Critique our Disc Priest

[OrcsRLame]

A disc priest that I raid with feels like he's under performing compared to what he could be doing, and I was hoping you fine folks could take a look at his logs and throw your two cents in. No need to sugar coat things, he's a big boy and can take criticism.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...GpFM7y#fight=9

[lcs]

So just some random thoughts after looking at the logs:

• He is using 'Power Infusion' over 'Contrition'. Contrition is overall the better talent, especially for a fight such as Cenarius where your atonement is pretty much guaranteed to be valuable for the entire extended duration.
• His penance usage is low, he had 21 casts in 4:30. Penance has a cooldown of 9 seconds. He missed out on 9 possible casts by leaving it off cooldown.
• His shield usage is worse, ignoring Rapture usage, he had an average cooldown of 11.25 seconds. With moderate haste the cooldown on shield is like 6.5 seconds. For 'Shield Discipline' to be of the most value and for the atonements being applied, PW:S is a higher priority than everything except Penance.
• His opener is odd. He doesn't apply any Atonements in the first 15 seconds of the fight, he is only DPSing. Once thorns comes up everybody is taking a lot of damage. I generally open with a Pre-shield, PtW, Penance into Rapture, so that I can heal up the higher DPS that start to get wrecked by the thorns.
• This is leading to his initial burst being low, see his burst
• 
• vs burst of another Disc priest
• 
• Note: These are from a 1% disc priest, so this is the upper end.
• The majority of the healing for Disc (~75%) on this fight comes from three sources: The first thorns, the tree stomp, the exploding wisps. The healing requirement drops when Cenarius starts nascaring around the room during phase 2.

Another concern, taking a look at his Atonement applications:



That spike in damage at ~1:40 is the wisps being killed. At the time he had only 5 atonements applied. This means in order to heal that damage he had to first apply a bunch of atonements after the wisps died and then starting DPSing to heal it back up. This is just poor play. The wisps are a known quantity in the fight, you know when they're going to explode. Atonement needs to be applied prior to damage.

His overall number of Atonements are just low as well. Here is his mana:



He seems to be saving it, ending the fight at 25%. As I noted before, the lions share of his healing is going to come from Phase 1 and the three known group wide damage events that go out. He could be out of mana going into P2 and still do well given how good Disc is at healing that first phase. If you look at his Atonements above, then these from a different set of logs you can see the difference:



TL;DR: Better priority on cooldowns and just applying more Atonement and healing more people will lead to better performance.

[PosPosPos]

Penance doesn't have to be used on cd, or rather, can't be used on cd if you are actually playing disc properly. 9 casts lost is slightly on the high side, but isn't that big of a deal especially when atonements are not up.

[Saiyoran]

Penance doesn't have to be used on cd, or rather, can't be used on cd if you are actually playing disc properly. 9 casts is still perfectly within reason.

You only delay penance for radiance spam before burst and during rapture right? Or saving it a few globals for raid damage? Any other situations?

[PosPosPos]

You only delay penance for radiance spam before burst and during rapture right? Or saving it a few globals for raid damage? Any other situations?

Doesn't apply specifically for this situation(lol4minfight), but it's expected to hold off penance if you don't have innervates on a long encounter.

[lcs]

You only delay penance for radiance spam before burst and during rapture right? Or saving it a few globals for raid damage? Any other situations?

Correct. If raid damage is coming up in a few seconds you should save penance to heal it back up. This doesn't apply so much to Cenarius as the current meta makes the entire fight one giant burst phase. You're generally rolling with a higher than average number of Atonements for the entire fight and the raid is almost always damaged, so there isn't much value in holding off on penance except during Rapture.

[Jimjam38]

Dude got to 50 stacks of nightmare on mythic. Damn, solid effort lol.

Also, his sins uptime is amazingly low (82%) because of dying early and doing nothing for the first 15 seconds. His average atonement count is low too, rarely over 8, only once got up to 15.
Basically the dude is only half paying attention and would probs suck on any class cause he's leaving stuff off cooldown.

Idk what other's do, and it might be different for mythic, but on heroic on the pull I prepot (prolonged power) then dot Cenarius, apply 3-4 atonements on tanks and key people, penance, smite a few times then refresh dot (early if i have to) and pop rapture a few seconds before dread thorns and start PWS spaming the top dps and the ones with dots (ferals, boomies, spriests, fire mages, assassination rogues, etc). About half way through rapture I pop shadowfiend and penance whenever it's off cd, usually right as the thorns start, and use that to help keep up those dps taking damage from their dots even after they've swapped to the adds. After rapture, penance/smite a few times, referesh dot and then dot the adds. Then I usually call for innervate and prep for a Light's Wrath burst for the dragon reaching 50%. I'll move around during rapture and penance to clear my nightmare stacks.
So idk why this guy does nothing for the first 15 seconds.