Evaluate Me Please

[elkewtf]

Hi guys,

I'm looking for a critique. I have been doing pretty well healing disc, and I love it, but I'm always looking for improvements. I've linked my armory and our most recent WoL.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...horae/advanced
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/cjvcrru4d79hfa5e/

Thanks!

[Madam]

Your toon looks great.

I glanced at your stats first, you seem to value Mastery so when looking at your logs I was surprised to see only 21 PW:S on boss fights?

Yes, your top "heal" is DA, but with so much Mastery one would think your "go to spell" would be shield.

If you are raid healing focused with Atonement spec and spamming PoH, try and add more haste. (More PoH will allow you to stack larger DA. The log you linked shows you may not be getting all that you can from DA as the number of DA is lower than your number of PoH, try not to let DA fall off your focused groups.

Oh, and welcome to the Priest forums, good luck in Heroics.

[elkewtf]

Thanks I will see about adding more haste. I've been using askmrrobot.com for stats and I question the validity of some of their suggestions.

I used to be a bubble bot in Wrath, but when Cata came out, I stopped using it as much. I only recently switched back to disc (from holy) and need to do more research with regards to how disc healing is now that Cata is mature.

[Deleted]

Me self, I dont think so highly of mr robot, so i never ask him.

I rather go on what i feel best for our raid setup and progression.
To me atm its Haste/Crit Balance with some mastery reforging out all Spirit.

[Deleted]

- Your spec is fine, I would change penance glyph for PW:B though. Be careful with Veiled Shadows, it's useless on some fights, but mandatory on others. For Hagara I would spec out of it.
- Your reforging is kinda meh, haste is by far the most powerful stat for disc priests, closely followed by crit. These are my suggestions: (you have too much spirit now as well, although that's not a huge problem on Zon'zz, but you should lose some for Hagara)

Further points... all heroic

Morchok: average stats haste/mastery/crit, lots of preshielding, average spirit
Yor'sahj: average stats haste/mastery/crit, again lots of preshielding, low spirit
Zon'ozz: haste/crit pref, keep some mastery if you shield spam after black (I tend to but I doubt you will as it costs too much mana), high high high spirit & get Veiled Shadows (probably most mana intensive fight in DS, I find it worse than spine HC even now)
Hagara: average stats haste/mastery/crit if you shield a lot, this depends on your mana though, if you're running low on mana then prio haste/crit and PoH/single target spam with GHeal. Average spirit
Ultraxion: crit/haste if you go red, crit/mastery if you go blue, high spirit if red, LOW LOW LOW if you go blue (as low as possible).
Warmaster: favouring crit/haste but keep some mastery too, high spirit is pref
Spine: full crit/haste, mastery is crap, high spirit pref
Madness: average stats, don't get too much haste, get as much as you can without capping PoH. Med-high spirit is pref

Haste strongest stat on all fights. Low/Mid/High depends on your gear, for me it would be 1.8k/2.5k/3.2k spirit for instance (incl trinket).

Regarding builds...

Morchok, atonement pref due to transition, but never smite outside of them, holy fire if you need to keep stacks up
Zon'ozz, atonement/non-atonement is about equal here since the healing is always intensive. If you're having mana issues I'd go atonement since it's more efficient. There is an argument to say it's better overall too since you can get stacks when the ball first spawns & save for black.
Yor'sahj, atonement better, gain stacks in between oozes & use on every wave
Hagara, atonement pref, get stacks after transitions
Ultraxion, atonement for DPS, if you won't be DPSing then it's equal to non atonement
Warmaster, non-atonement with 2/2 SoS preferable, you barely have any time to smite in this fight & having SoS for P2 is very very useful.
Spine, atonement pref for burst & mana efficiency, plus smart healing on debuffs for the most part.
Madness, atonement pref again for the same above reasons

Either spec works for any fight but that's my personal preference (and reasons).

You should never be reforging for mastery as your focus, ever. Unless you go for a 1:1 PoH:Shield rotation, which you won't, mastery is the weaker stat. If you only shield for rapture mastery is almost half as effective as haste in terms of stat weights. More on that here. Onto your WoL...

- First thing I always check is rapture. On Morchok you have a 1 minute gap with no shield, a lot of that is transition but not all of it, and you can still proc rapture during transitions. It's not worth using Maw when you're only getting 0.9% healing. On to Zon'ozz...
- Again huge shield gaps (5:18 try), 30secs at start, then another 40sec gap, then another 30sec gap, then a 25 sec gap. If you do it right you should never have more than 10-15 secs between shield casts. There was 25 secs there where you seemingly casted nothing apart from 1 shield, make sure you never stop casting, even if there is no damage you should be casting something.
- Still on 5:18, you have atonement, why aren't you using it? Holy fire should be on CD regardless, and you can smite just after the void spawns since there is very little damage. This is the only time you can smite (between void spawning & debuffs), but it does allow you to get 5 stacks to use on every black phase. There is a gap with no PoM healing, this spell needs to have continuous uptime throughout the fight (you have 74% uptime, good but could be better). Your Grace uptime is very good (due to good penance usage) at 81%, but it could still be better.

I'm nitpicking a lot, most of these things I neglect a huge amount myself, but it's never bad to know where you can improve. That being said a lot of this doesn't matter that much, the main problem here is how few PoH hits you have. SO MUCH of your healing is obviously being wasted. Compare:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2743&e=3076
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/c...?s=7882&e=8200

125 PoH hits over a 5min fight vs 354 hits
161 DA hits vs 432 hits
26 shields vs 43 shields
0 atonement heals vs 74 (and consequentially 27% AA uptime vs 5.6%)

You might think, well my haste is more than yours. That doesn't make up such a huge difference, this is obviously bad PoH targeting & it not hitting 5 targets. If you check my spell usage on a graph vs yours you will see my PoH healing is usually in the 20-30k HPS range, whereas yours never goes above 15k HPS... see here: (untick everything except Prayer of Healing)

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/c...&s=7882&e=8200
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...&s=2743&e=3076

This is where the main difference lies. My grace/PoM uptime is terrible, and my AA uptime isn't that fantastic either. The two most important things when healing are PoH efficiency & rapture uptime, closely followed by atonement efficiency (casting smites at the right time). Shadowfiend is also important, you only cast it once, why? You have Veiled Shadows, use it! Use fiend during the first black & you'll get another fiend around the 5minute mark, yes you will mana cap in black most likely but it doesn't matter. Disc healing is all about getting as much mana as possible & getting maximum healing from PoH with good targetting & clever AA usage to boost its healing.

Hope this helps.

[elkewtf]

To me atm its Haste/Crit Balance with some mastery reforging out all Spirit.

You reforge out spirit? I have always valued spirit pretty highly.

---------- Post added 2012-03-29 at 07:29 AM ----------

Thank you @Halaberiel, there's a lot of great information here. I will definitely be reevaluating how I'm setup and what I'm doing. It's why I came here

I just took the points in veiled shadows yesterday, prior to that my spec was 31/7/3 with 3 points in darkness and I was taking points in desperate prayer instead of inspiration. http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRsbcoMocuZh I realized that it was a waste to take the points in desperate prayer because I never used it. That said I'm sorry I removed the haste, it seems my throughput was a lot better last night, but I'm missing like 4% haste now. I plan on reforging for haste where I can now. Would you reforge spirit for haste, I'm not keen on that idea.

I try to keep PoM on CD and usually use atonement more. That fight was progression for us and so I think that's where some of my lacking was. Not sure what was going on that I didn't cast anything either, I almost always have something going on. At any rate, I really appreciate the tips, going to make some changes now