i just started playing dragonflight with priest recently and its so sad that this Discipline spec basically only gets leftover scraps from Holy and Shadow for all it’s abilities. It has basically nothing of its own, except for Penance and i guess Purge the Wicked? Holy has a more fun DPS rotation with Holy Fire and Chastise and Empyreal Blaze. For a spec that relies upon dealing damage you really would think it would get some of its own unique, interesting abilities with which to deal damage.
Basically Discipline still feels like one of those Half-DPS rotations that they give healers to put in a little extra damage on the side of healing, despite the fact Discipline relies almost entirely on dealing damage for it’s healing.
ESPECIALLY in regards to Visuals and Sound Effects, which i believe to be some of the most important aspects of a class that get people to play it, all of disciplines stuff is just either the sparkly sounds and golden light from Holy or the corrupted purple and shadowy whispers from Shadow. It’s like this whole spec was just cobbled together from leftovers it TRULY feels like the biggest afterthought of a spec in the whole game, somehow even moreso than WW.
With how Pain Suppression, Rapture, and the Priest class mount when in disc spec are all gray, i really think going for a Grey aesthetic for it’s abilities, with more grayish vfx and solid, shieldy sounding sfx, would really give Discipline its own unique feeling amongst the priest specs.
For its damage rotation, i really think balancing light and shadow is cool and it should get Twilight Equilibrium baseline, but not every single one of its abilities should still be ones from Holy and Shadow, i basically only want it to keep Smite and Mind Blast personally. Give Purge the Wicked unique gray visuals and absorption properties like the Sanctuary talent so Disc’s unique dot isnt just SW:P with a Holy Fire reskin, keep Penance as is, add a unique assortment of AoE abilities other than just spamming holy nova, all that stuff to really make Discipline feel like a dps class.
I really like this spec, but it really has absolutely nothing to call its own other than the Atonement effect. I would really like to see it get a full on unique aesthetic and rotation to make it stand out from Holy and Shadow. Thank u.
Pain Suppression, Radiance, Penance, Purge the Wicked, Atonement, PW:Barrier, Ultimate Penitence are all discipline exclusives with their own visuals and sounds. I’d even make the case that PW:S almost is, as well. You’ve gotta remember that we’re still a healer and always have been.
Solace/Schism got removed, and it was generally for a good reason. I’d rather they don’t bring a bunch more buttons back. Though I would like to be able to talent into mind sear again. Or let me talent into Cascade again - since it would fit Discipline pretty well to have a spell that they could cast on allies or enemies to get the shadow or holy cascades.
I’m not the biggest fan of our rotation, but that’s largely because our rotation is just so heavily tied to Shadow Covenant/IE and our current tier set. We’re fishing for resets all the time, which doesn’t feel amazing. But we definitely have enough spells.
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i was moreso referring to the fact that discs’ damaging abilities consist of: Smite (Holy), Shadow Word Pain (Shadow, Purge reskins it to Holy Fire from Holy), Mind Blast (Shadow), Mind Games (available to each spec), Shadow Word Death (available to each spec), and Penance is the only one unique to disc
then theres the aoe abilities which consist of Holy Star, Halo, and Holy Nova, which are all also available to each spec
then theres the healing abilities Flash Heal, Renew, Power Word Shield, Prayer of Mending, which are also available to each spec.
then for our cooldowns we do have some unique stuff but our most important one is Shadowfiend/Mindbender which is also available to each spec
yes, Discipline does have a COUPLE unique things, but its really not that much, and theyre mostly all Cooldowns where i think there should be more unique basic abilities
Yes, but you could argue this reductively for every priest spec, or really any spec in the game.
What do holy priests have for damaging spells? Well they’ve only got chastise that isn’t shared if we’re counting PTW as holy fire.
What does Shadow have as unique damaging spells? Well they’ve got Spike, Crash and DP, VT if you count it. And I guess a bunch of random procs with their own fx.
But even Shaman’s in the same boat. Ele and Enhance share a ton of spells. Resto even shares stuff with them. They all even share Ascendance as a possible CD in their spec trees (it’s not even a class tree CD).
I just don’t really think Disc is lacking flavor really. Classes are still classes, even if the specs are a different flavor of the class, there’s generally a lot that unites them.
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I play all 3 specs and they all play completely apples to oranges from each other. The only similarity are Priests share some of the same abilities. Outside of that: night and day difference.
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If ur gonna complain about classes sharing abilities, ur gonna be making a lot of threads for a bunch of different classes.
Disc is about tempering the balance of shadow and holy to aid ur allies. It has a unique playstyle of damage you deal directly healing allies marked with atonement, something no other healer in the game does baseline (much less have it be the focus of their spec).
Because of that, it’s obviously going to be using some Holy and some Shadow abilities to achieve that.
Aesthetically? Maybe they can do something visually different. But that’s something that can be done at a later point.
I wish we had nore unique offendive abilities to use.
I liked solace, and i also liked when we had a knockback.
I wish blizzard would lean more into the offiensive side of disc.
I have thought similar thoughts about disc like maybe make another spec called void weaver but disc would need to use prayer of mending I think, I don’t know how they would even setup something like this.
Yes! All of this.
Why does holy priest get all the love in PVP? Chastise, divine ascension, holy ward, spirit form. Disc gets the scraps.
Disc has no equivalent to chastise, nothing like diving ascension, and nothing like spirit form to provide a sustained period of uninterrupted casts. Disc can use a one-second fade to avoid CC, but so can holy and shadow. Holy has bigger heals, more cc, AND more damage than disc. It’s nutty.
Give disc spectral guise. Give disc mindsear. At a minimum at least give disc chastise.
Just give them silence back
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Disc is the worst healer spec in arena blizzard ruined the spec.