Tips for a Holy learning Disc?

[sarad]

So I tried picking up Disc before and found out that I'm pretty bad at it. Horrendous, actually. I can hold my own in Holy but I'd like to pick up Disc as an off-spec to bring the absorbs to the table.

Problems

• I don't understand when to smite heal and when not to.
• I don't understand when would be a good time to pop AA, or even when to be building the stacks if I'm PoH spamming (Holy habit I guess)
• Having a hard time grasping when to stop PoHing and when to start hitting people with GHeals. (Too used to flashing people back up for serendipity and then resuming PoHs)
• PW:S on someone who's not the tank: when to do it?

Gear I can work with

• What I have equipped (Armory link is in the sig)
• World Mender's Pants
• Non-Heroic tier Hands, Chest, and Legs
• VP Trinket
• Spare VP boots and Wand
• Normal Maw and Ti'tahk.

I'd like to keep my current holy gear setup, so use of the spare tier gier + the tailoring legs would be preferred, but if we can come up with a reforge setup for some of the gear (like the heroic pieces), I wouldn't mind sharing gear.

I two heal most fights with a Druid, for progression we have either our Shaman or Paladin help out. I much prefer healing alongside the Shaman at the moment.

Any help you guys can give me would be very appreciated by me and my guild.

[langning]

Do you have any logs of your playing disc?

[sarad]

Never took it outside of an LFR because it was truly that horribad. In holy I normally maintain 22-30k HPS, in disc it was 9k.

[Deleted]

So I tried picking up Disc before and found out that I'm pretty bad at it. Horrendous, actually. I can hold my own in Holy but I'd like to pick up Disc as an off-spec to bring the absorbs to the table.

Problems

• I don't understand when to smite heal and when not to.
• I don't understand when would be a good time to pop AA, or even when to be building the stacks if I'm PoH spamming (Holy habit I guess)
• Having a hard time grasping when to stop PoHing and when to start hitting people with GHeals. (Too used to flashing people back up for serendipity and then resuming PoHs)
• PW:S on someone who's not the tank: when to do it?

Gear I can work with

• What I have equipped (Armory link is in the sig)
• World Mender's Pants
• Non-Heroic tier Hands, Chest, and Legs
• VP Trinket
• Spare VP boots and Wand
• Normal Maw and Ti'tahk.

I'd like to keep my current holy gear setup, so use of the spare tier gier + the tailoring legs would be preferred, but if we can come up with a reforge setup for some of the gear (like the heroic pieces), I wouldn't mind sharing gear.

I two heal most fights with a Druid, for progression we have either our Shaman or Paladin help out. I much prefer healing alongside the Shaman at the moment.

Any help you guys can give me would be very appreciated by me and my guild.

1. You "smite heal" when the incomming dmg is low enough for the other healer(s) to heal it without you. Once you do the fights a few times you will know.
2. You pop AA when dmg is high and you really need it, or you can simply pop it to get some mana back while you build up another 5stack of evang for later.
3. Always a tough call when to stop PoH, as it depends on encounters. I personally usually just spam PoH and fall back on PWS/FH to compensate if I feel imminent danger.
4. You PWS "others" when they are low and you think they might die if you don't shield them, or if they have any kind of incomming dmg; morchok>soakers - warlord>debuff - yor>fixate - hagara>shattered ice - ultraxion>bad soaking classes - Warmaster>stick with GH - Spine>grips - madness>debuff.

You will want less spirit as Disc. Buy another pair of VP boots (reforge spirit away), Make sure all your red gem sockets are 50int (I see bad gems on armory!). You don't want to replace heroic gear with non-heroic gear, so forget that. Intellect is absolute king as disc, the more you have the more you can heal, so don't bother with VP trinkets (they don't have int).

If you want "high" hps as disc just spam PoH as much as possible with 1 shield every 12 seconds. If you want more efficient healing add penance/pom to the mix.

[tala77]

From just a quick glance at your Holy gear, I'm seeing a few things I would adjust for a disc spec. I believe the standard haste goal is 12.5%, and you have quite a bit extra. It boils down to personal preference and healing style and such but I think 12.5% gives your Gheal a cast time of about 2.2 or 2.1 seconds, which is decent. The 12.5% gives you an extra tick of renew (which I rarely use as disc) but it is good to know you have it if you ever need it. I would try to get some more mastery if you want to get high numbers as disc. I am currently using the trinket Foul Gift of the Demon Lord (from Well of Eternity) simply for the mastery proc. It can be very powerful on ProH-heavy fights.

I have a few tips from my healing style, if you want to look into them or try them or even come up with a variation of your own.
- Penance is a very efficient heal, but it can also be used to build up 3 stacks of Grace quickly. If you know heavy damage will be coming, or if you need to keep your eye on the tank, Penance or use a Heal (if no heavy damage) every now and then to keep the stacks active.
- I use Inner Focus for ProH. It increases the chance of the spell to crit, and seeing as ProH puts aegis on the group anyway, I think crit will cause extra absorb on the aegis. Use Gheal instead of Flash heal to help reduce the cooldown of Inner Focus. They are about the same mana cost.
- I like to pre-aegis the tank before the pull. If you cast Penance or Heals or Renews that crit, you can build up a shield on the tank for upwards of 60k. Out of combat, your regen will be fine. I find that using Heal does not decrease my mana much at all, and Renew is like a buffer in case you don't get a string of Heal/Penance crits.

Hope this helps!

[zakaluka]

[*]Having a hard time grasping when to stop PoHing and when to start hitting people with GHeals. (Too used to flashing people back up for serendipity and then resuming PoHs)[*]PW:S on someone who's not the tank: when to do it?[/LIST]

Only gonna hit on these two things.

Flash -> serendipity PoH is analogous to PW:S -> BT PoH.
Use PW:S for raid spot-heals during AoE, not GHeal. GHeal is for periods of directed/spread moderate damage, or tank support.

[lamchopp]

1. You "smite heal" when the incomming dmg is low enough for the other healer(s) to heal it without you. Once you do the fights a few times you will know.
2. You pop AA when dmg is high and you really need it, or you can simply pop it to get some mana back while you build up another 5stack of evang for later.
3. Always a tough call when to stop PoH, as it depends on encounters. I personally usually just spam PoH and fall back on PWS/FH to compensate if I feel imminent danger.
4. You PWS "others" when they are low and you think they might die if you don't shield them, or if they have any kind of incomming dmg; morchok>soakers - warlord>debuff - yor>fixate - hagara>shattered ice - ultraxion>bad soaking classes - Warmaster>stick with GH - Spine>grips - madness>debuff.

You will want less spirit as Disc. Buy another pair of VP boots (reforge spirit away), Make sure all your red gem sockets are 50int (I see bad gems on armory!). You don't want to replace heroic gear with non-heroic gear, so forget that. Intellect is absolute king as disc, the more you have the more you can heal, so don't bother with VP trinkets (they don't have int).

If you want "high" hps as disc just spam PoH as much as possible with 1 shield every 12 seconds. If you want more efficient healing add penance/pom to the mix.

I'd like to add to what Yilar was saying:
1. Smite healing is still a heal it isn't an on/off "I'm going to be dpsing now" phase. Smite heals are little stronger than heal so, ideally, use it when you can afford to use heal and keep everyone at close to or topped off.

2. AA is an amazing 30 second cd. This means that you can and should be using it often but not necessarily every time it's off cooldown. Obviously timing it and holding it off for a high damage phase would make more sense.

3. Prayer of healing is efficient if 3 or more people in that group need healing. This is because other healers may be healing them already and if you prayer of healing a group with 3 or less it's wasted. Otherwise, use GH.

4. Contrary to what Yilar was saying, you shouldn't approach PW:S with the mentality that it is a lifesaving ability.

Yes it can be, but PW:S has so much more to offer that you want to be using it outside those situations as well. This is where disc/holy separate. Using PW:S requires you to think like a resto druid and anticipate incoming damage then shielding them before they take damage. Remember PW:S is one of your key abilities that gives you mana back through rapture. Can you use it during aoe-damage phases? Absolutely. Why? Because of borrowed time. You can shield someone and throw out a prayer of healing. Not only is PW:S itself awesome but it boosts other heals through renewed hope giving +10% crit to your next flash,greater,heal and penance. There is no assured method of when to use PW:S on the raid but keep in mind that PW:S will give you mana back, a haste buff and boost your next heal

Being a good disc priest is by no means simple. There maybe times when you PW:S someone who just stopped taking damage or little damage but that's fine as long as you practice and understand the damage patterns and react accordingly.

[Deleted]

Just to add to what was already said, if you want HPS you're in the wrong spec. If you want to be a good disc priest you need to accept the role of the guy who makes other healers life a lot easier. We are giving shields to 5 people at a time, we stack that shields to a ludicrous amounts if we have time, we throw biggest instant heals in the game and we can make someone's health jump up like it's on fire.

But we can't really cope with constant high damage or, even worse, huge random hits. We have the most annoying and least sensible mana regen mechanic in the game, but as a reward it gives us a lot of starts to work with, since we don't waste them on spirit. There are fights where you'll just be dicked over by the mechanics, pretty much cutting your regen in half, but as a bonus, every other fight will allow you to take advantage of damage amplifiers and just rocket your healing with antonment. Heck, it even ignores LoS rules allowing for some amazing saves.

Unlike holy, you can't just rush in a new fight and expect to wing it. For disc, every fight as about studying, learning the phase, understanding where and how you can take advantage of your tools. And it is also reliant on you being a bit lucky and hell of a lot focused. And I can't stress that enough! Being a bit sleepy of affected, being distracted IRL or simply focusing too much on smiting the boss will be extremely obvious and will affect your performance in a major and negative ways.

[constantduty]

A couple of other things to keep in mind:

Power Infusion - make sure to dole it out on CD to a caster DPS unless you really feel like you will need the throughput.
Rapture - download ingela's rapture or set up something in power auras to track its CD.
Grace - Don't ignore it. i.e. if you are helping to clear the searing plasma debuff off of someone make sure to heal them with penance first to build 3 stacks of grace (24% boost to healing). No reason to work harder than you have to.

A skilled Discipline priest thrives on the spec's synergy (PW:S nets a haste buff and mana return) and knows the raid encounter inside and out. Throw yourself into the spec and have fun!