Disc in DF

Classes Priest
21

After playing disc in beta for the last few days, it’s a lot better than it was in SL (for dungeons).

Atonement healing feels really good. Radiance > schism > lights wrath is massive healing and harsh discipline procs very fast which is quite strong healing as well. I’m actually worried about this getting nerfed for dungeons because I think with 20 atonements out in raid it will do disgusting healing…

My main concern with the spec is single target burst healing. Our atonement healing feels good for group damage but not for single target. Flash heal spam + renew feels very underwhelming for these situations, although new buffed Pw:s with aegis is quite strong.

My lesser concern is giving disc a strong aoe damage tool. Maybe make it so it doesn’t interact with atonement so our healing isn’t busted, but we are definitely lacking in the aoe damage department.

1 Like
22

Atonement doesn’t heal out of aoe. Any aoe spell will just heal with atonement for the equivaleny damage on 1 target.

Removing mind sear feels bad for sure as far as damage go

2 Likes
23

For disc to be viable it needs radiance bumped. It’s super gimpy. If it’s that weak going into DF it’ll be crap. As a pvp player I’m sad we are losing mind dear. I popped many a stealthy using mind sear. I’m not a fan of this trinity crapnwhere I have to just spam shield and purge and offensive penance . It’s a pretty boring rotation and we are oom so much more than other healers. If I take body and soul I’m weak in other areas.! All this talk just reminds me that disc is one little tweak of being the new mistweavers from s1/2 in shadowlands

24

I’d say the loss of Shadowmend actually makes disc’s triage healing much worse than it is in live. Shadowmend acted a lot like Desperate Prayer in rapidly increasing the health of your targets for long enough for atonement to kick in as the heal begins to deteriorate. It bought you time to handle the situation.

Flash heal and renew don’t move the needle in the same way, so your triaging if the whole party is taking damage becomes a heck of a lot scarier. It’s much easier to panic because you don’t have nearly the same margin for error in topping someone off again.

25

I’ve done a decent amount of M+ testing (timed both +10s, and did a few more).

Hard to get a really good look because a lot of groups are falling apart for one reason or another (especially in ruby life pools, where the thunder dragon just blows everyone up repeatedly to a point you just try and skip it - the thing puts a debuff that does 18k a second and if you remove it, hits the whole group for 90k, and it puts 2 of them out at a time). And teleports aren’t working most the time, and no repair bots - so anyone not joining at 100% dura and has their stuff break also breaks the group. I tried to record, but literally every dungeon the group blew up - sometimes people just quit with 0 deaths after doing a boss - sometimes gear broke and it blew up - sometimes someone was doing 10k dps, a group member got mad and left, etc.

But my opinions:

Overall

Disc is doing OK, I think. It just seriously lacks triage healing and is going to be forced into 2 points of contrition and a really anti-synergistic build in high keys if they don’t address flash heal being a terrible spell for everyone but Hpriest. (Contrition heals more than an offensive penance to each group member now).

Healing profile

Aegis of Wrath is a necessary talent. The amount of healing PW:S does, especially with our 4 piece is completely ridiculous. I think every dungeon I did PW:S was my top heal, and was nearly 10% above atonement.

Honestly I think PW:S has been tuned so high with the tier set that the ‘correct’ talent path is probably to take Aegis + Weal and Woe and forego twilight equilibrium (which sucks, cause it’s one of our coolest talents). At that point your PW:S is hitting for 80-90k without crits, and ~160k with crits. That is a hell of a buffer. You can pretty much get away with this + contrition and power through the worst triage healing moments by rotating D.penance → PW:S → flash heal repeatedly. But you’re still significantly worse off than on any other healer in the same scenario.

Flash heal sucks, and we really need help in extended damage phases. There were already a couple bosses in these dungeons that were VERY hard for the healers I tried barring Druid (who get away with prehotting and an incredibly strong tier set wild growth). And if you go into those phases as a Disc priest without rapture up, you’re just going to die.

Power Word: Life is really good, actually. It fills a gap in our toolkit, and it’s cheap.

Damage profile

In M+ all healer damage is kind of low right now, it seems. And I have a bad feeling we’re ALL going to be stuck taking glacial fury pots, because it does more damage than anything in any healer’s kit.

To put it into perspective, most healers I see doing keys in beta right now are doing ~2-4k DPS. On Disc/Holy I’m regularly able to get around 7-8k. With glacial fury pots, I’m up at 15k. If it isn’t nerfed it’s going to be the bis potion for at least S1. There’s no way to outscale that with the int/verse other potions give you.

1 Like
26

That sums up my experience as well… Although I didn’t go as up as 10… I find the gameplay has gone down compared to shadowlands (talking about fun, not strenght here, mind you)

It feels like it’s going back toward a more shield oriented disc. Which has no appeal for me at all… I know the tree let us go towards other paths, but even if we assume they’re going to be tuned up, they aren’t even all that satisfying to play with.

I’m considering other classes right now. I’m quite sadened to leave my priest behind :slightly_frowning_face: It is what it is :man_shrugging:

27

Personally I feel like the playstyle didn’t change too much - just using PW:S more and less Shadowmend.

28

Well it’s not too different but the slight differences arent all that fun like I already explained in the df feedback thread on the beta forums.

I prefer TPO over harsh discipline. I feel the slight different makes it less fun and really not as useful in all contexts (such as arenas) both have their pros and cons ofc.

Removal of shadowmend still hurts the spec a lot. Even more so in pvp. While it might be completely fine viability wise, it’s a lot less fun to play with.

On an additionnal note. I’m having quite a lot of fun with mistweaver and preservation. I’m really more about fun over anything else really so that’s a big reason.

Disc is still fun and similar to SL gameplay wise. But the fine details that changed make it less appealing to me. I’m still not 100% sure of the switch over. Maybe having shadowmenr replace flash heal would be enough to make me stay but as things are now, I’m not :man_shrugging:

29

Yup, if you’re not having fun or enjoying it, you absolutely should swap. No point in trying to stick around on something you don’t enjoy.

For what it’s worth, I did do a lot of really random builds (one focused on defensive penance, one focused on expiation, one focused on inescapable torment, etc). The only thing I think is totally not viable to take is inescapable torment right now. Likely will work in low key, but boy was the healing bad, and the damage barely worth it.

I also did get a recording of a dungeon where I didn’t take Harsh Discipline - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYOEsAYcalA

I played super badly in it because I’m not comfortable with the UI and having 0 weakauras set up for my CDS - so plenty of points where I was just hitting a button that was on cooldown. :stuck_out_tongue: But it does show you can time easily without really interacting with harsh discipline.

Overall I came out of the M+ weekend pretty happy. I don’t think Disc’s like absolute meta material at current tuning - but it definitely seemed a lot better than Shadowlands to me. And I was enjoying its dungeon playstyle much more than holy.

30

Yup. I thought this would be the goto talent tbh. At first I thought it was undertuned, but the more I think about it, the less it feels like they are going to change it at this point. Or maybe we’ve yet to see any balance on that front simply because aoe tuning isn’t done yet.

Sure. I’d say it’s on par with current or maybe a bit better too. Viability speaking, it needs better triage healing with a small buff to flash heal and that should do it.

Feels a bit bad to have little to no aoe option, but maybe that’s their new way of balancing healer damage as disc contributes quite well on bosses on that front :thinking:.

31

To be fair, I tend to offspec a lot since I often group with a friend who also heals. So the fun factor for the offspecs needs to be present as well. That’s a major part of chosing a class for me :man_shrugging:

While I’m not on the ‘shadow is terrible’ boat, I don’t feel that the aoe/cleave has really improved. I’m not really enjoying myself with the spec. (At least in a m+ scenario)

While priest overall seems in an ok state in terms of viability, I’m having more fun on monk and evoker. I’m a bit sad to leave my priest behind to be honnest… but I play this game for fun before anything else :man_shrugging:.

32

Been working lots. Friend said Dorki said disc was weak in keys?

33

Idk about that but I was watching moadmoad play disc in +20s last night and disc was looking absolutely fantastic for keys

34

It’s definitely not WEAK.

But I don’t know if I’d say it’s strong either. It’s a step up from Shadowlands for sure, but could use some more tuning.

Right now tuning’s very weird though. It’s hard to know where classes will end up because some are just doing WAY better than others. Hard to say if other classes are going to be pushed up to that level, or those overperformers will be nerfed a lot. I think right now Monk is at that S tier for healers. Nobody else stands out as excelling as much as they do right now though - at least IMO.

35

Depends if you’re going PvE or PvP. I’m sure most PvE’ers here will tell you it’s fine and fun, but for PvP its a little sad what we’re losing.

We’re losing Shadow Mend and Shining Force and aren’t receiving an interrupt or a silence while everyone else is. They seem adamant on not going back on any of their decisions and Void Tendrils for some awful reason breaks on damage even though that was supposed to be it’s niche (kill the tendrils to be freed from root). Mind Blast is useless, costs a ton of mana, and doesn’t have it’s absorption on it anymore.

We’re losing a huge part of our class fantasy which is having two schools of healing magic. We’re pretty much one of the only specs with nothing to truly look forward to while other classes seem excited about their trees and what they’re getting.

It’s looking grim for us in my opinion. :dracthyr_shrug:

2 Likes
36

Shining force is a big loss in PvE too - no doubt.

But I am speaking mostly from a PvE perspective since I fell off WoW PvP like way back in cata. :stuck_out_tongue: If I PvP anymore it’s like random BGs with friends or something and I don’t take it too seriously.

I’m not trying to make things sound like sunshine and rainbows either. Some people aren’t going to like things, and trying to look for another class, or quitting altogether while unfortunate are valid things to be doing if you’re not enjoying it.

37

The biggest change they can make that might keep me playing Discipline would be bringing back Shadow Mend.

Even if they can’t give us an interrupt or Shining Force, having only one school to cast while everyone gets an interrupt feels awful.

1 Like
38

That’d be the change that would make me consider my priest as well since I tend to do pvp and pve :slight_smile:

39

Is it just me or did Priest lose Spirit Shell? I don’t see it anywhere - which, iirc, was one of the main things solidifying Disc’s place in a raid to make raid-wide mechanics much less scary.

I did putz about on PTR for a bit though and the traits that beef up PW: Shield are excelent, and will be even fancier at 70. I don’t know if this will be super viable but I really like the look of a 50% increased PW Shield plus that damage-from-PW: Shield trait at 20% of the value.

Removal of Shadowmend definitely feld unnecessary though.

40

I’m actually excited to go back to somewhat of what disc was before atonement healing, which was a dmg mitigation spec. Once disc became a dmg to heal spec I lost all interest. I decided to pick it back up in season 4 (this is for pvp mainly) and I’m happy to see shielding being a thing again in DF.