[Priest] State of Discipline 4.0.1

[ecnam]

That last thread didn't seem to turn out well, so even though I'm a new member I thought I'd take a stab at getting a discussion back on track.

From a general play standpoint, disc seems to be in a fun, if not powerful spot--the standard "fun" spec grabbing AA/Atonement and the direct heal buffing talents works well for five mans and farm content, if being a bit underpowered compared to other healers. Anecdotally speaking our disc priest, when acting as a tank healer, couldn't compete (but this is possibly because she had been geared for bubble-spamming prepatch). Part of the problem is not having access to Inspiration, which just makes disc a not-very-good choice compared to other options.

However, for the majority of guilds, disc will still make H-LK significantly easier, though most people may find that two disc priests are required. Due to the Borrowed Time nerf as well as other haste losses, the haste rating GCD cap for disc (assuming 2/3 Darkness) is something around 740, which is pretty high considering all the mastery required to keep shield propped up where they need to be to handle infests on Heroic 25. A perfectly geared (full 277 haste/crit gear, with crit reforged to mastery) disc priest -should- be able to 1-bubble the infests, but my own guild (and several other late-comer LoD guilds) are finding themselves forced to move to a 2-disc strategy because our priests can't get their GCDs low enough.

Overall I think Disc is a very fun spec, if not as powerful as it could be, with a lot of potential for growth at 85. As far as I can tell Blizzard doesn't seem to think there's a problem with it so it's not likely to be buffed before Cataclysm. Love it or hate it, it's here to stay.

[jmottram08]

My main beef with disc is that PW:B just isn't good enough to justify a 3 min CD.

I mean, is it supposed to cast on the tank + melee? When i do this, it ends before the animation finishes growing, even in a 5 man. So do I cast in on the ranged when AE is coming? Most of the time they aren't that close together.

Am I alone here?

[Kelesti]

Barrier is quite gimmicky, unfortunately. The problem is, if they make it too good, then it's overpowered. But anything less and it's "why the hell would I want to cast this anyways?" And at the risk of things being "Too good" also comes the problem of never using it, because you're always waiting for that "right time" to cast.

It's a tough line to balance, and I'm not sure we'll be seeing this corrected before 3.1, if even then.

[Tamriel]

I absolutely love it. Ive never had so much playing a spec than i have with the new disc.

[jmottram08]

I absolutely love it. Ive never had so much playing a spec than i have with the new disc.

Yeah, but when / how do you use it?

If the tank is in danger, pain suppress. If the group is in danger, i usually innerfocus a prayer of healing.

I just want to know the real use-case of PW:B. Is it for melee? If so its grossly (on live and in beta) underpowered. Is it for casters? If so the CD seems way too long.


I would almost want to see it channeled, and cost mana per dmg absorbed. If its to powerful, raise the mana costs. Disc feels its missing AE healing anyway.

[Tamriel]

Yeah, but when / how do you use it?

If the tank is in danger, pain suppress. If the group is in danger, i usually innerfocus a prayer of healing.

I just want to know the real use-case of PW:B. Is it for melee? If so its grossly (on live and in beta) underpowered. Is it for casters? If so the CD seems way too long.


I would almost want to see it channeled, and cost mana per dmg absorbed. If its to powerful, raise the mana costs. Disc feels its missing AE healing anyway.

Heres a quick answer to that. I pvp. Nothing else. I hate icc with a passion.

[Deleted]

I would say, use power word: barrier whenever you know aoe damage is incoming, or you are struggling keeping people alive only by smiting. After that you can change to shielding, using penance and combining inner focus with greater heal.

Just a general question. When smitehealing is it better to have the group stack up whenever possible, or just go their merry way and try to use penance for dpsers and greater heal for a heal on the tank?

[ecnam]

PW:B is pretty bad, even with a 2 minute cooldown. The glyph gives it a decent "meh" factor; you can drop it on a tank and get a tiny healing increase (might end up being more useful/beneficial in Cata, the way things are going to scale exponentially).

Would be useful/interesting if it worked like AMZ--energizing the Disc Priest's mana as it absorbs damage, fitting in with the design aesthetic of Rapture and making it very nice.

Just a general question. When smitehealing is it better to have the group stack up whenever possible, or just go their merry way and try to use penance for dpsers and greater heal for a heal on the tank?

Atonement has a 40 yard range as far as I know, so it should be more than enough to cover incidental five man healing. Besides, flash heal is cheap/broken at the moment, so sending out the occasional flash heal (maybe 5 per archangel cycle) isn't going to hurt you much manawise. And if it does, hey, that's what fiend and HoH are for.

[JustTed]

I've watched a few videos on the Youtubage of some fights in the PoV of a Disc Priest in a couple of the Cataclysm heroic bosses, and I'm really excited to test all of that out come December. Atonement/Archangel really looks to be something that may be required, and I don't know if I agree with that only because I think that with such small talent trees, we should be able to spec in either the pure healing build or the Smite build without losing out on important efficiency/strength of heals. It looked like the priest I was watching was using Archangel pretty regularly and the mana regen seems to be a huge must.

I'm excited to hear about the feedback of the raid testing, and I really hope that Disc will stay on par with the other healers. I think Atonement/Archangel may become slightly situational in a raid, but I think that since Blizzard put these type of abilities in all of the healers specs, they'll add in definite areas/times in the fight in which to use damage abilities to get the mana regen. We'll see!

Now, on a personal side note: I used PW:B on the final boss in Old Kingdom. I did use it for myself, but it + Psychic Scream glyphed + Smite Spec = Fun. I know that using it for myself is not how it was supposed to be used, but it was fun and pretty, so I did it.

[Drekor]

Would be useful/interesting if it worked like AMZ--energizing the Disc Priest's mana as it absorbs damage, fitting in with the design aesthetic of Rapture and making it very nice.

I like that idea.

Currently I've been using PW:B as an emergency spell similar to pain suppression. I've found it's actually more powerful than PS as it'll absorb a lot of damage per hit(typically more than 40% of the damage). Put onto a single person effectively gives them a second life on top of giving you time to bring their HP back to full. As long as it's only protecting one person it's very strong. Protecting multiple people is not something it can do well... thankfully though the area it covers is so small only getting a single person in it is quite easy.

[Kamakiri]

What are the stats priority as Disc now?

[MortalWombat]

What are the stats priority as Disc now?

From what I hear it goes like this
If you're more of an atonement disc. Int > SP > Haste > Mastery = Crit > Spirit
And if you're a shield maniac Mastery > Haste(to the GCD Cap I imagine) > Int > SP > Crit > Str(JK) > Spirit
They could be off but this is just what I heard on EJ recently.

[dekadron]

Atonement has 8 yard range.

It's my belief, after trying it out in 25's, that atonement is not a healing ability to be relied upon in most situations. You just don't know who atonement is going to target when the melee is on the boss, and your output will be much lower than if you were using other spells, anyway.

Of course, the other talents that you would pick up in place of evangelism/archangel/atonement are not really remarkable. I would like to see more commentary / experimentation with people using evangelism during lulls, not for healing output, but in order to get an archangel boost for more clutch healing spots.

This is, of course, just for 4.0.1. It may become more important for good healing output in later patches / cata.

[Surea]

Atonement has 8 yard range.

It's my belief, after trying it out in 25's, that atonement is not a healing ability to be relied upon in most situations. You just don't know who atonement is going to target when the melee is on the boss, and your output will be much lower than if you were using other spells, anyway.

Of course, the other talents that you would pick up in place of evangelism/archangel/atonement are not really remarkable. I would like to see more commentary / experimentation with people using evangelism during lulls, not for healing output, but in order to get an archangel boost for more clutch healing spots.

This is, of course, just for 4.0.1. It may become more important for good healing output in later patches / cata.

In cata healing with atonement was the way to go for me, I don't think I'll change my mind soon. In 4.0 I use atonement mainly to get the archangel proc at certain times. You don't go oom, so you don't have to care about mana. Therefore I'm still using a lot of flash heal.

[harky]

From what I hear it goes like this
If you're more of an atonement disc. Int > SP > Haste > Mastery = Crit > Spirit
And if you're a shield maniac Mastery > Haste(to the GCD Cap I imagine) > Int > SP > Crit > Str(JK) > Spirit
They could be off but this is just what I heard on EJ recently.

Mastery > Int, or Int > Mastery depends on how much Int you already have. The less Int you have the more important it will become. It's only when you have a high base Int value that Mastery surpasses it. So before 264 it's more like Int > Mastery > Haste and in high end gear it's Mastery > Int > Haste unless you have 700+ Haste at which point it's Mastery > Int and other stats are superfluous.

[jmottram08]

Put onto a single person effectively gives them a second life on top of giving you time to bring their HP back to full. As long as it's only protecting one person it's very strong. Protecting multiple people is not something it can do well... thankfully though the area it covers is so small only getting a single person in it is quite easy.

While this might be true, this is NOT what the spell is meant to do. If we wanted a single person saver, we need a ultra powerful pw:s, not a group shield.

I'm just saying, for what it does its pretty useless. If it were on a 30 sec CD maybe, or if it were 5 times as strong and on a 10 min CD, again maybe. Maybe i am over reacting here, but it doesn't seem as strong as PW:S, especially when the CD is more than 8 times longer. (Edit. Looks like it roughly absorbs ~25k dmg. Meh. thats less than 2 PoHs)

On beta and now live, I barely ever use it. The glyph is nice, but the barrier is so fickle about staying up that is is unreliable. Many times you can't get off a gheal before it is down.

[Wuga]

While this might be true, this is NOT what the spell is meant to do. If we wanted a single person saver, we need a ultra powerful pw:s, not a group shield.

In its current state, this is all PW:B will ever be good for. To be effective as a group shield, it needs to scale positively with the number of targets it affects (ie, the total amount absorbed should be X * # of people under the bubble, not just some fixed X). As it is now, all you do by including a large group under the barrier is dilute the shield on each target to basically trivial levels.

[Bigslick]

Yeah, but when / how do you use it?

If the tank is in danger, pain suppress. If the group is in danger, i usually innerfocus a prayer of healing.

I just want to know the real use-case of PW:B. Is it for melee? If so its grossly (on live and in beta) underpowered. Is it for casters? If so the CD seems way too long.

In a ICC 10H LK fight last night, the disc priest used it at the ledge phase to cover herself and the resto shaman, providing them a fairly extended period of time to focus on the raid healing without having to focus on themselves as much. Similarly, it might be put in play for a single player soaking vile spirits in P3.

If you expect it to do a tremendous amount of mitigation for a large number of people, you're going to be disappointed. It's not a cure-all, but careful consideration of where and when to place it can make it quite valuable.

Plus, it's OP in BG's when you're getting zerged.

[Apostolic]

In a ICC 10H LK fight last night, the disc priest used it at the ledge phase to cover herself and the resto shaman, providing them a fairly extended period of time to focus on the raid healing without having to focus on themselves as much. Similarly, it might be put in play for a single player soaking vile spirits in P3.

If you expect it to do a tremendous amount of mitigation for a large number of people, you're going to be disappointed. It's not a cure-all, but careful consideration of where and when to place it can make it quite valuable.

Plus, it's OP in BG's when you're getting zerged.

1- PW:B is a bit underwhelming for a group bubble. It is diffidently no PalySanc. What I have used it for, is have the healers stack under it, thus only making 4 groups to heal, rather then 5. This allows 1 healer to focus on the tanks, while the other 4 top off each group.

2- If the whole raid is taking consistent damage, then PW:S is still the way to go. You will still top the healing/absorb charts.

3- Tank healing right now is not really viable due to the fact that we can not get inspiration. However, with healing reducing the amount that weakened soul lasts, you can provide greater up time on PW:S on the tank. So the priority for tank healing at is: PW:S>Renew>Healx4>IF:GH. If you have enough haste, you can do a IF:GH rotation.

I do agreed that for straight AOE healing, disc is behind Holy. However, I think we need to be looked at as the 17th DPS, 6th healer, Utility Personnel all rolled in one.

However, remember we are being designed around lvl 85, and not 80, so things will drastically change at that point, most likely for the better.

[dekadron]

I agree with your comment about balance at 80 vs 85 but your rotation you give is all messed up, you didn't include penance and you got too many heals in, I would just cast 1 or 2 to reduce to weakened soul time and replace the others with flash heal or GH if you like. If you have the luxury of just focusing on 1 tank as your assignment then I think a disc priest with the strength of soul talent would be excellent at keeping that tank up.