The new Disc - sound offFollow

Even though the Smite is Awesome thread started out being about, um, Smite, I'm starting a new thread because I wanted sort of a poll. Except I'm too cheap to be able to do a poll at the moment. So use your imagination, 'k?

No matter what the mastery says, it seems clear to me after playing it for a while that Disc has moved away from absorb-healing and now is centered around smite-healing. Agree? And if so, do you...

1.) Love this.
2.) Hate this.
3.) Medium-emotion this.


#3 for me, because I think it's a neat idea, and although I miss mitigation healing in its old form, I think this is a cool thing to replace it with. However... I'm not able to bring myself to do it. I thought I would love it because I've always enjoyed my offensive capability as a Disc priest, but there's a difference between having the option to cast offensive spells and relying on offensive spells. It's definitely an uncomfortable feeling for me to count on an offensive spell to do defensive stuff. I see damage hitting a friendly target and I want to shield it, or heal it. Ignoring it in favor of burning the enemy down just feels wrong. This is compounded by me not really being able to count on Atonement to hit the right person (although they've done great things with Atonement overall - yay for proccing DA!).

To me, the old Disc feels gone and I'm not sure the new one fits me personally. I could probably get used to it with practice, but I'm just not sure it will be my thing. Not QQ though, because like I said, I think it's neat.

Here you go:

Teacake Says...


Edited, Oct 25th 2010 6:47am by dadanox

I'm going to be a ******* just because I can. I 1) love the idea and really like synergy between offensive abilities and heals, but 2) hate how it currently works in WOTLK. Because of the fact that disc can still be played WOTLK style right now I'm stuck on 3) and medium-emotion this.

All in all the idea is good, but it needs to be tweaked and I need to see it at 85 before I can honestly say I like or dislike it. They need to make up their mind about whether they want Disc to use Smite or Heal as a primary heal and adjust Strength of Soul accordingly, while completely fixing Atonement, Train of Thought and PW:S on the road. As it is now, talents like Soul Warding (which should be core to the spec) aren't going to be worth picking up.

While they're at it, they could simplify holy a bit too. The niche-appeal is outstanding, but literally every damn spell in that school has some kind of synergy with another spell - it's just too confusing for me to play right now. I can put out nice numbers, but I never have a clue whether I'm actually playing it optimal or not.

Thematically, I love it. Discipline to me seems like the "balance" tree. Priests have always been creatures of two worlds, the Light and Shadow. Discipline is the tree that blends the two and gives you causing damage to heal. They're what TVTropes calls a "Yin Yang Bomb", blending two thematic opposites together to achieve a goal, which I like.

That said, as an actual in-game mechanic, it strikes me as having to give up the best of both worlds to do what each tree specializes in, just not as effectively. Also, as teacake said, it just feels strange. It might be because we're just not used to it yet, but when you're used to either watching health meters and healing those that go down, or making a single health meter go down, ignoring directly healing people so you can indirectly heal them feels not right.

Old posts that are barely relevant a side, I miss the absorbiness of Disc as PW:S seems weak now.

Hopefully being able to get involved with some serious mastery rating will help. Still haven't raided since 4.0.1 do to having a friend visiting but hoping mana isn't to bad so I can push some stats into mastery to see if it helps at all.

Also need to gussy up mu Smite macro as it is currently non-existent.

/cast Smite [harm][help, @targettarget] is what I'm wanting yes? Having to target mobs is really annoying when I'm trying to heal.

I ran around solo for a while doing dailies just to test it in a controlled environment and see if I was being needlessly hateful. But nope, it's true: my shield is for crap now. Which means it really is Smite heal or GTFO. I'm going to GTFO for a while (not saying forever). I still think it's a cool idea, but I personally feel like I'm giving up too much of my healing power for the boost in offensive power, and the balance isn't to my liking. When I do need bigbig heals fastfast, I don't feel like I have them. Penance is awesome, but it's not superman.

I shall try again at 85 or if they make more changes. Meanwhile I'm still trying to find my feet as Holy. I had to take Spirit of Redemption out of my PVP spec because of that damn bug. :(


Edited, Oct 29th 2010 10:41am by teacake

You die, you’re an angel, you die again, and you’re stunned. Both as a spirit at the graveyard and when you rez. Until the BG is over or you’re kicked. Your PVP trinket won’t break it. No debuff shows in your bar.

It’s a really rotten bug. I had to spec out of Spirit of Redemption too.

I don't know, my research isn't all that scientific. I haven't done any math. All I know is my shield is breaking sooner against the same mobs doing the same dailies than it was before. Combined with how uncomfortable I am with Smite healing, Holy just feels way more powerful right now. And I still feel like I have decent offensive capability, with Smite glyphed and Chastise.




Bear in mind you and I do different things most of the time with our priests. This just isn't true in a battleground situation at all. I haven't done something wrong if I'm not everywhere at once, but I do have to be responsive to emergency situations. And there are plenty of cases where riding up just in time to provide a BIG heal NOW is what saves the day.




You're right that Gheal isn't much use for what I'm doing regardless of spec. With Disc I have Shield, which to me feels much weaker than it was before, PoM, and Penance, if it's off cooldown, else Flash Heal. With Holy I have PoM, CoH, the instant heal from Renew (small, but something), the instant heal from Holy Word if I'm in the right state, Shield to help them run away if necessary, or to absorb a little damage at least. None of those are very big impressive heals, but taken together that's 4-5 instants I can cast while moving, and/or while running toward my target, in quick succession, and combined they often get enough of the job done for me to have time to stop and cast a longer heal. I also have Guardian Spirit in my pocket, which as a panic button I find vastly preferable to Pain Suppression. Again, sorry I have no math and that makes my "evidence" nothing but anecdotal, but anecdotally, for me, Holy just flat out saves more lives. Including my own.

Some of that is because I'm not doing Disc right. If I'd stop having a panic attack long enough to let Smite do some healing, that would probably be different.


Emmit already spoke to the SoR bug but really what pisses me off the most is that 9/10 times you end up with the deserter debuff, and therefore don't get the honor at the end. Such a waste of time. Hate.


Edited, Oct 29th 2010 9:21pm by teacake

This is good advice. Particularly since both specs (all specs for every class for that matter) are bound to change a lot between now and whatever point in Cata we all start getting bored again. :) I keep telling my husband that if he could find someone to pair up with who could play that Disc/Smite spec well, they would probably be indestructible. I can definitely see the potential.

I'm going to revisit it periodically. And then I'm going to try both again at 85. I'm not ready to commit to a "main" spec yet.

I'm also likely to do more PVE in Cata than I did in Wrath, so my range of activities will be wider. So your point about different situations is a good one. It may be that I never have a "main" spec because I change between the two so frequently depending on what I'm doing that day.

While obviously I haven't played as long as most everyone else here who posts on a regular basis, I can say that, for me anyway, when I can't get my head around a class, to go away for a while and then to come back to it at intervals usually leads to some sort of facepalm experience where I mutter to myself imprecations about why I never understood this or that in the first place.

Sometimes, it just takes a while for the new brain pathways to get active.

I would imagine that this would be doubly true for someone that knows a class very well and then has it changed entirely. Unlearning isn't an easy thing.

Disc is a monster 1v1 with reflective shield, since smite heals you for a good amount when you can spam it. As for smite healing, i like it a lot in melee heavy groups but i'm guessing there will be many raid bosses where it will be terrible since 8 yards isn't really that much range.

I've dinged 82 and am halfway through 83. Healingwise, stuff hasn't really changed for me yet - normals ended up being fairly facerollable with players that aren't total morons (guildies).

As for questing - barring shadow, it would seem that disc is the fastest. I use the Glyph of Smite, and generally just go Holy Fire > Smite until the mob dies. I barely use Archangel - keeping up 5 stacks of Evangelism means that you get 40% Smite damage when Holy Fire is up, and that's too good to pass up on when soloing. Holy's Chakra is cool, but it runs out of mana too easily, and it also lacks a decent shield. It also lacks Reflective Shield, and you can't pick up Evangelism 'till 83.

Holy Nova is........ no, really, don't, it's not worth bothering with. If I AoE down approximately 4 mobs at the same time as disc, with the Holy Nova glyph, it takes down about 50-60% of my mana pool and something like a full minute of constant spamming. Not only is it way more intensive to keep up, it's also not worth it until you can take down about 6+ mobs at the same time with it.

Just shy of level 82, using my Holy spec but leveling with my husband. Smite Chakra is lovely for what little DPS I need to do. Dungeons have not been a challenge so far - haven't dropped dangerously low on mana yet and been more than able to keep everyone topped off all the time.

If I were going to solo I'd be tempted to have a shadow leveling spec and a healing spec for dungeons though. What little I've done with shadow post 4.0 has been fun and the mobs go down crazyfast.\

Edit: and as for gathering a bunch of mobs, I dunno how you can even test that. Gathering more than one on my server with the insane crowds has been rare.

Edited, Dec 7th 2010 10:20pm by teacake