Hi guys,
I always wanted to make a place for discipline priest discussions and also holy priest discussions, mainly for pvp … since that is what i do. So this is my first, out of hopefully many more blogs to come, and hope this information will be useful for all those discipline/holy priests out there. I am not a pro, and my mmr is at around 1700, but I do have great insight into discipline and holy priest gameplay.
So the changes came out on the 5th, a couple of buffs for healing priests. The first change is:
“Spiritual Healing is a new passive ability obtained by Discipline and Holy Priests at level 10. This ability increases the amount of healing done by Flash Heal, Binding Heal, Renew, and Prayer of Mending by 25%. The amount of healing done by those four spells have been reduced by 20%. For Holy and Discipline Priests, there is no change to the amount of healing done by those four spells.”
So this change basically does not affect discipline or holy priests, but is meant to nerf shadow priest healing, which is also unaffected since they get healing gains from pvp power.
The next change is:
“Evangelism’s stacking effect now also increases the healing of Penance.”
This is a significant buff to discipline priests really, considering penance is also getting a 20% addition to healing and damage. I did some testing on this on the PTR. The 5 stacks of evangelism give 20% bonus healing to penance. So when we stack all buffs up we can get some really big heals in pvp zones. For example, on the PTR a simple penance without any buff heals around 24k. After grace, a full archangel and full 5 stacks of evangelism which equates to 30% x 25% x 20% more healing, I healed for 54k penance per hit. So, we can see where blizzard is going with this in trying to accomplish the offensive healer, which looks very interesting and fun for me. 150k heals with penance…. of course we would have to consider the 30% healing debuff in pvp, but when compared with 5.1, this is huge. The thought now arises that perhaps, Power Word: Solace can be viable to obtain the Evangelism stacks.
Next change:
“Phantasm no longer makes the Priest untargetable by ranged attacks, and the movement impairing immunity effect is now 5 seconds (was 3 seconds).”
Well for me this change seems like a nerf. With the previous untargetable for 3 seconds, priests were allowed to pull off 1 greater heal or 2 flash heals against ranged while staying in the open. Combine that with Archangel, Inner Focus and Holy Spark and you can heal more than 75% of your targets health, not to mention the shield that is created after that. Yes, we priests cannot do that anymore in 5.2, and so it may seems as a nerf. However its quite the opposite. I have noticed on PTR that the cool down on fade has silently changed to 5 seconds! This means that all priests can be permanently immune to all movement impairing effects. Thats pretty advantageous from a whole new perspective. Infact, I think this is too OP and the cool down on fade will probably be changed. The reason it is OP is because fade DOES NOT TRIGGER the GCD, and therefore all priests can easily macro all their key binds with fade, and therefore be immune to any movement impairing effects, much like druids.
Lastly:
“Spirit Shell can no longer be dispelled.”
I would consider this a buff, but hard to pull off. Spirit shell can be stacked up to 60% of the targets HP, and considering that the cost is now half if you have your pvp gear on, the enemy has no choice but to either wait or eat through the shield. Spirit shell does not scale with mastery. So if you normally heal for 60k using flash heal, you would create a 60k shield on yourself when spirit shell is active. So in times of facing dispellers, hunters, shamans, priests, etc … you can allow your team to tank a burst if you have been able to plant in some spirit shells. Think rbi situations. Casting always leaves you vulnerable to being locked out, but this is saving you 50% mana on flash heals every minute, so it is a bit of a give and take scenario.
In my opinion, discipline and holy seems extremely viable in patch 5.2, and probably on par with other healers. We do fall short in the CC department compared to other healers, but the best way to find out viability is when the patch goes live.
Discipline/Holy Priest Pvp 