Disc priest help (log analysis, 10 man normals & heroic)

[hatchetman240]

Hi all! I've come to see if you can look over our logs and check in on our disc priest. We ran into problems on H Protectors 10 man, and in looking at things I noticed he didn't using spirit shell at all that night, so I'd like the community with more experience to look closer at his logs and give some feedback as to what else he could be doing

WOL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/y...0iu/details/6/
Previous WOL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/b...o5m/details/7/

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...olvinus/simple

Since we're three healing most encounters, I've often asked him to go "full atonement" since a little bit of extra DPS might help us out on some fights but I didn't think he was continuing it on progression encounters that leaned heavily on healing. Before I bring it to his attention I want to be sure what I should be asking for. Thanks for your help!

[Nestar]

As you mentioned, no SS usage. That's by far his biggest thing. Looking over your logs for that fight, him doing that isn't gonna save you though. You're losing people early in the fights to avoidable mechanics, not lack of healing.

Mainly Corruption Kick, Vengeful Strikes and Noxious Poison.

As far as his healing goes, He could do to up his PWS usage a bit, Barely abusing rapture right now, that's free heals he could be getting. Archangel usage is good.
He needs to unglyph PWS and stop using renew though, And chances are he could better benefit from Halo over Cascade on this fight.

[Larynx]

Hi all! I've come to see if you can look over our logs and check in on our disc priest. We ran into problems on H Protectors 10 man, and in looking at things I noticed he didn't using spirit shell at all that night, so I'd like the community with more experience to look closer at his logs and give some feedback as to what else he could be doing

WOL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/y...0iu/details/6/
Previous WOL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/b...o5m/details/7/

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...olvinus/simple

Since we're three healing most encounters, I've often asked him to go "full atonement" since a little bit of extra DPS might help us out on some fights but I didn't think he was continuing it on progression encounters that leaned heavily on healing. Before I bring it to his attention I want to be sure what I should be asking for. Thanks for your help!

First of all, there's no such thing as "full atonement." In 10m, discs who distinguish between the two are just bad and looking for an excuse to press 3 buttons over a 10 minute fight. If you're three healing an encounter with a disc using 100% atonement, kick him and bring a DPS instead. Your other healers will be fine.

Your priest is also logged out in Shadow gear, so his armory is useless right now for gear. Looking at his glyphs, he's using one mandatory glyph, one bad glyph, and one more than useless glyph. He should never use Glyph of PWS. There is never a single conceivable situation for it. Glyph of Smite doesn't do anything for healing, and you won't run into a situation where you need it until Malkorok or Spoils. He should be using Weakened Soul, Holy Fire, or Inner Sanctum.

Here is my own log I'm going to use for comparison for Protectors: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...1&e=469#Iviker

So, the first two obvious things. He never uses Spirit Shell. That is bad, considering this fight it's actually useful. He should be using it in one of several situations: Calamity at over 3 stacks if no one has a raid CD to mitigate it, when Calamity hits during Inferno Strike, and during Dark Meditation if it'll be up by the next Inferno Strike.

Second obvious thing, he uses Cascade. That ability is borderline useless for this fight. The entire ranged group is stacked for the duration of the fight, so he should use Divine Star.

Despite being "full atonement" he also has significantly less (20%) uptime on Evanglism and Archangel. Archangel should be used nearly on CD. Nothing more to really say. I guess he was twiddling his thumbs or something.

His Twist of Fate uptime is 20%, compared to my 60% uptime. Considering you never got a kill, this one is harder to evaluate. It's still ridiculously low. So you know, ToF is a buff that procs when you damage or heal someone below 35% health. He needs to tag the adds that spawn to proc ToF. This happens every transition.

Analyzing his damage done, it's pretty obvious he's oblivious or lazy. On my log Smite is 11% of my damage done, and I have about a 1:3 ratio on Smite vs Penance. On his log, Smite is 46.6% of his damage done, and he has about closer to a 2:1 ratio on Smite vs Penance.

I could look at less general numbers beyond spell usages, but there's no point when he's not even doing the basics well enough.

So, to sum it up:

• He needs different glyphs
• He needs to use Divine Star (and the raid needs to stack)
• He needs to game ToF better, or not use it at all
• He needs to actually pay attention to his CDs and not smite spam
• He needs to use Spirit Shell. Looking at your deaths, several of them could have been prevented by proper use of Spirit Shell.

[hatchetman240]

ok, he's relogged in his discipline gear. He was reading that crit builds do not benefit from spirit shell, and said there is no good authoritative source on how to build a disc priest that has any consensus. Can you point us to a definitively correct guide?

[Larynx]

ok, he's relogged in his discipline gear. He was reading that crit builds do not benefit from spirit shell, and said there is no good authoritative source on how to build a disc priest that has any consensus. Can you point us to a definitively correct guide?

http://www.icy-veins.com/discipline-...-healing-guide (seems like they haven't updated the gemming part of the guide unfortunately, though the given stat priority is correct)
or
http://howtopriest.com/ (I think that's the correct one)

At his gear level, this should be his stat priority:

Crit (1.9 crit = 1 intellect) > Intellect > Mastery > Spirit > Haste

What this means is that he should be gemming for Crit/Int for red, Crit for yellow, and Crit/Spirit for blue (depending on socket bonus straight crit is better)

He's also still logged out in his Shadow set, unless he's seriously reforging to straight haste as Disc.

In case he brings it up, on the subject of spirit: The majority of Disc priests play with the minimum possible spirit. I have 8.2k spirit, for example. Even with that little, I don't run OOM very easily. Anything more than 10,000 is wasted stats. If he has issues maintaining his mana levels at any amount over 9k, then it's personal error on his part or his other healers are slacking. This assumes he has the legendary meta gem. The LMG is worth approx 2k spirit (~19k mana per minute using lucidity to proc rapture, 1 spirit = 1.2 mp5) from just rapture procs, so assume about 3-4k extra spirit on my numbers if he doesn't have the LMG.

[Nestar]

ok, he's relogged in his discipline gear. He was reading that crit builds do not benefit from spirit shell, and said there is no good authoritative source on how to build a disc priest that has any consensus. Can you point us to a definitively correct guide?

Spirit shell takes all heal and divine aegis into account when giving the total absorb, so yes it does benefit. What he may have read is that mastery no longer affects spirit shell, Which was a change back in I believe 5.3. Mastery affects the DA and heal used to calculate the spirit shell absorb, but it does not increase spirit shell again afterwards.

So if you were to cast a PoH that hit 5 players for 100k each and 3 of them crit, You would see those 3 get spirit shell for 200k and the other 2 would get 100k (obviously these aren't real world numbers, mastery and amp trinkets will adjust this a bit).

The major point of spirit shell is that it does 0 overhealing with what normally is a very excessive spell (PoH)

[kenn9530]

Atonement is the primary healing for disc, use Shields on rapture cd combined with 2-3 shields with LMG procs, Spirit Shell should be used prior to large damage spikes, L90 talents are either halo or DS, use these on CD pretty much when needed (with luck you can get halo of during an LMG proc to save lots of mana).

tips never ever use cascade as disc, halo/DS is far superior.

Stat prio is Crit-Mastery-Spi(8k isk max)-haste

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...t/Kahel/simple

is my armory to compare stats.

Crit should be aiming for upwards of 40% self buffed and 50% mastery, haste should be avoided at all costs as it will drain your mana.

By having lots of crit your dps will also hover around 100k helping atonement provide plenty of healing for most situations.

Having looked over many of the logs the main problem is why are you 3 healing most fights, uptimes on his AA and ToT are generally pretty good and his dps is around 100k in most fights, yes there could be more use from Spirit Shell as he didn't use it(although on the ocassional fight if i don't need to use it i will focus on dps instead).

[Chillzor]

Are you guys really suggesting that a disc who isnt playing optimally in a raid that is dying to stupid stuff should run with 8k spirit? I dont think that will be very helpful to be honest.

Now, i have no idea how much he has since hes in shadow gear, but i would say that having a comfortable cushion of 11 or even 12k and THEN proceed to cut down once hes more comfortable would be for the best.

Not everyone plays in perfect environments, common people tend to derp a lot in my experience

[kenn9530]

Are you guys really suggesting that a disc who isnt playing optimally in a raid that is dying to stupid stuff should run with 8k spirit? I dont think that will be very helpful to be honest.

Now, i have no idea how much he has since hes in shadow gear, but i would say that having a comfortable cushion of 11 or even 12k and THEN proceed to cut down once hes more comfortable would be for the best.

Not everyone plays in perfect environments, common people tend to derp a lot in my experience

have you checked his logs, yes since the fights are being overhealed he most likely should be at the top(maybe the holy pally is stealing some of that extra healing), but the uptimes on his cooldown usage is reasonable apart from no usage of SS(but its mostly normal fights), the main problem is they are 3 healing the fights, as far as i can tell he isn't the first one to die and he has throughout the whole report the one with the least amount of damage taken.

There are literally no benefits of having an extra 3-4k spi apart from gaining 30-40k mana extra per minute which is not needed, the extra 3-4k put in throughput stats is much more benficial it just takes the monitoring of the LMG proc which is not hard to check for a proc and whack a few shields out.

[Deleted]

Suggesting a maximum of 8k spirit is very dependent on what trinkets he has access to.

[Chillzor]

have you checked his logs, yes since the fights are being overhealed he most likely should be at the top(maybe the holy pally is stealing some of that extra healing), but the uptimes on his cooldown usage is reasonable apart from no usage of SS(but its mostly normal fights), the main problem is they are 3 healing the fights, as far as i can tell he isn't the first one to die and he has throughout the whole report the one with the least amount of damage taken.

There are literally no benefits of having an extra 3-4k spi apart from gaining 30-40k mana extra per minute which is not needed, the extra 3-4k put in throughput stats is much more benficial it just takes the monitoring of the LMG proc which is not hard to check for a proc and whack a few shields out.

Yeah i glanced at them and at the replies in the thread. Smiting for 50% of his damage and having 20% ToF uptime tells me that he is not very good at tracking his own stuff, i very much doubt he sucks at that and hes perfect at LMG management tbh.

Plus 3 healing stuff obviously takes more time to die, raid does mistakes (stepping in poison patches, not moving from sha sears, letting corruption shocks go off) and that just calls for more emergency bubbles and binding heals in my experience

In any case, like Amezea notes, we dont even know what kind of regen trinket he has access too (if any) and i personally believe that suggesting 8k spi in a vacuum to a non optimal player is a bit silly, but whatever

[Deleted]

In any case, like Amezea notes, we dont even know what kind of regen trinket he has access too (if any) and i personally believe that suggesting 8k spi in a vacuum to a non optimal player is a bit silly, but whatever

Agreed. I'm of the opinion that suggesting any amount of spirit is entirely useless. The amount required will vary wildly with raid size being tackled, group composition, ability to track the LMG and Rapture, chosen race, trinket access and amount of haste being used. The best advice I have heard in terms of amount of spirit is to have enough to be able to get through heroic Protectors and heroic Thok such that on a standard kill you will be just about OOM. Play around with the amount that is being used - if you have a glut of mana at the end following proper cooldown management then shave off some to the extent that your gear will allow. Not everyone has access to perfectly itemized pieces (I'm looking at you, glut of haste) so what is possible for one person in terms of their gearing might not be for someone else.

[kenn9530]

Yeah i glanced at them and at the replies in the thread. Smiting for 50% of his damage and having 20% ToF uptime tells me that he is not very good at tracking his own stuff, i very much doubt he sucks at that and hes perfect at LMG management tbh.

Plus 3 healing stuff obviously takes more time to die, raid does mistakes (stepping in poison patches, not moving from sha sears, letting corruption shocks go off) and that just calls for more emergency bubbles and binding heals in my experience

In any case, like Amezea notes, we dont even know what kind of regen trinket he has access too (if any) and i personally believe that suggesting 8k spi in a vacuum to a non optimal player is a bit silly, but whatever

immersus hc kill 69.1% ToT uptime, 31.2% AA uptime (could be just holding it for ph2 a little longer), damage seems reasonable enough, healing output could be more but there is not a great deal to heal anyway

protectors norm 56% ToT uptime, 42.5% AA uptime, 100k dps so thats reasonably good although healing is abit lower than the top healer, again 3 healing especially on a normal fight not much to heal.

norushen hc kill 73.7% ToT uptime, 49.1% AA uptime, 68k dps not great but only 54% uptime on the buff so not full damage(should be going in first), so that means his healing suffers compared to the healer with the buff longer but should be pulling maybe upwards of 200k if using a bit more PoH.

pride normal 42.7% ToT uptime, 50.9% uptime on AA, 90k dps reasonable, 3 healing a normal fight with next to no damage healing is not too bad.

not going to say anything on gala with only 1 try on hc, as disc i tend to help kill tower guards that kill the demo teams but usually maintain equal healing of the othe r healer near the end.

Things hes doing ok at, maintaining ToT uptime good, AA uptime apart from immersus is good maybe a few more % increase, Taking minimal raid damage,.

Things he needs to improve on more rapture procs(us on cd as best possible), use SS and use it often, using cascade as disc(use halo/DS), not using PW:S enough.

The spi still is not a problem even if not playing optimal its not hard to track the proc of LMG to whack a shield or two out, hell even I miss out of some rapture procs and still end up with plenty mana, The way he is healing mana shouldn't be a problem anyway and if they maintain 3 healers he should just be 100% atonement for aid in dps.

[Chillzor]

Kenn. The topic was about OP's raid having problems with H Protectors. Look at those logs aswell, and you might also want to consider that he healed the puddles on Immerseus for barely over 2.5mils, i sort of doubt he was holding onto AA there

Now, on their best Protectors try, he had 50% of his damage as smite, 37% ToF uptime, no SS, 1/3 of the rapture gains he should have and a couple renews for good measure. If you consider that ok, then we have different definitions of ok i suppose.

You can keep saying "its not hard to slap some shields" but hes just not doing it properly. Maybe we can discuss it further whenever we get the change to peek at his disc gear, but as it is now im not comfortable suggesting for him to drop down to 8kish spi.

[hatchetman240]

We made more attempts, got a little further along, here is an update. Please give us your feedback.

WOL:http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...ses&boss=71475
Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...olvinus/simple

[Deleted]

We made more attempts, got a little further along, here is an update. Please give us your feedback.

WOL:http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...ses&boss=71475
Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...olvinus/simple

In terms of how the gear is looking, the amount of spirit is probably still a little too high. For two healing heroic protectors (no mana regen CDs aside from my own) I find around 10.5k spirit with double amp to be enough. Some of that could likely be pulled off and put into more crit or mastery.

That healing cloak should really be switched out for the dps one in my opinion. Especially on protectors where the cleave can increase ToF uptime rather nicely. On your longest heroic protectors attempt Jina-Kang contributed a whopping 1.6% to healing output. Twist of Fate was up for around 25% of the time but I guess this could be increased slightly through Essence of Yu'lon procs. Plus, there is also the rather nice DPS increase that the cloak can afford on protectors when things are being stacked.

Might also want to reconsider the reforging priorities on the legs; haste --> crit is going to be better than mastery --> crit.

From a quick glance at the logs, why is Cascade still being used? Since the raid is either stacked or spread in a manner that Divine Star can cleave through them, I'd really recommend this talent for heroic protectors. Divine Star really, really should be getting used on heroic Norushen. There is also no use of Spirit Shell on Norushen - it works as a really good throughput cooldown on this fight. Are you ensuring that your disc priest is free from corruption for most of the fight? That will allow a good bit more Atonement healing (which would only be multiplied further by the use of double amp).

Edit: Glyph of Power Word: Shield is a pretty poor choice IIRC.

[hatchetman240]

We send the disc priest in first. He's clear as fast as possible. Agreed on speccing divine star more often. Heroic Nourshen starts out very spread out however due to range players blocking the bolts from the adds, but the fight always finishes in a stack it seems. Divine star is certainly a good switch here due to the stacking of the big adds on top of the boss.

[Deleted]

Divine Star is more for healing the stack on heroic Norushen. Honestly, I've never seen either of the raid groups I am part of block the bolts and instead the adds appear to simply be DPSed down as soon as possible. The group maintains a stack, at one of four positions (moving to avoid Blind Hatred) in order to allow better use of AoE heals and abilities such as Divine Star.

If your disc priest is clear for the entirety of the fight, they should be able to pump out a bit more healing, allowing you to two heal the fight.

[Sakamae]

Unless something has changed, only monks can game the Immersius dps trinket through fistweaving, it will not proc for disc. I remember reading that the timeless Yu'lon trinket is better. He really should be using the two piece tier, and at this stage he should at least have gotten two pieces. It gives you pretty much guaranteed DA on the whole raid with AA and level 90 talent. Armory doesn't show him wearing any.

There is no reason for the raid to be spread out on Norushen, you do not need to block bolts. DPS just need to prio killing the adds quicker if you have tank damage issues. There is constant AoE on the raid on this fight, which makes spirit shell able to be used on CD. As Amezea said, he should equip the DPS legendary cloak, and never look back. The healing cloak is really bad for disc. The dps cloak did over 12 million damage on my last protectors kill for example.

He needs to be tracking his CDs and procs. At minimum he should have a weak aura for the meta gem. He is not casting Penance hardly at all. I had over 10 million damage from penance on my last protectors kill, he was at 1.6 million, 78 hits versus 15. It is one of the most effective ways to heal through atonement. Holy fire also underused with only 7 total casts, this is cast on CD. Smite casts matched mine, but smite was only 15% of my damage, compared to 68% for him.

Spirit shell was only used twice. It should be used as close to CD as possible, combined with AA and/or Inner Focus (which he also only used 2 times). I had 14 million absorbs from spirit shell, (that's all damage prevented!) compared to his 3.2 million.

Edit: You need to make sure you have a set rotation for who takes the mark of anguish and what CDs they need and when. It shouldn't need to be passed to the tanks. It looks like that's where you are losing people.

[Deleted]

Unless something has changed, only monks can game the Immersius dps trinket through fistweaving, it will not proc for disc. I remember reading that the timeless Yu'lon trinket is better. He really should be using the two piece tier, and at this stage he should at least have gotten two pieces. It gives you pretty much guaranteed DA on the whole raid with AA and level 90 talent. Armory doesn't show him wearing any.

You are correct, it isn't possible to proc PBoI with a standard discipline "DPS" rotation but I've found from experience that my throughput increased with heroic
PBoI against Timeless Yu'lon. I wouldn't imagine normal being quite so clear cut but I found the 8.5% more secondary stats and increased critical damage and healing to be worth it. Ideally, one would be using PPoP and Siegecrafter's trinket with pieces of gear which allow for a smaller amount of spirit.

He needs to be tracking his CDs and procs.

If WeakAura isn't your thing (I'm not a fan of it) then you can configure Clearcast to show simple icons near to your character when something procs, raid frames or whatever suits. I use this to track Lucidity, Borrowed Time and Spirit Shell amongst other procs and stacks of Evangelism.