Disc has infinite mana because you can pop out a new Mindbender every 15-20s and you also get easy Throes of Pains returns due to Purge the Wicked being freely spread around with Penance.
On Holy I need to drink, but on Disc I’m at >90% mana the majority of the dungeon.
Yes these are the mechanics that enable it, but it doesn’t change anything that I said earlier.
To put it another way, damage has to be infinite because its about cramming as much as it as possible into as small a window of time, see DPS, while healing has to be finite because it’s suppose to be able stretching a finite resource, mana, over as long a period of time.
They are literally opposites and when you try to force them together it breaks the games mechanics as a whole. It’s one thing for a healer to be able to throw out some damage on occasion, it’s another thing entirely for it to be intentionally designed to DPS to heal. DPS must be unlimited, healing must be limited, and you can’t mash the two together without breaking something, see the design of disc.
This isn’t to say you can’t make a viable, functional, fun, etc etc I’m purely talking about from a design perspective it’s like mixing oil and water, it isn’t healthy or beneficial for anything and instead causes issues like what we are seeing now, and this is only one of many in discs history since Legion.
I get what you’re saying, but in DF season 1 and 2 prior to the rework, disc didn’t have infinite mana like it does now and it wasn’t that big of an issue.
The rework/tier set in season 3/4 and interactions with talents now just allow it to happen.
If it was getting to spam damage to heal it’s almost always had extremely good mana, and on the odd occasion it didn’t it wasn’t in conversation for runs. Generally if disc is running oom it’s because it’s having to spam flash heals or is depending to much on Radiance for keeping atonement up.
Just the comparision Penance is 40k, Mind Blast is 24k, PTW is 45k and Smite is 10k mana. Radiance is 112,500, Renew and PWS are 60k, and Flash Heal is 90k.
These %s have pretty much been steady for a long time, with I think only mind blast really getting much of an adjustment with the DF rework to the shadow side of the tree. Yes the changes to mind bender and Throws of Pain help, but the same remains as true then as it is now. If disc get’s to spam damage it doesn’t oom, if it doesn’t it will oom extremely quickly.
I am looking at the same data when people were complaining about Rsham. “You have to get to the 200th spot before you see something other than a shaman!” was iterated over and over again until rsham was nerfed. It is now disc that is in the same spot as rsham was but won’t get touched.
I exclusively play pvp, so it doesn’t really bother me seeing disc top in pve. I just don’t get why people aren’t crying like they did when rsham was on top.
What hurts is seeing disc be the best healer in pvp and pve. See the title of this post. Why play anything else? Pick disc and be the best in ALL content and never worry about mana. (A good point someone brought up).
For the health of the game, more frequent tuning needs to take place
Well, here’s the thing.
Disc was really bad (and bugged) throughout most of the TWW beta. There was a nasty bug that reduced Disc’s healing by -40% in dungeons amongst other issues. A lot of these issues weren’t fixed until the final hour just before the expansion launched so nobody was able to properly test or give Disc a proper review.
Disc’s performance at TWW launch was still bad and they received a couple of hotfixes to bring them up to where they are now. Even with the buffs Disc’s single target healing is still pretty lackluster which is its biggest weakness.
Resto Shamans and Prevokers were the only healers that made it through the beta without getting massive nerfs. Resto Shamans also got a talent tree revamp.
Monks and Holy Paladins were blowing everyone out of the water by +30% for most of the beta until they both got nerfed hard. Prevokers were still overtuned and world first guilds stacked 2 of them so Blizzard brought in the nerf hammer.
Priests were the only healer class that didn’t receive any talent + class changes so we were just ignored.
So the TLDR is the conditions were setup for a Resto Shaman meta at the start because they were the only healer that snuck by with new changes without getting any nerfs. Disc snuck under the radar because it was bad for 90% of the TWW beta due to bugs.
Except I already outlined how much resto shaman was nerfed - it had an Earth Shield talent nerfed and that’s it. All the crying didn’t get resto shaman nerfed in any significant ways - it’s essentially just as strong, or stronger, than it was on launch.
Blizzard is being perfectly even-handed in their approach by your own metric.
It’s not. It’s considered best in M+, but potentially the least desirable healer in raid, and paladin and shaman having overloaded utility may be just as responsible as discipline’s power level for its popularity in M+.
Nobody is going to dispute that discipline is good, or even the best healer, in M+, but I do think it’s interesting that you insist that crying got shaman nerfed when it wasn’t and are so concerned about healer balance in content you don’t play.
This isn’t correct, it also had Poison Cleansing Totem get the Mass Dispel nerf which was actually huge for them. Prior to that nerf they pretty much had it available for every instance in which it was needed which greatly reduced the amount of healing they needed to do in many dungeons. Now they pretty much have it once or twice during an entire encounter meaning they instead have to heal through everything like other healers have to.
I am crying that healer balance, as a whole, is not healthy and the meta has remained stagnant for a couple months now. Frequent tuning keeps the game fresh. I don’t care if shaman is on top. They never are which is why I play them. I feel like an underdog.
I care when one healer is clearly ahead of the pack in all forms of content. Its not healthy for the game and ruins it for ALL the other healers imo.
You can keep trying to play this game where you think I am crying for shaman buffs. I am not. I would just like to see the healer meta shifted because in its current state I don’t see why you should play anything other than disc.
Should I not be concerned for the health of the game even if I don’t play all content?
The issue with the healer meta is you have only 2 healers that can give the group enough of an hp buffer to survive big hits. Disc has fort + lenience + absorbs and Resto Shamans have ancestral vigor.
The compounding issue is 7 out of 8 dungeons have poisons and curses which naturally leans towards Resto Shamans as their dispel pattern can handle all of these.
Disc Priests also crank out the highest damage with Mistweavers being not far behind.
So when you take Holy for example: your damage output is lower then Disc and you don’t bring Lenience nor the absorbs. Symbol of Hope was nerfed pretty hard and it’s not equal to Rapture or Barrier.
The healer balance is just a mess right now. Most of the healers need a +50% dps buff just to match Disc.
Let’s say this is valid - that it was especially harmful to resto - it clearly isn’t so important as to affect resto because enhancement is still super meta, has PCT on a 2-minute cooldown, and theoretically resto would be more valuable after the nerf rather than less because PCT being necessary would demand more access to it.
But even if we want to say it’s a direct nerf to resto - well, disc ate that nerf a year ago when it wasn’t even meta.
The precedent for that nerf was already set, and leveraging it as an argument that discipline should be nerfed rings hollow when it already had been nerfed in the exact same way.
That’s perfectly fine, of course. But the issue here is predominantly protection paladin and enhancement shaman. Discipline was unchanged from when resto was #1 to when discipline became #1, but the game changed around them. I’m all for discipline nerfs if protection and enhancement get nerfed to have less than 90% representation and the rest of the comp changes but discipline maintains its relative dominance, but until the things that changed around discipline are addressed then I’m not inclined to call for nerfs to a class that is historically weak in M+.
Especially when that class is almost certainly getting large changes in 2-3 months.
Its funny how raid is exclused of your equation.
All form of content in endgame would be raid m+ and pvp and disc is dead last in raid.
Also, disc has strong representation mostly because it’s simply the best choice to go with the 4 other group members. Change the comp and disc will be kicked out of the meta without it being touhed.
I agree that healer meta is stall (and it always is…) but I’m doubtful that the right sollution is a nerf to disc 
I wasn’t leveraging it as an argument that disc should be nerfed, I was simply pointing out that it was in fact a significant nerf to resto that did in fact hurt it’s position as default best healer in the game.
Enhance is meta now not just because of PCT, which helps cover disc, but also because it’s big offensive burst window lines up exactly with Power Infusion, meaning simply put Enhance is meta because disc is meta and it synergizes extremely well with it.
I’d say PI is meta. And disc is a good option with PI, which cannot be said by the other two priests…
Thats just the priest curse. Pretty much every season some spec of priest is viable, often because it brings PI, and the other 2 are either bad or niche.
Its the biggest reason why the damn spell should just be removed and the class redesigned/rebalanced around not having it.
Because other specs are more fun to play.
we are the same page bro
I’m not really digging this new expansion as well.
M+ has been a mixed bag. Blizzard has done very little tuning this season and I don’t like a lot of the changes they made. The -15s reduction off the timer on deaths and loss of the weekly affix on +12s and higher isn’t cool. At least they’re making it less grindy for crests and upgrades next week.
Mythic raiding is really where they dropped the ball imho. The first 4 bosses are pretty consistent on difficulty, but once you get to Ovinax its a massive leap up in difficulty. If anyone misses breaking an egg or a kick for 7-8 minutes straight the raid blows up.
Kyvesa, Queen, and Council also necessitate precise movement and coordination while also requiring everyone in the raid to juggle doing multiple mechanics simultaneously. The weekly buff literally does nothing to help with any of this stuff because making mistakes one shots the raid.
This is just way too complex for an entry raid.
Not sure this logic follows. Enhancement was meta before priest was even considered, so PI didn’t make enhancement meta - if anything, PI being great on enhancement is just one of the factors propping up discipline after protection paladin got buffed.
Priest is the most stagnant class in the game and it has only ever been meta when its an outlier in power, which currently it isn’t, or when the rest of the M+ comp can cover every mechanical demand of the dungeon pool without contribution by a fifth member. This season has all the hallmarks of the latter scenario - discipline has been almost unchanged since the Atonement buff at launch and only became meta after paladin replaced warrior as the favored tank with the DPS slots being largely fixed (enhance, aug, dk/mage/druid).
Again, not saying discipline shouldn’t be nerfed; only that protection paladin and enhancement shaman (and augmentation, always augmentation) are a better starting point.
While this is valid you are also forgetting that disc tends to be one of the better pushing specs when its good due to its ability to buff effective health more than any other healer out there. Rapture being one of the shortest defensive CDs and adding a significant chunk of effective health to an entire 5 man party goes a long way to making encounters more forgiving, especially when you also consider that same class is bringing barrier.
Sadly bubbles and damage reduction always bring these balance conflicts which is, imo, one of the reasons blizzard hates priest as there really isn’t a solid middle ground for it. Its either the best or its irrelevant with no healthy middle ground the majority of the time.
I don’t want disc, holy or shadow for that matter nerfed, I want them reworked and updated so these pain points can be addressed and the class can actually step into the modern era instead of being stuck in the archaic Legion design space.