Tried a alt Disc and it felt like atonement was there to make the spec worse, also really unfun. I love the idea of doing damage to heal, but why atonement. Why not just make it a smart heal. 5 Lowest HP targets in the raid get healed. Ya big CD spreads this effect for 10 secs to the whole raid.
That way Disc can get a well thought out damage rotation and have this ebb and flow game play. So you have spells that heal more as a percentage of damage and spells that deal damage but heal less. For when less healing as needed.
I duno maybe the priest community likes atonement, though to me it just feels jank as …
Atonement is great, really enjoy the playstyle ever since Legion. In MoP and WoD atonement just healed whoever was lowest HP.
What’s not great is 2 things:
Disc hasn’t really changed or evolved since then, there’s a small handful of encounters where disc just doesn’t work, and some mechanics just absolutely destroy disc as a spec or just make it way more annoying to play, the big ones being boss damage immunity and spell queueing. Meanwhile pretty much every change that HAS been made to disc since then has made the spec worse. Regularly nerfing its damage or its CDs, up until Spirit Shell which brings me to my 2nd problem…
Spirit Shell is absolute trash of a talent, basically ruins the spec. IDK why they made a spell that simplifies the spec, and makes it less fun for other healers, so bloody overpowered.
Disc is pretty awful… Atonement healing god awful or at least the plaguefall 4 i was it was, people were getting chopped down to 50% HP all over the place and my Smite->Atonement Healing was returning 600 to them.
Once again discipline is the “trickle” healer or at least in PUG,s it is , Someone stands in something bad then enjoy your shadow mend spamming each of them individually whilst trying to keep the tank topped.
In MOP it was a great spec as it worked whilst you was damaging and to say its lacked skill it still required you to do a decent amount of damage to keep the shields going but this version of discipline is poor af, My shammy healer with same ilvl or lower has no sweats on a 4 even with people standing in stuff.
Discipline is not designed for burst healing on-the-fly (Ie… when people stand in bad) so it is not a PUG friendly spec.
BFA had some nice thigns with the set to increase radiance healing but even with that its not good, We need more reactive healing not a shield that protects for 2k when someone gets hit for 5k or more in quick succession.
Spirit shell is a trash ability it doesnt even make it good I used Spirit shell with people all on 50% and as fast I could get shells on them they disappeared from the AOE damage and poisons in Plaguefall 4.
Why does Renew an instant cast tick for the same as a Atonement -> Penance setup on a per tick basis? Seems a bit weak regardless.
Most of the Direct Healing is OK, Shadow Mend, Radiance but nearly all of the Indirect Healing (atonement based healing) is negligible in M+ , There either has ot be a way to increase the % back from atonement or increase the shields absorption but a lot because if people were getting 2k shields with almost 200 ilvl what are they getting in a 10 4k shields?? (Good luck with that one).
You could always just play another spec if you are not having much luck with disc. Not a good response I know but its the best response unless you want to keep trying to go as disc and get used to playing it. You need to learn to expect damage because disc has a harder time reactive healing compared to other healers.
You will need to rely more on Shadow Mend sometimes. Atonement can do pretty good heals when you have your burst damage abilities available (Mind games/Mind Blast/Penance), but outside of that the atonement you will get from Smite will be low.
If you have multiple targets you should have SW: P/PtW rolling on them as they contribute a fair bit to atonement and will tick while you Shadow Mend.
I have done all my keys with people I know and they usually can avoid most stuff they shouldn’t get hit with but in a pugs you probably will group with people who dont avoid anything.
ToF talent is a really big help in m+.
I wouldn’t hold your breath for any changes to atonement because devs are likely aprehensive about making disc too strong. If its atonement healed more to the point you can heal most damage with it alone disc would be way too strong. There would be a lot less downtime of damage to cast Shadow Mend.
It also would likely be a change that would affect other types of content also where disc is really powerful already (like raids).
and in regard to Renew, pretty sure most holy priests dont even cast that, I dont actively cast it myself when I play holy unless i cannot cast anything else while moving ^^ Renew is pretty poop! At least atonement is coming from more than 1 spell (dot ticking and direct damage spells).
Edit: actually did 1 key as holy last reset, screw grievious! ended up at the end with more damage than i do as disc and healing was fine. Nothing wrong with playing other specs <:
I used to hate disc because I didn’t get it. But it kept bugging me, the fact I couldn’t get it right. So I kept trying, and suddenly it just “clicked” with me. Now it’s my favourite spec and I can’t stop playing it. I’m @221 ilvl now, and atonement healing up to +10 is really easy, almost no shadow mend needed. However if you’re pushing higher keys, it’s harder for sure, and you’ll need shadow mend.
A good combo for AoE group healing, either through prideful or DoS mask, or even the halkias mobs, is as follows:
Purge/sw:p > Radience > Mindgames > Mind Blast > Penance (even better if you go penitent legendary, it’s real fun to use). This combo has massive group healing outside of rapture.
Theres plenty of things they could do to make disc healing feel better in a non-raid setting. Almost all the talent rows could easily be redesigned and used as tuning knobs for different types of content. They could add spells, such as binding heal. They could implement some interaction between defensive penance and shadow mend, or even just a spirit of preversation type effect for mend alone. They could give barrier the aoe heal treatment (tranq/hymn). They could buff the penance–>ptw spread from 1-2 targets, and give mind sear an interaction with swp/ptw. Theres loads of things they could do to buff/change disc in small group content without affecting raid performance.
I have this weird relationship with the Disc spec.
On once side I love the concept. On the other side I hate how it requires to watch both the enemy frames for debuff duration, the allies for atonement duration and also to maintain a DPS rotation on enemies.
I find it too scatterbrained as well as how it falls appart as soon as an ally makes an unpredictable mistake and gets in trouble. I also hear that on high keys it devolves into a lot of shadow mend spam so I ask, why the heck is it made that way.
idk, in higher keys if someone messes up they just die. idk why ppl just take for granted that healers are expected to carry players through their screw-ups
btw I don’t play disc in m+ so I can’t comment on how good it is there, I just never liked the argument that disc sucks in it because “you can’t heal through mistakes” - you probably can and I think players should expect better from their fellow party members lol
This is so true, PuG groups are full of errors, People without interrupts I see it so many times on my monk tank hardly no one interrupts the 20k Damage cast Shadowcore from the Death Speakers in DOS on fortified weeks but as a tank I am meant to just continually soak and the healer expected to outheal a almost 50% of my HP in 1 cast excluding all the rest of the mobs with the speaker.
Discipline just needs a better AOE heal and way more effective throughput healing its pretty poor, As i said I was in a 4 plaguefall people didnt interrupt hardly anything and we didnt time it, then i switched to Holy for a TOP6 and we timed it easy with the same group, Disc just needs more direct healing rather than Shadow Mend spam the second someone screws up.
I like the atonement mechanic. I just feel it’s a bit weak in 5 man content. Resorting to shadowmend spam doesn’t feel great at times.
It could use a modifier like other raid cool downs that have it’s efficiency increases when not in a raid group. I don’t PvP, so can’t comment about that part.
Imo, just increase atonement duration. Nothing wild, maybe 4 seconds? I’d probably main disc but there’s barely a window to actually do damage between reapplying atonement.
For the annoyance of reapplying atonement constantly, you may as well spam shadowmend, and if that’s all you’re doing, you may as well go holy.