I see on many different posts, many different forums, many different discord, many different twitch, people asking to bring back the Bubble disc for Priest , the one spec thousands of people enjoyed compared to the actual Disc priest we have, and yet still no answers about it,no changes, nothing going towards it… I don’t understand why? Why is Blizzard not going foward this with the fan base?
Facts and statistics shows that the current specialisation of the Discipline Priest is much less enjoyed compared to the old Disc Bubble we had in previous expansions, but why not doing anything about it ?
It needs to be understood that it might and will not be easy to re implement the bubble disc priest back into the game, to adjust everything and to make sure it would not be as OVERPOWER as it was back then. But tuning, balancing and adjusting are things that can be properly done with a bit of time.
Since we are now in the Alpha, the environment where BALANCING AND TUNING (and creating,let’s be honets) are still in place, why not taking the right time to do so,if that’s what the player base is asking for ?
I get that the player base and fans are one thing and that on the other hand, Blizzard have the final decision since they are the creators of the game, but why not working together towards this path for the Disc priest ?
I would like to hear you guys opinions, what do you think about it ? What are your thoughts about this ?
The problem wasn’t as simple as tuning. It’s not that the shields were overpowered, it’s that shields were impossible to balance if they made up the majority of our healing. They couldn’t scale appropriately over the course of an expansion, any more than atonement does. They also were guaranteed to snipe healing from other healers, getting first dibs on any incoming damage and often leaving little left over for other healers to heal. Of course this felt fantastic for the Disc priest - it was like bringing a car to a foot race. It felt terrible for everyone else.
The more balanced versions of Disc, pre-MoP, had more straight up healing - Flash Heal, Prayer of Healing, Binding Heal, Renew, Cascade. That’s what they need to bring back - more healing - not more shields. I envision a spec that has some strong but limited shields, some atonement, and a strong base of straight-up heals. That has the potential to be workable.
It’s obviously been said above but a healer with shields as their primary method of “healing” just doesn’t work from a balance perspective. In addition to the heal sniping, even just having that amount of damage prevention changes how Blizz would have to balance encounters. For a recent example look at The Restless Cabal in Crucible of Storms. If bubble priest existed, I can guarantee that raid groups would have just stacked disc even harder than they already did to cheese the void stone mechanic where healing was reduced by 100%. If bubble priest existed that entire mechanic wouldn’t have been possible because of one spec.
I do agree that there are a lot of pre-legion disc priests who had fun and want the bubble playstyle back. What I can also tell you is that, as someone who played mistweaver during the bubble disc era, more people within WoW’s entire playerbase never want to see it again. It felt terrible whenever I was grouped with a disc priest because I knew they would just snipe most healing (with minimal effort) before I even got a chance to do any. You just don’t see people against it as often because previous iterations of priest specs don’t get brought up much in other class forums.
As for my personal feelings on current disc - Legion disc is what caused me to change my main to priest. I find it far more engaging than other healers in this game and don’t want to see it’s playstyle homogenized with other healers. I’d rather see Holy gain some more utility with limited strong bubbles and talents to give it an option to play more like pre-mop disc. I could go for some QoL changes (like a spammable out of combat group heal) but that’s really it. I’m excited that damage>atonement is really being doubled down on in SL with the additions of mind blast and mind sear. Disc isn’t objectively in a terrible spot, and if any massive reworks need done, it’s shadow with how fundamentally broken and unbalanceable insanity is.
Besides everything above i will add, its just frigging BORING. No 1 button spam class should be top of the charts with so little effort, and that lack of effort while topping the charts is WHY its so popular.
Atonement Disc is challenging, it’s the higher skill level spec of the two healing specs priest offers. But as a reward for its challenge, it’s also the most engaging, and really, really fun when you figure it out.
The folks most often reminiscing about Bubble Disc should be blunt about what they want: an easy, unchallenging 1-button-to-win spec. They miss Disc when it was easier and hate Atonement because Atonement is, again, higher skill cap than just spamming bubbles.
If Disc could just get something to overcome its handicap in M+ I don’t think I would ever roll any other healer. (But it does have that handicap, and it feels really bad on certain affix weeks to the point I quit playing my priest completely.)
I feel like they could have balanced a mitigation version of Disc and made it more than a spam PoH or PW:S (depending on xpac) spec at the same time.
Doing things like making their absorbs not 100% up-front but instead only absorb a maximum of X per attack and balancing it so that absorbs make up maybe half of your output instead of 90% of it would be a start. You could then have some interaction between shielded allies and the rest of your kit.
That kind of design could actually pair with atonement as an optional way to heal the damage people are taking.
random thought: Alternatively to make 5 man Disc better in shadowlands, maybe they could play off a combination of concepts like premonition (PvP talent) and the 8.2 essence vitality conduit via a new small group focused talent where you could transfer your own health frequently to heal your group so the group damage is more focused on one target (you) and then have something like masochism become baseline to improve your ability to heal yourself. Could also throw in making using it proc and be affected by focused will to reduce the incoming damage.
edit: maybe prem is a bad example since it works based on atonement, but an AoE version of vitality conduit that would take a chunk of your hp and send it to 4 other targets
There’s two things that Blizzard devs have hated since the early years, and have gone to war over time and again, are DoTs (waves at the Afflic Warlocks), and bubbles/shields.
As long as the main devs are raiders, pre-Legion disc priests won’t be coming back. They don’t like the concept of sniping heals (a.k.a. ABSORBING DAMAGE like the spec was designed for since Vanilla). Irony for those who don’t even raid and who lost their class spec, to this philosophy change by the devs.
Best healing I ever did was from Vanilla to Legion as a disc priest, and no, its not OP (that narrative just gets old to someone who actually played it for 10+ years).
It did allow you to save the PUG group from the bad, but now, healers are so weak (any spec w/o best gear) since Blizzard REALLY REALLY REALLY wants other classes to use their damage avoidance/restoration abilities, in conjunction with an actual healer.
And as an older player, I would appreciate having back an “easy” healer class to play. And before you cast me adrift off on the iceflow, remember that more healers in the queue means faster queue times for you, and that you too will get older, but your love for gaming will not diminish.
As for me, I play dps now, though I do have a Holy priest in my back pocket.
I like what they’ve done with Disc, but the biggest problem for me is that our Talent Tree sucks. Only one talent for most rows are ever picked, there is almost no way to talent to improve 5 man healing.
Passive DPS is also a big problem. Since most other healers have to stop healing to do DPS, it really complicates balance.
Well depends on how you implement the shield/ bubble disc priest, if it is how the old shield would absorb the damage negating that healing in some ways, than yeah most likely will never want to see that redone as it pushed alot of healers out.
Now how could you reimplement the bubble/shield concept of disc, but do it in a method that aided the group an healers? Well we have a concept already used in the form of stagger that monks use, which delays the application of the damage basically for a given period of time (now that damage can be reduced). This idea actually works in hand with a healer actually as it allows them to get themselves set up to deal with the incoming damage. So I suggest the below idea for how to re-implement a style of disc that is somewhat like old bubble disc.
New shield mechanic: Shields would not function to delay the application of damage for a given duration, but with a upper limit on how much damage it could delay being applied to the shielded target/s. Now while the target/s are shielded healing done to the target/s will reduce this delayed damage up to a specific percentage. In this way the bubble would still work to allow the healer to set up, and manage damage, but now other healers could actually be used to reduce an mitigate the delayed damage.
Example: A disc priest places a shield on the tank in a encounter, which will delay up to 50k damage being applied for 15 seconds, which allows the healer to get some renews an such on the group. Then as the shield is ramping down the healer pumps into it some healing reducing the 50k it had delayed down to 15k that is applied as the shield 's duration ends. In a raid that 50k could be reduced by a pally or druid healing, while the disc shielded up the raid for some large aoe coming in and delaying a portion of the damage 10-15 seconds later.
I would say make it that reapplying the shield caused the delayed damage to be applied tot he shielded target early, over rolling the damage over.
Or, have the shields absorb a portion of damage taken, like ignore pain.
Buff Shields, but make them only absorb a maximum of 20% damage from each hit. Meaning that there is still more healing to do on shielded targets, and that shields aren’t guaranteed 100% efficiency all the time since they could time out before the entire thing gets absorbed.
It also makes Shields into more of a HoT, and like other HoTs your focus would be on maintaining the shield instead of just constantly spamming it on everyone.
I have been playing a bit more disc recently and it has definitely been growing on me. I still wish the shields were a liiiiiittle stronger outside of rapture, especially in a pvp setting, and slightly better out of combat healing would be nice for grievous/bursting weeks.
I haven’t raided in many years, so I know I’m missing out on a big portion of where atonement healing shines, but I still don’t think disc has some elusive skill cap that you can’t find on other healers. The playstyle is unique for sure, but the principles are the same in order to be the most successful with anything: anticipation, positioning, spatial awareness, proper CD management, proper global management, etc.
I know Disc gets memed on a lot for M+, but theres more Disc priests who run 20+ keys than Resto Shamans.
The biggest factor that holds disc back is… other players. Disc can heal damage just fine with some gear, but the problem arises when people take excessive damage. It can be difficult to recover.
For example, Disc can handle bursting just fine if you chain pull, but people in lower keys in particular like to fully kill a pack then move to the next, so the disc has nothing to attonement heal off of.
And to the OP, No, I don’t want bubble disc back. I had to go disc for our 25 man LK to bubble for phase 1, and that was just annoying “Cast PW:S down the raid frames”.
t wasnt op in vanilla, for obvious reasons. you ran out of mana. That was less of an issue in WoD
and there. is holy priest or monk with their smart heals and one button push raid cd
You could solo heal garosh in wod due to absorbs. (im sure it was wod, getting old) and with divine aegis coming from crits you stack divine star and between that and pws you could blanket a raid
Its not going to come back because it was a nightmare to balance. Disc priests were either weak as crap and not worth bringing to a raid, or they were the strongest healer in the game and absolutely destroying other healers on meters.
Though I really do miss it, old style disc was a lot of fun to play. I loved tossing out bubbles, spamming penance, prayer of mending, prayer of healing with divine aegis. Was extremely satisfying. Disc these days is a spec I avoid like the plague, not because its harder, but because it just doesnt feel fun to play (obviously an opinion)
Nah man, keep it the way it is. I like being able to nuke players and then spam heal mends. Actually with Depth of shadows + spirit of preservation, Disc is kinda OP
