H Madness Disc Priest Healing Info.

[Jazzster]

Hello, I am Jazzster, Holy Paladin - Healing Officer of Primarch - US Galakrond. I have some information to post and I'm looking for suggestions or words of improvement or to tell my healers to step-it-up. We are a 7/8 H guild pushing towards H Madness. Our healing composition contains: Holy Paladin, Restoration Shaman, and Discipline Priest with a Holy Priest currently on the sidelines. We are perfecting platform 4 but we tend to find ourselves gimping each other when we are 1 tank/3 heal/6 dps; because impale sometimes our soaker gets melee'd before they take the impale but that's also due because our feral druid is absent to switch forms and take it head on without the gimpiness' of our Rogue or Priest using CDs to mitigate the damage. We have had zero experience in P2 but still focusing on perfecting Platform 4, Our healers seem to be mana starved with low throughput.

My Post now will review my concerns along with links to our healing composition and our progression through, please take a second to analyze these.
WoL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/181967/
Holy Paladin:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...zster/advanced
Discipline Priest:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ascoh/advanced
Restoration Shaman:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ernia/advanced

Concerns:
My Restoration Shaman has had previous issues with Buff Uptimes and Output.
My Discipline Priest is having mana issues on the 4th Platform. Shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope, and Rapture don't seem to be that high as previous logs.
Inconsistant attempts, I can't fix that.

I'm looking at logs and I'm just not impressed with our current stage of progression. I would love to 2 heal this fight. I killed Heroic Ragnaros back in November during Progression. We've easily killed Heroic Spine and that has to be my favorite fight, but now where healing actually matters, I don't see a possibility in P2 with healers being at that state.

Please leave suggestion below and let me know how I can help perfect them and increase our healing. My healers are outstanding but I do know that in certain areas, including myself, can greatly increase output and throughput. Thank you! - Jazzster

[Maleric]

You aren't doubling/tripling your other healers, as far as I can tell. You're all pretty even on the H Madness attempts I looked at (your most recent night, 3/15/2012, attempts lasting >8 minutes).

Moving on to your disc priest, I see two related problems:

1) overuse of Power Word: Shield; and
2) reforging supporting Power Word: Shield.

The guy has too much mastery and too little haste for H Madness. With his configuration his HPS from PW:S is better than it would be with a haste>mastery setup, but his HPS from PoH is worse. In line with this reforging, he casts a lot of shields. While this may be a good idea for some fights, it isn't for H Madness because it's a long fight with several fairly serious AoE healing phases. Instead of getting through those phases with comparatively efficient PoH spam, it looks like he's having to rely on PW:S instead. PW:S is strong for spot healing, but it is an inefficient mana suck for handling AoE damage.

It would also help if he specced AA/A. That way he could stack/maintain Evangelism with Holy Fire (also an efficient heal!), and have an Archangel cooldown for the tail end of each platform. This isn't mandatory, but it's another way to improve efficiency.

EDIT - As for gear, your disc priest is ilevel 398 and has a Heart of Unliving. His gear is fine.

[zakaluka]

Adding one point to jazz's post, he nailed it.

Some discs run a hybrid AA/A - SoS spec for H madness, because chain shielding during corruption is mandatory as well as a new fresh shield just before each impale (depending on how you're using bop).

----
The rest of this, is merely speculation on my part.

Looking at one of the longer attempts (attempt 10), all healer plots have the same general shape and the shaman beats you by 5%. Looking at overall (all attempts), you have about 10% more healed than the two of them. About right for a holy paladin in this tier. Where are you seeing 100%?

Analyze-healing done Mascoh, time range 6366 - 6438 (first corruption/parasite): top heal is DA - 27%, followed by PW:S - 24%, PoH - 18%
This says to me he is rolling DA for corruption, and spamming PW:S for parasite? DA stacking with overheal PoH is really abysmal efficiency. 45% overheal on PoH this case makes the PoH spam just barely more efficient than PW:S spam during aoe.

Analyze-healing done Mascoh, time range 6436 - 6486 (first cataclysm): top heal is PoH 31%, followed by aegis - 27%, PW:S - 25%. You have a shaman, I just wonder at the need for so many spot heals during AoE. 11 shields 9 PoH. Granted if you stack mst, alternating PW:S - PoH is highest throughput, but only by a tiny margin and it's not sustainable!

Nothing he is doing here is really horribly wrong, I just wouldn't be comfortable with those numbers if it were me. That playstyle requires very high spirit, even without the da stacking. Overhealing PoH for DA is gimmicky and only works on farm content, not taxing progression aoe fights.

Must resist going on further. I merely participate here because it helps me think about what I will be doing for H madness. I'm not to that point yet, so please don't take what I say with too much weight.

[Jazzster]

Thank you for providing this information. I'm sorry if my wording comes out to where I seem like a "God". I don't mean it to come out like that. I want to imrpove our healers as best as we can. ..even when I have to go out and find some pointers/tips for them and they're not doing it themselves, lack of discipline but they're all I have as a current healing core. Thank you to both of you for providing more than enough information on Mascoh, I really do appreciate! I will relay the information over to him. Again, Thank you!

If you find anything else throughout past and future attempts, feel free to let me know!

[Deleted]

The shaman should have nearly infinite mana with proper use of lighthing bolt, make sure he doesn't feel the need to heal 24/7.

As for the disc priest i'd recommend Attonement-AA, but I'm not sure how it works with a hunter pet in the mix. Apprently attonement is bugged so it will heal a pet over a player, which is rather useless. Since we don't have a hunter/warlock in my grp I just stick with tons of haste and use attonement to heal a lot since it gets amplified with the catalysm buff.

[Deleted]

Sorry Zaka but that's crap, overhealing PoH for DA is amazing on madness, that's EXACTLY what he should be doing. When we were progressing on Madness HC my PoH had close to 60% overheal, it's really not a problem at all. Check my logs... (should be worth noting aegis stacking is also amazing for warmaster pre shout pre onslaught, yor'sahj, Zon'ozz pre bounces, and many other occasions)

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7668&e=8546

Eventual PoH overheal is 45% by the end of the fight.

So I'll explain why... this fight is all about healing people up FAST & mitigating future damage. It's all spike damage, crush can one shot people if they're not full. That being said, damage is in short bursts, and there is no point having 3 healers single target healing. What you want is 1 person single target healing, no more. The other two healers should be assisting each other in some tank healing but mostly pure AOE. Aegis is amazing for mitigating crush damage, you basically want to be casting PoH this entire fight. People are spread out for crush but stacked enough to all be in range of PoH provided you stand inbetween everyone.

No, this priests problem lies in the fact he's shield spamming for some ungodly reason. Shield spamming has no place on madness, at all, you just don't have the mana for it. Furthermore he seems to be casting flash heal a huge amount? Is he on parasite healing? I mean holy crap he has like 10% healing done through flash heal? I guess it's to do with having surge of light but still...

WHICH IS RIDICULOUS, his spec is horrible... 3/3 inner sanctum? 1/2 surge of light? Inner Focus but no ToT? I really am lost for words. Tell him to go atonement, my spec works fine in my signature. He needs to reforge some of his mastery to haste, up to around 15% if possible (which considering his reforges I would guess so). Also 5% grace uptime? It should be closer to 80-100%.


EDIT: His second spec is perfect, why isn't he using it? I guess it was a recent respec. Anyway I just realised I'd made some posts about this fight before so I'll not add anymore

--- WALL OF TEXT INCOMMING!!

Some tips for madness...

Atonement is decent here again, the spike dmg really works well with this spec.

- Assign a healer to heal those with the debuff, he needs to spam heal them so they're always full HP. If they're not full HP they may die, since smash removes 80% or so of your HP instantly. We used a shaman for this, a paladin is probably the best though.
- As a disc priest your immediate thoughts might be to single target heal. DON'T. This fight is all about preventing damage & keeping people topped up. You want to basically spend the entire time casting PoH while the corruption is still alive. Aegis helps to temper the damage from smash, and soaks up other raid dmg so no one goes much below 100% unless they get hit by the corruption (smash).
- Play to your strengths, the above is also true for druids - don't single target heal. Hot up the raid & soak up damage. You do need one healer to do the single target healing though, that's usually pally/shaman.
- Obviously still interweave PoM/shield/smiting into your PoH spamming
- Work out a healer CD rotation that works with your fight timings. We used the following (it's not really required on the first 3 platforms, but you may as well, it saves mana at least): (#) is platform B1 stands for blistering1, DG is divine guardian

(1) B1 DG1 SLT - B2 DG2 Bubble / tranq / PI - Tree BEFORE WE'RE ON ARM TENTACLE!!!

(2) B1 DG1 Tree - B2 DG2 SLT / PI

(3) B1 DG1 - B2 DG2 Tree / Bubble / PI

(4) SLT / DG1 / tranq bolt - B1 DG2 - B2 Bubble & personals (PI/Shaman tier)

For P2 you don't need healer CDs until the 10% bloods, for that we used tranq (you get bloods & terror at the same time here, so tranq sorts out the AOE heal req & other healers spam the tanks with single target). At the 5% bloods we used DH & tree, then SLT, then finally bubble. The hardest part in P2 healing wise is the 10% bloods, the tanks will take a crap tonne of damage, and the raid. You need to be seriously spamming your tanks like hell or they will die. Unless of course you're lucky enough to have a DK tank -.-

The most important thing is this: DO NOT WORRY ABOUT OVERHEALING on this fight (lawl 46% PoH overheal ftw?!?! ). Seriously, just spam away even if everyone is full HP. I mean provided it doesn't cause you mana problems, but it shouldn't really. I use fiend during first cataclysm, then on CD. I use HoH during 2nd fiend, and potion during 3rd. Timing things correctly I can go from 20-25% right up to 100% with fiend/hoh/rapture/archangel all timed with hoh.

If people are dying to parasite then it's a healing problem. Don't try to convince yourself that it's not (I sincerely doubt you had heal problems on any other boss) because this fight is different for healers. We had heal problems at the start too, people weren't being healed fast enough - crush does A LOT of damage. You need 1 person assigned to parasite targets, AND HE ONLY HEALS THEM. Parasite target needs to be close to 100% all the time or he will get one shot by crush. That being said, healing through parasite on platform 4 shouldn't be much harder than the other platforms. PS the tank as the bolt hits & it should last for impale too.

P2 is all about DPS timings as follows:

DPS boss > kill 15% bloods > DPS fragments > DPS boss > DPS terrors with 1 marked > DPS boss & push to 10.5-11% BE CAREFUL OF DOTS, DO NOT REACH 10% > DPS Fragments & push boss to 10% just as you kill the last fragment > DPS 10% bloods & tank terror with them, it's VERY important the bloods spawn BEFORE the terrors > DPS terrors > DPS boss > DPS 5% bloods > DPS boss ignoring all fragments, PUSH BUTTON!!!

These timings need to be exact. The underlined is very important or your tanks will die from stacks. The berserk is also pretty close, remember it starts when the fight begins so any time you save in platform 1/2/3/4 works WONDERS in P2. Just because platform 1/2/3 is easy don't think that you can slack, you don't want to wipe on 1% because you slacked too much earlier platforms (as we did at least once).

I hope the above should help you with your other healers. Also don't let him fool you into thinking it's gear related. It's not. He's just not playing efficiently. I mean hell he has similar regen to me (more spirit less int) & I don't have any mana issues at all on this fight.

[mascoh]

EDIT: His second spec is perfect, why isn't he using it? I guess it was a recent respec. Anyway I just realised I'd made some posts about this fight before so I'll not add anymore

yes it is, thank you for all the good informations, I love you and would gladly make you a baby

<3

[Deleted]

The shaman should have nearly infinite mana with proper use of lighthing bolt, make sure he doesn't feel the need to heal 24/7.

As for the disc priest i'd recommend Attonement-AA, but I'm not sure how it works with a hunter pet in the mix. Apprently attonement is bugged so it will heal a pet over a player, which is rather useless. Since we don't have a hunter/warlock in my grp I just stick with tons of haste and use attonement to heal a lot since it gets amplified with the catalysm buff.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7668&e=8546

It's fine, we killed it with both warlock & hunter np <3 Check my atonement targets.

yes it is, thank you for all the good informations, I love you and would gladly make you a baby

<3

Lol. My suggestion would be to look down this list:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...ipline_Priest/

Check the other healers. First check their healing partner classes (because that affects how they heal), then check their individual pages to see their spell breakdown. From this you can get a picture as to how their group heals. Now check their armory for spec / reforges. My method of healing isn't the only way that works, and I'm sure some of those logs are completely different to mine. You should always do this for new fights, it's the best way to learn if you're not at high high progression. I always do it before trying fights for myself because you can learn SO much about an encounter that way.

It's also useful to go through your logs & check where you're going wrong. We have something in common: we're both bad with our grace uptime. This is something I'm working on, and something you should to. My PoM usage while pretty good could also be much better. On fights like madness it should pretty much be on CD the entire fight. You can also check your rapture uptime by going to "analyse healing done", click "healing done by spell", tick "Power Word: Shield". This will then show a graph of all PW:S casts & you can see the time between them. If you have a large gap of 30 seconds, you just wasted 20k mana for instance (x2 rapture); note this can only be done during off peak times.

Also forgot to mention, don't get Veiled Shadows for madness. You don't get an extra fiend with it, and it doesn't help your timings. Get 2/3 Darkness instead. (I was in that spec for bosses 1-7, it's good on Spine/Zon'ozz/Warmaster especially)

[zakaluka]

OK. I have been wrong before Thanks hala.

I have used atonement with pets in the mix and have not encountered the pet bug.

Maybe when atonement has no valid target it will overheal a pet first? I do see some atonements going to pets but it never just completely falls off the bottom of my chart. Pets generally only take a tiny bit of damage.

I guess I don't know much about the atonement bug, though I've heard of it. Atonements just seem to work properly for me.

I never intentionally spread bad info, but I do often guess. I'm glad someone will come in and correct me. Digging up the logs and pointing out things that don't make sense to me... well it helps me figure out what i'll be doing next month.

[Ellumina]

Frankly, I'm not sure how he's not topping the meters on this fight. Every week in the same healing comp as you, I find myself decently ahead of the other healers in terms of HPS, with no mana issues until P2 (not to mention he has 3k spirit AND HoU, that's a lotta spirit for Disc!) The gear he has shouldn't cause a problem for healing H Madness. Just glancing through some of the 10 minute attempts, my thoughts:

- In his second Disc spec, why on earth does he not have Inner Focus O_O I didn't think not taking IF was even an option for Disc Priests ever. Get it. I personally don't put points into Inspiration due to the fact that we have a Resto Shaman in raid.
- He might be going oom because he's using Flash Heal so much in some attempts.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1127&e=1763
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7316&e=7953
Is Flash Heal one of his main healing spells or something? Because Flash Heal should really be used in emergency situations only, and he seems to be all willy nilly using it. For a general comparison, in my 4 H Madness kills, I used Flash Heal: 1 time, 9 times, 9 times, 10 times, compared to his 40+ in one 10 minute attempt. More Greater Heal, less Flash Heal.
- It's really important to go into P2 with as much mana as possible (I also like to make sure I start at full when getting onto the fourth platform).
- Atonement is wonderful for downtime. When the corruption is still up, I find myself just smiting a lot (even helping on the parasite and bolt). I'll swap to "real heals" if multiple people are getting hit by those corruption smashes, which shouldn't be happening anyways and if that's the case, people have to spread out better. Archangel is a nice boost for when Blistering Tentacles pop out on later platforms too.
- I recommend popping mana CDs really early. I pop my Arcane Torrent and SF towards the start of the fight, waste all the mana I can. After that, I pop it every time on CD to maximize my mana.

My logs from Madness kills if you or your Disc Priest cares to take a look. I'm by no means a great priest, but if it can help:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=5342&e=6235
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=8048&e=8915
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1086&e=1988
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3711&e=4577

EDIT: I like Veiled Shadows for this fight. I get to use SF 4 times (one at the start of the fight, second at the end of 2nd platform, third at the start of 4th platform with HoH, fourth on DW's platform, where I really need the mana).

[Deleted]

Ellu, most atonement disc don't take inner focus. It's not that strong of a talent for raid healing, and you don't really need the mana save. It's also significantly weakened by not generally having ToT (I see that you do, which I find kind of strange as atonement considering you rarely use GHeal) and from not casting greater heal very often.

Removing inspiration is also kinda risky considering a lot of the big dmg is physical & ancestral healing won't be on everyone in the raid. I thought about removing it too, but when you consider Crush (the major P1 killer) and shrapnel are both physical I changed my mind. Inspiration isn't just useful for tanks <3

You can take Veiled shadows but you gotta use fiend very very early if you do, around the 1 minute mark. I use it at the end of the first platform & still go up to full mana :S You could see if you get leverage out of 4 fiends, I never could though.

OK. I have been wrong before Thanks hala.

<3 ignore my kind of rude tone though, I tend to get defensive when I read things I think are stupid lol

--

Oh also you can holy nova stuff when healing isn't intensive (bloods). It procs spellweave & does decent dps.

[xirdyh77]

disc is mjy favorite specd for healing it is so good.

[Hushkoon]

Regarding your spriest or rogue being gimped as they are about to soak an Impale due to melee swings, the solution is rather simple: HoP them. They will still be the one being targeted by the Impale, but they won't get gimped by any melee damage. Just remember that if you HoP a rogue, he needs to have a cancel aura macro in his Cloak, since he can't use it with HoP on him.

[Tihr]

So many misinformed posts in this topic.

Mastery is fine for Madness. Disc shouldn't have mana problems at all on Madness as long as you're getting Rapture procs on cooldown. Train of Thought isn't a great talent, by any stretch. Atonement is a gimmick, and there's really no need to spec it.

Regarding Shadowfiend, I use my first as I reach the 2nd platform, I Hymn of Hope as I reach the 3rd, Fiend is back up during the 3rd platform. I pop a Potion of Concentration as I reach the 4th, and Fiend is back up towards the end of the 4th. Hymn of Hope is back up for the head platform. This is without Veiled Shadows.

PoH healing (and by extension Aegis healing) is extremely effective for Madness. You should really only Shield for Rapture procs, on the tank prior to an Impale, or if someone spikes dangerously low. During the 'burn' phases, just spam PoH, PoM on CD, and make sure you shield for Rapture procs.

[Ellumina]

Ellu, most atonement disc don't take inner focus. It's not that strong of a talent for raid healing, and you don't really need the mana save. It's also significantly weakened by not generally having ToT (I see that you do, which I find kind of strange as atonement considering you rarely use GHeal) and from not casting greater heal very often.

Removing inspiration is also kinda risky considering a lot of the big dmg is physical & ancestral healing won't be on everyone in the raid. I thought about removing it too, but when you consider Crush (the major P1 killer) and shrapnel are both physical I changed my mind. Inspiration isn't just useful for tanks <3

You can take Veiled shadows but you gotta use fiend very very early if you do, around the 1 minute mark. I use it at the end of the first platform & still go up to full mana :S You could see if you get leverage out of 4 fiends, I never could though.



<3 ignore my kind of rude tone though, I tend to get defensive when I read things I think are stupid lol

--

Oh also you can holy nova stuff when healing isn't intensive (bloods). It procs spellweave & does decent dps.

That sort of blew my mind regarding the Inner Focus thing. I understand ToT being debatable to use, but I figured IF would still be great for PoH. That's news to me o.O And I just like to have ToT (prefer 2 points, but I'm not willing to take a point out of SoS), hence my kinda odd spec, but hey it works for me.

I wasn't aware Shrapnel was physical damage. Good to know ^^ Although I don't see Inspiration being that helpful for crush personally (since if I heal them up after they get hit, they'll be getting my Inspiration too late anyways unless they get smacked in the face again =P). I spend a lot of my tentacle/Crush time Smiting anyways XD Unless people are buttheads and like to get a bunch of people hit with crush.

[Luamara]

I don't understand why you debate about talents. I'm using my PVP Spec on Ship, Spine and Madness HC. I only change one glyphe, Shadow Word: Death against PoH.
But your Disc should not spamming PW:S. PoH is much more effective on Madness. Also Tihr said how I'm using my mana cds. Oh and my Spirit is that high, because I'm using my Holy gear, just T13 instead of T12^^

[Deleted]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7668&e=8546

It's fine, we killed it with both warlock & hunter np <3 Check my atonement targets.



Lol. My suggestion would be to look down this list:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...ipline_Priest/

Check the other healers. First check their healing partner classes (because that affects how they heal), then check their individual pages to see their spell breakdown. From this you can get a picture as to how their group heals. Now check their armory for spec / reforges. My method of healing isn't the only way that works, and I'm sure some of those logs are completely different to mine. You should always do this for new fights, it's the best way to learn if you're not at high high progression. I always do it before trying fights for myself because you can learn SO much about an encounter that way.

It's also useful to go through your logs & check where you're going wrong. We have something in common: we're both bad with our grace uptime. This is something I'm working on, and something you should to. My PoM usage while pretty good could also be much better. On fights like madness it should pretty much be on CD the entire fight. You can also check your rapture uptime by going to "analyse healing done", click "healing done by spell", tick "Power Word: Shield". This will then show a graph of all PW:S casts & you can see the time between them. If you have a large gap of 30 seconds, you just wasted 20k mana for instance (x2 rapture); note this can only be done during off peak times.

Also forgot to mention, don't get Veiled Shadows for madness. You don't get an extra fiend with it, and it doesn't help your timings. Get 2/3 Darkness instead. (I was in that spec for bosses 1-7, it's good on Spine/Zon'ozz/Warmaster especially)

Your links don't work...

I found that I could just do tons of smite/hf for the first 2 platforms and then spew more PoH doing the 3rd when corruption was up, once it went away I would go back to smite/hf. Catalysm seems to improve your attonement heals aswell. The red buff makes sure people have enough health for attonement and the other healers to have time to bring people above the point at which point the corruption hit will 1shot them. On yellow and blue you have to be more aggressive with your healing and be more reliant on PoH. The only time you actually need to AA+PoH spam is on the last wave of blisterings on the blue platform, spamming PoH on any other platform without a corruption up is a dps loss. The other healers should have no issues with the rest. Also when you get into P2 you will want to focus more on PoH spamming, as the sharpnels targets need pws and they need to be topped, which means PoH is great since the DA overheal will absorb the raidwide dmg and keep them topped. Also if you lack dps on the adds you can mind sear them to, with proper use of cooldowns you don't have to heal all that much when bloods are up, but this depends on strategy though.

Also isn't mind sear better than holy nova?

Last time I did this fight I ended up with 22mill dmg done.

Also what's the point in not having Inner focus? You're basically trading 1/2 sos for 1/1 IF, and to be honest you shouldn't be healing the tank that much outside of penance (which doesn't work with sos anyway). IF saves you about 5,5k mana every 45seconds. Over a 14min fight that is more than 100k mana.

[Deleted]

Also isn't mind sear better than holy nova?

Last time I did this fight I ended up with 22mill dmg done.

Also what's the point in not having Inner focus? You're basically trading 1/2 sos for 1/1 IF, and to be honest you shouldn't be healing the tank that much outside of penance (which doesn't work with sos anyway). IF saves you about 5,5k mana every 45seconds. Over a 14min fight that is more than 100k mana.

Could be true, I'm not sure, you could try both. Holy Nova heals too though at least, albeit for a very small amount.

I wouldn't want to lose SoS, it's really nice to have in case mistakes are made & you can force a reshield. If I was to lose anything I would lose 1/3 mental agility, which you do have a point on. I wonder why anyone would chose to lose SoS instead, the mana gains with mental agility are pitiful. Last madness fight mental agility saves me 20331 mana (the 1/3 talent not the total), while IF saves 101707, there won't be any occasion where the mental agility savings are greater.

[noladrew]

hello! how is everyone