Thread: Proving Grounds

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  1. #1
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    Proving Grounds

    So, how far did u guys get so far? For some reason i'm struggling with gold healing (NPCs standing in shit etc), while i coulld easily do Tank bronze & dps Silver as a discipline.

    Healing Gold sure seems like a big step up tho.

  2. #2
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    Been wondering about this myself. Got to wave 6 in gold so far but haven't tried that much yet. Not sure if I'll be able to get to finish gold. I'm struggling with mana, especially since it's impossible to drink between fights.

    I'm playing disc with a mastery build.

  3. #3
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    Gold is easy as either spec. Endless is the challenge. I can't get past wave 29 atm.

  4. #4
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    Strictly speaking about Holy, try these tips for healing Gold: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post22354684

    Read my post, and then Havoc's under it. He (?) takes a totally different approach, but also gives very good advice.

    As far as Disc, you are a cooldown spec. It's mostly a matter of just learning the rhythm of the waves and using your cooldowns proactively, because once damage happens, Disc is just a sad ghetto version of Holy if it has to heal up massive damage. The complexity is that you're mana-starved, so mitigation that goes to waste is deadly, but so is not mitigating!

    You just need to get the hang of each wave as Disc. For example:
    • When you know a wave will have Hive Singers (or the second you see one pop) that's a good time to pop Spirit Shell and shield up your group with PoH.
    • But, be careful. Some waves will have Hive Singer AoE, but no other damage on the group. In this case, you could just let the DPS take the damage and heal it up in little bits over time, instead of wasting mana on PoH spam. Other waves will hit the group so hard that SS'ing the Hive AoEs is critical. Again, Disc just has to learn the pull rhythm.
    • When you know a wave is going to massively bumstuff your tank, spend Spirit Shell on single-target heals instead (gasp! blasphemy!), to heavily buffer Oto
    • When you see a Flamecaller spawn, make it your Focus target and pay attention whenever its target switches and a new Pyroblast starts up. Immediately get a PW:S on that person.
    • Bubble anyone who gets a Rabbit bleed and immediately top them off to get rid of it.
    • Exploit Atonement aggressively during low-damage phases. The faster stuff dies, the less mana pressure you're under. And having Archangel available when damage ramps up is extremely important.
    • Especially, you can't interrupt, so Atone the nuts off any casters that spawn, for as long as you can get away with it, before switching back to the tank. The casters need to die, NOW.
    • Don't be shy about Pain Suppression and PW:Barrier, they will come off CD many times before the fights finish so use them liberally.
    Last edited by Lovestar; 2013-09-11 at 04:09 PM.

  5. #5
    hey all,

    I have tried 5 or 6 times, the bronze and silver was so easy.
    I could not pass wave 6 on gold, I run OOM in wave 5 =/

    I need to study the waves and mobs skills.


    I have a doubt, if I focus a specific target will dps and tank focus my target or will they focus a random target ?

  6. #6
    I got gold as disc, after 30-40 mins of wiping on late waves - although I will be trying holy for endless I think. I have a crit focus at the moment - and changed my spec to have FDCL, and actually dusted off the Heal spell! (I found that sometimes I wanted to target a specific NPC rather than the one smite would have picked). I also used divine star as my 90 talent - it's a nice bit of both DPS and healing.

    Make sure you can see when the burrowing add debuff is on your party members - and get them shielded and topped off ASAP. Use barrier on either the ranged or the melee; it's off cd every other wave basically.

    Smite where you can - archangel is awesome for heavy dmg phases. I didn't use PS until the wave with the add that gets big (I'm thinking...7?) but it is clearly going to be off cd before then. I found that not smiting in the first couple of waves was better in the long run - I'm so used to being able to smite endlessly that I was causing myself more mana problems than I needed to.

    If you're really struggling remember your meta isn't active (it's challenge mode rules) so grab an old helm with no meta gem and use that instead. I'm pretty sure it's going to be needed in endless. Haven't got time to try it out myself tonight though. Also grab a spirit flask and/or food - every little helps after all

  7. #7
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    Apologies for the, likely, poorly constructed post. Nothing like having to post from a phone. I finally managed to get gold after around 3 hours of trying last night. Admittedly, some of the issue can probably be pointed at the laptop and connection I was on but despite this, discipline feels pretty poorly tuned for PG gold. The damage patterns really highlight the weakness of the spec with certain damage patterns and in a number of situations. Which is a shame. If PG gold is the expectation for a flex / normal raider I can see quite a few people turning to holy on the basis of how weak disc feels in this content.

    To echo some of the advice above, being able to track the bleed is essential. Discipline's inability to quickly top people off is really pressed upon so the shield and heal route is best for this.

    I actually found that using Spirit Shell only when there was some downtime between waves worked out better for me. To try and stack during a wave or at the beginning of a new one while mobs were still up only lead to the tank taking some nice big spiky hits which were difficult to recover from.

    Mana is tight. I reforged back to spirit and away from crit and mastery. This helped a little.

    What was more useful was basically entirely discarding how disc is played at the moment in current content and taking it back to being a much more simplistic healer. In other words, play discipline in exactly the manner that would get you kicked from a raid. Penance the tank, only shield the tank or definite damage targets. Use heal and don't smite - build atonement through holy fire.

    I wound up using divine star, mind bender for the extra DPS and using power infusion as a mana recovering tool.

    RNG can also be problematic. If the NPCs focus the wrong mob or you get the dreaded situation where both the hunter and the mage decide to sit in the fire, things can get very tough very quickly.

    PG gold seems like it will teach players how to deal with jerkish comments from people in their groups. It gives an idea of very stressful healing situations where the players toolset is entirely sub par. It definitely doesn't teach someone how to play a discipline priest and this is actually quite a considerable failure in my arrogant opinion.

    Time to brush off that holy spec for endless.

  8. #8
    Disc healer here. I loved the idea of this, but in reality it doesn't really teach someone how to play disc, although I am not sure that was the intention. Proving grounds is a completely different playstyle than say for a raid, CM or dungeon, but then again, you definitely wouldn't be using your bag of tricks in the same way for any of those instances. I agree with Mianette above - you must rethink your spell usage considerably in order to get through these as disc. It's definitely not as easy as some make out, but maybe despite my all gold CMs and heroic raid experience I'm just a bad I can't imagine how impossible it would seem for a new priest.
    It's a fun challenge though, but as disc I found it super frustrating on the PTR - hitting a wall on gold constantly on about wave 5 or 6 no matter what I tried. I have a crit build but will probably just go back to straight spirit stacking. Will try on live later this week.

  9. #9
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    Yep seems mana is big problem for disc here, myself getting barely gold 6th wave even when trying to play max mana efficiently (using downscaled raid gear, no optimized gear for this). Guess should regem spirit and get head with old meta gem, probably spirit flask too instead of int. And switch to spirit trinkets. Throughput does not seem to be problem personally, mana is problem.
    Hmm seems I am not only priest who has extra hard time there:
    http://www.wowprogress.com/char_stat...ield.pg_healer
    total of 3 priest on top 100 currently.

    On the other hand shadow seems really strong on dps mode. And I guess holy red chakra is easy to mode for "wrong spec" achi.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    I didn't make the full step of gemming out my crit for spirit though I imagine this would have helped quite a bit, as would picking up an older meta. If I hadn't managed to finish it last night, that would have been my plan for today. I did find a spirit flask to be hugely helpful though.

    The problem with disc is that you can't play MoP disc in PGs, you need to take a step back and start thinking like a mana starved and undergeared WotLK priest. Relying on atonement to heal is tough and rarely gets the right target. It also isn't anywhere near a good HPM value. HF to get Archangel was just about manageable.

    This, in my opinion, is one of the reasons that I feel PGs have failed discipline. They aren't teaching how to play disc, how to use the tools of the class correctly and how to respond to damage correctly. What it has highlighted though is just how reliant upon gear disc is. Strip us of this and a way to regenerate mana through drinking and our lack of reasonable AoE response tools, ability to output life saving burst healing and innate mana efficiency is starkly highlighted. The niche of Shields and dps to heal is wonderful. I adore it. It just shouldn't only be applicable when you are above 463 item level and relatively geared to the teeth.

    With the timeless isle available for gear, I am tempted to switch my druid back to healing and see how they compare. I am guessing they will be much stronger than disc who feels like a support healer trying to step up with the proper healers in PGs.

  11. #11
    The problem is that disc needs a certain amount fixed of spirit to sustain your healing and actually need more of it with lower item level, this makes the PG harder the better your gear orginally is, because it means less spirit and mana the higher the original item level of your gear.
    I find it quite impossible to sustain my healing with only 5k spirit and no procs, despite having reforged for full spirit on every item. I'd have to re-gem everything to spirit as well and gear up with blues specifically for this - which is simply no fun and feels like getting bullied for having good gear to me. It acuallly felt easier for my newly leveled twink in blue gear. Much easier.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Somehow I don't feel it is fun anymore. Failing due to bad rng and no options due to no mana is no challenge but an annoyance. There is just no room to recover from having the wrong mob up too long or bleed and pyros focused on the same npc and we have neither the interupt nor the cc other healers can bring. (Fear and physfiend are mostly uselesss and mindcontrol is a bad joke anyway.)

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Yeah, the inability to pick things back up again after even the slightest portion of unfavourable RNG is really quite a weakness of discipline. This has been pretty well hidden by sheer amounts of gear yet it becomes painfully apparent in PGs.

    On the other hand, if you get a streak of the NPCs behaving well (both the friendly ones and the opponents), PGs can feel an awful lot easier. Which is pretty bad design really.

  13. #13
    Hey,

    I'm not a raid player, but I could do all my CM without heal problems, and I love how disc needs to play, using atonement and procing shield.
    I was exicited about this feature but now I'm dissapointed, to compete against other healers I need to change my play style ;-(

    I have tried a few hours to get this gold, but mostly time I'm runing OOM on wave 6 or 7, yesterday I reforged my gear to spirit and it helped to go a little bit more longer, but I need to switch to holy or stop smite to get this gold is a complete fail in my opinion.

    I will get this gold as a disc, but I'm not sure if I will be able to get a good progress in endless mode.
    anyway, this feature is awesome. =)

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Mianette Fizzycog View Post
    Yeah, the inability to pick things back up again after even the slightest portion of unfavourable RNG is really quite a weakness of discipline. This has been pretty well hidden by sheer amounts of gear yet it becomes painfully apparent in PGs.

    On the other hand, if you get a streak of the NPCs behaving well (both the friendly ones and the opponents), PGs can feel an awful lot easier. Which is pretty bad design really.
    Ye, I fell it, I cant top the NPC life, the SS helps, but I need to top the npc life and I can't do it without spending so much mana, maybe the best reforge here is spirit/mastery, and use HF only to get archangel.

    penance to get grace and FH or GH, shield each 12 sec on tank, PoM on AoE waves, 10 waves without smite or ofensive penance, it is strange because disc needs to smite, to get atonement and reduce the penance's CD.

    Actully I like the crit change, it seems more disc, but in PG it fell a bad design.
    I have never felt this crit change like a problem on pvp or CM run like I fell on PG.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Rangoo View Post
    I have never felt this crit change like a problem on pvp or CM run like I fell on PG.
    Yeah, the difference between CMs and PGs is really quite stark. In CMs, I feel like my DPS can actually make a difference yet in PGs, if I try and play discipline as everything has been suggesting we do for this expansion, I am hit with mana issues and the mobs die around the same time as they would without my input.

    Maybe we will see some tuning or perhaps a switch towards Holy might encourage discipline to get another look, which feels necessary. I am finding myself relying more on Atonement and Divine Star out in the world to a greater degree than I did in the past. SS seems somewhat less useful and, while I might find it more useful in raids once I know the damage patterns well, I wouldn't be surprised to see people with T16 4 piece simply popping SS to buff Atonement and DS.

    Back on topic, I think 3 stack Grace on the tank is almost essential for Disc PGs. I'll know better once I am back on my actual computer I guess!

  15. #15
    Dear Blizzard,

    I love chain casted Pyros on one target. I love Hunters standing in fire. I love melee-Mages and ALL STUNS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIGHT! I also love Fear immune mobs when Fear is my only real CC, and absolutely no interrupts whatsoever. Thanks for all of this.

    Sincerely,
    Healy Priest

  16. #16
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    Another tip, if you're Disc I strongly recommend Divine Insight.

    You cannot keep the tank up with Heal, meaning you have to GHeal between Penances / PW:Shield. Because PW:S is significantly more efficient than GHeal (as Disc), the more PW:S you can put on the tank, the better. It also lets you spend more time Smiting, which brings down the deadliest enemies faster.

    Once the Flamecallers / Hive-Singers are down in any given pull, your absorbs, PoM, and spot-heals are easily enough to sustain everyone while you cool off and regen a bit. The new 100%-proc DI lets you follow a pattern of Bubble > Penance > Bubble > Bubble > Penance > Bubble on Oto, and if you throw in Pain Suppression you can support this for a bit even under very heavy pressure. This buys you more time to Atone-DPS the most troublesome adds.

    IMO this is a lot more effective than Twist of Fate (15% healing is too little, spread out too much vs. PGround's punchy damage spikes), and Power Infusion (only really useful for spamming GHeal on Oto at reduced cost, but I'd rather just keep him shielded, which is Disc's strength).

    It's also key for getting through Pyroblast phases. If you Focus the Flamecaller, you can see who he's targeting with his next fireball. You can then bubble anyone he's targeting, then immediately DI with Penance and bubble again if the Flamecaller starts chain-casting on one of the DPS.

    The goal as Disc here is always to try to get out of directly healing anything, as much as possible. Preventing damage, while killing stuff, is Disc's strong point.

    Also, prioritize healing yourself (exploit Desperate Prayer for this, too) because you do not want your Smites going to you at 50% reduced healing.
    Last edited by Lovestar; 2013-09-12 at 04:09 PM.

  17. #17
    Doing gold, I ran mindbender/pi/ds. I was not impressed with the level90 talent function in PGs. Gearing, I didn't swap helms nor did I flask and found gold to be a one shot. For me, heavy atonement use and likely some decent rng eased some waves and let me regen. Plan your mana CDs for max uses.

    Comparatively, endless was a nightmare. I felt like the hunter stood in fire the entire time and through 6 waves nothing have me a break. I figure trying with a more int/haste/crit build may prove better over my normal raid crit setup.

  18. #18
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    PG sucks really bad if you've adopted the legendary meta, low spirit disc playstyle. I basically have to swap my helm and reforge everything to be even close to good. It's pretty stupid.

  19. #19
    Did it last night as Disc

    Talents:
    - Spec into psyfiend and use him to interrupt/fear cc mobs. Especially when there are just a lot of mobs up on Otto, or when there is a lot of caster/aoe damage. Haven't tried Dominate Mind yet, but will try it for endless.
    - I found solace or mindbender about equal, but mindbender is better at smoothing out mana spikes (and solace doesn't have anywhere near 100% uptime because of the long breaks)
    - Divine star is incredible. Stack with the ranged and aim it at Otto for max win (I didn't try lifegrip for the times Otto is too far away, will try it tonight)

    Also, harken back to YE OLDE HEALIN DAYES . . .
    - Keep 3x grace stacks up on Otto when he's getting hammered and you're out of CDs (penance mostly),
    - GH on Otto with those 3x grace stacks (get grace up before you do this!), remember it reduces the WS debuff each time
    - roll renew on Otto when you need to spot heal someone else and he's got the WS debuff (especially with 3x grace up).
    - Flash Heal = emergency only and target has weakened soul

    Couple of other tips:
    - use a spirit flask & spirit food (makes a huge difference)
    - If the water bomb mob is going to die before the water bomb goes off, then don't dispel it (it vanishes with him).
    - When you use Barrier, make sure you get in it too
    - Void Shift is a very effective CD when it's just Otto taking huge damage and you're topped off
    - Don't use your CDs on Otto when he has shield wall up, unless you're in deep doo doo
    - Focus fire the adds giving you the most trouble (for me it was kill Burrower/AoE mob)
    - If you're near the end of a wave and your party is more or less topped off, STOP SMITING (but keep Solacing if you have it). Let your DPS kill it and save your mana. (but don't let your AA stacks drop)
    - You will need to Hymn of Hope. Plan ahead. I did it between waves, but it could probably better be done by doing it at the beginning of a wave with mindbender/shadowfiend up for more mana return.
    Last edited by jason1975; 2013-09-12 at 07:58 PM.

  20. #20
    Got to wave 7 in Endless as disc. Was basically about to be oom . Ran around 9k spirit. almost feels impossible to progress as disc!

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