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Discipline Priest State in Shadowlands Alpha - Mythic+ Viability, Lackluster GCDs, Covenant Abilities

Post by Awsyme01

I can't remember any recent "state in shadowlands" post that doesn't include "lackluster GCDS" in its title. So every healing class is crap?

I can't remember any recent "state in shadowlands" post that doesn't include "lackluster GCDS" in its title. So every healing class is crap?

Yeah - Not sure why they used 'lacklustre GCDs to describe Resto Druids. Never has one spec had so much ridiculous utility....

As for Disc - I like the spec but I wish they'd focus more on being able to talent for the aoe burst damage you take in Mythic +. For most beginning/average priests few are going to be comfortable doing mythic keys as this instead of holy. And as long as affixes like Grevious exist I can't see that changing with the current available talents.

Post by Grigory432

Currently leveling Discipline priest. The way it works in BFA is kinda old Shadow armed with Vampiric Embrace: PWS everyone who might be taking damage & DPS enemies. Atonement fading > recast PWS or just Radiance > spam some more Smite. Uh, this a healing spec, or a DPS spec with inbuilt party support?
Flash baseline would be good, Shadow Mend feels bad in combat when you just delay damage on tank instead of really healing.
In general PWS seems to suck and it's only use is putting Atonement on 1 target. Needs beefing up.
Penance is good for DPS. No joke, it's castable while moving, and really weak as heal, but slightly better than Smite in DPS. So why does this spell has healing function again if it doesn't heal people, just keeps them walking a while longer?
Power Word Barrier is a cheap copypasta of Anti-Magic Zone, like the small indie company couldn't squeeze out some $ for graphics team to make a new "holy yellow-white bubble" effect (instead of palette swap) and new sound effect (pure old Wrath AMZ). Too strong to ignore, too long CD to actually use as something else than cheesing a big raid-wide hit.
Mind Blast & Sear baseline = meh/good. Good because Discipline gets ranged AoE. Meh because Blast is YET ANOTHER DPS ability to bind & use on cd when you are, y'know, the healer.
The whole thing with Discipline being labeled "HEALER" gets old when you play it a bit and realize it heals more by damage dealing abilities than actual healing abilities. Really, VE Shadow + some yellow-tinted spells. Who the heck put that label? It's obviously DPS... :D
Power Infusion, Evangelism, Rapture, Shadowfiend/Mindbender should be off GCD, feels incredibly bad to waste 1,5s doing nothing but casting INSTANT buff on SOMEONE ELSE, or yourself and not benefit from it for that 1 gcd. Bad enough Discipline doesn't really have tools to sustain healing party/raid, it doesn't need more GCDs.

The DPS hybrid spec sucks, just return it back to the bubble glory days.

Yeah, this was the one thing Discipline excelled at, buffing players' effective HP by putting absorbs on them while also being able to really heal ST & AoE both. PWSing 25 targets was fun. Being able to heal 2/3 of tank's total HP in 1 spell was also fun. Or healing the whole party for 1/3 to 1/2 HP and putting 33% of that healing as absorb on top of it. Other heal specs might be better at healing, but Disc could heal & was THE glorious absorb spammer, and it was great. Played like a healer, not "put effect on people to heal and DPS" caster dps who heals people by what is pretty much party/raid-wide Leech maintained with spells, who also cannot really heal people while being heal spec as it doesn't have AoE heals, Penance sucks and Shadow Mend keeps target alive for now but you have to heal it again later.

I can't remember any recent "state in shadowlands" post that doesn't include "lackluster GCDS" in its title. So every healing class is crap?

Well this happens when you take something that was OFF GCD for like 14 years and then put GCD on it, its equivalent in other specs, its companion pet, and its mother too, just because someone had a VISION where everything in the world was on GCD, so OF COURSE they had to put it on live WoW. Can't name a single spec that doesn't have issues with clunky, unwieldy, just plain bad GCD issues. Curiously, all of them have a common theme of how good it felt to play X before the dark times... Before Beta for Azeroth / Battle for Abilities off GCD. And I can say that every single class that had some off-GCD abilities, usually macroed cooldowns, DOES feel bad now, if only because of those GCDs.

Post by Duckworth

A lot of this thread is just selfish wish lists and it shows that a lot of the comment section doesn't really play discipline priest at the highest of levels. Discipline is a specialization made for mythic raiding, by using Power Word: Radiance and/or Rapture before huge burst windows they become a perfect raid healer. The issues are not that there are lackluster GCDs... if you are actually complaining about rapture and evangelism being boring; it shows that either you aren't grasping what the abilities are meant to do or you aren't using them right. The Devs gave discipline priests the perfect cooldowns for high intensive healing. Both Evangelism and Rapture are at the same cooldown time of 1.5 mins, while other classes such as holy paladins need essences to fix their base kit to even use glimmer correctly. It also gives the user an opportunity to use them in succession or use them at two different times which Holy paladins don't get the option to do that.
Furthermore, shadowfiend/mindbender isn't meant for you to see results right away! They are abilities used prior to large damage mechanics or when the raid has rot damage. For the thread to say that it doesn't feel good I'm not sure what you want out of this ability? When used in tandem with 15+ atonements on the raid, shadowfiend almost doubles the healing throughput. Discipline priests aren't BM hunters or Frost Mages so I guess I'm not completely understanding why you think we need an action bar for a pet that is solely there to help you heal and in other variations of the game also a mana battery.
Lastly, I want to address two big things regarding the thread. First, Power Infusion is not always meant to be used on yourself. In higher raiding content when the spell was in the game before removal; Power Infusion was always used on the caster that utilized the haste the most and this will still be the case in Shadowlands. Yes, healers want to see everything used on them such as Innervate/Power Infusion/Wisdom/Etc. However, just like what they did for Innervate, where it now has the secondary effect for putting there cast on another player these abilities aren't meant to be used selfishly. Power Infusion will be primarily put on strong casters during their burst windows and not used on yourself. Unless Discipline priests get nerfed so hard that they start to have mana issues this spell should almost never be cast on the user. Leading me into my last point.
Reading the Night Fae covenant portion of this article, it is obvious that you are saying the ability is not worth using. But every high end raider I have spoken to about this covenant ability has said this ability is busted. Multiple clips have shown things such as spamming a Frost DK with Power Word: Shield during their Breath and it extended their Breath for more than double its normal uptime, and for Warriors in execute they will literally be able to constantly be casting execute if the ability is used in that regard. And when you don't need to buff up a dps you can then spam shadow mends on the whole raid to give everyone a 10% dr on top of the already amazing Power Word: Barrier. Which is the issue with this covenant ability... The Night Fae ability is not an issue for it not being good, the issue is that the ability is TO GOOD. The issue is that instead of using Rapture as a way to do throughput it will now be used to buff up their fellow party members and this makes for very unhealthy gameplay. Most world first guilds will have to create comps around this ability to utilize the ability and completely amplify a single player every 1.5 mins. As I mentioned prior Rapture is also a 1.5 min cd which now you can see where the underlining problems lie. I think they will need to completely scrap the Night Fae ability or discipline priests will have no choice to choose it and basically become an equivalent to a Bard or a raid utility healer.
I would love to hear anyone else's opinions on what I had to say! Furthermore I want to address that I do not hate the author nor the article written, I am just not fully onboard with specific comments made that would influence the reader into thinking a specific way. I also love almost all the changes with what they did to the discipline priest in Shadowlands and by complaining about minor things such Mind Sear not doing enough damage or Mind Blast having to long of a cooldown that it feels bad to press it will cause the Devs to inevitably remove the abilities instead of fix them.

Post by Poromania

I think it’s as sign of that there’s not that much wrong with the classes if the complains are regarding the <1.5s GCD’s on spells with a 1.5min cooldowns

actually most healer classes fight with uselessnes in m+, only druid are monster in that
also disc are competetive in raids, being able to take one more dps and having shields which are superior to heals

Post by ekidna

I doubt Disc will ever return to "bubble lord". Blizz has stated that absorbs are too powerful and detract from other healers. More direct throughput would be a nice medium. During high damage use a direct healing/absorb cycle, and during low damage/constant AoE a primarily DPS cycle. The 30% damage "target" (as mentioned in some presentations and interviews) is where a lot of the complaints seem to lie. The option to switch to 10% damage with more upfront healing/absorbs would be nice.

Post by Nathasil

Post by Duckworth

Post by Yizimist

Evangelism should be a base line ability and they need to add better talents.

Post by Alatheia

sadly shadowlands seems intent on keeping priests on the weaker side of things overall.

2 healing specs, neither of which is particularly good.
1 dps spec that is slow AF.

I just wish we had a good damage spec to go with the lackluster healing specs priest has. Soloing content is just decidedly slower on a priest than any other class, even in shadow.

Post by Alatheia

Post by Duckworth

Imho it would be best to simply add atonement as a talent to Holy and come up with something completely new for Disc.

I know a lot of players will hate on this proposal, but as long as NEITHER priest healing spec can have something cool "because the other spec has something like it!" priest will always have the worst complete package out of all healers.

If i play Disc, i cannot access the throughput talents/spells of Holy. If i play Holy, i have no access to the absorbs/damage<>healing conversion of Disc. Other healers always have access to all their healing-talents.

Priest having 2 healing specs is NOT a bonus - its a liability. Especially if the expansion forces you to specialise into ONE spec (Azerite Armor in BFA, Covenant in SL).

This is just not a good idea, I'm sorry. Holy is the only spec that feels incomplete out of the three priest specs.... Discipline is in the healthiest state its ever been in and the only downside to playing discipline is that the spec isn't good in M+. The issue with raid healing right now is that the top three specs: Holy Paladin, Discipline, and Restoration shaman all have the best cooldowns such as damage reduction and can still do dps without losing throughput in healing. Why would turning disc into a talent for holy be at all a good idea? Holy needs to be fixed not discipline. If you want to play a strictly "healing-based spec" such as Mistweaver, Restoration Druid, and Holy Priest you won't find as much success in a raid environment. To fix holy you need to give them a DR abilities which somewhat is fixed with the Fae Transfusion spell (Night Fae Covenant Ability) or give holy an option to dish out more damage to compete with the three specs I mentioned prior. A suggestion to put holy in a better place in raiding and M+ is probably to make apotheosis base-line. Holy priests have some of the best talents in the game but they are locked behind talents that you have to take in specific environments. Ex: Salvation and Apotheosis being in the same tier as well as Binding heal and Circle of Healing having the same issue.

never understood why damage has become a relevant aspect for healers, this makes the highest damage healing class almost always the most desirable, in a world that is already all about dps.

Sorry but shadow is garbage as long as voidform exists. it doesnt feel good to play the slowest ramp up class. It is fine to have a slow spec like shadow for raiding, but it is not fine to have an entire class that is so horribly slow compared to every other class when soloing content. Unless Blizz is ready to scale enemy hp for healers like they did in visions, every class should have an effective and fast specialization.

You would think a class with 2 healing specs would be really strong, but like that poster above said, it is a liability. The only content you get to play healer on is group content, so the class has 2 unusable specs when not doing group content, and the only 1 usable one is slow as hell.

Then the 2 healing specs arent even that good? And one of them fundamentally outshines the other to the point that the other could be deleted.

It's different when 1 class has multiple dps specs because they usually serve different purposes. But with healing specs, there is always only one purpose, keep people alive. There are scenariors in which strong aoes, or dots are preferably to single target burst. But in the case of priest, there is never a situation in which it is better to have a holy priest than a disc priest, other than maybe bursting and grievous, but all that does is highlight a terrible issue with disc priest, not a strength of holy.

overall, having 2 healing specs means so far has meant that you get half of a whole healer. It's just that Disc is the better half due to...dun dun dun.. DPS.

Priest is one of the worst classes in wow at this time and it doesnt look like it will change in shadowlands.

I'm not sure where you get at saying discipline is only half a spec when it was literally the top healer almost all expansion until paladins scaled out of control. The issue with boss design ever since Legion has been that some healers just heal to much to quickly, this leaves rot healers in a bad spot. That is why restoration druids and holy priests are only viable early on in expansions. DPS healers are very valuable because they do have the option of weaving dps and healing. However, this is only important in the highest level of mythic raiding which a majority of the player base isn't in. I have mained almost every iteration of discipline and the bubble disc playstyle was unhealthy for the game. Furthermore, shadows voidform in legion was the best shadow priest there was because the skill level used to gain large lingering insanity stacks really made a difference on the meters. Shadow is perfectly fine at the end game of bfa and if they didn't get nerfed to the ground before nyalotha they would have scaled out of control. I'm confused how people will complain about a class not being good what so ever but like I have mentioned prior holy is the real issue out of the three specs it doesn't fulfill a role and that doesn't mean you should take away from the other specs to fix that. Shadow right now is just flat out bad in shadowlands because they pruned to much in legion and then tried to fix it with azerite which is gone in shadowlands. However, shadows voidform is what makes it scale later on into an expansion and will probably be looked at for further changes at a later time.

Post by Alatheia

Post by Duckworth

I mentioned in my first comment that disc is not good in mythic+ and there is an underlining issue with that but the solution is not to gut the spec it is to just add more talents that can fix this. Shadow Covenant is a good step in the right direction but instead of it just increasing shadow damage by X% it should just make it so it increases the potency of shadow spells by X% this makes it so shadow mend will also be affected by this ability. Its little things like that, that can help discipline. Besides this in all content other than M+ disc is probably one of the most well-rounded healers. However, as I mentioned previously disc excels at raid healing it feels like it was created for this specific purpose. The problem is that almost all the healers aren't in a good place for M+ besides druids and monks, holy pallies just recently came into the meta for M+ but that is because Holy paladins have spiraled out of control for scaling in the current expansion. The whole argument started because someone mentioned that disc should just be scrapped and turned into a holy talent. The solution is not to just get rid of something because of inconvenience. I think the Shadowlands Devs need to look into all healing specs and see why some specs are performing well in M+ while others are flopping.

Post by Acccattone

Its =/= it's.

Every. Single. Article.

Post by mozpioz

No mention of ? It's becoming baseline too, isn't it?

Also in general I think it's ridiculous that the one healer spec that is *required* to do damage in order to heal has such a convoluted way of doing it. It will always feel more logical to me to just to start DPsing when not much healing is required instead of going through this "ok apply atonement first, THEN dps as much as you can to keep your party alive" routine.
In short: MoP Disc felt great - you healed a little through atonement, much like applying a HoT. But when people started taking *real* damage, you had to switch to *real* healing and absorption.
Nowadays, Disc doesn't have real healing anymore, you *have* to make do with atonement becase it's all you have. And that reliance on absolutely having to DPS in order to meaningfully heal has been the problem of this spec since WoD.

Flash heal isnt becoming baseline. Shadow mend replaces it once you learn it while leveling. On live this level is 28

Post by mozpioz

These comments make me feel sorry for the priest discord.

Post by Haelthyr

Disc would be miles more optional to bring to m+ (and more consistent raid throughput) if we had a few things:

- A slow Heal spell baseline to counteract many of the “rot” damaged or bursting effects we see in mythic plus in a way that won’t make us OOM in 5 spells like shadowmend feels. The ability to have any sort of efficient out of combat heal would be great as well in comparison to shadowmending our hearts out.

- Reduced recovery rate for Radiance to improve AOE healing capability OR alter our mastery back to how it used to be. Having atonement be a proximity based heal off the target you’re damaging and increase that healing by x% and absorption by x% based off mastery is leaps and bounds more appealing than “if you’re healing someone that already has atonement on them, here’s a little more to add on”

- A SILENCE/INTERRUPT. Even on a 45 second Cooldown, we’ve experienced things like the horrific visions where solo encounters are just less favourable for you to be doing while in Disc because we lack an ability like this.

These are some of the only things that I actually find bothersome with it. As my main character, I manage to get the job done but you can also visibly see how much harder disc is working to output as much as it is in comparison to other healing specializations.

Post by Kuroii

The DPS hybrid spec sucks, just return it back to the bubble glory days.

no one wants to go back to the days of just looking at a grid and pressing one button to spam shields with no sense of interaction please stop thinking that the playstyle was "fun" and interactive nobody liked it when it was out. It was simple and lacked any interaction besides having 2 buttons bound. This is why holy exists its a more traditional healing spec as it should be. Not every single healer class needs to be dumbed down to 3 spells. This spec breaks the classic holy trinity and has drawbacks for it. Stop trying to go back to days of simple boring interactions that is what makes people quit classes / expansions and you come back here and complain its a vicious cycle and thankfully disc priests change that in a way.

Post by MalOSB

I really would not mind Disc struggling in Mythic +, if Holy was good... but every season both Priests specs are the least desirable healer any group wants. Mass Dispell cannot keep up with the utility of the other healers, the so-called damage healer cannot compete with a paladin (or Resto, Monk?) for damage.

Post by Ukitsu556

disc in raid is god tier since many years.
disc in PvP is really good
disc in mm+ is ok, not best tier but not worst tier. Ppl like Moadmoad do 26-27 timed, but ppl just prefer to play with Pal or Drood

Disc player want to be god in all format...

Discipline Priest State in Shadowlands Alpha - Mythic+ Viability, Lackluster GCDs, Covenant Abilities

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