Originally (REAL originally!) Discipline was supposed to be kind of a melee, monk-like tree. That’s why Inner Fire gave you attack power and stuff. That didn’t work, and Blizzard quickly changed it to be about shields and stuff, and eventually they decided to define Discipline Priests as the ones who use both Light and Void at the same time.
But now with Hero Talents, that sort of “bridging between the themes of two other specs” thing is more of a Hero Talent’s job than a third Spec’s.
Like Frostfire Mages, who use Fire and Frost. Or Heckcaller Warlocks, who mix Shadow and Fel, etc.
So do you think Discipline Priests should get re-themed to get something other than mixing Light and Shadow together?
No, if anything they should have doubled down on Shield and Bubbles. I think there is genuinely some very interesting possibilities when explored properly to make the spec extremely unique to all other healers.
I think Discipline Priests, like the name, should’ve been themed around creating mechanics that require you to be preventing in healing rather than reactive and force you to benefit from not spamming your buttons to get the best 'HPS" out of the spec. I would’ve changed the resource away from mana, and maybe create a reverse hand of sacrifice mechanic, with the priest self-flagellation empowering the protection spells for others. I think all that would’ve been a more fascinating approach than simply “you can sort of use both light and dark”.
That would of course require a dedicated team for each class. Which we will never get though.
It’s tricky because preventative healing is virtually always better than reactive healing, and has been a reason disc has been historically strong for a long time, especially in raids.
Preventative healing/shields for example can stop 1 shots, no amount of reactive healing can do that.
It definitely is a very difficult thing to execute and much more to “balance” against other healers.
I do think it’s possible though, but it requires breaking away the institutional thinking on healing.
Like you could create “threshold” parameters, and let that be your, pardon my pun, guiding light with preventative healing.
So something like, a bubble on full health won’t absorb damage, so much as “burst” into a hot a soon as player receives at least X damage.
Or something like a bubble will “shatter” and allow one-shot mechanic if the incoming damage is X% over the amount the bubble can contain.
Similar stuff has been implemented in the past.
I dunno, I just think the game would benefit from more dynamic thinking.
I mean, the closest thing to that would be the lamplighters. They worship Beledar, and supposedly wield the Light, but Beledar might simply be Azeroth’s power which is not “the light” per se.
So it could be a “Azerite” powered Spec if that is the kind of change you are looking for. Allow the spec to change it’s devotion to get Azerite empowered spells?
And again, I just don’t subscribe to Disc Priest ever wielding anything related to Shadow. It doesn’t make sense to me.
The original Disc design reminds me of Deckard Cain in HotS. He has a melee 1v1 build and it’s very niche and methodical, but it’s funny that it can actually be effective in the right situations.
The game is naturally too fast in PVE to have that methodical type of utility game play, they would need to slow everything down. You could probably do it for PVP though because I hear it takes years to kill anything in Retail PVP.
I like how Disc is done with Whitemane though. It doesn’t use Shadow at all, but it still uses Atonement and you still DPS to heal. It’s like what Oracle is trying to be, but better because you get an offensive Holy mind flay type spell.
I think that’s the problem with Disc right now, it doesn’t have it’s own spells that are good, it has to borrow from Shadow and they won’t use Holy spells for it because “thats for Holy”.
I’d rather they just drop the Shadow thing and give Disc its own spells.
Blizzard hasn’t really did a good job with Holy RDPS representation because they’re too busy stanning Paladin. Holy Fire and Purge The Wicked(Which will be gone in 11.1) is proof of that.
Rather have that over another Hero Talent. Other RPGs made holy DPS casters a thing, Blizzard still playing catchup.
See, I loved priest more back before void was even a defined thing.
There was a strong undercurrent of mental power to the whole class. That you were channeling raw belief and manifesting that as physical effects, regardless of damage/healing. Pain Suppression makes things hurt less, so it actually does less damage. Shadowform increases damage because you’re scarier and the attacks are more believable. SW:D does minimal damage at high health because you know you’re not dying yet. Hell, even the NAME ‘discipline’ has heavy implications that you’re boosting the willpower of allies to keep them alive.
AFIAK we’ve never gotten a real explanation of why light/void has such powerful effects on mortal minds. That could easily be sorted out in a way that makes it the focal point for disc.
