How badly is Oracle Disc Priest going to get nerfed?

Classes Priest
61

Thinking the same. I expected the Weal and Woe, but the 15% on Penance sucker punched me.

The spec still has an issue with too many stacking modifiers. It’s illustrating an issue with the DF talent designs as well- it’s all too easy to path around a tree picking every strong talent and skipping weak ones, where you can’t balance talents against one another without a direct choice node. Nothing stops Oracle from grabbing most everything that makes the old Mindbender burst build function, but also slanting over to Weal and Woe and Eternal Barrier to giga-buff its shields.

1 Like
62

I don’t think this will stop me from playing Oracle. The 15% isn’t a huge enough nerf to impact Penance as a spot heal. You would have to make all their instant casts go away for me to stop playing it.

I run a multi dot Oracle build, I don’t take the Shadowfiend stuff or Schism, only Power of the Darkside stuff. I run crit. So basically my Flash Heals crit for 3-4 million and my Divine Aegis makes up a lot of healing, passive healing that doesn’t require anything.

I don’t see any changes to Divine Aegis, Flash Heal or From Darkness Comes Light, therefore this is barely a scratch. Oracle has way more going for it than the shields, that’s what’s crazy about it and that’s why people are jealous of it.

3 Likes
63

Disc abusers in varying stages of denial that their spec deserves those nerfs. :rofl:

You should really look yourself in the mirror before you monologue.

1 Like
64

I do not like oracle at all and am glad to see it hit hard. I think Premonition is a bad design within the overall context of the game and that’s evident by the real power behind the spec being talents like Preventative Measures, Twinsight, and Divine Feathers, all of which are vanilla priest flavor and not specifically “oracle” flavor, really highlight how big of a design failure Premonition is.

Even I think your hyperbole is comical.

65

I don’t like oracle either. However, just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean I want it destroyed. I am always in favor of buffing others to be just as cool.

3 Likes
66

I’ll be honest, I’m absolutely disappointed in the Disc nerfs, and this is from someone who plays Disc as an alt.

Disc was fun, it actually felt like what all healers should try to achieve, it was fun and insanely less stressful, as Disc I never got healers fatigue.

Disc should have set the bar that Blizzard should try to achieve on other healers, make Healing feel good, impactful but more importantly having fun and enjoyment while doing so.

I’m very, very disappointed in the Nerfs, glad for buffs on other specs, Healing should be fun, every Healer should be pure enjoyment, feel good, fluid.

I honestly thought Oracle Disc achieved this, it wasn’t about its DPS its focus was on actual role of what a healer is about, keeping everyone alive and safe.

4 Likes
67

Let me be clear - I think that Blizzard is targeting the wrong things here. Weal and Woe wasn’t a problem with voidweaver. Penance wasn’t a problem with voidweaver. Atonement transfer in raid wasn’t a problem with voidweaver.

Blizzard needed to directly nerf oracle. Instead they nerfed discipline, but nerfed oracle harder than voidweaver. They should have nerfed Preventative Measures and Twinsight. Twinsight’s extra bolts shouldn’t benefit from PotDS or trigger Weal and Woe, Encroaching Shadows, and Contrition. Do that, then reassess and nerf Premonition if it’s needed to bring it in line with voidweaver. Down the line, Preemptive care needs to just be removed. Same with Divine Feathers - making atonement management trivial in raid and giving a massive movement speed boost to oracle is a problem when archon and voidweaver don’t get it.

Unfortunately, oracle is the closest Blizzard has ever come to caring about priest since Legion, so oracle can’t get nerfed without discipline catching strays.

68

Just remove and destroy everything that makes Oracle viable? That makes Disc playable to those who don’t worship the Atonement/Schism/Shadow Cov trinity?

I have a better solution: don’t nerf anything. Buff others. Fix the dungeons, fix expectations.
Up to +10, there are precious few mechanics that barely one shot. Most every mechanic is meant to be punishing but survivable, or lethal by ridiculous overkill amounts. Shields are as good a tool, not better, not worse, than every other kit in that paradigm. It’s only when regular mechanics begin to deal 100%, 105%, 120% of health bars, where shields start to make a difference and other kinds of healing can’t cope, that it becomes an issue. This only happens in Mythic+ past where rewards end and ego-chasing begins.

Fix dungeons, actually stick to their guns of making healing a marathon and not a whack-a-mole, and players won’t jealously attack shields as some kind of cheat. We might see another Khajin where Disc covet party-wide giga-Hots Druids bring. We could avoid situations where Mass Dispel looks broken,gets nerfed, only for an expansion later to see us use it once a dungeon anyways.

They need to broadside the expectations of the community that - allegedly- can’t separate Midi pushers from their own experience and only commit to a meta that isn’t appropriate for the average player. But count me dubious that this is actually case, and not the anecdotal whinging of a few. In my personal experience running Disc, I get declined as often as not, for Resto, for Pally, for HOLY Priest, and the deciding factor is IO and Ilvl, not class or spec.

1 Like
69

If you want to look at oracle as a playstyle that’s less reliant on Atonement, then voidweaver is presumably the playstyle that is reliant on Atonement, yes? With that understood, here are some things to consider:

-Why does oracle get +4s to Atonement duration if oracle is supposed to be less reliant on Atonement?

-Why does it get +20% damage on Penance and Smite?

-Why does Twinsight grant offensive Penance bolts when used to heal instead of improving the healing received (or some other benefit) with a defensive Penance?

-If Twinsight’s extra bolts stack Weal and Woe, then why nerf Weal and Woe for both hero classes rather than change how Twinsight interacts with the talent first?

-Why is Blizzard nerfing Atonement value in raid when voidweaver is currently performing at 67-75% the effectiveness of oracle? Yes, the strongest players are all playing oracle right now, but missing 4s of duration and lack of overheal protection is a major contributor to this disparity.

-Why is Blizzard nerfing Penance damage rather than Preventative Measures when voidweaver Penance value is not a problem?

Think about it.

That all said, I’m not opposed to the nerfs in question if they turn out to be warranted for voidweaver as well, but right now voidweaver is catching strays for oracle when the problems are clearly rooted in oracle itself.

And as an aside, Divine Feathers should not be exclusive to oracle. It is far more powerful and useful than Dark Energy and archon has nothing improving its mobility. It absolutely needs to be baselined to the class itself or removed.

1 Like
70

The thing that was busted about oracle was simply the massive shields, the easiest way to nerf it was to nerf the shield portion of weal and woe. If ur playing voidweaver and all ur healing comes from atonement then it shouldn’t really matter if that nerf happens. A voidweaver isn’t gonna have the same talent setup as a oracle disc priest and oracle is what is broken at high keys atm.

71

Atonement is integral to the Disc experience- Blizzard doesn’t want us abandoning Atonement completely. That’s why it’s the first talent point. There is a nuance in how much it contributes, and how it contributes. Disc’s other tools, damage reduction, shields, instants, etc, are also a spectrum.

I see it the two hero specs as leaning towards one nuance and away from the other, without abandoning either completely.

With Voidweaver, I don’t think of it as merely Atonement. I think of it as the “ramp” style Atonement- why I called it Atonement/Scism/SCov trinity. You spend a lot of GCD’s to set up a large burst of Atonement healing. Voidweaver leans into this playstyle. It still uses mitigation, shields, etc, but not as much. I don’t like it- but it’s popular, and I wouldn’t to take it away or nerf it.

Oracle leans towards mitigation tools, but also, a more consistent, lower burst, less setup-based Atonement. I argue it’s not that Oracle is far less reliant on Atonement for its output, it’s less reliant on Atonement maintenance for its gameplay loop. That’s the appeal to me; trading burst for flexibility.

As to why individual parts seem scattershot? I chalk that up to Blizzard being reactionary, without an over-arcing goal:

The 4 second Atonement duration means less time is used to maintain Atonement. Without it, Oracle has to spend more time juggling Atonements- even if it gets less out of Atonement, it still can’t heal properly without it. This helps ease pressure.

A lot of Disc encourages offensive Penance- Twinsight mitigates the penalty of using a defensive Penance.

The damage modifiers on Oracle spells were a reaction to the (still large) damage disparity with Voidweaver.

Oracle only has good Feathers, VW has base feathers and dark energy, that stack.

Nerfs to raid Atonement- because Blizzard is bad at balancing, lol? Actually, I think it’s because the devs are shorthanded and overworked, and don’t have time to address minute subtleties in balancing, so they look at specs or even classes as a whole and take nerf bats to the simplest targets to correct perceived issues.

I agree they need more targeted nerfs, but disagree with the one’s you’re proposing.
The thing I take the most issue with is the 15% nerf to Penance healing. It’s Disc’s only good spot heal, and even using it as a heal hurts our overall hps, so it’s relegated to emergency usage. It’s not broken, it doesn’t contribute to any of the issue other whine about. This nerf was unnecessary.

1 Like
72

They’re still nerfing a tool for voidweaver that, at least for now, does not need nerfing. They could easily revert oracle to require two Penance casts with no Smites or using a Radiance charge for a big shield and see how that changes things.

I may end up eating my words here, but I don’t believe these stack. Even with some quick testing, I did not observe any increase in speed between having Angelic Feather active and having both feather and rift active at the same time. I’m happy to own it if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding and observation that Dark Energy only provides benefits if you do not have a stronger movement speed buff active (IE, almost never).

Even if it does stack, it would be a smaller speed boost than Divine Feathers, is not available on demand like Divine Feathers, and still relegates Angelic Feather to a self-use only macro instead of being useful as a group utility like Divine Feathers is.

Strong disagreements about design aside, your comment about Penance is exactly what I’m talking about the nerfs overall. They’re targeting the wrong things, at least for now. Penance damage and healing is not a problem for either spec, but it’s getting nerfed. Atonement throughput in raid is not a problem at all for voidweaver, but it’s getting nerfed. Weal and Woe shields are not a problem for voidweaver, but they’re getting nerfed.

There’s no indication, at least for now, that any of these changes are needed for voidweaver but all the goals for Blizzard’s nerfs could be achieved by targeting oracle specifically, and it’s very odd that they aren’t doing exactly that.

73

You can’t expect to have a balanced game where all healers can output Life Cocoon on a person every 7s lmao… Imagine having to tune EVERYTHING in terms of dmg patterns, defensives and every single healer because of just one healer being out of line.

Just accept Oracle Discipline priest was overtuned… And it’s ok if they overnerf it a bit more because Voidweaver Discipline is also an S tier healer…
These nerfs do not push Discipline out of the equation, it’ll still be a strong healer as it still has massive aoe healing, ok dmg mitigation and it is still better than holy so if you want fort/soothe/PI disc is still the way to go.

1 Like
74

Already laid out why shields are an issue due to the content, not the design of shields. Reiterating: Blizzard has always promised to make healing a marathon, with large hp bars that are slow to fill. Shields are not an issue in this environment. But they always backslide into trinary full/damaged/dead damage patterns that favor shields. Fix that, fix the issue without nerfs.

And then iterate even further:
Surviving full health bar hits is the bottleneck in high M+. A) why is balance centered around high end M+? And B) why is the healer, ONCE AGAIN- the bottleneck that paces M+ progression?

If timers were the bottleneck, no one would care about shields. Groups would hit dps constraints before they met damage checks requiring shields. Oracle would fall out of favor very quickly in that environment.

Rather, what this reeks of is anti-Premo crowd trying to put Oracle into the dustbin so that they don’t have to deal with it.

1 Like
75

I would like to ask a smart Mythic Raider if Oracle Atonement is the reason it’s dominating raids, and if so, how is it higher than VW? The last I read, VW still outpaces Oracle in damage, which I would think would translate into more Atonement healing.

I do concede, I would rather they nerf Preventative Measures over Penance itself. It’s an overall 3% Atonement buff to M+, the shield nerf doesn’t bother me because over half of my Weals are spent on Smite anyways, but the spot healing is going to hurt.

1 Like
76

While I’m not a smart mythic raider, I can outline why oracle atonement is powerful in raids.

If you look at the highest quality logs you can find for voidweaver and compare them to comparable oracle logs, which is admittedly only heroic raid, voidweaver does ~50% more damage in raids and does indeed get roughly 50% more Atonement healing, with all of its talents are geared toward maximizing that value.

But if you look at comparable oracle logs, the better PWS and Twinsight alone make up for the gap in Atonement between the two hero specs, with Divine Aegis, Piety, and Solace all being gravy.

What’s more is that oracle’s ramps are not only longer but they’re also very front-loaded and get a large amount of healing out very quickly, when it matters most, while voidweaver’s ramp is consistent across the whole duration of their shorter Atonements, with a big spike right at the end, when it’s most likely to overheal - a concern that oracle only has in 1/3 of ramps.

tl;dr: Oracle gets what voidweaver does in raid with just Preventative Measures, Twinsight, and Insight, with Piety, Solace, Clairvoyance, and Aegis of Wrath all being gravy.

77

I’m not anti-Premo
I like playing Oracle in my Holy priest alt.

It’s just balance. I still think Oracle Disc is playable and viable, just not oppresive in the healing meta

78

This is not entirely true, because a lot of full ramps use 2 premonitions at once in order to get out multiple penance casts + boosted healing during ramp. So Premonition is much more important to the kit than it looks if you’re only analyzing what’s on the meters specifically.

79

People over blow how intensive the management aspect of Premonition is. If you can cast 2 PoMs (PW:S) in a row, that means you have the CD reduction. If you don’t, that means you have the other 2, which basically means just bomb Flash Heals because that’s the quickest way to over heal a single person without blowing Serenity. Unless you were Oracle Disc, then the quickest way to over heal a single person was ding ding ding Penance.

Either way, Flash Heal is the fastest way to get a direct heal out AFAIK for Piety and Solace purposes.

80

Except the boosted healing and multiple Penance casts are all accounted for in the amount of Atonement healing, Penance damage, and Penance healing the spec gets, which is why I included Insight as part of the kit that is needed to match voidweaver. Piety overheal is accounted for on its own, as are Solace, and Divine Aegis, all of which are extra on top of the healing voidweaver provides, at least that is consistently true in comparable logs.

I consider Piety’s healing boost as somewhat of a wash as a part of the comparison because voidweaver gets +20% Atonement while rift is active, and that’s effectively the same as a +20% healing boost for voidweaver.