Disc has to be a support spec

Classes Priest
1

I would say, the time for disc healing is now over. Blizzard has alrady never made the spec what it deserved and what the fantasy can reach to. The spec has always been designed very bad and much weaker than it’s supposed to be due to concerns of huge performance peaks on different aspects of game.

So is like:

-If you make shields and atonement good enough as it should for Mythic+ and PvP, then it’s insane strong on Raids.
-If you make shields and atonement good enough for Raiding, then it’s insane weak on M+ and PvP
-The same above can also be spoken for the damage output, mana spending, utilities etc. disc is the only spec that has 0 access to an interrupt e.g. (holy has that stun which can be used in that purpose)

All that mess has been tried being fixed with different mechanics & coefficients like “sins of the many” or “atonement is increased X during party contents” like of stuff.

Then even, the damage output of the spec has become irrelevant. You have lost the feeling of the “original feeling” of the spec where you are the “almost 4th dps” in the team. Even Holy Priests are doing more damage than Discs nowadays.

So what ?

Whatever they tried, they couldn’t reach the soft point where spec is balanced on healing and damage output and utilities on different aspects of the game.

AND

They won’t be reaching there too.

I would say, “they could” if they’d give up the idea that “atonement has to be applied and kept up actively”. Instead, if they’d return to some kind of “good old days” where atonement was a pure passive skill and never had to be applied or re-applied. By that, they could have had the chance to balance the healing and damage output. Because then half of the disc game-play would be freed of the shackling chains of atonement application.

BUT

we know they won’t. Blizz never makes specs so good and so fun… they must always make them bad and you never are allowed to feel neither “strong” nor “special”.

-i actually question myself after saying this why i keep playing this torture-game still… -

anyways.

SO

my suggestion is: re-design Disc Blizz. Make it a support spec like Augmentation. So you save us both from this sht. We know you won’t ever do a good job with disc already. So… Just dump it and make it a support spec.

thanks for reading all. take care.

2 Likes
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Hi Ekqo,

I will have to say I strongly disagree with several of your comments and analysis of Discipline Priest. Without a doubt the most difficult part for the game designers is balancing classes and to be honest the Discipline Priest as a specialisation is more than capable of being better than two players in a game.

If healers see Discipline Priests are topping healing, they will be a little frustrated as they are known as a specialisation to do ‘lower healing’ due to the playstyle. This is why rating a Discipline Priest in player vs environment is extremely tricky… If they are 50-70k HPS lower than other healers then they should be doing 50-70k DPS more than other healers, yet the meters will say they are under-performing from a healing perspective, of course you would hope that the healers and other raid or mythic members would understand that… yet pug groups will either kick you or tell you to switch to Holy. The argument of “I am actually doing DPS, to make up for the loss of healing” can become extremely tedious to say the least.

What you did mention is if they are to allow Discipline Priest’s to play ‘their own game’ with abilities feeling like they are strong abilities is the same for every class. If it is overpowered and the person is not playing it, they will complain…no I am not speaking about every player. If it is weak and the specialisation can simply not keep up with other classes (excluding gear of course) then the players will not pick them for their raid groups.

Picture this, you are in a raid as a tank… your Disc Priest is out DPS’ing you every raid and healing is 1st or 2nd every raid. The tank may be a little frustrated as they are being beaten in DPS by a healer. I am not joking, seeing Blood Death Knights do literally 100k+ more HPS than me in some mythics or raids is very frustrating and confusing to say the least. As the Death Knight of course it is fun and ultimately it is a game… If I want to do 100k more hps than ta Disc priest… then I would have to reroll to Blood DK lol.

The game designers have class favourites…new class, highest dps or healing - why else would they introduce it? As players it must be accepted. I mean, make a guild and don’t play with the class ey?. Even if you were to play as a DPS and see a Discipline Priest out DPS’ing you… again it would become very frustrating… why am I in the raid, if healers can out DPS me… I may as well reroll. Most people playing who want to beat a boss or gain arena rating understand different classes during different expansions or patches are better.

2v2 is another great example, there was an whole expansions where the known PvP arena specialisation Discipline Priest was non-existent… it was a little strange when the Discipline Priest… which is known for its competitive nature and playstyle is replaced with Holy Priest x Destruction Warlock for an ‘’‘’‘‘easy 2.2cr push’’‘’‘’. Why do these things happen? This one I cannot explain, I actually tried to play as Holy my self a couple of times and I simply could not, it didn’t feel fun or like a competitive player vs player specialisation, maybe I am a little biased as I believe Holy should be a mainly PvE spec and the best PvE spec in the game. I also cannot figure out what the Holy Priest x Destruction Warlock’s did when they reached mirror comps every game as gaining rating seems to become like a losing battle sometimes.

You need to understand Discipline Priest is quite balance right now and in a decent position. They can very easily compete and beat other healers if you take into consideration what they are doing. It does involve a little more skill to be able to apply [Atonement] consistently and to at least 30% of a 30 man raid throughout a boss fight is an exciting challenge every time!!. Your suggestion of it being a passive ability would be…interesting to say the least. This does however give opportunity for a slight rework.

**My last comment will be…NO!! Do not turn Discipline Priest into a support class like Augmentation, the last thing I want to do is be buffing other players with critical strikes and haste stat increases any more than [Power Infusion]. If they do rework the class into being a support class they will be losing me as Discipline Priest main for sure. The specialisation is unique and in it’s own league the support comes from healing and that’s enough.

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Disc at its core is very well designed for pve imo. There’s a few tweaks they could make here and there, like atonement duration and dmg/healing throughput, but ultimately the issue is not with the design, just the tuning.

Like you mentioned they have sins of the many, which was supposed to be a raid-independant tuning knob - they just refuse to utilize it. Same goes for lack of spot healing and other stuff like fixing bender cdr (increasing the cdr but capping it).

The only reason disc has never been meta in m+ (granted it was 3rd best healer in s3 and maybe s4), is that they dont want us to be. Idk what the reason is, but its probably not a coincidence that rdruid is never worse than 2nd best healer in m+. And in pvp it has been the best 2v2 healer for at least 10 years straight, and usually is the best for 3s as well.

They have all the tools they need - except will.

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If a raid group or guild uses a Discipline Priest well, they can focus heal 5 targets with no problem whatsoever and a haste stat tuned geared Discipline Priest can heal 8 - 10 players in a raid consistently, 10 being max number of players IMO without excessive use of [Ultimate Radiance] for mana efficiency.

My belief is that IF Discipline Priests were to dominate the PvE raid or Mythic scene many healers would simply stop playing or cause quite a commotion, this is why I think specific boss fights in raids where they can really showcase their abilities as a healer based on DPS output is majorly important. Trying to heal even a +10 as a Discipline Priest where most of the group simply doesn’t want a Discipline Priest can be extremely challenging, even if you are well geared. Tanks and DPS are used to playing in a specific way and they do not like the pressure of having to self-heal or constantly use defensives, I mean trying to AoE heal as a Discipline Priest is one of the most demanding healing methods in the game. That said, the class has been really well designed and I can only credit how it has continued to progress without it being changed TOO much.

Competing with a Restoration Druid in PvP is always going to be a challenge, they are designed really well and [Cyclone] will almost always beat a [Fear] as it is castable from range. (note this is in conversation context).

I do hope for a change in [Atonement] duration or at least a rework of [Evangelism] with reduced cooldown and increased [Atonement] duration, maybe even something like:

#showtooltip [Evangelism] | 60 seconds
Casting Evangelism will reset [Atonement] on all targets as if it was newly applied by an active ability.

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Have you seen the wall of text that you had to write in defence of Disc balance ? That alone proves my point. It has been unnecessarily complex now for disc to be in a good shape on different aspects of game.

There are tons of changes that i can suggest that has to be made in Discipline… For instance: Rapture… A dead Spell and even a Zombie talent for a while now. It is in no means an urgency spell and has no use aside the ramp preparation. And now with this new form (removing CD of 3 PW:S) it is EVEN WORSE. We simply DO NOT need it anymore since DF arrived with the introduction of “renew” applying Atonements.

So, what you above mentioned is “will”. If they had the “will”, they had redesigned Rapture for like 4 years ago already now and made it something like a

Rapture: 1.5 min CD, 2.5 sec cast, Casts PW:S on your target and 4 allies in 20 yards range of it for %80 increased absorbtion amount
Additional Rapture talent nob: Rapture now applies PW:S to 7 Allies in 40 Yards for %80 more absorbtion
PvP Talent For Rapture: Instead of casting 4 additional shields on additional targets, Rapture now removes CD of PW:S for 4 applications

There you go. Now you have a wonderful Rapture for M+ and a wonderful talent mob where you’d get it if you are Raiding and solved PvP even.

But THEY WON’T do stuff like this.

They have been, and are still, crippling down the Disc and to compensate that crippled lame boring “atonement application game”, they are making up an even more ridiculous spell like “ultimative penitance” which exactly seems nothing like a Disc spell but a Holy skill.

I played Disc more than 5 years now and hoped for decency… Sent tons of forum messages, opened topics, cried out loud literally… It brought nothing. And therefore, speaking of suggestion for this spec is over for me. I want it dumped and reborn as a support spec.

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The most entertaining damage preventing healing specialization.

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I decided to break down the wall a little, with my above comment. Ultimately the specialization is designed as a unique healing method of applying [Atonement] and dealing damage to heal, all while preventing damage with consistent absorption shields. That is why I enjoy it, otherwise I would switch to Holy as a pure healing spec which it should remain. I was surprised that I was able to play Discipline Priest in PvE an I’ll be honest I have struggled previously trying to heal as Disc, even now it can be REALLY difficult at times… with maturity the class is adaptable and can actually be accepted as a high level healer. Dare I say even enough to save a raid multiple times within a boss fight.

As for your comments on Discipline, the [Rapture] suggestion is interesting, I have my own playstyle with the ability and in a good team ability to create opportunity for my team mates to do things they would not otherwise be able to do… really offensive opportunities during times where in honesty, they should be peeling or LoS’ing completely. That is my playstyle though. Making it as you suggested as a cast would make it a little tricky due to the time of cast suggestion, I cannot complain about the 80% addition to the absorption shield though and I am already used to having to prep certain abilities, so why should [Rapture] be any different.

Define what you mean by support spec… a healer in itself is a support spec?!..isn’t it?.. You want additional abilities like [Power Infusion] or abilities like [Power Word: Shield] to heal less and give haste like the talent [Borrowed Time] does for the Discipline Priest casting it?

[Ultimate Pentinence] is one of the funniest spells I have seen, without a doubt a Holy spell… flying in the air casting 30 x quardruple Penance bolts is always an interesting one, especially if you have additional Penance bolts being fired when landing *(if talented into).

It would also be nice to have [Power Word: Shield] exclusively or ONLY the Shadow spec and not the Holy spec. I don’t like it personally when Holy can use it. Somebody suggested [Shadow Nova] somewhere for Shadow Priests… [Shadow Power Word: Shield]… reasonable?..Shadowmend was an interesting enough change in itself.

I look forward to hearing your response on what you mean by support specialization.

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For raids it was mainly useful for the evang ramp, but in m+ it could be gamebreaking on its own. Oneshots is one of the hardest things to overcome in high m+ keys, and it is the one thing disc does better than other healers. Rapture was - and still is - a great tool to deal with that. Im happy they didnt change rapture too much, I like the spell that way it is. If anything they should make luminous barrier a choice node with rapture and let raiders take that.

What makes you so certain redesigning disc into a support spec would yield better results? Seems like theyre struggling enough as it is with aug.

Its hard to say how much of the power budget ultipen soaks up. Im not familiar with discs status in raiding, but if it does impact the way they balance disc then I agree. For m+ most high rated priests dont even deem it worth a talent point.

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The mana cost of [Ultimate Pentinence] isn’t too high and it can do >2million healing each full cast. One of the strongest individual healing spells in the game. Certainly a raid ability over M+, yet no harm simply taking a talent point for the ability and applying [Atonement] on each member then using it.

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