Kamikaze Halo and healing burst spikes as Discipline...

[Nyel]

I just recently switched to Discipline and I really like it. Usually was healing either as Holy or as Shaman/Monk.

I still have three questions:

1. How to properly use Halo? That skill is totally amazing when there are a ton of adds and you can place Atonement on the entire group. Incredible healing potential. But... how to use it? In all the dungeons the mobs are so cluttered that it is incredibly hard to use it and not pull mobs that are not yet engaged in battle. Unfortunately I managed to random pull mobs without wanting to... even from places that seemed to be out of sight.

2. How to deal with big damage spikes? Haven't found a counter for them yet, e.g. when a tank has a ton of adds on him and gets a lot of burst damage. With Atonement alone it seems impossible to heal. Use Penance as heal directly on him instead on enemies? Sure I can cast Pain Surpression or the empowered Shield over and over but this doesn't sound like a solution to that problem.

3. How to AoE? Just place SWP on every enemy and then Smite?

Thanks! I very much enjoy Disc right now. Haven't done Mythics yet and I am a bit concerned on how good I will be able to heal them...

[Tataie]

1. Halo in dungeons - in my opinion no. There will be only a few times when you will not pull half of the mobs in dungeon and its not so effective. I use divine star. You can position yourself easier to not pull other mobs and its heal is quite strong.
2. With big damage spikes , as a disc,you kinda need to know when they happen so you can prevent them. You can pre shield group with Rapture , PS on tank , barrier on the whole group , use your shadowfiend and, solace ( if you have it ) can crit for quite some dmg/heal.
Also,your tank and ppl in group should have their own cd's for healing and dmg reduction,they can also avoid taking unnecesary dmg , its not 100% all about you

[kaamila]

1. Halo in dungeons - in my opinion no. There will be only a few times when you will not pull half of the mobs in dungeon and its not so effective. I use divine star. You can position yourself easier to not pull other mobs and its heal is quite strong.
2. With big damage spikes , as a disc,you kinda need to know when they happen so you can prevent them. You can pre shield group with Rapture , PS on tank , barrier on the whole group , use your shadowfiend and, solace ( if you have it ) can crit for quite some dmg/heal.
Also,your tank and ppl in group should have their own cd's for healing and dmg reduction,they can also avoid taking unnecesary dmg , its not 100% all about you

And thats the weakness of Disc. I love disc but I play holy when doing randoms because you cant expect random people to use their own defensive cds and avoid damage so playing disc during that punishes you more than them. When Im in a premade 5man group though, I can go disc because i know the players and know they will avoid as much damage as they can.

[Puupi]

Spec Castigation and Contrition. Use a healing Penance 95% of time. Don't touch Halo for now.

That's how you heal dungeons as Disc properly nowadays.

On a mob pack pull, dot all the mobs (like 4-5 of them) and then start healing the tank.

Purely Atonement healing is for when you are steamrolling and overgearing content OR raiding. In challenging dungeons Atonement healing (excluding dotting and a smite here and there) is more or less inexistent outside of some lighter situations or steady AoE.

[Grable]

On damage spikes - outside of defensive cooldowns used, I do:
Atonement+Schism (works great for AoE healing as well with PW:R used before) > healing Penance > Shadow Mend spam

[Nyel]

So you're really using / spamming Shadow Mend as Disc? Isn't that quite counterproductive for the entire spec idea?

[Ophenia]

So you're really using / spamming Shadow Mend as Disc? Isn't that quite counterproductive for the entire spec idea?

Well, if someone drops too low, it means you failed to protect him (he probably failed to protect himself too), and this is the core of the spec.
Thus, you have to recover using your direct heals, either Healing Penance or Shadow Mend.

Your job as disc is to anticipate, to prevent the damage. But if the damage is too important, you'll have to make up with unusual tools, at a cost.
Or you can perfectly chose to continue slow-healing with Atonement, but that is dangerous as any incoming damage can kill someone.

Edit: Tbh, the "entire spec idea" kinda died a long time ago when Disc was pruned to the point of only having PW:Shield as shield. We don't have a lot of ways to negate damage nowadays.

[Grable]

So you're really using / spamming Shadow Mend as Disc? Isn't that quite counterproductive for the entire spec idea?

It's just a situational combo I use for big damage spikes when tanks or other people fuck up, panic healing - when you simply need to put off the dps as Atonement can't keep up. Majority of the time I heal with dps of course and that's enough.

[Yunzi]

The options for AoE healing:

Dotting mobs and applying atonements
Offensive Penance with atonements already applied
Defensive Penance with Contrition talented and atonements already applied
Power Word: Radiance
Shadow Covenant
Halo and Divine Star (not recommended in dungeons)
Luminous Barrier (not recommended)
Rapture

Schism is good for burst healing but it's restrictive, not flexible, and requires a mob to live and for offensive spells to be poured into it for several seconds to get it's full effect. I prefer Castigation for non-progression dungeons for consistent benefits and Twist of Fate for progression.

Power Word: Radiance is underappreciated as an AoE heal. It does more direct healing than defensive penance with contrition, doesn't require contrition, and unlike penance applies atonements to all players in range and doesn't require atonements to already be out to be highly effective. Especially if you aren't running a heavy AoE build with contrition or shadow covenant, this is your go-to AoE heal.

Rapture is slow, being 6 GCDs to cast it and then apply one shield to each player in a dungeon, but those shields are so powerful that this CD is effectively the slowest form of AoE heal, with the flexibility of being spammable on the tank instead for very high throughput single-target healing.

[Nyel]

Well, if someone drops too low, it means you failed to protect him (he probably failed to protect himself too), and this is the core of the spec.

I don't think this is necessarily true though (that I failed to protect him). If there's too much burst damage (e.g. tank pulling too much) I just can't do anything against it except popping CDs. Absorption of PW:S is quite mediocre and Penance on a 9s CD is quite high to "burst heal" with it.

I figured out that a healing Penance is a good tool (especially with the proc) but sometimes it's just not enough. Never used Shadow Mend but maybe I'll try to.

[Grable]

I figured out that a healing Penance is a good tool (especially with the proc) but sometimes it's just not enough. Never used Shadow Mend but maybe I'll try to.

In the situation when somebody is gonna die and you've used up defensive CDs and healing Penance (and Schism, if you have it), Shadow Mend is pretty much all you can do. Smite + Atonement is not gonna outheal Shadow Mend spam.

That's just the reality of Disc though, it's shit at panic healing. The spec is a blast and super effective when people know what to do and don't take unecessary and unpredictable big damage. But if you're stuck with people walking into damage you're gonna have a hard time and are probably gonna get smacked with "are you even healing" from your oblivious party members.

In short, Disc can't outheal stupid. Holy is for that.

[Brighter]

Spec Castigation and Contrition. Use a healing Penance 95% of time. Don't touch Halo for now.

That's how you heal dungeons as Disc properly nowadays.

On a mob pack pull, dot all the mobs (like 4-5 of them) and then start healing the tank.

Purely Atonement healing is for when you are steamrolling and overgearing content OR raiding. In challenging dungeons Atonement healing (excluding dotting and a smite here and there) is more or less inexistent outside of some lighter situations or steady AoE.

This is totally inaccurate and bad.

[Scrotles]

Spec Castigation and Contrition. Use a healing Penance 95% of time. Don't touch Halo for now.

That's how you heal dungeons as Disc properly nowadays.

On a mob pack pull, dot all the mobs (like 4-5 of them) and then start healing the tank.

Purely Atonement healing is for when you are steamrolling and overgearing content OR raiding. In challenging dungeons Atonement healing (excluding dotting and a smite here and there) is more or less inexistent outside of some lighter situations or steady AoE.

Uhh. What? Lol. You sound like someone who hasn’t played Disc for any moment of time, saw a beta YouTube video and posted this awful response. We’re trying to help the priest community. Not make them complete and actual useless morons.

You also do realize that atonement and atonement Crit literally is 50% of your healing on a normal boss fight. If you have smend, penance anywhere near the top you’re playing disc wrong.

Please learn a class prior to posting dumb responses.

[Puupi]

Uhh. What? Lol. You sound like someone who hasn’t played Disc for any moment of time, saw a beta YouTube video and posted this awful response. We’re trying to help the priest community. Not make them complete and actual useless morons.

You also do realize that atonement and atonement Crit literally is 50% of your healing on a normal boss fight. If you have smend, penance anywhere near the top you’re playing disc wrong.

Please learn a class prior to posting dumb responses.

I was talking about actual challenging content, not daily heroic or normal mythics.

If you are saying you are keeping the tank alive with smitespamming atonement.... you are in for a surprise.

Obviously you are atonement healing as long as it is enough to keep the people alive - but in mythic+ it won't once the mobs start hitting the tank harder.

[Scrotles]

I was talking about actual challenging content, not daily heroic or normal mythics.

If you are saying you are keeping the tank alive with smitespamming atonement.... you are in for a surprise.

Obviously you are atonement healing as long as it is enough to keep the people alive - but in mythic+ it won't once the mobs start hitting the tank harder.

Considering you use castigation and contrition I could see why you think that. Schism + solace + off penance more than enough to keep the group healthy lol. When my tank takes a huge dip my initial thought isn’t holy shit I need to smend. And I mean I personally ran mythic +s in beta and so did a shit ton of other disc priests. And nobody came to this conclusion because it’s false lol. But we’re all on a different skill gap.

[Nyel]

Is Schism really better than Castigation? A 33% stronger Penance sounds a lot better to me than the on and off buff I get via Schism.

[Scrotles]

Castigation is literally the worst talent to take on that row. Schism gives you huge on demand burst healing paired with solace. Which by default is what you should be taking. The other good talent set up is going twist of fate and mind bender. Castigation is pretty terrible because penance does not refresh or put on any atonements. If it were to prolong/apply atonement then I see an arguement. But penance as a whole isn’t the best spell in the world. And just in terms of healing output it’s nowhere near as useful as smite spam or schism+solace

- - - Updated - - -

You really only wanna cast penance when you have the proc, and when you have schism buff on a target. The healing it does defensively is “nice” but again not even close to what you get out of a 9 sec schism window.

[Nyel]

Have to try it out but I'm not really convinced yet.

Penance is great for on demand burst heal when you need it, even better with the proc. And it's not really worse casting it as DPS than just smiting. Castigation and Contrition, which I'm using at the moment, feels quite nice to be honest. But I'll try Schism later. I absolutely hate Twist of Fate and most likely never will take it, even when it's considered "go to". Played with Mind Bender but will change to Power Word: Solace to see how that works out.

Thanks for your input.

Does somebody know if Purge the Wicked spreads to an additional target per Penance missile or just once per cast?

[Scrotles]

Have to try it out but I'm not really convinced yet.

Penance is great for on demand burst heal when you need it, even better with the proc. And it's not really worse casting it as DPS than just smiting. Castigation and Contrition, which I'm using at the moment, feels quite nice to be honest. But I'll try Schism later. I absolutely hate Twist of Fate and most likely never will take it, even when it's considered "go to". Played with Mind Bender but will change to Power Word: Solace to see how that works out.

Thanks for your input.

Does somebody know if Purge the Wicked spreads to an additional target per Penance missile or just once per cast?

Yeah for sure. There are a million play styles with disc. Whatever works for you is fine. The schism play style is weird at first. Specially if you don’t pair it with solace. Schism + solace + penance feels so goddamn good. And I’m right there with you even though the ToF/MB build is good. It’s boring af. And it’s kinda just the derpy way to play disc imo. The schism play style is a lot more fun and intuitive.

And purge from what I’ve seen and tested with spreads with whatever is in the radius of the landing of the first bolt. I’ve had it where I cast purge start to penance and my do tank grips something in before the cast finishes and the target doesn’t have purge on.

[Puupi]

Schism is obviously better for AoE healing.

But if you are looking at keeping the tank alive, Castigation is miles better.