.

Liberral use implies a lot of it, while what i have been trying to say is that there is no heavy need of it, unless you want to turn disc into a tank healer, in which case Pala rules all, and you simply dont run a raid without one anyway. There is no need to make such heavy use of smend (as plea is an atonement placer and nothing more) to execute an optimal strategy on M bosses. Likewise there is no reason to try and make disc fit the spot heal niche. As in the good rewarding gameplay will not ask that, so there is no point in describing how it cant do that.

[Yunzi]

How often do you come to such scenarios of having to spot heal for such extended periods of time, that your atonement wave suffers?In a vacuum the argument can hold very well, but i am in a below average guild, on most if not all aspects and i dont face such problems. I do turn my attentions to things like time release or tanks health dropping unusually low, but never encountered the difficulty you are describing.

It's not difficult mana-wise to sparingly use Shadow Mend in raids. It's the best emergency heal outside of Pain Suppression and Power Word: Shield, but emergencies in an otherwise successful pull don't happen very often.

The only time it is reasonably used outside of an emergency is as a spot heal when Plea is unavailable (5+ atonements) and Power Word: Radiance is undesired (little upcoming damage expected). That's a pretty specific circumstance.

So adding up Shadow Mend's usage as a backup emergency heal and occasional use as a backup spot heal doesn't amount to much, but it's a lot better to use it in this way than to take it off the table in the name of the "correct Disc ideology" - aka the Burst Healing Camp.

[Deleted]

take it off the table in the name of the "correct Disc ideology" - aka the Burst Healing Camp.

Aha, you're a heretic!

[Popokolara]

Who do you identify as the burst healing camp?

Anyway if you mean those i think you are, they never "prohibited" it. The exact wording is that its suboptimal, but depending the fight and circumstances, it can be needed, therefore you will use it. Sparingly, i believe, is a good description, along with circumstantial.
If you mean someone else, i cant imagine who they might be.

[Yunzi]

Who do you identify as the burst healing camp?

Anyway if you mean those i think you are, they never "prohibited" it. The exact wording is that its suboptimal, but depending the fight and circumstances, it can be needed, therefore you will use it. Sparingly, i believe, is a good description, along with circumstantial.
If you mean someone else, i cant imagine who they might be.

Part of the argument is the consideration of the definition of "optimal" - whether it's defined as maximizing HPS or maximizing raid success. In a raid Shadow Mending anyone for any reason is suboptimal with respect to HPS, but if that player would die otherwise it usually increases the pull's chance of success.

The other big issue is the context. The Burst Healing Camp, by which I remember Pearl and Pospospos being prime advocates, were only concerned with Mythic raiding. There are two key differences between Mythic and non-Mythic raiding - the fixed 20-player size of Mythic versus the 10-30 range otherwise and the limited variability of outcomes of Mythic pulls. Meaning, plenty of things can go wrong in a normal or heroic pull (usually) with the pull still being successful, whereas in a Mythic pull a few things going wrong results in a wipe that the performance of the Disc priest can't prevent. This means that the Mythic Disc doesn't have to worry about adapting to greatly different circumstances during a pull - those circumstances would simply cause a wipe, whereas a non-Mythic Disc can adapt to the situation and help the group succeed.

The raid size makes a big difference in the optimal (defined here as what best influences a pull's success) spell selection. The lower the number of raiders, the lower the number of maximum atonements - all of the mana a Mythic Disc uses to bring the number of active atonements from 12 to 15 or 15 to 18 is saved in a 10-player raid. Among other things, this impacts the value of Shadow Mend - if Shadow Mend is bad to use in a 20-player 6-minute pull environment and great to use in a 5-player 2-minute pull environment then how good is it to use in a 10-player 6-minute pull environment? We would expect the answer to be somewhere between the two. The Burst Healing Camp didn't even address the issue because to them, nothing outside Mythic exists in a capacity that's worth analyzing.

[Popokolara]

Part of the argument is the consideration of the definition of "optimal" - whether it's defined as maximizing HPS or maximizing raid success. In a raid Shadow Mending anyone for any reason is suboptimal with respect to HPS, but if that player would die otherwise it usually increases the pull's chance of success.

The other big issue is the context. The Burst Healing Camp, by which I remember Pearl and Pospospos being prime advocates, were only concerned with Mythic raiding. There are two key differences between Mythic and non-Mythic raiding - the fixed 20-player size of Mythic versus the 10-30 range otherwise and the limited variability of outcomes of Mythic pulls. Meaning, plenty of things can go wrong in a normal or heroic pull (usually) with the pull still being successful, whereas in a Mythic pull a few things going wrong results in a wipe that the performance of the Disc priest can't prevent. This means that the Mythic Disc doesn't have to worry about adapting to greatly different circumstances during a pull - those circumstances would simply cause a wipe, whereas a non-Mythic Disc can adapt to the situation and help the group succeed.

The raid size makes a big difference in the optimal (defined here as what best influences a pull's success) spell selection. The lower the number of raiders, the lower the number of maximum atonements - all of the mana a Mythic Disc uses to bring the number of active atonements from 12 to 15 or 15 to 18 is saved in a 10-player raid. Among other things, this impacts the value of Shadow Mend - if Shadow Mend is bad to use in a 20-player 6-minute pull environment and great to use in a 5-player 2-minute pull environment then how good is it to use in a 10-player 6-minute pull environment? We would expect the answer to be somewhere between the two. The Burst Healing Camp didn't even address the issue because to them, nothing outside Mythic exists in a capacity that's worth analyzing.

The term optimal and efficient is strictly derived from the relative mana cost-benefit ratio which would support disc focus on his raid wide expenditures. The moment a smend is warranted to save a life, or a mechanic like time release, its still "suboptimal" in that mana ratio reasoning, BUT necessary for the raids wellbeing. I believe they have been misunderstood primarily due to their more aggressive or sarcastic attitude, but i tell you know, as a person who often speaks with them, or follows their own conversations, they are not unfeeling, arrogant bastards, and have adressed multiple issues on heroic.

The big question here is this: When the raid survivability depends on a smend contribution from you as a disci priest, in heroic which is a less organised and conditioned enviroment, and has massively smaller healing requirements, what the hell happened? I mean just how circumstancial are we going now?

The main reason that these personas react in such an unbecoming way is because a majority of the population takes what theysay 1.either out of context and into a generalism of the void, which is far from the truth, 2. to extreme hyperboles and 3. cannot see past the insults/sarcasm/aggressiveness to the actual argument.

And if i sound like a fanboy one has to do to find out himself, is talk to them, with an open mind, without holding a "i dont raid M but i know better than you idelogy because theoretically a is better than b". Honestly these kind of people have been the spark that caused so much hate on the forums and difficulties in forming a constructive conversations.

[Deleted]

Liberral use implies a lot of it, while what i have been trying to say is that there is no heavy need of it, unless you want to turn disc into a tank healer, in which case Pala rules all, and you simply dont run a raid without one anyway. There is no need to make such heavy use of smend (as plea is an atonement placer and nothing more) to execute an optimal strategy on M bosses. Likewise there is no reason to try and make disc fit the spot heal niche. As in the good rewarding gameplay will not ask that, so there is no point in describing how it cant do that.

That was exactly my point, as a reply to that post - which presented disc as having choices. Unless you define "choice" as "do this at the cost of performing optimally" (granted, doing that is also a choice), that scenario doesn't really exist. As a side note, although I'm currently not raiding, we did raid without a paladin occasionally, and use a holy priest for more tank healing. As disc, I never felt I'm of particular use as even a here and there tank healer without Grace.

Anyway, you have a non-argument with me. My reply was to somebody presenting the spec as versatile in raids, which I disagree it particularly is. Sure you can try and spot heal or tank heal - you're just not really good at it, and it comes with a higher cost than for other healers. Spot healing was something I enjoyed as disc in the past, but whenever I raised that topic for Legion, I was told to reroll holy - and for a good reason. I'm not saying you can't toss some Smends occasionally, I'm saying it's not optimal and others are better at it, so it's not really a choice and more of a compromise.

[MendUS]

This thread is silly.

[Deleted]

How to kill a spec in 1 easy step by Blizzard Entertainment! Inb4 the the disc priest from fairy land fly in to tell me how much better the class is now. Yeah, no. This use to a popular spec and look where it is now. Right in the gutter where Blizzard wanted it.

totally agree.
i stopped playing disc once i realised it just wasnt fun to play anymore & i couldnt be arsed to learn how to play the class yet again & i had been playing since 2005.
loved my priest, but im afraid she is no more & i have moved on to pastures new.

[Yunzi]

The term optimal and efficient is strictly derived from the relative mana cost-benefit ratio which would support disc focus on his raid wide expenditures. The moment a smend is warranted to save a life, or a mechanic like time release, its still "suboptimal" in that mana ratio reasoning, BUT necessary for the raids wellbeing. I believe they have been misunderstood primarily due to their more aggressive or sarcastic attitude, but i tell you know, as a person who often speaks with them, or follows their own conversations, they are not unfeeling, arrogant bastards, and have adressed multiple issues on heroic.

There are no enemies of the Burst Healing Camp. Even people they have pointed to and routinely mocked, such as Flintoid and Carl, never had a radically different approach, just a degree of difference regarding the relative value of Shadow Mend vs Power Word: Radiance, or the Smiters with some difference in the relative value of Smite vs Power Word: Radiance. It's never been the situation they used to justify their aggressive actions, which is that only through that aggression could they break through all of the resistance to their healing methodology. There's a term to describe religious groups with this kind of attitude - Fundamentalists. They tolerate no deviation from the core message.

The big question here is this: When the raid survivability depends on a smend contribution from you as a disci priest, in heroic which is a less organised and conditioned enviroment, and has massively smaller healing requirements, what the hell happened? I mean just how circumstancial are we going now?

Mythic Nighthold (75th percentile) averages 635k per healer and Heroic Nighthold 466k. Substantial but not massive. Shadow Mend situations are often one player screwing up - getting hit by a ring in Elisande, for example. It's almost impossible to know if that player is going to take a 2nd pulse from the ring (or if the Pink add is up, he'll take more unavoidable damage anyway) so emergency healing is in order. PWS is best, when that is unavailable Shadow Mend. Even if that player already is atoned, both PWS and Shadow Mend do much higher up-front HPS than healing him through atonement. One he's out of danger of dying but still injured, atonement healing (and the other healers) can take care of the rest of his damage. The usual argument against this by the burst healers is that other healers can do emergency healing more efficiently than the Disc using Shadow Mend, and that's a fine argument when it works. I've tested this argument in the real world (of warcraft) though, and sometimes the player dies when a Shadow Mend would have saved him. So I'd rather be slightly HPS inefficient and save a life.

The main reason that these personas react in such an unbecoming way is because a majority of the population takes what theysay 1.either out of context and into a generalism of the void, which is far from the truth, 2. to extreme hyperboles and 3. cannot see past the insults/sarcasm/aggressiveness to the actual argument.

Respect only works when it's mutual. Of course anyone not fully in the Burst Healing Camp is going to react negatively to being told they're an idiot for doing anything differently. Burst Healing *really is* a tremendously valuable system of healing, especially for larger groups (16+), and it only really breaks down below about 13 players. But like communicating *anything*, you have to understand that you're talking to people who don't fully agree with you. Why not respect that disagreement? Why not try to learn the motivations for Flintoid's method? Why not try to understand the limitations and *context* of your own system? Why not understand that through understanding your "opponents", they will be encouraged to understand you?

It was like talking to religious Fundamentalists. They are Right and everyone else is Wrong. But that is empirically incorrect. Context is what determines optimal spell selection, and the Burst Healing Method is absolutely not Always Right, All the Time.

And if i sound like a fanboy one has to do to find out himself, is talk to them, with an open mind, without holding a "i dont raid M but i know better than you idelogy because theoretically a is better than b". Honestly these kind of people have been the spark that caused so much hate on the forums and difficulties in forming a constructive conversations.

To paraphrase Pospospos - "Only Mythic matters". Well, no it doesn't. A Disc priest who wants to learn, to become better, and more helpful to his raid's success can exist at *any* raiding level. There's a mystification of Mythic which is ridiculous and uncalled for. What Mythic is is a more difficult raiding level than Heroic, in similar sense to how Heroic is more difficult than Normal, with the addition of a fixed 20-player size and lockout and cross-realm limitations. That's it. It's not humans who raid Mythic and sub-humans who raid Heroic, or players who raid Mythic and try-hard scrubs who raid Heroic. Of course the average skill level of players goes up with raid difficulty level, but so what? That hardly means that "only mythic matters".

To be as fair as possible to the Burst Healing camp and "only mythic matters", they were referring to the value of analysis. They were saying there's no point in analyzing optimal spell selection in any raid difficulty besides mythic. So let's stop and think about that. What about the well-intentioned Disc priest raiding normal or heroic who wants to help his raid team *Now*? Well, he's shit out of luck. Maybe he should "git gud" on his own, hope to get into a Mythic raiding guild, and THEN receive help (basically, after he no longer needs nearly as much of it).

This is why it's entirely justified for the Burst Healing Camp to be accused of Elitism.

[Popokolara]

There are no enemies of the Burst Healing Camp. Even people they have pointed to and routinely mocked, such as Flintoid and Carl, never had a radically different approach, just a degree of difference regarding the relative value of Shadow Mend vs Power Word: Radiance, or the Smiters with some difference in the relative value of Smite vs Power Word: Radiance. It's never been the situation they used to justify their aggressive actions, which is that only through that aggression could they break through all of the resistance to their healing methodology. There's a term to describe religious groups with this kind of attitude - Fundamentalists. They tolerate no deviation from the core message.

I remember a great deal of people who flat out supported burst healing is an agenda, a media trick, and just wrong. Majority in MMOC too.
Flintoid's approach was literaly the opposite of mindset of the burst tactic, fixating on shadow mend usage, not simply using it more. As for them being fundamentalists, and using only aggression, there was a lot f explanation, arithmetic and log examples, and still as i mentioned a lot of people simply said: My log said otherwise. Do i condone the elitist attitude? Of course not. But to say aggressiveness was a way to break through the resistance? Nay, it was frustration, mockery and outburst at the blatant denial of people, not to saying they agree 100% with burst, but to admit that they own personal opinions about disc being half a healer and other memes might be due to wrong gameplay decisions.

Mythic Nighthold (75th percentile) averages 635k per healer and Heroic Nighthold 466k. Substantial but not massive. Shadow Mend situations are often one player screwing up - getting hit by a ring in Elisande, for example. It's almost impossible to know if that player is going to take a 2nd pulse from the ring (or if the Pink add is up, he'll take more unavoidable damage anyway) so emergency healing is in order. PWS is best, when that is unavailable Shadow Mend. Even if that player already is atoned, both PWS and Shadow Mend do much higher up-front HPS than healing him through atonement. One he's out of danger of dying but still injured, atonement healing (and the other healers) can take care of the rest of his damage. The usual argument against this by the burst healers is that other healers can do emergency healing more efficiently than the Disc using Shadow Mend, and that's a fine argument when it works. I've tested this argument in the real world (of warcraft) though, and sometimes the player dies when a Shadow Mend would have saved him. So I'd rather be slightly HPS inefficient and save a life.

You are right and i simply want to repeat that noone ever denied the priority of saving a life. Saying that smend is suboptimal is like saying a car is red. Its not my favorite colour, but its a good cheap car and the only i can afford. I can keep saying i dont like the colour and still buy and use it. Smend becomes the optimal choice in the circumstances, and remains the suboptimal GENERAL gameplay choice because the possibility of no other healer being able to throw that spot heal are , like augur says, a "The stars align!" chance of happening (astronomical). Therefore the suboptimal play became optimal through sheer "blackmail" of circumstances.
So we always agreed there.

Respect only works when it's mutual. Of course anyone not fully in the Burst Healing Camp is going to react negatively to being told they're an idiot for doing anything differently. Burst Healing *really is* a tremendously valuable system of healing, especially for larger groups (16+), and it only really breaks down below about 13 players. But like communicating *anything*, you have to understand that you're talking to people who don't fully agree with you. Why not respect that disagreement? Why not try to learn the motivations for Flintoid's method? Why not try to understand the limitations and *context* of your own system? Why not understand that through understanding your "opponents", they will be encouraged to understand you?

It was like talking to religious Fundamentalists. They are Right and everyone else is Wrong. But that is empirically incorrect. Context is what determines optimal spell selection, and the Burst Healing Method is absolutely not Always Right, All the Time.

Also right but i want to stress out that each is responsible for their own actions. The so called "being dense" is one of the most frustrating things to face, especially when you talk to people who obviously dont know what they are talking about. As i said before these people destroyed the conversations, created conflagrations between sides which would have been more civilised - not 100% by any means, but still so much better.
And finally, i also saw these super aggressive people. And i instantly disliked them. BUT i also instantly recognised who sounded more ledgit. I realised i had to investigate. There is no excuse for sups mockery of people, only reasoning. Likewise there is no excuse for people being so dense and selfish in their ignorance, only, again, reasoning behind it.


Also the reasoning behind the disagreement if you will with flintoids initial methods was extensively analysed, as well as other choices and scenarios. There was no shortage of constructive - rude but constructive nonetheless- answers, and with multiple repetition. If i can whole heartedly defend these people one one thing, is they left no question unanswered.
Those who trully hear only to answer and not to listen, deserve no special treatment to "not offend" them. That is not respect, its hypocrisy. Mend does that right, the others are more like barbarians than fundamentalists in the end i think.

To paraphrase Pospospos - "Only Mythic matters". Well, no it doesn't. A Disc priest who wants to learn, to become better, and more helpful to his raid's success can exist at *any* raiding level. There's a mystification of Mythic which is ridiculous and uncalled for. What Mythic is is a more difficult raiding level than Heroic, in similar sense to how Heroic is more difficult than Normal, with the addition of a fixed 20-player size and lockout and cross-realm limitations. That's it. It's not humans who raid Mythic and sub-humans who raid Heroic, or players who raid Mythic and try-hard scrubs who raid Heroic. Of course the average skill level of players goes up with raid difficulty level, but so what? That hardly means that "only mythic matters".

The mythic matters is the expression of two things:
First, tuning revolves around M, therefore its natural to have incosistencies and "problems" design wise outside of that. A good example is flex size. GOD i HATE my 28man raiding group because atonement simply cannot work well with that due to the fixed buff duration. This brings us to:
Second part which is difficulty level. You need no optimization to beat heroic. I say that not a good raider in an awesome guild etc, but as a person who constantly made mistake after mistake along with my buddies who did the same. I osberved the forums, participated, and noticed that by improving myself through studying, examining and DEFYING even the so called burst camp i learned what goes and what does not. I tried flintoid and sups, and maximum borrowed time uptime and anything else my little mind cound conceive. I see something that works, and i will try to do it right, but also wrong so i UNDERSTAND. Thats whats so difficult about Disc, the need to experiement and turn the failure into lessons that people dont want to do.

In the end i felt how they meant that mythic is what matters - in that it will test the limits of the spec, and force you to optimise for the mechanics and patterns- these are the raid after all. The damage values which are significantly lower on the other difficulties allow you to beat the bosses without knowning your class well at all. My experimentation lasted until we hit heroic Cenarius. I mean we killed all these bosses, and even though i had so many problems i wasnt the last guy on hps, mechanics, perception, heck even knowledge of what the bosses do. It was just relatively easy.

You can literaly have 15% of the raid afk and still kill the boss if you have a good team. IF that doesnt clear up the mythic matters camp i dont know what will.

To be as fair as possible to the Burst Healing camp and "only mythic matters", they were referring to the value of analysis. They were saying there's no point in analyzing optimal spell selection in any raid difficulty besides mythic. So let's stop and think about that. What about the well-intentioned Disc priest raiding normal or heroic who wants to help his raid team *Now*? Well, he's shit out of luck. Maybe he should "git gud" on his own, hope to get into a Mythic raiding guild, and THEN receive help (basically, after he no longer needs nearly as much of it).

This is why it's entirely justified for the Burst Healing Camp to be accused of Elitism.

They literally said sorry no help for you?Are you sure? I mean i remember them saying u cant use heroic logs to invalidate mythic logs, because thats like saying a 6th grader math invalidates my Log equation. But sorry no help for you? The general playstyle WAS effective and the problem was people not wanting to bother, than it not being applicable.

[Kranxie]

Discipline is playing chess, while the other healers play checkers. It's an amazing spec requiring planning, foresight, and deep judgement. "I think I'll pick up Discipline casually as an alt" is an approach not likely to result in success.

Somewhat off-topic, but is this Yunzi-Lothar? If so, I would highly recommend his opinions, as I have seen first-hand that he is among the top 10 discipline priests in the US, and I have logs to prove it. That's true for a heroic context, anyway, since our server really doesn't have a mythic raiding scene of any sort.

Also, hey Yunzi!

[Yunzi]

Second part which is difficulty level. You need no optimization to beat heroic. I say that not a good raider in an awesome guild etc, but as a person who constantly made mistake after mistake along with my buddies who did the same. I osberved the forums, participated, and noticed that by improving myself through studying, examining and DEFYING even the so called burst camp i learned what goes and what does not. I tried flintoid and sups, and maximum borrowed time uptime and anything else my little mind cound conceive. I see something that works, and i will try to do it right, but also wrong so i UNDERSTAND. Thats whats so difficult about Disc, the need to experiement and turn the failure into lessons that people dont want to do.

I did the same and enjoy it, but one of the purposes of this forum as I understand it is to pool our knowledge and help each other. Part of the reason why non-Mythic Discs have to do so much personal experimentation is that much of the analysis of the spec is done by people who have no interest outside of Mythic.

In the end i felt how they meant that mythic is what matters - in that it will test the limits of the spec, and force you to optimise for the mechanics and patterns- these are the raid after all. The damage values which are significantly lower on the other difficulties allow you to beat the bosses without knowning your class well at all. My experimentation lasted until we hit heroic Cenarius. I mean we killed all these bosses, and even though i had so many problems i wasnt the last guy on hps, mechanics, perception, heck even knowledge of what the bosses do. It was just relatively easy.

What you're saying isn't true. Plenty of guilds roll through Mythic while some groups can't even handle Normal. The difficulty level of the raid is only one factor - the skill and gear level of the group are at least as important, with gear being the dominant factor as people soloing WoD bosses can tell you. In a bad enough group it's just as important to optimise for that group to succeed as it is for Sups to optimise to succeed in the progression race.

The progression race is the one thing that makes Mythic special. Without it there would be no mystification of Mythic raiding. But to the extent that people take the progression race seriously they feel that, well, like the Burst Healing Camp, the only analysis that matters is of Mythic.

They literally said sorry no help for you?Are you sure? I mean i remember them saying u cant use heroic logs to invalidate mythic logs, because thats like saying a 6th grader math invalidates my Log equation. But sorry no help for you? The general playstyle WAS effective and the problem was people not wanting to bother, than it not being applicable.

That's not what happened with the logs. I was making a point using Normal, Heroic, and Mythic logs, and they said that only Mythic logs matter, so the point was invalid. That certainly seems to qualify as arrogant.