So it's okay MW, RDruid, RSham, and HPal don't use Mana?

Classes Priest
1

“Discipline mana feels terrible on the PTR,” is a phrase I’ve heard a lot now from high ranking M+ players, myself included.

Nerfing Disc mana is just saying you haven’t played the class in challenging content like high keys or progression mythic raid content. Yes there is a difference between long prog fights and farm speed reclears in how healers opt to use their mana.

I can assure you as a person that is in +20 keys Disc absolutely uses mana. And having played every healer at 3100+ even up to 3600 and 3800 - Disc’s mana burn down does not feel out of line compared to the other healers, even in Raid (fwiw I have numerous 95-99 Parses on many of the healing specs, I have raided on them).

In dungeons, zero of the healers lose mana going pull to pull. The only time you’re actually burning a mana bar is on bosses and not even all of the bosses. Just the intentionally select healing check ones. As stated, this is the case for all healers, not just Disc. Truth be told MW, RDruid and HPal are way more out of line than Disc is on the mana front in Mythic+.

This mana issue somehow always resurfaces whenever Blizzard wants to arbitrarily nerf something. But they’ll just leave 4 or 5 healers not using mana then decide one of them needs to use mana. Then talk about how mana should be important for all the healers. This has never made sense to me.

As it stands, these changes will just further force people playing Disc in keys to be Night Elves. So they can sneak drinks towards the ends of dungeon pulls. This is after introducing potions attempting to move people away from Night Elf. Hilarious.

Although this makes raid more annoying these are clearly targeted at M+. Because if it was for raid tuning the intelligent choice would be nerfing our raid atonement applicator Renew, which isn’t used nearly as much in dungeons as Radiance, Shield or Flash Heal, which are what was nerfed. It’s also not worth doing tuning like this if it was meant for Raid, prior to actual Raid testing… And also without actually looking at the current Raid data and seeing Disc is not only not the top HPS healer, but it’s the spec most capable of sniping overhealing. So if Piety Overheal Protection Disc is not topping the meters now, it’s probably not really in need of a nerf. Because it’s currently in the overhealing environment it thrives in the most and still isn’t at the top. That’s what leads me to believe these were intended for M+ first and foremost.

Please revert the Disc mana changes, they make literally no sense. I’m not saying not to ever nerf Disc. It just takes barely any time to make mana changes so just do them after a few weeks into the season when you have more accurate data to look at rather than just throwing a dart at a dart board right now.

Thanks.

Summary

FWIW I am an HOF 3800 Disc. Every healer at least 3100-3600 and 8/8M on most of them. I have geared and can play every healer. “Nerfing” Disc does not bother me. If it’s bad I can just play something else. This post is not a crying post but one meant to call out changes that I do not believe are not hitting their mark.

PS. Not to beat a dead horse, Disc will still most likely be the meta healer for M+ going into the new Season. However this is not due to a Disc design issue but an encounter and scaling design issue. I have already stated this in numerous posts. The reason it is played right now is because DPS is so high players can push to key levels where everything is a one-shot. And Disc provides the strongest effective hit points to classes that could otherwise not live the one-shots. The best solution is to design encounter damage better. For instance moving front-loaded large hits into smaller consecutive hits, dots, or heal absorbs which scale more friendly into high key levels.

However, the easy and fast solution is to buff player Hit Points/Stamina prior to Raid Testing. This will lead to a more balanced Mythic+ where you will see healers other than Disc when strong EHP to live one-shots is not as needed. And if it’s done prior to Raid Testing, it will not impact the Raid.

These current changes feel like the Devs telling player not to play Disc, rather than giving players a reason to choose to not play Disc.

4 Likes
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It’s definitely bad. It’s going to feel pretty terrible in raid. My team never has a consistent innervate and I felt pinched on mana before these changes. There is a pervasive and incorrect assumption that disc “doesn’t use mana” among players that seems to have worked its way into the devs heads. I expect people to drop by and repeat that and tell you to stop whining at some point, because they think disc still works the same as when it was all VW with cdr on MB. Or they think that low keys where mana really isn’t a big factor for any healer is only particularly an indictment of disc

2 Likes
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Hopefully they revert all the mana changes before August. It doesn’t make the game better for anyone to have to deal with an outdated resource model. I wish they’d just remove the mana bar entirely from some specs that are already balanced around cooldowns and secondary resource systems.

Eternal Barrier Disc gets most of its output from short cooldowns. Flash is the only thing you can spam. It’s just filler for when your cooldowns aren’t up. Healers juggle fight mechanics, cooldowns and in some cases secondary resource systems. Mana is just a relic that offers little value to the game at this point. It should just be a fast recovering energy bar if anything to limit spamming particularly strong filler spells and limit off-spec healing casts.

I can’t remember the last time a fight failed because I ran out of mana on a healer. The mana limitations that still exist are mostly just annoying and make me stop to drink where no other role has to do that. Mana management isn’t interesting in the places they still force it to be a thing. It wasn’t even really interesting in vanilla where it was a huge focus of the role. Now it’s just a giant question mark as to why I need to care about this on this spec but not that spec.

In PvP they use it as a reverse enrage timer, which I also think is bad design. Even there I think mana bars being more like fast recovering energy bars would feel better.

1 Like
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Wonder if they are balancing around the shadowmeld potions now that everyone can use them to drink.

Stupid changes are stupid. We will just pick up Shield discipline, use concertation pots and drink withe shadowmeld potions. I think we are still in the green for mana regen.

5

Yea I dont get it. They love making us the whipping boy for mana issues, low crowd control, and low mobility.