Disc Priest outstanding issues & concerns

#0 - March 30, 2009, 4:46 p.m.

This is an outline of the issues Disc Priests currently have as I see them. Please feel free to add comments.

To be clear, Disc Priests are viable. However, we have several issues that we would like to know the status of as they do hinder our abilities or, worse, push us to go "against the grain" when it comes to healing.

Also note none of these changes are ment to make Disc Priests OP so if you are thinking to yourself "that would make Disc Priests OP", then you are probably reading something wrong or I was not clear enough and will make edits. :)

Rapture
Is the feedback on Rapture's current "backwords" approach to mana regen being considered?
Specifically, when MT healing, many Disc Priests prefer to save PW:Shield for emergencies when the tank takes a big hit as a means of stabilization to provide time for heals such as Penance to be applied.

With the changes to Rapture, to maximize mana return and rage / energy / mana / runic power returns Priests are now encouraged to apply PW:Shield every time the Weakened Soul debuff drops. This means that with the new Rapture, the way many Disc Priests prefer to use PW:Shield and how it works with Rapture no longer synergize.

This is the most worrisome issue in my opinion as it really pushes us to use our PW:Shield in a way that goes against how many Disc Priests feel is the best way to use it - reactively. And while I have no doubt that many Disc Priests already prefer to keep PW:Shield up the maximum amount of time, I do not believe all Priests should be pushed in that direction.

Holy Tree
Are any changes planned or under consideration for Tier 2 of the Holy tree to give Disc Priests a better stepping stone to Inspiration?
With Imp Flash Heal, we're clearly being pushed away from Greater Heal which was the only reason for us to take Divine Fury. And at 5 points, it was already very expensive for what little gain we got. As we use GH less and Flash Heal more, these points become even more wasteful.

Swapping Divine Fury with something like Spiritual Healing or Spiritual Guidance for example would address this issue and do a great deal to address our healing output issues as well and it would have absolutely no effect on Holy healing.

Grace
Are concerns with "one target at a time" Grace restrictions being considered?
With the planned one target at a time effect of Grace, if a Disc Priest helps heal any other raid members, they will rather significantly reduce their heals to their main target. The issue is that this change makes it feel like punishment if the Disc Priest helps heal the raid and also means Grace is almost totally worthless in Party situations where the Disc Priest must heal everyone.

Weakened Soul
Is anything being done to address the Weakened Soul effect which makes it disadvantageous to bring more then one Disc Priest to a raid?
Personal experience: My raids happen to have 4 Priest healers. Currently two of us would like to be Disc Priests but due to the Weakened Soul effect, we can not justify bringing more then 1 Disc Priest and so we end up with 3 Holy Priests. That is an issue we would like addressed or even just acknowledged that you see it as an issue or not. The problem is worst in 10 man raids.

The issue is that one Disc Priest can lock out ~15 talent points of another Disc Priest on multiple targets for the entire duration of any fight making a second Disc Priest a hinderance overall. And while arrangements can usually be worked out, no other class has such restrictions or needs.

Healing
Is the healing output of Disc Priests still an open issue that will be addressed in 3.1 or is it considered a "wait and see" issue?
We were told Disc healing output was low and would be addressed in 3.1. However, from what we've seen so far in the various 3.1 PTR builds, very little has changed that would have any significant impact on our healing output. There are small gains from the Penance Glyph and more %crit/haste from talents, but the small boost to Grace is also a nerf due to the single target restriction.

Please keep in mind that this is specifically in reference to healing, not absorption or mitigation, and there is no desire to "equal" other healing classes output - we have lots of mitigation that they don't. We just want our heals to be a bit bigger / faster when someone does drop to very low health and I believe there is lots of wiggle room between where we currently are and where the other healing classes are.

Summary
This isn't a demand that these issues be fixed. Its simply a request for feedback on where we stand on these issues.

I also realize this post is completely void of math. But all of the issues except healing output and Grace really have little to do with the numbers and more to do with mechanics. And for Grace and output, the question is simply if these are still issues that are being discussed / reviewed.

#181 - April 4, 2009, 1:31 a.m.

1. We do want a lot of Power Word: Shields to be getting tossed out. You can use it on multiple people throughout the raid for additional regeneration if needed. We are still a little weary of where mana regeneration is at, we aren't sure it is really going to be hit that bad with the changes in patch 3.1.

2. The talents requested are relatively far down in the holy tree with the goal of improving overall healing, the thing is that we don't feel discipline healing will really need these buffs as it could be fairly competitive as it stands. We feel the issue is the need to track the effective of shields, since these don't show up on healing meters it looks like the disc healing is low, but overall it should work out well if you add in the data from the shields.

3. We agree that how grace works feels a little awkward, we are looking into this and may change it in the future, no guarantees though.

4. We are still okay with how the weakened soul debuff works in a raid setting. If raids only allow 1 disc priest and it becomes a plaguing problem, we'll look into it, but at the same time we don't really want to see raids running around with only disc priests (this applies to any class).

5. Like I mentioned above, we feel the overall effectiveness of disc should be pretty good in 3.1 if you consider not just the healing but the shielding aspect of it as well. We will see how it plays out.