AutomaticJak's 10.2 Discipline Priest First Impressions - Streamlining, Ultimate Penitence, and Talent Issues

PTR Posted 2023/09/13 at 10:00 AM by AutomaticJak

Atonement

This Public Test Realm (PTR) is a testing environment for the content coming with the Dragonflight: Guardians of the Dream update.
Dragonflight: Guardians of the Dream Update Development Notes
PRIEST

Power Infusion Haste reduced to 20% (was 25%) and duration reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).
- Developers’ note: Power Infusion has proved to be too impactful due to how it stacks with cooldowns on specializations that excel at dealing damage in a short window. We’re reducing it’s duration and amplitude to balance our burst classes and keep them more in line with steady-state damage dealers.
Shadow Word: Death now deals 8% of the Priest’s maximum health in damage when it fails to kill a target instead of the backlash damage being based on damage dealt.
Tithe Evasion now reduces Shadow Word: Death damage dealt to the Priest by 50% (was 75%).
Shadow Word: Death backlash damage is now reduced by damage reduction effects.
Mass Dispel cooldown is now 2 minutes (was 45 seconds).
- Developers’ note: We’re reducing the frequency that Priests have access to Mass Dispel as the value of the spell is exceeding the value of other utility at its current power level and cooldown. We’re looking to allow for more situations where magic debuffs are applied to multiple players without having a Priest trivializing the intended difficulty of the mechanics.
Improved Mass Dispel is now a PvP Talent and reduces the cooldown of Mass Dispel by 60 seconds (was 20 seconds).
Improved Mass Dispel no longer reduces the cast time of Mass Dispel.
Improved Mass Dispel has been replaced with Mental Agility in the Priest talent tree.
New Talent: Mental Agility – Reduces the mana cost of Purify, Purify Disease, and Mass Dispel by 50% and Dispel Magic by 10%.
Rhapsody now only highlights Holy Nova at max stacks while in combat.
Discipline
- Developers’ note: The goal of these changes is to simplify Discipline’s damage rotation as well as the number of stacking modifiers used when ramping up for burst healing. This should make it smoother to play by reducing the number of abilities pressed in sequence, allowing players to focus on managing Atonement and triaging their allies instead.
- Schism has been redesigned to be a passive talent – Now causes Mind Blast to fracture the enemy’s mind, increasing your spell damage to the target by 10% for 9 seconds.
- Shadow Covenant has been redesigned to be a passive talent – Shadowfiend or Mindbender enters you into a shadowy pact, transforming Halo, Divine Star, and Penance into Shadow spells and increasing the damage and healing of your Shadow spells by 25% for 15 seconds (7 seconds with Mindbender).
  - Developers’ note: Shadow Covenant is another ability that must be sequenced correctly and is usually stacked with other damage modifiers. By merging this effect with Shadowfiend, we can streamline the damage rotation and make Shadowfiend a more exciting cooldown at the same time.
- Mind Blast now has a 24 second cooldown (was 9 seconds).
- Mind Blast damage has been increased by 30%.
- Dark Indulgence no longer grants an additional charge of Mind Blast. Instead, Mind Blast has a 100% chance to grant Power of the Dark Side.
- Inescapable Torment damage increased by 60%.
- Inescapable Torment now triggers from Penance in addition to Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death.
- Inescapable Torment is now a 1-point talent (was 2).
- Power Word: Solace has been removed.
  - Developers’ note: Power Word: Solace has a long history, but it was another example of a short cooldown damage button that cramped the rotation, so we’re removing it.
- Harsh Discipline no longer triggers after 4 spell casts of Smite, Mind Blast, or Power Word: Solace. Instead, Power Word: Radiance has a 30/60% chance to cause your next Penance to be free and fire 3 extra bolts.
  - Developers’ note: While Harsh Discipline was fun to play with, it added another thing you had to do before paying off on your Atonements. By triggering from Power Word: Radiance, this will now automatically happen after applying your Atonements. This will also reduce the frequency of Harsh Discipline procs, and allow regular Penance to deal more damage and healing.
- New Talent: Sanctuary – Smite prevents the next 80% damage dealt by the enemy.
- New Talent: Ultimate Penitence – Ascend into the air and unleash a massive barrage of Penance bolts, causing Holy damage to enemies or healing to allies over 6 seconds. While ascended, gain a shield for 50% of your health. In addition, you are unaffected by knockbacks or crowd control effects.
- New Talent: Heaven’s Wrath – Each Penance bolt you fire reduces the cooldown of Ultimate Penitence by 2 seconds.
- New Talent: Overloaded with Light – Ultimate Penitence emits an explosion of light, healing up to 10 allies around you and applying Atonement at 50% of normal duration.
- Penance damage increased by 15%.
- Penance healing increased by 30%.
- Power Word: Barrier now reduces 20% of all damage taken (was 25%).
- Atonement now heals for 32% of damage done (was 40%).
- Atonement healing is now increased by 50% when not in a raid.
- Flash Heal healing increased by 40%.
- Power Word: Shield absorption increased by 10%.
- Divine Aegis is now a 1-point talent (was 2).
- Light’s Wrath, Resplendent Light, Wrath Unleashed, and Make Amends have been removed.

10.2 First Impressions of Discipline Priest

The first set of patch notes for 10.2 has brought a major talent revamp for Discipline Priest with a number of Developer notes to describe the reasoning behind these actions. One of the most important of them is the first one in which Blizzard states:

Developers’ note: The goal of these changes is to simplify Discipline’s damage rotation as well as the number of stacking modifiers used when ramping up for burst healing. This should make it smoother to play by reducing the number of abilities pressed in sequence, allowing players to focus on managing Atonement and triaging their allies instead.

The GoodShadow Word: DeathHoly NovaBoon of the AscendedAscended NovaAscended BlastAtonementAtonementUltimate PenitenceGeneral Downsidesit still feels like there is more to come with Disc changes

Mindbender procing Shadow Covenant, while fun and interesting, is exceedingly better than Shadowfiend and taking non-bender talents at present. Having a strong buff to your damage being gated behind a 1-min ability (with cooldown reduction potential) versus a 3 minute is no-contest.

With the incoming changes, there are some significant updates required for existing talents. Among these Weal and Woe and Aegis of Wrath continue to feel undervalued/underpowered while Twilight Equilibrium and Expiation were powerful talents when Mind Blast was a low cooldown with charges now become near-useless talents when Mind Blast is changed to merge with Schism. I hope for changes to the former and I expect big updates to the latter.

One of the intended goals of Discipline's rework was to simplify Discipline's damage rotation and stacking modifiers but I do not believe that means that every abilities should be shaved down in the final tier, particularly when they result in a downgrade. Harsh Discipline is noticeably nerfed by proccing off of Power Word: Radiance and in a world with a reduced quantity of overall damage buttons this could be an area where they revert a change or significantly buff the benefit from proccing off of radiance.

It is still very early for Ultimate Penitence but it seems to be oddly constructed by firing off some damage and healing bolts regardless of who is targetted. It also does not have synergy with Shadow Covenant which feels strange as they advertise it as firing Penance bolts and a key point of excitement is visually seeing the Penance bolts go to darkness when Scov is activated.

Raid Challenges

Once again Mindbender/Shadow Covenant feeling too forced, that other options are not presented or available to compete at the moment suggests that there are more changes to come, especially when the double-Smite of the 4pc looks to provide a massive swing in strength for the spec.

Ultimate Penitence while flashy and new I think it is important to draw attention to its performance so that it is a strong and effective cooldown but not TOO powerful like Boon of the Ascended that baseline abilities like Smite and Penance feel like they do near-nothing like in Shadowlands.

Rapture has felt very weak this expansion ever since losing the extended Atonement duration of the Shadowlands legendary. Would very much like to see the supporting talents for this to be markedly improved in some capacity. Additional Atonement duration would feel particularly good paired with the duration extension that Smite brings with 4pc.

Speaking of tier sets, the 2pc seems to give Atonement extension to the lowest-health target rather than the lowest Atonement duration target. This will frequently allow for more duration extended onto your tanks in raids and keys but you often will be extending your duration with Flash Heal procs anyway making this particular benefit not as valuable as it otherwise could be.

With the loss of the Aberrus tier-set Power Word: Radiance will once again require a lengthy cast-time. While Discipline has functioned historically as an immobile healer this bonus was particularly helpful in raiding when targetted by mechanics or needing to move while ramping. Since some talents already look like they are in need of updates with Discipline's revamp, why not offer Power Word: Radiance instant-casts, perhaps on a cooldown, as an end-tier talent option or choice-node so that they can be flexxed into as needed by players? This would also add some interesting complexity for when you could use this ability to deal with mechanics vs taking greater output from another end-tier point.

Mythic+ Challenges

Similar to Ultimate Penitence not interacting with Mindbender/Shadow Covenant it also does not spread Purge the Wicked. A dream talent by many Disc enthusiasts is a mass Purge the Wicked applicator and it would be particularly epic to have this ability properly spread Purge the Wicked to enemies when it strikes a target with Purge the Wicked already on it, likely making it a lock for Mythic+ content.

With each new season of Mythic+ bringing new dungeons there are significant impacts to the value of each spec's utility. As we exit a season that heavily benefited from Power Infusion,Mind Soothe and Mass Dispel, leaving them nerfed, we look to be entering into a season where interrupts will be highly valued and Discipline (and Holy!) are the only two specs in the game that lack an interrupt.

Power Infusion was nerfed due to the strength given to allies but Twins of the Sun Priestess exists as an independent tuning knob to impact the strength of the ability for the Priest, so why hasn't this received any attention to bring it back to pre-nerf value?

With many talents receiving updates it is worth mentioning that Lenience is an extremely boring talent that is often de-facto run in Mythic+ not because it feels noticeable/impactful.

Angel's Mercy was nerfed in 10.1.7 as it gave incredible Desperate Prayer cooldown reduction due to heavy burst damage. The nerf is very noticeable in Mythic+ and leaves the spec much more vulnerable to damage over its peers, particularly to physical damage.

Conclusion

This guide is written and maintained by Jak, Healer for Incarnate on US-Tichondrius, Author of the Holy and Discipline Priest Guides.

You can catch Jak on Twitter, Youtube and streaming on Twitch if you want to check out more of his content!

Watch live video from automaticjak on www.twitch.tv

Comment by lovelywazWas getting excited to read the tooltip of Ultimate Penitence until saw the duration and that CD. For only 6 secs, this should be 1.5 Mins CD at most, if not around 1 Min only. 4 Mins is way too long for very short duration and I would rather have it shorter CD than longer duration!Comment by TolstoriWas getting excited to read the tooltip of Ultimate Penitence until saw the duration and that CD. For only 6 secs, this should be 1.5 Mins CD at most, if not around 1 Min only. 4 Mins is way too long for very short duration and I would rather have it shorter CD than longer duration!Comment by lovelywazWas getting excited to read the tooltip of Ultimate Penitence until saw the duration and that CD. For only 6 secs, this should be 1.5 Mins CD at most, if not around 1 Min only. 4 Mins is way too long for very short duration and I would rather have it shorter CD than longer duration!RaptureUltimate PenitenceComment by fairygardenidk Jak, I think healer is too powerful and we should nerf Disc instead.Comment by AnastasiaYumiThe person who wrote this, just like Blizzard, doesn't realize how counterintuitive their own words are. One of the key points Blizzard made was that they wanted healer's to be less CD reliant. Their changes to Disc not only achieve the exact opposite, but the broader changes to all healers do this. By gutting mana across every healer they've effectively made base heal spamming worse. They took disc and homogenized it to play the same as half the other healers, and then again gave it another CD that it's entire healing kit is going to revolve around, all while gutting the most interesting dps playstyle among healers. It's fine if you like this boring 1 button rotation, there's already every other healer except for hpal and mw for that. There was genuinely no reason for them to crush the rotation on disc down to smite spam. Of course older versions of disc were more popular. They were simple and more accessible because they fundamentally played liked most other healers, just with shields. Why is another flavor of that something people want? The spec had a really solid niche, was strong in M+, and better then people treated it in raid. The only thing it needed help on was it's ramp. Overall, a bunch of counterintuitive, contradictory changes that no one actually playing the spec at a relatively high level asked for, and a far overreach from a balance team that clearly has no idea what they're doing with healers. For the author, maybe take a step back from blindly thinking that past=good, when you yourself acknowledge how many horrendous changes there are in this ptr patch. There are simple solutions to all the problems Blizzard perceives disc has without destroying it's current identity. Rolling schism into Scov, making pw:r baseline instant and slightly nerfing the flat healing, buffing the base healing of renew/flash heal. Any of these and numerous other changes would have been fine. Completely gutting the dps kit, adding a new cd your attonement ramp will revolve around, directly and indirectly killing a bunch of talents, none of these changes are good or well thought-out. Start from scratch.Comment by KkuraThe person who wrote this, just like Blizzard, doesn't realize how counterintuitive their own words are. One of the key points Blizzard made was that they wanted healer's to be less CD reliant. Their changes to Disc not only achieve the exact opposite, but the broader changes to all healers do this. By gutting mana across every healer they've effectively made base heal spamming worse. They took disc and homogenized it to play the same as half the other healers, and then again gave it another CD that it's entire healing kit is going to revolve around, all while gutting the most interesting dps playstyle among healers. It's fine if you like this boring 1 button rotation, there's already every other healer except for hpal and mw for that. There was genuinely no reason for them to crush the rotation on disc down to smite spam. Of course older versions of disc were more popular. They were simple and more accessible because they fundamentally played liked most other healers, just with shields. Why is another flavor of that something people want? The spec had a really solid niche, was strong in M+, and better then people treated it in raid. The only thing it needed help on was it's ramp. Overall, a bunch of counterintuitive, contradictory changes that no one actually playing the spec at a relatively high level asked for, and a far overreach from a balance team that clearly has no idea what they're doing with healers. For the author, maybe take a step back from blindly thinking that past=good, when you yourself acknowledge how many horrendous changes there are in this ptr patch. There are simple solutions to all the problems Blizzard perceives disc has without destroying it's current identity. Rolling schism into Scov, making pw:r baseline instant and slightly nerfing the flat healing, buffing the base healing of renew/flash heal. Any of these and numerous other changes would have been fine. Completely gutting the dps kit, adding a new cd your attonement ramp will revolve around, directly and indirectly killing a bunch of talents, none of these changes are good or well thought-out. Start from scratch.Comment by KkuraSince Boon of the Ascended is mentioned in the article, I want to emphasize the fact that early-Shadowlands' Spirit Shell and Boon killed disc because the spec received huge nerfs in order for a single spell to do 80% of the spec's healing. I hope we are not repeating history with Ultimate Penitence.Comment by RelaxSince Boon of the Ascended is mentioned in the article, I want to emphasize the fact that early-Shadowlands' Spirit Shell and Boon killed disc because the spec received huge nerfs in order for a single spell to do 80% of the spec's healing. I hope we are not repeating history with Ultimate Penitence.Comment by KkuraSince Boon of the Ascended is mentioned in the article, I want to emphasize the fact that early-Shadowlands' Spirit Shell and Boon killed disc because the spec received huge nerfs in order for a single spell to do 80% of the spec's healing. I hope we are not repeating history with Ultimate Penitence.Comment by ProdromusHarvThank God.

Disc spent the better part of 2 and half expansions being this incredibly situation dependent healer where any fight tha didn't line up with it's cooldowns basically made it dead weight.

Disc doing nothing but spamming smite, then playing DDR for 15 seconds every 1.5-2 minutes was stupid and made Disc more akin to raid CD class, not a healer.

Very happy they're finally opted to give Disc more consistent healing with a proper rotation, with much simpler, less obserd ramp periods.Comment by VrrtiiI wonder how many people praising this rework actually play disc at a remotely competitive level.

The Mass Dispel nerf alone is idiotic. The spell’s power is directly tied to encounter design, not the class.

Reducing our button bloat for the sake of streamlining an already cooldown heavy spec is idiotic. I don’t want to spam filler healing spells, or I’d be playing holy paladin or a Resto shaman.

There are exactly two viable builds right now on the PTR and neither is effective for keys. Heavy consistent damage completely drains our mana with little to no way to recover. Six of the eight keys in the next rotation will be absolute nightmares for disc.

In this current iteration, Disc is dead for keys next season. But hey, at least we get another burst raid CD.Comment by messiah77For me to get back into playing Disc it would require a rework on how atonement works. I feel that it should be applied to party members automatically just by using any spell rather than having to apply it manually on each group member. This wouldn't take away from how the spec plays but just minimizes the constant need to reapply the buff. How it would work in a raid environment then they could smart target it for both tanks and then 3 random dps, this wouldn't take away from having to use any of our healing tool kit.

Maybe it's my age but I just want to blast on Disc like the good old days and use healing spells for when I need them rather than having to micro manage the whole atonement aspect lolComment by lovelywazFor me to get back into playing Disc it would require a rework on how atonement works. I feel that it should be applied to party members automatically just by using any spell rather than having to apply it manually on each group member. This wouldn't take away from how the spec plays but just minimizes the constant need to reapply the buff. How it would work in a raid environment then they could smart target it for both tanks and then 3 random dps, this wouldn't take away from having to use any of our healing tool kit.

Maybe it's my age but I just want to blast on Disc like the good old days and use healing spells for when I need them rather than having to micro manage the whole atonement aspect lolAshen HallowComment by ComeAndSeeDisc was way overbloated with its dps rotation with Schism and Shadow Covenant both being 30s cds on-top of needing to weave Smite and Mind Blast 4 times just to buff Penance. It was a more demanding dps rotation than playing Shadow.

Now its just a 2 button brainless dps class. Mind Blast is on a 24s cd so you just mainly cast Smite and Penance 90% of the time. Mind Bender is just the new Shadow Covenant and you want to cast it basically on cd with Mind Blast for the damage increase. So they didn't really fix the stacking modifier problem, they just moved it onto Mind Bender.

Ultimate Penitence is about a 2.5 minute reset and outside of doing about the same healing as Divine Hymn: it really doesn't do anything special. Holy has Divine Hymn which gives a +20-30% hps taken buff to the raid for 15s, Holy Word Salvation which is a high throughput healing cd that heals over 15s, and Symbol of Hope (defensive cdr reset). Ultimate Penitence really should offer something unique maybe like -10% damage taken for 10-15s ontop of the healing.

Disc is also a lot harder to play than Holy in raid. The whole atonement mechanic with needing to manually place on people is too much of a hassle.

Disc will be far better than Holy in M+ though come post update.Comment by moldgrimTelling us to go back to not having instant PW: Radiance is too much. I would rather have instant pw:r than...ultimate penitence. Make it a choice node?