I’m 10/10N 6/10H, 207
Last expac I went with disc as my primary and did pretty well into mythic, though right now I have this weird feeling towards balance and gameplay.
I’m running holy in disc gear and doing dps with that w/side healing and pushing as well as I would as disc w/o the same complexity of ramping up and shielding. Doing 99 parses on a lot of fights for holy damage.
Some fights i’ll go disc as it just flows better for movement+damage, though overall I really think disc should be doing more DPS even if it comes at the cost of healing. It should be more on par with tanks then holy priests.
Like part of what I really enjoyed about disc was being a .5 healer .5 damage, right now it feels like a .75 healer and .25 damage, holy being .7-.3 on the same.
The legendries also aren’t that great, one that brought back old smite, or did anything around smite or dps past penance or the one you gotta grind ascended rep for would be nice. The azerite tree had a lot of flexibility in this area.
Anyways to tl;dr, I really think disc should be doing more dps, we have more damage spells but the toolkit isn’t there and the flexibility in meta choices isn’t either.
Disc is still a healer. Their extra damage compared to the few hundred DPS you’re expected to put in as a (theoretically) throughput healer like hpriest or resto sham is just an extra bonus, on top of their absorbs, on top of their heals.
Holy pallies might be putting in more DPS as a healer but considering the playstyle, I can’t say that’s entirely unfair.
Anyhow, I wouldn’t obsess so much over your damage parses as hpriest… that’ll never be their primary role. You bring an hpriest to have safe and guaranteed big ticket raid CDs and (with FC) the versatility to bring pretty strong spot healing to bear if needed.
Most raids I know like to balance the throughput healers with the spot/bonus damage healers. And disc has its own niche plus the nice damage. If disc really were just .5 healer + .5 damage dealer they wouldn’t fit in well in either group. As it is, they’re more like 1 healer + .2 damage dealer which is no bad deal.
I can get that though right now I’m feeling like Holy fits the disc toolkit of healing w/some damage with less complexity, it should least be outpacing holy by a 20-30% margin. Maybe even nerfing holy dps would do this, though to me disc was always [we’re bringing at least tank level dps to a fight.]
It doesn’t though, because holy doesn’t heal through damage. To do DPS you have to stop healing, then… unless you’re getting carried, people start dropping dead wondering what their hpriest is doing.
You’re right in that if/when hpriest can ever stop healing the spec does more DPS, but in appropriately challenging content those moments don’t come around too often in between the unavoidable damage spikes.
So in any real world scenario, disc will put in 4-5x or more the DPS as a similarly skilled hpriest while putting in equivalent HPS if they time their ramp-ups well enough.
I do feel as though disc could use a DPS boost, even if say attonement % is dropped as a result. I have done a few raid, and it feels awful when I see shamans and druids doing more dps and hps than I am.
In M+ some Pugs won’t invite Disc because they fear you would suck at it, anyway it’s a decent m+ healer. It can almost be top-tier if you played it perfectly (tho that’s hard). For Holy, pugs won’t invite you over shaman. It’s not your fault btw, shaman is broken not that Holy is too bad or anything.
In 20+ man Heroic raid Holy is still top tier.
In Mythic raid Disc is top tier.
i do agree that disc does not feel that great in general and esp at lower tier raiding - of course once u get the gear its good but thats kind of saying how a PHD in gender studies is awesome after u get a high paying goverment job.
I’d prefer that to holy which only feels good at lower tier content and then falls apart, all things considered, although the logs for disc look above average in all content.
Anyhow, scaling well and offering utility that’s more valuable in harder content is no bad thing.
to me i think the reason why disc tops so many charts esp at higher gear level - is BECAUSE of spirit shell - so since our “HOT” of atonment and wont be competing with other healers hots and its just flat damage prevention the numbers can be there for us.
bascially if details calculates damage PREVENTED with spirit shield we will get first dibs before other healers.
this is nice though why I feel disc needs MINOR changes - we are meh meh atonment and then BAM shield.
if it were up to me - i would have it where our shield is just replaced with spirit shield and that it becomes our staple shield that adds attoment as well - and have our dmg done split to shield and healing
You’re right that spirit shell is definitely putting in crazy work. Of course making that a full time spammable event instead of a 1 minute CD would be really insane.
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After doing another heroic run I’m shifting more towards [disc is better then holy at dps and spot healing]
Though it really depends on the fight.
I know you need to stop healing as holy to do dps though as disc you also need to do that in part with how attonement and ramping works. Holy’s CD’s are extremely strong. I know it’s not a 1:1 ratio though I still feel like disc should be doing more damage.
Like it should be enough more then holy that this kind of thinking isn’t even in the perview. Though also I think the SW:D leg is the way to go for how I’m trying to play, I have 25% haste base and w/hero + leg you’ll be doing a SWD every 2-3 sec with lust, that should bring it up enough i’ll just main disc.
Maybe making penance cd impacted by haste would be a marginal buff in this direction?
Disc will do more DPS than holy in high pressure fights. Disc also does literally all its healing in burst phases through Spirit Shell. Your approach to fights should be to find the highest instances of damage, then cast 7 PW:S, 2 PW: Radiance, Mindbender+Spirit Shell, Schism, Mindgames, Mindblast, Smite.
Between Spirit Shell casts, you’re generally conserving mana, keeping PW:S on both tanks and casting Smites/Penance.
It’s not the most engaging playstyle, but it’s the best you get for raid throughput.
As far as Kiss of Death legendary, it’s pretty useless in raid. SW:D damage doesn’t transfer through atonement unless the target is below 20% health threshold while using it. So really all you’re doing by getting that leggo is a small instant cast that’s expensive on your mana every 20s or so.
In a low pressure fight, Holy will always do more damage single target. Just play holy if you’re determined to be pumping damage on a raid boss.
SW:D leg is…kinda weak tbh because Tanks need lot of shield to survive the mobs opener while dps should delete the mobs as fast as possible. Twin Suns is better.
Disc is actually a balanced spec (in m+). If you are Kyrian you are super strong in m+.