Lack of Priest transparency? Zero feedback on Disc from twitter

[Nurasu]

I don't mind the idea of Holy Nova spam

I've already resigned myself to going Holy if they don't drastically reduce the mana cost of PoH, since I have always and still do absolutely hate Holy Nova. I hate the idea of running around trying to get in range of specific people that need healing, spamming HN on them, and running off to the next people, especially with reduced instant cast heals for filler. No other healer has to do anything even remotely similar. As much as I love penance, I hate HN more. I honestly don't even care where the numbers for HN come in, I absolutely don't want to use it. Maybe not very rational, but I think feeling counts more for these types of spells anyways.

[Larynx]

Really glad we finally got some much needed answers out of Blizzard.

Oh wait...

We'll nerf archangel so it's not mandatory to keep up with the other healers, we'll buff atonement a bit so it's not completely awful and call it a day, everything else seems perfect! You don't like spamming holy nova? well too bad for you then.

[davesignal]

Finally get Blizzard talking about Discipline, and it gets hijacked by PVP shit. Figures.

[Venaliter]

Finally get Blizzard talking about Discipline, and it gets hijacked by PVP shit. Figures.

PvP is where Disc has the problems. It'll be just fine in PvE.

[Larynx]

PvP is where Disc has the problems. It'll be just fine in PvE.

Lol

/10char

[Deleted]

Lol

/10char

The way raid damage is shaping up. I think disc might be ok numbers wise in pve. It will suck in some encounters and be decent (or top in niche situations) in others. The real problem is that the spec has become even more brainless than it was in SoO (how is that even possible!)

In PvP however apparently disc needs a lot of help.

[Larynx]

The way raid damage is shaping up. I think disc might be ok numbers wise in pve. It will suck in some encounters and be decent (or top in niche situations) in others. The real problem is that the spec has become even more brainless than it was in SoO (how is that even possible!)

In PvP however apparently disc needs a lot of help.

Numbers are honestly irrelevant.

The real problem is that the spec has become even more brainless than it was in SoO (how is that even possible!)

Is exactly the issue.

[Jimjam38]

PvP is where Disc has the problems. It'll be just fine in PvE.

You a comedian brah?

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But srsly
Shocked and amazed to see some legitimate disc discussion, even if it did get very pvp orientated by the end. Interrupts are my pet peeve in pve when I cant trust my retarded raid to do their interrupts so having silence will make me very, very happy.
We're tuned to be balanced around maximum archangel uptime and that makes it mandatory to use on cooldown, so hey the solution is to just nerf it and make us shit all the time instead of just approx 40% of the time. God I hope they remember to buff our baseline if they're gonna nerf archangel.
The primary issue with archangel is because of the stupid baked in inner focus. Ffs, make it separate again, just suck it up and revert blizzard, admit you were wrong and move on with our lives.
However, even with that change archangel is still going to demand maximum uptime, its a buff, thats how it works. You dont just choose to save a short buff for those intense moments that might happen but might not and never use it outside of that. Like ohhey I could increase my throughput right now but I dont feel like it. No, never gonna happen.
One option is to give it a much longer cooldown. Oh great, look guiz, we just got wings, and im not talking about the spell effect. Nah fuck that, shit option, I dont want generic boring cooldowns like everyone else, especially not if it just gives them another ability to list among priests many, many, *sarcasm* too many cooldowns, pruning needed *just to clarify, sarcasm* pls.
Another option, people realize that archangel is a buff, not a cooldown, maximum uptime is inherent and the skillcap disctates smart gameplay and timing for the mimimum amount of downtime needed to line it up with the most intense periods. If you're sitting on it for more than 15 seconds in order to line it up with whatever you feel it needs to be saved for then your just bad at timing it. So this option, People reaching enlightenment? not bloody likely. In terms of what it is (a buff) and how it works and needs to be used, its fine, nothing needs changing, the only reason it currently feels problematic is because of the retarded inner focus replacement perk. Change that and it wont be 'too mandatory',siting on it for 5-10 seconds wont feel like an excruciating trade off.
This is the most realistic fix.
My personal preference, however, is the option where they make it into an toggle on off buff with a limited duration that when turned off regenerates at up to 60% the rate that its spent when toggled on(thus the same uptime as current). Add in an atonement evangelism interaction (eg, evangelism stacks increase archangel regen rate for x seconds per stack when toggled off). Ta da, same result without all the bitching about peopke having to use it on cooldown because they're incompetent at timing it.
The skillcap then comes from knowing when to pool the duration and when to spend it. Essentially the same but slightly more flexible and much more intuitive use for the same fundamental style of play.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, some *new* mechanics. Redesigned Borrowed Time... how do we feel about that. At first I wanted to kick and scream that haste will never be valuable, y u do dis blizzard, etc etc, but, as I stood back and regained my composture, accepting that disc stat priorities would likely have to change anyway with the new healing model, perhaps its a good thing. Using PWS every 6 or so seconds (maybe the duration needs to be longer? ) to maintain a haste value buff could be a bit like a new rapture kind of gameplsy. It doesnt appear to be consumed on the first spell use, so perhaps with a little haste this buff will see some good use, even if only to reduce the gcd during HN spam. Idk, an interesting change. God damn I wish I had beta access to test this stuff.

Moving on, our stat attunement finally got a name and a potentially shiny new additional effect. PoM crit chance increased by 10% or something. Any new mechanics are welcome in my opinion, but this could prove to be either far less interesting than the above mentioned BT change, or far, far more significant. Assuming the later is a result of WoM and a significant PoM numbers buff, perhaps that could bring some significant improvements to a spread encounter gameplay. Lets keep our fingers crossed that atonement will eventually work with WoM, since they are insisting on still going onwards with the atonement stuff (fine by me, but I do hope they manage to make good on their intentions). Anyway, im out of battery, ttyl

[Spotnick]

Holy Nova spam has one advantage, you can do it on the move.. I believe only monks can aoe heal on the move (with spinning crane kick/chi torpedo)

Which is kind of weird because that was the whole point of putting a cast time on our T90 talents and prayer of mending.

Let's see the good side, we're the only healers with 2 healing specs. Not saying holy is awesome right now, but we have choice.

And I thought we got an extra 5% crit, you crushed my dreams by telling me they just renamed our atonement.. back to the dummies lol.

[Lovestar]

PvP is where Disc has the problems. It'll be just fine in PvE.

"Fine" maybe. But will it be fun? =/

- - - Updated - - -

Not saying holy is awesome right now, but we have choice.

I actually see this as a double-edged... uh, dagger (let's go with something Priests can use).

Yes, you have the option of going Holy.

But... you have the option of going Holy.

In other words, the developers can be a lot more cavalier with one spec if an alternative exists (GC sort-of round-about said as much ages ago).

[Deleted]

The Redesigned Borrowed Time should be fine. It doesn't increase haste or decrease cast time as currently but instead makes any haste that is available more potent. In other words, if you wanted to use it to really PW:S / CoW layer, you are going to have to gear into haste deliberately to see much of an impact. That will come with the trade-off of mastery and crit so it is, on the surface, fine.

Enlightenment might be an attempt to try and make Words of Glory more appealing to Discipline. If this is the case the bonus crit chance could do with being slightly higher.

These are nice little things but they don't solve the rotational AA issue. The problem isn't people struggling with the skillcap of using AA on CD but rather that the right choice is always to use it on CD. To solve this, Evangelism must be almost as potent as AA with Evangelism and AA offering different secondary benefits - the mana regeneration / critical strike choice that I babbled about in another thread for example. A risk and reward setup with Evangelism and AA Seems like it could offer interesting gameplay while Evangelism being built by a buffed Atonement and impacting non-Atonement healing would go a long way to really fleshing Disc out a bit more.

[Basmothh]

To solve this, Evangelism must be almost as potent as AA with Evangelism and AA offering different secondary benefits - the mana regeneration / critical strike choice that I babbled about in another thread for example. A risk and reward setup with Evangelism and AA Seems like it could offer interesting gameplay while Evangelism being built by a buffed Atonement and impacting non-Atonement healing would go a long way to really fleshing Disc out a bit more.

There'd be a ramp up to get to 5 stacks of Evan, but once that's achieved, you just have to refresh it once every 20 seconds. If you need to pop AA, just rinse and repeat. AA may no longer be rotational, but building to 5 stacks of Evangelism will be. Considering how easy it is to maintain 5 stacks of Evan, this also leads to issues whereby Disc has to balanced around constant Evangelism uptime.

The main reason why AA is used on CD indiscriminately is because it provides a potent buff with high uptime (60%). Increasing the buff to 30-35% and decreasing the the duration to 6-8s would encourage using it only when the raid really needs healing. If the frequency of damage is high enough to warrant using AA rotationally, that's honestly not something I see issue with, especially if Atonement gets a minor buff. Additionally, they may want to look into the interaction between AA and CoW/PW:S. The strength of these absorbs further encourage using AA on CD even if the raid isn't taking any damage.

[Deleted]

And would there really be a problem with requiring the generation of 5 stacks of Evangelism? One of Discipline's niche has become DPS to heal and many people enjoy it, irrespective of what Blizzard deems good for the game. This would be one way to keep the requirement to do DPS present in the spec while providing a natural and mechanical shift to direct and more targeted healing, especially if the mana cost and healing becomes tied to direct heals instead of Atonement spells.

Increasing the potency of the buff and decreasing the duration could work but wouldn't that result in our healing being tuned weaker outside of such burst moments? The points where we are already struggling. Otherwise, the situation is one where for 52 seconds per minute of every fight Discipline does equivalent amounts of healing as every other healer yet for 8 it suddenly becomes worth 135% of a healer. I would much rather have a structure where Archangel provides a moderate increase to healing but impacts a secondary stat more. The problem, as you point out, is that it could still very easily become beneficial to pop a large healing increase AA on CD if it interacts well with CoW and PW:S, something which is made all the more possible with the return of Borrowed Time. That said, the concentrated buff proposal is easier to implement.

Regardless, I think the next step with Blizzard's tuning will have to be buffing Smite if they don't make considerable changes to mechanics. Empowered Archangel also needs to go and Inner Focus needs to return if the idea is to prevent AA being used on CD.

[Basmothh]

And would there really be a problem with requiring the generation of 5 stacks of Evangelism? One of Discipline's niche has become DPS to heal and many people enjoy it, irrespective of what Blizzard deems good for the game. This would be one way to keep the requirement to do DPS present in the spec while providing a natural and mechanical shift to direct and more targeted healing, especially if the mana cost and healing becomes tied to direct heals instead of Atonement spells.

You are still required to DPS to heal with the current version of AA. How would giving Evangelism its own bonus change the way we use Atonement or make it more fun though?

Increasing the potency of the buff and decreasing the duration could work but wouldn't that result in our healing being tuned weaker outside of such burst moments? The points where we are already struggling. Otherwise, the situation is one where for 52 seconds per minute of every fight Discipline does equivalent amounts of healing as every other healer yet for 8 it suddenly becomes worth 135% of a healer. I would much rather have a structure where Archangel provides a moderate increase to healing but impacts a secondary stat more. The problem, as you point out, is that it could still very easily become beneficial to pop a large healing increase AA on CD if it interacts well with CoW and PW:S, something which is made all the more possible with the return of Borrowed Time. That said, the concentrated buff proposal is easier to implement.

AA would still retain its 30s CD even if its changed to a 30% boost for 6 seconds. However, this change would also result in less overall benefit from AA. This has two important advantages.

Firstly, it would increase the trade-off to using Atonement instead of regular heals when there's actual healing needed. This means that Disc should no longer feel compelled to use Atonement to build Evangelism instead of more optimal and appropriate raid heals for the situation. With optimal spell selection no longer guaranteeing having AA up on CD, this would also allow for more judicious usage of AA when it's actually needed. Secondly, reducing AA's overall benefit provides the opportunity to buff other areas of our toolkit. This would serve to make Disc Priests feel slightly stronger when AA isn't up.

Like I mentioned though, the interaction between AA and absorbs like CoW and PW:S is an issue. It can be remedied by simply reworking AA to only benefit our heals, but that has the downside of complicating AA's functionality. On the flipside, the change to BT would actually go well with reducing AA's duration to 6s.

Regardless, your suggestions to reworking Evangelism/AA would actually have the opposite effect. No one would ever use AA on absorbs, because using AA for pre-shielding means that you have neither Evangelism or AA up once raid damage lands.

[Deleted]

You are still required to DPS to heal with the current version of AA. How would giving Evangelism its own bonus change the way we use Atonement or make it more fun though?

One of the desires for Discipline is more an interplay between our spells if I am not mistaken. At the moment, we DPS to build Evangelism purely to eventually spend it upon Archangel. There is not much of a trade-off - it is always correct to spend stacked Evangelism at the moment in SoO to gain the buff provided by AA. In WoD, this is compounded even more so because Evangelism does not offer much of a tangible benefit as the spells it acts upon are so weak currently. One solution to this would be to buff Atonement and call it a day. Or, you could change Evangelism such that it interacts with the potency and mana cost of our traditional heals.

Then, you have an impetus to DPS in order to improve direct heals with an eventual choice through AA for moderately more throughput at the expense of heals becoming more costly and time spent restacking Evangelism. I think this is more engaging than DPS --> Evangelism and then gain a buff through AA, especially if there is an introduction of a mana cost vs throughput (20% crit or something with an increase in throughput over stacked Evangelism) choice in Evangelism vs AA.

Firstly, it would increase the trade-off to using Atonement instead of regular heals when there's actual healing needed. This means that Disc should no longer feel compelled to use Atonement to build Evangelism instead of more optimal and appropriate raid heals for the situation. With optimal spell selection no longer guaranteeing having AA up on CD, this would also allow for more judicious usage of AA when it's actually needed. Secondly, reducing AA's overall benefit provides the opportunity to buff other areas of our toolkit. This would serve to make Disc Priests feel slightly stronger when AA isn't up.

With such a short CD though, there is no real impetus to hold AA for any length of time, especially when it provides such a strong buff relative to baseline healing. There would still be an advantage to trying to use AA as much as possible, even if it is popped during a lull and then used to stack a couple of massive CoW and PW:S combinations on the tanks. At that point, it just falls back into being rotational within the constraints of the encounter - you might wait 5 or 6 seconds here and there but that really isn't much different from normal.

Secondly, reducing AA's overall benefit provides the opportunity to buff other areas of our toolkit. This would serve to make Disc Priests feel slightly stronger when AA isn't up.

That needs to be done, irrespective of the eventual design of AA!

Like I mentioned though, the interaction between AA and absorbs like CoW and PW:S is an issue. It can be remedied by simply reworking AA to only benefit our heals, but that has the downside of complicating AA's functionality. On the flipside, the change to BT would actually go well with reducing AA's duration to 6s.

Having AA only benefit heals is problematic in my opinion. It removes interaction with what we are supposed to be good at - shielding! The change to BT in addition to a 6 second AA makes Spirit Shell less of an option (unless at high haste levels) during AA and would favour PW:S and CoW. Choosing to gear for more haste would then make BT and PW:S and CoW even more potent.

I'll admit I'm primarily arguing against this because I think a six second duration is pressing and stressful. It is like Rapture procs - you become inundated with the desire to maximise them. If AA is reduced, I'd rather see it at around 10 seconds to coincide with Spirit Shell.

[Spotnick]

Doesn't anyone thing PW:S and CoW (this one will be funny for tauren priests) is pretty much the same spell just one with a cooldown and the other with a cast time?

Might as well have done something that if a target has Weakened Soul casting PW:S on them isn't instant and call it a day.

[Jimjam38]

I cant wait for them to completely destroy disc again in the next build because they nerf the shit out of archangel and do nothing to compensate. "OH but isnt this what you guys wanted? An ability that's so shit it's rarely worth using? You did say you don't want it to be used on cooldown"

This stupid debate, and all its retarded brethren on the bnet forums, will more than likely result in blizzard making some horrendously bad change to archangel/evangelism . I can see it so clearly its almost like its happened already. The fact that some twat actually managed to get a mention of it into the interview just sets this fate in stone.
The problem is NOT about archangel "being too strong", and its NOT about it "being used on cooldown". Those things havent changed at all from MoP, and archangel was not a problem in MoP. "Oh hey blizzard, i want an awesome throughput buff that I somehow won't want to use a much as possible".
Nope, not going to happen. Ever heard a caster say "pls don't give me the mage buff, i don't like the idea of maximum uptime". Ever heard someone say "oh man this holy paladin is pro, he doesn't use any cooldowns at all". No, because its retarded. Do you know WHY other classes healing cooldowns aren't used on cooldown? Its not because they're strictly being saved for the 'opportune moment', its because depending on the fight length and cooldown time, you probably won't get many more uses out of it by using it on cooldown. The uptime doesn't change much when its 12 seconds every 3 mins being used 3 times, or 2 times, and in that case it becomes better to use it when it will have more benefit. If wing's had a 40s cooldown, do you REALLY think the paladins would save it for 3 mins to be used only during the most critical phase? No, because that's retarded.
Oh okay, so now the problem isnt about it being best used on cooldown, or about derps who can't make small timing ajustments, but rather the problem is that its "always worth using". Oh noes, someone went and calculated that 60% uptime on a 25% healing increase is worth 'kinda wasting' a few casts of smite and holy fire. Oh shet, dear god no, not a throughput increase that's always worth using. Pls not that, anything but that.
Can you tell me when a throughput increase ISN'T worth using?

Derp: But.. but.. but.. like.. but.. I want to save it for those periods of high damage.

Herp: Well shit son, its got a 30s coolwon and 60% uptime, I'm sure you can figure something out.

Derp: But sometimes those high damage phases last more than 18 seconds.

Herp: MOAR THAN 18 SECONDS? WELL FAK LETS JUST QUIT NOW THEN. Oh or you could realize that it's probably still going to be better to 'waste' a few smites during its lull period and have it back up ready to go for mad stronk throughput again if the high damage is still going on when archangel comes off cd.

Derp: But I don't wanna smite, its all icky.

Herp: Well i suggest you drink a concrete milkshake and harden the fuck up or roll another class.

Derp: No, i meant smite isn't strong enough. That and I don't like popping archangel to make use of something that should be an independent ability.

Herp: WELL, THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS! We actually managed to find the real problem. Turns out it was hidden deep within the caves of the Moron Mountains, located in the famous Inarticulate Archipelago. Its really not the best place for an inter-expansion holiday, 0/10 would not visit again.

[ThePlanckEnergy]

Holy Nova spam has one advantage, you can do it on the move.. I believe only monks can aoe heal on the move (with spinning crane kick/chi torpedo)

Which is kind of weird because that was the whole point of putting a cast time on our T90 talents and prayer of mending.

Let's see the good side, we're the only healers with 2 healing specs. Not saying holy is awesome right now, but we have choice.

And I thought we got an extra 5% crit, you crushed my dreams by telling me they just renamed our atonement.. back to the dummies lol.

Holy Priest also have Circle of Healing with no cast time... something I'm fairly positive is an EGREGIOUS oversight on the part of the Devs.

[methz]

Holy Priest also have Circle of Healing with no cast time... something I'm fairly positive is an EGREGIOUS oversight on the part of the Devs.

It wouldn't be worth casting if it had a cast time. Same as HN.

[rylai21]

Welp, you can now have 100% Archangel uptime. And with the new borrowed time I'm getting an extra 1% haste...