Disc priest feedback so far from MOP Beta and Pre-patch

WoW Classic Mists of Pandaria Classic Discussion
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I have played disc priest in the mop beta and also now on the pre-patch and I primarily had a problem I did not encounter from the other healers classes that I have also played in both prepatch and beta (mistweaver, hpal, and rsham), and that is mana. I do also believe disc priest feels a little behind on raid-wide CDs, specially when other classes have a similar CD that is either stronger (eg. life cocoon or hand of sacrifice [can have two out at the same time]) or easier (e.g., devo aura just applies to everyone and don’t need to cast it on a specified area + other players need to be in it).

Atonement has always been the mana efficient way to spot heal. With the tuning disc priest got, its obviously impacted their throughput quite a bit (although they did need some balancing). However, even with using mindbender on CD, using archangel, and healing 90% through atonement, disc is completely depleted of mana. Additionally, in order for spirit shell to be effective and giving it to all members of the raid both takes quite a while given the cast times and also drains your mana super quickly.

I feel like there isn’t a consistent and effective way to get mana back that other healing classes have, where a lot of it is built already on their rotation. For instance, mw with chi healing spells, mana tea, chi brew, and muscle memory; resto shaman with mana stream/tide, resurgence, and water shield; hpal with seal of insight, divine plea, and holy power spells (I don’t know much about resto druid so not sure exactly what they have here). All while not having strong CDs or “oh sh*t” raid-wide buttons like many other healing classes do (e.g., revival, zen-meditation, tranq, devo aura, healing tide, spirit link totem). Even so, while MOP disc priest was primarily designed for full atonement throughput, the nerfs to it should also be reflected on the rest of the class balance (i.e., mana scaling). Don’t get me wrong, i definitely believe disc/healers in general needed balancing, and buffing all other healing classes was an amazing thing and it makes all other healer classes really fun and viable! People don’t need to be forced to play just disc and resto shaman. But, the current state of disc priest doesn’t seem fun or rewarding (meanwhile resto shamans still have amazing hps throughput).

And so, I feel like there could be some changes to make disc priest feel a little better to play. This is just a set of ideas, I definitely do notthink they all need to be implemented, but just to get ideas rolling! Would love to hear what others think.

  • Archangel returns mana like in cataclysm
  • Mana reduction % on all abilities
  • Glyph of penance mana cost should be increased by 5% or 10% (from 20%)
  • Prayer of Healing also applies a hot or always applies DA like it did in cata
  • Train of Though also includes that Inner focus’ CD is reduced by each hit from penance
  • Spirit shell reduces the mana cost of the spells that proc it by X% (or maybe it returns mana back when they are depleted like rapture)
  • Something like Weal and Woe, where your penance bolts increases the damage of your smite or absorb of your next pws.
  • A raid-wide CD like luminous barrier or evangelism from retail (Evangelism here would be a weird one to implement, perhaps it could be something like it instantly heals the last 5 members that had atonement or heals all members with spirit shell. I don’t know, throwing stuff out there)
  • Once Barrier is depleted, everyone inside is healed for a % of the damage absorbed to a max of 10-25% of their HP (or something like that). Or, healing from the priest is increased by 25% to the raid members inside the barrier.

Again, these are just a few things I’ve thought about that would be nice to have and it doesn’t mean it has to be all of them. Please, take this time to theorize about this. If you don’t agree with any of it, politely discuss. I want this to be a place to collaborate and not shut down others ideas :slight_smile:

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I disagree with your assessment of the CDs for Disc. They are still the strongest in the game. Spirit Shell is ridiculously good and on just a 1 minute timer which aligns incredibly well with Archangel. Life Cocoon is equivalent to Pain Suppression, not sure why you think it’s different.

Disc was never meant to compete with the others for healing back up after damage was taken. Their job is about preventing damage in the first place - which with absorbs counting as a heal is what puts them at the top of the meters in most cases.

However, the mana nerfs are a huge problem and went too far. Penance is now really bad for healing per mana. It’s only benefit is that you can use it while moving rather than just shield or prayer of mending. I can only hope mana is better at 90, but it probably won’t be so I’m swapping to mistweaver because it’s just a lot more fun and I like the extra personal immunities - and my raid teams are letting me.

Just FYI tho, mistweaver played poorly is always OOM and if you rely on just eminence to heal, you’ll only be successful in lower end content where there’s little damage taken and their raid CDs are the worst of the healers. You’ll have to use the entire toolkit, in the right order even, to not be OOM and keep up with the heals for 5 to 10 minute long fights. Revival is not taken seriously, and it really shouldn’t be, it’s an “oh sh*t” button that is fun to troll druids using tranq on farm.

TLDR: @Blizz, Just fix the mana issues and Disc will feel a lot better.

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It does last longer, scales, and increases periodic healing from all sources.

it’s currently unable to compete in prepatch and also beta just because of mana. Absorbs are amazing, but if you can’t stabilize yourself, you are sort of left twiddling your thumbs.

Agreed! I did the beta and with heroic gear and dumping some stuff into spirit, having spirit trinkets, I was still oom! MW is tons of fun :slight_smile:

Yeah, played poorly and any healer class is bad. I think right now even playing disc well you will have mana issues and can’t do anything about it. With MW, at least muscle memory will make you stable, jab (and other chi granting spells with renewing mists) will help you get free uplifts, and then you also get free mana tea from that to stabilize yourself whenever you’d like. With the buffs to eminence, it is a lot more viable to keep the raid topped up (specially since people should always have renewing mist). And with Xuen at 90, it will do a LOT of healing.

Revival right now, even with the nerf, is quite good. If a ton of damage goes out, I can get the entire raid from like 10% to full with one ability.

Yeah. I think at least fixing this will help immensely. it’ll help feel less useless when you have no mana and mindbender/hymn is on CD and you already used pots. The CD stuff is second to me. I think I just feel useless if a bunch of raid damage goes out and can’t top off people like in cata with hymn, for example.

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I was wrong on that, it’s the same CD. I understand it increases periodic healing while it’s active and CAN last longer, but in practice, it lasts no longer and typically lasts less as you use it as an external on the tank for a specific boss ability eating through the shield as soon as they get hit. Used on CD on a tank, sure, it’s great HPS and way better than PS, but that’s not what it’ll be used for except in dungeons.

Idk, I did have huge mana issues, but I was still up their with the other healer in pre-patch. Some fights I was not top, unlike the rest of cataclysm, but at least half I was. Disc always though had to rely on other healers to do massive heals when people are low during progression. It may be more obvious now since we can’t PoH spam outside of building up Spirit Shell. And that definitely feels bad considering it’s still the end of the expansion farm time and we’ve been able to solo raid healing for quite a while.

This won’t last forever. Our health pools just aren’t all that big now.

You just have to be symbiotic with the other healer(s) and trust them. I know, it’s not easy when you’ve been THE healer all expansion.

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You know what? That’s a totally fair assessment. Played well, disc still has mana issues. It is unfair for sure. I’ll stand by all requests for lessening the mana costs.

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That’s fair! I guess we’ll see how it unfolds as it will scale with spell power. Depending on what the tank has too (like other shields or DR) it can last longer. I think just that at baseline (being fully absorbed) it feels equivalent with PS. But, it has the potential to be much more.

Agreed. I was able to solo heal as a 380-something ilvl monk. But, could not as a 405ilvl disc priest because of mana.

I think just that in order to get good use of Spirit Shell, you dump a trillion of your mana since you need to spam PoH, which is super expensive. So, while absorbs are amazing, you are now left dry while all other healer CDs don’t.

Fair! I dunno if it scales with spell power, but I do think that having a button that can instantly heal everyone even if its like 10-20% of their health, it’s quite good. Disc would need to PoH twice and spend 4-5 seconds trying to achieve the same thing. I know a lot of it is relying on your healing partner(s). But, if its a time when you’re alone or something, not being able to help the raid just makes you feel useless. It’s like “okay wait yall! ill heal you soon! i promise! oh, youre dead”

Enjoying the convo :slight_smile: love theorizing and talking about healing stuff.

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I think this particular spell scales pretty well with the spellpower (compared to revival), and sometimes can be used alone for a tank, but other times they need a second CD, perhaps one of their smaller CDs or some smaller external from someone else. That’s just based on memory though. For pre-patch, it’s not enough for impales alone - or at least it wasn’t on the BDK. He was at 100% HP according to the log with a fresh LC and still died with 12k overkill. I think my cocoons that night were about 212k so that plus his HP whatever it was should have been enough, but it wasn’t.

Yeah. That’s a big issue. I had to be super reliant on innervates (besides my own stuff) especially since we didn’t have the other mana regen in the raid - no spriest, no ret. If I was healing with a resto druid I might have resorted to a brez for mana back on spine and madness.

It does scale with spell power. I think that in general it healed on average 12.5% of everyone back in the day. I agree, that is really good especially since it’s instant and you can hopefully have your chi and other CDs pooled for uplift spam. But even in ToT where MW was still in a great un-nerfed spot, revival was noticeably less and less valuable because the health pools got so much larger that the amount it could heal via spellpower scaling wasn’t good enough.

I felt that even in cata lol. It will be worse in MoP and probably couldn’t solo until much later in the expac when you’ll have so much crit & mastery without trying that spirit shell won’t let any damage ever happen unless you fall asleep. And mana won’t be an issue then either as all your heals will hit so hard thanks to int even if they don’t crit. Might not reforge out of spirit if these mana costs remain so high though.

Same :+1:

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I just thought of something. My disc is still all haste build. I didn’t change over to crit at all and I probably should have. It’s probably the haste killing my mana to heal ratio in pre-patch.

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Oof, this is a cursed sentence haha

Yah
 at least PoH was faster and had a hot and gave you guaranteed DA. So you could use it preemptively to lessen the damage and then quickly heal. But also hymn if it was really bad.

Yeah, even in the mop beta i first tried to reforge a small bit out of spirit and I was oom immediately. I changed it for another try where I tried to reforge into spirit, and I was still oom. Mind you, this was with also heroic gear that they provided, fully gemmed and enchanted.

My priest before had a haste-crit build in cata. I reforged before going, changing haste to spirit first, crit or mastery when I couldn’t with spirit, AND we had a ret and a resto shaman with mana tide, and i still had issues :face_holding_back_tears:

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Unfortunately I didn’t do beta, so I’ll take your word for it and don’t have much more to say.

Trust me, the thought crossed my mind every 2 seconds while I was waiting for enough mana to just smite until my mindbender came back off of CD.

There were times in one particular guild that wasn’t even enough. But my friends hassled me until I joined that team, so what can ya do? :woman_shrugging:

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Disc has a few problems right now during the pre-patch that will be mostly fixed once you hit the level cap it is designed for.

  1. The 90 row solves a lot of the “oh shhh” button problem. 5 mans, stacked up nice, DS is a short CD that can blast people up quick. Halo can blast it up with a bit longer CD. Missing this row right now makes you really have to spam less efferent spells to accomplish the same goal over a longer period of time. If you look at the classes right now the ones hurting a bit are the ones that pivot a lot more on that 90 row, priest is one of those.

  2. Right now a lot of players are probably mostly geared around insane haste levels, very very low spirit levels, and you probably will need to find a higher spirit level before you are comfortable and spin a bit more towards crit/mastery gearing to make a lot of abilities more impactful. With the added bonus of not spamming your mana to the ground.

  3. Spirit shell is going to take some getting used to for some folks. It requires ramp/planning/timing. In 5 mans where things are less predictable and often you are playing with some specials it doesn’t always feel great as well. Easy to miss, big rewards if hit, over all this is a huge power once mastered. Give it some time.

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spirit shell=best raid CD in MOP on a 1 min CD
you’re welcome.

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I just want Ultimate Penance.

But yeah, disc is clearly balanced for divine star that we don’t have yet.

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I tried these during the beta too. Same problems unfortunately. In the beta, I had heroic raid gear and reforged for spirit.

  1. Is not an “oh shhh button” really. It is part of your rotation and these spell take a ton of mana.
  2. I have reforged for spirit in both the beta and the prepatch.
  3. I have experience with spirit shell. I have used it for big rewards. It just always leaves you without mana which is the big issue I’m talking about.

More over, I am not speaking about 5man content. I am talking about raids.

Still has issues with mana. This is the major problem.

Same with this. It is a ton of mana to use. It heals a lot and feels great, but even doing atonement rotation leaves you dry. In the beta with full heroic gear + spirit reforged.

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I raided a few times in prepatch on my priest and went disc on and off for certain bosses where we needed more healing. Every single time, I’d end up OOM less than a quarter into the fight and just standing there watching everyone else play.

That is not what I call fun.

I wish Bliz would figure out how to manufacture ‘challenge’ without always resorting to “heals oom super fast” because healers can’t control when other ppl do dumb things and take loads of avoidable damage, and then have to be healed


Heal them, go oom, get yelled at for being oom so fast.
Don’t heal them, get yelled at for not healing them.

And then there’s bliz’s favorite go-to for fake challenge: unavoidable massive aoe that you just have to heal through.

Up until midway through WotLK classic, my priest was a healer main. I got weary of feeling like it was more of a job than a game so I went shadow with it. (That and I used to prefer holy spec, but bliz seems to have a wicked hate on for holy priests since they’re always C tier or “lol you want me to invite a what” tier
 and just figures that when I finally resign myself that Bliz’s design philosophy is “if you want to heal on a priest, you WILL play disc” and I get used to disc and almost start to like it, they nerf the crap out of it.

But yeah, Disc rn is ooming waaaaay too fast. I see people setting priest healers aside for now and doing something else that’s actually fun to play.

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I have found you do have to manage mana to a degree but I haven’t found it to be something that cannot be overcome. Just have to find the right mix of atonement and direct healing.

I healed all raids as Disc and made it work. Something has to be off in what is going on in either your spell choices or gearing. It could also be your raids approach to solving problems. CD coordination is kind of the big deal in a lot of MoP raids. If the solution is to just heal though it than its going to be rough.

Now did times come about where I fumbled the ball and ran out of mana? Sure. Did the raid sometimes think just standing in the fire because omg look at my damage and we failed? Sure.

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I think the main point is that it’s so much more work than other classes and the results aren’t showing for the amount of work put into it vs other heal specs.

It’s this for real. I did. But to be honest, I always knew I would main monk if we ever got to MoP Classic. But I didn’t plan on shelving my old disc main as I have done and now leveled a 2nd monk for alting.

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