I’m considering playing disc priest this expac. I played shadow from wrath too bfa, and loved the class/spec, but eventually wanted to try other classes. I tried maining hunter in sl but the class just felt so much worse than priest that I gave up on it. I played some feral too in bfa and sl and it felt great to me, even when it was underpowered. It felt far better designed and bm and mm. Now, after a decade of dps, healing is more interesting to me, I really liked playing resto shaman at the end of sl, but the second df came out resto fell off a cliff. Same character, but everything was way more more difficult. Now, I’m thinking returning to priest is the way to go. It just felt the devs just did frustrating stuff with hunter, resto shaman isn’t fun for me anymore, and forums say shaman is an afterthought for the devs. I’m generally of the mindset that one should play what’s fun and ignore the outside noise, but I also don’t want to waste time playing a poorly designed or tuned spec. I don’t really care if the spec is s tier or not, but I would like to play a class/spec that is well maintained over time. Do we feel disc receives adequate attention and is well maintained?
Yes!, traditionally every new tier Disc gets a new round of nerfs! 
I’m joking btw… Well kind of… It did tend to happen, and for a Mythic raiding perspective the nerfs were warranted usually, the problem was that those nerfs impacted the spec everywhere else too (and Disc wasn’t overperforming on those other areas).
So typical lifecycle was:
Patch X.0 : OP in Raids, “Good” in M+ (never No1 but top-3).
Patch X.0.5 : Great in Raids, “Ok” in M+.
Patch X.1 : Very good in Raids, “Kind of weak in M+”.
Patch X.1.5 : Good in Raids, “Weak in M+” (but more importantly doesn’t feel good to play with having to spam direct heals over atonement).
Then sometimes it stayed there and sometimes it got further nerfs, but in general you’d knew that if Disc wasn’t at least Very Good (like A+ or S tier) in Raiding (talking Mythic, mostly) then it just didn’t feel good to play anywhere else.
The good news now is that with the new change to Sins of the Many it seems like Disc will finally be able to get over those issues. Right now it feels better than ever for M+ imo.
Bad news is that we kind of got punished utility-wise and along with Holy Priest we are the only 2 out of 36 specs without an interrupt (and also lost other forms of utility)… Particularly in M+ our utility is pretty bad I think.
But I mean overall Idk I guess the normal amount of attention? (so not a lot, but most specs don’t either).
Traditionally I enjoyed casual PvP, but now I find myself enjoying pve more. Mostly 5 man. I don’t have any friends playing this expac, so how long I play is dependent on whether I think the content is good. If I really enjoy it, I’d try and find a pve guild.
I figure it’ll take most of the expansion to redesign and balance the specs with the new talents trees, so I don’t care if it’s not in a perfect place right now. I just don’t want to get hit with the nerf stick like resto sham did, but it sounds like that happens here lol.
Yeah as I was saying, traditionally yes but I think this time around there are legitimate hopes that we finally are over it because of the Sins of the Many rework.
We were asking for something like that since BFA beta, actually probably even from Legion but I remember BFA beta we were pretty heavily pointing it out, the change/fix finally happened and it’s making a very big impact imo.
So Disc does feel really good to play in M+ right now, better than ever and I don’t think it’s overpowered so let’s hope it sticks this time around.
The only real turn-off right imo is the M+ utility, specifically the lack of reliable disruption abilities which are really important with so many dangerous casts in dungeons.
There are also changes in store already for 10.0.5 ptr I think so at least right now the Devs seem to be looking at Priests a little bit.
Thanks for the input. The 12 second interrupt was something I liked about rsham.
Yeah, I do play some Resto Shaman too… And yes between 12s interrupt, Cap totem (with the talent to make it proc twice), and thunderstorm you feel like you can lock down enemies or entire packs for a very long time…
So on that specific category you go from one of the best CC classes to one of the worst (in M+ at least) but I mean there are other categories, and Raid util is quite good for Priests.
In general I think that if you have other classes with good CC and players that actually use it then it’s not too bad, but it really hurts with bad groups since you can’t make up for it.
Wooo, you are in for a treat, wanna work 2x as hard to heal half as much…I kid, but it is a lot more difficult to get that pure throughput, and as a predictive class, you have to know the classes and prep for the places that people are likely to screw up. For example, sbg this patch has a pretty rough necrotic interrupt that needs to happen, in pugs I have just started rapturing before these pulls in case one doesn’t get kicked, in am organized group, I wouldn’t but pugs, I’m throwing rapture and pwb before every bad mechanic whether it’s interruptible or not
Personally really like Disc priest this time around in dungeon. Haven’t played it in raid, but they’re sought after there so probably very powerful still.
And the 10.0.5 patch changes are pretty kind to Disc as well if they all make it through - so I think we’re actually looking like we’re in a fairly good spot now.
Thanks again, what really drew me into rsham was all things you could do in addition to healing, damage from fire shock and lava burst, as well as all the cc. It felt like there was a really high skill ceiling I was never getting close to and I enjoyed that. Does disc have similar levels of damage and other spells, or do you spent most of the time casting healing spells?
In terms of DPS numbers if both were to only DPS then Resto Shaman’s damage is higher, specially in cleave scenarios where you can make good use of Chain Lightning, but Disc does damage to heal so in scenarios where you need to focus on healing Disc will pull ahead.
Now, gameplay-wise Resto Shaman’s DPS rotation is much more basic, Disc has a lot more DPS spells to use and some more interactions to optimize like Twilight Equilibrium. And yeah you regularly use them all since DPSing as Disc is an integral part of your healing.
You’ll be casting both (healing and damage spells) obviously but most of the time it should be damage spells as Disc, you should be casting DPS spells much more often as Disc than as Resto Shaman.
I thought about it and I’m going to stick it out as rsham. Mostly because I’m stubborn. You had good feedback though, thanks for being clear and positive. Enjoy your travels.
I have now your position but as a disc priest thinking about switch to rsham, im doing well on m+ and feel good dpsing and healing but on “oh sht” moments i cant do anything but rapt or pwl.
Im missing the 12 sec kick, cap, wolf form etc.
Its true that rsham hps is so bad atm?
Idk if i will miss the mass dispell too
I wouldn’t do that right now if you’re looking for an M+ upgrade. It’s debatable if you’re even upgrading at that point. Resto has the problem where the only reason you traditionally brought them (Stun, interrupt, lust) are now held by another much more powerful healer in Evoker.
It’s ultimately up to you if you like the playstyle, but I will say healing tide totem doesn’t even feel like a CD anymore in dungeons after the health changes, and lacking any kind of real external mitigation does feel really bad.
They will be a lot better in next season when poison cleansing totem and tremor totem become HUGE for a couple dungeons. They’ll also probably get taken more if evoker stops being FOTM.
That said, if you’re main-hopping right now for healing, Druid is probably the way to go. Resto is very good this expansion, and it’s unlikely that nerfs will upset it much. Evoker is extremely powerful too, but they also give me the feeling they’re 1 bad nerf away from losing viability, because they’re VERY dependent on like 3 spells/talent interactions. It’s possible evoker never sees nerfs and stays top dog, but I’m always wary of specs where I think a single nerf on the wrong thing can send them over the edge.
Yeah agree with Caps on that Evoker kind of steps into spots where you’d usually have wanted a Resto Shaman in then past, most notably when looking for a LUST healer… And even the “weakness” of Evokers about having issues when the group is very spread, well it’s also an issue for Shamans so it’s not like you get rid of that problem by choosing a Sham. Shaman does have better utility imo but Evokers throughput is just waay above.
I have only done a few low keys on my Shaman I think in the +6 to maybe +9 range, don’t remember exactly (it’s my 3rd alt after all)… And for the most part AOE felt fine as long as the group can stay together but it feels mostly lacks on single target or spot healing, seems like you need to have a Riptide and commit unleash life to get your Single target heal (with a fairly long cast time) to do anything to the target, and it’s still not too impressive.
From what I remember HTT is going to be getting buffed in 10.0.5 (will be doing 2x throughput when not in raids I believe), that’s pretty nice but I don’t think it would be enough.
The one part that does feel great compared to the Priest is the utility and I feel you get to prevent A LOT of damage from trash with the double Cap Totem thing into the Knock-up from Lightning Storm plus your great interrupt. So when that’s reliable it’s great but when you do actually need to heal trough the damage (like on bosses) it can get rough unless is stacked AOE.
Disc is the worst healer in the game right now in high end and low end content & PVP. I’ve actually never seen Blizzard bone a healing spec quite this hard. Discipline is, once again, a directionless and total disaster of a spec.
It has mana problems, damage problems and healing problems. I enjoy playing it, but it’s just really bad.
I’ve had a couple things come up, so I haven’t been playing a whole lot this month. I’ve mostly been leveling a horde and ally shaman to better understand the tree. To summarize an argument on the shaman forum, most people think it’s trash and underpowered (it seems most people on the forums think this about most specs right now) with a couple people in vehement opposition saying it’s fine. One person says he feels like he’s trolling by trying to join a group as rsham. In general it seems you can get the job done but it feels harder than other healers. I think you’d really have to like the play style to reroll to it right now. As a side note, people are enjoying playing as enhance in non PvP settings and ele is in good place.
This is an aspect that I also wanted to ask about, pvp, I’m not rushing to be glad but being a disc at least they invite me to rbg low, what about the shamans, the few I see in rbg are heavily discriminated…
In arenas look to be viable both specs.