PW:S has no cooldown on alpha..?

[Deleted]

Well its clear that they want our atonement applicators to feel actually useful in terms of healing, plea was largely wasted in terms of raw throughput (not that it healed for much anyways) but the majority of it was dead healing due to its main use being applying atonement for ramping prior to your x2 radiance combo. Now at least that healing will not being going to wasted with PW:S.

Having PW:S on the mastery tho is kinda courting disaster in the sense of a return to shield spam a'la WoD. I can't see them letting that happen however tbh, so i would expect the baseline co-efficient to be drastically lower than live, maybe even as low as the effective healing of a current plea. If you think about it, mastery is very easy to balance around in terms of those three individual spells since it is applied after the baseline co-efficient and is a flat increase. That way they can just tune each ability to where they need it to be after mastery by adjusting the the baseline. This is something now possible as it has zero effect on PvP unlike before as they now can have separate co-efficients.

Shields are too strong? Then just drop the baseline power to where it needs to be, but mastery is still going to be a great stat because it is buffing our largest damaging spell and healing spell through atonement, as well as buffing our fast inefficient heal helping us to be more relevant in M+ as well as spot healing in raids.

This goes for Rapture as well, since its just a flat % increase to PW:S its piss easy to tune as its output is directly dictated by the baseline power of PW:S so can just be adjusted accordingly to where it needs to be.

I think a lot of people are misinterpreting blizzards change here, everyone is thinking no cooldown on PW:S is going to result in another shield meta, where the actual real reason, as they have stated is to move away from absorption based healing as its too hard to balance against throughput healing. This change still leaves Disc with shields from a thematic stand point and the ability to use powerful absorbs in the form of CD's like Rapture and PW:B, but will actually shift more of their healing into the atonement mechanic and actual throughput with shadowmend, which will result in them being more versatile overall and still feel like the most unique healing in the game in terms of doing damage to heal.

[MendUS]

To me, Cataclysm disc priest was fine.

PWS with a huge mana cost, except you got a free one every 12 seconds, prevented shield spam. You had penance and a more powerful prayer of healing (relative to the holy one) and barrier as a raid cd.

It's the only version of disc that was useful without being overpowered. Wish they went back to it. I'm not sure what the hell this dps/heal hybrid crap is.

EDIT: re-read and saw Cata Disc. I don't think the spec was as engaging as it is today. I doubt we'd see us go back to that style of play any time soon.

[Supliftz]

Because absorbtion as a core healing mechanic is unbalancable. It adds a second layer of buffer between alive and dead that makes it way too good. Every healer are playing with the health of the party, absorbs play before that health.

A healer having absorbs is more powerfull than a healer having classic healing at same HPS.

So you would need to nerf disc to be x% less HPS than other healing spec. Making high solo content harder to them (MM+) and making them rage because they can' rank.

And don't even mention PVP, where absorbs are even more powerfull (basically free HP even when healer is CC).
Absorbs are interesting, but can't be a core mechanic of any healing specs in wow. That's why blizzard moved it away from disc and killed previous Hpal mastery.

It's either broken or simply too weak and not worth the GCD/cast time/mana.

yes but how does weakened soul fix the problem of absorbs adding effective hp

[Well]

In this post, I completely disregard PvP issues, and talking from a pure PvE perspective. Feel free to imagine any PvP talent that would make up for these changes. I played Discipline in all of MoP & WoD, doing mythic raiding. In my opinion, all iterations of Discipline had some good parts, with most of them found in the Legion one. I don't generally raid in Legion but only casually play instead. Here are my thoughts and suggestions:

The problems of Discipline:

(1) Shield Spamming as your best (and really the only) way of healing must had never happened, and should never come back. Ever. For me, this includes the removal of PW:S' cooldown. The solution to this is to always make sure that PW:S has a cooldown.

(1a) PW:S should always feel meaningful, and being able to spam it constantly took away from that. The Legion version of mostly using it on your tank every time it was available was not of my liking. It felt empty and ultimately a wannabe mana regen tool if you had taken Shield Discipline: without choice, except for those times when you would shield someone soaking.

(2) Discipline is too mobile with instant PW:S and moving while casting Penance. You are not going to cast Shadowmend in raids and the only thing that requires the Priest to stay and channel would be PW:R. Feathers are plentiful, but by no means think that I am suggesting that Priests are anywhere close being top dog in mobility. VERY far from it, especially after the movement speed bonus reduction on the Feather.
(2a) With spammable shield, and outside of Smiting, I don't see why the priest would stand to cast PW:R, unless it's an emergency or they were preparing for Light's Wrath, but that is not present in BfA.

The goods of Discipline:
(1) Most positives come from Legion: Light's Wrath was a fantastic ability. It hit hard, it healed hard, it had an awesome animation, and the ridiculous numbers it could provide when heated up (not present in raids) was phenomenal and immensely satisfying. Add to that the synergy satisfaction you got from applying Atonement as much as possible to shoot a huge Wrath, and you have a wonderful ability.
(1a) Light's Wrath MUST be a cooldown available to Discipline in BfA. It added complexity, satisfaction and execution requirements to the spec.

My suggestions transitioning from Legion to BfA:

Things that should no longer be in our spellbook:

Power Word: Radiance is removed.
Shadowmend is removed.
Plea is removed.
Power Word: Barrier is removed.

The following abilities are changed, replaced and reworked like so:

Clarity of Will becomes baseline, replaces Shadowmend and is reworked into:

Clarity of Will
4% base mana
2 sec cast
Shields the target with a protective ward absorbing 500% spellpower damage and healing them for the same amount. The ally will take [(500% of Spell power) / 20] damage every 1 sec, until they have taken 500% of Spell power total damage from all sources, or leave combat. Applies Atonement.

Light's Wrath is retained, but its cooldown is increased to 2 min and its baseline damage is also increased by 25%.

Luminous Barrier (the new talent for Discipline in the BfA alpha) takes Power Word: Barrier's place and becomes baseline. It is reworked in:

Luminous Barrier
3 min cooldown
No cost

Shield all allies within 40 yards of you for half your Power Word: Shield's value for 5 seconds and applies Atonement to them for 5 sec.

Rapture is reworked into:

Rapture
1.5 min cooldown
No Cost
Does not trigger the GCD

For the next 12 seconds, your Clarity of Will costs half as much mana, has its cast time reduced by 50% and becomes castable while moving.

Power Word: Shield is reworked into:

Power Word: Shield
40% of base mana (up from 2.3%)
2 sec cast time (up from Instant)
20 seconds cooldown (up from 0 or 7.5 or whatever)
2 charges
Range: 40 yards

Shield yourself, your target and 2 other allies that are in a 15 yard range of your target for an amount equal to what PW:S shielded for after the Highmaul first nerfs. Shields created by this ability apply Atonement for 60% of its normal duration.

It will favor players without Atonement, then players with Atonement, then non-players as Power Word: Radiance does now.

The following talents are reworked and moved elsewhere in the talent rows:

Shield Discipline:

When 3 or more shields you create are fully absorbed within 2 seconds of each other, you reduce the cooldown of Light's Wrath by 15 seconds.

Shadow Covenant is reworked:

Your Power Word: Shield spell shields 2 additional allies, but if the shield is not fully absorbed, any remaining shielding value is tripled and applied as a damage over time effect on its targets.

Last notes:

What I want from Discipline is for its abilities to feel powerful and meaningful. Move far from spamming shields and allow interesting gameplay. While I am generally not a huge fan of Atonement, I can certainly see the appeal in it and what it can offer and I am all for it. In my opinion, these changes achieve the following:

(1) Merging abilites and relieving clutter: Shadowmendt, Plea, PW:Radiance, etc.
(2) Providing meaningful shields that are not spammable, but are controlled and lead to Atonement healing, without going through 15 seconds of spamming Plea to your raid just to be able to use Light's Wrath.
(3) Emphasize the timing shields need to be applied, by taking away spammable shields (PW:S no cd), and making the new Clarity of Will's nature answer to duality: both healing & shielding. That way you waste healing by mindlessly spamming as in WoD AND lose on the mana to healing conversion when using it on a full health target.
(4) Rapture allows for much needed mobility in M+ and a good way to play the Plea game for those that liked it. I personally dislike instants in healing.
(5) Power Word: Shield turns into a real Power Word, allowing for key moments of shield placing and fully moving it away from blanketing the whole raid (always talking from a Mythic raid perspective). Account that the Priest only chooses one target to shield plus themselves, and the others are chosen by standard smart healing rules.

[longxia]

Light's Wrath MUST be a cooldown available to Discipline in BfA. It added complexity, satisfaction and execution requirements to the spec.

Im glad its gone, and because its named after the staff itself (which has been binned because 'reasons') I doubt it will return.

Regarding gameplay, I bet that Disc will play essentially the same as today. Blizzard has six months to think of new talents and azerite traits to make that gameplay interesting, but I would imagine that in the interests of maintaining class differentiation Disc will broadly keep its current niche.

[Nurasu]

I thought it was gay. Im glad its gone, and because its named after the staff itself (which has been binned because 'reasons') I doubt it will return.

Regarding gameplay, I bet that Disc will play essentially the same as today. Blizzard has six months to think of new talents and azerite traits to make that gameplay interesting, but I would imagine that in the interests of maintaining class differentiation Disc will broadly keep its current niche.

I disagree; to me it looks like they're moving more towards sustained throughput for Disc and away from burst healing after large damage. It would be great if they would start designing fights with actual sustained healing checks again.

[BobAwesome]

Aw, Body and Soul got nerfed

[Nurasu]

Aw, Body and Soul got nerfed

Hard, too; now you won't even know when it'll work without a weak aura :P

[ttylol]

Feathers is good enough anyways, time to rework Holy's Body & Mind and share it with Disc instead. Perhaps something like target-able Angelic Bulwark as a mini-cooldown? Could throw on some move speed when it procs, a la Cauterize.

[Al Gorefiend]

Naw guys, I gotta say I'm getting a bit salty.

What's with the obsession for removing cool abilities from Disc? I miss Cascade, I miss Void Shift (PvP talent I know) and now I will miss Light's Wrath.

Just.. why do they remove cool things? What video game does such a thing?

[theburned]

Naw guys, I gotta say I'm getting a bit salty.

What's with the obsession for removing cool abilities from Disc? I miss Cascade, I miss Void Shift (PvP talent I know) and now I will miss Light's Wrath.

Just.. why do they remove cool things? What video game does such a thing?

This ability would either end up just as useless as divine star/halo (as in only first hit doing attonement healing), or be vastly overpowered (have every instance of damage heal).

[Sticky]

you want real change? http://calculators.iradei.eu/talents/priest

Fix the darn trees. locking us into one spec is horrid, If you want to see what we had, look at 3.3 (2.43 is what I linked, most of it is not applicable given terrible encounter design lately)

This is hyperbole. If you hate them so much, I hope for hypocrisy's sake, you're not subbed and haven't been for years...

[Nurasu]

This ability would either end up just as useless as divine star/halo (as in only first hit doing attonement healing), or be vastly overpowered (have every instance of damage heal).

If you're talking about Cascade, it would be a huge waste to cast it on an enemy since only a portion would be transferred through atonement, regardless of how many instances of damage it counted. It was a fun spell to heal with, though.

[theburned]

If you're talking about Cascade, it would be a huge waste to cast it on an enemy since only a portion would be transferred through atonement, regardless of how many instances of damage it counted. It was a fun spell to heal with, though.

I have to question if you know how attonement transfers work, if you think you would ever cast the heal over damage if all hits counts for attonement transfers you must be nuts.

[Nurasu]

I have to question if you know how attonement transfers work, if you think you would ever cast the heal over damage if all hits counts for attonement transfers you must be nuts.

You're 100% correct, I was thinking a 1:1 situation for some very dumb reason. I guess the easy way to fix it would be to make it only castable on friendies; there needn't be a damage option to begin with. Not that they'll bring it back anyway.

[BobAwesome]

Body and Soul got unnerfed?

[Rhaxus]

Body and Soul got unnerfed?

please let it be so, dear god it would be so amazing

[Nefarious Tea]

Aw, Body and Soul got nerfed

Because Spriests need even shittier mobility, right?

[Deleted]

Im glad its gone, and because its named after the staff itself (which has been binned because 'reasons') I doubt it will return.

Regarding gameplay, I bet that Disc will play essentially the same as today. Blizzard has six months to think of new talents and azerite traits to make that gameplay interesting, but I would imagine that in the interests of maintaining class differentiation Disc will broadly keep its current niche.

It's probably going to end up as a combination of MoP and Legion Disc.

Right now shields have the mana cost of a rejuv and absorbs more than a rejuv does healing, it's around 25% of the players hp before critical strikes. Which means you'll most likely be blanketing one to two groups in your raid and when big raid damage comes out you add 2x PWR to cycle and obviously deal damage.

Other than that, you're going to rely a lot less on damage to do healing in low damage moments, but focus on just shielding instead.

[kran1um]

Tested Disc last night - oh boy there will be nerfs. Unlimited bubbles, that when it expires gives back mana, another talent heals as you put bubble on, swp stuff for attonement, bubble gives a speed burst if spec'd, not each one, but seems every other bubble, but of course I was spamming to see how fast I could go so seems like a time involvement to where you just cant spam for run time. I see this as a PVP nightmare without the weakened soul.

Didnt test the 12m mass bubble as I was having too much fun just bubbling and seeing the heals.

Disc is performing really well in BFA - #madepriestgreatagain