This week has been kind of rough for any of us disc priests who have dared to heal M+ pugs with the Grievous affix. Albeit some groups are fine for various runs, others are not. You can get all kinds of problems in these keys that require triage–which means Shadow Mend spamming. That will get you out of most pickles, but the result is heavy mana burn.
Now since Fish Feasts are gone in the sense that they do not work to get mana back if you are over 50, this problem is all the worse this week. I have gone into Prideful loads of times now with no mana. A lot of tanks will simply ignore your pleas to stop for mana when you are at 50% (and even lower) but you know from experience it wont last through the next pack and then Pride–even if you use a mana pot. The results are often dire, or lead to all kinds of problems. A lot of puggers cannot do Prideful well in the first place, add in Grievous stacks, people who ding each other because they do not know that the beams always go out in the exact same directions every time, tanks that move the Prideful mob in the middle of your rotations, tanks that will even pull more mobs in the middle of pride, etc. and you have a recipe for disaster that is made 20 times worst when you start pride oom–which has happened to me countless times this week.
Here is what Moadmoad had to say about it: (source Twitter, October 22, 2020):
"Can we get some disc mana buffs along with that please?
Disc has TERRIBLE mana sustain in keys, fish feast was our saving grace and now that’s gone. This will heavily impact disc priests in M+."
His prediction has come true and is evident this week more than ever. Is Blizzard gonna force us all to play healers with no mana issues, like paladins, or are we going to remain second or third rate healers who have trouble getting invites in high keys forever?
If you agree please do us all a favor and hit like and comment with your thoughts. Let’s try to raise the devs’ awareness that we have been given the royal shaft and for months have suffered and that we want a change.
I know it sounds bizarre but this has been one of my biggest push weeks yet.
Granted, I just started pushing my Priest(Disc) a about 3 weeks ago.
I’m sure it’s likely a me thing but, even with Mass D, I still dislike Bursting far, far more than Grievous.
I mean, Atonement can heal off more Grievous when used properly.
Sometimes it definitely does get like really scary but I’ve just learned to keep faith in my Atonement and forego panicking into Shadowmend spam until the last moment possible.
Again, could just be a “me” thing, and likely is that simple as I’ve heard most Priests I talk to in agreeance w you.
I’d honestly rather have Grievous than Bursting or Explosive or many others.
But as far as a particular affix really effing over a class, I’d say Storming on Holy Pal is rough.
Bursting used to be a biat back in BFA before getting Mass D.
It’s not that atonement is or is not enough. The need to resort to Shadow Mend spam depends on a number of factors. Are your deeps standing in fire? Are they getting interrupts? Are they avoiding avoidable damage? Are they using health pots and using defensives? Are they dispelling? Are the pull sizes too big? Those are the big ones, but of course other things like tank skill at mitigation, gear level, how high the key is and so on are factors too.
Yeah, sometimes you just gotta let a DPS sacrifice themselves a time or two to learn.
If the grp is standing in fire repeatedly, they’re just gonna die repeatedly.
I’m not gonna play at a sub-par level to accommodate sub-par players.
I promptly communicate as much to groups and you’d be surprised how often it clears up.
A lot of players aren’t bad. They’re just lazy and/or too busy staring at the Details damage to coordinate properly. Often, as soon as you call them in it the run will go much more smoothly.
People will most def use and abuse their healer lol. It’s true. Don’t let em!
To be fair though, Mindgames is likely my biggest healing cooldown.
It’s got a short enough cooldown to wear you can have it for every pack and Radiance into Mindgames into Penance will bring a group from half to full. Especially with a Penance proc.
It’s kinda sad and unfair. I feel like I’m playing in easy mode with a Kryian Paladin.
I have much more fun on my Disc Priest though and now wish I woulda have pushed him first.
I enjoy Disc far more now that we got some additional spells back with Blast/sear/covenent.
I think the fact that I am having more fun on Disc and enjoy the playstyle more makes me kinda overlook the fact that I likely do have to be much more concerned about Mana though.
And what key level do you call pushing exactly? Anything can be easy on low key level with a skilled group. 15+ can be done without a healer. To make a meaningful statement about difficulty one would need to mention item level, key level and rio score of your group at the very least.
Personally I don’t like the whole concept of ‘managing’ mana by not healing. It’s just not fun. Don’t you think it would be much better if healers could heal forever, just like dps can keep doing damage? Your maximum hps would still be limited by max theoretical throughput appropriate for your item level and to prevent boss fights from lasting too long there is already another mechanic in place like hard enrage. When you hit enrage it’s obvious to everyone that there was not enough dps and it’s not healer’s fault.
Having healer output be based on total mana rather than throughput has another problem for balance. All top logs for disc priest show a situation where disc had almost unlimited mana due to externals like innervates. Without those we simply need to afk between ramps. But guess what everyone looks at top logs and we all know how that ended.
And I’m not saying just remove mana bar either, it could be a resource which you can spend and recover in some way, possibly pulling it for a big burst and then slowly recovering but you should be able to recover, right now if you run out, that’s it.
I actually had a disc build in bfa with some trinkets and azerite powers where I would never run out of mana. It wasn’t a top meta build, but it was fun. Now I feel like I’m the only one in my group needing to carry full bags of food like I’m some kind of fat panda.
But I don’t expect them to redesign the whole class now, so simply decreasing mana costs would do for now.
The mana issue is a big one for disc priests. In a recent M+ pug I joined, the healing was intense and I had to stop for mana a lot. The key was also not timed, and in the last minute, after I had not gotten into any arguments, had only been helpful, the keyholder leader removed me so that I did not get quest credit or valor points. I have no way of knowing why but suspect that he may have been frustrated and blamed me for not timing because I had to stop for mana a lot. Never mind that my dps probably more than made up for the time spent getting mana. He probably took the time I spent drinking as time lost without any consideration of my dps.
As a disc priest you can reduce your mana consumption. Generally never press your damage buttons like smite except to do healing via atonement via damage. Never press the buttons that consume a lot of mana, that is spells like mind blast. Never press your damage buttons unless you are healing with them via atonement. Always use penance defensively or if the whole group needs healing via atonement. Press mind games and solace on cd solely for their mana return–and cast smite only to heal the tank via atonement because it does not use much mana. Do not use your pet as a healing cd, use it on cd to get back mana. Be economical in your healing–that is, use shields vs shadow mend as much as possible and do not overheal.
Generally speaking be willing to not cast any spells except for the ones that get back mana back. Heal only what you have to such that you force the dps in the group to either use their defensives, healing pots or self-heals as much as they can, but realize that they might not like this and may remove you for doing this.
There are plenty of tanks that will do massive pulls non stop. In these groups you are usually neither on the tanks radar or mind. It is usually like you are not even there. In these cases you do a ton of triage, and do the above. A lot of these guys are in such a rush that they are willing to court oversized risks of a wipe and your job is simply to not go oom and emergency triage heal the whole dungeon.
If we want to be actually fair, here, the top logs of every healing class generally has innervates - the entire reason for innervate being seen as a Disc thing is because we get the most value out of innervates. The only class that comes close is Mistweaver.
But in 9.0, looking at the logs of Disc priests that didn’t get innervates, they were still doing better than other classes in the fight, as well. So saying the only reason that disc was doing well is innervate is kind of moot.
Mana management is something disc is always going to have to struggle with in raid so long as their playstyle remains being the walking healer CD raid blanket. It’s been a ‘problem’ (though I think it’s pretty clear Blizzard DOESN’T see it as a problem at this point) every tier since Tomb of Sargeras. We blanket, we burst, and then we recover mana. We’re to healers what the big burst CD DPS classes are to DPS. We shine in several windows of the fight, but outside those windows we’re really just sitting there.
In M+, our mana’s really not that bad in comparison to Hpriest, MW or Druid unless we screw up the pull fairly bad.