Would Discipline Priest Mechanics work in FFXIV?

[Welsper59]

Mists Disc Attunement was automatic, but it was also a minor healing component, with all the thought of making sure you were milking your free PW:S via Rapture, if that. Traditionally, or really all the way up until Legion, Disc has also had a tremendous case of SCH syndrome — "with enough Discs, it's no longer a mechanic." Barrier shielding in general (both Earth Shield and especially the entire Disc point of superiority) took a dive with Legion, as it's just not a niche they wanted Disc to be guaranteed slots over for certain fights. It now joined the tide of raid-healers, where DPS is about the only thing it has to make up for its lackluster toolkit (compared to Holy burst, or especially, say, Resto Shaman).

If you want the overall package of what Disc meant for a raid, we pretty well have it already: Scholar.

If you mean specifically a bit of direct heals and damage as healing between rolling instant shields and chain-healing-trap buffs, with one really shitty HoT for on the move when all instants and your CD heal are on cooldown, I wonder how it'd differ enough from a SCH or the half-breed AST to really be worth adding. I'd say mechanically it could still absolutely work. I just don't know if it'd bring anything that would feel especially new to the table.

I gotta agree with this. Disc Priest would work, but that'd just be because we have its FFXIV relative with a pet to do most of the healing: SCH. Unless the game really is going headfirst into prioritizing damage output over everything else, another healer with heavy focus on DPS output to heal isn't going to bold well.

[loreleidiangelo]

I gotta agree with this. Disc Priest would work, but that'd just be because we have its FFXIV relative with a pet to do most of the healing: SCH. Unless the game really is going headfirst into prioritizing damage output over everything else, another healer with heavy focus on DPS output to heal isn't going to bold well.

I'd prefer if they moved away from it, myself. Tired of new healer jobs being judged on how much DPS they can do while healing, or how well they can virtually solo heal a raid so that the OTHER healer can DPS a ton. Very refreshing playing WoW in this regard, where their stance on healer DPS is "if you have time to DPS, your raid has too many healers". It works for Disc in Legion because their raw ability to boost HP bars is weak; you'll bring them to a raid for extra DPS oomph and tank/spot-healing, but they're not so good at both angles like SCH where they'll be mandatory to a comp.

More to the point, Disc's niche is a unique one because of the way raids are balanced in WoW in general. You'll never NEED Power Word:Shield like you'll need Adlo or Noct Barrier for tank busters/AOE version for raid busters. Disc's barriers exist solely AS their method of "healing". They don't have a lot of ways to boost someone if their HP gets low, so they have a bunch of damage-reducing CDs to make SURE no one gets low to begin with. This isn't really how XIV's raids are designed, so if they don't have SOME kind of barrier mechanic SCH will still be the king of "DPS healers". If a Disc-type is basically a WHM but their Regen is put up through DPSing and they have access to burst healing as well...well you can imagine what that would do to DiAST/WHM.

tl;dr if you design Disc with shields so they can replace a SCH in raids they are basically a SCH just with a "DPSing regen", instead of a "pet regen while you DPS" if you remove the shield concept from them they'll either suck because of no burst healing, or they'll have burst healing WITH "DPSing regen" and WHM/AST can kiss their raid spots goodbye.

SE really needs to do away with the design of shields being mandatory for raids, IMO. New healers will never have interesting concepts or designs if they don't start designing fights that break away from the "one burst healer/one shield-and-DPS healer" raid meta.