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Discipline Priest State in Shadowlands Alpha - Mythic+ Viability, Lackluster GCDs, Covenant Abilities
Shadowlands
Criado
22/6/2020 em 03:30
por
Squishei
Thanks to Sylvanas Windrunner, the veil between Azeroth and the realm of death has been shattered threatening the cosmic balance between life and death. On April 9th, the Shadowlands were flooded with the Champions of Azeroth as select players were invited to the Alpha test for World of Warcraft's next expansion. As adventurers explore the Shadowlands and the covenants that are core to this new realm, players learn that the machine of death has broken. This realm we become a part of is in desperate need of mending and the mechanism of death must be restored if we are to bring balance back to the Shadowlands. Who better to do that than healers? We've been bringing back players from the brink of death and resurrecting our allies for years. It's time we take our gifts to the Shadowlands.
In this episode of the state of healers series, we'll explore Shadowlands Discipline Priests. The light and darkness are forever intertwined; Light casts a shadow, and darkness is defined by light. Wielding these two opposing forces to pull their allies from the brink of death while sitting on the edge of insanity is the true goal of Discipline Priests.
Previous Articles in the Series:
Restoration DruidMistweaver MonkHoly PriestRestoration Shaman
Introduction
Currently all classes with their updated toolkits are able to be tested, but so much has changed with each healer on a base level and the introduction of covenants adds a completely new twist and set of tools for each class. Moreover, we have still yet to see the full toolkits for healers as soulbinds, conduits, and legendaries have yet to be tested. Additionally, only a limited amount of content is available for testing including the
Bastião
and
Revendreth
leveling zones,
Thanator, a Torre dos Malditos
, and 5 dungeons (
A Chaga Necrótica
,
Salões da Expiação
,
Empéstia
,
O Outro Lado
and
Brumas de Tirna Scithe
). The types of encounters have just as much of an impact on healer balance as the toolkits of the healers themselves.
Although we don't have the entirety of healing toolkits and Shadowlands content to test, we can and
should
still offer feedback on the current state of healers on the Alpha. This series will attempt to give a first look at each healer specialization in Shadowlands and hopefully provide early feedback on the current changes including baseline toolkits, covenants, and even the hot topic of abilities that feel lackluster still on the GCD.
Previous articles (ie.
Ny'alotha
and
Eternal Palace
) ranked healers according to desirability in previous raid tiers. While those articles were helpful especially for new and returning healers to determine what healers would be in high demand, it's nearly impossible to determine any sort of ranking or demand this early in development of Shadowlands due to how much is still unknown or in flux regarding healing.
Remember, this is only my opinion on healers so far in Shadowlands and primarily comes from a PvE point of view. Everyone should provide as much constructive feedback as possible. As always, the information presented here is based on the 9.0 Alpha cycle as of this article's release date and thus will almost certainly be inaccurate when the Shadowlands officially launches. Expect lots of changes to classes, covenants, soulbinds, conduits, legendaries, items, and encounters between now and launch. It should be noted that we're trying to hit the
major
changes to each class, yet for the sake of brevity we won't cover every single spell differential or mana cost reduction. If you're interested in the entirety of the spell differentials for each class please see the Class Change link listed at the top of the section for each class.
About the Author
This article is written by
Jaydaa
a veteran healer and contributing writer to both World of Warcraft content and other Blizzard games content here on Wowhead. I've been raiding in WoW for almost 15 years at various levels of progression. I've contributed to the theorycrafting of multiple healing classes, notably Mistweaver Monks and Restoration Druids. Find me on
Twitter
or on the
Wowhead Discord
.
Contributors
Sups
, admin of the
Focused Will Discord
and healer theorycrafter.
Jak
, Healer for
Future
on EU-Twisting Nether, author of the
Holy
,
Discipline
, and
Advanced Mythic+
Priest Guides.
He is also the Host of the official World of Warcraft
Mythic Dungeon International
events. You can catch Jak on
Twitter
and streaming on
Twitch
.
Discipline Priest
Priest Class Changes
Because we don't have a lot of Shadowlands content to test, we'll be primarily be looking at how Discipline Priests have changed since Battle for Azeroth, especially in the stripped down world of healing sans Azerite, Essences, and Corruption. The additional systems of Battle for Azeroth didn't largely change Discipline Priest healing playstyle of spreading
Expiação
s and converting damage to healing all while utilizing powerful damage reduction and absorbs. Essences were the most impactful to Discipline Priests due to enhancing their burst via
A Maré Ascendente
or ensuring mana was plentiful via
Memória de Sonhos Lúcidos
.
Baseline Toolkit Changes
New Baseline Discipline Priest Abilities
:
and
Palavra Sombria: Morte
- This array of damaging abilities offers up additional damage to Discipline Priests, but does so with limited to no
Expiação
interaction.
shares a similar design space to
Nova Sagrada
so the choice of use is a bit muddled. Though
Palavra Sombria: Morte
got a recent 100% damage buff when used on targets below 20% health, it will equally increase the damage done to the player if the target doesn't die. How much more damage and whether we'll use all these abilities during periods of healing downtime will likely depend on final tuning.
Impacto Mental
- An interesting addition to the Discipline toolkit,
Impacto Mental
gives us a baseline shadow damage cooldown spell with the absorb that used to be part of
Punição
. With decently high damage, you'll definitely want to press
Impacto Mental
quite often to maximize your healing throughput, but with a 15s cooldown and high mana cost you'll likely need to be more sparing with
Impacto Mental
to ensure you don't run out of mana or miss incorporating the spell into your
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
and
Cisma
burst windows.
NEW
Infusão de Poder
(Level 58)
- The haste steroid returns as a baseline ability and can now be cast on any player rather than just the Priest. An interesting piece of utility that I'm sure everyone in your raid/party will be clamoring for during their cooldowns. As a Discipline Priest, most of your throughput is baked into short burst windows so any cooldown that helps you pack even more into that window is fantastic. Lining up
Infusão de Poder
with
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
,
Evangelismo
, and
Demônio das Sombras
will be phenomenal. Add in the
Dom dos Ascendidos
covenant to this lineup and your burst will be insane. Other players in raid will likely have to pry this ability from your cold dead hands before you give it up for them, but they might have a chance to nab it occasionally in Mythic+.
NEW
(Level 52)
- After its removal in Mists of Pandaria,
Reconforto Mental
returns. While it was extremely niche in most situations, it might possibly have renewed use in Mythic+ as skips can be highly valued. i don't expect this one to be cast very often, but I'm sure we'll see a video of a
Reconforto Mental
skip in Shadowlands at some point.
Shadowlands Leveling Perks
:
NEW
Rank 2 (Level 17)
Fade now reduces the range at which enemies will attack you when used while active.
If
Reconforto Mental
is meant as a group-wide aggro radius reduction, then this perk is the personal version. Niche perk at best but I'm sure someone will find a use for it somewhere.
NEW
Rank 2 (Level 54)
Mass Dispel is now potent enough to remove some Magic that is normally undispellable.
As something that already exists in the live game, it seems weird to remove this for the prepatch just to re-add it as a leveling perk for Shadowlands. On the plus side, you'll likely see this used more often in PvE content such as removing
Comunhão com a Morte
from
Sathel, o Amaldiçoado
in
Teatro da Dor
.
NEW
Rank 2 (Level 48)
Reduces the global cooldown of your Holy Nova by 0.5 sec.
The Priest strobe light just got a whole lot more spammy. Overall not a huge change, but a nice quality of life one. Brings the spell up to near
levels of damage. This perk creates an issue for AoE damage where you now choose between the player-centered
Nova Sagrada
with a mana cost and miniscule healing or the target-centered
that's free but does not offer healing.
Reworked Discipline Priest Abilities
:
Punição
Smites an enemy for (47% of Spell power) Holy damage. Cost changed from 0.5% to .7% of base mana.
With losing the absorb to
Impacto Mental
and the increased mana cost,
Punição
feels even worse than before. As the filler ability, it's the final spell you cast after the long and growing list of cooldown based abilities that Discipline Priests are expected to manage. Sure you'll use it, but you won't feel good about it.
Palavra de Poder: Fortitude
Infuses the target with vitality, increasing their Stamina by 10%5% for 1 hour.
Already the least mandatory buff, cutting
Palavra de Poder: Fortitude
in half makes it feel even less mandatory, but will still be a nice buff when you can bring a priest.
Overall the base toolkit for Discipline Priest hasn't changed significantly in Shadowlands. Yes, we lost a bit with nerfs to
Punição
and
Palavra de Poder: Fortitude
, but we've gained a lot of utility and even added a shadow rotational ability. There's definitely some concern that while
Infusão de Poder
is certainly a welcome addition, that it will cause our burst to scale out of control or lead to a scenario where our sustained hps is brought even lower due future balancing around our burst.
Unfortunately, additional support in the way of single target healing in Mythic+ was missing from the changes. While Discipline Priest did get some decent utility and even skip potential with
Reconforto Mental
, they've always struggled with responding to single target burst damage in dungeon content. Instead of relying on raw throughput, they have to fallback on their absorbs and damage reduction cooldowns (
Supressão de Dor
,
Palavra de Poder: Barreira
, and
Enlevo
) to survive. The gameplay differs so significantly from raiding that many struggle to perform the role in higher keys. There is a constant tug of war between healing through
Expiação
by dealing damage or directly throwing out healing to support your group. This is made all the more difficult with
Estilhaçante
and
Atroz
, when there are no enemies to damage to support the Discipline Priest, revealing some significant vulnerabilities from week to week.
Talent Changes
NEW
Allies are healed for (210% of Spell power) when they gain benefit of your Power Word: Barrier, and healed again for (210% of Spell power) if they are under your barrier when it expires.
Tier 7 Talent, in place of
Brandura
Afago da Luz
rewards players for smart and well-timed positioning of your
Palavra de Poder: Barreira
and for players staying within it for the entire duration. You'll likely find yourself yelling at your raiders to stay in the bubble until it disperses for that last pulse of healing. For reference, each pulse of healing is a little less than a
Reviver
in healing meaning
Afago da Luz
could be a fairly potent throughput talent. With the addition of
Afago da Luz
, the level 50 talent row starts to feel a bit weird. There's a talent that rewards you for good
Palavra de Poder: Barreira
timing and positioning; one that allows you to gain some absorb value out of
Palavra de Poder: Barreira
especially when you can't stack up for the
Palavra de Poder: Barreira
; and
Evangelismo
to create larger burst windows. I'm not sure if having two
Palavra de Poder: Barreira
talents on the same row is weird or if
Evangelismo
is the odd man out for not modifying
Palavra de Poder: Barreira
. What I do know is that for a specialization that is struggling in Mythic+, this talent row doesn't do a lot to help in that scenario.
Strikes an enemy with heavenly power, dealing (83%70% of Spell power) Holy damage and restoring 1% of your maximum mana. Cooldown changed from 12 sec to 15 sec.
As a mandatory pick for entirety of BFA, it makes sense that
would be getting a nerf in Shadowlands. The cooldown increase hurts the most as it has the same issues that
Impacto Mental
does in that lining it up with the
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
cooldown of 20s and shorter
Expiação
duration can be frustrating occasionally forcing players to delay the ability for their larger burst windows. Having two 15s cooldown abilities doesn't help that at all.
The laundry list of short cooldown abilities continues to grow with the recent additions:
Cisma
,
Penitência
,
,
Impacto Mental
, and sometimes
Estrela Divina
/
Halo
, and
Sabá das Sombras
. Perhaps instead of adding to this list,
could augment
Impacto Mental
or
could replace
Impacto Mental
baking in all the goodness of both spells into a single ability. This could go a long way in pairing down the laundry list.
REWORKED
Instantly heals the target and 4 other injured allies within 30 yds for (135% of Spell power), and increases the Shadow damage you deal by 25% for 7 sec, but during this period you are unable to cast any Holy spells.
Tier 7 Talent, in place of
The new incarnation of
Sabá das Sombras
is highly thematic to Discipline conjuring images of a Priest so consumed by the void that they can't reach the light. I could envision and would welcome an entire rework of Discipline Priest around this very concept of balancing light and void. Keeping both in check or succumbing to the insanity of the void or the blinding light.
As for the actual talent, this is a strong replacement even from a throughput standpoint. There's still some concern as to the lack of shadow damaging spells beyond
Impacto Mental
,
Cisma
, and
Palavra Sombria: Dor
. Perhaps allowing a
Poder do Lado Escuro
proc to turn
Penitência
into shadow damage could be a very cool interaction that Priests could play around.
The Discipline Priest talent tree didn't receive a ton of changes, but I really would have like to seen more. For raiding, the tree has been largely cookie cutter with the exception of a few rows. If we're not going to see more diversity in raids, then it should pertinent that we take these stagnant talents and repurpose them for dungeons. Right now there just doesn't seem to be strong support for all aspects of the game and with Shadowlands there's a lot of possibility to do so.
Covenant Abilities
Kyrian:
Dom dos Ascendidos
via
Nova Ascendida
and
Impacto Ascendido
- Due to
Impacto Ascendido
's short cooldown, you'll utilize a combination of
Nova Ascendida
and
Impacto Ascendido
to heal and build up stacks culminating in a huge detonation of healing and damage via
Erupção Ascendida
increasing based on the number of stacks built. Because
Dom dos Ascendidos
is classified as a Priest spell, the damage from
Nova Ascendida
,
Impacto Ascendido
, and
Erupção Ascendida
all convert to healing via
Expiação
. For
Nova Ascendida
, only a single target of damage transfers via
Expiação
similar to
Nova Sagrada
; however, all of the final explosion
Erupção Ascendida
damage transfers via
Expiação
for all targets hit resulting in a overwhelming burst of healing throughput. Properly coordinating your burst windows around the covenant will be key to maximizing your throughput including using
Infusão de Poder
to build as many stacks as possible and applying
Cisma
to a target to amplify
Erupção Ascendida
. With no stack cap, the potential of this ability is only limited by the number of stacks you're able to generate and any scenario where you can hit multiple enemies will dramatically increase your throughput. The only downside to this ability is the long 3 min cooldown, but beyond that this covenant is absolutely insane for Discipline and will be hard to top in any scenario.
Evocar Comissário
- The steward offers some quality of life options like free talent changes or a vendor to sell things, but it essentially boils down to
Frasco de Serenidade
, a glorified healthstone for all intents and purposes. The healing will be nice and contribute albeit minimally to throughput, and the personal bleed, curse, and poison dispel for Discipline Priests could come in handy as you can't normally dispel those; however, the circumstances where the phial will be invaluable will be few and far between compared to other covenant abilities which are more universally valuable.
Venthyr:
Jogos Mentais
- A cool idea of turning an enemy against themselves and utilizing their damage to heal is awesome. I dream of a world where I can turn
N'Zoth, o Corruptor
's
Evocar Angústia
against him to heal the raid, but I feel like the limitations on this one are just too difficult to overcome. For starters there's no upfront healing, but the upfront damage will transfer via
Expiação
. Beyond that, you'll only get roughly 400% spell power worth of healing and 4% of mana from the damage conversion out of each 45s use. Compare that to the massive amounts of AoE healing you'll get from the other covenant abilities and this one starts to feel a bit small potatoes. Interesting concept, but the numbers need to be there as well. Has maybe some potential in PvP maybe when trying to secure a kill?
Porta das Sombras
- Quite possibly the star of the covenant signature abilities, it's hard to say no to a 35yd teleport with a minute cooldown even if it has a 1.5s cast time. This type of movement is almost universally valuable and it's hard to think of an occasion where it'd be useless. Full Venthyr dungeon groups can plan skips around this ability. As a Discipline Priest, I will never say no to more mobility.
Necrolord:
Nova Profana
- A massive 15yd AoE heal that also infects enemies with an AoE DoT that has a
Julgamento da Luz
-like healing component. As of the current build, they've nerfed the healing from striking enemies with
Transfusão Profana
down to 12% spell power and applied a ~1.5s internal cooldown to the healing component per player for each target struck. The damage of the
Transfusão Profana
converts to healing via
Expiação
. As such, the more enemies you're able to hit the stronger this ability becomes. This will likely be an exceptional ability in Mythic+ where multiple enemy targets are pretty standard to scale the
Expiação
portion of the damage and pretty bland in raid where you're relying on the
Julgamento da Luz
portion to scale based on the number of players. With the significant access that a 1 min cooldown allows for, this could really help shore up some of the power that Discipline Priest seems to lack in Mythic+. It's worth noting that the 1 min cooldown also considerably desynchronizes with
Evangelismo
and the
Transfusão Profana
DoT lasts 15s compared to the
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
Expiação
duration of 9s.
Moldacarne
- This extra self survivability will be nice and as an absorb will contribute minimally to overall throughput, but where this one loses me is the 4s channel. Adding a long channel to our toolkit is not exactly something we want. I would really like to see the channel time reduced or allowing this ability to channel while moving would go a long way to making this ability more palatable. Could be an excellent tool for surviving burst damage especially in high Mythic+, but it's a bit of a hard sell against the other movement oriented covenant signature abilities.
Night Fae:
Guardiões Feérios
- While the other Covenant abilities focus more on raw throughput,
Guardiões Feérios
is primarily focused on utility. The 10% damage reduction from
could be strong in Mythic+. If you plan your spell usage correctly, you can keep the 10% damage reduction rolling on your tank and another target for 1min and 15s out of every 1.5 mins, an 83% uptime. While it's not much, for Discipline Priest that has to rely more on the damage reduction abilities in dungeons to compensate for their lacking single target throughput, this could be very help. Where I start to become skeptical on this ability is the remaining two benefits. Because
Palavra de Poder: Escudo
still has the
Alma Enfraquecida
effect and you can only bypass it with
Enlevo
, you'll likely be using this on a few different targets unless you're willing to burn that cooldown in the process. So you're looking at best 200% resource or 20% mana spread over a few different targets. While that can be helpful, the granted mana hardly pays for the 3.4% mana cost for each
Palavra de Poder: Escudo
paid by the Priest. So you're actually making
Palavra de Poder: Escudo
more efficient in the process of granting mana to other healers. It's more efficient to generate resource and therefore damage but how much damage is questionable, especially when you consider that you're not picking another covenant ability which has damage baked into the cast so you're already losing out on that. Finally, the
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
benefit grants the 5 targets 3s off one of their major abilities. Because
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
has a cooldown, at best you're going to get 2 of these upfront and then maybe 2 more as the charges come back up. On top of that
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
is 5 injured allies that don't already have
Expiação
so selecting who is getting the cooldown reduction beyond the first target is questionable in raid. Finally, suboptimal usage of
Palavra de Poder: Resplendor
nearly destroys their throughput as careful timing and setup are key to their success. Now consider that Discipline Priests are sacrificing the added damage and throughput of other covenants just for this utility and this covenant's outlook is bleak. For me it's just not worth it. I'm sure you'll see videos of a Priest reducing cooldowns or granting resource here and there for the spectacle, but it's just not a realistic scenario.
Forma da Alma
As someone who adored
Fera Deslocadora
, it's nice to see this come back as an option although more watered down. Blinks and teleports are universally valuable and while it might not be the Venthyr ability this is a strong second place option. You likely won't be coming up with skips for such a limited 10 yard blink, but you get 3 in the 12s duration so you may have some opportunities to blink over some particularly nasty mechanics. It should be noted that you can cast while shapeshifted. Comes with a cosmetic collecting minigame which is fantastic.
We don't have the full class toolkit yet with soulbinds, conduits, and legendaries still to be released, so it's hard to make a clear choice right now as to what covenant is the best and for what type of content. However, if I had to pick one now based solely on the information we have on Alpha I think I'd be hardpressed not to pick
Kyrian
for Discipline Priests.
Dom dos Ascendidos
is a versatile healing tool both in raid and dungeons with a lot of scaling and potential as Shadowlands progresses.
Necrolord
comes in at a close second just for the greater access and strength in Mythic+ content, but tends to fall off in single target content. Unfortunately, both covenants have somewhat lower tier signature abilities, but for how powerful the covenant abilities both are exceptional choices.
Lackluster GCDs
Enlevo
- At the start of BFA,
Enlevo
was put on the GCD and given 2 extra seconds of duration to compensate. For
Enlevo
, that first activation GCD delays the actual power of the cooldown making it feel a bit more hollow. Fortunately this one is an easy fix. Simply make
Enlevo
a targeted spell that applies a large free absorb to the target on activation in addition to its current effect.
Evangelismo
- While the talent has been near mandatory in raids for all of BFA and doesn't need any additional power, the GCD hasn't felt like a particularly strategic or powerful one for awhile. As long as you press
Evangelismo
sometime before your large number of
Expiação
s expires, you're doing it right. Ideally, if there was a moderate pulse of healing on all of your
Expiação
targets when you activate
Evangelismo
the spell would feel more impactful and could be used more strategically. Repurposing a
Contrição
heal for this seems easy enough.
Infusão de Poder
- With the return of
Infusão de Poder
, there's been some concern about whether it would be on the GCD or not. Before it's removal at the start of BFA it was intended to be placed on the GCD, but due to it's removal this never occurred. With its return in Shadowlands,
Infusão de Poder
remains off the GCD. For parity with abilities like
Avivar
, it probably should be placed on the GCD, but I urge developers to reconsider this and so many other abilities. With
Infusão de Poder
once again being allowed to be used on any ally player, the Priest shouldn't have to pay the GCD cost for another player to have fun.
Demônio das Sombras
&
Dobramentes
- The immediacy and level of impact that these pets cause players to feel less than excited about pressing these GCD abilities. Combine that with an unforgiving pet AI and the complaints start to make a lot of sense. I'm not terribly attached to either of these abilities, but if they can be salvaged I'm all for it.
Personal Wishlist
Mythic+ Viability - While there are a lot of factors that determine how well a spec performs in Mythic+ (utility, damage, single target throughput, etc.), I'd really appreciate if future development could be focused on helping Discipline Priests become stronger and more relevant in dungeon content. I know it's a big ask and there isn't an exact solution, but perhaps the additional systems of Shadowlands could really offer some more tools for Discipline Priests. Since it's rework in Legion, Discipline has always been the healer with the highest skill cap but has rewarded players for mastering this challenging playstyle. While that tends to work out in raid, putting in that same effort in dungeons has only seemed to land them somewhere around the average.
Salto da Fé
- While it's cool to be able to move your allies across the field of battle, I miss the added mobility of Reverse Life Grip allowing you to grip yourself to an allies position. While I think it'd be super similar to Druid's
Investida Selvagem
, perhaps we can give it a more
Colisão
-like functionality that causes the two players to meet in the middle.
That's a wrap for now for Discipline Priest. I hope you enjoyed the breakdown. More Shadowlands healer breakdowns will be coming very soon so stay tuned to Wowhead.
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