Disc players, why

Why is it that so many disc players i see seem to refuse to use their atinement too heal.
It is so strange, most for whatever reason use penance and shadowmends as their main healing source.
That is horrible too do in soo many ways and defeats the whole purpose of playing disc, too heal through dmg and atonement along with massive shields.

Disc players that heal in this awkward penance shadowmend spam inevitably fail, doing 0 dmg and having horrible aoe healing, thus giving disc a horrible reputation.

So please, USE ATONMENT.

If they would buff either damage or atonement then probably be worth using it, but as of now, just go Holy… Disc isn’t worth playing at the moment

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Disc ingeneral is fine. For super high keys ya but unless you are pushing 26 and higher disc is fine.
Like really people think disc is unplayable when it is actually fine too play in many forms of content.
Just most people tend to really suck at disc.

Disc has potential but it has some things working against it.

  • It’s whole function is counter intuitive, healing through damage. That is a hard concept for a lot of folks to grasp.

  • The spec functions around damage prevention more than damage repair.

  • There are limited ways to correct a missed damage window. You don’t have holy words to bail you out.

None of this is new news but it definitely is part of the reason you don’t see many disc priests.

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I know just seems crazy the amount of people that end up never using atonement and just spam shadowmend/direct penance healing.

Ive been running my disc P recently and just seeing other disc players heal in such a derpy way causing multiple deaths due too low healing is annoying.
Causes disc to get a bad rep for almost no reason. I get kicked out of even 15s because im disc (which is rediculous) and they want me to switch to holy.

I think it comes back to damage prevention. Atonement is easier to maintain when every is sitting pretty. Once health bars stop dropping, it is hard to overcome the mental barrier to use a direct heal vs atonement into damage.

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You are correct. Disc is mostly fine.

I don’t play it anymore because it feels like garbage, needs adjustments, and holy is better in every way that it can be in a mythic+ environment. Holy does more damage, more healing, and requires minimal effort to play compared to disc.

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True for sure it is. Its just most i have seen recently dont even try to atonement heal, they just shadowmend and penance.

You do have penance, though. Which with 4 piece is about as good.

What Disc lacks is damage in M+, that’s it. It has the tools to do anything, really. But the Disc aura is really bad for its damage output late into the expansion.

People new (or somewhat new) to the spec do this because the first time experience to the spec is difficult.

Atonement DOESN’T cover anything. Well-timed atonement burst windows can. Tossing Atonement on someone, then dropping your cooldowns on a mob does good healing immediately, but atonement as a filler heal (mind sear, smite and SW:P/PTW) is pretty terrible healing.

From my experience, many people start the spec trying to rely on atonement and running a damage rotation and get screwed by any random damage spike because they get caught with MB/Penance/Schism/Covenant abilities down. That leaves you with Shadowmend/Rapture.

A secondary issue is people not understanding cooldown usage. Many new healers come into the game thinking their cooldown is an emergency button, when the fact is healer CDs generally function better when you’re using them to reduce the amount of globals you’re wasting. I’ve even seen holy priests hold onto Apotheosis for an ENTIRE dungeon up to +15 keys. Take that fact and then consider that Pain supp and barrier are prevention tools that are a bit more difficult to use (They’re pretty awful to use on the default blizzard UI if you’re not tracking a tank’s CDs with an addon especiallly). And you’ll find that the class is just very unforgiving if you aren’t willing to put in a lot of work right at the start of picking it up. And that leads to Disc priests falling really far behind in their healing and having to resort to Smend, as it’s our best recovery tool.

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Yee with disc you essentially have too use everything or things will go down hill very quickly. Timing and proper decision making are very important too disc.

I think part of what would somewhat eleviate that is of course adding more dmg too disc annd i think making the penetitent one legendary a guarntee proc when you use radiance. It feeels pretty bad too have your legendary not doo anything because of rng on a healer, especially a healer like disc where you need too know what will hapoen.

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If the dps aren’t making stupid mistakes and interrupt when they should, it’s more plausible that we can stand there and spam damage to keep you up with atonement. DPS players’ poor performance are the usually the #1 reason for failed keys. Disc doesn’t seem very suitable for pug groups.

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It’s kinda hard for me to evaluate how other disc players play when I’m shadow because I can usually often cover healing myself. But from some of the complaints I’ve seen on the forums by disc players themselves, it seems some disc priests have a hard time trusting their atonements and tend to use shadowmend even in periods of low or no damage.

Also, shadow covenant seems like a trap talent that encourages this.

Disc will always be one of the trickier specs in keys because disc’s kit still leans toward a proactive playstyle, and as another poster said you can’t always predict when the dps mess up. So some shadowmending will be required.

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The trick is to do both. It’s why disc has atonement from radiance, and mend.

I enjoy disc. It was to hard for me to raid as disc this year tho.

May give it another shot.

Boon + disc + ramps is trixy until u really know all of the fights.

Discs strong point is pain suppression and being able to move and heal ok.

Maybe they could give shields some DR and buff them x2 that’d be leet.

Disc is the only class that plays like a hybrid, in a game where hybrids dont mechanically work well, and arent supposed to exist. You need to have tank level knowledge of all encounters, since you’re a walking mitigator. The second you mess up, you spend half of your mana bar casting 5-6 shadow mends to get your group to a manageable level of health. We have to understand tank mechanics so we can mitigate through CDs, are expected to dps to upkeep our pitiful atonement healing, and our burst healing can only be used sparingly or else we oom. While i enjoy the challenge of the spec, i just wish our atonement healing and damage was a little better, and we had a little more direction in the spec. As of right now, its just all over the place, and not particularly great at anything.

Unfortunately for me, the two heal classes I enjoy most are disc and mistweaver. Both are ‘fine’ for the most part, but in comparison to the others, they’re bottom. Really hoping that next season will bring them closer to all the others in terms of balance.

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Atonement healing is relatively weak, I think–not that it is bad. But unless you are in a good group that gets kicks, uses defensives, stays out of fire, etc.–and notably when you have carries in groups, or even when the whole group is a carry group, then atonement just doesnt cut it.

That said, you and your group need to have confidence in the power of atonement to make it work. What comes to mind on this one is seeing Moadmoad (while streaming and in the previous patch) saying “trust” to others in the group when their health was down to 20% and atonement was going to heal them up, but not all that fast.

Right now i mainly like disc been trying too get it up in ilvl since its at 270ilvl.
Just really annoying when you see one play horribly, and somehow have their atonement bee some of their least amount if healing.
Seem soo mamy that just shadowmend and penance allies, seen about 8 do this and it leads too a spiral downwards where hes out of mana about a minute or so into the fight.

disc should Receive yet another rework to be nothing but “The” DPS/Heal spec

They are gonna have to get rid of the weird difficulty with disc having to fight between shielding and DPS to heal (Atonements). if we think about it disc is in the worst spot at the moment. So far for healers we would have
Pally- single target/Cleave Aoe healz
Shaman- Group AoE healz
Druids- HoTs
Holy Priests- defensive/Utility healz
Mistwearver-Channeled/burst healz
Disc priest- DPS healz
Evoker- DMG mitation/Moral boosting (Could be the new Absorb shield class??)

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The main reason is because atonement doesn’t heal enough. Blizzard made disc damage to heal but then we aren’t even the top dps, so our healing suffers. When it gets hectic it is best to just spam heal to try and get ahead rather than relying on your atonements.

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Idk atonement is quite a significant amount of my healing done. About 3x higher then my next healing ability.
Really what you do is combo radiance uses into an empowered penace, and divine star.
Along with when massive amount of dmg is about to happen use kyrain radiance combo and end that combo off with an empowered penance, divine star.
Even using mindbender in that aswell heals for a significant amount.
People need to actually utilize atonement more often, and not in this seemingly odd way if trying too smite your way to victory with atonement.