Hey guys, Ralz here, I’m currently 3334 rated as I write this, I’m writing this purely for those who are confused about what season we are in, and what set bonus relates to our current strength in season 3.
P.S.A. It is crucial we vote for season 3 as our entire class has had multiple abilities removed and/or baked into other abilities as to simplify our class, and make mindbender very playable and even strong in M+ dungeons.
Please for the sake of all that is not a holy pally meta again, vote for season 3 set to keep disc priest fieldable. <3 take care my disc enjoyers
(season 3’s set is the one that lets us crank smites while inside shadow covenant, which occurs when we spawn our mindbender, in order to keep good uptime up on our pet, it’s insanely strong and is the best disc has felt in years)
PSA: Void Summoner is near certainly tuned around the S3 set and would need to be re-tuned if we use either other set for S4 - assuming that no tuning would take place when the reason they aren’t just making all 3 sets available is to do tuning is kind of a strange angle to come at this from.
S3 set holding so much of the spec’s power is something that does not take a genius to see and would take all of 5 seconds for the devs to just re-tune Void Summoner around us not having and the power level loss is resolved - the real question is whether the S2 set even can be tuned up in a way that makes sense. The tuning would have to be to the base spec, thus why I said what I said in my post above.
P.S. Instant radiances are quite high-impact in m+ and it’s weird to not acknowledge that
The instant radiances, while helpful, are not necessary at high-end M+ by any means. Some of the highest keys in the world right now are being timed by disc priest in its current form, I’ve acknowledged the importance of both set bonuses, and added more to why season 3’s set bonus is strictly better, not only for healing, but for strong aoe damage as well. Radiance unfortunately does no aoe damage that helps the key progress. ):
Right, but the catch is you don’t use the 4 piece from the Season 3 set either for PVP (arenas especially) and Tier 1 is meh for several reasons so it’s a no-go for me. So, I’d rather just take the 4-piece from tier 2 and free up a PVP talent point, specifically for Thoughtsteal (underrated vs Resto Druid, which is S tier in arenas right now) or Archangel.
Right, but the catch is you don’t use the 4 piece from the Season 3 set either for PVP (arenas especially) and Season 1 is meh for several reasons so it’s a no-go for me. So, I’d rather just take the 4-piece from tier 2 and free up a PVP talent point, specifically for Thoughtseal (underrated vs Resto Druid, which is S tier in arenas right now) or Archangel.
Edit: also, the 4 pc isn’t just instant Radiance, it’s huge mana savings. Most games don’t come down to mana, but some do, and it sucks to lose for that reason.
You’re right of course. The real issue is Season 2 vs Season 3. Season 3 is good for people who only do PVE and who don’t mind being a pet spec. If you want to do arenas on top of raids and M+, or don’t like being a pet spec, it falls short.
For me, it’s not just instant radiance. It’s also:
- Not being tied to a pet
- Not being tied to Shadow Covenant (not taken in PVP in any serious play)
If you’re voting for S2 you’re objectively wrong. Its that simple. Instant cast Radiance won’t do anything for you when you can’t actually deal damage with the atonements.
Funny, everyone was all soooooooooo incredibly unhappy at the close of season 2 because they thought instant cast radiance was soooo good.
I am leaning towards season 3 myself, but what a change in thinking. Ha ha.
I’m confused…people keep saying vote season three because of the power and blizz specifically stated they would balance w/e one is chosen. How about we choose which one is fun??
Fun is subjective. I couldn’t care less about instant radiance. I like having higher uptime on MindBender
S2 set is so good for pvp but lets be real all the pve fanboys are gonna vote in the terrible s3 set
Cool, I couldn’t care less about being a pet spec. If I wanted that, I’d play a Beast Mastery Hunter or Demonology Warlock, instead. Those are pet specs, not Priests. I honestly think they should remove Mindbender and Shadowfiend from the spec, entirely, and just reduce the mana cost of all spells by like 30-40% to compensate.
Again, being a pet spec is fine if you enjoy being a pet spec, and it’s not fine if you don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy when they force talents with their tier sets, at all and really wish they’d stop doing that with tier sets.
Maybe think more on how the class plays and less about what it uses to play that way, mindbender being a pet shouldn’t sway how you feel about the way the class plays. The pet is just the cosmetic part of the buff that it functions as, making your smites double cast, entering you into shadow covenant, and enabling strong healing throughput to those with atonements, whilst giving the priest the ability to do strong aoe damage.
great job thinking about pvpers when it comes to this! i cant wait to not use 4 set in pvp again because it’s good for pve and terrible for pvp!
Oh I did, and I hate pet plays on specs that shouldn’t be having a pet, at all.
The tier set bonus for season 2 felt 100% better. Instant cast Radiances were 100% more fun than Smite spam.
You will have strong AoE healing throughput from instant cast Radiances leading into 5+ Atonements all at once and spending the same mana as Mindbender, without being tied into Mindbender.
As a healer, you shouldn’t be worrying about your damage output. I know that Disco is an exception to that, but it seriously irks the hell out of me that a healer cares so much and is designed around doing more damage. Might as well put the spec into Augmentation’s support role and declassify both Augmentation and Disco from their current roles, add Support in and throw both of them into that very role instead.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed season 2 Disco way more than Season 3 or Season 1.
I don’t understand why we are voting for the current season bonuses to remain into the new season. nobody uses season 3 4 piece set in PvP. nobody. whether they are 1200 or 3200 rating. so, voting for this completely bricks a whole set of people. ideally, you want both PvE & PvP players to benefit from this decision. being a smitebot in PvP is worthless because you global other things & the return of investment on a smite cast just simply isn’t there. being a smitebot in PvE is not worthless & helps with throughput with atonement on all your party & huge damage (healing) while sf/mb is up. come on, people, jeesh.
from all 3 seasons, season 2 would benefit the most people & it was strong regardless of content. there’s my vote & explanation. k bye.
Mindbender and Shadowfiend aren’t pets, their guardians. And I’m not just being pedantic - the idea is they’re temporary and require zero micromanagement. You can just pretend it’s a dot or buff on yourself or whatever, doesn’t change the game play. Plus you still need to use that ability (well) regardless of what set bonus you have. If this is your reason for voting for a worse set bonus you’re certainly entitled to your opinion. Just don’t try to connect it to some weird class fantasy thing.
I totally buy the “I’m not good at pre-planning and instant radiance bails me out of trouble and that’s fun for me” argument. That’s a totally legit reason for voting for S2. But for those of us that play at a more competitive level we’d much rather play the spec correctly and benefit from more throughput and more synergy with the rest of the kit.
Disc is in a really good spot in season 3 and a large part of that is the set bonus and recent rework. And don’t forget that it also impacts non-competitive players if a class is perceived as weak, in terms of getting invited to groups, or being asked to play a different spec, and so on.
“Atonement healing is now increased by 50% when not in a raid.”
That would be the reason we’re healing more with atonement, and that number can be increased if we lose the damage we get with our S3 tier set. Our S3 tier set didn’t allow us to heal more through atonement anywhere near as much as the 50% when out of raid buff.
Please for the love of all that is holy vote for S3 tier set. The entire disc priest playstyle is balanced around having the double smite in pet windows. Losing out on the CDR on SF/MB means that all of the raid and mythic + timings change. MB 30s ramps become 45s+, SF becomes 1.5min+. In mythic+ in mid level keys you’ll only get 1 MB before the pull is over. Maybe they can change some of the tuning knobs to get the HPS numbers to look okay but without another full rework to once again move away from pet windows and shadow damage it’ll still feel really bad to not have our current timings available. It is much more realistic and reasonable from all angles to simply have the S3 tier set moving into season 4.
The S2 tier set bonus with instant cast Radiance procs should have been turned into a talent imho.
Compared side-by-side though… the power of the S3 tier set bonus is miles ahead of the S2 one. The 4-piece is basically just a flat out +50% dps boost alone. This is the first season where Disc beats out Holy in overall dps.
The 2-piece lets you passively keep resetting atonement and when you’re under PI + Heroism you can keep atonements up on an entire 5 man group by just spamming Smites. It’s also pretty useful in light healing situations because you can keep atonement up on the tank and yourself for free.
The high uptime on Mindbender + Abyssal Reverie (+20% more healing from Shadow damage) makes getting through healing checks a lot easier because you’re having a Mindbender out almost constantly.
The TLDR is that Disc will feel really bad once we lose the 4-piece. It’s carrying our weight right now this season.