A Look Back at Discipline Priest in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial
13.02.2024 - 07:33
/ wowhead.com
/ Dragonflight
/ Wishlist
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.
Our Guide Writers have reviewed their specs throughout Dragonflight and share wishlists of what they'd like to see in the War Within. Check out all of our released editorials below.
Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists
Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK
Havoc DHVengeance DH
Feral DruidGuardian Druid
Restoration Druid
Augmentation EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker
BM HunterMM HunterSurvival Hunter
Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage
Mistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk
Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin
Holy PriestShadow Priest
Assassination RogueSubtlety Rogue
Elemental ShamanEnhancement Shaman
Restoration Shaman
Affliction Warlock
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