I was looking through Chronicles' raid data recently and found that Discipline Priest (more commonly known as "smite priest") is not popular and, funny enough, doesn't seem to deal much damage. Though I understand it's half a support class, I feel a lot of classes like Shammy gives more support to the team while still being relevant on the DPS meter.
While I play pala, I've always been interested in the Disci spec (I love the holy vibe) and decided to dig a little deeper on the subject.
Turtle did a great job at conceiving a fitting DPS spec to Discipline, but I felt it lacked some things that other specs got in recent-ish updates.
My main observation is that, while most other casters relying on spells that can crits are greatly rewarded with their crits (By having 200% dmg, having procs etc...), the only thing Disci got is an instant smite. Looks fair, said like that, but you usually got the talents "Divine Fury" to put your smite on a 2 sec cast time. That means your "instant smite", who would have taken 2sec to cast, is now instant BUT the catch is, you still get a full GCD afterwards, effectively reducing the cast time by 0.5 seconds. Strong in PVP, but on a dps side, only a theoretical 33% increase in damage from the proc.
But it gets worse, as I didnt include the spell haste you'll probably have at that point, reducing the relative effectiveness of crits proc even more. The more quckly you cast your smite, the less your instant cast is effective, reducing the effectiveness of having crits, and vice versa. And you get pretty fast to a point where you get close to the 1.5 cast time, as you got 3% haste in your talents, and even more while casting Chastise.
So, bad scaling with crit, bad scaling with haste, doesn't seem promising, but it gets worse.
I learnt that for a pvp balance purpose, there is an internal cooldown on the instant smite proc. I don't know the duration, but you can't get 2 instant smites in a row, reducing even more the effectiveness of crits.
Now that was the main problem, but there are some other specific issues like the fact that in order to get bonus spell power (the only relevant stat if I may), you either have to get Resurgent Shield (Implying you need to waste a gcd to get a temporary buff, with a clearly unreliable uptime) or Spiritual Guidance (deep in holy, and there aren't that much spirit in most of the good gear for dps).
Long story short: No reward, no scaling, and most people don't even now about the spec and think Disci priest are heals.
I think there's a lot of different things that could improve the global experience of a Disci player, and I'll put here a bunch of things that I thought about.
-Having a talent that reduces the GCD of Smite. An already existing talent or not, -0.5 sec or something like that would be more than enough to feel really rewarded by having an instant smite. I believe there is/was something similar in the Balance Druid path, though I could be mistaken. There's no reason Disci Priest could not have such an improvement, in my honest opinion.
-Having a way to reduce the GCD of the Power Word: Shield. Using Resurgent Shield sounds like a fun way to play, but you don't get enough back from the wasted GCD of the Shield, and that steals a bit of the fun. Additionally, it's a spell that is usually overlooked a lot.
-Eventually more spirit deep in the disci branch ? There's Intel and Casting speed, but adding spirit would be a way to get rewarded enough for going to Spiritual Guidance.
-I don't know about the pvp dampening, and if it's active or not on this server, but getting rid of the internal CD of Searing Light (while balancing back the dmg in pvp) could also feel good for PVE players.
-Quite a specific here, but I heard that Grace of the Sunwell (High elf Priest racial) doesn't feel good to use as Disci, as it does quite the same work as Chastise (while needing a FULL GCD, while chastise does not), improving the haste (which, stated earlier, isn't that much rewarding in the current state). I'd propose to make the spell GCD free while nerfing the buff a lot. I don't see much people using it in logs and stuff, and that's quite sad in my opinion.
While all those ideas would certainly make Disci A LOT STRONGER, I think adding at least the first suggestion (or something similar) would be the bare minimum to get the class way more rewarding to play.
Sorry for the long post, I hope my english isn't too bad and I wish you a very fun experience on the server !
Thank you for reading !
(Do not hesitate to add sugestions, or to react to anything I've said. I'd be glad to be proven wrong!
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Just kidding, good point I guess but I hardly see how it addresses the "feeling good" point of the post.