Hey everyone, I am going to be changing mains for 10.1. I am really enjoying my priest. I will be healing mainly with shadow if needed. My question is I want to learn Discipline. We have one or two holy priests already and I was hoping have a disc priest in raid would be helpful or do you think I should stay Holy. My guild does normal and we try for AoTC if we can. We won’t be doing any mythic raids. I have a group of friends I do M+ with as well. Any advice or suggestions I appreciate.
What size is your group?
Discipline somewhat “caps out” around 20 people - they can’t effectively get atonement on the whole raid in groups larger than that, and they’ll be less useful for raid-wide damage the more people you have above that.
If your group is that size or Smaller, Discipline is fine and is looking pretty OK for next tier. It’s a pretty difficult spec to pick up, though, because playing it well in raid specifically is very heavily dependent on “ramping up” your atonement blankets during raid-wide damage. Think stuff like the bombs on Razsageth - you want to have atonement on the entire raid JUST BEFORE that goes off then pump out damage to heal everyone at once.
In M+, the spec is considerably easier now, especially with stronger PW:R from the upcoming tier set. Chances are that it’s gonna be a great pick for M+, just with a bit of a learning curve still (albeit not nearly as large as raid disc).
Edit:
Though, to be clear, in Normal difficulty, disc is still gonna work for you regardless of size. You might just be behind your other healers a bit if they’re sniping the big moments - because their CDs will be more effective than yours.
Discipline is the most difficult healer spec, especially for raiding. What Capslock said, you NEED to know when raid damage is about to happen and have atonements on your whole raid before the damage goes out or you will do 0 healing. I would start out as Holy and then swap to Disc once you’re familiar with the boss fights so that you’ll know when to ramp.
Jak was saying disc and shammie look good for next tier. Hopefully the damage patterns favor us. Dropping back to heroic only next tier. Just dont have the time these day
Disc for M+ is imo much easier than holy as the “kill stuff to heal” leads to stuff dying faster and less spot healing being needed due to healing just constantly happening.
Disc healing in raid, however…yeah I’m not touching that nonsense. The whole “heal 20 people who might not even need healing to get up a buff so you can heal when actual damage comes” just never sat right with me either as a design or as something that was fun to do. If you enjoy it and want to learn it more power to do, but for me it’s always been counter intuitive since the Legion redesign.