It is gone, but Spirit Shell propped up disc WAY beyond what it should have been in Nathria, and it isn’t the reason Disc priest was taken.
Disc priest is taken to raid for two reasons:
It’s the strongest burst AoE healer in the game bar none - nobody comes anywhere close - and they can do this raid-wide every 2 minutes.
Power Word: Barrier
Spirit Shell made the former part easier since they could turn their incredible burst heal into a shield - so it eliminated overhealing, essentially. Several nerfs later, and Disc was mostly not using Spirit Shell in SoFO - it was very fight dependent.
Worth Noting SoD and SoFO in Shadowlands were the first two tiers since Emerald Nightmare back in Legion that it wasn’t part of the RWF meta (and I mean, it kinda still was in SoFO - just not on every fight). And Spirit Shell was new in Shadowlands. So its removal isn’t really any kind of doom to the spec.
In raid testing so far, Disc has been very good. TBH, I’m sort of expecting we get nerfed as a result of raid testing (which sucks for PvP/Dungeon disc - but I can definitely see it coming).
Fair. I only raided in Castle Nathria and quit after, so I didn’t get to see the shifts later on. I played holy while someone else in the raid played Disc, and I remember basically having almost nothing to heal on fights when they got used to the flow of things, and I’d check logs and 50% of their healing would be Spirit Shell.
Makes sense though. I never really liked the skill and I’m pleased PW: Shield has options for getting CHONKY.
Yea and this is what I’m really interested to see play out because I think it’s possible that Preservation takes this niche/spot from Disc. I think Preservation is one good defensive CD away from being very competitive in raid if its tuning remains roughly where it is throughput wise.
Disc ramping to 15+ Atonements and bursting for huge burst AoE healing is still alive and well but Preservation is now capable of doing similar burst AoE healing imo and has an absolutely insane raid CD in Rewind, particularly in progression where the incoming damage to HP ratio is high.
Napkin math:
Disc gets 15 Atonements out and presses Schism > Penance with HD > Lights Wrath > MG they can dish out roughly 10,000% sp healing. I don’t even know if it’s possible to cast for 7.5 seconds and keep 15 Atonements active but lets assume under ideal situations it is and the Disc can stand still for half of that time casting and has the mana for all of those abilities every 2 minutes.
Preservation can press Dream Breath on a raid and do 75% of that throughput with a single button. Throw in Stasis, Dream Breath and their normal AoE healing in the same casting window as Disc and you have a healer capable of even higher burst on the same 2m CD.
Obviously this is very rough math that ignores Mastery and a bunch of talents but the point is that for the first time since Legion Disc might just have competition in raid for the amount of raw throughput it can burst and I’m interested to see how that plays out.
You can ramp to ~14 Atonements if you use both PW:R charges back to back with the 15% longer Atonement duration talent every 40 seconds and want to fit Schism > Penance > MG in but Light’s Wrath is 90s CD and is the most healing in that scenario. Anything over ~13 Atonements (maybe 14-15 with Haste) requires Evang which is also 90s.
So you could do the big ramp every 90s under ideal circumstances and a mini ramp about 40-50% as strong every 45 but that would also mean you would do almost zero healing between those ramps.
Preservation can pump constantly with big burst every 2 minutes. I’m just interested to see how it competes with Disc. Barrier might be too strong to make Preservation viable for the same role but we will see. Rewind is also incredibly powerful, it just isn’t a DR.
so if preserve dose its every 2 minutes and disc has everything up every 1.5 it makes our ramps more versatile. i think the 30 yard range thing is going to screw most evokers also for evokers ramp to work everyone has to be stacked to make it work.
The one thing that isn’t up to tuning is barrier, which automatically makes disc excellent in any raid, unless spread mechanics during damage are prevalent
Also, as noted above disc has PI, and preservations 30 yrd range could really hurt them
True, I forgot about that. I remember having that earlier in beta and loved it but thought it was a bug. Really happy to see that return, especially for M+.
Yea. I even think sustained AoE throughput playstyles are more possible than ever without needing to put everything into ramps. There are just so many good damage buttons to press for every PW:R or Rapture with things like SW:D being so strong.
This is what im looking at for a “holy” dps spec. Any thoughts? Mostly relying on Purge, Nova, and Star for AoE with Penance/Wrath/Light for burst (weaving SWP SWD, MB, and Shadowfiend for the Equlibrium buff) while getting as much atonement upkeep as possible. Ignoring most shadow spell buffs in favor of holy damage.
If your goal is to actually do DPS (IE: You’re trying to do as much as a traditional DPS) versus actually atonement healing, it’s simply not going to work and no priest spec will for that matter.
If you’re looking for a version of Disc that is more light-flavored, this is fine. Light’s Wrath’s followup talents are not very good outside raid, Smite still will do little to nothing, and you’re mostly dependent on big penance/mind blast. You’re still primarily a healer - and you’re going to do healer damage.
If you’re looking to do as much damage as possible through specifically holy spells, Holy is a FAR better option, speccing into empyreal Blaze, Searing Light and Divine Word. You’ll do quite a bit of damage through Empyreal Blaze > Divine Word > Chastise > Holy Fire x 4 > Smite spam. You give up healing for it, but it’s absolutely the most holy damage the class can do.
If you are looking to bamboozle the people inviting you to group then i say well thumbs up
Well get rid of death and madness and schism and malicious intent then. Plus the mind games talents. Seems like you have taken a fair few shadow buff talents.
Penance is not holy so prob drop those buff talents too
Without taking twins you will be forced mostly to PI others in your group which will cost you dps,.
Going on the idea you are talking keys because you werent specific