MOP Discipline Priest - What Has Changed (Part 1)

[Deleted]

Hi, guys.

Here's the 1st part of what has changed so far in the MoP Beta from a Discipline Priest's PoV. The release date is approaching quite rapidly, so I guess now is as good as any other time to get prepared for some serious butt whooping !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwuXQGQ1TV4&feature=plcp

Feel free to comment, share your views, give advice, etc... anything that can improve the discussion and the channel is welcome !

[Deleted]

Very good little video, knew most of it but wasn't aware of the Glyph for Penance, or the new Dispel mechanic...

Speaking of which, will anyone actually be using that Glyph? I can only think of a few fights where it would be worth the mana to cast it while moving.

Also, the Divine Hymn change is painful... I understand it entirely, but it makes it no less crap.
Loving Spirit Shell though, as long as it does give the full heals worth (to a cap, maybe), so in fights where there is no lull I could cast it on cooldown with, say, Power Infusion so I'd never overheal and just be a complete bad ass.

[Celentes]

Very good little video, knew most of it but wasn't aware of the Glyph for Penance, or the new Dispel mechanic...

Speaking of which, will anyone actually be using that Glyph? I can only think of a few fights where it would be worth the mana to cast it while moving.

Also, the Divine Hymn change is painful... I understand it entirely, but it makes it no less crap.
Loving Spirit Shell though, as long as it does give the full heals worth (to a cap, maybe), so in fights where there is no lull I could cast it on cooldown with, say, Power Infusion so I'd never overheal and just be a complete bad ass.

It's a pvp glyph for the most part.

[Deleted]

Aye, I was thinking that... many times have I been running away wishing I could use penance.
Worth an ask though in case someone had thought of something.

[scandore8472]

This list is by no means comprehensive

New Spells:

Spirit Shell -Finally we have a tool to pre-shield en mass. Also a great CD to stack a nice shield on the tank before a big hit. Affected by grace and scales with mastery and crit.

Void Shift - Pseudo lay on hands. You can swap health with another player. If you use as a heal, make sure your at full health, or it's kind of a waste. It's not strictly a disc spell, but it's worth mentioning.

Changes:

Atonement and Archangel are now baseline. Also, Archangel no longer restores mana, it's strictly a throughput cooldown.

Inner Focus - Reworked, now increases crit chance by 100% and reduces mana cost by 25%.

Rapture - Now based on spirit instead of max mana, which makes Spirit an extremely important stat for disc. Unfortunately, this means reforging out of spirit is no longer viable, at least not yet.


Glyphs:

Almost all of our glyphs have changed, I'll list some of them here, but it's probably a good idea to read over them all.

Glyph of Penance - I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been baked in to disc as a baseline because IMO this glyph is mandatory, it provides way too much utility.

Glyph of Prayer of Mending - Changed slightly, now a major glyph and also removes 1 charge from PoM.

Glyph of Holy Fire - Instant holy fire, useful for quickly stacking evangelism.

Glyph of Power Word: Shield - Changed slightly, now converts 20% of your PW:S to a heal.

Notable Talents:
Power Infusion - No longer a disc only ability. It's now a talent, and can only be cast on yourself.

From Darkness, Comes Light - Great mana conservation talent with excellent synergy with disc, procs often and the procs can stack twice, allowing some flexibility on when you can use them.

Power Word: Solace - great regen, but creates an awkward rotation for disc because of atonement.

[Jaarh]

Glyph of Power Word: Shield - Changed slightly, now converts 20% of your PW:S to a heal.

I didn't realize that's how it works now. Hm. Definitely going to reconsider my glyph choice with that.

[Kirse]

Speaking of which, will anyone actually be using that Glyph? I can only think of a few fights where it would be worth the mana to cast it while moving.

Also, the Divine Hymn change is painful... I understand it entirely, but it makes it no less crap.
Loving Spirit Shell though, as long as it does give the full heals worth (to a cap, maybe), so in fights where there is no lull I could cast it on cooldown with, say, Power Infusion so I'd never overheal and just be a complete bad ass.

Re: penance - apparently there are lots of new raids that require a lot of movement, and disc has very few tools for healing on the move. Chances are I'll be glpyhing penance for those fights.

The glyph is great for PVP too

SS is excellent. The loss of Divine Hymn makes me cry

[Deleted]

Why nerf the poh glyph? because the new talent for poh? ;E I really want to see how ss works on heroic raids or does it.

Blood Legions disc priest ignored ss fully and didnt use it at all when i watched him doing mop raid as disc.

[Affiniti]

Why nerf the poh glyph? because the new talent for poh? ;E I really want to see how ss works on heroic raids or does it.

Blood Legions disc priest ignored ss fully and didnt use it at all when i watched him doing mop raid as disc.

SS when used in proper situations is very very strong. Just because one person doesn't use it in a limited environment doesn't mean they ignore it fully or that they are even doing it right :P

[Deleted]

SS when used in proper situations is very very strong. Just because one person doesn't use it in a limited environment doesn't mean they ignore it fully or that they are even doing it right :P

Yea, well the thing im wondering is how many situations there will be for the spell Shure now with inner focus change the spell sounds better. Would love to see some disc priest raid healing and how often the spell is used. Cant just find any streams/videos for a disc healing heroic raid testing mop. I love how the disc works for me now and im too scared how the spec will work on heroic raids on mop :S

[Nereth]

The only actual hard throughput increase on SS is from the fact that it benefits from mastery, right? Otherwise, throughput wise it does nothing except un-front-load the heals?

[Deleted]

SShell is indeed very interesting in situations where your raid isn't taking high amounts of damage. You can then pop it and shield as many people as possible, before things get serious again. So in my opinion it shouldn't be used on cooldown, but should rather be timed and placed whenever you have a lesser intensive period of time in the fight.

It benefits from Mastery, but it doesn't seem to benefit from Crit, or even Haste once you start capping the shield faster than the boss damage output, since in that case, you actually have to wait till people lose the shield before putting it back on.

This means that on average your HPS wouldn't necessary increase when you use it, and so using it on cooldown isn't necessary interesting.

Very good little video, knew most of it but wasn't aware of the Glyph for Penance, or the new Dispel mechanic...

Speaking of which, will anyone actually be using that Glyph? I can only think of a few fights where it would be worth the mana to cast it while moving.

Also, the Divine Hymn change is painful... I understand it entirely, but it makes it no less crap.
Loving Spirit Shell though, as long as it does give the full heals worth (to a cap, maybe), so in fights where there is no lull I could cast it on cooldown with, say, Power Infusion so I'd never overheal and just be a complete bad ass.

Glad you enjoyed it !
That glyph is indeed interesting on any fight where you move a lot, so yes, you should find some use for it despite the 20% Mana increase.

[Deleted]

The only actual hard throughput increase on SS is from the fact that it benefits from mastery, right? Otherwise, throughput wise it does nothing except un-front-load the heals?

But then, I don't understand even more... if SS Heals benefit from Mastery because they are bubbles, does that mean that they will not benefit from haste? And if they do... doesn't they mean they'll just be stronger anyway? So you'd ALWAYS use it (assuming you had any mastery, which you should have plenty of)

So now, (for example), a Greater Heal may heal for 50k on average or whatever, when spirit shell is popped, it would heal for 53k as a shield, because mastery interacts with it? So by that logic, isn't it just an amazing cooldown, because you are more powerful, you can do no overhealing?

Also, does anyone know if Vuh Do will have functionality for SS? As of now it perfectly displays everything I need as I've worked it out, with little icons for DA, PW:S, WS, PoM, etc...

[Deleted]

The only actual hard throughput increase on SS is from the fact that it benefits from mastery, right? Otherwise, throughput wise it does nothing except un-front-load the heals?

More or less that. If you have high amounts of Crit and Haste on your gear, you might get in situations where poping it actually makes you loose HPS on average, since it doesn't seem to benefit from Crit, and only benefits from Haste in situation where the boss removes your shields faster than you put them.

---------- Post added 2012-08-15 at 11:11 PM ----------

But then, I don't understand even more... if SS Heals benefit from Mastery because they are bubbles, does that mean that they will not benefit from haste? And if they do... doesn't they mean they'll just be stronger anyway? So you'd ALWAYS use it (assuming you had any mastery, which you should have plenty of)

So now, (for example), a Greater Heal may heal for 50k on average or whatever, when spirit shell is popped, it would heal for 53k as a shield, because mastery interacts with it? So by that logic, isn't it just an amazing cooldown, because you are more powerful, you can do no overhealing?

Not exactly, as I said it right before you posted, ; )

Once you cap the shield on a player (which is roughly equal to 60% of your own max HP), you have to wait till he loses it, before healing again - otherwise you'd be overhealing.

It doesn't seem to be able to Crit neither, which makes it that in a situation where your GH is a crit, you'd have a 100K heal + 30K absorb at least, making at least 130K total heal in that situation.

[Deleted]

More or less that. If you have high amounts of Crit and Haste on your gear, you might get in situations where poping it actually makes you loose HPS on average, since it doesn't benefit from Crit, and only benefits from Haste in situation where the boss removes your shields faster than you put them.

---------- Post added 2012-08-15 at 11:11 PM ----------



Not exactly, as I said it right before you posted, ; )

Once you cap the shield on a player (which is roughly equal to 60% of your own max HP), you have to wait till he loses it, before healing again - otherwise you'd be overhealing.

It doesn't seem to be able to Crit neither, which makes it that in a situation where your GH is a crit, you'd have a 100K heal + 30K absorb at least, making at least 130K total heal in that situation.

Do you think it not being able to crit is intended? (perhaps to discourage Disc Priests wanting crit)?

[Chimaera]

Spirit Shell already accounts for crit in the absorb amount. Unless that is not working as intended.

[Deleted]

A quick correction :

I just found out in a different discussion that SS can not crit because your crit chance is already taken into account when the shield value is calculated.

Here's the formula to calculate the shield amount :

For PoH => Heal value*(1 + mastery/100)*(1 + crit/100)*1.3 = Shield amount

For the other spells => Heal value*(1 + mastery/100)*(1 + crit/100)*(1 + 0.3*crit/100) = Shield amount


This means that crit is actually taken into account, and so even though it ''cannot crit'', it still increases according to your crit.

This also makes it yield a bit more HPS when its activated, and thus can be used on CD on one condition : if you're not already keeping it for a more stressful moment in the fight.

I will add an annotation in the video to specify this.

[Deleted]

A quick correction :

I just found out in a different discussion that SS can not crit because your crit chance is already taken into account when the shield value is calculated.

Here's the formula to calculate the shield amount :

For PoH => Heal value*(1 + mastery/100)*(1 + crit/100)*1.3 = Shield amount

For the other spells => Heal value*(1 + mastery/100)*(1 + crit/100)*(1 + 0.3*crit/100) = Shield amount


This means that crit is actually taken into account, and so even though it ''cannot crit'', it still increases according to your crit.

This also makes it yield a bit more HPS when its activated, and thus can be used on CD on one condition : if you're not already keeping it for a more stressful moment in the fight.

I will add an annotation in the video to specify this.

I am god awful at math but I will take your word for it, bro.

Oh, and, get the new video out soon please!

[Deleted]

I haven't done any raidtesting but I'm a little dubious when it comes to SpiritShell and its actual use in a raid. It's suggested the priest in question is to, during lull periods in the fight right before a big AoE hits, pre-PoH/SS the raid to make the burst a bit more managable.

Taking the above as an example I do have some concerns. Seeing how extremely stressful raiding heroic raids (gathered from watching streams) is on mana, I'm not sure it's viable to actually stand and pre SS the entire raid during a lull period in the fight which I assume would be better spent trying to regen our precious mana. Even if it would be viable, all SS does is steal healing from other classes. Pretty much like DA coating the entire raid with PoH/DA on live atm.
The positive thing about SS is that it increases the effective health of your raid/tank which is useful if the incoming, predictable damage is high enough to more or less oneshoot people. With that being said, I doubt Blizzard is bringing such abilities into T14, having learned from previous bosses (LK HC for example where a disc was mandatory).

So, from my point of view, SS is something you use to "steal healing" from other classes, which, in most cases, would heal up the damage in a lot more efficient way than a disc priest. SS is nice to pad meters as well. But, that's not really viable in a new expansions first tier progress.

[Chimaera]

So long as you do not use Spirit Shell in an attempt to inflate your healing done on the charts, you will be doing healing that has to be done, so why not do it in front of the damage(since you have the free time) which reduces the risk of death, and be more efficient because Spirit Shell gets you your full mastery scaling. This does require you understanding just how much you actually need to heal as your part of the healing team. There is also a synergy with this and Power Word: Solace where you frontload all of that healing through Spirit Shell and then just spam Solace while the other healers take care of the remainder.