Discipline as a support spec?

[Al Gorefiend]

So they're actually experimenting with a support spec. Awesome news, and I think the follow-up to that should be changing an existing spec into a support spec.

I think Priest is the best candidate.

My topic points:

We already have 2 healing specs! There's no rule to how many healing specs a class should have, but 1 feels like enough to me.

We already have a history of having the most player-interactive abilities and single-target buffs, as in something other than providing a heal - Void Shift, Mind Control, Leap of Faith, Power Infusion come to mind.

Discipline always felt like a support spec already. As my main, I vouch that we've always had a playstyle unique among healers. We had our glory days of being able to single-handedly heal a tank and a raid at the same time during MoP and especially SoO, but since then I've felt our place has been as a back-up healer, or off-healer, or however you describe it, Diet healer? This IMO fits perfectly with the description of what a Support class can be.

What would MY ideal Discipline-as-a-support-spec look like?

Remove the healing component of atonement, but bake in the Lenience talent. Give atonement a component to the buff that provides resource gain depending on the class used on (Similar to Blood Elf racial) little bits of extra mana/rage/fury/focus/runic power every few seconds.

Give Power Infusion multiple charges, like 3 or 4, so that it could be used strategically to buff multiple players prior to a pull (Like a party-sized lust), or to keep the buff rolling on a single player with cooldown management.

Give Dominate Mind a longer pet duration

Give Fiend/Bender a longer pet duration, these two will provide Priests with the much discussed fantasy of having pets. Mind Controlled servants and a shadow minion would fit the fantasy of a Priest.

Remove healing component to PW: Radiance, used as a cooldown to give the entire raid atonement. Which with mentioned above will be the damage reduction % and resource gain only.

Give Mind Blast back the damage negate component it used to have

Give Pain Suppression a shorter cooldown and a longer duration. Keep Transform Pain and Protector of the Frail as talents

Move Archangel and Dark Archangel to the PvE tree, in place of Lenience and Evangelism. Lenience is baked into atonement. remove Evangelism altogether

Make Flash Heal expensive and painful to use, similar to Shadow Priest.

Keep Barrier as it is

Keep Rapture as it is

Keep Power Word: Shield as it is. Keeps atonement rolling

Keep Smite, Penance, SW:P as they are. PtW continues to spread by Penance.


So, on top of PW:S being technically an absorb, this leaves Disc Priest with the healing spells of Renew, Flash Heal, Penance, PW: Life and the healing from Nova, Halo and Star. Not enough to heal a group through hard content, but enough that a decent disc priest can heal lower content, can help out a struggling healer in the group, can do enough to hard focus on a tank if a healer drops to carry them through.

So why bring a Disc Priest? We are left with abilities that buff a tank's ability to tank, buff a healer's ability to heal and reduce incoming damage, and give DPS a powerful cooldown. We are also bringing a modest amount of backup healing and DPS.

The people who like healing as a priest have nothing to lose, the people who like Discipline should still like it as the playstyle remains intact albeit for a different purpose, and the people who like healing as a Disc and hate healing as a Holy get one step closer to seeing a therapist.

This is of course all dependent on Augmentation not being a flop, and people end up liking a support spec in their groups.

[cocomen2]

Remove healing from it's entire kit and it would become one, i mean support job is utility = Move speed buffs, crit buffs, absorbs, damage boost, reduction damage taken by allies ...and other stuff; but healing belongs to Healer spec.


But somehow feeling like Blizz wants to make "Support" job as private lover healer, as if you bound to 1 and only 1 person and can't do much for others. (only WoW can be WoW killer yep? so it's bound to kill itself)

[Elbob]

Before we jump the gun here, the only current model for a "support" spec stays almost completely within its role. Its a DPS spec that sacrifices personal dps to increase the dps of others. If you want disc to be a healing based support spec its empowerment abilities need to be used on other healers to keep it in line. Balancing Augvokers is already gonna be tough, but a cross healer/dps that just gets to grab all the best parts of priest specs (PI for dps and raid cds for healers) would be balance nightmare town.

[Al Gorefiend]

Before we jump the gun here, the only current model for a "support" spec stays almost completely within its role. Its a DPS spec that sacrifices personal dps to increase the dps of others. If you want disc to be a healing based support spec its empowerment abilities need to be used on other healers to keep it in line. Balancing Augvokers is already gonna be tough, but a cross healer/dps that just gets to grab all the best parts of priest specs (PI for dps and raid cds for healers) would be balance nightmare town.

Simplest amendment would be to not give PI the additional charges, I did focus on Disc Priest being a healer back-up and tank back-up first and foremost already. As the two are so linked together its hard to be a helper for one and not the other.

[gaymer77]

So they're actually experimenting with a support spec. Awesome news, and I think the follow-up to that should be changing an existing spec into a support spec.

I think Priest is the best candidate.

My topic points:

We already have 2 healing specs! There's no rule to how many healing specs a class should have, but 1 feels like enough to me.

**Snipped for easier reading**

Not sure why it was changed but there has been discussions regarding priest on the alpha testing being what was literally what turned into a brewmaster monk. Not fully "brew" related but it was meant to be a monk who tanks in cloth armor. It fit with the whole religious basis that paladin is based on too. Priests would have their holy spec for healing (religious reference there), monk spec for tanking (monks are a different form of a priest in another religion), and shadow for dps (shadow/dark priests are from folklore that dealt damage).

As for your topic, other than the patches & expansions where disc was "the" healer spec, disc has always been more of a niche healer or a support/tank healer. I would love to see disc priest get completely overhauled and turned into a true support class if they're going to start adding support specs to the game.

[Trumpcat]

I'd just bake the shielding utilities of Discipline into Holy as talent options and have Discipline be a Holy caster DPS spec without shadow bits in it.

[Makabreska]

So they're actually experimenting with a support spec. Awesome news, and I think the follow-up to that should be changing an existing spec into a support spec.

Blizz already said they wont be changing existing specs into support.

[Nicarras]

I am in no way every supportive of Disc or Priest becoming or having a Support spec. Having multiple play styles of main/primary healing is one of the features of the Priest in the first place.

[John Fenderbender]

Absolutely no way in hell.

[czarek]

Disc as its base sounds as support spec. Havent played it since WoD or smth. Could work i think.,

[Thundering]

I would rather have Disc as a DPS specc we kinda lack a holy spell caster in the game(dps).

[Amariw]

Hoping not. Both Holy and Disc have cool gameplay fantasies and loop (healing with dmg, shielding for disc, powerful reactive healing and holy words for holy) which work great. No reason to redesign them. Better to add other support speccs if they want more.