Discipline and 9.0

Classes Priest
21

@OP, I agree with many of your points (not all) but mostly disagree with the proposed solutions, plus I think there are many other things that might also need attention… Here’s my breakdown:

1.-
I disagree on the Rapture thing, I don’t think there’s a problem with Rapture, but I do agree having it off the GCD would make it feel much better in M+. I specially don’t like the idea of replacing it with Luminous Barrier, I think it’s good that it takes time to spread your Shields.

The one change/improvement to Rapture I think might be worth exploring is making it so instead of giving you a set amount of time it could give you a set number of charges and more time to spend them (say you get 6-8 charges and have up to 40s to use them). This might also open the opportunity for future talents/effect that might suddenly grant you 1 charge or Rapture (re-introducing the concept of getting a strong shield every so often).

2.-
I agree tier 1 talents are a bit imbalanced. Schism is fine imo. I also think TOF is fine it just needs maybe one or two talents that have good synergy to support it (more on that latter).

As for Castigation I do have a pretty cool idea for a change that involves a few more talents too. Basically I would make Castigation cause your sw:pain / POTW spread to a nearby enemy per bolt of penance, then I would replace Shield Discipline for a new version of POTW which no longer has the spreading effect (that was moved to castigation) but returns some mana per tick. (This also covers OP’s point number 3 about Shield Discipline, which I think it’s a boring talent with no real gameplay interactions).

4.-
I agree, Lenience is boring and has very little gameplay interactions. Evangelism is in this row and it’s basically what defines Disc gameplay as a burst AOE healer, I would like a talent that can offer a somewhat different playstile, and I have just the thing for that in mind:

I’d like Disc’s version of Benediction. This involves giving Disc Prayer of Mending which is something I’d like to see as well as a moderate priority / use on the move spell (because I’d also want PoM to go back to instant cast)… The idea is that Benediction causes every jump of PoM to leave an atonement behind (for a reduced duration probably).

This “Benediciton” idea serves two important purposes: 1) Providing an alternative gameplay option for more sustained healing but less burst. 2) Making Disc more approachable for newer players as it requires much less knowledge of the encounter, just use PoM on cooldown. An important note is that Evangelism should remain the go-to option for Mythic Raiding where burst healing is so important (if that’s not the case it means Benediction is OP and needs re-balancing).

5.-
I do somewhat agree about Disc being “punished” by grievous and bursting but I personally don’t think is thaat much worse than for the rest of the healers (as long as everyone brings and uses his own food and/or you bring fish feasts). I’m fine with this specific weakness.

6.-
Somewhat true, I think a lot of it comes down to Disc throughput in 5-mans being quite significantly lower than the other healers. Address that and we are fine on this category (Probably having atonement % transfer being buffed a bit in 5-mans).

Other Concerns I have:
Disc (and Holy too) needs a GCD efficient way to deal AOE damage in M+, it doesn’t need to translate to healing. I would buff Mindbender/Shadowfied to also drop dark puddles on the ground that damage enemies standing on them (that damage does not transfer to atonement healing). This is different from Durids and Pallys using Sunfire/Consecration but achieve the same thing, a GCD efficient way for AOE damage, since it’s a longer cooldown it should be stronger when used.

Spot healing or triage healing is an issue for Disc too, and here’s where I think we should have something big in the final talent row competing with Evangelism and the other talent I proposed (the Benediction-like talent). I don’t have a specific idea but perhaps some form of direct healing help, something aimed to M+ to help with triage healing (this would also very likely interact well with TOF from talent row 1).

1 Like
22

Holymonky,
There are some pretty stellar suggestions you proposed.
The fact that Penance has almost no iterations is dumbfounding, especially because the 3 bolt volley has a ton of potential for cool interaction. If each bolt extended the duration of SW:P then castigation gains value, but there is nothing like that currently. SO I 100% agree, schism is fine, buff the other talents.

The charges for Rapture is also a great idea, it devalues haste for disc, but I think it would give disc a lot more freedom to not be stuck to the burst window playstyle without removing or nerfing that playstyle.

Instead of Lenience I would add a talent that increases the Direct Heal of penance by 100-200%. This gives disc triage, makes Castigation more desirable, and Make Contrition desirable in M+ Since penance would almost always be used as a direct heal.

4 Likes
23

id agree with the boring talents, this raid tier ive given up on trying to compete with healers who have it easy with whackamole healing and all kinds of healing while moving ablities, in raid i just focus on burst damage and tanks byond that focus on dps. logs look awful but long as were downing bosses I dont care. druids and monks have it so easy in raid this go around, hopeful they make some adjustments in 9

24

i strongly disagree with a lot of this. There are better ways to improve disc, its really only lacking in m+ right now and might benefit from regaining two stacks of focus will. I have posted on ways to improve attonement healing if only 5 or less attonements are active, which is probably the best solution for m+.

Rapture is an essential ability that is situational in content. It might not be ideal for raid but for other non-raid content its required.

25

Buffing Penance healing makes sense but to be blunt, besides holy priest and shamans, disc’s dmg output is technically the lowest of all healers right now.

Check M+ dps logs for healers. Monks are pumping INSANELY well, resto druids can passively heal with hots and out dps a disc priest. Funny enough, holy pally’s do less dps than a monk, pending key level but at higher key levels holy pally’s are definitely the DPS healer of choice.

Disc damage was over nerfed in 8.3. They can’t even keep up with catweaving lmao.

3 Likes
26

With regards to your last words, my only issue with Rapture is that I feel that it takes far too much setup time, especially when considering other healers. Pre-shielding just 5 people takes 6 GCDs, which is an eternity, relatively-speaking. My suggestion was only to streamline the process.

I’m excited to see what changes Priests get in the Alpha. I don’t have any intentions of changing classes, so I’ll ‘roll with the punches’ either way.

2 Likes
27

Every time i use Vitality Conduit, I keep thinking…damn I wished this was what Rapture/Shadow Covenant is supposed to be:

Shields that quickly shield the an entire party while still playing to the discipline theme of plus/minus effects in their healing.

It’s the same thing with shadow. When I use Breath of the Dying Major, I keep thinking…damn I wish this was the new Shadow Word: Death. It solves some if not most of our problems with the ramp up time while still giving us that sweet execute damage.

Sigh.

28

The only thing disc needs is an instant apply atonement to all raid members for 10 seconds talent that has a 5-6min CD. That is all.

29

Disc doesn’t need help in raids. It needs help in keys

2 Likes
30

As much as it pains me to say this.

Disc is fine.

I’m not a fan of the new design, I think it’s clunky and slow to react to things (if you’re new to a raid, someone takes unexpected damage, PvP random damage).

What Disc DOES need is to get some spells back from Holy. For example; binding heal, prayer of mending (instant cast) and inner focus. (Or bring back old inner focus and inner fire)

Binding heal is great for 2v2 and healing yourself and an ally in M+, Prayer of mending would be great for bouncing atonements around and Inner focus for bigger osh** healing and to help with their mana problem.

Again, not a fan of it’s current design - but it does ‘work’.

31

I’d love mana burn back too :smiley:

32

Given that this thread is about Discipline Priest in Shadowlands, one thing I noticed reading into this thread and the comments is no one mentioning the new abilities we are getting back.

Mind Blast, Flash Heal and Shadow Word: Death are available to all three specs next expansion.

For instance, they can introduce new passives onto current talents, or just new baseline passives, such as, “Your SWP/PtW has a chance to:”
“make your next Mind Blast instant cast and deal 50% more damage” OR “allow you to cast Shadow Word: Death on any target regardless of health for the next 8 seconds.”

Of course, this is just an example and I’m not saying this would fix the current state of Discipline Priest, but just some neat ideas to bring to Discipline priest into 9.0.

Since we’re also getting Flash Heal back, maybe Shadow Mend can receive a buff, being the big damage heal and Flash Heal can become the new Quick Heal for small damage healing or something else along those lines.

Going back to what others have said though, Discipline priest has alot of weaknesses such as in Grievous and Bursting and how they need to rely on other players, like people needing to carry their own food, players need to know what they’re doing in a mechanic, etc.

Talents could definitely be improved on. Personally, I like the idea of buffing Castigation to extend duration of SWP per bolt or spread PtW per bolt. They could also buff Masochism to affect others and not just yourself, so that Shadow Mend applies a HoT and a 10% damage reduction to anyone you cast it on.

33

Was there something about Flash Heal being a separate heal? Because Disc already has Flash Heal - a low-level Disc starts with Flash Heal, which changes into Shadow Mend at level 28. The game still reads them the same: a macro to cast Flash Heal will cast Shadow Mend. But I’d be intrigued if they said it would be its own separate spell.

1 Like
34

I know that we have it at lower levels and it turns into Shadow Mend later, but in 9.0 I believe we’re getting it as a separate spell.

Its the same for Shadow, they have Shadow Mend as well but will have the option of Flash Heal. They did say all three specs will have them, (Holy already has it) so I’m just assuming.

35

I could understand getting SW:D, but mind blast and flash heal? Seriously, whats the point?
If its true, then it strikes me as more mindless blizzard thought bubbling, with no actual gameplay to back it up.

36

It was announced at BlizzCon. They’re just trying to unprune classes. Believe it or not though, we did have Mind Blast as Discipline in Legion beta. They took it out but I like that we’re getting these abilities back.

They could always introduce new passive abilities because of this which opens up alot more options.

37

I dont think its enough, in any way, shape, or form, to fix disc’s current issues.

38

As I said,

It’s also good from a PvP standpoint. If I’m locked on Shadow, I can always cast Flash Heal as an alternative.

39

Disc already had this supposed advantage though, and in the real world it means sod all tbh.
There are some that think its sufficient that disc be perfectly good at mythic raiding…personally that means nought to me.

40

I’m betting they’re just removing shadowmend and giving all specs flash heal back, and if that’s the case—good riddance.

1 Like