Been reading up on the changes for disc and am looking forward to jumping back in next tier. Main thing I wanted to talk about was Harsh Discipline, probably the only thing I’d like to see changed and my only real concern.
Guaranteeing the empowered penance , especially in a mythic+ environment is just too useful. Their change was specifically to make the raid ramp guarantee an empowered penance (which it still won’t, I raided sepulcar and would sometimes not get procs on my ramp). My suggestion would be to keep it as is, but to have PW:R give you 2 stacks of harsh discipline.
In other words, smite = 1 stack, PW:R = 2 stacks and when you get to 4 stacks you have an empowered penance. This way in raid, you have a guaranteed empowered penance, cause you are doing 2 PW:R in your ramp, and in m+, you can still use your PW:R as a heal, without spam using it in the hopes you get a proc. if 4 stacks is too powerful, could make it 6 stacks (and have PW:R give 3), but I think most people will prefer something they have control over, rather than praying that they get a proc to heal properly.
that whole area on our talent tree is probably dead expect to play squid. as now we dont have the shadow spells to play TE and expiation wont see much either with MB having a 24 sec cd, and only one charge.
Unfortunately, they definitely did this on purpose because of ult. penitence. If you could guarantee constant 8 bolt penances you’d get that off CD very fast.
On the upside in M+, Squid is incredible right now. Been testing with it, and putting out mindbender then blast->penance->Sw:D is a lot of healing (like nearly fully resets DPS health bars from my DHT run) after all the buffs. It’s also doing some wacky damage. The spec feels like it spends a lot of its time trying to put out bender, then attempting to reset it though. So it’s quite a playstyle shift.
Yeah, I’ve been mostly playing the squid build on live and have loved it. But you are right, its probably to do with the new CD, tho i feel like thats an easy fix by making the CD reduction to do with “every penance you cast” or just making it a flat 2.5-3min cd which seems to be the average.
So with “mindbender then blast->penance->Sw:D” is that empowered or just normal?
Do you mean like Harsh Discipline penance? Or Power of the Dark Side Penance?
After the change to Mind Blast’s talents, you get potds for just casting MB.
I didn’t take Harsh Discipline in my testing because I’m taking enduring luminescence (so less total casts of Radiance), and don’t enjoy the RNG.
The changes that made this better really is Bender now does like 60% more damage, and atonement transfer (in 5 man groups) jumped up like 8%.
And our Tier set makes every cast of Smite cast twice during Shadow Covenant (which auto starts when you cast bender now). It’s still a fairly weak tier set, but it DOES help reset bender a lot.
It does feel powerful in dungeons, but it is very, very heavily incentivized to go for the void summoner line with our tier set right now.
Yep they’re out.
The thing about Squid build now is you want to get as many penance resets in its window as you can now, instead. Which does still feel pretty restrictive.
It’s like Halo in that if you use it at target dummies it’ll hit everything. But in the world, or in a dungeon, it’ll strictly stick to things you’re fighting.
Interesting. IIRC the issue you had with the build mostly came down to hitting several buttons in succession before your burst, IE: Radiance > Scov > Schism > Start DPS.
Squid build has condensed so much that it’s basically just Radiance > Bender > Start DPS.
And I mean, the playstyle itself has come all the way down to Smite + Penance spamming even in the scov window. So you might actually not mind it anymore.
Honestly, play how you want, more power to you, but I will say - realistically, I don’t think you can run without bender at least right now. Shadow Covenant just… barely functions if you’re running Shadowfiend, and our tier set is Scov based right now. If that doesn’t change, it feels like a major mistake to not sacrifice a point somewhere for it.
Yeah i’m not a fan of the harsh discipline change. If ultimate penitence’s CD was reduced each time you cast penance instead of per penance bolt that would let them keep harsh disc as it is now which I greatly prefer.
Yeah, the extra bolts from Harsh Discipline. Since you aren’t using it, looks like the buff from PotDS is enough, tho less exciting than pew pewing a bunch of bolts.
Call me a simple man, but penance is probably one of the most satisfying buttons to press in the game, and seeing it shoot out 3 extra bolts makes it that much better. Also, the little minigame of getting your stacks and then hitting penance is just a fun gameplay loop.
Also, theres still no way to guarantee it procing. I had whole venthyr ramps in SL fall flat, cause my extra penance bolts didnt proc. Considering the playstyle is doing big damage when you ramp, having that not happen just feels bad, and it’s got nothing to do with how you played. You just got unlucky.
I don’t think harsh discipline is bad - but I’ve never liked that RNG version. Even less so in dungeon content.
I never ran the leggo in SL either. I ran Twins the whole expansion.
Really it is a personal preference thing for me. I’d far rather have the ult pen followups and the aegis line or blaze of light instead. But you can move those points around.
I don’t know… I don’t like the new Harsh Just because i hate that its tied into a Spell that is normally used for Life saving situations, Rather then being a Situation used for just a DPS option If that makes sense. I just don’t want Extra Penance bolts to be behind a Radiance proc and Know that I’m not going to get the guaranteed Bolts Like i could with the Previous Harsh Discipline.
It’s not really “dead” though, as now you have shadow word: death on a 10 second CD which is 2-3 seconds longer than Mind Blast was.
I was on the PTR and it’s fine for TE. Now Expiation, on the other hand, would have to be edited or yeah it’s a dead or mainly dead talent seeing as how it’s only based off of Mind Blast, but yeah, nah, TE itself isn’t dead.
You can weave in Mind Blast, Mindgames, SW:Death and if you take the talent for Mindgames to be reduced by Smite casts it helps get that off CD faster. Granted now, I could Smite spam about 3-5 times between casts of SW:D but I mean, eh, you could still technically do it. Once MB, SW:D and Mindgames are all off CD you could get 3 full TE procs in there and then donezo for about 3-5 Smites/Penances then get another, then 3-5 Smites/Penances, then a full 3 TE procs.
without a buff to mind games im not even sure thats worth taking, unless were grabbing it solely for te. im kinda hoping we get a few minor buffs to our spell with the now that we have lost 4 damage spells.?
I don’t know, I wasn’t looking at numbers. I was just testing to see TE and if there was a way around it. There technically is a way around it and this is the way.
Also, Penance is still counted as a shadow spell once you’re in SCov, as would be Divine Star or Halo.
