Should I abandon disc priest?

I honestly never like disc after they changed it. I liked it much more when it was just a healer instead of the heal/dps combo.

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As someone who plays Disc every expansion we are still lacking a big AOE heal such as Tranquility, Healing Tide Totem.

I find in M+ keys we usually end up relying on Radiance and Shadow Mend spam to keep people alive, Atonement healing is borderline useless in M+.

Imo I find that Discipline needs either of 3 things to be successful.

1 : A super tanky tank one that isnt going to spike and require tonnes of healing at a moments notice.

2: Super strong DPS so the mobs die so fast the required amount of healing required to keep the group alive is kept to a minimal.

3 : The whole group MUST know what to dodge and interrupt because if someone takes 60% of their HP from a fortified caster mob then you are always playing “catch-up” which results in shadow mend spamming.

These are just what I have found in my experiences, Sure you can get away with atonement healing provided the group acknowledge that you are a discipline and will try to interrupt and mitigate as much as possible, But in a PUG group do not hold your breath.

We need more instant heals such as holy word serenity or something of that equivalent, and a bigger atonement window for Atonemnt healing to be more viable in random groups.

That’s funny, because in PvP Disc is the best AoE healer thanks to the pvp talent that buffs PW: Radiance by 200%.
Whenever I play disc in pve stuff I immedietly notice the difference.

disc priest are so bad in current end game that people ask you before if u are disc in order to ban/kick

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pvp and aoe healing is a myth, in realities there is no such thing, totally useless

I’ve been playing as a healer since WotLK and I can absolutely say without a doubt, healing is the hardest and most stressful it has ever been.

That is not to say it isn’t fun cause it is.

But, if you are struggling at the lower levels to enjoy the role under pressure then it may not be the role for you as it doesn’t get much easier, (assuming you will go raiding and push keys).

Healing is fun, but you’ve always got to be on your A game otherwise the group’s dead.

As a side note, don’t judge a class’ ability to handle situations as you’re leveling as once you hit end game the tuning of abilities change so suddenly.

Instant lay on hands on 5 people on a 20 second CD is a myth? what? :joy:

If that was true, I wouldn’t complain.

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Good luck on relying on Radiance in M+ keys, Its pretty poor when your tank gets 1-2 slapped for 10-20k a time.

Discipline has pretty much become a PVP exclusive spec as far as I am concerned because Holy has much more immediate healing effects than Discipline unfortunately.

Im not the greatest geared priest atm about 185 or something but i,ve not played it for a few weeks been levelling gearing alts, But my smite dealing 700-800 and atonement healing for about 200 of that damage when your tank is slapped for 6k+ or a DPS is hit by a random cast for just as much damage then you realise the main attraction of disc is not very good.

My renew as holy ticks for more and is instant cast but in disc nooo i need to put a shield on someone then smite the mob bearing in mind smite is a 1+ second cast, We are already losing a lot of healing time just for the “prep” to heal.

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disc is like the best healer in the game. why would oyu give up on that lol.

Very old thread but I think in the MDI disc was pretty much the only healer used so I don’t know what this talk about it not being viable in m+ is about. Also I heard Max from Limit saying that if u were to 4 heal Sludgefist it would be 2 discs and 2 rshamans.

DIsc is a proactive healer which means they need a few things other healers don’t

a) They need to know precisely where damage comes from, when, and for how long so they can prep shields in advance (prepping initial atonements after the pull/damage is to condemn yourself)
b) they need a group that is forthcoming in utilising their DR and self-heals when able to do so at minimal cost to their dps and to avoid avoidable damage.
c) The tank needs to pull in line with Disc’s needs, so expecting big healings outside of combat is iffy, gentle chain pulling is more suited to disc to keep atonement as an option for radiance. Disc has no good aoe healing options if a mob isn’t ability to damage.

Healing in SL is hard atm due to the dmg, the dmg is pretty big. This is an issue affecting all healers rather than just disc, but proactive healers probably feel the burn more, because in gentler dmg expos like BFA, they could probably get away with playing a bit reactively. In SL they cannot do that anymore, they must prep their heal targets in advance.

Disc must also get over the wierd anathema of shadowmend. Some people seem to have a problem casting this spell. It exists for a reason. Having to cast shadowmend isn’t a “failure of design” it is the disc priest’s intended heal when damage intake isn’t gentle. If disc could heal pretty much all dmg with just atonement they would be far too easy to play and mana efficient. So yes, expect to toss out shadowmends to keep up atonement rather than shield (outside of the initial pull) especially on single target damage.

Radiance is generally still ok for aoe healing, disc is no worse than anyone else in this regard. Radiance still is one of the best aoe healing tools in the game provided you line it up with stuff like schism, solace and mind blast. It’s not the best granted but it’s pretty good.

The only thing I think Disc could do with is either an Atonement generic buff (18 sec duration) or you make Evangelism baseline and 1 min cooldown because it’s when the aoe dmg keeps coming and radiance is down, that’s where the crap starts to flow due to lack of relaible ways to apply atonement to the party.

In BFA disc had the whole “holy nova can reset radiance” schtick with radiance casts which meant that realistically you could often keep atonement up through radiance alone for about 27 seconds more or less without factoring evangelism. In SL you cannot do this and in some bosses you’re gonna need to aoe healing more often than radiance allows- but at the same time the ST damage is big so when you’re busy reapplying atonement with mend, the tank is getting whittled. It creates a real dilemma that would be easily solved if atonement lasted a bit longer so the disc priest doesn’t lose so much healing time when reapplying atonement.

I mean by the time you’ve finished applying atonement to every one in the party with mend/shield, the first atonement is nearly halfway timed out. It’s mad.

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I was asking around, and my rotation is correct. I have been told Disc gets better with gear. It would make sense because increasing ilvl from 150-200 causes our health pool to increase by ~10k from 20k to 30k (roughly), so I would say by ~50%. The damage is increased multiple times from 1k to 2k or 3k. Therefore damage is increased by ~150% up to let’s say 200%. So even though damage taken is higher in higher keys, healing is much more increased. That would explain why Disc performs much better in the end game. That’s only some theory because my Priest is not geared enough to test it.

Disc gets better with progression into the season for a lot of reasons

A) Gear of others. As others get better gear, their stats round out and stamina increases more than anything else, which means that spikes of damage become less common in typical content and get ;pushed up to extreme high end. This means Disc benefits as Disc is poor at single target triage. The less fragile people become the better Disc is as Disc is strongest when they can maintain large atonement uptime due to the syngersitic effect of it being better for their mana and cleave healing, but also because contributes DPS (which in turn reduces healing required).

B) Disc benefits from many secondaries, Vers, Haste and Crit all benefit disc a fair amount and even mastery isn’t completely useless, therefore the more rating disc gets, the better they become quite significantly. As Atonement is time sensitive (15/9 sec) Haste is a very significant factor on Disc performance as the more spells you can fit into 15 sec, the more efficient and powerful your healing becomes and your healing uptime is increased.

C) Season progression usually indicates familiarity with content such as “trouble packs” and general mechanical knowhow. Disc not only benefits from knowing this, but they massively benefit from everyone else knowing this as their reactive spot healing is poor but their ability to keep up steady continual healing is good.

What you have described relates to all classes including other healers, as well. But Disc is different from other healers because it heals by doing damage.

It is compounded for disc because it relates to how disc heals.

Let’s take a reactive healer, like a shaman, and a disc priest.

Now let’s assume the shaman is 158 in a 158 group. It may be the case that ever few seconds or so, the shaman needs to cast a healing spell based upon dmg taken and gear.
In a 213 group, it may be that the shaman needs to cast a spell every 4 secs or so in a similar situation. There isn’t much net change here except they respond slower and dps more.

Disc’s behaviour doesn’t change in the situations massively, because they heal by doing damage so they’re “always healing” when atonement is active regardless of whether it’s needed or not. Given the healing is little but often, it rarely overheals.
The difference here isn’t that disc needs to behave differently across the ilevel (unlike the shaman) it’s that what they’re actually doing goes further. So whilst radiance - atonement may be able to weather the group if they’re at 50% health at 158, at 213 we may see that it not only weathers the damage, it counters it - what they’re doing is now more effecrive rather than them needing to do it less.

This is the difference.

The better geared other healers get (assuming they’re not engaging in infinitely scaling content) the less they need to heal.
The better geared disc gets, the more it heals and the more effecitve this healing becomes without sacrificing any DPS.

This is why disc becomes pref towards the end of seasons/expos. Because whilst the other healers start to dps more, they sacrifice slight/all their HPS in doing so, so they still have to react to those spikes and aoes. Disc gets to a place where they just DPS throughout the whole dungeon and people don’t die. Maybe they need to toss a shadowmend here or there. They become the safest and smoothest option at the same time.

Resto druid is close as their healing can also be maintained whilst they dps. Note both of these healers tend to dominate dungeons towards the end of expos? It’s because they have it in common- they scale very well and their dps and HPS largely scale together and occur together. Rsham may be able to do great dps when they get geared but they can’t do that AND heal at the same time. Disc and resto druids can.

So yeah whilst all healers do benefit from the better gear and the better playerbase, not as much as disc does as disc feels the benefits in both a continual damage supply and a continual healing supply and the gear/experience makes that healing supply adequate for the dungeon where it isn’t in earlier dungeons. This just makes them the safest option because they’re constantly damaging and reinforcing the group at the same time.

Glimmerdins became popular end of BFA for the same reason, a healer whom can damage and heal a little bit regularly scale exceptionally well towards the end of expansions due to the changes in how much dmg people take and the content they’re doing. People start running content that becomes “simple” to them, not everyone keeps pushing higher and higher. Disc excels at this place. When it comes to the experiential content (like 25-30 keys) you may well still be better bringing a reactive healer instead.

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I have a priest at 60, and I’ve normally played disc. Disc is good, but Ive found healing dungeons easier as Holy so far. But others will say differently and I think most priests are healing as disc. Tbh the main reason I’m playing as Holy is for a bit of a change from disc. I’m finding Holy pretty fun this expansion too :slight_smile:

Level as Holy, end game Disc once you are i190+… Disc is so strong especially in pvp.

I love when people say stuff like this.

Remember Disc CAN be good with the right team, Sure if you have a team which interrupts ALL the important damaging abilities of mobs and have really good spatial awareness and can dodge stuff on the floor etc…

Now… Lets return to the REAL world and not the world of the pro,s, Your average PUG group IS no where near the ability of these players so Disc becomes useless and throughput becomes WAY more important, Hence why Shamans are so good now because Riptide and Cloudburst offers so much through put healing on demand,

If your group is bad then a high throughput of healing can help brute force a dungeon but if your group is bad then Disc will not be able to cover that and it will show even more.

This guy gets it, Disc is good but in random dungeons with random groups Holy is much more powerful because people make more mistakes which Holy can recover from.

I am not talking about the end of the expansion because who really wants to play a healer for the “end of an expansion???” , Discipline atonement healing is so little it,s more like trickle healing for example my renew on my priest ticks for as much if not more than the Shield + Smite spam discipline provides and costs me 1 global.

Lets face reality that Discipline is more based for PVP than PVE.

I wouldn’t mind.

I like healing as Disc in raids and in PvP. I still heal as Disc in dungeons for fun but I needed a better gear and need to select certain talents plus knowing a dungeon is IMO the key. There is also great support from conduits to make it more comfortable.

Even though my gear is good enough, it’s still much harder to heal up a group from a bad pull or when certain players stay on crap they do not suppose to. It helps extremely lots by being more preventing if you can predict when a group is going to take massive damage. As such, if you know instance phases, situations with AoE, boss’s deadly spell and act accordingly, then you save the group and mana. But this means it is required to know the dungeon much better than other healers need to and this is one of the aspects that makes healing by Disc much more difficult.

So in conclusion, don’t go Disc if your gear is low and/or you don’t know the dungeon.