How do you feel about Disc

[amythist]

so now that we are 3 patches into Legion, with the 4th (and most likely last) one on the horizon, how do you feel about Disc, did you stick with it, did the changes turn you off? And how do you feel about how the spec preforms? and finally what changes would you like to see either in 7.2 or beyond

personally I've liked the idea of Disc but not so much the actual practice of it, though in Dungeons my performance felt very lackluster, and haven't really gotten to try it out in raids outside of LFR where my numbers just feel very low (though that could be due to LFR having more healers than it needs and them having no real coordination) so I've had a hard time trying to justify to myself why I should have a spot in my raid group

[Azardea]

It's no MoP Disc, that's for sure.

[Taygai]

so now that we are 3 patches into Legion, with the 4th (and most likely last) one on the horizon,

Stop please. If you'd done your research you'd know better than to lead with this.

[Deleted]

I've stuck with disc throughout legion and really enjoying it, I've had no trouble through Nighthold and moving onto mythic progression. I believe it has a big learning curve for new players but once you learn the damage patterns of a fight you begin to see those high numbers.

The changes for 7.2 look really nice so far, the new traits are looking good and the new 2/4set bonus are looking amazing.

If you like a challenge and want to be different from your traditional healer, give it a go!

[Memento1]

how do you feel about Disc, did you stick with it, did the changes turn you off? And how do you feel about how the spec preforms? and finally what changes would you like to see either in 7.2 or beyond

I went from liking the concept, to being discouraged and almost giving up, to liking it again, then considering switching again, then back to loving it. Currently I'm just loving it - that may be because I finally got good gear and great legendaries. I'm an altoholic and have every healer above 860, but Disc is the only one I want to play recently.

How does the spec perform - well that depends completely on how much you put into it. It doesn't perform well if you play it casually. It doesn't perform well if you play it reactively. But learn how to be really proactive, and it shines. That requires more work than most people want to put into a game, which is completely fair, but for those that really enjoy a challenge, it's a blast.

If I could make changes, I would do 2 things: change mana scaling, and slightly faster atonement application. Since mana pool doesn't change with raid size, playstyle actually changes quite a bit as raids get larger. You have to radiance more and smite less. Thankfully I'm in a smaller raid, but Disc in large raids are forced into a burst-and-conserve playstyle that is unappealing to most. Faster atonement application is to reduce the skill floor, making it easier to be played casually. I do not mean become reactive (like Halo applying atonement), but as it stands 10 seconds is the ideal amount of time to be thinking ahead. Make it 5 or 8, and it will be correspondingly easier for casuals to get better at. Unfortunately this "buff" would require a corresponding nerf elsewhere, so it's fraught with complications.

[fixall]

so now that we are 3 patches into Legion, with the 4th (and most likely last) one on the horizon...

What the hell are you talking about?

Also Disc is doing just fine and is very welcome in Mythic progression raiding.

[Deleted]

I stuck with disc, which was a hard decision considering the rumours from beta. I managed well in EN, not feeling as good about NH, but that may be a lot due to a change in how my guild handles healing raidleading, which is rather unfavourable to proactive healing (basically my healing officer calls out the next cd 1-2 seconds before the dmg happens and he ignores all my cds outside barrier - kinda obvious since you can't really just call on the fly something that needs 10 seconds preparation). I don't blame him, all other healers work fine like this, and I recall the best raidleader I ever had also did things like this back in MoP. This isn't the only thing that has slowly put me off raiding, I didn't enjoy the burst/conservation style at all - it felt forced to me. If my guild stops raiding, I will take a break most likely too, but that may be a lot down to raiding without breaks since TBC.

On the other hand, I absolutely love m+ as disc. I have the same excitement I had for raiding in the past on offnights when I can just spam m+. I maxed my disc artifact and I'm currently dumping all AP in my holy spec, but honestly, I have little inclination to it.

On short, I think disc in Legion is great, it could use some QoL things and a bit more variety in raiding style, but otherwise I'm having a blast in 5 mans, not so much in raiding.

[Cheze]

man I feel the opposite; I've only played it in normal raids, but once I got used to the 'rotation' it was pretty fun. In five mans though, barf. I feel like I'm just spamming shadow mend all the time and when the group takes heavy damage it's really hard to catch up

[Queen of Hamsters]

so now that we are 3 patches into Legion, with the 4th (and most likely last) one on the horizon, how do you feel about Disc, did you stick with it, did the changes turn you off? And how do you feel about how the spec preforms? and finally what changes would you like to see either in 7.2 or beyond

personally I've liked the idea of Disc but not so much the actual practice of it, though in Dungeons my performance felt very lackluster, and haven't really gotten to try it out in raids outside of LFR where my numbers just feel very low (though that could be due to LFR having more healers than it needs and them having no real coordination) so I've had a hard time trying to justify to myself why I should have a spot in my raid group

No, 7.2 is not "most likely the last". 7.2 will contain the SECOND tier of this expansion (with staggered opening of the raid itself) and after that we might have more minor patches before 7.3, and then even more minor patches to tie us over into the next expansion...

As for how I feel about Disc; I don't enjoy it half as much as previous iterations of the spec. I leveled a priest using Disc, and it was sloooooooooow. When healing I felt like tanks didn't take into account how Disc plays, so I'd have to panic quite a lot. 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.

[Deleted]

I enjoy it although I feel like its been kind of neglected and subjected to conflicting ideas from the devs as to what is good for disc, the legendaries for example are all meh and very counter intuitive the same goes for some spells, talents, Artifact talents, and the strange damage nerf to dps trinkets and yet we have had almost no real changes or updates.

Raiding wise it feels solid as long as you do your homework on each fight its not a spec that you can walk into an encounter blind and still be productive but it is quite potent once you nail down your timings and handle your mana.

Speaking of mana I would love to be able to use some of the non mana regen trinkets available or even the dps trinkets but I feel any changes to Discs current mana usage would only make the use of mana trinkets even more important but still I feel something needs to be changed in this regard.

If I had to sum up the current Disc in two words it would be "Counter Intuitive"..

[MendUS]

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.

Hm... possibly.... Shadow Mend?

[Queen of Hamsters]

Hm... possibly.... Shadow Mend?

Uhm, yes...?

[Kuruption]

I went from a MW at the start of the xpac to disc at the beginning of the year, and I haven't regretted my decision at all. My guild is starting to do Mythic here soon, so it should be even more fun.

And I think it's great in Mythic+ too. Being able to do 200k dps on Tyrannical bosses while healing is just beyond nice.

So overall, I'm very happy with the spec.

[Deleted]

Uhm, yes...?

Why would they complain that they have to use healing spells to..heal you? :P
I think you just stumbled over bad disc priests that think they should never use anything other than atonement. Unless they needed to spam you constantly with it, which would suggest the problem being on the other side.

[vulena]

Once you're used to disc, everything else is boring AF.

It can take a bit to get used to Shadow Mend, but once you are, you're golden.

There are a few things I'd still patch up, though:

- Mana. Blizz wants to fix our mana issues, which get a lot better once you're used to the spec anyway, but even on basic trash, you run a bit lower than other healers, and you don't get quite enough out of it to justify having the drain.

- Talents. Honestly, ours are not exciting, and a lot of them are either not choices, are boring choices or go actively against our theme. I'd scrap the Penitent, scrap the whole of tier 6 (CoW feels like old disc, Halo is annoying in 5-mans and Divine Star's animation and sound bug me ENDLESSLY though I don't mind having a skill shot group heal at all) and baseline all of tier 7 in some way (why not baseline Shadow Cov, since no one is going to use it anyway), then give us some more thematically interesting choices. But it's not breaking us, either, so I'm not dying.

- Theme! With rebranding disc as somewhere in-between shadow and holy, they really did not apply this idea to our visual effects. Almost all of our spell effects that you can actually see are purely holy, and I want to feel more like someone balancing opposing forces. I wish one of our Holy relics was a fire one, but that's SUPER minor.

[Menz]

I am quiet happy with it. It is endless fun at M10++.

It's no MoP Disc, that's for sure.

And I am even happier it is not MoP and also not WoD disc for that matter.

- Talents. Honestly, ours are not exciting, and a lot of them are either not choices, are boring choices or go actively against our theme. I'd scrap the Penitent, scrap the whole of tier 6 (CoW feels like old disc, Halo is annoying in 5-mans and Divine Star's animation and sound bug me ENDLESSLY though I don't mind having a skill shot group heal at all) and baseline all of tier 7 in some way (why not baseline Shadow Cov, since no one is going to use it anyway), then give us some more thematically interesting choices. But it's not breaking us, either, so I'm not dying.

I agree with most of what you are saying. Only the Penitent needs to be baseline and not scrapped.

[lifebinderx]

I play a holy main and tried disc sometime during the exp. My opinion about disc is "it is not rewarding". It is just like old school feral druid. U keep track of 10 different things at a time and still a 3 button retri pally does the same damage as u do. There are special raid setups to make disc priest be on logs like 1m hps on a mytjic NH run but they are not progress runs. If you do myhic raids and the 3-4 druids are not feeding u with innervates, ur raid leader does not count u for raid CDs etc u will not enjoy playing it since a holy pally can burst 400k dps at pull and then use martyr only to heal twice of you during the encounter. It's a fun and playable spec but will never make u happy in a casual environment.

[smitey]

Overall its in a decent place, but we could use some quality of life improvements to game play.
1) Easier atonement spreading with no chance of failing/overwriting. I love it when I cast it and it lands on one person because of range/los/etc. Have it radiate off us when
cast with 40yrd range
2) DPS spell with no mana cost during downtime which doesnt proc atonement but maybe buffs next power word shield?
3) Reliance on mana regen. Innvervate buff is a huge difference in performance. Also wearing the Darkmoon deck promises forever? Trinket gearing is the most
interesting way to improve performance. Let us have options.
4) Talent choices especially last row needs to be more interesting. Dungeon use Grace, Raid use potw. Shadow Covenant wut?

[Corvusse]

Completely rework discipline into a Bard spec.
:3 But that's just me dreaming.

[Ripert]

Meh in Normals, but I'm liking it a bit more now that we are in Heroic. I'm sure if I did Mythic, I would love it. It just seems that they are so niche that unless the damage that you are healing fits in a specific box then you are going to be out completely out healed.

I struggle heavily with mana while it seems the other healers are surprised anytime they get low mana.

It seems all the other healers have a much wider tool box to pull from when really our only thing is "but look we can do crappy (and often nerfed) DPS too!"