[Discipline] Priest Consolidated Feedback

Hi Disc Priests! I'm running out of time tonight, but wanted to stop by at least one healer spec before I go, and Discipline is arguably in most need of discussion at this point. Disc has seen a fair bit of change, especially surrounding Atonement, so some frustration is expected. Lets have some constructive discussion, shall we?

Disc was quite overpowered by the end of Mists for a few reasons. The first of which was that they had a couple spells (Divine Star in particular) that bypassed the AoE cap. That was a huge mistake, and has been solved. I think that's pretty clear to everyone.

The second is that they did most of their effective healing through absorbs, and absorbs were extremely powerful in general. Things have changed in Warlords to make this not the case: Damage has become much more 'high sustained' and much less 'high burst', meaning that no longer does everyone sit at full health and absorbs snipe all the effective healing. And on top of that, we've toned down how much of Disc's throughput comes from absorbs in general. They're still by far the heaviest on absorbs (that's their specialty, after all), but it's not *so* skewed in that direction.

And finally, Atonement. It was tuned strong enough that it wasn't much of a healing throughput loss to use, while being an easy and significant DPS gain. And the fact that it smart-healed made it very effective healing. I think we still have some tuning work to go through to reach this, but our goal is that Atonement is like splitting your attention between damage and healing, something like 60/40. It's something you do during lulls in healing need, or when you've got more healers than you need (which may be or not be the case on a phase by phase basis, in raid encounters). This phase easy on healing? Switch to Atonement for a while, contributing about 40% of a damage dealer's DPS, at a loss of about 40% of your healing. And when you do go back to full healing, you have Archangel to help smooth your transition back into healing. You can also weave Atonement+Archangel into shorter lulls in healing requirements, to min/max. As I said, I believe the tuning is off from that vision, currently, but we'll get there.

08/18/2014 10:36 PMPosted by Macphisto

Also, why is holy nova still doing damage? You removed all those from level 90 talents, I understand for finding rogues in pvp it's useful, or prevent flag cap but that could be a glyph. I know for a fact after playing my monk that getting aggro from spamming your aoe heal isn't really fun. (Rushing Jade Wind killed me a few times)

Holy Nova does no threat, either from its damage, or its healing. Just a neat little perk of Holy Nova. Always been that way.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

1) No baseline CC: I miss psychic scream so much that I would never take another level 60 talent (even if the root worked) . Every other healer has some kind of baseline cc, some have multiple baseline ccs and talents and interrupts.

I believe Holinka has mentioned this on Twitter, but we're considering giving Silence to Disc, because it has no baseline CC. Not a promise, just something we're considering.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

2) Holy Fire: Don't get me wrong, I like this spell in concept. What I don't like is that too much is tied to it now. With a talent it's mana. With a glyph it's a cc break. Regardless it's how you build up evanglism stacks and have a pseudo hot. Oh but it has a cooldown so if you build evangelism you can't break a poly. Oh and if you get locked out of holy you can't defend yourself from one either.

It's indeed a very multifaceted spell, especially in PvP. However, the Atonement healing it provides should not be a huge factor in that case, so is lessened.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

3) Archangel: So much of our healing is tied to a short cooldown that has to be charged through atonement. Only atonement healing is now intended to be a real trade off. With a 30 second cd, archangel requires smite or offensive penance and you can't keep it up with just holy fire on cooldown.

I think Archangel may actually be too strong; it's not intended to be a rotational thing during periods of high HPS need.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

4) Fade: Similar to Holy Fire, fade now does too much. It is the threat drop, the glyphed cooldown, and potentially the talented cooldown. That's too much baked into one button and makes it a non-fun button. That said, unless something changes I don't think I'll ever take phantasm.

This answer is similar to Holy Fire, but we see all of those potential customizations as a good thing. All of the things you mentioned are talents/glyphs that can be swapped in/out based on need. That kind of customization is generally good.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

5) Saving Grace: This ability is too good, and I don't think a numbers pass will ever get it to a realistic point. A stacking MS is not a real tradeoff for a no cooldown NS. It only lasts 10 seconds you spam it till full and then kite for 10 seconds.

One thing that may not be obvious (or may be bugged) is that it affects its own healing. If you spam it for 10sec, the last half of that is doing some pretty weak healing. Then you're doing none for 10sec... And now you're spending 2/3 of your time doing no healing. I don't expect that it'll get much use the way you describe.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

6) Spectral Guise: Also too good. It is also on the healing tier when it is clearly not a heal. I guess it's not so much a too good, as a "this talent is clearly better in a lot of instances." It works too well with fear, and with saving grace. The only other talent I'd consider is bulwark but a tuning pass might make desperate prayer worth using again.

Indeed, that's something that's on our radar. Keeping an eye on it.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

7) Holy Nova: Numbers aside: Visuals aside. Having this be the spell you spam when kiting looks bad visually. This is more a factor of it being a 0 cooldown instant, than that it is the aoe heal. I am not a fan of it as an aoe heal either, given that it gets rid of aoe healing during the all important losely spread out mechanic fights. We already have a talent that pushes us to clump the raid in barrier. This just feels too much.

Different healers have different strengths and weaknesses. This isn't a particularly restrictive one, all things considered, and is similar to other healing classes in effect.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

8) Too many mandatory glyphs: If you want mass dispel, inner focus, and death you have eaten up your three glyph slots. Tough luck if you wanted anything else fun. What makes me dislike this even more is that at the start of last expansion this would have meant 0 glyphs and I could take some fun option things like glyph of smite.

We actually want *more* mandatory glyphs, not fewer. That creates better tension, and makes glyphs feel meaningful. Interesting choices, etc.

08/18/2014 09:06 PMPosted by Fingles

9) Too many interrupts: Mobility and instants were taken away from casters. I get this, it had gotten ridiculous. The only issue I have is that those interrupts that got scattered didn't go away. As a disc priest, I open up my primary school with penance. This means that if I want to take advantage of that new perk to snare an enemy with it, I have to be prepared to be locked out. Everything I would ever want to snare has an interrupt. Interrupts are so common now that every dps, every tank, and half the healers have access to one now.

This is getting more into Holinka's territory than my own, but the prevalence of interrupts is something that's strongly on our mind right now.

This post ended up more PvP-focused than I had hoped, but I gotta run, so will try to post more soon.

As I've said to other specs tonight, I'd like to have further discussions with you all about Disc, but please make that easy for me to do, by keeping the hyperbole and anger and useless sarcasm and generally destructive behavior out of this. Thanks.