Patch 5.3 PTR. Attonement Nerf

[kaib]

next on the agenda: make attonement heals ignore dmg modifiers on the priests target, elegon, horridon etc. if it is 'only' a 20% nerf, can still expect the progression oriented guilds to run mostly disc priests and holy paladins with a few monks thrown in. getting a free 30-50k dps from some of your healers still means disc is vastly superior, even if now might be slightly behind paladins and monks. certainly a 20% nerf won't be good enough to let druids and shamans catch up in 10 men.

[Deleted]

Disc popping out so much raid damage compared to other healer while they are doing smart heals. Absorbs just puts healers like shaman into a corner and tell them to shut the fuck up and feel bad because he is bad. Every sane disc player will agree that this spec is slightly overpowered and there are simply two ways of fixing it: nerf disc or buff others. The first one is easier.

Dont get me wrong, disc will be topping meters and steal heals with attonement after this nerf anyway. But the whole "good damage + smart heal + massive absorbs" - mechanic is way to good to swap a medicore disz with good shaman in a 10 man raid.

[Deleted]

I find it interesting that they nerfed the healing, but left the damage where it was. We're still on the way to become a hybrid healer/dps?

[Deleted]

I find it interesting that they nerfed the healing, but left the damage where it was. We're still on the way to become a hybrid healer/dps?

Basically feel the same way as quoted.

I'm not surprised they nerfed atonement, I'm just semi surprised in the way they did it. I thought most of the whine has come from disc being able to push so much dps it's made em superior in 10mans due to that reason, not because of the "massively op healing output". Agreed, that by nerfing the amount atonement heal they're trying to push us to use other spells, making atonement less viable for healing, but to be fair 20% less healing from atonement will hardly fix what the QQ was to begin with.
Atonement will still be pretty much equally as viable for 10man smarthealing (where the biggest QQ was from anyway afaik) as (good) discs still turned to SS/poh for heavier dmg phases, using atonement as a "might as well be casting something for next to no mana" filler / Evangelism builder.

I cannot see how this change will make our play style any less atonement based. What else would you be casting when there's next to no dmg going on and your SS is on cd? Sure some other healer classes might feel its encouraging to see disc push less hps (mostly 25) but again, doesn't really change the situation in 10mans. I'm glad to see Blizz is good at solving the problem at hand, once again.

[nobodysbaby]

My guess is they didn't want to touch the dps, since questing, solo scenarios would be suffering from this and Bliz would get a whole lot of unhappy Disc who "cant do solo scenarios, my dps sucks yadayada".

I agree the dmg should be nerfed first/instead or aswell, but I can understand why they did it this way by nerfing only the healing part.

[Manabomb]

If anything you should be glad that the most brainless form of healing known as atonement got nerfed, this change was actually long overdue considering how much atonement heals for and how little mana it costs. Now you might actually have to use healing spells instead of dpsing for 70-80% of a fight!

So you're saying atonement is more brainless than PWS on the raid and afk, or PoH spam? And on that note, what healing spells? Hard casting "heal"? Maybe pop that epic 9k tick renew, or if you're lucky enough to have our useless 2 set, roll in with a big PoM? Can we face the fact disc has the niche of being the absorb healer with a dps while healing mechanic and get off the boat of forcing us into being like -every- other healer? I play a disc to get away from the idea of playing whack-a-mole with my raid frames so I can be a preemptive damage reducer.

Edit: And ever further, why are you even playing disc if you don't like the healing while dpsing mechanic or the shielding niche we have? Seriously, go mash wild growth and rejuv on the raid. Or better yet, mash holy radiance, light of dawn. You don't even have to target anyone for that. I understand that being a rather unique spec gets us our times of being a bit overpowered or a bit underpowered and yes it can be frustrating. However I don't see blizzard revamping the way heals, smart heals, hots, absorbs and similar mechanics work to make us completely balanced with the other healers, so let's just all be happy disc is a little overpowered now. Otherwise we'd all be holy and hating ourselves.

[Deleted]

If I wanted to Heal using healing spells. I would fucking spec Holy.

Well this blows, I spent the last 3 weeks gearing my Attonement Disc priest because I love the way it plays and now it is going to go down by 20 fucking %

G fucking G.

Back to Tanking/DPS for me since all other healers are lame and boring.

Spamming one spell for dps AND healing is so fucking creative and fun.

[Deleted]

Spamming one spell for dps AND healing is so fucking creative and fun.

You've got one weird play style going on there matey.
At least doing 2 things at once is more creative than spamming pom and CoH for the "pure fun" of "pure" healing.

[Deleted]

Anything that promotes bad play should be nerfed.

Atonement smite spammers are exactly that, bad players.

[Deleted]

This might sound bias, but I like the model for disc/mistweaver of doing something else than healing. I know a lot of healers look at the possibility of weaving dps spells while healing with disgust, but for me it makes for a more dynamic style than "I'll use 3 types of aoe heals because its a lot more complex to heal in 3 different ways". Yes, atonement is a passive heal - it still has more action involved than Lightspring. Since we cant actually crit heal anymore, I cant see aegis as entirely "passive healing" anymore - it has our crit heals rolled into it. This makes disc passive healing extremely low compared to the 30-40% paladins get from their mastery, or the 20% holy priests get from EoL (and if we add lightspring, its also @30% in total), or the amount of healing shamans get from plonking a totem. Ofc, if you remove the passive hps, what is left looks even more bleh, which begs the question of how well those classes are designed outside passive healing.

But for disc: actually using healing spells? Why? Disc gets basically nothing "for free" from using regular heals (alright we get grace). I'm not an atonement only disc, atonement does around 15-20% of my healing unless there's some gimmick involved. I still feel my "actual healing" happens only during some cd - like spirit shell/archangel/power infusion/inner focus. Outside those, not much of my actual healing spells feel rewarding. So, I'll..uhm..spam gheal on the tank. Yeah, like there's a lot of tank healing in ToT. Alright, I'll use prayer of healing more, good old party bound spell vanilla style...do pray the raid is fairly stacked and your raidleader arranged groups to your liking, and the dmg is raidwide. Well, I use prayer of healing with SS quite enough tbh. Also if I want to spam poh, I might as well go holy and get tasty DI procs. What else is there in terms of actual healing spells? PWS? Sure, I use it fairly, it does up to 20% of my healing, how much more you want? PoM? Our pitiful renew?

So, what are these "actual healing spells" that disc are supposed to use more? xD

Note: I'm not fussed about the nerf, atonement does 15-20% of my healing normally, the nerf will be mostly a 3% off my healing, if even that, due to overhealing. I just want to say that I understand the lack of appeal "using healing spells" has for disc sometimes. I didn't see many top disc ranks from atonement only spammers, so obviously the good results already come from mixing other spells (gimmicks like horridon aside).

As for the "nerf the healing, not the dmg" I have a hunch atonement started poking eyes only since its a competitive hps tool. Nobody gave a toss about it in cata, though it was doing dmg then too. It just wasn't doing as much healing compared to normal healing. The mop shift to fixed mana pool and less regen brought different hps numbers, but atonement is a byproduct of dps, and dps is treated very differently than healing in mop. Disc dps being used for solo, as somebody mentioned, it followed patterns of normal dps. It bypasses the mop regen/healing patterns.

It also does a damn good job at being a crutch to a specc that otherwise only has 1 spell and 1 cd to make it different from holy - spirit shell and PWS. With crit heals baked into aegis, aegis is no longer a real reason to go disc. Without atonement, disc would be a poor version of holy, and this is why it will keep getting "balanced" every tier, because of scaling of dps, that has a completely different curve than the scaling of healing.

[Deleted]

Anything that promotes bad play should be nerfed.

Atonement smite spammers are exactly that, bad players.

Not to feed the trolls, but if discouraging bad playing/players ever was to be Blizzard motivation in nerfing any ability, they'd be screwed.

Using an ability that is a) most mana efficient b) a smart heal and c) abuses mechanics such as Horridons increased dmg taken is hardly considered "bad playing on bosses where it's viable to do so over other spells, in other words, resulting in better outcome. There is no point in blanketing a raid that wont be taking any group wide dmg with SS, if a low mana cost smartheal can outheal the incoming dmg, which sadly is the case in many normal 25 mans. Heroics are another chapter.

I am most certainly not saying one should be spamming smite and ignore other tools, but I do disagree with a statement saying using atonement as a major part of your healing (even after the nerf) is considered bad playing. It becomes bad playing if you can't find your head from up your ass when you know raid wide dmg is incoming and you keep smiting over using SS and Shields.

Point being, I'm fairly certain atonement isn't getting a nerf to discourage "bad playing"/. Blizz just has its spell "tweaking" very confused.

[Overdispersion]

Anything that promotes bad play should be nerfed.

Atonement smite spammers are exactly that, bad players.

Are you stupid or just pretending to be? Do you know how many phases there are where there is absolutely no healing to do and you can help beating the enrage timer or skip a phase by simply starting to dps? The fix is great and is basically saying "pleasy refrain from dps:ing while there actually is raid damage going on" and has nothing to with smite spamming being a litmus test for bad priests. Good disc preists/and holy priests for that matter know when to use smite and there are many occasions to do that simply because the healing recquired is too low. Comments like this piss me off.

[Isheria]

Once upon a time atonement got introduced to replace your basic small-efficient healing spell aka heal not every healing spell like it does now. When was the last time you actually used a single-target healing spell as discipline? I bet very long ago since atonement basically replaces all of them right now because:

a) it's faster
b) it's stronger
c) it costs nothing
d) it's smart

Surely you can see the problem that led to this nerf which isn't even a big deal. If anything they should have a taken it a step further and extend the self healing penalty to every target receiving atonement heals. It is one thing helping with dps when damage is low and a completely different dpsing instead of healing because you do better healing that way.

[Deleted]

Once upon a time atonement got introduced to replace your basic small-efficient healing spell aka heal not every healing spell like it does now. When was the last time you actually used a single-target healing spell as discipline? I bet very long ago since atonement basically replaces all of them right now because:

Sadly, more than I use those as holy.

Atonement is still a single target spell. Please show me which other healer actually uses single target spells for more than 10% of his healing.
In a world of aoe healing, why exactly disc needs to single target?

I asked you: I'd spam gheal on the tank. Which fight exactly requires a dedicated tank healer? And how enticing is it to spam gheal when its former synergy with inner focus has been fucked over by the new aegis? Sure the mastery change balanced out the aegis change in terms of single target healing - except inner focus. Which incidentally worked very well with gheal.

They removed the extra crit on targets with WS/grace, they removed inspiration, they nerfed inner focus+gheal spam and even PWS technically is nerfed with the change in mastery (and the crits of PWS often fuck over your rapture). What incentive did they leave disc to actually use gheal? I used it quite a lot in cata, and even in t14. I have little reasons to do it anymore. I'm not even sure if spamming gheal as disc is any better than doing it as holy in serenity anymore.

[laplacedemon]

When was the last time you used a single target spell as Holy, Isheria? Even if holy doesn't have anything like Smite, you had

* 9 Renews, 2 PW:S and 1 GHeal which was 100% overhealing
compared to 14 PW:S and 1 FHeal by Faerko on Jin'rokh
* 30 Renews (26 of them on tanks), 35 Heals (all on tanks), 9 GHeals (all on tanks) and 1 PW:S
compared to 20 PW:S and 1 Penance by Faerko
and 19 PW:S, 5 Renews and 1 FHeal by Xabok on Megaera
* 8 Renews (all on tanks), 13 Heals (all on tanks), 3 FHeals and 5 GHeals (4 of them on tanks)
compared to 9 PW:S and 1 FHeal by Faerko on Ji-Kun...

I sincerely doubt there is ANY difference between casting Heal & Renew on tanks almost all the time and using Sol/Smite/Penance on boss. Not in difficulty and not in mana cost...

I think the bigger evil of Atonement is the dps, not the healing part apart from the bosses with damage increase (it's really absurd there). Yet they can't change it because of soloing and PvP purposes.

(In case I seem like whining about the nerf, no I'm not. Even at 80%, Atonement still will be the best filler for disc and a really really small hps decrease for me personally.)

[HPLathus]

Sadly, more than I use those as holy.

WHy? -_-




I am seeing a lot more QQ over atonement then I expected.... sounds to me like a lot of you have been spoiled and just recently started playing disc.


Let's talk about disc when atonment was 10 yards, and the best use was on heroic maloriak dark phase.... and outside of a fight like that, the real ONLY usefulness was for tanks and getting archangel up for mana return.


You really want to cry about atonment NOW? You don't even know how bad disc had it back in the day..


All I am going to say is "Divine Spirit"

[ramennoodleking]

Sadly, more than I use those as holy.

If you raid 25s, then disregard this comment, but I use my entire kit as holy in 10 mans.

[Deleted]

WHy? -_-

Is the sadface because I'm using single target heals more as disc than as holy or because I'm not using them as holy? :P

I raid 25 mans, and even if I know my 1/13 hc isn't representative for anything other than the casual segment, I did not have a single fight this tier that required tank healing. I had to tank heal here and there in t14, but t15 seems even more oriented towards aoe. All in all, single target heals in a 25 man feel like a drop in the ocean. By the time I finish casting that Gheal, there's prolly 5 smart heals hitting my carefully chosen "triage" target. Tbh, I dont even know if disc is that good of a tank healer anymore, at least not without support from an actual healing specc. The aegis change hit single target healing as well, and I'm not sure we were the best tank healers even before it. Gheal spam in t14 seemed to oom me too close for comfort.

As much as blizzard tried to revive it, triage healing feels quite...erm..dead. There are places where it theoretically would be needed, but so many smart heals make any long cast time useless. Most of the time I cast a gheal, it overheals. Do I have much incentive to use it with IF instead of a poh? That's one of the big advantages atonement has.

If you raid 25s, then disregard this comment, but I use my entire kit as holy in 10 mans.

Yepp, 25s. I can see 10 mans being a lot more balanced in terms of aoe/single target.

[Deleted]

Even if Blizzard nerfed Smite Damage AND Atonement Healing Priests couldn't complain... Disc Priests are simply too strong right now, doing HPS like a Holypaladin while also pushing 40-50k DPS was simply too much.
Didn't Blizzard say they want DPSing Discpriests/Fistweaving monks doing 50% DPS and 50% Healing while a Holypaladin is 100% Healing and 0% DPS for example?
Even after the nerf its something like 50% DPS and 90% Healing for Priests.

[babylon]

i dont really get this rant :/
you can spam only atonement in lfr and be fine. but you can also afk in lfr and be fine if noone notices, how is lfr relevant?

Once upon a time atonement got introduced to replace your basic small-efficient healing spell aka heal not every healing spell like it does now. When was the last time you actually used a single-target healing spell as discipline?

recently, iron qon hc, gl completing it without any :/

in heroic modes, in 10man, discipline priests use a lot more then just atonement. and to be clear - atonement comes from 3 different spells, so actually its 3 kinds of heals. just named the same.

compare to monks - 40% of healing done by ranking monk is renewing mist - noone cries.
or to ranking paladins, 30% of healing is their mastery - noone has a problem with it.

why the whole drama has to be always about disc priests? :/
im not against a reasonable nerf, but i believe that 20% to whole mechanic is too much and i also believe that the whole war-against-atonement is very extravagated.