Disc Priest healing for H Spine 25m

[Distorted]

So my guild as a whole we've been stuck on Heroic Spine for the last two months or so and have yet to figure it out. I've read guides, looked at videos, and asked other healers, but I feel as a whole that I am sucking it up. I know that on Phoenix Style that I've been doing between 3-4M+ of getting searing plasmas off and I know that Disc Priests are weak in that department but our utility comes into using our shields and barrier for the damage mitigation. I was wondering if I was doing anything wrong or if others have suggestions on what I could be doing more etc. Also I am the primary dispel for blood.

Our strategy as a whole consists of landing and tanks go on the opposite side and the raid on the other side and down three corruptions and leave on up. When death comes out I have been swapping from Inner Fire to Inner Will to dispel (and get Earth on the tanks) and then go back and on the first plate I tend to go Atonement and heal when necessary. We take the Almagamations to the back of the plate and our other tanks picks up the blood. When we have 9 residue, the blood tank taunts the almag and dps gets it down (I am sure we are not doing something right cuz at times we have quite a few pulses). We continue this and go on from there and so forth. My main concern is that we will be getting to p3 somewhat consistently but our tanks will die to kiting. We've gone to a set up of 6 healers and 3 1/2 tanks, but I don't know. I'm just pretty frustrated with this fight as well as our whole raid group is and want to down this boss tonight. Any suggestions and advice would be helpful.

Our roster tank wise and healing is a bit off at times due to people posting out on raid nights due to various things. We usually go with:

2 Paladin Tanks
1 Kitty/Bear
1 Warrior
1 Holy Priest
1 Disc Priest (me)
2 Holy Paladin's
1 Druid or
2 Shamans (or 1 shaman)

Can't post my armory or WoL since this is my first post and have to wait.

[Chimaera]

Disc priests are extremely weak on this fight for raw throughput. Your only real significant value as a disc is shielding debuffed players when they are going to take superheated nucleus or grip damage. Beyond that poh coating to keep health bars high all the time or helping dps through atonement is really all you can do. I see nothing wrong with the basic premise of your strategy. It all comes down to execution and minimizing the damage you can minimize by trimming the Amalgamations as low as possible, breaking grips with 0 damage ticks without over damaging them so they die early, and gripping your kiting tank from the bottom back to the top when the blood are on stun dr, otherwise stunning them at each end of Deathwing's back so as to have the tank take as little damage as possible. I recommend using as many resto shaman as you can. Having slt for each damage spike makes the fight significantly safer and they can heal the fight very effectively on 25. 3 full time tanks plus a cat switching to bear seems like overkill.

[Distorted]

I agree and I have no idea why we seem to struggle when we get to plate three. That's what I thought and that's what I have been doing and I don't know if it seems like I am over healing or not healing enough etc. I think our biggest problem is the execution and minimizing mistakes. I think we are leaving the almags stay up way too long during the pulses etc. We have one of our rogues log over to his shaman for this fight the past couple weeks so we've been using two or so, and apps for recruits etc. have been quite low for a while and I know our GM/Raid Leader and officers are getting pissed because we can not get past this fight. I agree with the SLT and myself have been trying to power lvl a shaman and gear them just for this just in case I have to switch. We are also using our SLT when our healing leader calls for it, since our shamans have been using it when there really isn't much damage so they could use it again on p3 (another issue on itself). Yes I agree about the tanking and it is cutting out of our dps and it just seems like we are quite slow on the almag/blood transitions and seems like we are taking very long to get to plate three. On WoL we are on the realm Area 52 and guild is Criticism. Usually Thursdays and half Monday's raids are our Spine Attempts.

[Comfort]

How are your handling the Bloods? 1 big source of damage on heroic is from the blood deaths and when it comes to the last plate there are many many bloods as I'm sure you have seen.

You want to have controlled dps on this, to do it the safest way. You should have specific dps assigned to killing bloods, a ret paladin/dk are generally good as they have personal CDs they can use for themselves. What they want to do is make sure they are DPSing the bloods down so that you don't have multiple bloods dying at the same time. You generally then ban other dps from hitting bloods unless the dps/blood tank requests help.

Next the tank kiting, what class is it (I ask 1 as you should manage this with 1 tank kiting)?

Warrior is generally best suited due to their aoe stun and mobility, but a paladin is also a good choice for their stun from glyphed holy wrath. You should also have a holy paladin with that glyph to assist on bloods while kiting.
Doing it this way. You would have the blood tank kite them to the starting point of the spine and stun the adds, and then move back towards the raid group where when the adds reach that place the holy paladin would stun the bloods while the add tank keeps kiting to avoid being hit as much as possible.
You can also have a priest in your raid group help out by gripping the add tank if they feel they need the help to avoid being hit.

Your other tank would pretty much do what I expect he is doing, while helping to pick up the few stray bloods that might appear while kiting.
If you feel that this puts too much strain on your amalgamation tank, then you can have the feral cat take an uncritable spec to help pick up the stray bloods.

You may also find that you are losing healers, you should probably make sure that you are using bop on healers at critical times. Shamans a especially high threat on this fight.

Other than this you might need to look at your CD usage. Its ok to use some CDs even if they are personal on the 3rd plate when you are still lowering the amalgamation as you have quite a few stacks of the debuff from the amalgamation deaths, which have significantly lowered your raid HP pools.

[Distorted]

Thanks for the reply Comfort. After a disappointing night on our attempts, and our raid leaders decision to change the strategy for the first hour and countless wipes, I can say I officially hate this fight.

Tonight we used 1 Blood DK, 1 Prot Paladin, 1 Prot Warrior, and then kitty/bear. At the beginning and through the first two plates our feral druid stays kitty until after the roll and picks up the bloods, only 9 for the residue. The DK was tanking the almags (was getting trucked and mentioned to RL), and the prot warrior and paladin were on bloods. Going into plate three the DK continues tanking almags, while the warrior and paladin kite. To be honest having 3 1/2 tanks has been gimping us pretty bad.

On the bloods killing them is two DK's for the first two plates and after that one goes to the almag. The DK's are both Frost, but I think they may be switching to Unholy for their CD, again another long story. We usually hold up killing bloods for a few seconds after the roll so that we can heal people up. Personally my numbers were way down, because I feel like crud, and couldn't focus too much except not to throw up on my monitor lol. Our CD's change often, but tonight we used one of our holy priests hymns, tank raid cd (raid wall), and Aura mastery for lift one. On lift two we use barrier and our other holy priests hymn. On the rolls it was our resto druid's tranq and another AM from the holy pally. After we come out of the rolls I think our Shaman has been using the SLT, but we are trying to use it discretionally since he was throwing it down with people that had very little plasmas on them.

I think the main problem I have is, and without providing a parse and my armory (which is hard) since I don't have the posts yet, is that my searing plasma is low and I didn't know if I was doing something wrong or what. It sucks being the primary dispeler because I know my numbers get much lower than others on that. Our RL is using Phoenix Style and I think I've been taking out about 3-4M+ going with a mix of shields, atonement, and PoH and using PoM on cd. I really don't know any other way except maybe I suck at playing disc on spine, or I need to re-look at my spec, reforges and gems. I know our RL and officers were pissed because plasmas weren't going down like they wanted it to. Honestly I can say that I am sick of this fight and sick of the complaining I am hearing, but yeah.

We only raid three nights a week Mon, Tue, and Thur for about 3 hrs each. I just don't know if it's group chemistry on this fight or what, but yeah. I just kind of want advice now to see what I can do better on the fight to help with plasmas (which isn't much imo) or if I should switch to holy. I honestly see the benefits of the disc priest in this fight, but at the moment, our leaders our looking for a scapegoat which kind of sucks.

[Deleted]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/116839/

Without actually checking what exactly you're doing I'm gonna guess a few things that are probably going wrong and you should look into.
Cooldown assignment, when to pop what.
Healers switching to aoe heals to inflate their hps while the plasma kills people!
Not killing enough blood and the tanks get swarmed!
The raid not standing on the tanks when the place gets swarmed with bloods and they take agro and die!
Fiery grip flat out killing people because people don't nuke them down in time, there's a timer for a reason!

Now i've only killed it on 10m so my advice may be incorrect, but I think you should pop 1-2 big cooldowns for the nuke and the rest for the roll with STL always being there for the roll. Here's an example:
Pala AM(2min), DG(2min)
War SW(2min)
Priest PWB(3min), holy hymn(3min)
Druid FR(3min), tranq(3min)
DK VB(3min)
Shaman STL(3min)

1st roll stl+vb+2x hymn+dg+fr
1st nuke: sw+am
2nd nuke: pwb+tranq
2nd roll stl+vb+2xhymn+dg+fr
3rd nuke: sw+am
4th nuke: pwb+tranq
3rd roll stl+vb+3xhymn+dg+fr
5th nuke sw+am+lust
6th nuke pwb+tranq

As a disc priest just focus on dispels, shield all the grip targets with plasma (I checked logs you have frequent deaths) and anyone who drops very low with plasma. Spam hf/smite till using PoH makes sense, keep pom on cd. Towards the end of fight you will be almost only be poh spamming, as the bloods keep dying.

[Rfx]

Sheer throughput should already be covered by your Holy Priest/Paladins/Druid in regards to the searing plasma debuff.
If you need to really need to help out on the searing plasma:
- Drop a penance on a new debuffed target (to stack grace) then spam gheal

If the Searing Plasma is fine then i'd just focus on shielding people who get gripped before the tick, spamming poh on all 5 groups to build DA (With the dps buff bloods drop quite often so DA/PoH is really effective hps wise for disc (though it'll do little towards searing plasma)

Focus on preventing dmg not healing searing plasma unless you really need to or have nothing else to do.

Get your shamans to dispel imo

You're not using PI as much as you could and I wouldn't bother with Inspiration.

[Distorted]

Hey there Yilar thanks for the response. I totally agree with you about the CD's usage especially for the rolls, but I don't know I seem like I'm the only one out there. I think I maybe switching to AoE healing too soon, but I usually only do PoH if there is three people in a group that have searing plasma, but I think I should just focus one at a time and do a penance/gheal on the target. I don't run meters for the fights and I haven't been checking logs on the other healers about if they are inflating their numbers with AoE heals.

I've also mentioned it to RL about getting rid of extra corrupted bloods by killing them and having an almag run over them before the roll to clean up some of it that way in plate 3 we don't have 50-60+. Also you are correct last night our fiery grips were absolutely awful. They were either getting nuked down too fast or not getting hit, and it's hard throwing a shield up and healing through then bam. We get the blame for a 5 second grip :S. I've also been shielding all the people that have been getting griped and the ones that have searing plasma on them. Also if I'm dispeling I will throw out a shield to help out especially if its before superheated nucleus. The HF/Smite sounds correct, and was wondering with AA do I pop on cd? Also is stance dancing required? I've gotten some feedback and seen some logs where some priests if they are dispeling go from Inner Fire to Inner Will.

Rfx yeah that's what I normally do is try to use penance on cd if I can. Yeah the last few raids I've really been trying to focus on preventing damage, but the other officers/healers are complaining about searing plasmas being up and was thinking about going holy :S just for that. I will ask our healing lead about that since other people are probably better off at dispeling and still healing (healing rain ftw) then having a lowly oh 3-5k heal with a dispel lmao. I agree with you there I don't use PI as much as I should and should be using it more , thanks for the friendly reminder. I chose Inspiration because before raid they told me I was tank healing, and afterwards didn't have a chance to go respec.

Also I have one other question. Would haste or mastery be better for this fight? I haven't seen a very definitive answer on this.

[Deleted]

As disc you should be dispelling. I usually just stay IW for the duration of the fight, at least on 10m.

[Deleted]

Hm, I may be wrong here, but are you playing the girly pants spirit and mastery disc? If so, yeah, you're gonna have a hard time.

Myself I'm stacking haste and crit and I must say, I just blow up the debuffs. Yeah, we can't provide the amazing stability + AoE healing of a shammy and druid on that fight, but as long as I'm just focusing on single-target healing the debuffs it all goes well. Yeah, I also have to do some shielding during rolls and at 9 stacks, preventing the guys with debuff from taking too much damage, but mainly it's plasma control. Heck, in the whole fight I barely even touch PoH, only during rolls.

As for strategy, there are more than a hundredth different ways to do this fight and every second group will say to you that their strat is the best, but it really comes down to actually choosing one and than mastering it. Trust me, the worst thing you can do is changing your strategy every week.

[Ellumina]

On this fight, I find that there is always something to heal. Even when it doesn't look like it and you can be smiting, there is someone to heal. If you're not healing someone, debuffs will fall behind, and there will be a high number of debuffs out which should not be the case.

I also run AA/A spec for Spine, but I will always prioritize healing debuffs over DPSing / Smiting. Your use of GH is nonexistent and your Penance is far too low. Pop a quick Penance on a debuffed target, and GH as needed. Your lack of debuff healing will put more weight and strain on your other healers. Your Grace uptime is at a measly 9% (on one attempt I am looking at), and your Raptures seem very low (to put into perspective, I gained 411k mana from Rapture in a 11:12 minute fight while you gained 336k mana from Rapture in a 12:03 fight, and I don't tend to time my Raptures terribly well myself). Do you have a Rapture timer addon? If not, I would recommend that you get one to help try and get your mana returns on CD. Personally, I use the Ingela's Rapture addon.

It should not be necessary that you go Holy on this fight. Disc is indeed weaker in terms of pure throughput on this fight (with a lack of a ground AoE / area AoE that other healers have), but the spec is still perfectly viable, and Barrier can be very helpful for Nuclear Blasts. I must admit, I was very tempted to go Holy this fight myself (simply because Holy Priest can rock out some really awesome numbers on Spine), but I stuck with Disc for variety.

Your spec and glyphs seem alright. Your spirit is somewhat high, considering you're also running with Heart of Unliving. If you're not having too many mana concerns on this fight, I would drop some of that spirit towards other secondary stats. If you're not having any mana concerns, that could also be a bit of a problem in the fact that I always find myself burning a lot of mana on this fight due to the amount of healing required. For your meta gem, you could go Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (ever since they changed it to 3% increased critical effect over 3% increased critical damage), which will slightly increase your throughput compared to your increased mana pool. This is also a fight I would prefer to go a bit more mastery and crit over haste, but I generally reforge to haste > mastery > crit (also due to my shared gear with Shadow) and I do not reforge specifically for this fight. I am also a firm believer that there is no wrong way to reforge a Disc Priest, and it depends on playstyle as well.

To give you some more comparison/perspective, here is some more information about our group:
3 Tanks
- Prot Pally (tanking adds for amalg by plate)
- Feral Druid (tanking amalg)
- Prot Warrior (kiting adds)
6 Healers
- 2 Holy Paladins (1 is on dispel duty)
- Resto Shaman
- Resto Druid
- 1 Holy Priest, 1 Disc Priest
Healing CD rotation
- SLT & Divine Hymn (Holy) every roll to assist removing debuffs
- Power Word: Barrier 1st Nuclear Blast
- Tranquility 2nd Nuclear Blast
My WoL from this week's Spine kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...ne/?s=56&e=729

[Markle]

I looked at your logs for your longest attempt 12:03 and noticed a couple of things if you want to personally increase you HPS numbers for the fight. Now i understand your primary job is shields/dispels and these tasks will take priority over maintaining really high HPS but i am convinced you can up your numbers significantly. Disc is generally pretty weak for this fight in terms of AoE throughput but can be quite a strong single target healer.

imagine that your holy priests and shamans/druids will be able to put out a ton of stabilizing AoE healing so not sure how useful you Prayer of healing DA stacks are going to be for most of the fight.

Usage of spells
(1) you cast 32 prayer of mendings x 10 second CD = 330 seconds / (12x60+03 second fight) = ~45% meaning you could theoretically get about twice as many prayer of mendings out there.
(2) your penance usage is extremely low, i.e. 4 uses in a 12 minute fight, its a handy way to build up Grace stacks.
(3) zero greater heals cast - you must have a few spare seconds to help with healing plasmas (i.e. penance + GH a few times)
(4) you received archangel buff 8 times in a 12 minute fight (8x30sec CD/723 second fight = 33% of possible usage) this could also go up quite a bit (i.e. build stacks on amalg then spam heal like crazy during nuclear blast, build stacks on tendon then spam heal during rolls. The +15% healing buff goes a long way on this fight use it as often as you can and make sure it is up when you hymn / PoH makes a huge difference.

Other than that, other people have had good advice, use the same strat each week, get a solid dependable healing CD rotation and good luck with spine!

[Distorted]

Thanks Yilar I may just run IW for the first two plates and go IF on the third plate.

Myhv I reforged last night to holy just in case they asked me to switch but we ran out of time. I was going to test it out on Monday, but after some great feedback I don't think it will be necessary. Your stat weights seem what I've been thinking about doing. I usually reforge out of spirit and go haste/crit/mastery about evenish if I can since I don't think one stat is completely superior. I also agree I think we've changed our strat a few times, but the most consistent one we have been doing is getting us to lift one on plate three.

Ellumina thanks for the advice. I will definitely start penance on CD with those that have the debuff and start using Inner Focus more with greater heal. I do use Ingela's Rapture so it helps me keep track of it, but I usually just shield people that are griped or who have the debuff although I do not get a rapture proc from it if it busts on a tank since it's on cd but yeah I can start shielding a bit more. Going into plate 3 or at the end of 2 I do tend to have some mana issues, but I'm starting to conc pot on the lift to get some added mana before the roll. I never thought about using the crit one, but I may just change that out, and thank you for pointing that out. I can continue to reforge out of more spirit. You're healing CD rotation will be mentioned to our raid leader and I appreciate the feedback.

Again just want to thank all of you for helping out and anymore suggestions I am more than willing to listen and learn .

---------- Post added 2012-06-01 at 12:56 PM ----------

Markle thanks for the reply. I kind of noticed that my usage was low on a lot of things so that will change come Monday, and hopefully gain us a kill. Thanks again for the advice and I think last night I was trying to HF/smite a bit more to help with mana regen, but mainly the added healing. I think instead of using PoH so much on the first few plates, that I will go more single target since we have other great AoE healers. Thanks again for the advice

[Ellumina]

Thanks Yilar I may just run IW for the first two plates and go IF on the third plate.

Myhv I reforged last night to holy just in case they asked me to switch but we ran out of time. I was going to test it out on Monday, but after some great feedback I don't think it will be necessary. Your stat weights seem what I've been thinking about doing. I usually reforge out of spirit and go haste/crit/mastery about evenish if I can since I don't think one stat is completely superior. I also agree I think we've changed our strat a few times, but the most consistent one we have been doing is getting us to lift one on plate three.

Ellumina thanks for the advice. I will definitely start penance on CD with those that have the debuff and start using Inner Focus more with greater heal. I do use Ingela's Rapture so it helps me keep track of it, but I usually just shield people that are griped or who have the debuff although I do not get a rapture proc from it if it busts on a tank since it's on cd but yeah I can start shielding a bit more. Going into plate 3 or at the end of 2 I do tend to have some mana issues, but I'm starting to conc pot on the lift to get some added mana before the roll. I never thought about using the crit one, but I may just change that out, and thank you for pointing that out. I can continue to reforge out of more spirit. You're healing CD rotation will be mentioned to our raid leader and I appreciate the feedback.

Again just want to thank all of you for helping out and anymore suggestions I am more than willing to listen and learn .

---------- Post added 2012-06-01 at 12:56 PM ----------

Markle thanks for the reply. I kind of noticed that my usage was low on a lot of things so that will change come Monday, and hopefully gain us a kill. Thanks again for the advice and I think last night I was trying to HF/smite a bit more to help with mana regen, but mainly the added healing. I think instead of using PoH so much on the first few plates, that I will go more single target since we have other great AoE healers. Thanks again for the advice

I'm not a big conc pot fan myself. I usually try to suggest Shadowfiend + HoH + Volcanic Potion combo. I stopped using conc pots ages ago in both Holy and Disc. Macro your Inner Focus to GH if you need to (which is what I do, so that I'm always using it on CD). Just a suggestion ^^

[calboy67]

6 healers seem like a bit of an overkill especially when no one is pulling exceptional HPS (which means, you should be able to drop 1 healer for a dps).

One way to make plate 3 easier is to get there faster. That translates to great dps on amalgamations on 1st and 2nd plates.
The result is significantly less bloods to deal with on 3rd plate.
After more nerfs recently, sometimes we arrive at 3rd plate so early that the tank doesn't even have to kite because there were only like 4-5 bloods for him to tank.

Seeing how your group really has no problem reaching 3rd plate, only suggestion I have, which others haven't mentioned, is to go through first two plates as quickly as possible. It will make the 3rd plate that much easier.

As for the healing advices other have given, I can't say I agree with some of them. Take a look at my healing break down and see for yourself.

add this to the end of worldoflog domain
/reports/rt-m2nmtw927hy863sh/details/7/?s=6323&e=6937

[Rfx]

As disc you should be dispelling. I usually just stay IW for the duration of the fight, at least on 10m.

Why should a disc priest be dispelling? Pretty sure shamans can do it just as well while still having shit like healing rain down. blood explosions while searing plasma up is the biggest issue I feel on 25H atm due to the increased dps.

I feel having a shaman do it and chaining PoH to build DA is much more effective and gives the holy priest(s)/druid(s)/paladin(s) time to pick up the searing plasma.

My logs:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=6119&e=6803
Distorted:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/9...?s=7773&e=8496

Our shaman loses about 5k HPS due to dispelling instead of focusing primarily on healing. But that is counteracted by the increase in healing/mitigation from chaining PoH. (Obviously gear is still a factor but if you have the ability to chain PoH and then swap in and out of healing searing plasma when you get overwhelmed you'll be able to do more then your shaman can)

If there is less damage hitting the raid, its going to be easier to out heal searing plasma.

[Deleted]

Chain Heal > PoH, unlike PoH Chain Heal can hit outside one group and thus can heal all the plasma targets, with PoH you're just healing people that are already being healed by passive healing or leftover hots, thus you're heal sniping. Also DA does very little when you substract the heal stealing it does from effloerence, healing rain etc. If people with plasma drop low you can always use PWS to counteract the blood explosion. Sure towards the end PoH becomes a better heal as the passive healing doesn't cover the blood explosions, but at that point in time you only have to deal with like a handful of dispels and it hardly matters who does it and that's why I suggest leaving it with the person who has always been doing it so there's less mistakes.

[Comfort]

@ Rfx : You should not be poh as disc on this fight, at least early on, ground aoes for the most part will take care of people w/o debuffs and you will have healers more focused on the ones with debuff. its a waste of mana to be doing it this way and is very ineffective towards healing the plasma debuff. Doing it this way you stop smart heals like wg/coh/pom/etc from being less effective on healing the plasma as generally the people in the raid who will be deficit hp will be the tanks/people with the plasma debuff.

single target heals are far more useful. Though on rolls and aoe from the amalgamation explosion its very nice as long as you pw: s people in danger of going too low.

And either disc or shaman is suitable for dispelling. I have done this on 10 + 25 as disc and on 10 man as paladin (which imo was the best on mana out of the 2 and i still kept up competitive hps, though on 25 man you generally want your hpala/hpriest/rdruids healing only). Shamans benefit from lower mana cost from talent, as can pala from glyph and priest with IW. But priest also has mass dispel and can dispel 2 debuffs on the same person. As long as the other healers in your team are making the hps while you fill this job then there should be no problem.

The most important thing is that your dispeller is reliable.

[calboy67]

to posters above

It really depends on how the debuffs is handled. As it stands, there are other healers way more efficient at single target healing than disc priest. If they're already spamming big single target heal and you still penance + gheal, there's probably going to be more overhealing across the board.
On the other hand, as group-restricted as PoH is, as long as there are three people in that group that needs healing (might it be debuff, targeted by grip, or simply health deficit) PoH gonna be more useful hps / hpm wise. Since the individual heal from PoH isn't that great, it prevents a lot more burst overhealing by other single target healers (if you have such assignment in your raid) Moreover, it's even worthier to heal debuff or health deficit with PoH if it's just right before roll position or when you're about to pop a group of blood adds, or when amalgamation is about to aoe pulse.

Obviously, how you heal on this fight largely depends on how your healing comp works as a group. Heavy usage of single target healing might have worked for you but would have gotten me kicked out of my guild long ago.

Lastly, I don't like to use WoL ranking to measure a healer's capacity or theorycrafting because there are so many variables at play - however, it's noteworthy to point out almost all of the top parsing disc priests on this fight in 25m heroic prefer heavy usage of PoH / DA stacking to single target healing.
The healing break down of PoH / DA to other single target heals is so landslided it's not even funny.