[Priest] Disc Discussion

Nikachelle wrote:

Levantine wrote:ITT: Nika being an arse and forgetting to spec a mandatory healing Priest talent.

Shhhhh!

/snicker

I'm resurrecting this thread since I raid as disc, and I'd like to add my perspective on some things mentioned in this thread (I'm still sad at times that I haven't raided with my prot paladin in a year). I have a mix of heroic and raid gear, so this should give you an idea a snapshot of what it's like part way through progression.

Normally I tend to use a Archangel/Atonement build that takes Soul Warding and Train of Thought (preference to ToT). This gives me the flexibility to use multiple PW:S in a short span, the ability to use Smite for melee/tank cover as needed, and a boost to the effectiveness of the IF+GHeal macro when I need it. Sometimes, though, I will be tasked with tank healing, and then I will swap in Strength of Soul for Atonement and drop Archangel for Darkness.

Soul Warding: You want it. Once you are working in heroic/raid level gearing, maintaining several bubbles is viable. Additionally, shield spamming is still viable for expected AoE--you just have to be more intelligent about planning for it due to the long Rapture CD. I prefer it to Surge of Light as at my level of gearing the absorb exceeds the output of Flash Heal (39k shield vs. 25k FH) , and I rarely find myself in a position of needing to chain Flash Heals on a single target (mostly due to an intact healing team that's been together for over 10 months now). The lone exception thus far is the Chimaeron fight, but I cop out and spec to Holy for it.

Strength of Soul is a very strong situational talent. If you are tasked with covering a tank, it will increase the number of shields you can place on your target if you're dropping GHeals on them(which you should be). I drop it, though, if I am being tasked with raid healing, as it's viability diminishes rapidly if you aren't focusing on a few select targets to heal.

bldavis wrote:
if you are in heavy aoe healing (which you shouldnt be as disc, but shit happens) then the PoH glyph is really nice

You absolutely should be aoe healing as disc. Granted Disc aoe healing doesn't have the multitude of options that Holy does, it's still viable. PoH always procs Divine Aegis (which benefits from mastery), and the healing it does warrants not only usage but also getting the glyph. PoH and the resultant DA procs usually accounts for ~30% of my healing done in a given fight. Also, depending on your raid group, Atonement won't hit everyone since ranged tend to wander away, so for me PoH becomes the go-to raid heal for those individuals. I also boost PoH by coupling it to Power Infusion on a macro, much as I link Inner Focus with GHeal.

As for stats, I aim to soft-cap haste when raid buffed (assuming a high BT up-time). After that I focus on Intellect, Crit, and Mastery since, as levantine mentioned, the synergy between them is highly effective for Disc specs. The more you crit, the more DA procs you get and the stronger your Mastery stat becomes. If I am tank healing, I grab more haste by getting Darkness and sacrificing Archangel. I'm generally too lazy to reforge for haste in those case, though doing so would certainly help.

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRsbcRMochM:qVcodqz0M is the build I generally use. I glyph Mass Dispel rather than Smite because for two reasons. First, using Holy Fire is a dps/heal loss over straight Smite spamming. With the changes to Holy Fire in 4.1, though, this will need re-evaluation. Second, after years of reduced cast time for Mass Dispel, I simply feel impotent if I don't have the reduced cast time. I also take Levitate so I can watch unsuspecting raid members float off of the elevator in BWD and into the lava pool. (Protip for Holy: If you cast Levitate at the top of the arch of a Body and Soul boosted jump off the elevator, you can float across the entire pool and land at the steps leading to Atramedes).

daemonym wrote:I have a question of my own for disc. I'm running my space goat through normal mode dungeons to get a feel for the UI and spec. All of my other toons I use only 1-2 addons in order to help me play better. However even in grim batol with a level 85 tank in all tank gear and an acceptable spec I tend to drop 20-30k mana per pull.

Armory:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/ysera/allystokpile/simple

All of my gear has spirit on it minus one with an int trink and a spirit trink. I'm gemming for straight int and picking up the occasional socket bonus with either spirit or mastery gems.

I checked recount on a few random pulls and saw I did only a few thousand over healing which translated into wasting half of a greater heal while "most" of my shields broke. The last 1-2 tend not to be fully used up, but they're always put onto melee that stand in cleaves and assorted bad stuff.

My question really is am I doing something wrong or is spending that much mana on your average pull normal ish?

From this and your other posts I don't think you are doing anything wrong per se so much as you have dps which are taking avoidable damage. This, coupled with your gear level, should have you 20% down on mana for each pull. Getting your dps to be more mindful of their positioning should alleviate a lot of it.

Halcya wrote:a position of needing to chain Flash Heals on a single target

Granted, I just started playing my disc priest again, but it's my understanding that GHeal is better than spam FHeal.

Is this not the case?

No, GH is always better than flash heal. You absolutely should never find yourself in the position where having to chain more than one flash is ever the right way to heal. If you do, either you or your group is doing something horrendously wrong.

Put it this way, in that Deadmines we did a while ago I never had to cast more than a single flash heal. I agree that SoS is an okay situational talent (i.e. you know you're going to be tank healing 90% of the time), but I've yet to come into a situation where I found shield spamming to be a more attractive option than PoH spam to warrant picking up Soul Warding.

Surge of Light is also horrible. Always. Especially as disc. I'd drop it in my Holy spec too if there were better things to put the points in at that level (there aren't).

surge of light is decent as holy if you get a proc right when your tank starts taking heavy damage

other than that, i dont even use FoL

I don't like RNG in my healing. It's also the reason I believe crit to be absolutely worthless as a stat on healer gear.

Levantine wrote:I don't like RNG in my healing. It's also the reason I believe crit to be absolutely worthless as a stat on healer gear.

did i say i liked it?
its just nice when it happens to proc

I think I read that you're supposed to reforge crit into either spirit or haste. Anyone know if that's accurate?

As holy, shit yes. Less clear as disc.

Yeah was thinking disc. I haven't touched holy this expansion.

I thought I'd read on EJ that that was the way to do it, but that haste and mastery became interchangeable at certain levels...

I've kind of been going for haste over spirit for two reasons... generally spirit is already on the gear already and secondly because I really don't like slower heals (which probably isn't really justifiable).

However, one of the best healers I've ever known told me they actually preferred crit on their disc gear because of divine aegis (which they indicated was usually in their top three heals on Recount - IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY).

So then I was very confuzzled.

thus the fuzziness...

i really cant say anything as i am a holy priest..so ya...
levie? or any other disc?

Last time I checked Disc was fairly apathetic when it came to secondary stats. There was no clear winner for them like there was for holy, and they all kinda made the others more effective. My rule of thumb would have been to keep them about equal through reforging unless I felt lacking in a certain area eg haste.

There has been a lot of discussion about secondary stats, and really for Disc it comes down to whichever you feel most comfortable with.

Spirit is less needed due to Rapture (which is getting a slight buff according to the last bits I read on MMO-champion) and Shadowfiend/Hymn of Hope (both become better through Int and potentially Haste)

Haste is nice to increase your throughput, but does little for mana conservation (though I believe allows HoH to tick faster, which allows you to get back to healing quicker, and should increase your SF attack speed.)

Crit procs Divine Aegis, which becomes more powerful with Mastery, but potentially causes overheal from some spells.

Mastery is good for PoH (guaranteed DA) and PW:S builds.

I believe the general consensus is to try and keep them fairly balanced for Disc. PW:S spammers (which isn't really the best way to do things anymore) would want Mastery > Crit > Haste. PoH favors Haste > Mastery > Crit. GHeal would be similar to PoH (since Crit potentially makes for a lot of overheal, though the DA bubble can be quite nice.) Smite builds would likely want Haste > Crit > Mastery (more damage done = more healing/shorter fights).

I guess (if my assumptions are correct) Haste is the most favored stat (minus PW:S spammers) and Mastery/Crit would be determined more by your specific healing style, though there really aren't any clear winners.

For A/A, recommended amount of haste?

I apologize for my daft "chain Flash Heal" comment. After rereading it in its context, I don't know I why wrote it. But the point is that I find Surge of Light to be inferior to the tools at the disposal of a disc priest, and it's not just the fact that's it is effectively a RNG heal (which I don't like, either).

I tend to favor a general distribution of secondary stats. I never touch spirit--I tend to end fights in the 10% to 20% mana range, so I don't need more, but I don't feel comfortable reforging out of it at this moment (currently I have 1678 spirit and 2926 mp5). At this point in time you can beneficially reforge your crit into haste or mastery. This should be the go-to strat for the foreseeable future, or at least until you can get crit into the 20%-25% range without overly reducing other supporting stats. I choose my own stat priorities based on my role in the raid for the evening. Focused/tank healing will see me reforge crit into haste, and raid healing will lead me to reforge crit into mastery. The best thing to do, though, is to parse your healing logs and see what spells your are using most and what percentage of healing they are doing, paying particular attention to the source of your absorbs. Heavy usage of PW:S, DA procs, and PoH (due to DA procs) will benefit most from mastery.

That being said, there is a strong case being made to boost mastery at the expense of all other secondary stats. The folks doing this are better geared than I am, but I haven't monkeyed with it yet. I might play with it later this weekend, but I don't think I have the mana regen at this moment to support it.

I can't recommend a particular level of haste for A/A builds other than "more is better."

AFAIK, there isn't a set limit to A/A haste, since I don't think you can reach a 1s cast time, and it's not a HoT, so there aren't any soft caps to hit. I would probably stack it until I have difficulty sustaining mana to the end of a fight, then scale back a little, if needed. When I'm able to get back on (couple weeks from now) I'll be chain running heroics as Disc to get a better feel for it (preparing for raids and whatnot) and I'll try to post what stats work best for my particular setup. Though I imagine a lot will vary based on your tanks/dps and guild runs vs PuGs.

Side Note: I've been using Surge of Light in my spec, just because they were disrectionary points, and I wanted to see how well it works. Mental note was made: when macroing IF to GH/PoH, FH WILL light up during the casting of GH/PoH... this should NOT be confused with a SoL proc .

I went and reforged and gemmed for a bunch of haste on my 347 priest; Smite is 1.74 or so, which seems interesting -- I also went 2/3 Darkness for 2% haste instead of Inspiration. This is for my heroic funtime spec; I have a 31/8/2 GH spec for raid healing.

Haven't had a chance to play with it much, but I'm curious.

Also, wow, the armory has aggregate numbers for boss kills.

I have a running argument with a fellow priest about Inner Will v Inner Fire. I'm firmly in the camp of only using Inner Will in the event that I need to get out of something quite fast and I can afford the GCD to switch from Inner Fire. Now, I could be doing something very wrong so hence me asking this (stupid?) question.

Do you guys ever run Inner Will while disc on a permanent basis? I find it hard (especially for me at this stage in the expansion) to give up 540 spellpower for reduced mana costs on my instants. Outside of PW:S and PoM, I can't think of any other instants that I use on a regular basis. How do you guys do it?

I use Inner Will for heroics and Inner Focus for raids.

Nikachelle wrote:I use Inner Will for heroics and Inner Focus for raids.

I hope you use Inner Focus all the time.

Seriously though, Inner Will on heroics? What's your reasoning other than probably being bored and trying to run around in circles quicker? Due to moths being attracted to the flame and you needing to spam PW: Shield?

That last part is the crux of my friend's argument. He's a bit of a shield spammer and even though I've tried to argue that shield botting shouldn't be done unless he has 4 boomkins feeding him innervates, he does it anyway. I try to counter it with "well, your penance,GHeals, etc will all hit harder with Inner Fire, proc'ing larger Divine Aegis which effectively reduces the need for shielding anyways.

thatguy wrote:

Nikachelle wrote:I use Inner Will for heroics and Inner Focus for raids.

I hope you use Inner Focus all the time.

Seriously though, Inner Will on heroics? What's your reasoning other than probably being bored and trying to run around in circles quicker? Due to moths being attracted to the flame and you needing to spam PW: Shield?

That last part is the crux of my friend's argument. He's a bit of a shield spammer and even though I've tried to argue that shield botting shouldn't be done unless he has 4 boomkins feeding him innervates, he does it anyway. I try to counter it with "well, your penance,GHeals, etc will all hit harder with Inner Fire, proc'ing larger Divine Aegis which effectively reduces the need for shielding anyways.

Usually people are chain pulling (and I need to catch up) and occasionally I get bored. Often a tank won't need more than a PoM and a shield from one pack to the other. I guess you could argue that the spell power would do more if I'm only using those spells. *shrugs*

Only time I've used Inner Will is immediately following a wipe to get back quicker for buffs/drinking/etc. If all you're using is PW:S/PoM (or the off chance you're using Renew), then maybe I could see using it, but Inner Will just seems to be more of a PvP/Farming thing to me. I don't even use it when I'm shadow, since it only really affects SW:P, SW:D and DP. SW:P shouldn't be getting hard cast after the initial application, SW:D returns mana (you spec'd into Masochism, right?) and DP is single target, with a fairly long timer.

BT even lasts long enough to cast penance, then PoM (for the faster GCD), then heal/greater heal