Prot Pally + 4 Disc Priests

[Wubsie]

Well, for Legion, Atonement will be the primary healing method for Disc Priests, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out, and how well the balancing is done on it. It is quite different from the old system in it's chore though.

Currently, from what I've read it's going to work so that you first have to choose your atonement target(s) by casting specific spells on them (Power Word: Shield, Shadow Mend, Power Word: Radiance), and then any damage done heals ALL* atonement targets for 40% (before factoring mastery) of the damage done. The main difference obviously is that the automatic smart healing is gone. Now, I doubt it'll be too hard to come up with a rotation that gives your toons atonement from atleast a few of the priests at all times, but it still poses new challenges.

* based on current tooltips.

The balancing side of the spec is going to be interesting to say the least. Due to the slow 2-step mechanism and the conversion rate of DPS to Healing, I would say that it's likely that Discs are now a more or less AOE raid healers (old resto Durds anyone?). It would appear that their healing scales rather well as the number of atonement targets increases. Additionally it's worth noting that if the damage they can do while keeping up with other healers is at all significant (maybe even 20% of a normal DPS) I don't see how they are not an auto-include to most progression raid groups. All in all, fascinating to see how it turns out.

[luxlunae]

All in all, fascinating to see how it turns out.

Fascinating to a man who doesn't have to balance a raid team next expansion, perhaps.

It's a clusterfuck of an idea.

(From what I've read, this could be out of date) they are going to be providing 80% of the dps of a regular dps. Even if they only bring 50% of the healing of a normal healer (and it will be more than that), what raid won't stack them over other healers? I'd rather have 160% dps, 100% heals (2 discs) than 100% dps, 100% heals (1 disc, 1 dps), and so would any other RL who can do math. So then how do you counter? Do you make healing so spiky that non-reactive healing is at a disadvantage? In that case the druid and monk are also not going to do weell. This expansion they tried to force the number of healers by phases that had to be countered with big cooldowns, which they are supposedly moving away from.

I'm very stressed. Also finding out that they are bringing back "tank healing" (because it was so much fun? because too many tanks still didn't get after 2 years that they were supposed to be using their active mitigation?) makes me want to barf.

[Wubsie]

I was thinking that stacking discos might be a thing, if the performance is as you described. I did think even Blizz would not be silly enough to make such a mess of it. Then again... It is Blizz...

I'm very stressed. Also finding out that they are bringing back "tank healing" (because it was so much fun? because too many tanks still didn't get after 2 years that they were supposed to be using their active mitigation?) makes me want to barf.

I thought it was completely the opposite, meaning the reason tank healing is returning is that some tanks, played by good players, were too self-reliant, making tank healing a non-issue.

[konraddo]

Priest had always been a great healer option. Holy priest got several AE heal. And then disc priest got shield and atonement which mitigates a great deal of maintenance in a 5-man team. The sad thing is they got nerfed and the DPS was just too bad yet the healing wasn't too good neither.

But as mentioned, atonement receives a drastic change in legion as atonement becomes somewhat flexible and it can heal more than one target. The pre-buff requirement shouldn't be too bad thanks to isboxer.

But then the most important problem(?) is legion requires a LOT of tank healing it seems. So it may not be much viable to bring one single healer. Comeback for support healer, perhaps? I'm already thinking bring a disc priest to fill the support role. The constant, managed healing should help ease some attention from us looking at the health bars all the time while not sacrificing DPS too much.