I used to love Attonement healing back in Cataclysm, MoP and WoD. It was this fun little side feature of the class that had great synergy with our core healing toolkit. When Legion was released, and I saw that main toolkit was taken away… my heart sunk. Even worse, though, is that the new form of Attonment they added was a PAIN IN THE BUTT to manage.
Having to manually apply Attonement with PW:S and Shadow Mend totally kills the flow of the rotation, and - tbh - it is what kills Disc’s fun-factor for me. It makes the Disc playstyle less than the sum of its parts.
I agree, only being able to pump out actual healing in a short window is unfun for me. I enjoy Disc more in dungeons because I can apply atonement to the whole party quite easily. But I dislike blanketing people in a bunch of prep abilities to do my actual healing.
I agree, it’s kind of an annoying chore to maintain with the spec. Personally I think they can revisit the whole idea of atonement. I really miss the play style of pre cata disc where it was more about the shield and ICD management of rapture. I’m all for it being an aggressive healer, decrease our healing throughout and increase our damage, but other healers currently outdps us.
If Blizzard ever ditches the whole “you have to constantly micromanage who has atonement” playstyle, I will play Discipline again. Right now it’s just too much effort for too little return, and even if the return was better, it’s just not fun micromanaging atonement on multiple people.
If atonement was like a stance I was in, or if it was a debuff I applied to an enemy, and healing occurred while I did damage in that stance, or damaged an enemy with that debuff, I’d find Discipline far more fun to play. But constantly playing whack a mole to keep atonement up is just not fun.
you understand the concept of wack a mole? its like see damage heal damage. Thats holy priest, Its the antithesis of what disc is.
disc is know damage is coming prep for damage, heal damage as it comes in.
Disc is by opinion and probably by representation the hardest healing spec in the game to play. It is not for those wanting simple basic style of healing. Thats why the absorb lovers are unhappy. They want that simple style back., where they could top the charts with minmimal effort andf feel good about themselves.
There are plently of simple healers to play. The old disc is not coming back. Adjust and play it or move on. Its unhealthy to be hanging on this long
I get that healing as Holy is essentially playing whack a mole as well. The issue I have is that when I am playing whack a mole as Holy, I am actually healing. But when I am playing whack a mole as Discipline, I am setting up to be able to heal through atonement. Then I can pew pew to heal… until I have to reapply atonement several seconds later. It’s just not fun for me.
As Holy I watch the health bars, but I have times where I can just toss out some Smites, Holy Fires, and Chastises. If I see a health bar dip, I can slam a Serenity on them, or a few Flash Heals if Serenity isn’t up. What I don’t have to do is fiddle with a gimmicky mechanic before I can actually do the healing I want/need to do.
I like the gameplay of dealing to damage to heal when incoming damage is below a certain threshold, and using direct healing spells to burst heal where needed when incoming damage is above that threshold. I just don’t like having to maintain atonement manually. If atonement were something like a stance, a self buff, or a debuff placed on enemies that I didn’t have to micromanage every 15 seconds, then I’d enjoy playing Discipline.
Right now though, I feel like Holy does a better job at healing and dealing damage than Discipline does, and it does so with far less hoops to jump through. I get that I can just stick to Holy, and I will, but why should Discipline have to work so much harder for equal or less performance compared to pretty much every other healer?
If Blizzard wants more people to play Discipline, then something needs to change. If they don’t care how many people play Discipline, then they can just hold their current course. I’m fine either way, since I can just stay with Holy, but there was a time I enjoyed Discipline and I’d like to see it become enjoyable again, for variety’s sake if nothing else.
Holy deals higher damage per spell because they’re typically casting healing spells and weaving damage in during downtime. Disc is the opposite. We have longer windows of purely dpsing and shorter windows of healing and prep, so we typically deal less damage per offensive spell. Disc also pulls insane healing and mitigation numbers when you properly prep and heal for raid wide damage, which is really the only time that you need to hyper focus on being an actual healer. During lulls in raid wide damage, you can get away with managing a few atonements on tanks and melee, and just popping off smites until the next big burst.
I’d enjoy Discipline if I didn’t have to deal with managing atonement buffs at all. But I get that not everyone would like that. I just think more people would be willing to play Discipline if managing atonement buffs wasn’t necessary.
Maybe. But i kinda like that it isnt for everyone. Id personally enjoy a lot more classes if their kits were a bit more situational and robust instead of the same rotation over and over ad nauseam. Try playing with addons like Clique that allow you to bind spells to mouse clicks. To me it makes the spec a little easier to manage, as i bind my beneficial spells to mouse and offensive spells to keyboard.
I get that. I don’t mind situational… I just dislike tedium that requires maintenance. It’s the same reason I was unhappy to see Slice and Dice return as mandatory for Rogues in Shadowlands. Ideally the Rogue 10.0 talent revamp will allow it to be optional.
Perhaps some tweaking of the Discipline tree could make atonement management optional with a sacrifice in how much it heals? Then those who like maintaining atonements can still do so for a performance gain, while those like myself could have an easier and more enjoyable time playing Discipline at the cost of a performance reduction.
Nobody wants PW:S spam back. What they want is for PW:S to be an impactful ability when you cast it, they also want Divine Aegis, a bit more of a core healing toolkit (Renew/Prayer of Mending), and smart-heal attonment.
were getting both of these in DF. i doubt theyll ever do smart atonement again, some people enjoy the skill expression that comes from getting that big ramp correctly
Tbh, I feel that this is what fistweaving is doing. But you have to be in melee to effectively heal. Being melee bring its own challenges so I feel this is fine but it would be a bit boring as a range…
Also this would effectively change how disc has to heal in raid. All 6 healing specs have distinct healing patterns that makes for interresting gameplay. While I find monk to be interresting, the spec finds its challenges in being melee more than anything else. I feel a range spec that would just need to dps would be quite boring.
Honestly, smart healing was fun too. It’s really annoying to us ATotM on a MW and for your big heal to over heal someone with another party member is really low hp.