Harsh Discipline weird interactions or bug?

Classes Priest
1

I can’t tell if this is a bug, or it has happened before the change since I didn’t play disc prior to the change.

Anyway, currently the way Harsh Discipline works is, if you use either Smite, Mind Blast or PW:Solace, there is a buff with counter that goes from 1…2…3… and the 4th cast will activate Harsh Discipline (which is a separated buff). At this point, if you do not cast your Penance, and instead continue casting Smite, Mind Blast or PW:Solace, a new counter begins.

Now, during any time on the “second set” of counter, if you cast Penance to consume the previous Harsh Discipline, it does NOT reset the counter, meaning you only need to cast the remaining “counts” of Smite/MB/PW:Solace to trigger Harsh Discipline again; however, if you keep casting Smite/MB/PW:Solace without ever using Penance, the counter will just keep going from 1…2…3…0…1…2…3…0 without doing anything meaningful. Below are a few examples to describe this weird interactions (I’m just going to use Smite to simplify the descriptions)

Example 1:
Smite (1) > Smite (2) > Smite (3) > Smite (activate Harsh Discipline, counter resets to 0) > Smite (1) > Smite (2) > Smite (3) > Penance with Harsh Discipline > Smite (will activate Harsh Discipline again, counter resets to 0) > Penance with Harsh Discipline

Example 2:
Smite (1) > Smite (2) > Smite (3) > Smite (activate Harsh Discipline, counter resets to 0) > Smite (1) > Smite (2) > Smite (3) > Smite (will not activate “another” Harsh Discipline, but counter will reset to 0), so you will need to cast 4 more smites to activate Harsh Discipline

I do not know if this is intended or just something they overlooked when they made the changes, but the problem with this interaction is, it makes Harsh Discipline super unpredictable and very high maintenance (you are not going to count every single Smite, Mind Blast or PW:Solace), and if you want to min-max, you almost need to stop casting at the second set of counter 3 to avoid it being reset to 0. So if you want to hold your Harsh Discipline in anticipation for a big ramp, you almost didn’t want to cast anything at that point which is extremely counter intuitive.

2

It’s been a thing since the start. As far as if it’s intended or not, who knows?

It honestly doesn’t matter too much, because you can generally stack up an HD penance before it comes off cooldown anyway, and HD penance is a cast you’d VERY rarely hold onto either.

3

I started dabbling in Discipline over the last couple days and noticed Harsh Discipline functions exactly as you described, and I like it. Feels a bit more flexible on casting order when weaving holy and dark skills for the Twilight Equilibrium buff.

I don’t see this function causing the skill to be more unpredictable than any other stacking mechanic. You don’t actually have to count the stacks if you don’t want to - you could pretend this doesn’t exist and it would play exactly how you imagine it should.

To help with tracking this interaction I started creating my own weakauras cause I’m sure as not wanting to count either - so I have 4 small icons that light up white 1-3 stacks and at 4 they all turn purple as well as light up penance. If i keep casting the icons will continue to light up so I just have to glance at them to know how many more cast i need for the next Harsh Discipline buff.

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