Despite being the best healer for raiding currently with huge bursts of atonement, unfortunately it doesn’t scale as well in smaller groups and being the only healer. The only reason why disc is so powerful in raids, is that they can provide a huge chunk of healing every 45 seconds, or to make a huge absorb shield for nearly everyone. But in that downtime, they have very little healing and that is an issue in m+ where you can only spam shadowmend, and hope for the best. Also, there’s no other healers to cover your downtime. Yes, you have 4 healing cds that you can use, but only two of them are able to provide sufficient hps for the whole group. Rapture- no need to say anything. Extremely potent healing.
Shadowfiend- also a very good cd, the only downside being the cooldown being too long.
Pain sup: fantastic tank support, but a waste to use on dps and does nothing for the entire party.
And finally dome: While it’s one of the best cds in a raid, it’s awkward to use in a dungeon since everybody is spread out and hard to take advantage of the damage reduction. In raids where often everybody is stacked, like hungering(consume), sludgefist(pillar), shriek(lantern debuff) etc it provides very good value, but not enough in m+.
Solution: replace some useless talents with ones that better support 5 man content. Eg lenience(very good value over the entire run but won’t be helpful if your group is dying, or help prevent that happen), contrition, divine star, halo.
Some ideas of better talents that i have: Use the pvp talent trinity and scale it down so that it wouldn’t be good in a raid. Or some new talents that i came up with: “the effectiveness of mindblast and penance is increased by 30% for each atonement you have, limit 5 targets.” or “ the cooldown of power word barrier and shadowfiend is reduced by 50% while not in a raid.” This could potentially help us to better manage heavy partywide damage, as well as triage healing.
Disc do have some mana problem in m+…ok not some, a lot.
I think next season without prideful It’s gonna be hell to heal.
It can use some buff. I’m all for all-in proactive play style.
I don’t expect them to replace lenience but It would be great.
If not then buff lenience to 10% should be good enough.
Yup, content is designed such that you will be able to complete it pretty much regardless of your comp.
The only time your comp really matters is pushing for WF, where you need every bit of help you can get since you’re going into these bosses at the lowest gear/borrowed power level you can. Disc, Shaman and Pally excel there because their CDs can blow through mechanics regardless of gear.
At the very least, disc lost some value with AMZ coming back. So the HPS hit to them could kick them out in favor of having DKs around.
Yes. Dome and spirit shell are so versatile and useful its hard to calculate the value of disc just based on hps. Although you see disc being one of the lowest hps healers, that’s the right place for them. Massive absorb shields to negate damage once a minute boosts a raids survivability so much that it’s often preferred to raw healing, since you could just have other healers to fill in their gaps anyways.
Disc, from the standpoint of M+, needs to have its damage and mana issues dealt with. Those are where the problems are.
Why? Because you get r shammy and h pally doing sometimes a ton more damage. You have zero mana issues, for pally at least. And those healers both have a ton more utility in spells like bop, bubble, lust, reincarnate, etc. If you check the in-game looking for group finder options, it is no wonder people are asking for R shammies etc, outright, and never asking for priests. It is also no wonder priest healers get way fewer invites. Blizzard needs to do something to balance all healers–not only priest. Mistweavers have also gotten neglected and their sad state is also symptomatic of serious class balance issues.
Not really. Mana is hardly any issue if you have an experienced group, which you will by the time you move on to 14s and 15s. If you still keep going oom, then you probably don’t know how to save and use solace on cd. Utility is def an issue tho. Disc has 2 externals, while one is very good the other is extremely difficult to use.Giving us an interrupt, or something similar in value such as a battle rez.
Naw, mana is still an issue. I’ve watched disc priests streaming in solid groups doing relatively high keys, and the mana issues are still there–even more so. There may be a sweet spot though, where, say in a 12 key, the group is OP for the key and people are familiar with the dungeon and know how to dodge, and do… Well, and in higher keys where people offheal, innervate, use defensives, do dispels when they can, and actually use health pots and even eat. Then, yeah, you can have no mana issues or a minimum. But most think the healer is there so they don’t have to help out with their abilities, and will even stand there without eating at 10% health twiddling their thumbs while you get mana, and then expect you to top them off and chew through your precious mana inefficiently and unnecessarily. Most deeps think they simply do dps and that is it.
What’s the bottom line, though? I know from being in great groups that the dynamics are different, but even so, if you push with a great group you will again have issues in harder content.
It is really hard to heal a key as disc without a boomkin mana wise. Long Tyrannical fights will have you shadowmending if you run out of CDs and that is when you can start to feel it, especially if stuff gets tricky.
Yeah, and to me, on a related note, this statement makes real that there is another problem besides the mana problem. This second problem is that a lot of tanks and deeps regularly run with other healers–and most do. These people think a healer is a healer. So when you run out of mana they are not expecting it. Hence, when it does happen, you not only have the mana problem–you have a lack of awareness of the problem.
This second problem compounds the mana problem itself. And if you have watched other disc priests streaming and have played disc yourself this compounding plus the problem itself are serious difficulties–especially on big pulls where your mana efficiency crashes through the floor because you have to spam shadow mends. And this is why I am often cringing whenever tanks pull big. The result is rarely any saving of time because a disc priest can no longer do damage, they have to spam shadow mend instead of healing via damage, and they go out of mana super quickly.
I used to ask groups to not pull big but sometimes the results were toxicity in the groups so I stopped doing that. Now I usually just bite the bullet and when the key is bricked and everyone leaves, I shrug. Sigh.
But what does this all mean? The thing about shadowmend is that when you cast it you are not doing damage. So there is already a penalty. Then for this to hammer at your mana pool is just icing on the cake. This could easily be rebalanced because there is already a penalty in the damage loss.
To me this double penalty for using shadow mend is real–and this double penalty is compounded by a lack of awareness of the related mana issue–mainly in all who do not themselves play disc priest–which is most of the wow community. It is why you want to shy away from using shadow mend as much as you can. But then, if you misjudge, the group wipes. But too, if you run out of mana the risk of a wipe skyrockets. So you are in trouble if you do, and in trouble if you don’t? Absolutely–and especially when the tank is oblivious–a lot of which are.
Go Night Fae… my mana issues have completely disappeared now, it is freaking great, I am telling you, give it a try, I literally never have to stop to drink anymore, even on crap groups that I’m healing over 6k hps
They also need to take the debuff that Shadowmend gives away, cus most people forget that SM also damages the target afterwards for 50% of the healing they receive from SM… that is stupid and needs to go if we are basically meant to use it so much nowadays…
I believe you are right, but typically the dot does not do that much damage. It is my understanding that it can do that much, but does not because the dot disappears when the target takes damage.
Yeah, it is stupid. I made a post about it a year and a half ago. I could only think I had misunderstood.
I wonder what happens to the dot though if you repeatedly heal a target–like say three shadow mends on a tank. You don’t get three dots, do you?
Yeah, that is tempting. But your damage must be even worse. If it isn’t then it would be a great idea.
On a related note, I’ve heard speculation to the effect that maybe we will have access to multiple covenants down the road. If that proves true, then it would be great combined with a covenant for pumping damage, like Venthyr or Kyrian.
You can’t do any damage(or healing) if you have no mana =) I also have switched my brain from not worrying about my damage and worry more about keeping the group alive… After they nerfed our damage, its basically negligible anymore
I find myself in a catch-22 all the time now in keys. If I focus on healing I go oom. This is because mana is the be all and end all for disc and high healing and damage prevention are high mana cost. And the best way to conserve mana is to heal via atonement via damage. Atonement + smite = win because it is so mana efficient. The problem is, if you just cast, say PW:shield on your tank and then spam smite, it doesn’t do enough healing in a lot of cases. That is a great way to converse mana though.
I was just in a group on a 16 HOA. I went oom after some big pulls. Then about 30 seconds later the tank had died, one deeps had died, and three of us were battling a pride mob with me at 6% life and zero mana.
I don’t know what we could have done better, except that the tank was not on top of my mana situation–and very few are. Things are going great, and then bam, I get to about 10% mana and then everything collapses from there.
In other keys, like 15s and 16s that fail to be timed, the problem is the group doesn’t pump enough damage. Sigh. This is where h pallies come in. They can both heal efficiently and pump insane damage numbers. Hence, they blow disc priest away, ez pz.
I also run The Penitent One legendary, you get to pop off those free casts of machine gun Penance, and I use it defensively alot
… I have had Prideful pop after a bad pull also, I hit Fae Gaurdians, 20% DR on tank, CD reduction on Mage, Mana return to me for every attack against the mob, not just my attacks! Hit Radiance, The Penitent One pops, machine gun mob, everyone is full health, saved the key! This scenario happens quite a bit actually lol
My main is this toon, on which I also usually run the Penitent One mainly because I pug (or run with friends who also mainly pug). I have Twins and one for raid as well, plus Flash Concentration for Holy. But while Holy can really pump the heals, the damage is poor, and not like disc–where you ought to be doing it for other reasons (like mana management).
I switched covenants from Kyrian a while ago, mainly because the damage button lines up nicely with your cds for Spirit Shell in raids. Venthyr is great because of the shorter CD, and so you can use it often in M+.
The idea of switching to Night Fae for the mana boost is a good idea. But if the damage is not there, then it is just a waste of effort–at least in my case. I used to heal on all healers, and basically gravitated to disc in BFA because of the damage–which made timing keys easier. I have also played a little dps over the years, mainly as hunters, destro warlock and mages. Hence, the knowledge and xp of playing ranged is a plus for disc in my case. I don’t like melee much though–which kind of sucks if you feel forced to play h pally. But you can get used to things if you make the effort, I guess.
Disc is also great in that you do damage passively as part of your healing. This is what I like most. H Pally is also this way via Crusader Strike, etc-- assuming you play a certain way, and opt for this style with your talents.
Disc is the 3rd strongest m+ healer, and the only healer other than holy paladin in the top A tier (since there are NO S tier healers this season).
Whatever struggles you feel, all classes other than holy paladin have even worse than you. This is largely a problem based on the tuning against healers this expansion combined with the massive disparity of dps capabilities of the different healers.
Discipline was for a very long time the leaders of the expansion as well until people really got in tune with holy paladin dps.
Any buff you think you need, other spec’s and classes need it even more, but in different ways (regarding dps instead of hps). Higher keys don’t require more healing, they require people to screw up less. This is a misconception amongst people attempting to do keys beyond 16’s. Most 16’s I complete and time I only need to put out between 3.5 and 4.5k HPS with my highest cap at 8.2khps (Overall HPS’s), with a 1 shot 4 second window I get to put out 59,000HPS. Any healing required above that amount of HPS means someone’s gunna die anyways.
I don’t disagree that you need to be buffed to come up to that holy paladin range, but you’re definitely last in line since your spec is largely revered as one of the only 3 great ones in the game right now. (Hpal > Rsham > Dpriest). All other healers are literally dragging through the mud unless they’re gods at their spec, and even then, they can’t get passed certain points because of lack of DPS contribution no matter what they do.