I’ve historically played holy but lately I’ve been trying to get into disc and I’ve noticed how ridiculous the skill floor is. I was wondering what could blizzard change to make the spec more friendly to new players in the spec. I was thinking a talent that makes radiances cooldown reduced by using damage abilities to create a fun dps healing feedback so that the spec doesn’t just rely on memorizing ramp rotations.
I’m curious what long term disc players think about the skill floor issue. Please keep in mind that I’m just asking what could make the spec more assessible.
A raid CD that can blanket without ramping. I’ve said this before, but something like an evangelism Rework that instead of extending Atonement for 6 seconds, applies a 6 second atonement to the whole raid (and extends any atonements already out by 6 seconds).
Or bringing back something like Luminous Barrier (but without losing barrier for it).
Making it easier to hit ramps in raid or cover at least one or two mechanics a fight without full ramping would make the spec far more accessible than it is.
I don’t know if that’s a GOOD idea in the end for the spec considering a lot of people enjoy the challenge the spec brings. But it’s definitely the best idea if the goal is accessibility.
Holy is considered and entry lvl spec. Disc is considered an advance spec.
If you came from a beginner spec to an advanced one, you expect an escalation of difficulty.
Blizz doesn’t need to make changes to make it friendly for new players… Thats why we have other healer specs.
Blizz has taken Many steps since legion to dumb the spec down and refine it for more casual players.
It is currently in my view the best iteration its been since legion. So if your asking for more refinements, consider where disc has come from.
Consider also you have obviously barely played it. Give it more time before suggesting the need for changes. It would like me walking into DH’s which i have never played and complaining that its too hard and how can they make it easier for me. I would come from a position of ignorance.
I feel like they’ve done a good job at making disc easier than last expansion.
I personally find disc easier than holy because you dont have to create windows to dps you just get to dps naturally while healing. Whenever I try holy my dps drops to basically nothing. I find it stressful trying to find time to dps and time to heal.
Disc is also just about knowing the fights and how to properly manage cooldowns.
Its not a spec most people can jump into, especially if you dont know the dungeon or boss youre about to fight.
But, It just takes a little practice to get it down.
Disc feels the most approachable it’s been since its Legion rework and I don’t think it needs to be made easier or more approachable for new players, but I do think that Blizzard made some missteps this expansion regarding disc’s raid identity. First, evoker can essentially do what disc does effortlessly and doesn’t really have any of disc’s weaknesses. Second, they made this raid require constant movement during huge damage events, which significantly impact’s disc’s ability to execute it’s Evangelism ramps.
I think it’s probably fine that disc’s burst healing niche is less of a unique role, but if that’s going to be the case then disc needs to be able to perform spot healing more readily and its mobility can’t be so terrible. They’re already addressing some of this in reducing mana costs significantly, but the mobility issue will remain a constant problem as long as major damage events require constant movement like they did in VoI unless fights regularly incorporate some “safe zone” for classes like priest or paladin to hang out in so that they don’t need to be literally carried by evokers.
In retrospect, VoI feels very much like Blizzard was trying to create niches for the previously eschewed raid healers like resto druid and mistweaver to shine and just really dropped the ball in some cases (mistweaver) and really underestimated just how much healing resto druid can do when most other healers aren’t capable of pressing buttons.
I think the entry barrier in M+ is much lower now since Disc is a lot better at reacting to damage than it used to, you still have proactive tools and will still benefit from pre-planning but I what I’m saying is that in the past it was either be proactive or fail but now the spec can still perform decent enough by playing reactively which I think it’s a pretty healthy state.
The one thing I would like to see improved is to remove a bit of the button bloat we currently have for our DPS spells. For example I think PW:Solace instead of its own spell it could be a buff we gain every 15s that makes Smite basically behave as PW:Solace does. And we could maybe merge Mindgames and Schism somehow (thinking how for example Pallys get multiple “Avenging Wrath” talents that stack with each other, maybe there’s a way to make Schism and Mind-games merge into the same spell if both are taken).
As for Raid I do think the skill-floor there remains a bit higher since we rely on Ramp timings. On this I agree with others that having the option to go Holy alleviates a bit the need of lowering the skill-floor for Disc. I still think an option to opt-in into an easier playstile at the cost of sacrificing some potential throughput is worth exploring but I think that’s what talents like Luminous Barrier used to do and (at least as far as I remember) they weren’t really well received.
I think a talent that allows you to choose a different playstyle would be great, that is the idea of the talent tree. If people want to choose the ramp play style sure but if people want an easier rotation then allow them to have that option.
Currently the spec is F tier raid healing and has half the population of the next least populated spec which is mistweaver. I think the new tier set will help the spec a lot but it could use some changes to improve its raid healing. M+ and pvp is currently the only place where it shines.
While I agree on that having other playstile options, even if sub-par but that people could opt-in would be good it’s also kind of a double-edged sword…
If “done right” where the talent tree is wide enough to provide multiple playstiles while also giving enough depth to properly support and allow good customization them then sure that would be awesome…
But there’s the risk they do it “wrong” and trying to support multiple playstiles ends-up in a very shallow tree that leaves them all feeling very shallow. I think the Holy Paladin tree is a good example of this, by trying to support melee and caster they ended up with a very shallow talent tree and both feel incomplete.
Yeah, it’s not “F” tier… If you are looking at Subcreation that’s pretty useless when it comes to Healer rankings in Raids, they themselves have the following statement about it:
Based solely on hps from 27204 Mythic parses. More details in the FAQ. Take this with a huge grain of salt for Healers as it is only considering hps and nothing else.
And even then, the difference in HPS is not even as large as to place healers from S to F. In fact I think after the most recent set of changes raid balance looks excellent (for healers), things might change next tier ofc but at the moment I would place every healer in either “A” or “B” tier for Raiding.
Disc popularity is indeed low… And I do think a lower skill floor for Raiding, and maybe some option to scale better for larger groups would be good steps to try to help with that.
You do… You have the left side absorb style healing or right side dps shadow side healing.
Talent tree working as intended
Misleading. Add in holy priest to see the number of PRIESTS. There can only be so many priests so of course if holy is more viable then disc takes a back seat. See mythic plus for SL affect in reverse when holy was better at mythic plus.
Damage profiles in raid also matter. Rot damage suits holy and hps healers more then big burst damage profiles where things like barrier, SS and evang work better.
really shouldn’t be needing to explain this
Hearsay only but Jak was saying the next raid might be better for disc and shammies. We will see, as in damage profiles
makes sense that the only class that can play 2 healing specs has the easiest and hardest to play specs, maybe the roof has to be lowered a bit, because adapting a highly complex sequence acounting movement and dmg patterns for a mediocre HPS feels so bad that makes you wanna quit tbh, especially when more inexperienced raiding teams dont consider dmg reduction and only HPS outcome.
The more I think about this, the more this makes sense as a change to Evangelism, which is just used for group-wide healing and nothing else. It would make Disc much more approachable and certainly less frustrating on some fights where RNG swirly-dodging gouges out parts of your ramp. And it would give Disc a raid-wide heal in groups larger than 20.
Holy is considered an entry level spec. Disc is considered an advanced spec
I must have missed the “memo” on that I always considered it incredibly fun and has never felt any more “advanced” to me. The only thing advanced about it is how the window of Atonement has become smaller over the years. Personally, I think Atonement should be dropped or totally overhauled for Disc. Every healer class should have the capability of being fun AND advanced depending on our play-style and effort.
Then yes you missed the memo. Having said that the memo has been around for many years. Current disc is the easiest to play then it has ever been so maybe now that gap is considerably smaller then what it was, say in legion etc when disc had no way to reactive heal as well as we can this xpac.
Its where a lot of the skill and difficulty came in, that and maneuvering in raiding getting your ramps out while doing mechanics.
Not sure you can say you find it incredibly fun but then say atonement should be overhauled or dropped, since its an integral part of how disc plays and you just said it was fun.
Fun is subjective so kinda hard to moderate. I find the current version of disc in raids and keys very fun and the multi dimensional ways to play it most engaging.
My point is the skill floor is too high and the healing profile is too ramp orientated and feels bad if anything goes wrong during your ramp. Your big healing cds don’t feel impactful. why ever play disc when you can do just about everything better as holy.
Complexity does not equal fun despite what some of you think. Effectively trying to gatekeep the spec from becoming better.
I’ve been considering learning disc as it looks fun but the “high skill floor” part kinda scares me away. However I am trying to figure out which healer to focus on in Season 2 which is either Paladin Monk or Priest.
While this is true, I think the solution is to make the ramp more consistent rather than trying to change how the spec works… And in fact that seems to be what they are doing with the tier set making PW:Radiance instant.
The total healing achievable by every spec is determined by the tunning so all healers are relatively close in power level to each other… Think of this as your total “Budget”, so if we want powerful Ramps every 1.5m then a significant part of our budget has to be allocated there otherwise they will just not feel impactful, but that also means we have less to allocate to other areas like consistent healing.
Yeah this is not true though… Disc was pretty weak this tier due to a combination of low tuning and generally most fight not favoring it too much (or at all), but tunning is a lot better now and Disc is finally looking good again, I’m pretty confident it will go back to being meta for Mythic Raiding this upcoming tier.
Fun is subjective so you can’t really dictate what others find fun or not… For me it’s not that complexity = fun, I don’t feel that way but imo what makes Disc fun to play in Raids which is the precise timing and pro-activeness (followed by a nice payoff from getting it right) is also kind of what makes it complex.
And it’s not about trying to gatekeep the spec to becoming better, it’s about not wanting one of the most unique specs to lose what makes it unique and become just another “standard” healer.
I always considered it incredibly fun and has never felt any more “advanced” to me. The only thing advanced about it is how the window of Atonement has become smaller over the years. Personally, I think Atonement should be dropped or totally overhauled for Disc. Every healer class should have the capability of being fun AND advanced depending on our play-style and effort.