tedv

The problem is that in general you have one of three roles in a raid: tanking, healing, damage. I hope we can easily discard the tanking option. Even if discipline gives some amazing buffs (and it does), your slot is still wasted unless you have something to do DURING the fight.

Lets assume discipline is worth spending 41 points on. Where do the other 20 points go? Either shadow for damage or holy for healing. But shadow is horribly mana inefficient without vampiric touch-- it doubles to triples your longevity. So that option is gone. At least with holy you can get some core raiding talents, but you still don't have enough healing power to compete.

Ideally I'd like the discipline tree to have some amazing buffs and enough talents to support reasonable but not exceptional healing or damage. To compete you'd need some serious buffs though. I'm talking "Your spells cost 10/20/30/40/50% less mana" kind of cheap to give your damage or healing longevity that's even in the same ballpark as holy and shadow priests.

 

galzohar

The problem is not just the ineffective healing, it's the fact you just don't get enough other features in return. PI and PS just don't cut it as something to make up for the healing loss.

 

Alici

If they were to remove the lengthy cooldowns of PI and PS to enable it to be cast on multiple people, but give it longish cast times to prevent spamming with impunity, maybe discipline could work as a standalone class type?

If a lack of things to do while waiting for spells is a concern, then eliminating the need to wait, or even making spells channeled to force the player to concentrate on the role would be the solution?

 

tedv

A solid minute of channeling pain suppression on a target (most likely the tank) seems like an extremely dull thing. Raiding is fun when you have a variety of options and have to choose the best. That doesn't seem to be the case if you should always channel some overpowered buff.

No, I think they have the concept right: Extremely powerful tanking and caster buffs. Now they just need to make the discipline priest worth taking for the 99% of the raid in which they are NOT casting these spells.

 

Anaram

You could *probably* make discipline viable by casting PI on a druid who rolls lifebloom on tank all through the fight, then gearing up for high spell crit to keep inspiration on. Pain suppression would on many fights probably be castable on main tank, making druid+priest a reasonably good MT healer combo. Still, it sounds a bit too much hassle for the tradeoff.

 

galzohar

Maybe if they just severly cut the cooldowns of those abilities there will be a point for discussion...

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I think those abilities are nice (though dropping to 2 minute cooldown wouldn't be a terrible thing), it's the surrounding talents that's the issue.

If they made mental strength also give mana per five based on intellect (similar to dreamstate or unrelenting storm) it'd be a lot more attractive. Enlightenment could also give 1% boost to your +healing per talent point.

Small tweaks to existing talents that make up deep discipline to help them be more competitive with deep holy is what's needed

Ideally you'd be able to have a raid with a holy priest and a disc priest without feeling like you're "wasting a healing spot" that could be replaced with a healer who has totems and bloodlust, mad crazy hots, or blessings

 

Alici

I guess that I'm the only one that wants Discipline to be more than an alternative healing spec...

Most every talent tree, when specced 41 points in, results in the player casting a majority of their spells from the specialization that they have chosen. 41-point fire mages cast fire spells, and frost mages cast frost spells. Enhancement shamans don't cast lightning bolts or heal as their main ability; Mutilate rogues don't sinister strike. The only exception (other than the disc priest) are hunters and demolocks, but even then, they are defined by the talents that they take.

What I really don't want to see happening is that a 41-point discipline priest, by way of design or whatnot, is defined by how those 41 points affect how they cast HOLY spells. Discipline abilities should not be 1% of the spells cast in a given timeframe if the priest decides to major in it; it should be the other way around. The design should be such that it is both engaging and effective to be actively casting buff after buff, and the mechanics should reflect that.

 

tedv

I really want to echo this. I'd love discipline priests to be more than just another healer or damage slot. I could see a role where 60% of the time you are actively dispensing buffs as appropriate and the other 40% you are doing straight up healing or even damage. The problem is that priests just don't have tools like this. Consider the activated buffs with long cooldowns each of the healing classes will cast during combat:

Druid: Innervate, Rebirth
Shaman: Bloodlust
Paladin: Lay on Hands, Blessing of Protection, Divine Intervention
Priest: Power Infusion, Pain Suppression

Notice anything strange about that list? All the other classes get all their buffs as trainable abilities, but priests have to spend talent points to get their buffs. And those buffs are not in a tree that helps either damage or healing.

If they want to make discipline priests useful, they should give all priests power infusion and pain suppression as trainable talents (maybe with an increased cooldown, maybe 5 minutes). Then make new 31 and 41 point talents that actually create a new play style the way Vampiric Touch and Circle of Healing do. It's very hard to influence a playstyle with an ability that has a long cooldown. Witness the difference between innervate and swiftmend as 31 point talents, or the trainwreck that the old 31 point holy nova was (with a 1 minute cooldown).

Just as brainstorming, think about a spell like:

5 second channel, 10 second cooldown. Increases the damage and healing done by a friendly target by 100% while channeling. Channeling breaks if the target drops below 50% health.

Now you have a class that can double as an extra DPS or healer as needed. You can't use it to boost the tank's threat too much, and threat would be an issue if used on the same target over and over, so you'd want to rotate targets. Bonus points if you can time your channeling with their timers. Half of the time you boost someone's power, the other half the time you need to find someone to heal or whatever.

I'd also like an bonus effect that makes power word shield a spell you want to cast in more situations than just emergencies, and 50% damage reflect isn't cutting it. Maybe restoring some mana/energy/rage when the shield prevents damage would make it worthwhile.

 

SomeoneRandom

While reading this thread that was sort of the idea I had as well, make both PI and PS a 5 second channel with a 5-10 second cooldown, so your basically running around looking for targets low on threat to boost their dps, or helping a tank with mitigation, or adding more spells that could perhaps lower the threat a target produces for 5 seconds, or other things along those lines.

I would personally love to play a class like this, you would have SO many options as to what to do, it would be an amazingly fun and unique class.

 

Caligula

What tedv posted goes right along with what I was thinking what I originally posted the thread. The disc spec being a total utility spec. A buffer spec. I totally agree on the point that 31/41 point talents on a long cooldown usually do not work (ex. how boring is readiness as a 41 point talent?). I was so excited when they announced VT as the new talent for shadow. I can't really express how disappointing it was to see Shadowmend in the top of that tree. Yet, that single talent, VT, has completely changed the play style of a shadow priest and raiding in TBC in general.

That's what I was trying to figure out with a Disc spec. The Disc spec (utility, buffing, spot healing) could add a completely new aspect to raiding and the class in general. I agree that with PS and PI being on such long cooldowns, even with the usefulness of PS and PI in certain situations we are still left with the problem of what to do when these spells are on cooldown. That currently is: mediocre healing, but it could be much more.

 

◊ Vectivus

Given my limited raid experience, I can think of a number of fights where PS would be valuable:

- Magtheridon as he releases. For a guild new to this fight, the chances of your tank getting 3-shot off the starting line can be very high - mitigating 40% of that (and losing no real threat in the process) is priceless.

- Morogrim add tank (Prot Paladin). Give him PS before he starts spamming Consecrate, and he'll be eating 40% less overall damage from Murlocs. The same could be done on Solarian. Doing it before significant threat is amassed removes the aggro-reducing concern.

- Tidalvess tank on FLK. Give it to him whenever you're concerned there may be a gap between Grounding Totems, or as a Spitfire Totem spawns to cover him while you help heal the raid. Mitigating the insta-gib could be very valuable.



I don't think PS is meant to be used for the 5% threat reduction - I think that's a penalty put in place to prevent PS from being chain-cast on a raid tank. I highly doubt this ability will see much use on non-tanks in most raid encounters.

 

Bendyr

I can think of a few too, I.E. right before Gruul's Reverberation on the third tank.

Still, it does seem like a very situational talent in this sense...

 

Ellyh

Well Eyonix hopes to be able to give us some ideas of where the developers want to take discipline in Wrath.

Although obviously this will be vague info it should give us some idea of the likelyhood of discipline being raid viable.

post Here

 

Alici

Here is my 5-minute brainstorm of a possible discipline priest implementation:


Power Infusion
Infuses the target with power, increasing the target's spell damage and healing by 10% for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times. When the effect expires, the target is afflicted with Power Overload, reducing spell damage and healing by 100%, recovering 20% every 2 seconds for 10 seconds, and rendering it unable to receive another Power Infusion for its duration.
2 second cast, no cooldown.


Think of it as kind of like Lifebloom, in that you would want to keep the effect rolling as long as possible without it falling off. This model is advantageous to the channeled model because it is possible to still use this ability in solo play.

In solo: Priest ramps up Power Infusion (3), and starts blasting away. Priest needs to recast the buff every 8 seconds in order to prevent Power Overload at an inopportune time.

In groups/raids: Same as solo, except the priest would heal or DPS in addition to buffing. If there are other casters or healers, the priest could theoretically keep a (3) stack on up to 3 people (4 not possible due to lag), increasing power by 90%. I had stated in a previous post that you'd want the buff contribution to be equal to the loss of one healer/DPS (100%), and 90% is pretty damn close to 100%.

This ability would also introduce a certain level of environmental awareness and planning. Sure, the priest could spam PI on everyone, but if something happens where he would suddenly need to throw shields or PS's or heals and the 10 second timer runs out on a pallytank, prepare to say goodbye to the raid.

This would meet the requirements of fun and engaging, and it's only one spell so far!

 

Ellyh

Slight derail from 2.3 viability but we have a couple of titbits about disc for Wrath of the Lich King.

This sounds promising but as they say the proof is in the pudding.

Especially as a response to the never ending question about fixing the necessity of investing in 2 trees to heal yielded a response of "that's the plan" If this goes through as the quote suggests this would leave almost no talent trees totally non viable for raiding.

No hint about what the goal of the tree will actually be though. They could continue the theme of buffs they are starting to develop. However as has been discussed in this and other threads, is it that exciting to play musical buffs/debuffs for an entire raid?

 

flyingtoastr

Interesting ideas.

I personally still remember watching the old PvPriest videos way back in the day, and for that reason I've always associated the Discipline tree with gigantic Holy Fire criticals instead of healing. Of course, my priest has been Shadow from 1-70, so I haven't played from the tree other than the first 3 tiers.

Its interesting to look at the tree's evolution. After 1.10 (Priest Talent Review for Vanilia) the Discipline tree was a cross between a utility tree and a holy damage tree. When TBC was launched most of the new talents were geared towards survival and additional utility. However, the old damage talents remained in the tree, weakening the focus of the tree and bloating it.

What the Discipline tree needs most is a true job and focus. It can't be a cross between a holy-nuke/survival/support tree and be viable. I think that is the first thing that needs to be addressed before Discipline will have a place in this game, even after the 2.3 buffs.

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

PSGarak

If discipline is re-invented as a dynamic buff tree, it also has the potential to impact raiding, and especially raid composition, as much as shadow priests, enhancement shamans, and feral druids have. From a player perspective they're a support class, but from a raid composition class they could be the ultimate hybrid: by focusing their buffs on dps (PI) or tanks (PS) or healers (both), or some combination of the three (reflective bubble?), they effectively allow their raid slow to perform whatever function the raid needs, without swapping gear, much less talents.

I also think you guys are coming at the idea of dynamic buffing from the wrong angle... Channeling spells isn't a heck of a lot different than fire-and-forget instants with a cooldown, except you can't do anything in between. It sounds exciting because it's a huge change but it would get old fast.
Image instead the inverse of an affliction warlock: juggling three to five buffs of varying duration or cooldown on different people, with the interem spent either regenning or on more "mainline" spells like heals or nukes. As an avid affliction warlock I think it would be an interesting and engaging playstyle, and if certian buffs are mutually exclusive in some fashion there's a crapton of theorycrafting opportunity.
Personally, I'd rather be juggling reactive shield on two tanks, PS on the main tank, PI on a dps, SW:P and renew than alternately channeling PI and PS on two or three targets. But that's just me.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

ilkori

What about a utility build that is more hybrid than 41/x/x? Each of the priest trees have some potent abilities at low levels - especially Disc and Shadow. I have not tried this, have not tested it, and it probably needs work.

28/11/22

-Trying to stay with the buff/debuff theme: IDS, IPW:F, and Focused Power. Absolution didn't get its way in there, but probably could be reworked.
- On the utility theme, Silence, Mind Flay, Blackuot and Vampiric Embrace.
- Holy abilities are mostly leftover points going up to Holy Nova (and boosting Renew along the way).

There is quite a bit of soloing potential here also with the Shadow abilities.

 

crimsonsentinel

I really like this idea, and I agree that channeling would be extremely boring. It would be like doing full heal rotations over and over again. It definitely is in line with what the priest class has evolved to in PVP as well. Massive utility through buffs and dispels, moderate healing power and a few key long cooldown spells.

Its ironic though that most people who rolled priests probably wanted to be main healers (myself included) but priests have become the most hybrid of healers in TBC.

 

galzohar

Then again priests are the most "adjustable" of all the healers... Not HoT-only like druids (or overkilling, too slow HT), not "heal raid aoe damage" chain healing shamans and not "heal tank or lose a lot of healing power" paladins. Priests have no healing role that they "suck" at, although at every healing role you can probably have another class that can do it better.

 

Xanana

Sorry to stick this question in this thread, but I could not find one where it would fit, and I cannot start new threads (I generally lurk & read as opposed to posting), and I have been unable to find any substantive discussion.

Has anyone done any analysis of Chastise? Specifically, does its damage scale? If so, how?

I put this here, since Discipline is more a Hybrid class. True SP's will rarely use this spell (since it removes shadowform), and Holy . . . well, maybe they would use it some, I'm not sure since its so new.

 

Vurrin

It does scale with +dmg. Not sure on the exact coefficient but with 905 spell dmg it does around 500-600 dmg makings its coefficient no higher than 15% I don't have any of the spell dmg talents in disc or the like but its safe to say it scales with those spells and further with dmg. I.e. Force of will adds 5% to the base dmg and with the spell dmg ( but which would be less than 1% more of your spell dmg more). ( specifically my low hits 511 and a 761 crit (roughly a 507 base hit) w/ 905 spell dmg and my highs were 557/558 which means the dmg could go up or down 10 more, but it wouldn't change the coefficient by more than 1%)


In terms of PvE usage I use it fairly regularly in BT/hyjal... mostly as a toy to entertain myself, because the cooldown is too long to rely upon, but I have used it to good effect in many situations.

1) Interupting spells- Necromancer shadow bolts, Rogue's vanishes, Bloodbolts, and a host of other spells can be interupted... the mob usually simply recasts it as soon as it takes dmg, but at least you bought time for someone else to react.

2) Helping sheep - Chastise is helpful for situations where a mob breaks sheep and runs to hit someone squishy. the best place for this is the bloodboil trash where the guys whirlwind as far as I can tell they are immune to stuns/sheeps when whirlwinding but Chastise does stop them momentarily. Also used in hyjal where when the MA breaks a sheep and it bolts straight for the MT who spellreflected a volley of SBs back at it before eit was sheeped. Chastise can stall it in place long enough for shadowbolts, frostbotls, or melee types to get on the necro as well and thus stop it from chasing fa tank who might be off aggroing Jaina or thrall or some such.

 

Louiscypher

First off, i think this thread is throughly interesting.

Next, i don't know as much as you guys/gals about the theory side so i'll try and leave it out of my post.

I am a 40/21 disc raiding priest and feel like i am the only one. I have raided with the same spec for sometime and i am one of the top healers in our guild. I am not going to say that the assumption that disc priests can't heal as well as holy is wrong but simply ask for an explaintion on my experiance of it. I do not have as much +heal as my holy friends but i do have much more mana (14.4k raid buffed) and mana regen (310/715mp5 raid buffed) than they do, which makes up for the lack of +heal imo. What i do not fully understand is if this is my experiance of raiding BT/MH with a disc priest where does the communities opinion that Disc is not a viable raiding spec come from? I've found that due to the lenght of fights my regen spec is really useful and for the most part on par with the holy spec for healing, i also get the added bonus of PI which i use on the spreist in my group to buff their mana regen output for the whole group, again very useful. Often in fights i see holy's getting killed quicky as they lack my survivability, so again a hardier healer. I always get taken to raids and my RL would have me there for for all 5 nights a week if he could, as i can only attend 4 out of 5.

I'm left a little confused then, is my experiance of raiding with a disc singular to me or is there something i'm missing?

Last nights WWS - Wow Web Stats

Armoury profile - is out of date by almost a month, not sure why tbh.

Thanks for taking the time to explain it to this noob

 

Caligula

We have 2 consistent raiding priests. Going full disc and taking Improved Divine Spirit (as long as your attendance is good) allows for another priest to take CoH, while allowing you to take PS, PI and imp dispels. This is the main benefit in my opinion.

Wow Web Stats

Here's almost a full BT run in one night, you can view each fight and see how well either priest does on individual fights. Brielle is our CoH priest, Kavir is our Disc priest. As you can see, Kavir did about 30% less healing overall. However, he also used PS 40 times ( Wow Web Stats ) and PI 40 times as well ( Wow Web Stats ). He also performed 297 dispels (including 208 mass dispels). Some of the min/maxers will probably say that this isn't worth the 30% healing loss. We're the kind of guild that is willing to experiment (as you'll notice the moonkin that we've had since TBC release). It seems to be working out for us so far.

Basically what it comes down to is, if you're willing to play to your strengths, that being, dispelling, PI, PS, cleansing, and shielding, and know that you're going to be around 30% less efficient than a full holy healer, and your guild is OK with this, then go for it. The disc tree could probably use a bit more PvE love in the way of a unique spell as people have pointed out so far in this thread, but for us, they currently fill a small niche in raiding.