Eternal Kingdom Forums

Found this in the Disc feedback forums and thought I'd share.

Disc Guide 7.0

Seems to be a good jumping off point for the spec. I've only played Holy in Beta (which I love) but definitely want to try and get Disc down for the fights that may need it.

Anyone have experience with Disc in Beta or have any insight? Would love to hear your thoughts. =)

Awesome Bella i like the guide and curious to play it once in legions be a longtime disc priest .

This comment scares me as a non-disc healer:

"we’ll call Discipline a spec that is supposed to do almost as much healing as other healers while also doing 30-50% of the average Damage Dealer’s damage. By “almost as much healing” we mean that if you should be doing within 10% of the healing of the next lowest healer at a minimum. Played well (which is very difficult to do), you will do the same healing as everyone else while keeping the damage for free."

I wonder who posted this guide and how old it is, to judge its worth.

Relatively recent guide. He plays more casually, but has spent the last few months on beta.

Sadly that worries me as well. The problem with disc is that, depending on how it is balanced, it has to either be necessary or irrelevant. If that statement comes to be true in raids, you'll really want them because they are basically worth a full healer and half an extra raid spot as dps. If they can't pull their weight as a healer, for most fights their dps won't be enough to bring one. I've leaned heavily toward the latter likely being the case despite how much I'd like to see the spec succeed, but with how out of hand class/spec balance has been lately, I'm not entirely sold on Bliz not letting it start to outstrip other specs.

The new PvP system has a great chance to keep the annoying balance changes from hurting balance in the opposing system. I have a lot of hope that this will allow classes and specs to be closer on dps/hps than ever before, according to their niches of course. That doesn't remove the problem disc priests will face though. I wonder at what point it would feel satisfying to play. 75/75 would be ridiculously over-tuned but even at that point would it feel good? Removing stacked raids from the equation, would it feel good for a dps to always be the bottom dps? Above the tanks yet unable to catch the actual dps? Would it feel good for the healing side to put out a lot of healing but face those moments where you knew if you were a normal healer you could have saved the raid?

I know this is all theory and style but I think how a spec feels to play is a critical aspect on how often it is played. For the longest time shields were not something that could be very accurately tracked in a raid environment. It was really hard on those who used them because you had to basically guess at their actual performance. Knowing that non-healers usually looked at such a person as just playing poorly is something I used to talk to fellow raiders back then. This tier I've run into that exact feeling fellow raiders had felt except now with the leech trinket. Depending on the fight, leech can be anywhere between 20-35% of my healing. Sadly few outside of raid leaders and fellow healers recognize what your actual healing is and that is based solely upon perception. If my actual healing or dps was never able to come close to other healers or dps, it would be extremely demoralizing despite your numbers actually totaling 1.5 actual raiders (going back to the made up 75/75). All that to say the disc spec really does need to be close to 90-100% on either side to feel good to play long term. There are probably plenty of people out there who could comfortably raid long term being a "master of none", but if I'm honest, I don't know if I would last more than a tier or two doing so.

I have seen a couple other mmos pull off what they are trying to do with disc. Unfortunately I don't think there is a good answer within WoW's old school architecture that would be balanced and still enjoyable.

The author posted the guide yesterday, so I imagine it's their most up-to-date version. They've been very active in beta and on the feedback forums.