Atonement - Play-style dead?

[Stupid-Maniac]

Just trying to get a definitive answer, with the changes coming and expected, is the play style over?

I was wanting to come back to the game to give this a shot. NOT because of it being strong, but the days of healing with so many games are just over. I haven't played in a long while and wanted something more different with the play style. I watched videos of the class recently this suits my style so much. But if its not viable in the next expansion then no point. All healing classes are just boring. Its my opinion. Other games at least have different methods of healing. This is what makes it unique. Again i don't care if its over powered, I really couldn't, the play style is just awesome to watch and would be better to play.

Can anyone give some light in the direction their taking it?

EDIT: Spelling

[KaPe]

You were never supposed to spam damage spells for the entire fight, with only brief pause to activate Archangel, fire off Divine Star and maybe use shield every once in a while. Penance was supposed to be used defensively as well, whereas nowadays it makes almost zero sense to do so - three smart heals instead of one bigger single target heals.

Atonement was supposed to feel like a trade off - minor damage, average healing, something you do in your spare time. It evolved into primary method of healing, with almost no downside, while offering advantages unmatched by other specs. I'd almost say that this playstyle attract wannabe healers - people who don't want to concern themselves with silly things like targetting and would actually prefer to dps. Not everyone, sure, but I'd be surprised if there isn't quite a few of those.

Is "real" healing boring? I don't know - all I know is that I personally am really tired of Atonement. It's nearly brainless, very effective and superior to other options - Holy included.

WoD seems to be heading back into "Atonement is backup healing" instead of "spam Smite/Penance/Holy Fire throughout entire boss fight". Can't say that I mind.

[Dierdre]

You were never supposed to spam damage spells for the entire fight

This. /tenchar

[Adinora]

It's too soon to tell if it's a dead play style. And, as most xpacs go, disc will be rough to play in the start of the xpac and will scale well with gear. I assume that will go along with atonement healing as well.

Personally I don't see how atonement healing is fun - it's pretty spammy. I played disc for a while and switched to holy, which I find much more engaging. Maybe a healer isn't for you?

[CailinUaigneach]

Straight atonement is not even a legit play style. You're a wasted healer/dps slot if ALL you're going to do is atonement. Atonement, even in it's current form, is there as your "filler" and to keep up your Evangelism for Archangel. If you want to play a Disc priest to it's full effect, you should be Shielding and Spirit Shelling before incoming raid damage; casting PoM often so it will jump; using your 90 talent with archangel pretty much on CD. Being a good Disc is about knowing the fight and timing, not just spamming 3 buttons.

As to answer your question: yes atonement will be a little less powerful. Spamming your atonement abilities (which penance will no longer be a part of) will definitely not keep your raid up and will probably put you very low on the meters. In WoD, so far it seems like atonement will be there for those moments when nothing is going on or to return mana, or maybe to help burn down an add or something since they did state that atonement will hit harder but do less healing.

[Deleted]

Straight atonement is not even a legit play style. You're a wasted healer/dps slot if ALL you're going to do is atonement. Atonement, even in it's current form, is there as your "filler" and to keep up your Evangelism for Archangel. If you want to play a Disc priest to it's full effect, you should be Shielding and Spirit Shelling before incoming raid damage; casting PoM often so it will jump; using your 90 talent with archangel pretty much on CD. Being a good Disc is about knowing the fight and timing, not just spamming 3 buttons.

Yeah, no actually. In SoO smiting is definately not a filler, you will be getting better results if you're smiting all night long. PoM is almost always a wasted GCD, your 90 talent is never used on CD (except thok) and you only use spirit shell when you're sure you're going to lose someone without, which is rarely the case.

On a full 14/14hc evening, pom is less than 2% healing overall, T90 is 6% and SS is 10% (and half of this is from Garrosh encounter). And this is during farm raids, dps was even more useful when current tier was still on progress.

[Stupid-Maniac]

You were never supposed to spam damage spells for the entire fight, with only brief pause to activate Archangel, fire off Divine Star and maybe use shield every once in a while. Penance was supposed to be used defensively as well, whereas nowadays it makes almost zero sense to do so - three smart heals instead of one bigger single target heals.

Atonement was supposed to feel like a trade off - minor damage, average healing, something you do in your spare time. It evolved into primary method of healing, with almost no downside, while offering advantages unmatched by other specs. I'd almost say that this playstyle attract wannabe healers - people who don't want to concern themselves with silly things like targetting and would actually prefer to dps. Not everyone, sure, but I'd be surprised if there isn't quite a few of those.

Is "real" healing boring? I don't know - all I know is that I personally am really tired of Atonement. It's nearly brainless, very effective and superior to other options - Holy included.

WoD seems to be heading back into "Atonement is backup healing" instead of "spam Smite/Penance/Holy Fire throughout entire boss fight". Can't say that I mind.

Thanks for your reply,

I want a hybrid play style. I don't intend to stand back and DPS to heal. I want to throw shields, heal, and DPS also as a kind of rotational system so to speak. At this point in time I see people flat out attacking. That isn't really what I was saying. What I want is;

1 - Is Atonement basicly none existent anymore. So the only time to use it, is if you totally out gear a dungeon you're doing and just use it for LOLZ

2 - It becomes part of a proper rotation that is used from now on, not something that you just spam.

Personally number 2 is what I want. I've been healing since release up until Wrath and it became so boring. I kind of what a hybrid type rotation, that to me is so much fun. There are many healing classes out there, some should be different at least....

[Deleted]

Yeah, no actually. In SoO smiting is definately not a filler, you will be getting better results if you're smiting all night long. PoM is almost always a wasted GCD, your 90 talent is never used on CD (except thok) and you only use spirit shell when you're sure you're going to lose someone without, which is rarely the case.

On a full 14/14hc evening, pom is less than 2% healing overall, T90 is 6% and SS is 10% (and half of this is from Garrosh encounter). And this is during farm raids, dps was even more useful when current tier was still on progress.

But during farm, when you out gear and have better knowledge of the encounter, you don't really need to be using L90 on CD, properly gaming the legendary meta and using Spirit Shell. The situation is different when you are still learning the encounters and Atonement acts more as a filler.

It becomes part of a proper rotation that is used from now on, not something that you just spam.

You will still be using it to build Evangelism, especially if you need to use Penance to heal. You just won't be using it as much as it is currently due to the healing being less smart.

[Stupid-Maniac]

It's too soon to tell if it's a dead play style. And, as most xpacs go, disc will be rough to play in the start of the xpac and will scale well with gear. I assume that will go along with atonement healing as well.

Personally I don't see how atonement healing is fun - it's pretty spammy. I played disc for a while and switched to holy, which I find much more engaging. Maybe a healer isn't for you?

If it was just a spammer then I agree 100% that it would be so boring. However, if it becomes part of a hybrid rotation, that would be amazing and SO MUCH fun.

[Deleted]

If it was just a spammer then I agree 100% that it would be so boring. However, if it becomes part of a hybrid rotation, that would be amazing and SO MUCH fun.

That is basically what it is at the moment when you are still progressing on content. In WoD, it will be less of a filler if that makes sense. You probably won't want to be using it quite as much and will supplement with direct heals or Holy Nova.

[Instructor Soki]

As usual, Blizzard will overnerf Attonement healing.

[Deleted]

But during farm, when you out gear and have better knowledge of the encounter, you don't really need to be using L90 on CD, properly gaming the legendary meta and using Spirit Shell. The situation is different when you are still learning the encounters and Atonement acts more as a filler.

Well from my experience, it has been exactly the opposite. DPS was really the hard gear check during early progress, and while learning fight mechanics I always tried to use Spirit Shell as less as possible (like everything that is a dps loss):
- Sha exploding pride
- one of the Iron Jugg pulses
- sometime on "oh shit moment" during shamans falling meteor
- on big add during spoils encounter
- Blackfuse empowered magnet
- Klaxxi fiery edge
- Garrosh ironstars/ww/bombardment

To my mind, there is 2 thing that makes priest really strong during progress: his ability to prevent killing damage thanks to ridiculously amount of absorb and to be able to provide dps the rest of the time. But I agree with the op, healing with a priest is really really different from any other healer (expect monk maybe).

[Stupid-Maniac]

That is basically what it is at the moment when you are still progressing on content. In WoD, it will be less of a filler if that makes sense. You probably won't want to be using it quite as much and will supplement with direct heals or Holy Nova.

I was REALLY hoping Aimeez that you were going to reply - I really love your arguments for the class. This is what I fear, is that it won't be hardly used any more which just sucks. If we barely use it at all, I don't think I will be healing in the next expansion.

If it becomes a part of the rotation is really required then man I will be all for it. I mean honestly, I hope it becomes a system where we really need to get buffs that beneift our shields/heals more. That is what I believe. Have some system where Smite and Holy Fire beef up our next healing spells resulting in greater benefits for the fight.

That to me sounds MUCH better. It's a system that was similar to Warhammer Online - Look I don't want to bring that up, but that play style was just enjoyable, it really gave another flavour to healing.

I'm really sick and tired, of classes being pigeon hold, and told "This is what you do as a <class>" there is no other way to make it different. I think its silly, there needs to be diversity and It's early yes I know, but for the moment I fear that the play style is dead.

[Deleted]

It certainly is going to be interesting. Taking penance out of atonement is a gigantic nerf (more so than the smart heal nerf). With penance regenerating mana I could see PoH/HN weaved into the rotation instead of just more smites.

I quite enjoy the DPS-like playstyle of disc, so I really hope they're going to make sure to let us keep it. But I expect they're just going to nerf it so hard it's going to become unusable or make it just as overpowered as it is now (and then nerf it again).

[Deleted]

I was REALLY hoping Aimeez that you were going to reply - I really love your arguments for the class. This is what I fear, is that it won't be hardly used any more which just sucks. If we barely use it at all, I don't think I will be healing in the next expansion.

Probably because we seem to be looking for similar things in the class! It doesn't look like we will be losing the Atonement, Evangelism and Archangel interplay so we will still need to Smite or use offensive Penance it will just be happening much less.

I'm really sick and tired, of classes being pigeon hold, and told "This is what you do as a <class>" there is no other way to make it different. I think its silly, there needs to be diversity and It's early yes I know, but for the moment I fear that the play style is dead.

I'm beginning to think that the introduction of Active Mana Regeneration is to foster different play styles. For example, a Holy Priest could potentially stack spirit and then fall into a cycle of renew and CoH or could use throughput stats, rest in Chakra: Chastise when mana is needed and switch to higher throughput heals like Clarity of Purpose when needed. An active regeneration Holy Priest would still give you some of the DPS to heal gameplay so long as FDCL is chosen.

For Discipline I feel it is less clear. I guess if you wanted to orientate towards active mana regeneration you would use Penance offensively and then switch to direct heals / shields so that the mana you cast on Smite isn't wasted by unintelligent Atonement heals. Gearing towards passive regeneration might allow you to Smite more often but then you would likely need to hold Penance for more targeted heals when Atonement RNG is bad.

If Atonement counts towards Words of Mending, it might work well. Similarly, if Clarity of Will offers a long lasting shield, there might be the opportunity of pre-healing vulnerable targets with this and then switching to Atonement. Limiting Atonement only to Smite once more might have made the DPS rotation even simpler (which is kind of crazy - it was already one of the simplest things) but it does mean that the method of healing can now be balanced around Smite damage, the individual healing of Smite can be higher and it forces more single target healing.

Lots of things to consider. I love the current variant of Discipline (still slowly progressing through 10 man) since in the environment I currently play in it really does feel like DPS to Heal is your filler with shielding, SS, direct Penance and L90 being used as needed. If we can keep the DPSing as a filler, supplementing with Holy Nova and direct Penance and maybe the occasional Heal during low damage that'd be nice. I just don't want to see Discipline only using Atonement to build Evangelism and then returning to Heal.

It certainly is going to be interesting. Taking penance out of atonement is a gigantic nerf (more so than the smart heal nerf). With penance regenerating mana I could see PoH/HN weaved into the rotation instead of just more smites.

That seems to be the intent. Instead of using offensive Penance as a ghetto AoE heal, we'll need to use HN a few times.

[Stupid-Maniac]

Probably because we seem to be looking for similar things in the class! It doesn't look like we will be losing the Atonement, Evangelism and Archangel interplay so we will still need to Smite or use offensive Penance it will just be happening much less.



I'm beginning to think that the introduction of Active Mana Regeneration is to foster different play styles. For example, a Holy Priest could potentially stack spirit and then fall into a cycle of renew and CoH or could use throughput stats, rest in Chakra: Chastise when mana is needed and switch to higher throughput heals like Clarity of Purpose when needed. An active regeneration Holy Priest would still give you some of the DPS to heal gameplay so long as FDCL is chosen.

For Discipline I feel it is less clear. I guess if you wanted to orientate towards active mana regeneration you would use Penance offensively and then switch to direct heals / shields so that the mana you cast on Smite isn't wasted by unintelligent Atonement heals. Gearing towards passive regeneration might allow you to Smite more often but then you would likely need to hold Penance for more targeted heals when Atonement RNG is bad.

If Atonement counts towards Words of Mending, it might work well. Similarly, if Clarity of Will offers a long lasting shield, there might be the opportunity of pre-healing vulnerable targets with this and then switching to Atonement. Limiting Atonement only to Smite once more might have made the DPS rotation even simpler (which is kind of crazy - it was already one of the simplest things) but it does mean that the method of healing can now be balanced around Smite damage, the individual healing of Smite can be higher and it forces more single target healing.

Lots of things to consider. I love the current variant of Discipline (still slowly progressing through 10 man) since in the environment I currently play in it really does feel like DPS to Heal is your filler with shielding, SS, direct Penance and L90 being used as needed. If we can keep the DPSing as a filler, supplementing with Holy Nova and direct Penance and maybe the occasional Heal during low damage that'd be nice. I just don't want to see Discipline only using Atonement to build Evangelism and then returning to Heal.



That seems to be the intent. Instead of using offensive Penance as a ghetto AoE heal, we'll need to use HN a few times.

I agree 100% hopefully it becomes this. They seriously will really need to nerf a lot more I think to make sure that it doesn't happen any more. Lets hope the play style is still similar, but now with some slight changes.