Quick question about Disc - Mastery vs crit

[tsumeno]

Hi there,

I´m constantly trying to improve my performance and do the best for my raid and role. I try to hold crit and mastery at an nearly even (unbuffed) percentage (Tsumeno, Blackhand-EU) and spirit at around 12k (don´t want to drop lower). We are going into heroics this ID, another milestone to improve reforging ^^

Should I go more into crit (having Yulons Bite 543 and ChaYe 536)?

[espoire]

Should I go more into crit?

My raid has a pure-crit and a pure-mastery Disc priest. Both preform well, both prefer their stat builds to the alternatives (balanced or the opposite extreme) because of the spells they use. We're 10/14H, take from that what you will.

Crit and mastery kept at the ideal ratio optimizes the total healing+absorb of your heal spells.
Pure-crit is the way to go to maximize atonement damage, and helps refresh Divine Aegis, which can actually produce more healing than the crit/mastery mix if shields commonly expire.
Pure-mastery maximizes PW:S blanketing.

TL;DR: it depends, use what you prefer.

[Deleted]

If you go with 12k Spirit and you don't want to drop that, then probably you are using more shields than atonement. So a bit more mastery would not hurt you. But I prefer, like many others, too, a Crit=Mastery-Built with low Spirit in 10m. I'm at 11/16hc, going with 9,5k Spirit (cannot go lower), 13k Crit and 12k Mastery.
I would go for minimum one reg trinket. Critprocs aren't that good.

[Fluttershy]

If he's 10man then he would def want 12k spirit + regen for malkorok/thok.

But if he's starting on heroics then yeah none of the fights other than maybe protectors will eat much mana.

[babylon]

If he's 10man then he would def want 12k spirit + regen for malkorok/thok.

hrm im in 10man, im doing thok hc on 11.3k spirit (2 regen trinkets, siegecrafter normal + horridon tf hc, solace), and with shield spam, mass dispels, and binding glyphed it seems perfectly fine (fine to the point when actually can drop more spirit), never run oom there :s

malkorok dunno, im carried by a monk, i just smite or whatever and run around, i know, i didnt deserve the ring :<

[Deleted]

May be i can give this question a little more views. Of course main problem is in which guild you raid - 10 man compare to 25 man is a big difference...

1) Since which point you would like to go more crit or more mastery included spell power (35k spell power+-??).
2) After answering first question since (or till) which point you are goig to gem full crit instead of intel.

For example here is my priest:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Yakka/advanced

We raid 10 man and are on Thok (waitting for kill on sunday). Now I have:
- 40.7% mastery (buffed on raid 49,3%)
- 36,16% crit (buffed on raid 43%)
- still gemming pure crit
- 10 600 spirit (after looting schoulders from norushen will be cca 9000)

and now:
1) Schould i still gem pure crit anyway?
or
2) Schould i now stuck more mastery or more intel on my gear?

I feel all right with spirit, i feel all right with healing done also with absorbs (personal problem with shells i use not optimal but that´s not for this topic). We tested 2 heal and 3 heal all the heroics we have so that´s not a problem. Also thok now is after one evening more about personal fails than healing troubles. I go each week 6 bosses on 5 of them i got rank but that´s not the main point.

Is there any moment on Dpriest gear where it is going back to gem intel/mastery instead of crit - because you have enough crit and it is not important to have more? I don´t agree very much with some people that you can play mastery PWS spam dpriest on 10 man, because of the DMG you can give to your raid - on farm it doesn´t matter but for progress it is a big deal to have 20-40 mil DMG done or just 10.. For 25 man it is absolutely relevant to go pure mastery and spam PWS but with more spirit you need of course.

[Deleted]

You won't even be able to max crit without high mastery rating. At 566 ilvl and all possible slots filled with non-haste crit gear except gloves and shoulders, I'm at 14600 crit rating and 13500 mastery rating. That's 43% crit vs 56% mastery raid buffed. The only way to even get more crit would be taking Cha-Ye's or dropping the 2P bonus.

How much spirit you need entirely depends on your PW:S usage and mana management really. I'm awful at using PWS (like, really), so due to not using it I'm running around with 8k spirit + siegecrafter trinket. The better you can handle rapture and overhealing, the less spirit you need. If I hit 4 rapture procs a minute I'd probably drop to 6k spirit.

On progression you'll have to find out for yourself how you want to balance your stats. Protectors, Norushen and Sha were really terrible on mana on our first kills (Protectors still are), but you can really fix those with hitting your mana cooldowns properly. But SoO heroics are even more ridiculous at one-hitting than ToT was, so maxing atonement throughput remains the priority for me. And the only way to do that is crit>mastery with low spirit.

[Fluttershy]

hrm im in 10man, im doing thok hc on 11.3k spirit (2 regen trinkets, siegecrafter normal + horridon tf hc, solace), and with shield spam, mass dispels, and binding glyphed it seems perfectly fine (fine to the point when actually can drop more spirit), never run oom there :s

malkorok dunno, im carried by a monk, i just smite or whatever and run around, i know, i didnt deserve the ring :<

that's cause you have 2 regen trinkets. Ideally you'd want the amp/blackfuse trinket.

[Sillychan]

10M is more favorable towards balancing Mastery and Crit for maximum throughput. In 25M, level 90 talents can be severely abused so anything to get DA on a large amount of bodies is favorable. Even then, generally you're going to want to reforge out of spirit and into Mastery or Crit (depending on the piece). Even doing this, unless you're carrying a large number of Mastery/Crit pieces that dont' have spirit, you should end up around 8-9k. Just forgo reforging out of spirit and into mastery on a few pieces and you should be able to stay between 10-12k.

I would personally go with Yu'lon and a regen trinket until you get your hands on an amp trinket.

Remember that Mastery is not a useless stat. Far from it actually. Some have been running around believing that SS is no longer affected by mastery, which is untrue. It used to be affected by mastery 2x (first by the intial heal, then averaged out among the party, and then mastery was applied AGAIN -- double dipping so to speak). However, while mastery does increase your PW: S, remember that PW: S can crit.

You actually get more throughput when/if PW: S crits that a highly buffed mastery shield. However, mastery is always valuable, don't forgo it to stack straight crit.

Lastly, you should be using your LMG for PW: S and Halo (if selected). It's the highest hpm you can get in a short window, and in the instance that Rapture lines up with Lucidity, you're getting free mana back.

[tsumeno]

Thank you all, your replies helped me a lot. For clarification, I´m raiding 10man. For a summary: I understand that in the end it depends on my spellusage, if I make heavy use of atonement spreading DA with crits would favor crit a lot. "Heavy" PWS usage favors mastery.
For me it means, I will go a little bit more into crit and see how that works.

Another question about mana regen, do you prefer Mindbender or Solace?

[cyqu]

our disc priest does full crit build (15k crit) with like 9k spirit and would probably forge out of more spirit if he could.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...bella/advanced

[Fluttershy]

I prefer solace, it's better since it takes less brain power to use shadow fiend properly than mind bender. though I believe for min-maxing mindbender is superior.

Mindbender is about a 11-13k dps increase over solace in my 567 gear, Nothing to scoff at for 10mans. I think I might just respec and bind it with my holy fire ability.

[Deleted]

if there is always a valid solace target in range, solace is better if you do not cast it with the LMG proc. (because using a free spell during clearcast state is "mana loss" or better mana-not-saved)
MB will bring you higher dps but solace will increase you hps by a bit. (solace does 100% of dmg as heal while HF only does 90%)

[langning]

our disc priest does full crit build (15k crit) with like 9k spirit and would probably forge out of more spirit if he could.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...bella/advanced

Amabella is a guy? Ruin my fantasy why don't you?

[Frmercury]

I prefer solace, it's better since it takes less brain power to use shadow fiend properly than mind bender. though I believe for min-maxing mindbender is superior.

FWIW - Shadowfiend + HoH = Zero -> Full Mana Bar

[Reptar]

The thing to remember is they are pretty similar and a lot of it depends on playstyle. The fact that you can tweak your playstyle from fight to fight will results in scenarios where either set up is optimal. As other people have said, your raid size will also help you make a decision here.

In a 10m, I would personally still gem crit, crit/int, crit/spirit, but I wouldn't pass up mastery gear with better stats over gear that prioritizes crit. In all honesty, your best bet is to most likely to reforge out of some of that spirit and put that towards crit/mastery (whatever piece the gear is missing). I know you said you don't want to do this, but you can get by with less. Imagine an extra 2,000 in secondary stats while not having to obtain any new pieces.

My suggestions for managing mana:

1) Make a power aura/weak aura for your LMG
2) Track Rapture
3) Cast Shadowfiend/Mindbender early and often. You'd be surprised at how many people don't use these spells until they need it, thus losing out on possibly 1-2 uses a fight
4) Make sure to save your hymn of hope for shadowfiend use.
5) This is situational, but if your 90 talent is on CD and you really don't need to bubble somene, you can time an archangel with your LMG proc, thus you get 2-3 free casts of smite/penance without evangelism when the spells cost more mana
6) Track raid CD's. There are a lot of times that healers will spam heal when their is a raid CD up. If you have a way of tracking these and you know you can trust your healers, there will be times when you can continue to smite spam instead of worrying and overhealing/wasting mana with wasted bubbles/PoH spam.

[Fluttershy]

FWIW - Shadowfiend + HoH = Zero -> Full Mana Bar

Yeah, that 4% more mana regenerated by comboing those 2 make you hit full mana. And when 2 healing in 10mans you don't always have the luxury of being able to channel for 8 seconds the moment you need to use fiend.

[Notdev]

FWIW - Shadowfiend + HoH = Zero -> Full Mana Bar

More like 50%, also what Fluttershy said.

[Fluttershy]

Actually the fiend only gets 6 hits(7 with perfect swing timing) during the channel.

So a hymn+fiend gives 2.7-3.15% more mana overall every 6 minutes. You use fiend when you start losing mana, which is generally on the parts where you can't just afk for 8 seconds to hymn.

[Gromok]

FWIW - Shadowfiend + HoH = Zero -> Full Mana Bar

Tested on dummies (one time only, so take it with a grain of salt):

Shadowfiend = 39% mana gained
Shadowfiend + HoH = 44% mana gained

That's about a 12,000 mana difference. Which is about half a potion, or about one PoM or PoH or Penance. So that is smart to do, yes, but don't let your stuff sit off cooldown for it.

Aside: I spent 5 minutes looking through forums and my spellbook trying to figure out what priest ability 'FWIW' is.... Now I feel dumb.