[Disc] Challenge mode advice!

[Rafal]

Hey there priest players!

I am looking for advice on gearing/talents etc for challenge modes. I have already cleared CMs once on my resto shaman, so I at least have some dungeon experience going for me, but I can't say I know much about playing a disc priest anymore.

Here is my toon: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...on/Vieo/simple

All advice is welcome =)

[purplehazen]

int>haste>crit>spirit>mastery. i can log out in my CM gear in about 30minutes after raid. Talent setup I run is 122212. You can spectral guise during trash, drop combat to rez/drink. Rapture is free healing, hopefully you're timing it. Learn proper spirit shell timing, it can also be used on tank as a single target CD. Most of your healing will be atonement. Less time alive = less healing.

[Quenden]

int>haste>crit>spirit>mastery. i can log out in my CM gear in about 30minutes after raid. Talent setup I run is 122212. You can spectral guise during trash, drop combat to rez/drink. Rapture is free healing, hopefully you're timing it. Learn proper spirit shell timing, it can also be used on tank as a single target CD. Most of your healing will be atonement. Less time alive = less healing.

A+ advice, the only thing I would add is to know your tank's incoming damage. It is a lot easier to heal a Blood DK than a BrM, for instance. Not that healing either one is particularly hard as Disc in CMs, just need to know what to anticipate.

[Thirteen]

Any (haste) breakpoints we should keep an eye out for? As someone else who's trying to get into CMs, thanks for the advice!

e: Also, noticed you were using Relic of Yu'lon/Vision of the Predator. How would Relic of Chi-Ji/Alchemist Stone fare? I heard the Alchemist stone is BiS?

[nightfalls]

Generally I prefer to go for Crit over Haste due to both good DPS scaling and healing (DA). This is also seemingly what most "experts" in CM's recommend as well. After that I'm not as sure myself, but a quick look at what most recommend is Haste > Mastery, which makes sense (again, more DPS scaling). Gemming as with all 463 content should be intellect-based - best scaling at low SP levels and also great since it affects both healing/DPS again.

The bottom line is that both the stat weights and the trinket recommendations you (Thirteen) mentioned for the "BiS" are DPS/speed oriented not so much about healing. It's assuming you know how to use Restorative Amber (hence total lack of spirit recommendation nor mana trinkets are included).

As a Disc Priest it's fucking night and day compared to a Resto shaman in healing ability, the cooldowns are something like 6x as good as the Resto ones, and your toolkit is 6x better. For talents your best bet is Mindbender (DPS and mana) / Spectral / ToF / Divine Star is the cookie cutter build, use Divine Star on trash to keep high ToF uptime.

Tips are just to anticipate damage in advance, prior to pulls I like to make sure a shield + some aegis (either renew or just heal spam) + POM is on the tank, use AA+SS, PS, Barrier all as tank cooldowns. From what I can see most good groups will just have the Disc mainly use atonement, that said, I would recommend focusing on healing over DPS until you're at least comfortable with your tank - stability > trying to min-max DPS and letting your group die when just going for Gold esp.

[Clebane]

A+ advice, the only thing I would add is to know your tank's incoming damage. It is a lot easier to heal a Blood DK than a BrM, for instance. Not that healing either one is particularly hard as Disc in CMs, just need to know what to anticipate.

Provided that the DK has a higher skill cap, they are the easiest to heal! He won't die if proper cooldown usage is maintained.

[Deleted]

Divine Star OP as fuck

massive uptime on ToF

crit > all :O

also i used both int, crit proc trinkets (caster TI trinket and the other from dungeons), which worked really well

[Deleted]

Provided that the DK has a higher skill cap, they are the easiest to heal! He won't die if proper cooldown usage is maintained.

Brewmaster has a way higher skill cap and is a lot easier to heal if you have a good one than a good dk. DKs are good tanks because they are very easy to heal even at low skill levels.

[TenDance]

Dunno, have seen several blood DKs in Flex and other groups show that low skill results in an untimely death. On the other hand, if a good DK isn't far behind the equipment curve, they won't need attention from a healer.

I wouldn't advise haste for a starter. You always have to compensate with manareg, much better stat investment in crit as far as I'm concerned.

[Deleted]

Haste over crit will improve your damage, crit over haste will improve your healing (DA mostly). Stacking haste before crit might be a bad idea if you're just going into challenge modes with other DPS/tanks who aren't totally sure what they're doing, meaning you might go oom during an encounter. Crit > haste is safer in both healing and mana. Although at the 463 gear levels, the difference should be subtle, honestly.

For trinkets, Yulon DMF trinket is clearly BiS. Second trinket is something with static int that procs something, so Vision of the Predator, Timeless Isle, Volatile Talisman etc. Make sure it's not on-use, because that interferes with the engineering gloves.

Other than that, don't forget about mindbender, spirit shell, pain suppression and barrier. Each of those are ridiculously strong spells. If you can keep the tank alive while taking serious damage, serious vengeance is going to come out of it.

[Kitakawa]

Haste is useless at all, Discs don't have any effective HOT, do they? Crit and mastery are much better I guess. 6000-8000 spirit should be enough btw.

[Deleted]

You're mostly trying to smite lots not just for the healing but the damage too, the quicker a mob dies the less healing that's needed - hence I think haste is still going to be pretty good for the added dps that mastery doesn't give.

[Deleted]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Snie/advanced

That's my CM gear, I recently started doing #1 World times. (Only did SSB so far, but should be a good confirmation that it's good optimized.