Disc in arena - threshold problem

Classes Priest
1

Yo champs,

Everyone who plays disc in PvP will know what I am talking about, but I want to raise awareness for Devs.

There is a big problem with disc priest design, where this class is either absolutely broken or totally useless in arena. And issue is that the main disc advantage over other healers is supposed to be damage added to the table. I believe this is also the reason why its mana regen is bad, games with disc should end fast either way - fine for me. HOWEVER…

Right now, depending on the lobby you can tell before even starting the game if you will be able to deal any damage or now. Say you play vs feral/unholy (a bit extreme example). The pressure is so high if you stop healing for moment - you lose.

And this is what I can threshold for disc. Below reaching it disc is OP and fun, after it’s a healer from previous expansion fighting in uneven match Vs other healers.

The solution for this problem is simple. Our heals need to be stronger, but have also longer CD, and our filler healing spells should be bad, worse than healing via damage. Passive healing like renew or pom are good too,anything you don’t have to spam.

Therefore radiance should have longer CD, PW:S should be stronger, penance should be way more stronger but deal/heal more. Flash heal should be either nerfed or removed. And this way you should do little dance of shield, boom boom, shield boom boom, and so on. Your choice sould be to use penance offensively or defensively, that’s it.

This way instead of spamming flash heal, renew (which should last longer or just me removed), radiance, we would spam smite and mind blast (absorb effect on these two used to be cool btw).

This way in 3s you will be able it as a disc, not as a bad version of holy priest, and in 2s damage profile will be the some over entire game (which btw probably will require damage nerf).

Lastly, smite should be shadow school, that would be ability to spam when your holy is locked instead of shadowmend we lost (which is good when you read entire post and logic).

TLDR: buff strong heals, make CDs longer, heal more by damage, remove or need to oblivion filling healing spells like flash heal.

1 Like
2

i agree.

disc in pvp feels incredibly clunky. renew, pom and flash heal feel out of place and pws having a cooldown instead of applying weakened soul is terrible gameplay-wise.

atonement healing should be the way to go, even under pressure. offensive / defensive penance should be a choice with a strong tradeoff, radiance should be a single application and maybe a longer CD, akin to what serenity is for holy. rapture, pwbarrier, pain supp should be the main emergency healing by reducing/stopping incoming damage while increased atonement healing is doing its job (through schism / inner shadow).

right now, disc feels quite soulless. two healing schools with tradeoff was a good design, why did you let go of shadow mend? yeah it’s nice for spriest to be able to flash heal when shadow locked, but for disc? that blows, man.

basically, here is how I think it should be :
renew for disc is ptw atonement healing.
pom for disc is pws.
serenity for disc is radiance.
heal for disc should be smite / mind blast / offensive penance
flash heal for disc is shadow mend.

and yeah, it feels like that if you can heal right now with atonement healing, that means you’re literally outplaying the enemy team and that you’re not making that much of a difference anyway. and when you have to dish out healing, atonement is literally useless and you have to spam cheap casts like a holy priest would inbetween your cooldown rotation.

i really miss shadowlands disc. it felt really smooth and good to play in a world of holy priests.

3

As long as shadow mend was obviously better than flash heal, due to two schools of magic for healing, I believe they should just remove any spamable heal for disc. This way we always have an option to spam healing instead of doing damage, and game will always balance itself the way that it will demand disc to spam heals.

Atonement healing should be the best option to use outside of the PW:S, penance and maybe radiance if we really wanna keep it.

I don’t want to go back to SL disc, I did not like it too, it had the same issues. I’d like to see a completely new disc, with limited healing spells, but sh*t load of defensive CDs and strong atonement.

And honestly I don’t see a reason why not to make disc like that. If that would be too strong for raids, make this with PvP talents, or apply a buff like sins of many.

4

We had few tools back in Shadowlands which we now really miss in DF.

  • Chunky Radiance: Thanks to counduit and PvP talent, our radiance was REALLY strong, so it helped us sustain our team during enemy burst. PvP talent got nerfed after first season, but the nerf was offseted by increasing power of the conduit. Now that we are without the conduit, Radiance heals for significantly less compared to first stage of Shadowlands, where it could heal more than 50% of your HP. I think Ultimate Radiance should be buffed to something like 150 - 200% healing increase to address this.

  • Covenant powers: love it or hate it, covenant powers were extremely impactful. As a disc, we mostly played venthyr or night fae in PvP. That gave us either strong burst and healing reversal in Mindgames or strong utility, defensive and mana regen in Faerie Guardians. We kept Mindgames in DF, but it is just a shadow of it’s former self after the nerf. We lost faeries. Also covenant signature spells were important for us, since both Door of Shadows and Soulshape were exactly that kind of mobility we desperately need.

  • Shadowmend: I believe that all the buffs to flash heal actually brought it close to values of Shadowmend. Honestly, Shadowmend did not heal for THAT much all by itself, I only remember it was really strong in BfA thanks to supporting azerite trait and essence. What’s bad is that now all our healing spells are holy, which negates the advantage we had in two healing schools. It feels really bad considering we now have to face way more interrupts and CC in arenas, since many classes got them unlocked in their class trees for all their specs. Except for priests, of course.

I’m curious how 10.0.5 changes will play out. Shadow side of the spec tree buffs seems nice, at least for PvE. I think Shadow covenant now might see a play, since it will be nice AoE burst heal and big dmg buff for our shadow spells. I only fear that it this would be easily stopped in PvP by CC chaining us, so timing will be the key.

We already give pretty nice damage, so I guess that with 10.0.5 we will be strong in healer damage. We need better sustain and please, dev gods, do something with our mobility, since feathers are countered by virutally any slow.

5

shadow mend being on the shadow school and quite expensive on mana could be the alternative when you can’t use atonement healing due to being locked out or playing defensively, that’s what i had in mind. it shouldn’t be efficient at all, just an emergency healing.

6

I would be fine with it, as long as spamming smite would heal more than shadowmend :smiley:
Otherwise, it will be always the answer to spam heals not dmg.

7

I agree Smite should be better button to press. Just compare it to Evoker:

Priest:
Smite: hits for approx 12k - 16k, depending on talents and procs. Can be used only to dmg. Holy school, so when kicked, our main healing school is locked.

Evoker:
Living Flame: hits for approx 30 - 40k depending on talents and procs. Can be used to heal or dmg. Can also cleave up to 4 targets if talented into. Fire school, so when kicked, Evokers still have nature and arcane school to use.

I think that in 10.0.5 we might just remove Smite from bars in favor of Mind Blast, which will do more dmg, trigger Expiation, will have increased atonement transfer trough Abyssal Reverie, will build up Harsh Discipline, will have reduced mana cost and additional charge and will work with Shadow Covenant, which gets buffs too.

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Are you sure we will play it? I think it will be hard to drop shield build, I don’t see much throughput gained going right side of the talents.

9

No, I am not 100% we will play it, but it might be possible. I’ve seen screenshots from PTR where discs blasted like 360k dmg in 3 seconds during Scov window with Dark Reprimand (shadow penance) and SW:D. The damage buff of both Scov and Mind Blast in the next build is considerable and Abyssal Reverie will make atonement transfer more potent… which is in fact something you asked for.

We shall see when the patch comes live. I will definitely try that out.

10

Interesting. Well, looking forward to that! Somehow I think it will get nerfed, and shield build will be the only option again, but let’s wait and see :slight_smile:

11

Scov has 30 sec CD, so it is available quite often, plus you can increase it’s duration through talents. The problem is the mana again, it’s kind of costy ability. I guess we can also be CCed during that window to prevent us doing anything, but yea… we shall see.

You can still reach some shield talents even if you go the “shadow” route, but not all of them. We shall see what will be the most popular build.

12

Most of the time in Arenas I cant find a few free seconds do cast some of the dps spells, I am too busy spamming heals and barely managing to keep my allies alive. Disci is one of the worst healing classes for arenas atm.

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That’s why I want damage to be the best option to heal up your mates, outside big cool downs.

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