A Look Back at Discipline Priest in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist – Editorial

With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Discipline Priest Writer, AutomaticJak, offers a retrospective highlighting Discipline’s journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec’s next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.

Discipline Retrospective & War Within Wishlist

Discipline Priest has received a ton of attention in Dragonflight as the spec has undergone multiple overhauls to properly merge together the correct amount of Shadow and Light spells for a balanced form that is not overly bloated. The latest overhaul has placed Discipline in an incredibly powerful position for Raid and Mythic+ though there are some areas that still could use some attention entering into The War Within.

Discipline’s Overall Gameplay

“Modern” (since Legion) Discipline has primarily focused on ramping (applying Raid-wide Atonements for brief periods of time) to burst healing across the raid to counter boss damage. It is an immobile spec with historically high mana costs to applying Atonements and has used a variety of abilities from sister specs like Shadow to convert damage into healing. In Dragonflight in particular the talent trees brought a mixture of abilities from Shadowlands and from the Shadow spec to Discipline creating massive button bloat and a variety of stacking modifiers to increase the spec’s damage and subsequent healing.

In a Mythic+ environment, the spec has struggled over the years frequently due to the challenge of balancing raid and mythic+ output. Each tier as Discipline scaled up with gear in BfA for example, they received a nerf to Atonement which still kept the spec in an incredibly strong position in raiding, but hit the spec much more noticably in a key environment. In Dragonflight, Sins of the Many was made to only reduce in damage past 5 targets and Atonement itself is now buffed by 50% outside of raid groups. Both changes created to produce some manner of independent tuning variables to improve Raid and Mythic+ healing balance.

Discipline Priest Throughout Dragonflight

Season 1 started with the spec barely making use of Shadow Covenant due to the heavy mana constraints of the active ability to Season 3 tying the strength into your pet in Shadowfiend/Mindbender. As mentioned above, many Mythic+ mains notably enjoyed the heavy button count/optimization of Season 2 where you played heavily around a variety of modifiers in Twilight Equilibrium, Harsh Discipline, Shadow Covenant, Expiation and others, it did lead to massive button bloat and to base spells like Smite feeling near worthless. Discipline received large amounts of attention throughout the expansion in large part because it is so challenging to properly balance damage converting into healing in a cohesive way for raiding and mythic+. In Dragonflight, more than any other expac, the devs actively worked on this problem with great focus. The streamlining overhaul in Season 3 brought real value to Smite, more solidly integrated our pet (Shadowfiend/Mindbender) into the core of our spec’s functions and provided meaningful diversity in how and when you want to ramp.

Since the 10.2 rework, that button bloat has been pared down substantially and the spec is more focused on the bread and butter of Penance and Smite for the majority of its Atonement healing. Stacking modifiers have been rolled together with Shadow Covenant and Mindbender/Shadowfiend sharing uptime with multiple synergistic passive talents replacing active talents or talents that required heavy gameplay to yield proper value. Many Mythic+ focused players from Season 2 thoroughly enjoyed the high button – high management style of Discipline which created a high skill ceiling for the spec, particularly in its damage output. However the downside was that Discipline was historically under-utilized and underperformed in the Aberrus raid and a change needed to occur to better balance between both PvE modes.

Discipline has in the past benefited heavily from borrowed power systems in Legion (Velen’s Future Sight) and BfA (Corruption/Overcharge Mana) often to the benefit of the user experience. Shadowlands powers I would generally view as a negative as the covenant abilities overshadowed the core abilities of the spec, making them feel near useless. Dragonflight’s tier-set bonuses are a form of borrowed power and the spec would not be where it is today without the strength and synergy of the Season 3 bonuses allowing for additional Smite hits that positively interact with your pet and Shadow Covenant uptime. I would say that some of the best experiences playing Discipline in both Raid and Mythic+ were greatly assisted by the Borrowed Power systems of their time. Legion legendaries, Corruption/Essence combinations and even early Mindgames/Spirit Shell insanity in Shadowlands produced some epic interactions.

Potential Discipline Priest Changes for The War Within

With that in mind and Moving into The War Within I am still unsure what role that Hero Talents are supposed to fill for Discipline Priest or in general for all specs. The shared class tree has noticeably caused issues not only for Priest but for other classes as well and I do have concerns that the shared nature of Hero Talents can continue this trend. I believe the ideal role that the Hero Talents could fill is providing another tuning modifier between raid and mythic+ dungeons to better balance the spec performance in both. Over the history of “modern” Discipline (Legion to Today) the spec would perform strongly in Mythic+ leading up to a new season, then receive heavy nerfs because they lacked separate tuning for Raids and Keys. I think having some supportive talents that are more raid or 5man focused would be the ideal way to implement them for Disc though I am skeptical with the first impressions from other classes that we have seen thusfar as they seem to lack a specific direction/purpose.

The latest vote on Tier Sets is a great example of how Raid and Mythic+ mains can be split with many Mythic+ mains voting for the Season 2 set which offered instant Power Word: Radiance casts allowing the spec to play more reactively in Mythic+. While nice, this set in Season 2 was not overly powerful in raids where the spec still struggled to stack all of their modifiers and put together meaningful burst output. Using Hero Talents to split this difference would be an excellent way for each group to have a win and for the Hero Talents to have a specific purpose in mind with their creation.

The spec tree since the 10.2 rework still features some dead branches with Expiation, Ultimate Penitence, and Aegis of Wrath all feeling under-utilized or mediocre with the talent build hard-forcing Mindbender/Shadowfiend synergistic talents like
Inescapable Torment which, while fun, does not feel like an option so much as a force deduction of precious talent points. While best builds will always exist, I feel that having mandatory talents for PvE require routing in the bottom of the tree (rather than at the top with spells like Power Word: Radiance) is very awkward and gives a false illusion of choice. I thoroughly enjoy the Pet-centric Shadow Covenant value provided in Season 3 Disc, just don’t paint that as if it is a choice when structuring the tree.

Closing Thoughts

Discipline has had an absolute odyssey this expansion as the devs tackled button bloat, borrowed power, shared class talent balance, raid/mythic+ balance, and damage tuning. There are always more problems to fix and adjust but the path laid forward of high difficulty in timing/executing ramps, low difficulty for dealing damage I believe is an excellent foundation to set for the spec moving into The War Within.

There are still a number of dead branches on the talent trees that could use attention and how they interact with Hero Talents will certainly be a point to watch out for going into Alpha. I’m not sure if buffing existing talents would be the best way to go with Hero Talents as they could force you into certain builds depending on the sub-spec you select (like Resto Druid seems to have with one of their Hero Talents so far) but the hype and excitement of Ultimate Penitence unfortunately burned out as fast as it came in with the ability almost never seeing use. Whether it is direct changes to the talents or augmented by The War Within systems I’m sure everyone could use some more Uppies in the next expac!

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