[Priest] Mental Strength - 4.0 Discipline Discussion

[Deleted]

Shielding still offers a unique approach to "healing" that no healer replicates

FALSE
The whole holy pala mastery is PURE absorb (and way better in absorb than disc with the DA crit mechanism)
Holy has shields too apart from DA and PW:B

and despite the overall power being nerfed it still has good synergy with Borrowed Time, Renewed Hope, and Rapture.

No doubt there is good synergy.....
BUT you seems to completely ignore that ALL these 3 powers has been NERFED TOO.

Archangel is certainly an interesting approach to the nuke-healing design, certainly different from any other healer.

Interesting aproach no doubt,but interseting doesnt always mean usefull, and in this case its NOT usefull for a pure healer.

But claiming that Blizzard doesn't understand the tree, or has abandoned it, or that it clearly won't be competitive are just foolish statements.

How would you describe a mastery that isnt doing much more than getting nerfed numbers back to the point they were before ?
IF you dont see in a OVERALL nerf to almost EVERY aspect and talent in the disc tree as a nerf.......
Funny that while other healers DONT get NERFED numbers but BUFFED numbers overall and NEW spells, and all disc gets is a big fat NERF to lalmost all talents you seriously claim disc to still be competitive........

In the current state disc ISNT competitive at all with the other healer builds out there, its broken to such a degree that on raids nobody will EVER invite a disc if another healer is available.

And this comes from testing.................

[Neichus]

@Beezle
Holy's PoM is the same strength as Disc's now. All PoM-supporting talents have been removed. The only way Holy's may be stronger is if it's in the PoH Chakra AND PoM is counted as an AoE spell.

@Nocturna
I'm sorry, I'm not even going to bother arguing with you. Your posts are a combination of indignation and victimization, against which no argument can ever win.

[Deleted]

@Nocturna
I'm sorry, I'm not even going to bother arguing with you. Your posts are a combination of indignation and victimization, against which no argument can ever win.

Maybe i, unlike you, actually tested the disc tree and compared it to the "other" healers performance and can now, unlike you, say disc cant compete with the other healers at all.

[Fenixdown]

There hasn't been, one, single, endgame instance tested.
We're not even talking Heroic testing yet.

Why would you start to fret over something as easily hotfixed as the numbers, when the numbers themselves haven't even been tested competetively yet? Mindless doomcrying and naysaying abounds, eegads for sooth. Oh, lest we forget ''Oh noes, Holy gets more toys then we do!! '' Unadulterated QQ. Consider perhaps that the spec famed for possessing Improved Death may need something added to it, before blowing the attention seeking whistle for Disc. Archangel sounds cool. Bubbles are cool. Penance is cool. PW:barrier sounds cool. Focus on these things, lest the QQ wears upon thee too mucheth.

Mayhaps you should reread my post, lest you continue to look foolish.

Nowhere, unless you're intending for my post to sound as such to yourself, is my post the common traits "QQ" that you maybe have grown accustomed to. I work with numbers and facts and logic, not blind emotions with no concrete direction in them.

Also, at no point did I state holy didn't need something to make it more appealing. The major reason I went from holy in BC to discipline in Wrath is because holy was not as appealing to me late in that expansion as discipline looked in Wrath's beta. I was very happy with that selection. I no longer had to see Circle of Healing on my bar (ah the days of 4-spam), and I got to do something that I honestly preferred doing. Even given discipline's sheer lack of oomph in terms of actual HPS throughput, I understand what it's role is and I am content with such.

However, that being said, holy (while losing many of it's simplistic and boring "increase healing by X" talents) has gained the following very exciting talents to increase, modify, or otherwise maintain throughput.

-Chakra
-State of Mind, which can keep Chakra up for it's full duration if played right (making it a buff off the GCD with a 1 minute timer and 1 minute duration)
-Revelations (a talent that turns a new ability, possibly holy's mastery spell, into a heal)
-Holy Word : Chastice (possibly holy's mastery spell)
-A healing concecrate from Revelations (which is holy crap on a stick omgsauce, to put it amusingly :P )

The healing increase from Chakra alone is enough to now possibly make holy take it's place back as "best healing spec in the game". Since that one buff alone has the ability to give holy the option to either increase it's AoE efficiency or single target efficiency at will for any needed situation. Tank healer just died? That's okay, CHakra Heal and have at it until he's back up. Big AoE damage incoming? No worries. Chakra PoH and have at that, too. Increasing DoT that's not removable incoming? Pft, who needs a resto druid. Chakra Renew and you're good to go.

Where every other healing spec and class has a "nitche", so to speak, holy just became the near master of all of them with one ability that's off the global cooldown (meaning you can even macro it to spells easily).

Archangel may "sound" cool, but tell me in the grand scheme of things how many raid leaders you are going to see that want a healer that does damage to improve healing, and then doesn't really heal much to begin with. At best, it's a very exceptional PvP talent. It's nice to theorize that "there may be time to DPS when not needing to heal", but realistically, I've been doing that already. All you have to do is macro your DoTs to apply to your target of target, put them up during down time, and then proceed to heal/shield/ect. as needed. Unless you are stacking enough haste to bring Smite to the GCD cap, Archangel is unnecessary as an end-game talent. That's not even factoring how end-game mechanics might possibly change in Cataclysm (which I doubt will be to a point where this will be the option, as bossses become more complex with each passing expansion), this is simply knowing how boss mechanics work in general. A boss where you have enough downtime to make use of Archangel hasn't existed since Naxxramas. Especially as a discipline priest, who's function is to prevent incoming damage.

Power Word : Barrier, at a 3 minute cooldown, is an "oh s&*^" button. Should it change to be reduced by Aspiration, this changes greatly. That then places it at the same cooldown for Pain Suppression, which on an average heroic mode encounter in ICC i can get off about three times. You would be greatly surprised how much of a difference 36 seconds can make.

Penance loses a little bit of it's oomph. It is now, only by looking at the fact that there have been no announcements that it's healing capacity has had it's numbers internally altered through the spell, less healing than Greater Heal at a faster cast time. When capable of standing toe-to-toe with an unboosted Greater, yes, it was (and is in this expansion) an amazing healing spell. However, on top of it's slight loss in numbers, it also loses much of it's speed through Borrowed Time's reduction. This requires discipline priests, in order to keep the identical speed after shielding, to stack more haste through gearing. This actually leaves us with less room to gear up for mastery, as crit is still a heavy focus (for Divine Aegis) and our haste requirements actually greatly increase with the intent to make Flash Heal a situational spell and no longer our go-to button.

I'm not looking at this like Nocturna, who clearly is QQing. I'm being rational. Maybe they will visit discipline some more after they feel holy is where they want it. I'm hopeful for that. However, in the past two builds, the modifications to holy have been drastic changes that are incredibly appealing. The changes to discipline have totaled at less than a handful in those very same builds, and those have been quite lackluster.

At this present state, most guild leaders will not want a discipline priest. Most priests that enjoy healing will not want to play as discipline. It will become what holy was to many, including myself, in the past. The "boring" spec. Not for the reason that discipline doesn't have things that are somewhat interesting. Simply for the fact that holy's new toys are simply that much more interesting (when I saw the new Chakra, I already contemplated going back to holy right that second).

Holy needed the boost to become interesting again. Now, however, with everything they're gotten, discipline needs at least one more tool just in the hopes to stay afloat.

Fingers crossed.

[Kaesebrezen]

Penance loses a little bit of it's oomph. It is now, only by looking at the fact that there have been no announcements that it's healing capacity has had it's numbers internally altered through the spell, less healing than Greater Heal at a faster cast time. When capable of standing toe-to-toe with an unboosted Greater, yes, it was (and is in this expansion) an amazing healing spell.

Penance heals basic 15k hp for 1500 mana at level 83.
Gheal heals 13,5k hp for 3k mana at level 83.
With borrowed Time penance heals 25k for 1500 mana.

[Kelesti]

~~~***Fenixdown:***~~~

First, Holy had 3 fights where all it did was spam Circle. Three. If you weren't weaving in Greater Heals of various ranks, or Flash/Binding, and of course Mending, then you simply brought too many healers. It was an awesome spell, but with a couple exceptions, we were still better tank healers than Shaman (who would just cover everything up with Chain Spam anyways, that hasn't changed since 2.0). So you went from spamming "4" to spamming "2" now on Power Word: Shield, I fail to see why you haven't abandoned ship yet, if that was the reason in the first place.

The healing increase from Chakra alone is enough to now possibly make holy take it's place back as "best healing spec in the game". Since that one buff alone has the ability to give holy the option to either increase it's AoE efficiency or single target efficiency at will for any needed situation. Tank healer just died? That's okay, CHakra Heal and have at it until he's back up. Big AoE damage incoming? No worries. Chakra PoH and have at that, too. Increasing DoT that's not removable incoming? Pft, who needs a resto druid. Chakra Renew and you're good to go.

All healers are meant to be badass at filling any role. Resto Druids need to tank heal? Pfft, triple stack of Lifebloom, refresh it and spam Nourish, bring in Regrowth/Healing Touch as needed. Need to raid heal? Triple Rejuv fills nearly the same role that Chain Heal does, Effloresence is like a mini-Healing Rain.

Paladins? What're those? Oh right. Need to tank heal? Obvious choice is obvious. Need to Raid Heal? Well, Healing Hands is a self-centered Effloresence/Holy Nova with a HoT/Healing Rains. Bit of a cooldown on it, but it fills the same role. Light of Dawn is unique in its cone form, and also count into the fact that "smart-healing" spells are being toned down and we're expected to use more single target spells in the context of raid-damage, Paladins aren't that bad off here.

Holy may seem like a Powerhouse with some of these changes, but all classes are shaping up to feel like Powerhouses. That was the point. You should pick Holy because while in it, you feel powerful, not because you need to fill role <x> or because it's higher in parses. The same should be true of Discipline.

TL;DR version of that: Healers should be brought because they can heal and are good at it, not because they're a <Insert Class>. They don't have a "niche" anymore, and they shouldn't.

The comment on Archangel is kind of lulzy, I'm sorry. During downtime in a fight, what does a normal healer do? They spam heals to top the overhealing meter! Or they stand around and conserve mana. Or they DPS a little bit, excruciatingly weak, but hey it's a contribution. These happen on live! And not only are we expecting them to happen in 4.0, we're also told that it's intended to be that way. The only reason Discipline doesn't is because of the huge emphasis they have on shields, and massing them out during a time of no damage means "lol when damage comes back I win @ WoL again!" Discipline's mass shielding days aren't intended, doesn't matter if you feel that niche is Discipline's "primary role" blizzard feels their "primary role" is "Healer". Ignoring Fight Mechanics and a mana bar to spam these, whether in intense parts, or downtime, is going to have a negative effect.

If I as a raid officer had a choice between a healer who stood around, or a healer that brought occasional DPS when the phase of that fight didn't need full on 100% spam healing output, a raid leader's obvious choice is the latter, not the former. When people aren't supposed to spam shields anyways, they may actually get some bloody use out of it.

TL;DR version: Archangel/Evangelism isn't there to actually boost your healing, it's there to boost your ability to do "stuff" when healing isn't necessary.

I agree that Barrier needs to find itself on Aspiration.

Regarding Penance, I'm not so sure. We haven't had numbers brought in for our spells yet, just numbers thrown in there with little regard to balance. Penance could, and probably should, find its way onto Empowered Healing though. Regarding the loss of Borrowed Time is irrelevant. Every class wants to get Mastery, and balance it with Intellect, Crit, Haste, and Spirit (or hit if you're a mage/warlock). Every class. Period. Discipline "capping" in blue gear wasn't intended then, it's certainly not intended now, when they want you to care about all of the stats. Sure, priorities may make one better than the other for certain specs and playstyles, but the point is you want some balance of all of them, not just "Intellect + Mastery + Crit, ignore rest". Holy Priests may not have talents buffing their critical output, but realistically when people are getting hit hard enough that a crit isn't instant overheal, crit does gain some value for them, unlike live as well.

TL;DR version: Having "less room to gear up mastery" is 100% intended. You're not supposed to ignore one or two stats entirely. And Penance scaling ticks with Haste are just flat out sexy.

And my final comment is, yes, Discipline could use one more tool. I still vote Renew brings in a Sacred Shield, one buffer mini-absorb of non-stacking type of thing. The point is, a Discipline Priest that heals in live is already showered like a rockstar, because of how effective they can flow between preventative damage when needed (or beneficial) and sustaining people up when you're holding off on absorbs. It's hard to find a new spell to give them, or new mechanics, that won't tip the favor of that, but will screw over shield spammers in general. Where's the balance? They haven't found it yet, but I'm not really concerned for the fate of the spec, just yet. We've still got a ways to go.

What suggestions can you actually make to offer new mechanics that aren't either a) Blatently overpowered, or b) simply replacing one spell with another?

TL;DR: Beta is beta, make your suggestions.

[Neichus]

TL;DR version: Archangel/Evangelism isn't there to actually boost your healing, it's there to boost your ability to do "stuff" when healing isn't necessary.

I find myself disagreeing with you on that one point. Like Holy Discipline faces the choice of "to nuke or not to nuke?" If you decide to nuke then you pick up Evangelism, Archangel, Atonement, and you subspec into Shadow. Your end build is 31/3/7 (3 points being in Divine Fury). If you choose not to nuke then I'm guessing a 31/8/2 build will become standard (those 8 points being Divine Fury, Empowered Healing, and Inspiration; Veiled Shadows seems to me better all around than a 10% mana reduction on a subset of heals). In this second build you don't pick up Evangalism/Archangel/Atonement; they're kind of an all-or-none thing, because none of them work particularly well without Twisted Faith and if you're going to spec into Shadow you might as well reap all the Smite benefits.

Archangel's mana restore component is not massive. It primarily pays for the cost of five Smites and then a bit more to sweeten the deal; exactly how much mana regen it accounts for depends on how much time you have to Smite (you probably won't be using it every 15 seconds). The 15% healing buff I think is important; it counteracts the loss of Empowered Healing. Again it's a bit of a balance. A Smite build gets 15% to ALL heals but doesn't have 100% uptime and requires some time spent Smiting (which are also healing via Atonement), while a "pure" healing build gets 15% more on a subset of its heals but doesn't have to work for it. Smite builds get a pinch of Haste as well as perk that things like Psychic Scream and Shackle Undead won't miss. Pure heal builds get Inspiration.

In this case I think Smiting and Archangel aren't just incidental "do stuff when bored" talents. They're necessary to counteract the loss of other benefits you would get if you didn't spec into Smite.

Edit: in any case, I do agree that Discipline needs a bit of talent work. I feel like there are just a few too many points I need to spend to get down the tree and in the end I feel like I come up a bit short. I'm not necessarily sold that the tree needs a new mechanic though.

[remedy]

Edit: in any case, I do agree that Discipline needs a bit of talent work. I feel like there are just a few too many points I need to spend to get down the tree and in the end I feel like I come up a bit short. I'm not necessarily sold that the tree needs a new mechanic though.

Agree with this here. GC just posted again in a hunter thread that dps/healing talents aren't supposed to directly compete with utility, so unless there's an oversight, we can expect Disc to get rearranged some more. By my count there's 31 points of pretty strong healing/absorbing talents, leaving Evangelism, Archangel, Atonement, Reflective Shield, Focused Will and arguably PI out in the cold.

Holy, by contrast, sets up a very nice 5-pt choice between DP, Lightwell, SoR, Twirling Light, Body+Soul and Blessed Resilience. That fits the new model quite well, and with a couple months to go according to the latest interviews, it seems reasonable to say that Disc will get a tweaking.

New mechanics are *always* welcome in a game we've been playing for over 5 years, but Disc isn't getting one; or rather, we're getting the experimental "weave damage w/ healing" mechanic. Who knows? 2 years from now, they may be tuning all healing to work that way. Regardless, the PW:S/Penance/crit setup gave Disc entirely new life in WotLK. Clearly it's now Holy's turn, which all priests should consider a huge win.

I'm not sure what I think about the stat competition in the first 2 tiers. Preferring haste vs. healing vs. mana cost vs. reduced dmg vs. cast time seems like the kind of thing you go to the spreadsheet for rather than an interesting decision.

[Abandon]

FALSE
The whole holy pala mastery is PURE absorb (and way better in absorb than disc with the DA crit mechanism)
Holy has shields too apart from DA and PW:B

Erm...isn't the Holy mastery for Paladins called Critical Healing, higher amount from healing spell crits? I am not sure where you got absorbs from.

[Fenixdown]

I do agree, Kel, that all healing classes should not be grouped into categories anymore. I've agreed with that since I first started healing (in the days when I was my guild's main tank healer in SSC/TK, for example).

I took a look again at the talent trees in the current build. I noticed what the largest problem is. Discipline is still too bloated, especially at the top.

-If you spec holy and focus pretty much on healing, you miss one point in Test of Faith, Blessed Resilience, and Twirling Light. Total talent points : 5
-If you spec discipline and focus on healing, you lose one point in Renewed Hope, Attonement, Archangel/Evangelism, Reflective Shield, and Focused Will. Total talent points : 11

This means that discipline has a grand total of 42 possible talent points as opposed to holy's 36.

In contrast, shadow also only has a current total of 36 possible talent points.

So, hopefully some trimming is in order. And maybe one extra tool, since Archangel really doesn't seem all that practical to me (how much time will a healer really spend getting to DPS?).

On a side note, I am also sad that Inner Focus is still gone. I loved IF. I use it for all of my on use trinkets and most especially for channeling Divine Hymn.

P.S.: I would love to make suggestions to Blizzard. Sadly, I will never be picked for beta because my graphics card is poopy.

[Lysdexic]

Erm...isn't the Holy mastery for Paladins called Critical Healing, higher amount from healing spell crits? I am not sure where you got absorbs from.

I think this is old. Now it is a guaranteed absorb (% of the heal) on the target. It is a Holy Priest's Radiance (now called Echoes of Light) in the form of an absorb instead of a HoT.

[Deleted]

I do agree, Kel, that all healing classes should not be grouped into categories anymore. I've agreed with that since I first started healing (in the days when I was my guild's main tank healer in SSC/TK, for example).

I took a look again at the talent trees in the current build. I noticed what the largest problem is. Discipline is still too bloated, especially at the top.

-If you spec holy and focus pretty much on healing, you miss one point in Test of Faith, Blessed Resilience, and Twirling Light. Total talent points : 5
-If you spec discipline and focus on healing, you lose one point in Renewed Hope, Attonement, Archangel/Evangelism, Reflective Shield, and Focused Will. Total talent points : 11

This means that discipline has a grand total of 42 possible talent points as opposed to holy's 36.

In contrast, shadow also only has a current total of 36 possible talent points.

So, hopefully some trimming is in order. And maybe one extra tool, since Archangel really doesn't seem all that practical to me (how much time will a healer really spend getting to DPS?).

On a side note, I am also sad that Inner Focus is still gone. I loved IF. I use it for all of my on use trinkets and most especially for channeling Divine Hymn.

P.S.: I would love to make suggestions to Blizzard. Sadly, I will never be picked for beta because my graphics card is poopy.

Well, if you have any suggestions at all, you can write them here and i will surely pop my beta to send them to blizz
Disc needs help atm.

[Ynna]

I don't have any place in this discussion, as I'm just a Holy Priest, but I do want to say some words of reassurance. Us Holy Priests were complaining about the lack of updates on our chosen tree, how the tree was badly thought out... And all of a sudden: WHAM, lot's of Holy Priest Beta Love! I'm pretty sure they just haven't got around on decently updating the Discipline tree. Your time will come (hopefully soon).

[Kaibel]

Why not just make penance work with Evangelism?

eg:
Evangelism (penance): Increases your healing output of flash heal, heal, greater heal and penance by (x) and reduces the mana cost of those spells by (y) (X and Y cause they sound kinda cool =3 ).

^-- With this the standard Archangel "caster form" will work so you can either keep at it with Evangel or bust out Arch for some nifty mana regen.

Also make the Ev stack cap at 10% and keep Arch at the 15% healing boost, making Arch work even better as it will boost the power of all other healing spell not stated in Ev (pom, poh, hoh,.... we have a lot of abbreviations......)

Just a suggestion.

[Neichus]

I think the worry there is that Archangel is balanced around the assumption that you are using Smite to stack it. I'm not doubting your version would be stronger really, considering how fast Penance could stack Archangel, but I'm not sure if it would accomplish what they want.

[Kiora]

Discipline still needs a decent amount of attention, it seems. Right now it looks like it would be great for 5 mans if your tank can take hits well enough allowing you to do some work with all of the damage dealing talents but beyond that, I just can't see it shining that well, especially with the most recent changes to Holy. But a healing spec that heavily banks on the amount of gear another class has seems a bit of a poor spec choice.

[Nemrod]

I don't get the idea that a healer should DPS in times of little incoming damage. While I haven't been so lucky to get a beta invite this philosophy seems to collide with the effort of Blizzard to bring back mana conservation.

So on one hand mana is rare and i need to juggle efficient vs. big heals/fast heals, on the other hand I should do DPS and burn through mana?
I don't get it.

Are there numbers showing those 15% mana is more than regen+not casting smite?

[Kelesti]

It's not so much that it's more (well, it's about 400 mana more than 5 smites, assuming you didn't miss one), but that you can cast the smites with "no real loss" so far as mana goes. Druids get a Wrath that costs 0 mana, Paladins get our old Surge of Light on Exorcism (Called, Denounce) but it can crit thus proc'ing Illumination's mana restore, Resto Shaman get cheap Shocks making cheaper heals, ontop of Lightning Bolt generating Mana.

The point is, Nemrod, that spending your mana via healing is supposed to be important. Having a chance to DPS to contribute shouldn't penalize your ability to do that, just so long as you don't frivolously throw it away by "shielding/hotting everyone", or using the "wrong heals at the wrong time on the wrong people, just because you can".

[Surea]

well I'm speccing without archangel when I'm raiding that's for sure. My job is to heal, I don't feel like doing damage in between, it's not my job.

I believe they will give disc some more love, I hope at least!

Lot's of our talents are just really boring, but I also seem to disagree with our absorbtion mastery. As it stands now, we won't be using shields all the time, so our mastery should proc for DA. That means we'll be forced into stacking crit, while holy palladins get the same kinda bubble without the requirements of crit. If we're really forced to shield less (for which I'm happy though! ), then I would rather see our mastery to be the same as holy palladins.

[Kiora]

It's not so much that it's more (well, it's about 400 mana more than 5 smites, assuming you didn't miss one), but that you can cast the smites with "no real loss" so far as mana goes. Druids get a Wrath that costs 0 mana, Paladins get our old Surge of Light on Exorcism (Called, Denounce) but it can crit thus proc'ing Illumination's mana restore, Resto Shaman get cheap Shocks making cheaper heals, ontop of Lightning Bolt generating Mana.

The point is, Nemrod, that spending your mana via healing is supposed to be important. Having a chance to DPS to contribute shouldn't penalize your ability to do that, just so long as you don't frivolously throw it away by "shielding/hotting everyone", or using the "wrong heals at the wrong time on the wrong people, just because you can".

Pretty much what I was about to say, such talents also probably exist to reduce the pain of soloing when specced for healing. I still remember from Classic spamming Smite a ton of times to kill one enemy, then take a drink.