Help out a returning veteran Disc Priest, why so low?

[Nascosto]

An old officer of mine is making a return to Discipline and the game in general after taking most of MoP off. She used to be a pretty damned skilled disc healer, but tonight and for the last few weeks since her return she's getting schooled. Tonight she at 528 got schooled by a 495 shaman alt on Spoils, so something here is obviously wrong. We've looked at logs, but I simply don't know enough about disc to be able to pin-point issues. If she's missing a big mechanic or something new I'd like to be able to pinpoint it and assist her. Our hypothesis is that she's just sticking to atonement healing and isn't doing as much direct, but we're unsure and don't know the numbers well enough to really get a confirmation. Thanks for any help you can give!

Character Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Elevine/simple
Tonight's Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...k/details/305/

[Vilbu]

Well she might want to read new stat priorities/rapture changes for starters. Second of all I am not so sure what did you expect from a priest 50 item levels behind of your restoration druid, though it seems like she was afking during spoils anyway. In my opinion you are overgearing the fights and it seems like there's not any reason why you'd even bring another healer unless it wasn't for a boost or gear. If you want to test her, drop the druid and let her handle things with the 495 shaman and see what she indeed 'IS' capable of.

[Portline]

I don't actively raid as disc, but I'll toss in my two cents as a healing officer.

She could probably afford to drop some spirit. Most raiding disc priests are running with around 8-10k; this is primarily due to synergy between the meta gem and PW:S spam, but she could drop some regardless.
She should probably be going towards pure crit gems, or at least spirit / crit if she is having mana issues. Crit became the default go to stat back in TOT and this still remains true (under most circumstances).
She needs to find the fine line between Atonement healing and adjusting to damage output. Lots of fights in this tier allow you to Spirit Shell and shrug off the damage. Proper use of her CDs is essential.

A blanket reason for why her HPS is low is because you are three healing every fight.. I only suggest doing this if your entire group is severely undergeared (ie: 520-530 range). Our resto druid actively did horrible HPS while we were three healing. He almost got removed from the team. We tried 2 healing everything the following week, it was a success, and we moved forward from there. There's no reason to have 3 heals for every fight in regular; the only fight I'd even suggest 3 healing is Thok, and even that is questionable. Your resto druid is already capable of solo healing a number of the fights, so it makes it very difficult to accurately gauge her logs. If you want a better sample, have her 2 heal Garrosh with your resto druid. Figure out if she's a actually responding to the damage output in a meaningful way.

[kenn9530]

her gear is pretty poorly optimised, barely any crit or mastery and too high a focus on spirit, even without LMG she could drop to around 12 spi and pick up 3k stats in crit/mastery, in 518 ilvl i wouldn't expect great things especially if the resto druid is much higher in ilvl, looks to me mostly the druid is soaking up most of the healing and its just a fight between the resto shammy and disc to pick up whats left but a disc even in low gear should be able to do well on meters just from absorbs.

I seen she used cascade which should never be used as disc as it sucks, she also needs to get more spirit shell usage but that could be since she hsa just come back she is not that familiar with the fights, once her gear is 540 plus then you should check her performance to see improvement.

[Nascosto]

Thanks for the off the cuff responses and the dedicated time spent looking at logs, all of this helps a ton and will give me a starting point for conversations and fixing. We'll try 2 healing with her next week. The druid does soak up a shitload of healing and that is something she had mentioned. Thanks again!

[Chillzor]

She can change the Purified and Sparkling for Potent and Smooth, as already said 15k spi is a quite a lot even without legendary meta
Drop PWS and PoM glyphs for Fade/Inner will/Binding heal
Get the Timeless Yulon trinket
Run her through Flex

Unlike other expansions, the gear gap is fairly large now, and the "catchup" mechanic, being timeless isle, sucks balls

[Azyoulike]

All good points, another that springs to mind is looking at her 'healing by spell' I'm only seeing 0.9% of her healing by Halo.

The top tier talents are a huge portion of Disc's output, even on 10 man. I'd expect to see them at roughly 20% of output, not including their contribution to Divine Aegis. Ideally you switch the talent for the fight, and use Divine Star when stacking. Halo has the longest CD of the 3 and the greatest mana cost so perhaps her problem is she's hanging onto the CD 'just in case'. But if neither ash-fall nor war song made her press the button, then she's set 'just in case' way too high.

[unkim]

Go LFR and try to find a good disci and copy exactly how they do.

[Trix]

A Disc Priest can excel on a fight once they know it as well, when we can predict the incoming damage we can stop it.

Being their first time in the raid, it's natural that they will be behind.

[Deleted]

Go LFR and try to find a good disci and copy exactly how they do.

Oh god.

The search for the grail begins.

[babylon]

gear:
1. more crit
2. less spirit (some could go into crit eh?)

herbalism isnt the best professions choice for a main imo, but depends on the level of casualty i guess

glyphs:
glyphs of pw:S - bad choice, pick weakened soul instead. pom glyph consider switching between fights, for binding or the range on atonement

logs:
have har read a guide 'how to play disc'
pw:s - very powerful, instant spell, absorptions being the main feature of the spec. consumed every 12 sec returns a lot of mana. she only used it ONE time on juggernaut. only 4 times on nazgrim. the shield should be in her top 3 spells (and this is including divine aegis) - if she doesnt want to use shields, make her play holy, clearly.
it seems that all she does is atonement, and yet her archangel (+25% to all healing) buff has a horribly low uptime. 12% on juggernaut. should be above 50%. look how much +healing she looses cause she doesnt bother to click archangel.

if she wants to DPS, if you think your raid needs more dps, if this is the excuse - notice something - her healing (again juggernaut) is about the same as your shadow priest, but her dmg done is so much lower. so, since she doesnt do any noticeable healing and any noticeable dmg, wouldnt it be better to take a real dps instead? like 20% dps instead of 4,5%healing+0,87%dps?

[Deleted]

Go LFR and try to find a good disci and copy exactly how they do.

On the recent times that I've had the misfortune of doing LFR, the "good" disc priests that I have seen, those sitting in a large swathe of heroic warforged pieces, seem to all have a habit of reforging out of crit to haste, enjoy stacking spirit and are keen on making good use of Jina-Kang. Don't copy these discipline priests please.

[Teegs]

I can't pull up her armory but I can tell by reading these comments above and based on logs, with overall low spell usages with key disc talents and poor talent choices/gems that it's not as simple as saying - just change this one thing around etc.

I think more priests would chime in and help analyze if it was only a slight issue here but this seems like a player who just got back into the game and isn't sure what they're doing anymore. There is honestly a lot to bring up looking at these logs, and a lot of improvements we can suggest but it's a big list to take in at once... I would suggest she read up on these forums or howtopriest, I recall have a good disc section.

[Deleted]

Mazor and Teegs effectively cover the issue - it just doesn't seem like she knows what she is doing anymore.

In terms of talents and glyphs, Twist of Fate is stronger than Power Infusion this tier so that should certainly be taken. Glyph of Power Word Shield isn't helpful at all and should be dropped.

As for the actual healing, Mazor gave a nice assessment of Nazgrim and reaches the conclusion that things simply aren't being used correctly. The same is apparent on Iron Juggernaut where Spirit Shell isn't used at all (it is definitely helpful for the pulses in phase 2) and Power Word: Shield was used only once. Checking over a current guide on healing as discipline is recommended.

[Deleted]

it seems that all she does is atonement, and yet her archangel (+25% to all healing) buff has a horribly low uptime. 12% on juggernaut. should be above 50%. look how much +healing she looses cause she doesnt bother to click archangel.

I have a rather untested disc priest alt and am always a bit unsure how to use archangel. When I thought about it, I decided it was better not to try for a high uptime on archangel when doing atonement spam, as you get +25% healing but lose the +20% (healing + damage) and the 30% mana reduction from 5 stacks of evangelism. It just seems a bad trade. What I do is save archangel for when I am going to use my level 90 spell to counter some raid wide damage burst or need to switch from atonement to direct healing. Am I doing it wrong?

[Checksmix]

I would say a good portion is none optimal gear.

[kenn9530]

I have a rather untested disc priest alt and am always a bit unsure how to use archangel. When I thought about it, I decided it was better not to try for a high uptime on archangel when doing atonement spam, as you get +25% healing but lose the +20% (healing + damage) and the 30% mana reduction from 5 stacks of evangelism. It just seems a bad trade. What I do is save archangel for when I am going to use my level 90 spell to counter some raid wide damage burst or need to switch from atonement to direct healing. Am I doing it wrong?

AA should be used on cd especially with 2set t16, currently i gain 55% plus crit while it is up and it takes less than 10 secs to gain full evangelism stacks back anyway, it should be used on cd and combined with spirit shell.

If your not using it on cd your reducing your effective healing by a fair amount, the few secs you don't have 5 stacks of evangelism will make very little difference in your damage output as it only increases damage and reduced mana cost.

[Nascosto]

Wow guys, this was awesome - I pointed her here, and saw a pretty massive boost in her healing after her tears dried up lol. We put our top druid healer to dps on a few fights and two healed with her and our under-geared shaman, and she spend a lot of time re-tweaking gear and spec. All in all we got numbers out of her much closer to what we'd expect from her gear level, and this post along made her a lot more competitive and I think a lot more confident in herself as well. No one likes coming back to something they used to be awesome at and sucking, so I know this has solved a lot of frustration. Here are Thursday's logs and armory if anyone feels like a round 2 to see if there's any things still sticking out. http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l...kit/details/8/

[Basmothh]

Her AA uptime is still too low, and she should be using ToF over PI. She could also use offensive Penance with a little more frequency.

[espoire]

On the recent times that I've had the misfortune of doing LFR, the "good" disc priests that I have seen, those sitting in a large swathe of heroic warforged pieces, seem to all have a habit of reforging out of crit to haste, enjoy stacking spirit and are keen on making good use of Jina-Kang. Don't copy these discipline priests please.

We reforge haste because "LOL MOAR DEEPS". It's LFR: there are no standards, only trolling. I like to tank LFR. 67k armor in Shadowform is humorous.