My main is a 400ilvl mw monk, with 1300 raider io, but i have a 394 ilvl disc priest and i can say priest need some love. Some simple changes could make disc priest much more effective both in m+ and raids:
-power radiance instant cast: this will help especially in raid, so we can apply attonment faster and gameplay would be more fun and smooth.
-shadow mend healing increased by 20%: this change can help with keeping alive the tank in m+.
-focused will back to 2 stacks: this is a pvp change we need so we stop being such an easy target to meele combo.
Playing both char i really feel discipline priest is way too weak in m+ compared to mw monk, they nerfed our dmg and attonment transfer too much, so our only utility we have, the added dmg we can bring is very low anyway and we have to use shadow mend too much to keep tank alive most of the time.
Probably developers cant buff our attonment or dmg without making us too strong again, but i think the changes i suggested can balance the class without making it op.
I would like some buff to this class because for me is by far the most fun healer to play^^
Disc needs to be balanced very carefully though, because if you push Atonement too much Disc becomes ridiculously strong due to how mana efficient Atonement healing is. Atonement healing is not intended as the primary means of mitigating damage on tanks anyway, especially at Mythic level.
I prefer to think of Atonement as a very efficient heal-over-time that remains on the target so long as I keep damaging opponents. It’s a versatile HOT because I can choose whether it’s on one, two or more targets at any time and whilst setting targets up takes times, administering the HOT’s healing does not increase beyond the first target.
So long as you weave Shadow Mend between occasional Smites your rotations remains smooth. You just choose the spell on whether you think you’ll risk overhealing or not when it comes to tank-healing. I found it clunky until I sorted macros out so I can cast either of these spells at the appropriate target irrespective of who I have targeted.
Generally I’ve played my Priest mostly as Holy spec but I have dipped my toe as Disc and i’m generally around the +5/+6 level atm as I don’t want to push my keystone too far beyond my ilevel (381).
Holy is easier, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s flat-out better. When it comes to “toys” yes Holy has far more, but that’s Holy, it’s the core “healer” of wow since days old, so their versatility is unmatched.
I’ve found though as Disc, even when casting Shadow Mend a lot on the tank and others to spot heal, mana is never really an issue at all. As Holy I’ve been brought down to 40% mana on occasions after huge pulls without drink breaks, with Disc I’ve not found that.
The only thing i’d say Disc lacks atm (which would result in somewhat less healing) is their DPS to be fair. When I DPS in mythics during low-damage phases as Holy it feels very much like i’m not hitting for less (if I even am) then my disc spec. When the “damage as you heal” spec isn’t reliably in front of the “pure healer” spec on the damage front, there’s an issue. It’s just very tricky to balance given how disc blends to the two, so changing one always changes the other.
The ony thing i’d say Disc needs at the minute to smoothen out how they perform in Mythic is making Purge the Wicked baseline. Precious seconds are wasted dotting all the targets, and if you don’t dot them all you miss healing and PoTDS procs. Some kind of mechanic to help spread SW:P or refresh the duration (outside of Contemptuous Homily because it doesn’t seem to stack properly making it pretty weak) would be hugely valuable.
That or a baseline Atonement duration increase (3 secs?), Disc suffers not because their healing is worse, but they often have to abandon healing to attend to maintenance to keep their healing going, and in longer fights these seconds add up.
Why do you think it isn’t already? As it most certainly is.
I don’t think this would change much at all with regards to the way disc works in raids, just shorten the ramp up window very slightly.
Of course that is what this change will help with. Doesn’t mean its necessarily needed. It will also cause a swing within raids where you will want to cast PW:S even less.
Why? Perhaps you are just better on a different style of healer and isn’t a issue of the spec itself. Sometimes you will have to use a lot of Shadow Mend and that is completely fine.
Thing is…
Disc is the least mobile healer in the game while being forced into way more running in raids then all other healers.
These days in raids where you have to switch bosses and ads by the second and bosses running all over the place, all other healers can just stand in range of the raidmembers and heal them while disc needs to be in range of the raid AND the mobs to heal with atonement. This is forcing disc to run more to heal in raids.
I play MW and Disc and while my disc is 15 ilvl higher, my MW plays way smoother in raids and puts out way higher numbers.
I even deal equal damg on my mw using Spirit of the crane to get mana back.
Everyone who says MW isnt far ahead in HPS AND ease of play in raids compared to disc cant play MW correctly…
As for spamming shadow mend, it is completely fine if it happens soem times. BUT forcing a player to almost completely ignore the specs core mechanics and just spam 2 skills instead is the same crap as the bubble spam in previous expansions.
I would say Holy falls behind us in that department,if anything. Priest is a immobile class in general. This is not something new or an overall issue for the most part.
I dont know of any boss where you have to make much effort to get in range compared to other healers. In a lot of cases our range is extended further than others as Atonement once applied has no limits within a raid encounter.
Anecdotal scenario that doesn’t really mean anything towards the topic of balance of both specs. When other healers get the time to deal dps they dont fall that far behind, just the way healer damage is balanced. The only difference is disc will not sacrifice healing by doing so. As a standard will do far more damage in any given encounter.
Eease of play is another topic entirely, and one that is subject to all manner of opinions. Disc for me is not all that difficult to play. As far as HPS goes the end goal is clearly to have healers as balanced as possible and right now there is not much difference between them.
Atonement cant be a one stop fix for all damage intake. Your tools such as Rapture, Smend, Pain supp, Defensive penance are your single target tools. Even during those moments you will have Atonement rolling gaining significant value from DoTs and Lenience DR (within M+).
I have Disc, MW and Resto Druid on about same iLVL.
All I play is PVP and M+. I can confirm that MW and rDru feel so much better for both.
In PVP, you can survive melee’s so much easier than Disc. You can do really good cc chains on your own, healing throughput is stronger and M+ feels so much easier.
Disc priest needs some serious attention from Blizzard.
I’d say disc needs a slight dps or attonement buff. Since if you play Disc correctly in mythic+ you have multiple HoT’s ticking on tank(well 1x on most bosses) that also increase Shadowmend out put by X, depending on S.mend trait buffs(I broke a 140k S.mend crit the other day lol).
Attonement in it’s current state aren’t a mana efficient way to heal anymore compared to other healers sustained healing(In 5-man content). Heck if it weren’t for the multiple attonement feature, i could heal infinite and way stronger just using a basic heal spell in holy.
Either the attonement transfer needs to go back to it’s pre nerfed state or some of the damage be returned. Another solution whould be that attonement as a mechanic whould be stronger when applied to fewer targets, we already have this trought the talent sins.
However I’d suggest that attonements should have it’s own mechanic. If you have attonement on for example one target you heal for example; ~75% of damage done and it’s lowered by 5% for each extra attonement application down to a minijmum of 55%. Which whould mean attonement whould work similar to other “raid wide” healing mechanics.
A change like this whould buff Disc in 5-mans and smal scale pvp, while preventing the “10+ attonement” raid healing from spinning out of control which was the issue in the first place. 10-15 attonements into evangelism were the thing which brought disc down to this state in the first place.
Why not? Atonement is still extremely efficient. Pre nerf its power was far too powerful, its current state is fine, from a balance perspective.
Not that I wouldn’t mind being OP again, I dont see that anything is in need of solving. Disc numbers are still competitive.
This would be incredibly hard to balance around and probably end up causing way more issues in the process. What Disc has now is a rounded toolkit. some talents could definitely be worked on but something like this suggestion is far out of the scope.
I really don’t understand the fixation on getting Disc buffed when it is in a very strong spot and competitive. I’m yet to see any concrete evidence of the contrary just anecdotal experience which does not mean the spec needs fixing. I’m only speaking for PVE.