This bothers me

Classes Priest
1

“yesterday,” or not that long ago, regarding the Discipline Priest spec…

blizz: "Harsh Discipline no longer triggers after 4 spell casts of Smite, Mind Blast, or Power Word: Solace. Instead, Power Word: Radiance has a 30/60% chance to cause your next Penance to be free and fire 3 extra bolts.

Developers’ note: While Harsh Discipline was fun to play with, it added another thing you had to do before paying off on your Atonements. By triggering from Power Word: Radiance, this will now automatically happen after applying your Atonements. This will also reduce the frequency of Harsh Discipline procs, and allow regular Penance to deal more damage and healing."

“today”

blizz: " * Developers’ note: We’re happy with Discipline Priest’s healing throughput in Guardians of the Dream, but their damage contribution particularly in raid encounters is higher than we’d like. As a result, we’re lowering their overall damage and increasing Atonement to compensate. In addition, we are slightly increasing the damage of Shadow Word: Pain and Purge the Wicked to ensure they continue to be used in single target situations.

  • All damage done reduced by 9%.

  • Atonement healing increased by 9%."

and to be honest, i think if people keep very close track of all the patch notes that are constantly being made, this has been a pattern all expansion. it happened with mages too when Rune of Power was removed. first a moderate buff to all their damage, and then constant, repeated nerfs, until it looked very close to the only thing that changed was Mages lost a burst tool and gained nothing in exchange.

this looks like a net loss for Disc overall, so its annoying and frustrating, but i bet the only part of the dev patch notes that gets published to the public (on patch day) will be the one implying there has been a buff to penance, without the truth of the matter being clear. and it is only noticed by those who keep an eye on things. honestly, i think the only future for mmo enjoyers will be when a.i. can help us make our own, beyond that, the whole game industry has been basically taken over by people who understand fun functionally not at all, and me personally about a billion orders of magnitude less than they understand fun.

despite the improvements dragonflight has brought, i find myself wishing every day for this era of game development to be over, to be able to kiss this incarnation of how the world functions goodbye, and to hope that whatever comes next, will allow me more freedom than what this game has evolved into. its playing by other people’s rules, that feels the worst, so i guess i just stick to dps, rather than futilely hoping anyone at blizz has any brain cells at all that even remotely resembles mine

2

Keeping track of Warcraft priests today there seems to be a consensus its neutral or a small gain. The dps loss apparently doesn’t affect pets, ie bender, fiend. I dont think full maths is in yet tho.

We really DID need a nerf to dps tho, so if they keep it as is and stop there its all gravy.

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3

If Disc looks to good to be true, guess what? More nerfs are incoming. It will go from looking good to being average, middle of the pack, which is typically what happens. If not, you have a rare situation that will soon be nerfed. Hence, don’t trust the excitement. Just know that the hype is indicative of pending nerfs.

If you want to be happy playing Disc because you like it: great. But if you want to play it because it looks OP you are going to be disappointed.

In the words of Alexander Pope, Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

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4

Soooo how do you say that and yet Disc was the second best healer in season 2. Thats a fact. You wont stop till you are top?

I play disc cause i enjoy it and i played it when it was absolute bottom. I dont actually want it to be top heals because every jonny come lately rushes in, hasnt played it since legion and think they know all about disc. Havent paid their dues

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5

Disc had its overall dps buffed on the PTR to be closer to Holy. I was doing about 15k overall more dps than current retail in AOE cleave on Disc.

Discs overall hps is basically the same - at least from my testing. What they did was bake in all the passive bonuses you got from having Shadow Covenant + Schism up 50% of the time into your healing.

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6

They already changed harsh disc from this again, now casting radiance guarantees extra penance bolts, more or less based off 1 or 2 points talented into it. Also the damage nerf was coming for sure, there is no world where disc can be doing so much more damage than every other healer in raid

7

I love your hot takes lol. I would love to peek into your head to get a full glimpse on what you think it takes to be able to play a certain class spec in a video game; what kind of dues.

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8

I mean, this is probably the smallest ‘nerf’ that Disc has ever taken before a patch in a long time.

And it’s barely a nerf. It’s nearly identical on healing (like less than 0.5% nerf on healing) and a nerf on damage, which we were doing a lot of in testing. Like we were outpacing everyone while also being one of the best HPS classes.

Nerfs were very expected, and tbh I was expecting far more, so if we get away with this one then :person_shrugging:

Also lmao, come on. You really think that world is going to happen? By the time AI can do this, MMOs will be dead, or an extreme niche that there are several hundreds of options for and all of them suck to one person and are a dream game for another - leaving very few players between all of them to even call it an MMO.

9

I fully agree, I was expecting essentially a removal of sins of the many with an equivalent atonement buff, so I will absolutely live with what we got instead if it stays that way (I also expect further nerfs).

The spec still looks strong, and fun to play, and I for one am very excited for next season.

10

They’ve fooled me with this one enough times.

Ever since like late BfA - whenever Disc is looking fairly strong, they get a ton of changes the week before patch drop that makes them disappointing.

So I mean I’m excited, but I’m also cynical enough to not really get my hopes up this time either.

11

I’m a bit nervous, too. I started DF as Priest/Disc, and in the first few weeks the spec was so massively undertuned that I promptly swapped to Preservation. Jumping into a pre-nerfed Ruby Life Pools and Disc was the closest I’ve felt to wanting to quit the game.

With the rework I’m hesitantly returning to Disc, because it’s the healer I’ve always wanted to master. But as you said, every time I get excited to play it, it gets gutted before it manages to actually be good.

12

Oh boy. Disc exacts dues, alright. First, it is not that easy to just pick up. In fact it is probably not only the hardest healer to play well, but the hardest of all class/specs in the game. Second, it has had pretty serious mana issues in the past–especially in pugs needing babysitting. Third, it definitely has issues with reputation because people think you don’t invite disc to pugs because most people playing disc are just bad at disc. There may be something to this, but some of us know what we are doing. The ones who know what they are doing are not certified as such though–hence, some keyholders will take most other healers quicker. Fourth, it is highly gear/stat dependent–meaning until you get good gear, it does not play very well.

I’m sure there are plenty more reasons–like how it pretty much ALWAYS gets nerfed when it looks good (SS did slip by the Nerf Gods though, somehow). Also among others: the high floor and ceiling with disc, etc etc. As for what Daketh meant exactly, I’d love to hear his take, any elaboration, and his exact reasoning.

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13

This doesn’t seem like such a big deal according to people much smarter than me on the discord. I mean, its a bummer losing damage only because disc is the OG damage/healer.

I hope we stay competitive. I don’t need to be top dog in the meta, but I don’t want to struggle to get into groups for keys above 20 due to the community perception that you need to play e.g. exodia for a 15. I just started disc 3-4 weeks ago, and am really enjoying it. I love the class fantasy, and the first time I saw a bunch of dps ignore the aoe channeled spell from the dwarfs in Ulda and yolo’d in to fear really brought it all together as a kick-butt battle priest leading the charge. I’m excited for ultimate penance, too!

14

It is so funny, I find this all personal opinion. I have seen some disc players go on and on and on about how difficult disc is and all of that.

Hogwash in my opinion.

I have played it I have found it fun often throughout the years. It is different, but I am finding all healers are.

I have never enjoyed it in raid, but other classes/specs I have had the same feelings about over either raid or keys, doesn’t mean that they are harder…just means that I don’t like the play style. That is my opinion though.

While going through healers, right now I actually think monk healer is the most difficult. Evoker has its challenges for me too.

I also can’t wrap my head around fire mage or play any class that requires figuring out combo points to save my life.

I just would easier believe that certain class specs click better with certain people and some just don’t. Doesn’t mean any are harder/easier in general.

It is a big world and I kind of find it odd to sit on the “disc is the hardest spec/class in the game,” hill while playing it as some sort of weird “look at me, I’m doing it though!”

I also don’t think a statement about dues should be made unless you have played other healers(or even various tanks/dps) and can compare. He already said that he hasn’t even tried holy this expansion, has he tried any other healers?

I have felt this way about holy as well. I don’t think that this is a disc only problem this expansion.

15

To be fair, this is a rather recent development.

Before DF upped the power of Radiance by like 3x and made it the best AoE heal in the game reactively, Disc was really punishing on any mistakes. Because you simply didn’t make it through some mechanics without your full burst rotation, and if you screwed that up you’d be fighting from way further behind than any other healer that screwed up.

And Ultimate Penitence is only pushing us further in the direction of being a way more accessible healer.

Disc was absolutely the hardest healer in the game when it came to learning curve for quite a while. It really wasn’t even a contestable point.

Even now, it’s not something I’d tell a beginner to pick up. Holy is significantly more straightforward, and it’s much better to start there and then try out disc once you’ve got some fundamental idea of healing first.

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16

Well to be fair i was drinking but im also a bodybuilder so i think in terms of times training to achieve goals if that makes sense. So someone who has played since legion has paid his dues in my mind, has been through the various iterations, the ups and downs and stuck with it.

Let alone legion where it was spamable but hit 3 people and you used up tons of mana and just sat there doing nothing at all outside of ramps

Not just mistakes but mechanics. There was that MC fight in nyalotha and i would get my ramp out and then get MC;d meaning i did no heals and wasted mana on a full ramp

17

It totally is personal opinion, but the opinion that it is hard is pretty widely shared. I mean just check out this recent video for example: EVERY HEALER RANKED from EASY to HARD in MYTHIC+.

I have healed on everything and sure, mine is only an opinion, but I found all other healers were pretty easy to pick up. Mistweaver and resto druid were a little hard to master though, but I only really had a hard go of disc the first time I tried it, and not with anything else. I was pressing my buttons kind of randomly and did not have my UI tracking a lot of things I should have, etc. For me playing disc opened my eyes to a lot of things I never paid attention to before. It’s proactive play was especially daunting at first. I mean on most other healers you see health bars drop and you simply raise them. But with disc it is not that simple if you are doing it right.

I dunno, but I can play Disc in my sleep now, but reaching that point took a fair bit of practice, and that was not so for any other healers in my experience.

18

Literally same. Mistweaver is the other healer I haven’t quite mastered, but I watched a few guides and started dabbling in it the other day and I am finding it quite fun.

Disc on the other hand is the one healer that I have kept trying to play and kept struggling with. The first time I tried it was in a King’s Rest…during Grievous. I had never experienced such an awful experience trying to heal a key before. I didn’t want to touch it again.

Then Dragonflight launched, and I wanted to give it a go again. Leveled up my priest first, and then hopped into a Fort Ruby Life Pools right when M+ opened. Disc was so undertuned and pre-nerfed RLP was so insane that this was handily one of my worst M+/healing experiences to date.

In the past few weeks I’ve been practicing Disc again. I’m quite fine with it in M+, and I just started trying it in raid last week. I am cautiously excited to proclaim it as my main for 10.2, but I have my doubts.

I am worried about seeing it do 3x the damage of other healers on ptr (yes after nerfs). As a damage-to-heal healer this doesn’t bode well for what I think is inevitable tuning, and I worry that Blizzard’s tendency to slam the nerf hammer too hard will make the spec terrible to play.

19

Haha gotcha. :+1:

I love when people explain their perspective, now I know where you are coming from.

For me, I approach the game in a different manner. I just play what I find fun within the priest world. At the start it was shadow, but I think I played with disc in pvp some. That was back in 2007/08 is and I was having all of the kids back then so it is a bit fuzzy. Mostly wandered the world and played with old EQ buddies. Did some dungeons but, again, all fuzzy. I just remember it being fun mostly.

Guess I kind of pick my own meta within priest spec depending on which one is fun and I feel like I am decent playing.

Never ready looked up any guides or read forums until DF when I felt like I hit a brick wall in terms of healing on both disc and holy.

I will type that in and see if I can find it. :+1:

I feel like resto Druid was easy and fun for me to pick up in shadowlands. I am not even close to being an expert as any other character besides my priest gets maybe heroic raid time and possibly a random 17-20 here and there if needed to fill a friend group.

But, this expansion, with the rejuv ramps, it felt a lot like disc to me in raid and I just didn’t like it. I don’t know if I played it goofy in shadowlands, but it just seemed so different. You can make fun of me, I can take it, but I play a lot with feeling. :crazy_face:

MW is a mystery and I find myself being accidentally cool playing her-sometimes. Then I try and figure out what I did and try and duplicate it lol.

I always start a character randomly pushing buttons lol. I get a feel for it, then start reading talents somewhat. Talent reading is a process for me and can take weeks. Probably gooby, but that is how I roll. As a mom of a million children, I only have so much brain space to invest in this game.

Also, I only use details and DBM. I know that that is a handicap nowadays. I only got a WA for flash concentration and that one ring boss in Sanctum. Soon as that was over I uninstalled.

There is a difference between being a difficult spec to play and being under tuned or having a clunky iteration.

My experience was similar as I was disc coming into DF and it was absolutely awful. I didn’t find the rotation choices rough, I found the result healing was ridiculous. Then it got a buff. I was already fully back into holy at that time and struggling there too. I didn’t trust the buff to disc but probably should have lol.

20

Playing Disc is a lot of fun. Was a bit difficult first getting into but overtime I’ve learned to keep up with my atonement’s or at least do my best.

I’m kinda of going back and forth on the pros and cons for each other and seeing what would fit my group best for M+. Right now it’s a rough choice between: Priest, Druid or Evoker.

I settle on one then change my mind the next day lol.