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

Classes Priest
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So many people with no competent information about disc saying “it’s fine etc.” do not speak anything you heard from some youtuber or whatsoever, or not if you do not play this class.

check the numbers so they show you the facts:

Mythic Kazzara World Logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/33#boss=2688&metric=hps

just 2 disc on the 1st 100
Still Just 2 disc on the 1st 200
still just 2 disc on the 1st 300
still just 2 disc on the 1st 400
you finally see a 3rd disc at the 405th line…

Average number of parses per healer spec on the top 95th percentile is 5293

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/33#metric=hps&aggregate=amount&dataset=95

And the number of disc parses in that percentile is by far less 1170, and by far worst.

Why ? Ask yourself why !

do you even think about what could it mean ? it is either 1 of these:

1- top players do not play this class
2- top players cannot play this class
3- top raid leaders do not want them

And any combination of the above three means :

Discipline Priest Sucks.

Do you really do not care anything about numbers ? Or you do not know what competition is ?

There are only 2 disc priest in the WORLD at 1st 400 top healing players ! C’mon !

Discipline priest needs serious rework. There lot’s of good ideas above. I have my own comments too, like “instant radiance being baseline and not a proc, atonement application is damn bad cumbersome and need rework”

but hey ! something’s clearly gotta change.

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Yeah even in M+ holy seems to match disc, not even talking about raiding.

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More general Atonement coverage would definitely help for raiding, so maybe a Disc version of Benediction with 15-25% chance for Atonement applications to spread to a nearby player. Or maybe even just make Radiance hit up to 6 people.

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I would not mind Benediction, it would at least give us some reason to spec into PoM, but I guess it would be quite unreliable for ramping.

One of the best suggestions is to rework Evangelism to apply 6 sec atonement on every person in raid.

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I am kind of sad and… hopeless… but i will still try to put out the facts to the community.

Mythic Aberrus, 1st Boss, Kazzara, World HPS rankings:

Only 3 disc priest on top 300.

Which means again as i earlier said;

  • Either even top players are not able to perform equally with the rest of the healers as discs
  • Either top raids do no prefer to get discs to their teams

Which means,

  • Disc is on a really bad level now.

The game tempo has increased insane drastically since the earlier patches. It is now no where near on a design of “bursts of damage + bursts of movement” instead… Constant damage+ burst of damage + constant movement + burst of movement.

At this scenario, Disc is like an old model of a Giant German Cannon which requires 100 days to setup to tear down 1 target and yet this is now obsolete cause enemy is INSANE dynamic now.

All the healers have “agile” solutions where Disc has nothing.

-yes procs of instant radiance is something but it is no where near enough of making the spec viable, it barely makes it “meh”.

Blizz, either

  • re-design fights, make some reduction to this insane amount of movement requirement (which you won’t).
  • remove atonement application requirement completely make it a passive effect
  • or bring back spirit shell
  • or give us some ULTRA Practical atonement application CDs
  • if you select the last, it still is not enough, make our damage rotation “ok”. our damage rotation is even complexer than a given dpsers dps rotation. this is funny
  • or increase the mastery coefficient drastically so even if we miss out 2-3 atonements or make 1 damage rotation mistake during a ramp, our existing atonements and damage would dish out some “ok” heals

Else, this spec will slowly pale out and die off raid environment.

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First of all, Contrition is still useless after 7 years in the game so we all know the disc dev is incompetent.
maybe replace that guy with someone who actually played disc or can read the 0% talent pick-rate for 7 years?
alright…
I’ve been playing disc since cata, since i was a kid, and I have never changed spec, and always played high level content (+20s, mythic raid, etc)
so I’ve had many ideas over the years on how to fix the spec. I will list them here, change them as you like:

1- Evangelism:
the disc ramp is the number 1 thing keeping new players away forever.
A cooldown should be the thing that gives you a good feel not cancer. so this is the cancer-less evang:
for 10 seconds you have atonement on everybody and healing transfer through atonement is 100%. (you can change the transfer, duration, cd, anything, but a healthy evangelism should free us from applying atonement)

2- Casted heals:
keep flash heal the complete useless thing it is, but make shadow covenant convert it to shadowmend and pump. don’t hate the idea, it’s an option and you can still SC + Schism and go for burst aoe heal, but our options for spamming spot heals are laughable.

3- Atonement:
SERIOUSLY we need a passive proc that will spread atonement randomly sometimes. i’m 100% sure every disc priest in the world will die for something like PoM jumping around applying atonements. the way flash, shield and renew work now is eh-ok but needs the random proc so bad.

4- Damage rotation:
do you realize every throughput increase options that is meta in our talent tree right now will make our rotation more difficult? TE, Expiation, HD… inescapable torment is actually a very well-designed name for the talent, it really is a torment. we don’t even have an API that tracks mindbender duration correctly.
Take all of these stuff down and make them effortless, our rotation will still remain among the hardest if not THE hardest.
Make amends & Painful punishment should have been baseline into penance, they are never worth spending a talent point but they have a beautiful design that fits very well into our always-one-step-behind spec.

5- Barrier is boring, it just looks good and is powerful yes, but pls add some talent points to alter/empower it. it is extremely boring for a 3m cd.

6- Talent points: in the class tree, I find many priest can’t even take Leap of faith(grip) because how bloated the throughput nodes are… it’s like we need to have 100% of these power nodes so we can function.
When we need to take utility ,for instance disease poison, we need to sacrifice big throughput which is not the case at all for other healers who also get interrupts and immunities they can use on themselves or others…
You’ve been smashing our heads against the ground just because of PI but is it really that good? good enough so we don’t get any interrupt? who’s been this stubborn guy who doesn’t want to listen to the community that’s been asking for interrupt since Beta. does this guy know how to play priest better than everyone?

In the end, I am very ashamed of blizzard devs for this awful design. I hope for a new team for priest devs that can actually understand our problems and address them.

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there’s obviously a lot more to this. I came back today to add some more if any of it helps:

7- permanent atonement: we need atleast one and should be able to talent into 2 of them. so we could have perma atonement on both tanks in raids. if it costs talent points it’s balanced.

8- Radiance talents: we need ones that will make it hit more targets, and it should have been instant cast from the beginning of it… split Bright pupil (5s cd) and Enduring lum
it’s not a choice node, it’s an “obvious-choice node”. having both can help the lackluster radiance we have now.
Radiance’s problem was anything but the amount it healed, and you changed nothing just added a big load of heal. nice bandaite for M+, 0 difference for raiding.

9- Mana: after all the billion problems disc had, it was and probably still is the most mana hungry spec. completely unfair. I would see mana management in a spec like holy to be part of the game but for disc if mana was infinite it still be hard to play.

10- Malfunctioning cooldowns:
schism on 24s with SC 30s and mind game’s 45 that can be lowered plus mindbender’s VS and there’s radiance charges and Halo/divine star. solace on hasted 12…
we don’t need ten thousand cooldowns to function, can we have CDs that actually do something by their own?
we’re keeping track of a lot of buffs and cooldowns, it feels awful really, we can never plan a good rotation unless we just sit on some cooldowns to get them lined up and I’ve been playing other healers a lot, their cooldowns line up automatically like butter…

You’ve been trying to make disc complex but you just made it hard so nobody would play it. I wish priest devs didn’t need to hear this but hello “you can’t make something fun just by making it hard to play”
Every time there’s a new talent that buffs an aspect of disc it’s like:
“You get 10% buff to this one spell, but first you need to bend-over-backwards to get the buff”

pff

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Disc is just currently not worth it in any PvE content sadly. Holy paladin and resto shamans completely outclass it in m+ currently and in raid it’s probably dead last. And even worse with the 10.1.5 nerf to atonement healing once again.

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Can’t complain tbh. Haven’t played higher keys yet but so far I’m having fun with disc in M+. I often outheal my resto shaman in some situations, especially ones with high sustain dmg. Haven’t looked into ptr yet but they also buff our overall dmg by 10% so maybe it evens out the atonement nerf. Will test it later…

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blizzard just loves those apply to heal buffs…
atonement
fistweaving ancient teachings
melee wings
etc.

the maintenance of this trash makes those classes less fun.

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Am i the only one who feels that Rapture is completely useless ? It could have been of value if like, i cast it in 2 seconds and it shielded like 8 players in an area at once. But now, GCD-GCD-GCD-GCD… while people are dieing…

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I think rapture is great. Maybe they could tune the numbers a bit, giving bigger shields, but I really like the design of the ability. Disc is supposed to be about preemptive play and being rewarded for thinking many moves ahead. The problem is more so that the reward doesnt feel big enough imo :smile:

I think disc main issue atm is twofold:

  • Throughput being too low. Even with a perfect combo of scov+schism+TE with penance and other dmg it just feels low :confused:
  • Healing profile, mainly applies to m+. You can do mediocre overall healing, and you can do decent spothealing, but you cant do both at the same time due to how penance works.

I havent played other healing specs in DF so Im not sure exactly how it is for them. But I suspect some of them dont have to choose one or the other, to the same extent. Possible fixes for this could be penance incurring a shorter cd when used on friendly targets during scov, and maybe retaining harsh discipline for both one offensive and one defensive use.

Another solution that would also address button bloat is to remove schism and give a flat buff to all dmg or atonement healing. I personally like having many buttons, but I agree its an issue that disc requires so much effort for mediocre performance.

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after testing Luminous Barrier, and reading the latest changes I have to say:
the best decision blizzard can ever make is to fire the disc priest team entirely and hire a new team.
This is my best constructive feedback. those guys are way past the point of getting benefit of the doubt or any kind of forgiveness. it is very obvious they have no idea what they’re doing and they are way too lazy to work on the main problems.
I have to clarify, this is a real constructive feedback blizzard, please change the dev for priest. Honestly consider it please please please.

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So in other words it’s (once again) not worth to take this over barrier?^^

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At the current tuning… no, not really. They need to significantly buff it in order to be viable.
I think the idea behind adding it as choice node is great - you either chose PW:B for fights take advantage of raid stacking (and in these scenarios, it should be always better option), or LB for fights where you need to spread… but the numbers are not there. I believe Halo has more value than LB now, which makes it pitiful 3 min CD.

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Look like disc is done already with the again atonement nerfs. In m+ I rerolled to holy and we get good dmg buffs this upc. reset.

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Whenever disc is topping the leaderboards in PvP arenas, they come and nerf it to the ground… I don’t get why they mess with the spec so much. Whenever it’s too fun and powerful, they nerf it to the ground with hotfixes. The essential thing is : healing solely through atonement output is not viable in arenas, there are so many factors in play that might keep a priest from dpsing enough. Popping PI + shadow covenant + schism + dark archangel (if taken) + and trying to get 4 stacks for a powerful penance is something that can only be consistent in M+ or PvE content. In PvP, you will either get cc’d, interrupted or the health of your dps partner will be too low because of the burst that you cannot follow that rotation to the fullest extent. And if you’re not following it to the fullest, its bad dps, equals bad hps.

Whenever blizzard puts too much trust in atonement healing through percentage buffs, it results in a terrible and powerless discipline priest. This has been the case for far too long.

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Pasted from my reply in another post:

EDIT: my personal opinion coming from Wrath Classic and loving disc priest there. Ofc there it was a bit more braindead than any spec should be in current wow.

Scrap the whole attonement playstyle which just basically makes you a mage or warlock and go back to the spec idea it was in early wow: damage absorbs are the main way a disc priest ‘heals’.

Atm it’s convoluted and messy. There’s so much stuff on my bar that I can’t even keep track of what to use first as a newcomer to the spec. I get the idea, but the execution is such a mess it turns me off to just try it when Holy both heals more and feels more fluid to play.

Make PW:S a very short or even no CD, bring back the Rapture mechanic from wrath but give it an extra bonus in terms of healing done instead of just mana return.
(ofc they would have to bring back Weakened Soul so you can’t endlessly spam shields on the same target)

For example: when your PW:S get’s destroyed it will give you some mana back and will increase your healing done and your absorbs by 5% for 6 sec, this effect can stack if multiple shields break at the same time.
If you play right your next 2 PW:S and/or Pennance will be exteremely buffed, giving you the ability to spotheal someone from 20% hp to full or give your tank a massive shield.

Mastery can be either just a flat increase in your absorb effects or any non- absorb healing you do will give your target a small damage absorb effect for 5 sec, like the Pala mastery from way back. Makes more sense to give it back to disc priests.

As for filler spells aside from your PW:S and Pennance you still have PoM and Flash heal.

New spell: Linked Soul. Link two targets at the soul, duplicating all healing, absorbs and damage they take for 10 seconds. 1 min CD
This is a bit of a hybrid Beacon of Light combined with Blessing of Sacrifice, but something you can play around when you have a big CD coming up to put on both tanks for example. Use it wrong and the second target takes more damage.

This is all just from the top of my head, but I really believe they should abandon the weird attonement mechanic, or at least don’t make the spec revolve around dealing damage with so much spells. If I want to deal damage I’d play Shadow or a mage.

I’d play the crap out of a disc priest if it was like I described, because atm it’s just a roundabout healer that’s still casting.

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To understand if a spec is “ok” or not, you cannot just say “i like it’s play style”. We all like it’s play style and that’s why we are trying to play it. But we are being punished clearly. C’mon… Just go check Mythic Sarkareth World Logs.

There are ONLY…Yes… ONLY !!! Only 8 Disc priest ALONG THE WORLD who could kill him… Doesn’t this tell you something about Disc ? How can this be ? Only 8 players and their performence are even %40-%50 worse then their comperative challengers of others specs.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/hPHTAyJcBX1z4gR7#fight=10&type=healing
This guy here, have 100 logged and yet a 70 logging MW outhealed him with almost 30k HPS… C’MON NOW !

Yes, rapture play style is fun. But it is so useless, i even am not getting it now and didn’t notice it. Just spreading atonements with Shield+Renew+Renew+Shield+Renew+Renew… Result is same.

I’d wish Spirit Shell was still there…

We are not “Pre-Emtpive Healers” as you may think now. In reality, we are a much worse version of a resto druid, trying to spread atonements to whole raid to be able to HoT heal them after the damage hits… And… With “very weak bad” HoTs… Due to complexity and low output of our damage rotation (and because our mastery being a peace of wheat)

It is obviously clear… They either have to

Bring Spirit Shell back

OR

create a new 1,5 min spell/talent which make Divine Aegis an ability which “ALWAYS” places an “X” portion of our atonement heal (scaling with our mastery not hp or else) when we use it

OR

They have to reduce the number of incredible swirlies raining to every single pixel on a battleground

OR

Change the play style of disc. Make atonement distribution easier with like making Rapture a cast time with 2.5 seconds which shields 8 players at once with a 1.5 min CD and make instant radiance base-line and making our dps rotation simpler and effectiver.

This is not too much… There are healers out there, casting 1 spell, and literally REWINDING ALL THE DAMAGE THAT RAID TOOK IN THE LAST 5 SECONDS !

THEY ARE ALTER TIMING THE WHOLE RAID ! WITH 1 CAST ! C’MON NOW !

And we are begging for insta radiance being base-line and we have to compete these guys… Pathetic…

we are now like: “10 instant spells, 3 hard cast spells, then cast this to buff that, then cast that to buff this, then cast this then cast that, then if you still can find a place to stand still… cast this looooong spell to make HUUUGE… lol joking stupid low damage and do bad hps”

It is clear, 1 of the 3 has to be done:

1- Bring back SS
2- Make the Battles less Movement freakish so we can find more time to manage atonements and damage rotation with our given BAD tool-kit
3- Or if the battles will be like this, then improve our tool-kit, make it simpler and effective… I mean… I am not hopeful but… If you can’t think of anything of the things i above said, at least… Buff our mastery significantly

or as a colleague mentioned a post earlier, Fire all the Blizz Disc dev team.

sorry for the wall of text folks.

Disc is fading away from High-End raiding environment.

(All above said is speaking in PvE environment. Gave up PvP crap so long ago)

Peace.

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