Is Atonement The ONLY Way To Disc In Mists?

[RicardoZ]

Hi guys. I'm thinking about re-subbing to WoW (quit for a lot of reasons around the last patch of Cata) because I really miss my lil' gnome priest healer who is pretty much the only reason I have to play WoW.

The problem is that (from what I've read so far) they pretty much made it mandatory for Disc priests to go the Atonement route now. I didn't ever like doing it that way because I didn't like the hybrid of dps-healing and much preferred to stack the crud out of my Mastery and go total PW:S/Divine Aegis crazy. I just liked how it felt to have people criticize my hps and then be like "How are we not dead?"

Anyway...is this true now? Is Atonement the ONLY way that a Disc priest can heal this go-round? I'd like to know because really it will make the difference as to whether or not I come back.

[Cephilia]

Well, Atonement is baseline ans as such yes, you'd be bad for ignoring it. BUT. Atonement stacking is a bit different now a days. You can glyph Holy Fire to make it instant and penance the boss for another stack. By using only these two spells, it takes 22 seconds to build up five stacks, which you can then keep up with instant Holy Fires only, and consume for extra healing when needed. You certainly aren't forced to be a smite bot which seems to worry you.

I think you might like disc healing surprinsingly much now a days. Absorbs are stronger than ever; Mastery is our strongest secondary stat (after spirit ofc), and it's a very strange encounter when absorbs make up less than 50% of your healing. Spirit Shell (disc short raid CD that replaced Divine Hymn for us) converts all your healing in to absorbs for 15 secs on one minute CD. If that isn't the most awesome thing for PoH spam-lover, then I have no idea what is

[RicardoZ]

Well, Atonement is baseline ans as such yes, you'd be bad for ignoring it. BUT. Atonement stacking is a bit different now a days. You can glyph Holy Fire to make it instant and penance the boss for another stack. By using only these two spells, it takes 22 seconds to build up five stacks, which you can then keep up with instant Holy Fires only, and consume for extra healing when needed. You certainly aren't forced to be a smite bot which seems to worry you.

I think you might like disc healing surprinsingly much now a days. Absorbs are stronger than ever; Mastery is our strongest secondary stat (after spirit ofc), and it's a very strange encounter when absorbs make up less than 50% of your healing. Spirit Shell (disc short raid CD that replaced Divine Hymn for us) converts all your healing in to absorbs for 15 secs on one minute CD. If that isn't the most awesome thing for PoH spam-lover, then I have no idea what is

Well it seems like they took it in the direction that I didn't like which was Evangelism/Atonement...thanks for the reply, saved me the price of the expansion and $15

[Moonlily]

Our Disc priest usually never uses smite healing and he's always top

[Dorfie]

I smite heal a lot in 10 mans (4/16 HM and 16/16 NM atm) and I'll probably do it even more when it gets buffed to a 40 yard range. There's so many reasons to do it:

-considerable amount of bosses take increased damage = increased heals
-it's pretty efficient
-good HPS for a filler
-40 yard range smart heal (soon)
-does damage
-stacks up your low cooldown throughput CD

So yeah, it's basically mandatory. Of course you can just spam PoH for 6 minutes straight in a 25 man guild if that's more to your liking.

I don't really see why you would ignore the expansion just because smite healing is mandatory. I just treat it like any other heal, doing damage is just a bonus.

[RicardoZ]

I don't really see why you would ignore the expansion just because smite healing is mandatory.

Because I don't like it. Why would I want to play something that I don't like and had the option of NOT doing it taken away from me? Non-Atonement/Evangelism was a perfectly viable Disc spec in Cata and I LOVED playing it, it was so much fun to keep those shields up and protect a Tank. But if they took away my favorite part of the game why would I want to come back?

[Vashi]

I never use smite healing. Its boring as hell. Really like sometimes when I am bored in fight and just for the lols. Well for our Garajal HC first kill I needed to be in smite spec (reforged spirit to haste, glyphs etc) to help on DPS.

[Pinkbyte]

@ Ricardo

I get where you coming from - i rolled a SoS spec all the way up to MoP and strongly believed before MoP it was equal or better than AA/Atonement (thats an old debate as to whether it was true or not). Anyway i disliked the idea of having to DPS being a healer and what not but i have to say im really enjoying my priest atm with our combined SoS/AA/Atonement.

You dont really need to smite heal, what you can do is use Penance and Holy Fire now and then to get evangelism stacks up and to keep them up then only use it when you really need to if using Penance/Holy Fire/Smite offensively really bothers you.

A few points that you should consider though:

1. Glyphed (Instant) Holy Fire is a pretty decent instant cast heal and can be pretty useful when you are on the move.
2. Once you get used to Atonement it really isn't that bad and the buff it provides is quite amazing considering the offensive spells you cast to gain the Evangelism stacks provide your raid with some extra DPS as well as healing in the process.
3. When there is low to moderate damage Atonement is quite a mana efficient way of healing.

[Dorfie]

Meh, I don't even think of smite/penance/holy fire as damage dealing spells since I use macros like this:

/cast [@targettarget] Holy Fire

Which will cast holy fire at my targets target. So I can just target the tank and use that macro, never have to target the boss.

[Zka]

Unless you're on the bleeding edge of progression raiding, I don't see how using evangelism would be mandatory.

[Linkash]

If you only played the game to put shields on unitframes, you must have a very boring life.

[RicardoZ]

If you only played the game to put shields on unitframes, you must have a very boring life.

It's just the play style I enjoyed. You can oversimplify and break anybody's role/rotation down into such blunt terms if you want.

[Deleted]

Eh, i generally just use HF and Penance on the boss as smart heals, nevermind the doing dmg to the boss part. Smite is a very good fillerspell too, with good efficiency and low overhealing.
It's not like you have to adopt the "atonement playstyle", although on some encounters with tight enrage timers the extra dps can be very useful.

I don't really get it though, when people say "I'm a healer, I don't want to dps!" or something to that effect, because you ARE healing with attonement. To me it's about as absurd as saying "I don't want to use shields".


If you just don't like the playstyle of a disc priest then fine, i don't like the playstyle of for example resto druids either. I just don't get your issue with how disc plays, because the issue doesn't really exist other than in your mind imo.

[notdryad]

You'd be foolish to outright refuse to ever Smite or Holy Fire. A +25% healing done buff is very good and exceptional when paired with Spirit Shell.

[ThePants999]

Just don't think of them as DPS abilities. They're simply small, smart, mana-efficient heals that you have to cast on an enemy target instead of a friendly target or no target. It's not "okay, I can do some DPS", it's "okay, I would cast Heal at this point, but I'm not bothered about stacking/refreshing Grace and the person I want to heal is lowest health or I don't care who I heal, so I'll replace it with Smite". Or it's "I need to heal with Holy Fire every now and again so that I've got a 25% healing buff available when I need it". And Penance on an enemy target is brilliant - three heals, each separately targeting whoever's lowest-health at the time so basically guaranteed not to overheal, double-dipping with your crit chance, making some future heals cheaper (via Evangelism), and building towards your Archangel - what's not to like?

And with @targettarget macros, or frames that show you players' targets, it's very easy.

I thought I'd hate smiting, and never did it in Cata. "I play to heal, not to DPS, damn it!" Now, I use Vuhdo and show targets, and I have Holy Fire on scroll wheel up, Smite on scroll wheel down and Penance on scroll wheel click, and it's brilliant - used correctly, it's simply more mana efficient healing. (And it's wonderful in LFR, as when there's just little bits of damage here and there, you heal it all without trying while the other healers get bored :-) The DPS you do is just a byproduct, it's not about DPSing, though it's fun to occasionally beat a bad DPSer in a 5-man.

[ciay]

A +25% healing done buff is very good and exceptional when paired with Spirit Shell.

I hope you're not trying to say that spiritshell stacks with archangel, because it doesn't.

[Chimaera]

I hope you're not trying to say that spiritshell stacks with archangel, because it doesn't.

Except it does since they fixed it weeks ago now. What it doesn't stack with until 5.1 is inner focus.

[Playintrafic]

Well it seems like they took it in the direction that I didn't like which was Evangelism/Atonement...thanks for the reply, saved me the price of the expansion and $15

You dont have to smite at all. You dont even need to use evangelism. Disc is pretty freaking op in 25m right now. Its pretty good in 10m too. We have a disco priest that can pump out some 75-80k healing+absorbs the whole fight and smile while doing it. She never smites, and only gets her five stack and refreshes it so she has an extra cooldown to pop for emergency burst healing.

Disc is a really good place right now, and if you can't stand atonement/evangelism that badly you would not wanna heal period in the current game. Nearly all classes have something to do besides stand there when damage is light.

[RicardoZ]

Disc is a really good place right now, and if you can't stand atonement/evangelism that badly you would not wanna heal period in the current game. Nearly all classes have something to do besides stand there when damage is light.

In the part of the post that I didn't quote because it's not really what I want to talk about you mentioned 25 man raids...to be honest I'll probably never even heal a 10 man raid. If I'm just doing 5 mans could I still be able to use my old method of PW:S/DA/PoH massive mastery stacked absorption?

And to be honest I didn't like the Evangelism thing because I don't really like "building stacks" of something. It's why I deleted my old Druid healer, constantly having to keep my stacks of (I don't remember what it was called, Lifebloom?) got really boring, really fast just essentially spamming that same ability over and over.

With the Cata non-atonement style of Disc healing, you had a lot of room for variation on how you wanted to gem, you could improvise and try out new tricks and make up new combinations. I loved the freedom of it. I don't think that's really included anymore from what I've been seeing, and I know it's hard for a lot of people to understand, but the combination casting dps spells to heal feels like squeezing a cow's udder to get orange juice...just doesn't feel right to me and I just can't get used to it. Sorry. (Actually I'm not, but whatever).

On the other hand, I think I'll give my Prot Warrior a spin again if nothing else. Just checked out Mike Preach's guide to Warrior tanking and it looks even better than before.

I don't have any dps toons that I use for dungeons or raids, they're my questing and doing fun stuff toons. When I quest, I'm always on my Rogue or Mage, but never in instances.

[squid]

If the only thing deciding between playing World of Warcraft and not playing is whether or not you have to do a couple attacks in the healing rotation for one spec in one class, I think you will probably not find it worth the money to resub.

But if you have been out of the game for a while I recommend trying it out, theres a ton of new fun stuff in Pandaria, Smite or no.