More Pruning... What's left for disc?

[Jimjam38]

Binding Heal is now only available to Holy Priests.
Borrowed Time has been removed.
Dispersion and Vampiric Touch no longer restores mana.
Base mana regeneration rate for Shadow Priest has been increased by 200%, Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch mana costs have been reduced by 50% to compensate.
Divine Hymn now heals all party or raid members instead of a variable number depending on raid size. Its healing has been adjusted to compensate.
Evangelism is now available only to Discipline Priests and no longer affects the damage or mana cost of spells. Damage of affected spells have been adjusted to compensate.
Focused Will now triggers from any damage taken instead of being limited to being the victim of any damage above 5% of total health or being critically hit by non-periodic attacks.
Inner Focus has been removed.
Inner Will has been removed.
Lightwell’s healing effect is no longer canceled if the target takes enough damage.
Pain Suppression no longer reduces the target’s threat by 5%.
Shadowform no longer allows any healing spells to be cast but also no longer has a restriction on casting other Holy spells.
Spirit Shell has been removed.
Strength of Soul has been removed.
Train of Thought has been removed.
Vampiric Embrace now heals all party and raid members for 10% of damage done, and this healing is no longer split between targets (up from 75% of damage done, split between targets).

So that's from today's MMO updates...
I can handle a lot, and I'm well aware of the fact that pruning isn't restricted to priests, but this seems excessive. Like, really excessive. Spirit Shell is arguably our most important ability currently, and was a huge QoL change when it was first added.
On top of that, Inner Focus is also gone, and several of our iconic and most useful passives (Strength of Soul, Train of Thought, Borrowed Time) too. Whats left? With Atonement healing turned into dogshit are we really just going back to LK style PWS spaming? Have I missed something here?
And for that matter, that will our new leveling Perks be, since I do believe 2 of those 3 passives were going to be buffed by our perks...
Until now I had been able to take all these patch notes with a grain of salt, but this is really pushing it.

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I just want to clarify, before any more non-disc players come in here and tell us to QQ harder, our MAIN concerns are not about the nerfs to atonement, the loss of spirit shell or never ending debate about absorbs.
The purpose of this thread was to voice legitimate concerns regarding the loss of our core mechanics and passives, and to speculate about where blizzard could possibly intend to take the spec, if anywhere.

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Borrowed Time has returned after some kind of eureka moment at blizzard HQ, now merged into the PW:S tooltip for disc only:

Power Word Shield:"Shield a friendly target, absorbing [ 573.2% of Spell Power ] damage. Lasts 15 sec. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. Once shielded, the target cannot be shielded again for 15 sec.

Also grants you Borrowed Time, reducing the cast time or channel time of your next Priest spell within 6 sec by 15%."

Also, scooby and the gang have solved the mystery of the Enhanced Strength of Soul perk:

"Empowered Archangel Name Changed from Enhanced Strength of Soul to Empowered Archangel. Strength of Soul can also trigger from Penance. The next Prayer of Healing you cast after activating Archangel has 100% increased critical strike chance."

In another moment of transcendent brilliance, the devs have envisioned a completely new, 100% original perk that definitely does not look suspiciously like a shitty version of Inner Focus. Nope, it's completely original, or as Celestalon would insist 'functionally completely different'

[Warstar]

Next on the list they're just going to prune away the entire disc spec and priests will now only be able to choose between holy and shadow.

[Aviditas]

It was a huge QoL change it when it was "first added"
Its been awhile, they'll find a way to fill that little niche but honestly Im glad. Disc needed to be brought down a peg.

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Finished reading your rant so I'll add one thing. You say "Until now I had been able to take all these patch notes with a grain of salt, but this is really pushing it."

Dont follow them if you're going to get worked up on Alpha Patch Notes. All it leads to is heartache followed by relief when everyone realizes that what they lost they gain back in another way and sometimes a better way.

[Overdispersion]

The use of Spirit Shell is one of very few things that distinguishes a good disc from a bad one. On a good day it does 15-20% of my healing and whenever our spriest has to go disc it does about 5% because he doesn't know how to use it properly. The rest of the removed abilities I can frankly easily adjust to.

[Generalfrisk]

One thing complainers fail to notice is that most, if not all of these abilities have had their effects added into other abilities. Shamans for example had nearly all their iconic weapon imbues removed, but whoopsy daisy... it's passive now.

One less button I have to push!

And before you disc complainers come in crying and complaining, yes, some of your actual buttons got removed, like Spirit Shell, we're all losing something. Disc Priests are broken overpowered every Xpac, try not to be spoiled.

[Therougetitan]

I get why spirit shell was removed, it was too powerful.

Why the passives though? They were small things that made helped make things a little more interesting and it's not like they took up a spot on the action bar.

[Jimjam38]

It was a huge QoL change it when it was "first added"
Its been awhile, they'll find a way to fill that little niche but honestly Im glad. Disc needed to be brought down a peg.

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Finished reading your rant so I'll add one thing. You say "Until now I had been able to take all these patch notes with a grain of salt, but this is really pushing it."

Dont follow them if you're going to get worked up on Alpha Patch Notes. All it leads to is heartache followed by relief when everyone realizes that what they lost they gain back in another way and sometimes a better way.

So far they haven't added very much at all. Monk Crane Stance, Holy Nova and a few other minor additions to various specs. The entire goal of this xpac has expressively been to remove things. I get that. What I'm saying is that this leaves disc with a total of 3 unique passives, being Evangelism, Grace and Divine Ageis, only one of which, Evangelism, is mechanically relevant to actually playing the spec.
Without Train of Thought, Strength of Soul and Borrowed Time, disc becomes extremely lacking in significant mechanics. Meanwhile, Holy still has Serendipity, its 3 chakra benefits, rapid renewal and spirit of redemption, and also interact fantastically with several of the passive talents (Surge of Light, Divine Insight, probably Words of Mending too).
Yes, disc has been horrendously overpowered this expansion, more so in 5.4 than ever, I'll be the first to admit that, and I completely understand that it needs significant nerfs. But they did that already, when they made Atonement a 'dumb' heal, Capped the 90 talents AoE and removed the mana return from rapture. Those are what broke disc, especially the smart healing from Atonement. That was understandable, and expected, as much as I personally disliked the changes. Add the removal of SS to that and I'll pass it off as typical Blizzard overreacting to a class needing nerfing, but nothing obscenely significant. Nerfing is fine.
But they didn't just nerf all that, they then went and removed our only remaining and significant mechanics from the disc specialisation: Borrowed Time, Strength of Soul and Train of Thought. These were neither insignificant abilities that never got used, nor were they overpowered and required nerfing, nor were they significant button bloat. I don't understand these changes. Top all this off with the removal of our iconic ability Inner Focus and what is left for disc? Really, if all we do is spam PW:S that's got to be the most boring spec i've ever heard. Even WotLK disc had more to it than that.

What kills a spec is lack of interacting mechanics, and these prunings have done exactly that. If it was just removal of spirit shell, I'd think, okay well that was probably coming anyway, they'll probally give us back something in return, but when they remove everything that made the spec mechanically interesting, thats when I begin to doubt

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One thing complainers fail to notice is that most, if not all of these abilities have had their effects added into other abilities. Shamans for example had nearly all their iconic weapon imbues removed, but whoopsy daisy... it's passive now.

One less button I have to push!

And before you disc complainers come in crying and complaining, yes, some of your actual buttons got removed, like Spirit Shell, we're all losing something. Disc Priests are broken overpowered every Xpac, try not to be spoiled.

Firstly, no, disc has not been overpowered every xpac. In fact they were complete dogshit outside of pvp for every xpac before cata.

Secondly, as I've already said twice, I can understand the removal of spirit shell, it saddens me because it was a very interesting and useful ability, but admittedly overpowered. That's not what I'm 'crying and complaining' about.
One of my alts is a shaman, so I've been on top of those changes too, so I'll gladly put it in shaman terms for you. Removing Train of Thought, Strength of Soul and Borrowed Time is not like making Weapon Imbues passive. Its like removing weapon imbues completely, and then also removing flurry and static shock, and replacing them with nothing (static shock I'm aware has been removed, however its effects have been somewhat merged into stormstrike).
And then on top of that, removing Inner Focus is like taking away searing totem too.

[Deleted]

This round of pruning seemed a little sour to me, not specifically to disc.

I kind of understood their reasoning for taking some abilities out, the sheer number of buttons was getting quite overwhelming (I imagine, to some people). However, removing passives that add a layer of gameplay just doesn't jive with me. What does removing borrowed time achieve? It's a little bit of extra gameplay available to the higher caliber players and entirely ignorable by players that want simplicity. Same can be said for Strength of soul and rapture, although I do understand the reasoning for mana changes.

I'll admit that I expected inner focus to be gone in the first round (and therefore Train of Thought) as it was a relatively minor button taking up space.

Honestly I'm pretty happy about spirit shell. It felt clunky and not particularly indicative of a healer ("someone save that person! I'm busy spirit shelling...").

However, in terms of the overall 'style' of disc I think it's the right direction. Assuming discs healing spells are balanced then it's simply shifting the focus away from absorbs and more to proper healing, with a bit of absorbing.
My concerns of the pruning aren't limited to disc. I think overall they're lowering the skill cap without significantly simplifying the basics - which imo is completely backwards.
Fewer spells with clever ways to use them is good.
Fewer spells with simple ways to use them is boring.
I'd like to blame my lack of throughput on my skill rather than bad RNG on procs tyvm

[Fluttershy]

>removed shadowfiend/mindbender regen

Nice work lovely priest-friends, now I have to be a unicorn who puts points in from darkness comes light and add another button for some crappy flash heal proc. Then add the fact that twist of fate will be near useless if they make healing more like cataclysm which means I have to get divine insight.

Awesome, how much of a cut are these guys getting from those razer nagas?

Every healer has 20 stupid procs and 7 abilities to juggle around for no good reason, they might actually want to start pruning abilities.


'retards' is not appropriate, so I updated your post - consider it a warning

~ Yva

[Larynx]

Penance.

/10char

[Jimjam38]

>removed shadowfiend/mindbender regen

Nice work retards, now I have to be a spastic who puts points in from darkness comes light and add another button for some crappy flash heal proc. Then add the fact that twist of fate will be near useless if they make healing more like cataclysm which means I have to get divine insight.

Awesome, how much of a cut are these guys getting from those razer nagas?

Every healer has 20 stupid procs and 7 abilities to juggle around for no good reason, they might actually want to start pruning abilities.

Actually, no, only shadowfiend had its mana regen removed, with the intention of making mindbender more competitive with PW:Sol in terms of Mana regen, since PW:Sol wont get the extra regen from Shadowfiend still being there.

[Deleted]

However, in terms of the overall 'style' of disc I think it's the right direction. Assuming discs healing spells are balanced then it's simply shifting the focus away from absorbs and more to proper healing, with a bit of absorbing.

But all of that could have been done with tuning numbers, instead of removing class defining abilities. Atonement looks much less potent due to the dumb smart heal change and will likely just be a minor filler ability to gain Archangel. Not that Atonement was ever a problem anyway, in my unpopular opinion. Spirit Shell, the real pro-active healing defining ability, is going but could have been changed to a heal / shield split or given a longer cooldown. Which just about returns Discipline to early-Cataclysm levels but now without the fun abilities like Rapture and Borrowed Time.

I really feel bad for Druids with these changes. Non-stacking Lifebloom feels so wrong.

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Penance.

/10char

Time until?

Penance has been removed.

Disc needed to be brought down a peg.

Sure, without a doubt! However, it didn't need the abilities that made it fun, interesting and different being removed just to sate the horrible Ability Prune monster at the bottom of Blizzard's HQ.

[Larynx]

Time until?

Penance has been removed.

Its niche clearly overlaps with Greater Heal.

At this point, I'm cynical after Disc being gutted so much. Who needs ability synergy and interesting gameplay? Lets remove EVERYTHING.

[Deleted]

I think Blizzard might be taking the idea that people want a return to TBC a little too literally. It was a great expansion and the atmosphere was amazing but the healing was much, much less fun than it is now.

I wonder if Discipline will get a new ~40 to 1 minute cooldown button to replace Spirit Shell?

[Larynx]

i think blizzard might be taking the idea that people want a return to tbc a little too literally. It was a great expansion and the atmosphere was amazing but the healing was much, much less fun than it is now.

CIRCLEOFHEALING
CIRCLEOFHEALING
CIRCLEOFHEALING
CIRCLEOFHEALING
CIRCLEOFHEALING
CIRCLEOFHEALING
CIRCLEOFHEALING
CIRCLEOFHEALING

Such cerebral and intelligent mechanics.

[Jimjam38]

But all of that could have been done with tuning numbers, instead of removing class defining abilities. Atonement looks much less potent due to the dumb smart heal change and will likely just be a minor filler ability to gain Archangel. Spirit Shell, the real pro-active healing defining ability, is going but could have been changed to a heal / shield split or given a longer cooldown. Which just about returns Discipline to early-Cataclysm levels but now without the fun abilities like Rapture and Borrowed Time.

I really feel bad for Druids with these changes. Non-stacking Lifebloom feels so wrong.

Pretty much my sentiments. It doesn't make sense to remove all these passives, they weren't overpowered, they weren't button bloat and they weren't irrelevant things no one cared about. They don't even feel consistent with the other 4 classes I've been closely watching - Dk, Monk, Pala and Shammy - where most of the things pruned get merged into something new. This isnt the usual kind of blizzard overreaction nerf hammer, this is just flat out amputation.

Also
Yeah, I haven't personally played a druid since my WotLK private server days, but their pruning section looked pretty brutal too.
I lol'd at the dk section though, like GG blizzard, finally a spec that hasn't actually got enough abilities to remove much.

[Deleted]

I lol'd at the dk section though, like GG blizzard, finally a spec that hasn't actually got enough abilities to remove much.

The mage changes got me. Especially with the follow up tweet that they (apparently) aren't a class in waiting for ability removals!

Anyway, this sapping of flavour from the different classes and specs is pretty worrying.

CIRCLEOFHEALING

No. It is Renew now. You are now a ICC Druid with a weak Wild Growth.

[Hyve]

Penance Spam

[Jimjam38]

I REALLLY don't want to abandon disc after such an enjoyable expansion like some FoTM player, but these changes make it look like even if disc manages to stay competitive heal wise, its going to be so mechanically dull that it devolves into ICC era (if a disc could even get into a raid group) PW:S spam but we won't even have Borrowed Time to kinda mix it up with. That's not a spec I want to play.

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I knew there was something fundamentally wrong up at Blizzard HQ when truly Iconic and Flavored abilities like Inner Fire got removed and Classic Spells that haven't been changed much since Vanilla like PoM and Wild Growth got given cast times. Its the WoW Iconocost 8|

I just want someone to come along and put all my fears to rest, like, dont worry guiz, the sky isnt falling cause x, y and z things you haven't considered, and I'm sure it will all become clear in the next lot of patchnotes

[ThePants999]

If some of this isn't reverted, I won't even be levelling my priest in WoD.

I played priest because I loved having a huge toolbox and using all of it. I used every single one of the abilities that are being removed, every raid. Too much is gone now.