Idea for Discipline (Atonement/Grace)

[Deleted]

There is a lot of QQ about atonement for disc, and how is it apparently overpowered and requires no setup or skill to use effectively. That's not the debate here; but simply an offer of a suggestion which could perhaps make atonement more interesting and add a bit of synergy. To buff disc's baseline throughput such that grace is not required in its current format and change it like so:

Archangel:
Consumes your Evangelism, increasing your healing done by 5% for each Evangelism consumed for 18 sec. During archangel, all heals done by the priest will apply a stack of grace to the target.

Passive: Whenever a target is healed with your single-target healing spells*, PW:S or PoM, they gain a stack of grace.
Grace: The target can now benefit from your atonement healing at an effectiveness of 30% of the damage dealt, stacking up to 3 times.

*Cascade/Renew will be included in this, giving disc priests a reason to use them it over DS/Halo/IgnoringRenew, where these are normally much more useful to holy priests.

This would require awareness and synergy for discipline priests to keep up grace on sufficient number of targets. But also the tradeoff of more diffuse and less potent atonement healing for stronger, but more focused at the priest's own discretion.

Of course this just off the top of my head and likely completely dreadful in most people's opinion. I just thought I would share it to see if people liked the idea ^^

[Deleted]

Personally I would rather see a situation where Grace is completely removed and shields are given a bit more of a thought. If people really want to turn Atonement into a secondary resource then I suppose Evangelism could be spent on some sort AoE heal, thereby invoking the choice of either buffing heals or dealing with sudden large spikes of damage.

Then again, I like Atonement as it is and I feel adding a mechanic with Grace in order to use what should be a mana neutral DPS / heal ability would drive me insane. I can only imagine how awfully RNG based such a mechanic could be; build Evangelism, blow it on AA, apply Grace to certain targets during that window and then have everyone but them take damage. I wouldn't classify that as fun personally.

[Deleted]

Personally I would rather see a situation where Grace is completely removed and shields are given a bit more of a thought. If people really want to turn Atonement into a secondary resource then I suppose Evangelism could be spent on some sort AoE heal, thereby invoking the choice of either buffing heals or dealing with sudden large spikes of damage.

Then again, I like Atonement as it is and I feel adding a mechanic with Grace in order to use what should be a mana neutral DPS / heal ability would drive me insane. I can only imagine how awfully RNG based such a mechanic could be; build Evangelism, blow it on AA, apply Grace to certain targets during that window and then have everyone but them take damage. I wouldn't classify that as fun personally.

My suggestion did not involve Grace only being able to be applied during AA, but AA offering a more diffuse option of applying it with every heal done.

[Deleted]

My mistake, I read it as being a fundamental change as to how Atonement works. If you are simply suggesting that during AA, all single target heals apply Grace then that would only exacerbate the issue of discipline's shields being too strong in certain situations and it doesn't help particularly help in situations which call for snap healing.

To clarify, this is my reading of what you posted taking that Archangel would be given a new passive effect "Whenever a target is healed with your single-target healing spells*, PW:S or PoM, they gain a stack of grace." not that this is new inherent effect of Grace which is always present.

[Deleted]

I think that OP meant that if you don't have the grace buff, you can't be healed via atonement.
To me, it's kind of similar to renew w/ yellow chakra where you have to manage your single target spells to refresh renew. Or paladin's beacon of light.

If I undertood well, it could be interesting and it would rise the skillcap of atonement usage as well.

[Nasirah]

If I understand the OPs suggestion, imo, this would make atonement even stronger than it is now.

I'm understanding it like such: in order to be healed via atonement, you must have the grace buff present on you. To have the grace buff you must be either single target healed by the priest or recieve any non-atonement heal from the priest while they are under the effects of AA.

From my perspective, roll renews on the tanks only and heal via atonement. Would be almost identical to current implementation except that atonement heals would be more focused onto two targets rather than anyone in the potential raid that takes a random hit of damage or stands in a fire patch for 2 seconds. On top of that being able to essentially 'choose' the targets for divine aegis would probably be super broken. It would also probably force Disc into more of a single target niche since maintaining grace on a large amount of people would probably be impossible and with disc in it's current implementation: atonement and lvl 90 talents make up a massive portion of their throughput.

I always like things to think about though, don't take my thoughts for negative criticism!