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  1. #21
    Deleted
    Being LFR, you could be spamming atonement only and still come out perfectly fine, but lets imagine these as normal/hc bosses.

    Blade Lord: your spirit shell is very low. You can spirit shell almost every unseen strike (it starts getting slightly delayed if you need to move from a tornado or smt and cast shell 2-3 seconds too late. Not only it gives amazing numbers, but in a normal/hc situation, spirit shell can save some insta-gibs from unseen strike. So, what you do for this boss is: shield the tank before pull>penance the boss while moving to position (if you have it glyphed) under the effects of borrowed time that you just got from the shield> holy fire (also can be done while still moving if glyphed) > 3x smite. When you see the unseen strike counter @15 seconds left, pop archangel/spirit shell/power infusion and cover the raid in shells, which will mitigate A LOT of dmg (in 10 man, prolly most of it, and power infusion might not be needed since you will cap spirit shell anyway). After unseen strike, re-charge the 5xevangelism, while not forgetting to shield the tank for rapture. If there is another disc, try shielding the wind debuff ppl (you should have them marked on your frames, and its good to keep an eye on them to toss a shield in case they dip). Repeat the whole spirit shell thing as close to 15 seconds before the next strike as you can. For the gauntlet phase if you can spare the attention, give ppl around you few shields, if you're specced into body&soul it will help them with moving and give them an hp buffer. Once back at the boss, you can prayer of healing your raid if ppl were slow and got low, or you can just smite if the raid is stable. Depending on how stable your tank looks over the fight you can use Inner Focus for a gheal on him when he dips low or you can use it with spirit shell for fatter shields (in 10 man, it will prolly cap it so no real need to use it like that).

    Garalon: technically if you can stand in the legs and dps them with 50% more dmg, atonement can be really good, especially in a 10 man environment. Spirit shelling before the crushes is nice (its a bit harder to predict when they will happen outside a very organized raid, so you can just use it on cd if knowing when your kiters switch is complicated). It's also very good against high stacks of pheromones.

  2. #22
    Since you raid 10 mans, I don't think LFR is a great way to practice as it's so different from 10 man healing. The damage is really low, you spend a lot more using on PoH and L90 talent, and disc will always look better than it "really" is by the combination of low incoming damage + disc's absorbs sniping heals.

    IMO there's no substitute for raiding the content you need to be doing. If your raid will let you, just go as disc on your normal raids, jump in the deep end, and look at the logs after to figure out what you need to change. If your raid won't bring you yet, join pugs, /combatlog those, and do the same thing. Doesn't matter if it's a wipefest.

    I switched my OS from holy to disc during a break week over Christmas, by doing HCs, doing LFRs, then finding a MSV pug and wiping for ~2h on SG while I figured out the healing. (Bad SG groups are a great way to practice actually - good mix of random damage, tank damage and raid wide damage. In current gear, you should be able to see bad explosions coming and preshield through them) Do as much 10 man normals as you can, even if you don't kill a single boss. It will help a lot more than LFR.

  3. #23
    I've seen some disc priests NOT using attonement at all... is that another way to play? Attonement-spec'ed requiring more crit vs going mastery for shielding?

  4. #24
    Deleted
    Not using atonement at all is pretty much as bad as using only atonement. You should use atonement for at least few occasions:

    - for charging up archangel before you need to burst heal: 25% extra healing is nothing to ditch.
    - in times of low dmg - it will heal small to medium amounts of hp and will choose the players with the lowest hp. I'm not a fan of letting atonement do 100% of your triage, since it can proc on pets, but if nobody is in danger of dying, its good enough; especially bosses with tight enrage timers will make use of the extra dps.
    - for any boss with a +dmg modifier: elegon hc, dogs hc, windlord hc, garalon hc (this one also has a lot of healing though), protectors hc, lei shi hc - they all have pretty large +dmg mechanics and higher dmg for atonement means higher healing. On windlord hc, with 500% extra dmg during his recklessness, your penance hits for 150k per ball, so 450k overall. Ofc switching to actual healing when lots of aoe dmg happens is needed, but otherwise, you can do some serious numbers for both hps and dps. Especially in 10 man, it is very strong;
    - depending on how much healing is needed at the same time, its good to use when there's need for some burst dmg - for example, the tentacles on spine hc, the adds on the platforms at sha, any other add that needs to die fast.

    The balance when you have to switch to actual healing depends on many things, and its a case of experience and knowing what to expect from the rest of the healers.
    There were disc priests in cata not using atonement at all - but back then you needed to take 5 talent points to get it, so alternative methods were normal and viable (it was mostly a case of speccing for tank healing and taking points in strength of soul/train of thought vs the 5 atonement ones). Now, all those "alternative" talents are baseline, and even if blizzard stated disc is not balanced around archangel, I find it hard to believe anybody would play disc without it. It's a huge loss.

    As for your stats question, right now, atonement doesn't benefit much from mastery, since it only uses it if it crits - so yes, atonement players (most 10 man disc priests) gear more towards crit than mastery. Another reason for this is that spirit shell caps pretty fast when you only have 2 groups to cast it on, so not point for stacking a lot of mastery. They also dont use prayer of healing that much, and instead use atonement, which benefits a lot more from crit. In 5.2, which mastery affecting our direct heals, the stat weights will balance out a bit more. Right now, for the prayer of healing spam that happens a lot in 25 mans, mastery is very strong - which will change with poh not proccing aegis 100% anymore.
    Last edited by mmoc318f6f4933; 2013-02-23 at 05:12 PM.

  5. #25
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by DiGG View Post
    I've seen some disc priests NOT using attonement at all... is that another way to play? Attonement-spec'ed requiring more crit vs going mastery for shielding?
    Not stacking archangel has 0 viability, so has not using holy fire and penance relatively frequently, both have excellent hpm and hps. Chosing to replace smite with more traditional healing spells isn't really that big of a deal, but smite will still be the better option for many situations

  6. #26
    I need to know something: when I use Spirit Shell with Prayer of Healing, I don't get the Divine Aegis buff? So when SS is off cooldown, I get DA from PoH, but not when SS is up?

  7. #27
    Deleted
    You wont get DA, but its built in the SS shields. The formula is changing the next patch, but if you look at the SS shields from poh now, they are quite a fair bit larger than the actual poh normal heal: it is because SS takes into consideration your crit chance/mastery in its formula. Afaik, the aegis considered for SS shields is still 30% (fucked up formula since they changed aegis), but might have been fixed meanwhile.

    But to answer to your question simply, no, while SS is up, you only get SS. You dont heal, nor do you proc aegis. Everything you do is just SS.

  8. #28
    Another question: I try to use Attonement as much as possible, and with it I get Archangle procs, which I use... but if I continue to Holy Fire/Smite (was told NOT to use Penance as dps) for "healing", does the heal coming from Attonement increased by Archangel?

  9. #29
    Deleted
    The heal from atonement is increased by archangel, but by activating archangel, you loose both the dps and mana reduction from evangelism (because you consume the stacks), so you heal for same amount as with 5xevangelism, and more mana. So - if you plan to continue smiting, its a loss to use archangel. You should use archangel only when you plan to switch to pure healing. Back in cataclysm, archangel used to return a % of mana per stack of evangelism, so it was good to use for that sometimes, but it doesnt anymore, so using it to only continue dpsing is a loss.

    Whoever told you not to use penance offensively told you wrong. The atonement penance (as in the copy of the heal from the dmg) is more powerful than the normal healing penance. Sure, if you want to use penance to keep grace on the tank, you can use it as a heal spell as well, but there is no reason to not use it offensively. Its a very strong heal/dmg spell and should be used on cd, unless you need to aoe like mad - in which case, ofc, you aoe. So use penance for dps as much as you want.

  10. #30
    Ok that's good to know, cuz I was using AA on ever cd with HF/Smite spamming, guess I'll save that a bit. Also, how I can I keep accurate track of Grace on the tanks? In lfr, I tend to shield them for Rapture (which btw I still can't really keep up, even with the addon), then PoM, then HF/Smite as much as possible... so I'm not even spending ONE sec actually healing them. I realise if I was use Penance on one of the tank, they would get the 3 stacks of Grace fairly easily, but then I would go back at HF/Smite (and Penance) to heal everyone else... so the 3 stacks of Grace wouldn't be that great return or what? It's lfr and I guess the rules in there are VERY lenient as far as to have the perfect use of abilities at the right time, and I guess "the real deal" happens in normal/heroic raiding.

    Another question: I should *only* use Inner Focus with Spirit Shell (and GH), so to the biggest shields appear? Is that the way?

  11. #31
    I see a lot of good disc tips above. I emphasize atonement so the following are from my perspective.

    At 6-7k spirit, if you have trinkets that proc spirit, you should not have much trouble with mana.

    Get the instant Holy Fire glyph. If you like atonement you also need the glyph that increases the damage of Smite.

    Use the atonement spells as your filler (holy fire, smite, penance).

    Rapture can give you major mana gains, but this requires that you have a target you can reliably have a PW:S broken on, and you need some items with spirit procs. If you are in a group with 5 priest healers then rapture probably isn't going to work out for you. In 5.2, short-term spirit buffs will no longer work on Rapture, so it will no longer be a SOURCE of mana. What Rapture was intended to be was to make PW:S "free" on one target. In 5.2 it should make PW:S "free" on two targets but will no longer be a source of mana. A Rapture tracker is a good idea anyway though.

    Mana hymn is super annoying because it can give you no mana at all. If the fight's long enough it's best to pop it once very early in a fight and then a second time when you are very low on mana. Try to be as low as possible before using it, because that increases the chance it will actually GIVE you some mana.

    I like mindbender. The DPS is significant. Also, mindbender followed by fade is helpful when a tank doesn't have solid control of a pack of trash that is about to nom nom you.

    Penance is a super efficient spell and whether you are using it for atonement or for stacking Grace on the tank you should be casting it at every opportunity. Holy fire can crit for huge numbers if you have some int/sp/whatever procs going with evangelism (I've seen 120k without damage debuffs and I have so-so LFR gear on my priest).

    Prayer of mending is also super efficient and you should cast it on cooldown. It can account for 5-10% of your healing in smaller groups.

    Don't use archangel until you are ready to spam some pure healing. I pop it right before spirit shell or cascade. (I should probably macro it to both of them.)

    I have a bunch of macros that focus spells on the tank (or, well, my focus target, who is a tank, or if I am alone or in a scenario, me). I have one that bubbles the tank and another that rotates through prayer of mending, renew, flash heal, flash heal, flash heal, et cetera. Normally, I just try to keep up bubble and prayer of mending. If the tank is taking light raid damage I just stick to Atonement, which will generally go to the tank.

    If your tank is in trouble, there is always Pain Suppression (an immensely strong cooldown). You can also pop Inner Focus, Spirit Shell, and start spamming Flash Heal, which will give you a staggering amount of absorbs.

    Before Spirit Shell, you will want to pop Archangel (AA), and if it seems appropriate, Power Infusion. In 5-man and possibly in 10- and 25-man you will want to macro Inner Focus to Prayer of Healing and maybe Flash Heal, and put your first PoH on the tank's group.

    Also, as far as I can tell, Binding Heal is pointless on disc. By and large you should be using Flash Heal instead.

    ---------- Post added 2013-02-26 at 01:14 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Saphiramoon View Post
    But to answer to your question simply, no, while SS is up, you only get SS. You dont heal, nor do you proc aegis. Everything you do is just SS.
    Well, not exactly. Atonement continues to work as it normally does, Prayer of Mending works normally, and so on. It's just the "heal" spells and Prayer of Healing that work with Spirit Shell. So far anyway.

    DA (the crit version) started to work with Atonement in 5.0. Also, DA works with the Holy Nova glyph. I have no idea whether Prayer of Mending can crit and proc a DA but I'm guessing it can.
    Last edited by HardCoder; 2013-02-26 at 09:15 PM.

  12. #32
    Nice tips HardCoder.

    I would add that Prayer of Mending should be used with care, and you should track the buff somehow. Don't recast it until all of the jumps have been used up as that reduces the efficiency a lot. If it's dropping off before all the jumps are used, you probably shouldn't be using it at all.

    Pain Sup (and PW:B) are like the entire Disc arsenal in that it is best used ahead of damage. Using it on the tank after he eats a big spike and is on 30% (but stable) is a huge waste of a CD - it needs to used before damage.

    Binding Heal... I'm really not sure. I've been trying it out on HC Garajal as it seems better on paper than FH, but the logs have been disappointing. It's good for when you have to heal someone NOW but you're voodoo'd yourself/just low. It also isn't affected by spirit shell, which again is good on Garajal when there's a Shadowy Attack coming, people are low and you just popped SS.

  13. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by dmfg View Post
    Binding Heal... I'm really not sure. I've been trying it out on HC Garajal as it seems better on paper than FH, but the logs have been disappointing. It's good for when you have to heal someone NOW but you're voodoo'd yourself/just low. It also isn't affected by spirit shell, which again is good on Garajal when there's a Shadowy Attack coming, people are low and you just popped SS.
    Being voodoo dolled is one of those edge cases where Binding Heal might be useful. It's just rare that you have such a case, and it's not a particularly strong heal and it's a mana hog. It's too bad that Inner Focus won't make it crit (with DA that would be nice). I really have trouble finding a use for it.

    PW:B's duration is so short that it's pretty tricky to time it right. It's also a longish cooldown and not THAT much help unless everyone is really well stacked. It was more fun to use back in Dragon Soul LFR where people did stack predictably. For whatever reason, there's hardly any stacking in this tier of LFR even though there ought to be.

    Excellent point taken about PoM. The simple version is only cast it when there is raid/party-wide damage.

  14. #34
    Deleted
    Well, not exactly. Atonement continues to work as it normally does, Prayer of Mending works normally, and so on. It's just the "heal" spells and Prayer of Healing that work with Spirit Shell. So far anyway.
    True, bad wording from me. I meant it specifically for the spells that are affected by Spirit Shell, evidently all other spells function normally .

    Don't use archangel until you are ready to spam some pure healing. I pop it right before spirit shell or cascade. (I should probably macro it to both of them.)
    I'm not a fan of macros like this. Sometimes you can toss a normal cascade when you need to move, it doesn't always need to be with archangel. I prefer using archangel manually when it's optimal to use.

    I have a bunch of macros that focus spells on the tank (or, well, my focus target, who is a tank, or if I am alone or in a scenario, me). I have one that bubbles the tank and another that rotates through prayer of mending, renew, flash heal, flash heal, flash heal, et cetera.
    I dont really get this. Why do you need macros for normal spells? I have macros for cooldowns like pain sup or void shift, but they are just normal mouseover ones, not tied to a specific person. But the one that rotates through pom/renew/flash? Honestly I rarely ever use flash heal, its a case of your tank almost dead with WS on him and penance/holy fire on cd.

    If your tank is in trouble, there is always Pain Suppression (an immensely strong cooldown). You can also pop Inner Focus, Spirit Shell, and start spamming Flash Heal, which will give you a staggering amount of absorbs.
    Agree on the PS advice, but I would be careful with flash spam. I prefer using IF with gheal for the tank. Gheal spam also reduces greatly the cooldown on Inner focus so that's another reason to prefer spamming gheal rather than flash. Flash has its place, but you should generally avoid getting in the situation where you need to flash spam.
    You also need a shield indicator for SS, since spamming with SS can cap it and then you just waste mana.

    Also, as far as I can tell, Binding Heal is pointless on disc. By and large you should be using Flash Heal instead.
    Binding heal is good for when you need healing yourself. Both flash and binding are situational spells, none of them should be used largely. They both cost similar mana (binding is slightly cheaper), have same cast time, binding heal is a little weaker per target, but heals 2 targets (one of them being yourself), while flash is a bit bigger, but only heals one target. Flash also has the advantage of stacking grace, while binding doesn't, but you will rarely need to use more than 2-3 binding heals anyway, unless yourself take a lot of dmg, in which case you prolly want to binding heal anyway.

    I prolly have entire raids in which I dont use flash heal more than 2-3 times. It's just an extreme emergency spell, best is to not get to need it.

    Binding Heal... I'm really not sure. I've been trying it out on HC Garajal as it seems better on paper than FH, but the logs have been disappointing. It's good for when you have to heal someone NOW but you're voodoo'd yourself/just low. It also isn't affected by spirit shell, which again is good on Garajal when there's a Shadowy Attack coming, people are low and you just popped SS.
    That's a pretty good example of use of binding heal. It's not a core spell for either holy or disc, but for holy at least it gives serendipity, for disc its just basically the last stand of keeping you and somebody else alive.

  15. #35
    Hi guys, three weeks later, I'm now very confortable into disc! I tried going back holy "just for fun", but I was doing TWICE as much as disc, so... I'm staying disc hehe.

    I got ONE question about Ingela's Rapture addon: I still don't really get when to cast PW:S to get rapture constently. The addon sometimes shows a rapture cooldown bar, sometime I hear the addons' sound then telling me "it's ready", but... what's ready exactly? It's time to cast another PW:S?

  16. #36
    Ingela's shows the ICD on Rapture. So the cooldown begins when your PWS is used up and you get the regen.

    When you cast the next shield depends on the fight a bit. It's always "safe" to wait for the CD to finish before casting the next shield, but if the tank damage is low it can take a few seconds for the shield to break. You can pre-cast the shield before the CD finishes and try and get it to proc immediately after coming off CD, but risk it popping early and not giving you rapture at all.

    Tbh PWS is now so cheap that you should probably be using it quite a lot, and tracking Rapture is no longer such a big deal.

  17. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by HolyLathusDisc View Post
    You can say the difference, is always going to be that disc can predict, holy can react.
    I wouldn't use "can" because that depends on the player, you can predict damage patterns just as well as holy, it just wont have the same inpact as for disc, just as reacting is much harder for disc since a big part of the "healing" will do nothing after damage. As disc you need predict and as holy you need to react in time.

    Also, great work with the structure of your post, it always amuses me greatly when you compare holy and disc; really utilising the whole potential of different formatting and the expanding and dublicating versus abbreviating and contracting of points to express your view of the complexity of the specs.

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