Great article! I leveled as Disc in BfA Beta to 120 and it was pretty wonderful. Much better than Shadow (sad, sad Shadow). Healing in a raid/epic battleground as Disc still makes me nervous, as there's such a lack of direct healing, but that's the way the spec works. I think in smaller PVP or 5-mans it will work really well. In PVP the DPS is great, especially when Sins of the Many is taken.
Might have to bring back my old 110 disc priest now. Stuff is looking good
The link to the disc priest guide is broken: https://www.cuckhead.com/wotlk/disc-priest-guide
Nice to see the changes written out and discussed, it has me thinking about a few things with the mana changes on atonement application being more expensive, if the mana decreased cost on the DPS spells does indeed balance it out, it could still potentially play similarly to the legion Disc Priest with minor adjustments to the "burst healing" phase. But it was stated that we will no longer be able to keep a large amount or atonement rolling during raid encounters due to the mana cost on PW:S. I have my questions as to how will Disc's healing output compare to the direct healers if we can no longer have a large amount of atonements rolling raid wide, or are we more potent now in small triage spot healing type atonement applications? It almost sounds like we don't need to prepare incoming damage and can apply atonement to targets after they take damage, then top them up? This way of playing Disc may be easier for newer players to understand as most healer just wait for damage to come, then heal that up afterwards.Or is it still viable to blanket atonement and prepare for incoming damage, but we can be a little bit more spammy with Smite as the mana cost has just been reversed?I'll just have to test and feel it out for myself :) Thanks for the review! ♥
Lovely review, thank you! A small thing I am also happy about is Holy Nova. While leveling as a disc priest in legion, I really missed a decent AoE dmg spell, this is making my life so much easier! I already loved disc and now I love it even more. This will be my main for BfA for sure!
Am I blind? I can't see the Vengeance in the schedule :/
Not blind, it's not there, but Brewmaster is there twice so I'm guessing it will be on one of those two sections and that someone messed up :)
I feel like luminous barrier should go to PVP.. it is by default a PVP talent since the anti-burst is so strong and useful especially for BGs; but from a HPS perspective in PVE it has no place in its current iteration.
They should make Body & Soul have a 6 second cooldown per target, so you can still provide speed boosts for others after yourself etc without penalty.
The Atonement change killed Discipline Priest for me, so I'm disappointed to see it's still a thing. Too much micro-managing and switching targets. Maybe if the buff lasted longer, or you could put a forever-buff on the tank while the rest you have to spot heal with Atonement...or...something! Gah. Maybe next expac... :(I'm glad to see damage AoEs returned to both Discipline and Shadow priests though!