25man Disc PTR Testing

[vanityking]

I'm making this post requesting links to any logs or videos of the performance of disc priests on the PTR specifically in the 25man environment. I believe the 25man testing is just starting so whatever input from your experiences would be greatly appreciated. (This obviously excludes LFR) -Thanks!

[Deleted]

I was looking at the stream on mmo, but sadly it had only a dmg meter up. I would be curious too how they are.

[kagebertha]

I am also interested in seeing some disc's in the PTR in a 25 man setting. I'm stuck at work for most of the PTR testing and since I'm in a 25 man guild, I'm more interested in seeing how a disc does in that setting as opposed to 10m. I'm still up in the air about going holy or disc for 5.2 so numbers would be awesome.

[DailyBB]

I've been testing on my priest. mostly as holy, but disc when its better. On constant damage fights holy and disc are about the same (holy pulls ahead with the new 2p and divine insight), but on the burst aoe damage fights disc wins with spirit shell.

They're very competitive with each other now. Holy still has terrible regen tho. Disc regen is perfect so long as you're using rapture smartly.

[Clebane]

One thing I can say with playing on the PTR, atonement is great for LFR. Penance on CD and you'll top the meters :P

[vanityking]

How are you guys prioritizing crit, haste and mastery? When you say "using rapture smartly" are you implying that even with the mana cost reduction you one cast PW:S for Rapture procs?

[Deleted]

When you say "using rapture smartly" are you implying that even with the mana cost reduction you one cast PW:S for Rapture procs?

Even if you don't necessarily gain mana from using PW:S with rapture off cd is still a very high hps heal for a very low (or no) cost, it's definitely high on your priority list.

[vanityking]

Well of course, I mean, like is it safe (mana-wise) to cast more than 1-2 PW:S given a situation which calls for it.

[blargh312]

Did LFR earlier and was basically just atonement healing 80% of the time. Me and a holy pally were topping the meters by a pretty wide margin. Hard to judge vs. most people on PTR but I'd say disc is still one of the strongest healers. I was only using PWS for Rapture, and to be honest I still don't really think it's worth casting when Rapture is on CD, but it's not as bad as it is on live. It'll probably just be personal preference more than anything.

The downside is 5.2 disc is even more boring. Smite spam, PWS for rapture, PoM, SS, Cascade was all I used. PoH feels really weak and I can't see myself using it for much other than SS.

[Deleted]

Did LFR myself and I dont put a lot of weight on healing there, as the 3 bosses that are up for testing are pure atonement fests: 2 of them have +dmg modifiers that heavily favor atonement, and the third has pretty random dmg that dont allow much use of prayer of healing. I barely used prayer of healing outside spirit shell, and didnt even use spirit shell a lot. At least 40% of my healing was done with atonement on each boss, followed by aegis (quite odd considering I barely used anything else other than atonement and I wasnt especially crit heavy - @14% crit), spirit shell and cascade. PoH ended up being @1% of my healing.

Regarding PWS, I've never been a fan of PWS only for rapture. Its a decent hpm spell even outside and its value as a life saver (and mini speed boost with B&S) is larger than just the heal itself. I've always used PWS on both tanks and on anybody in danger of dying. On last night's PTR I tried weaving PWS in more than normal, I didn't go oom, but then again, spamming mostly atonement, with solace, you dont normally go oom.

I did @70-80k hps and 30-40k dps on the first boss, lower hps and higher dps on the 2nd (mostly because there isnt that much to heal and the boss has stupid dmg modifiers by the end); the hps numbers for the 3rd weren't very high but the fight is very long and doesnt have that much dmg. Most numbers are skewed by the wiping buff, as they sometimes managed to stack it by having a hunter pull and FD, so up to 20% buff. We had a paladin pulling 135k hps on the first boss, with almost 40% of that coming from mastery.

[Dianthe]

I've only tested 2 bosses as of now, disc seems to do fine, but the playstyle itself has not actually improved. My disc friend was doing his top HPS / healing in fights where he'd basically bubble up 2 groups then spam atonement for the remainder, then bubble up some more and atonement some more. I've tried to play smartly and utilize some actual heals, but I was quite a bit behind compared to his bubble+atonement rotation... Admittedly this was 25 man normal, but atonement seems very strong atm, and not only in LFR.

For the first boss of the raid disc was better (there is a lot of chilling around with little to no dmg done, then a lot of dmg which SS handles very well). Unfortunately one of the paladins was bugged and his arching light was doing an insane amount of healing. That + his mastery left us others with little to heal, so it might not actually be indicative of the status of the various classes.

On the turtle boss I was ahead of all healers as holy with 2-set and DI, the margin varying on how much DI would proc. The disc priest was a pretty close second.
I haven't tried the other fights sadly so maybe someone else could fill in on those...

[Deleted]

For the first boss of the raid disc was better (there is a lot of chilling around with little to no dmg done, then a lot of dmg which SS handles very well). Unfortunately one of the paladins was bugged and his arching light was doing an insane amount of healing. That + his mastery left us others with little to heal, so it might not actually be indicative of the status of the various classes.

I noticed the 135k hps pala in my LFR also had a lot from arcing light (I think it was his 2nd source after the massive mastery chunk, if not 2nd, then surely 3rd).

[vanityking]

When you say "he'd basically bubble up two groups" do you mean he would spam PoH/Spirit Shell or he'd actually cast 10 PW:S? How much spirit are you guys running with? By the way, thanks everyone for your continuing responses.

[Deleted]

Horridon and the turtle are niche fights for discipline. Horridon has a damage buff for atonement and the turtle boss is a lot of burst. If you are beating disc in those fights, then it really does not bode well.

1st boss is probably the strongest fight for discipline due to fluidity being a massive boost to atonement, but I don't know how long you have the buff for.

It is not surprise that SpS+atonement are working well there. It is exactly as we expected.

[Dianthe]

Horridon and the turtle are niche fights for discipline. Horridon has a damage buff for atonement and the turtle boss is a lot of burst. If you are beating disc in those fights, then it really does not bode well.

It is not strange that I was ahead, just because PoM is very good on that fight, and disc does not have DI, which carries holy. I assume it might also depend on how you do the fight - in our case the groups were fairly spread, and damage was quite constant with regular bursts, that DH handles very nicely actually.
We did kill the boss on PTR with no troubles at all, so I guess our tactic couldn't have been too bad. The disc priest was not far behind, so I don't believe it warrants a "does not bode well" comment.

@OP - I mean he cast PW:S on 10 people yes, his mana was fine.

[Deleted]

The fight has a lot of burst and a lot of spot healing, so the disc priest should be doing really well. This is a fight where the old disc would be completely dominating like vizier. This means that disc is doing worse than expected.

[vanityking]

So what you're saying is that in the fight(s) in which disc is supposed to come out first, we come out equal so in the fight(s) in which we're supposed to come out equal, we'll be coming out worse than the other healers? Have you seen this behavior in other bosses? I imagined when we got hit with the battery of nerfs that we weren't going to be doing very well for a while but I had my hopes we would be fine.

[nobodysbaby]

I've been testing on my priest. mostly as holy, but disc when its better. On constant damage fights holy and disc are about the same (holy pulls ahead with the new 2p and divine insight), but on the burst aoe damage fights disc wins with spirit shell.

They're very competitive with each other now. Holy still has terrible regen tho. Disc regen is perfect so long as you're using rapture smartly.

Yepp, seems Disc and Holy are pretty close in healing done on PTR. The only difference is Disc is doing a good amount of dps at the same time and have PW:B+SS instead of DH & LW, wich also makes a difference since PW:B usefullness doesn't show on healing done.

[Deleted]

These fights are all relatively low HPS fights, where a lot of hte healing comes in bursts. If we dont come ahead of holy there we will have our butt kicked on any high HPS fight with frequent hard raid damage.

[Maleric]

These fights are all relatively low HPS fights, where a lot of hte healing comes in bursts. If we dont come ahead of holy there we will have our butt kicked on any high HPS fight with frequent hard raid damage.

I agree. LFR and even normal mode testing is fine for what it is, but it doesn't have much bearing on the maximum HPS disc is capable of. If there's only 100k healing per second to be done on an LFR fight, yes you can snipe most of it with Atonement and top the meter. If there's 800k healing per second to be done on a hard mode, though, the same strategy that rocked in LFR is going to leave you way behind in HPS.