Atonement healing is what makes discipline unique and incredible fun to play. At least is what I love about the spec, but right now it isn’t our main source of healing. It’s nice to have a single healing spell that is massive like radiance but takes the soul of the spec.
Right now our main problem it’s that we have a lot of damaging spells and all are wet noodles, if we want good healing with atonement we have to use it all perfectly.
I just want fewer spells that hit a lot harder, bring back the damage absorption in mind blast, make mind games hit like a truck or give us boon of the ascended back.
In every expac we had different problems and never a good solution, we couldn’t have to much damage or we will be op in raids, couldn’t have good absorption spells or other healers didn’t have to heal, always too complex, always rely on the skill of the rest of the party because if any screw up we are all dead, etc etc etc
Always a different problem, never a core solution.
I love the complexity of the spec, but I’m kinda tired that the core solution to our problems never come.
I dont know how you can say its not your main source of healing. In keys its pws then atonement. In raids its atonement. Its one of my main sources.
So shadowcov, MB MB SWD HD Pen all are bad? Add in Halo because in a healing scenario it hits hard.
We and have been A tier for some time now. We are the best we have ever been in keys. The spec flows well and allows different play styles in keys and raids. Really not sure where your coming from
Yes we are right now but until 10.5 we were trash, in shadowlands we were the healer with the worst dps and only in the first patch of bfa we were S tier.
The solution in 10.5 was a massive buff to our direct heals going into a more reactive healer than a proactive healer. I personally don’t like that, that’s the first thing i said.
Too many spells, in shadowlands i could cast radiance followed by mind games and the healing output was a way more. I want fewer spells that hit a lot harder than having a super long rotation, the only spell that hits like a truck is LW in a raid environment.
PWS? really? i haven’t tried it after the last buff but never ever pws was a good source of healing to me in this patch, after 10.5 atonement and radiance were way ahead of pws. Even with rapture it wasnt enough to manage some boss mechanics in tyrannical weeks, reactive radiance was a lot more effective.
In shadowlands, we were hard carried by a horribly overpowered spell that was propped up by soulbinds and legendaries that were only unlocked in later patches and was significantly better on Hpriest than it was on us anyway.
Outside boon, we were spamming Shadowmend in keys. And in raid, the rotation is about as strong as it traditionally has been. Setting up a dark reprimand does more damage than Mindgames used to.
So, don’t you think button bloat it’s an issue right now?
Again I’ve never said disc is weak right now, I said that I personally don’t like the direction the spec is going buffing our direct heals instead of atonement.
I understand that in season 1 being a proactive healer wasn’t good enough. Damage didn’t follow a straight pattern in a lot of fights (specially trash in m+).
The thing I love the most of the spec is and always was nailing the rotation in the right time. You know something it’s about to happen and you prepare to that, and I don’t feel it’s the case right now.
If we have to be more reactive I want to be with atonement and not with radiance.
Not for me. I find myself wanting to take mindgames, as an extra button to cast during shadow cov because i run out, also with TE i run out of shadow keys to swap in with holy ones.
SBG +18 break down FYI
PWs 12M 33%
Atone 7.77M 21.4%
PWR 5.05M 13.9
Also loving using TE to proc larger holy novas. Holy nova doing a ton of damage atm
Atonement IS our main source of healing in raids.
Disc Priest was absolutely nuts in Castle Nathria.
thats because spirt shell was too strong of a spell overall, needing to time our spells to match the damage of a raid boss vs just applying a shield before anything happens and becoming the best heal snipers in the game.
No, not really, tbh. I generally think bloat comes from having a bunch of buttons doing the exact same thing. I think arguably right now, Disc only really has one of those (mindgames, which has fallen FAR from where it was in early beta - and now is like a filler spell that happens to prevent a lot of damage). But I also just don’t take it in a lot of scenarios now because of how much it was nerfed.
In M+ we’re GREATLY improved. Your standard atonement heals can cover way more than it used to with all our bonuses to penance and the sins buffs. Radiance is a great tool for when spike damage comes out which is something we were sorely missing. And we’re not stuck spamming Shadowmend (something that was greatly exaggerated in SL, but still did happen even when playing well).
And in raid, Atonement’s still pretty strong - stronger than it was in late SL. It isn’t Nathria levels, but Spirit Shell was the only real reason for that.
What you might be feeling is the HP/damage changes that hit at the start of DF (and are happening again in 10.1). Every healer is feeling those to an extent, though. I know every healer I’ve played has felt slower.
My perspective is mostly from raiding.
DF has added in a lot more things to track, especially if you want to excel at it.
Twilight Equilibrium, Harsh Discipline, Weal and Woe, Shadow Covenant, Expiation. It’s definitely become more complex to master. In SL, BFA, and Legion, I don’t think I ever had to keep track of so many things just to barely keep up with co-healers.
10.0.0 was the final straw to make me leave my priest behind after 7 years.
Getting out there and playing other healers made me realize what a dumpster fire disc is comparatively. (And it’s not just me, look at the disc population compared to everyone else)
Disc is the only healer I’ve played where I fill all my action bars. When I played prevoker/rsham/holy priest, it felt like something was wrong because I’d have empty buttons that I was so accustomed to being filled.
On top of all of this, the spec still feels too reliant on encounter design and raid comp.
All that being said, the new tier set is awesome, and I do plan on bringing my disc back and testing the waters again.
But the spec still could really use a rework.
In dungeon or raid?
In dungeon we’re doing pretty well, actually. In raid, I can understand because playing disc is fairly difficult there and you’re going to see a huge amount of variance when it comes to player numbers.
I don’t think a rework is necessary at all, tbh. Disc is in a really good spot right now overall. Its balance is easily middle of the pack in dungeons, and it’s likely to be meta in raid again. I still think it could use a couple things if they wanted to make it more accessible to a raiding crowd - but it kinda seems like Blizz is OK with the spec not being very easy in raid because priests have holy to fall back on, and holy plays itself in raid just like evoker does.
In raid.
I quit doing keys on my priest shortly after my RL gave me the ultimatum of swap or get sat, which was unfortunately the week before 10.0.5. So all of my disc M+ experiences are mostly pre-buff.
I still take my priest to alt raids, though, and it’s hard for me to not to feel bitter towards the class when I have seen how much greener the grass is.
I do agree a bit on the button bloat though… Not something that warrants a real rework but I do think some small adjustment to a few active talents to maybe cut-down a bit on the multiple single target damaging buttons that we have would be a nice improvement…
Don’t get me wrong I really enjoy this iteration of Disc and some of the additions we got are fantastic… In particular I think having access to PW:Life is great, having SW:Death work with atonement is also very nice, Penance feels good again (really hated how weak it was in SL). And I think Mind Blast is also pretty nice…
But for example I think they could adjust a few talents to instead of being an additional spell they could just merge into existing ones… For example when PW:Solace is off CD you basically would always cast it ahead of Smite so maybe that can be turned into a buff you gain every 15s that changes Smite to behave like PW:Solace.
Similarly I think Mindgames and Schism can probably be merged into the same spell if both are taken (kind of like Pallys have multiple talents for Avenging Wrath that stack with each other)…
12 plus year disc Main spec here. Not one of those who swap to holy when its easier to. I stuck it out.
So because you don’t like it, its dumpster fire… Excellent logic. Discs population has always been small… or do we not pay attention.? There has been no point in recent history that disc has vied for top most played healer spec. So your point lacks.
Im Glad you have something to go back to 
As do most specs. Any raid fight that has big burst Favours us. Any fight that has rot damage favors hps healers. Nothing wrong with that at all
I dont track. Thats a Habit not something to track. and you dont have to take it. Same as the others you mentioned. The only one you really have to track as ism is HD. Everything else is just use or refresh
Much to the Chagrin of other healers, Disc priests were a dominant healing spec throughout MoP and their high representation was thoroughly documented by Dedralie in the expac review on Healiocentric. Funny how folks forget that things have reversed, and that back then it was holy priests on this same forum who would be saying that they were going to “stick it out” even though disc was considered “easymode” because of the atonement implementation at the time, and it was easier to get accepted into raid groups as a disc priest as well.
Just as I didn’t ask back then to make Holy as easy as disc was, I don’t think they should single out any changes to make disc easier now. If however the skill floor becomes lower as a consequence of other positive changes to the spec, and the depth of the spec and skill ceiling aren’t negatively impacted, then who gives a flip? Some of the stuff like ability clutter aren’t so much a skill thing as just an annoyance. I can pile a bunch of crap on my desk to make it artificially complicated too.
I get that there is value in Disc being a complex, advanced-skill spec. I’ve enjoyed that aspect of Disc myself throughout the years and I still find it rewarding. There is a difference between something being complex and something being complicated, though, and the line needs to be drawn somewhere.
Disc’s ramp was already lengthy and complex before Dragonflight. But in Dragonflight we added to Disc’s ramp/burst window:
- 4 extra casts of smite to proc Harsh Discipline
- Making sure to cast Flash Heal once to get double-atonement via Binding Heals
- Weaving PW:S and Renew while applying pre-Radiance atonements to make the most of Train of Thought (although not done with a Rapture + Evangelism combo ramp)
- Twilight Equilibrium
- Weaving SW:Death into execution windows
- At the tail end of your burst window, cast Purge the Wicked immediately after Mind Blast to benefit from Expiation
Where do we draw the line and say “this is too much, cut back a bit”? And if we aren’t ever going to ask that question, is that really a healthy approach to evaluating the spec?
Disc can still have a high skill ceiling even if you make Evangelism apply a raid-wide atonement. You will still have to weave Twilight Equilibrium, get your Harsh Discipline procs, make use of trinkets, use an optimal talent build for that specific encounter, weave SW:Death into your burst windows, etc. And of course, time everything optimally so that your hardest-hitting spells hit within a second of the damage hitting your raid.
What will change far more than the skill ceiling is the skill floor, however. Advanced Disc priests will still be able to distinguish themselves.
Yep I do agree on this tbh…
The “complexity” of Disc, specially in Raiding has traditionally been more about understanding when to ramp and then been precise and on-time with it, but the actual execution on how to do the Ramp and then how to execute your “DPS rotation” afterwards was pretty straight forward and this is the part that has become unnecessarily more complicated imo.
I still enjoy the spec a lot so this is more of a “what can be improved” kind of thing for me… But I do think there’s a bit of clutter in the “rotation” and reducing that would be beneficial both in terms of making the gameplay feel more fluid and perhaps lowering the barrier of entry a little bit.
Talents that I feel are kind of redundant and mostly are just adding clutter the rotation:
Shadow Covenant - I think having one of Shadow Covenant or Schism is good but they are a bit too similar (they kind of fill the same role) so imo only one of them should exist. I think Schisms feels better in Raiding and Shadow Covenant feels a bit better in M+ but still I don’t think having both is necessary, maybe it could be a choice node between the two.
PW:Solace - It’s basically Smite but instant and re-generates mana, not much thought process to it just use it on CD, you’d never use Smite over it so it could be baked into Smite either as a proc or with a set CD.
Mindgames - At its current power it’s not much different than MindBlast, basically works as another Mind Blast during your burst rotation, I think it could be merged with Schism is both are taken. I think having it in the class tree really limits how strong it can be to not make it mandatory so I also wouldn’t be sad if it just went away or became a PvP talent (maybe we can replace it with Door of Shadows to keep the Venthyr theme, please?).
**On the other hand, spells like PW:Life, SW:Death, Light’s Wrath, Halo/Star I think those indeed good additions and have their own identity and role within our kit. Same for the “passive” talent options we have I think that for the most part they are pretty good design-wise and on what they do for the kit.
I mean we do have the choice of not taking those talents, and it doesn’t impact our performance really outside raid, where the TE proc from solace is somewhat important.
That said, I do distinguish ‘button bloat’ from ‘a lot of buttons’. Those are two different things to me. I honestly think having a bunch of buttons on a priority system isn’t a bad thing for a healer that is supposed to be doing damage for its healing. Especially if those damage buttons do have different roles. Obviously it’s an extreme, but if we were to boil Disc down to penance and Smite, it’d likely be considerably less interesting (our first tier set was looking to do this - it would have been better to just smite and proc train of thought to get faster penances than it would have been to do anything else, really).
Mindgames I think only feels redundant because it was made so weak. When it had some mana return and its healing/damage prevented were higher, it felt like something you could toss on an enemy and prevent a huge portion of a tankbuster. Now it’s less damage prevented than a base PW:S on a target, and by a considerable amount. Granted it heals too, and it’s definitely better than people seem to think it is, but for something with such a long CD that seems very wrong and the followup talents are yikes.
(216) Dragonflight 10.1 BEST RAID HEALER TIER LIST | Aberrus Top Healers Predictions | WoW - YouTube
Prob one of the best descriptions about discs skills ive seen for awhile