Disc: Crit > Mastery?

[Bishop]

The extra dps you bring to a raid with a crit attonement build offsets any minor advantage mastery and or haste would have, and I don't even see that in my testing of the secondaries. There's also a lot to be said for attonement being a smart heal and basically being able to heal a tank/player on the opposite side of the boss from you. Top it off with crit shields rarely being overheal and you have your answer.

Faster raid dps = quicker fight = less healing required for your team.

In my humble opinion you should aim for spirit to comfort *I go for about 10k* > Crit > Int > Haste > Mast >

I would also use t14 4pc bonus over your t15 2pc until you get t15 4pc.

This build is really strong atm, and you should be topping charts of every fight except bird boss on add duty while pulling 50-65k Edps depending on your ilvl.

[derevka]

Havoc has a solid explanation.

Generally crit is superior to mastery, but balance this tier across Mastery/Crit is pretty damn solid. For an 'easy' rule of thumb... try to keep mastery 5% or so lower than Crit. Given your baseline Mastery (20%) you'll still need crit heavy gear and hybrid gems to make up that deficit)

[Purpleisbetter]

Yes ok, from a raw numbers perspective mastery is probably still better than crit overall. However, my original point was that it has always been a strength of disc to employ a low amount of overhealing compared to other raw healing classes due to absorbs (when used effectively) being primarily effective healing. The adjustment to mastery and crit with regards to DA seem to favor crit once overhealing has been considered. Given that most fights this tier thus far have us seeing some form of random-ish raid wide consistent damage, absorbs will continue to be effective 9/10 times. Thus, when calculating effect vs overall healing, it seems that crit will give greater benefit than mastery, and at this point I'm likely to be reforging before Tuesday!



And if you've not been atonement heavy in this expansion until now, I would venture to say you're doing it wrong and you're the reason disc got nerfed in the first place! They wanted us to be using atonement as filler!

---

Area 52 - Avrïllavigne <High Five>

I don't really agree. Didn't heal a lot prior to 5.2, but to mee full mastery and PoH/SS spamming was like ehm, mandatory.
It was all about Aegis and SS. Attonement was imba in +damage increased fight like Elegon.

Jesus, it may be nerfed but this SS spam + shield spam (when SS is on cd) and Attonement spam feels friggin' unique.
I basically have every healer, and i find it amlost as funny as resto druid healing and not carbon copy HPal-Rsham-Hpriest-Mwmonks. Fistweaving, thats fun.

[tsokin]

Balancing both is the way to go at this point. While, as healers, we have a tendency to try and push as hard to one stat as possible, I think its important to note the synergy that Crit and mastery currently have. Crits give more frequent applications of our mastery, mastery gives us flat healing and increases the values of our Crits. Crit seems to have an advantage when we start looking at Atonement healing since it Triples down as a DPS, HPS, and HPM.

Mastery takes the place of old haste in the fact that it is a constant HPS increase, however has the added bonus of also being an HPM increase unlike haste.

I am not a big fan of haste since it gives us a zero benefit on PW:S, POM, PW:Sol, and in most situations SS. However it is still very strong for an atonement play style. That being said haste is a strong HPS increase, but does nothing to help us out as far as HPM is concerned, and so lags behind the other stats in terms of efficiency.

I am personally trying to strike a balance of Crit and Mastery. This allows me to still do atonement when it is my best option, but have strong non crit heals through my mastery. My priority is still trying to get my spirit high enough that I feel comfortable being in an ABC (Always Be Casting) state. Thinking that around 13k-14k is where I want to shoot for, but still unwilling to give up int trinkets for spirit trinkets.

That being said, I have not done any math for 5.2 priests, and honestly do not plan too. Once you hit a certain Ilevel the need to play a min/max gearing falls off for nearly all raiders. What is more important is to gear for your play style. A great example of this is throwing on some Crit/Haste gear when playing a heavily atonement based spec.

[Snuggie]

I'm currently sitting at 18% crit and 17% mastery and I find that it works great (I primarily use atonement). I should also add that my haste is 4%.

The week 5.2 came out I tried reforging to mastery, was displeased with my performance, and went to what I have now. I'm still a little tempted to play around with my stats some more, but I really feel comfortable healing with my current setup.

[Noradin]

I am not a big fan of haste since it gives us a zero benefit on PW:S, POM, PW:Sol, and in most situations SS.

This is untrue. PW:S and PoM benefit from haste as long as you don't hit the GCD cap. Due to their CD and debuff limitation that benefit will not always be as big as for other spells but it is still noticable. SS has 'haste breakpoints' (how many spell casts you can finish till it expires depends on haste) and PW:Sol gets benefits on par of PW:S and additional breakpoints for its dot component, which can add adittional benefit to smite if you use that glyph.

[HPLathus]

The problem with disc using haste, is it doesn't increase our raid utility which is what disc is mostly about.

The ability to absorb, and increase the effect of our absorbs.


You can say haste will put absorbs up faster, but in a much weaker state. While haste might be a good stat because its a flat throughput increase, if you wanted a flat throughput increase I might recommend going holy at that point. You never want to flat out nerf the amount any of your absorbs can do, you want to always enhance it.

And unfortunately haste just doesn't do that as much as mastery/crit right now

[Dorfie]

You can say haste will put absorbs up faster, but in a much weaker state.

Yet you still end up with more absorbs, which is good. Haste lets you get your spirit shells stacked faster and let's you nearly reach a 1 second GCD with BT for throwing out a quick set of PW:Ss. Getting 2 PW:S out with a mastery build will save those two people, but getting a 3rd one off with a haste build will probably save those 3 even if the shields are a bit weaker. (eg, shielding people before ionisation pops on H Jin Rokh, the shields don't have to be huge to ensure they don't die, they just need to a be a bit of a buffer, the faster you can get shields out the better. It doesn't matter if they are at 40% or 50% after the ionisation pops, they'll get topped instantly to nearly free atonement heals)

I'd argue you can get more absorbs out with a haste build than a mastery or crit build in a given time period, it just comes at a higher mana cost. At the moment I'm trying to stack as much spirit and haste as I can to see how to feels on heroic fights. If it doesn't work out I'll just go a crit build like 99% of Disc are at the moment.

Also I'd never go Holy in 10 mans, losing 60k DPS just isn't an option in a 10 man raid.

[HPLathus]

Yet you still end up with more absorbs, which is good. Haste lets you get your spirit shells stacked faster and let's you nearly reach a 1 second GCD with BT for throwing out a quick set of PW:Ss. Getting 2 PW:S out with a mastery build will save those two people, but getting a 3rd one off with a haste build will probably save those 3 even if the shields are a bit weaker. I'd argue you can get more absorbs out with a haste build than a mastery or crit build in a given time period, it just comes at a higher mana cost. At the moment I'm trying to stack as much spirit and haste as I can to see how to feels on heroic fights. If it doesn't work out I'll just go a crit build like 99% of Disc are at the moment.

Also I'd never go Holy in 10 mans, losing 60k DPS just isn't an option in a 10 man raid.

As for SS getting up faster, does the 20% haste you have make up for the fact you lost 20% absorbs or those absorbs crit 10% less?

[Deleted]

As for SS getting up faster, does the 20% haste you have make up for the fact you lost 20% absorbs or those absorbs crit 10% less?

Yes that's exactly what it does. If you get just enough haste required to get another PoH off during SS the buff it's a way bigger increase for your SS absorbs than if said stats were spent on crit or mastery. That haste does nothing for your cds (penance, hf, cascade, etc) is a different matter and together with the increased mana spending the main reasons why crit/mastery usually is preferred.

[Dorfie]

As for SS getting up faster, does the 20% haste you have make up for the fact you lost 20% absorbs or those absorbs crit 10% less?

Haste will still get them stacked faster, just at a higher HPM cost. The amount of rating required to get either +1% crit or +1% healing from mastery (the mastery absorb component doesn't affect SS anymore) is a lot more than you need to get 1% haste.

Like I said I'm still experimenting, but it feels damn good having a 1.1 second GCD during BT during which I can fire off all my instant heals then cast a really short PoH or Smite. If mana becomes an issue in later heroic encounters crit will be the way to go, but definitely not mastery.

[Bishop]

You guys are still thinking like 5.1 priests. This is 5.2, and atonement is KING, and CRIT is the best stat for atonement, so you should naturally be stacking that.

[Noradin]

The problem with disc using haste, is it doesn't increase our raid utility which is what disc is mostly about.

The ability to absorb, and increase the effect of our absorbs.


You can say haste will put absorbs up faster, but in a much weaker state. While haste might be a good stat because its a flat throughput increase, if you wanted a flat throughput increase I might recommend going holy at that point. You never want to flat out nerf the amount any of your absorbs can do, you want to always enhance it.

And unfortunately haste just doesn't do that as much as mastery/crit right now

Well you could say that since haste increases the frequency of casts it improves the spread of the absorbs (your utility), which leads to better smothening of damage (especially with atonement) and thus makes it even more comfortable for other healers. Delivering the same amount of absorbs per time in smaller partitions is good, it decreases the variance and makes the patterns more steady than rare big chunks of absorbs. It would also increase the chance that your atonement smartheal lands in time to save a life if that would ever be an issue.
As you can see there are also arguments for haste to be made and if I was a little better in english I could explain a few more points that would deserve consideration, unfortunately a direct translation of those from my first language doesn't seem to make sense as the direct counterparts of the words I'd like to use don't exist in English or can't be used in the context I need.
(I'm aware of the other side of the argument but that has already been stated multiple times.)

[HPLathus]

Well you could say that since haste increases the frequency of casts it improves the spread of the absorbs (your utility), which leads to better smothening of damage (especially with atonement) and thus makes it even more comfortable for other healers. Delivering the same amount of absorbs per time in smaller partitions is good, it decreases the variance and makes the patterns more steady than rare big chunks of absorbs. It would also increase the chance that your atonement smartheal lands in time to save a life if that would ever be an issue.
As you can see there are also arguments for haste to be made and if I was a little better in english I could explain a few more points that would deserve consideration, unfortunately a direct translation of those from my first language doesn't seem to make sense as the direct counterparts of the words I'd like to use don't exist in English or can't be used in the context I need.
(I'm aware of the other side of the argument but that has already been stated multiple times.)

Don't get me wrong, I think haste is Avery valuable stat indeed. i have ways felt haste grows in power near the middle portion to the end of each expansion because of how much you can get by that point.

I mean by the end of cata, getting 30%+ haste was not difficult at all and very viable. I forsee by the end of this expansion all 3 stats being near equals on some levels.

[hawkster]

Im going to try half and half next raid see how it goes im raiding in 10 mans

[Rorschachs]

Crit is the way to go imo.. Haste doesn't give back when its a fight where you can't just sit there and spam heals or you have a little latency. You shouldn't count on haste.

And in 10 man if you don't go oom and because of that you think you can stack haste ; instead of that use more int gems instead of spirit and keep stacking crit. More crit also makes you a more reliable healer so because of that I don't like the mastery/crit build either.

[Dorfie]

Crit is the way to go imo.. Haste doesn't give back when its a fight where you can't just sit there and spam heals or you have a little latency. You shouldn't count on haste.

And in 10 man if you don't go oom and because of that you think you can stack haste ; instead of that use more int gems instead of spirit and keep stacking crit. More crit also makes you a more reliable healer so because of that I don't like the mastery/crit build either.

Good point about the intel, I feel it's over looked too much. Does anyone have any math on how mastery compares to intel in a 2:1 ratio? Both stats straight up make your heals do more, which is better?

[Kalmah]

More crit also makes you a more reliable healer

Am I in opposite-world or something? How does crit, the only rng stat make you more reliable?

[Deleted]

Good point about the intel, I feel it's over looked too much. Does anyone have any math on how mastery compares to intel in a 2:1 ratio? Both stats straight up make your heals do more, which is better?

I did some napkin math at 5.2 release which indicated that 1 int was slightly better than 2 crit or mastery, not sure if that's the case once you pick up some more gear but I'd imagine so.

Am I in opposite-world or something? How does crit, the only rng stat make you more reliable?

In a way it does, it enables you to count a bit more on your crits. More crit makes the worst case scenario (not critting for a X=very big amount of casts) significantly less likely, but it also means that are even worse off if this does occur.

[Sevyvia]

Am I in opposite-world or something? How does crit, the only rng stat make you more reliable?

In the sense that it increases DA uptime and scales into your shell, I guess. Not entirely sure how it makes you more reliable. But it's there for shields anyway, and I continue to go crit with a splash of Mastery.