Disc priests need desperate attention from the devs. One that was promised

Classes Priest
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Greetings, as a disc priest who is a part of a small community who are all tired of the same thing for months, I’m making this post to try and bring attention to issues that are plagueing discipline priests.

Blizzard promised us we deserved better at the start of the expac. We were told that our button bloat would be addressed. That we needed more clarity and conversations. So far none of that is happening. In a recent interview Ion is saying that specs at the bottom shouldn’t stay that way forever. Yet here we are, with no changes in sight for yet another 3months or more.

I’m not going to try and speak my own mind on how the spec can be fixed, there are people in the priest discord who are far better and more articulate than I. I will shamelessly post their suggestions and ideas (with credit ofc) with the hope that some blizzard dev reads them.

I would also love the devs to consider why spriest can get their 14th rework in 3 months, for issues that disc struggles all the same with. But we get nothing. Just because discipline is played by a smaller amount of people, doesn’t mean we don’t exist or want better.

The following throughts are brought to you by Clandon (a very articulate and knowledgeable disc priest mod on the Priest discord). His thoughts are generally echoed daily throughout the conversations and are a small synthesis of what we all think.

" 1. it’s simply a matter of disc was designed around a time period where most characters/healers had 1 healing CD and most of them were 3 minute cooldowns and dwarfed in comparison in power to a evang ramp. Evang was also 1:15 minute CD when disc first got reworked instead of 1:30. We’ve gone from a healer ecosystem of “slot some healing CDs to cover some harder spots but most of the difficulty of healing was triage and good in the moment target selection/triage” to “every single healer has 3 raid CDs on short cooldowns and healing is just a puzzle of slotting your 45 cooldowns into a spreadsheet and hitting them at the right time or else you die”. Disc’s design just simply doesnt work in the modern healer ecosystem and would either require healing as a role to go back to its former design, which would involve the reworking of multiple classes which is insanely unlikely, or a rework of disc to fit the current paradigm. "

:first 3 steps to a disc rework:

  1. Longer baseline atonement, but reduce atonements power baseline to compensate
  2. More active and passive atonement applicators. Things like PoM bounces applying atonements, etc. The increase in atonement uptime is offset by the reduction in baseline power
  3. Make Evang flourish. Duration increase like it has but then also add the whole “your atonement healing is increased by x for y seconds”. This leaves our burst withing evang the same level of power but allows us to be more active outside of the ramp. it also drastically reduces the skill req and punishment due to mechanics/movement/etc during the ramp up period with evangs being longer by default.

After that you just remove a bunch of the complication in our actual dps window, rework some talents, add something like LB on a choice node with barrier for fights where its not as good like spread fights, and bam. you’ve got a solid start to a modern disc."

Please blizz devs, consider that disc also needs some clarity and communication. We have glaring issues outside of just throughput and numbers. We need a deeper look at how our spec functions going forward.

Best regards, Qristalx

6 Likes
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Well, since the start of DF, the spec improved a lot… The changes were aimed on 5 man environment though, you seem to be focused more on raids.

Regarding raiding, the suggestions you LPsummed from discord would help a lot. I would also add:

  • Instant Radiance: that would help with our overcomplicated ramp a lot.
  • Mobility: Razsageth encounter showed how terrible our mobility is. It growed beyond acceptable weaknes. We need some better mobility tool to survive tactics.
    I agree that our current design does not fit well with disc healing pattern. Lots of rot encounters where HoT specs shine.

As far as M+ go, the spec improved A LOT. It is still not meta, but it is in best shape it ever was in M+. What priests in general lack in M+ is some form of utility. Being a class without both Lust and Battle Ress makes us complicated to fit in into groups. We lack solid CCs. We lack proper interrupt.

In PvP, disc is fine. Our damage was nerfed, but we are still viable. We miss our old glorious juicy Radiance heals. In 10.1, we get some interesting PvP talents, so let’s see how it will turn out. Also Radiance is changing from Holy to Radiant school, so when our Penance/Smite/Fheal gets kicked, we will be still able to use PW:R.

I agree spec needs attention. Honestly, whole class needs it. We are only class that keeps getting updates and reworks every patch, which is good, but it also shows the class design is problematic.

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I agree with most of what you said, tho I disagree with the whole class thing. Shadow priest is getting attention weekly. They kept buffing it literally every single patch. Disc and holy however do not. Compared to mistweaver and resto shaman, which they have been giving attention in every build of the ptr, disc has gotten nothing past the 1 basket of changes we got for m+. Since then, nothing. Meanwhile MW and shammy are on the buffing block every week lol. Not to speak of paladins who got a ground up rework.

I just wish disc and holy got some meaningful attention.

3 Likes
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Devs are scared of disc alot By recent Changes , As far i see This buff that they gave 10s Swd and 30% cast is basicly usefull but not ENough yet
made alot of topic but it seems worthles…

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The reason the group of people who play Discipline is so tiny is because it’s terrible compared to other healers, and has been for a while now
Even with the changes focussed on M+ disc is still in a bad place compared to resto, preserver, and pally currently, to speak nothing of 10.1 buff to all other healers except priest.

Disc in M+ lacks mobility, lacks throughput post +18-20 keys, and high mobility fights (of which there are many) make healing impossible since we have very few instant casts, and completely invalidate the one big cooldown we have: barrier. To make matters worse we don’t even get lust or bres

Try and heal a +20 tyranical Azureblade or Odyn on disc, then try on one of the above mentioned healers, and see how absolutely massive the difference in difficulty is…
Disc desperately needs attention and solutions for these issues otherwise the group of people who play it will just keep dropping even further

1 Like
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You’ve marked the worst ones thank you by that , hope Devs Watch this stuff all over here

i Personaly tried alot speakin of it but YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA,

Keep goin boyZ

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woud it help if Mastery also increase atonement duration ?
Just an idea.

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I believe that would be helpful. The less time we spend on atonement upkeep, the more time we can do damage.

What I believe should be done to disc:

  • Radiance being instant cast baseline. That would bring us strong button to use on the move, something which we miss really hard. It would also make our ramps way less painful.
  • Radiance made Twilight spell instead of Radiant. That would make it more synergistic with Shadow Covenant.
  • Give us more control about PotDS (Dark Penance) proc. Perhaps reintroduce SL tier set bonus, which had a chance for Radiance to trigger it.
  • Make Harsh discipline build out of all damage spells and make the buff stack twice.
  • Give us some mobility. Door of Shadows seem to be perfect pick.
  • Give us some utility. It sucks to be the only healer without B-Ress or Lust. It makes us hard to fit in some groups. B-Ress would be great.
  • Return Fae Guardians. Such a great spell.
2 Likes
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Daym :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: as far i know about the radiance one, such a thing like instant cast for them is kinda too much , you might askin why?
Datamined spells that they toke buff of it for like 30% Reduce Cast time on it will make sure that they kept an eye on it
aNd for the rest , “Fae guardians” They understand that disc got lit not a guaranteed spell for group stuff But surely thats a good idea for ppl Not Blizz
But Overall Your ideas ARe GREAT

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Yes, I am aware of the 30% faster cast time on Enduring Luminiscence, but honestly, it is not enough.
Playing with instant Radiance in PvP makes spec WAY more fluid and less clunky. Sure, PvP healing is different to PvE, but this would help in PvE greatly, as we would be less punished in movement heavy fights.

2 Likes
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Instant radiance seems pretty good, currently radiance gives 9 sec atonement, and the second cast means you’ve already lost ~1/3rd (cast time +GCD) of the first atonement, making evangelism mandatory to press, not particularly fun.
It would also finally give us something to do in high mobility fights beyond spamming renew and the occasional penance (or use rapture, but that only works one phase)

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Our healing does not come from shields or anything else but only atonement. Which means, we heal only when we damage. And while we damage, we must have much atonements as possible up.

1- Atonement distribution is very problematic.
2- Damage rotation is very complex
3- And both of them requires TONS of hard casts

Blizz has to either,

1- Increase atonement duration or make it very easier to distribute
2- Increase our mastery drastically so even if we miss or fail on atonement distribution or damage rotation, what we “could” would still be of use
3- Reduce the number of hard casts that we have to make and convert much of our spells to instant spells.

OR

Decrease the number of MOVEMENT mechanics on your raids. I would personally prefer this, i am now vomiting of movement to be honest… But am hopeless about this. Very often on fights, you can’t distribute atonements not while you can’t, you just can’t because raid is SO MUCH distributed or running around madly to avoid getting hit by stuff. So not just you, but others have to run too !

So do the 3 above please.

(and rework this idiot new tier set bonuses)

1 Like
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Honestly I’d rather have them fix our mobility and atonement issues instead of reducing raid movement. Mostly because M+ will still have the movement issues if that’s the case

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I was thinking.
If they make Mastery stat also increase Atonement duration time. like maby 1,5% or 2% per 1% stat?or something.
Then everyone wil get abit more Atonement uptime. And people can chose more mastery build if wants to. Just an idea :slight_smile:

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I’m quite happy with Disc in DF so far. Didn’t play high keys in this season though due to limited time through RL reasons. But it feels fun and rewarding. Some situations are a bit disadvantageous for disc (spike burst dmg) but in others I even manage to outheal my resto shaman main char.^^

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I’m kinda confused here mate, Disc is best at dealing with massive spike dmg through mitigation. Sustained dmg is where disc falls apart as throughput is lacking.

Now, with the new 4pc it might actually be pretty good as long as you go into a fight with 2 stacks of instant radiance ready to go

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Yeah I should’ve specify it a bit more. I meant unexpected spike dmg when some hard hitter casts went through and someone gets blasted from 100% to 20 in an instant for example. I play the twilight equilibrium build which, in conjunction with shadow covenant, harsh discipline and weal and woe gives me a good mix of atonement healing and buffed shields for good sustain heal.

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To handle up time on atonement I personally think they need to take back to just plain passive like it used to be, yea that’s the easy way but I don’t see why they took it away at the end of mop if I remember rightly.

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It seems like Disc is suffering a fair bit in raids by not being able to hit the numbers that other healers can. Some changes I think might help are:

  1. Increase Atonement duration by 2-3 sec from all sources.

  2. Rework Evangelism into a baseline 3 min cooldown that applies Atonement to the whole raid for 6 sec (and adds 6 sec to any existing Atonements).

In a dungeon group, the 6 sec of Atonement has 2x healing transfer (but the 2x transfer doesn’t last longer than 6 sec if the cooldown added to an existing Atonement).

  1. Have Lenience talent heal players for 1-2% of health 1 time when they take damage during a single Atonement application, instead of reducing damage.

Just some stuff that would hopefully boost numbers a bit for both Raid and M+, and make the duration better by default.

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I would definitely like to see Evangelism reworked like that. I don’t believe it would make us OP. It would certainly make spec more approachable and flexible, while maintaining it’s complexity. You would still need to align IT with your procs and burst tools.

I would also welcome return of Shadowlands legendary Clarity of Mind. It reduced PW:S mana cost by 20% during Rapture and also made atonements applied during Rapture to last 6 seconds longer. I think that would help a lot as well and it would make an interesting capstone talent.

In M+, disc looks good now. I would reintroduced Shining Force back as choice node with Void Tendrils. I also think that all healers should get Battle ress or reincarnation of sorts.