[6.2.3] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Deleted]

i think there is a lot of interaction in disc priest. i enjoy playing it. probably equal to, if not more than, my MW.

i dunno, it's fun being able to crit shield people for 140k. what a broken ass spell lol

I think Mistweavers' throughput is fine.
I can dps while healing.

Your two phrases have the same interaction as disc's toolkit (huehuehue)
Seriously tho, how beeing able to land a crit shield defines as an example of "a lot of spell interaction" ?

[Floopa]

I think Mistweavers' throughput is fine.
I can dps while healing.

Your two phrases have the same interaction as disc's toolkit (huehuehue)
Seriously tho, how beeing able to land a crit shield defines as an example of "a lot of spell interaction" ?

because the interaction in the disc toolkit is fun

lose hps for a while to gain hps for a while later on
after using certain spells other spells are more effective

how are these effects not interaction

[Dracodraco]

Yes, I'm always fishing for Borrowed Time because it has such an amzing, noticable effect on which spell I choose next, it really effects my immediate spell choices, because who would use PW:S if not for Borrowed Time? It gives like a 40% haste boost for the next >insert specific spell name<.
And AA, yes, it really makes a difference to why spells to cast. I always combine Solace-AA-PoH in a fixed sequence! The interaction between Smite and PoH is totally immediate and noticable!
Penance and Smite, however? Nice interactio, but it is sooo dated, it has been around forever and always will be, I'm sure.

Doesn't matter if you're fishing for it or not. It has the same form of interaction as Riptide does for shaman, and it's imperative to keep rushing tides up. Just because you don't feel that it matters right now because, surprise, in 630 ilvl we have no stats (mythic foundry literally has double the stats of current gear), that's not really an issue with no interaction.

Just because you can't seem to grasp the interactions, doesn't mean they aren't there. The interactions that you seek are no more noticeable for resto shamans, than they are for disc.

...Actually... No.
None of them (Aside from AA-PoH) really feel like they have a noticable positive effect on spell selection, Smite-Penance doesn't even exist anymore. If you didn't notice you can't have spent that much time trying out spell interactions with the disc spec. Maybe you just read some patch notes lately (not all of them mind you)?

If smite lowering penance is gone, then my bad. Honestly wouldn't notice, considering I only log on my priest to do daily CM now that it's fully raid-ready.

Riptide->2x wave/surge is so much more meaningful than BT it's stupid to even try to put them on the same level. BT might as well just be a passive, since we're back to spamming PW:S so much.

Riptide->wave/surge is more meaningful because right now, we have no stats. Just like their Elemental blast is wickedly powerful (a base +500 ratings and +1000 spirit on cast) because it won't scale at all. On the other hand, a flat 100% increase in crit chance is much more powerful than a 30% increase. Likewise, shaman has no "empowerment" like Archangel to give them +25% healing in a pinch. You could argue there's too much interaction because you have to try and weave PW:S->casted spells if possible (especially when we start getting more gear - during mythic raiding, I wouldn't be surprised if we get +10% haste from borrowed time).
Likewise, Riptide is pretty much an empty global you spend as it does next to no healing, but you need to keep that and ES up for chain heal to work properly (and that's actually an interaction I did forget, chain heal does more healing if the target has riptide). PW:S is far from an empty global, it's our most potent one. If you could have your next 2x flash heals have 30% more crit, or next 2x heals hit 20% faster, vs cutting PW:S from 50K to 18K (over 18 seconds), then sure. But right now, you hit riptide to get the empowerment - it's just like hitting smite to get archangel, just more consistent.

Solace/HF vs. UL is a valid comparison here as both are individually small effects but increase throughout later, and both are going to be used frequently during movement. But this "interaction" is really just the way they replaced IF for disc. Resto still has talented instant cast on a short CD which also plays into this (UL->instant healing rain wherever the raid is moving to, or Riptide->UL->Instant wave as a mobile tank save) and creates more interesting decisions for them. Plus the "smart" heal of solace/HF is actually like a really dumb healer, now. They nerfed the output of smart heals so much they're not worth using and the new dumb targeting makes them a liability. A shaman can put that UL, however small, on the right target, but disc has to pray HF goes somewhere useful.

A 90 second cooldown is short now? That's neither consistently in use, nor reliable. By that logic, we may consider our +50% healing on next spell from empowered leap of faith frequent, as it's also a 90 second cooldown. Heck, is the cutoff between 90 and 120 seconds? Because if not, then power infusion is frequent and insanely much stronger as a talent. I'd argue that anything "short" is below 30 seconds, which makes them so frequent that they become "hit on CD"-buttons.

As for smite/offensive penance, I doubt either will see much use in high tier raiding as using them is essentially doing it wrong unless no one is taking any damage. AA isn't important enough (beyond the stacks you get from HF/solace) to make you want to use either spell. Maybe a free benefit for helping DPS during a burn phase, at best.

A 25% increase in healing is very much so important enough to warrant using 3x smites outside of archangel, where you're already doing 25% less healing. If you don't think it'll be used, then I'm looking forward to seeing your logs.

Shaman toolkit feels much more fluid than disc. HST is still valuable, and so is healing rain and CH is at least partially controlled, while our smart heals are now a liability because more often than not they heal the wrong target (tank at 50% and DPS at 93% gets the solace heal ... perfect). Riptide is useful and makes the "efficient heal" spam less monotonous. UL is a movement boost and an interesting decision. And then, of course, you have infinitely stacking earth shields so that an extra shaman is not penalized, but two discs will step all over each other even in a 30-man flex-sized heroic.

Not really, though. You say that smart heals are unreliable and almost not worth using, then say HST is is still valueable? Why? With the talent it does a good bit of healing, sure - 50K on each target over 15 seconds (or 100K total). That's the same as you get from one singletarget cast. I mean, sure, that and healing rain are worth putting down, but they are both just used as things to top off people who have lost little health - they're the holy nova/atonement output of resto shamans. They might be more effective, granted, because they're fire and forget, but their healing isn't exactly meaningful. The only thing keeping a group alive with a resto shaman healer atm, is constant direct healing. On which note, chain heal being partially controlled? Compared to what? Our aoe heal, PoH, which is 100% controlled? Okay then.

As for earth shields stacking, you can't compare that to PW:S I'm afraid. Earth shield is mandatory for the shaman to get enough output on the tank to keep him up - CoW has no such limits, either. Likewise, earth shield isn't an absorb, but a heal after the fact, which means having more of them on one target isn't balance breaking. It's also retarded to compare a spam able absorb spell like PW:S to a buff you maintain on the tank once every half minute (you do know that you don't actually throw ES around in the group/raid, right?).

Our talent selections are pretty much decided for us by encounter mechanics, while shamans can adjust their utility much more freely based around the rest of the raid's healing comp. I have absolutely hated playing my elemental shaman's resto off-spec since I added it in Cata, and it currently feels very much like it did then, but I'm seriously considering using it in my raid because disc feels much less interesting, now. And I would definitely be switching if we had a second disc in our raid.

Please tell me how resto shamans talents give you more customization. I mean, PLEASE fucking do, because that's just bullshit.
T1 - no choise, mandatory self CD.
T2 - no real impact, default is windwalk for freedoms.
T3 - no real impact, could go with either double totem (so you can still HST while healing tide is out), or totemic recall if you want another HST quickly/need windwalk or such more often. Utility at best.
T4 - no choise, Ancestral is mandatory for the added haste and much needed boost to mobility. I mean, if you can stand still the ENTIRE fight you could consider elemental mastery, I guess.
T5 - choise between rushing streams and Conductivity, depending on the amount of stacking, with Rushing streams being the go-to.
T6 - no choise, Elemental blast because of the added regen and stats (in current gear).
T7 - as far as I have seen, cloudburst seems to be the go-to for everything.


for priest?

T1 - no real impact, choise between selfheal/invis/proc shield.
T2 - no real impact, movement talents.
T3 - No real choise, solace for max regen (same as EB).
T4 - No real impact, CC talent.
T5 - Current go to is PI, but spirit shell / ToF could be situationally viable. Kind of like Ancestral vs the other two.
T6 - Divine star for stacked, Halo for spread (just like rushing streams vs conductivity).
T7 - WoM for raid healing, CoW for tank healing.


I don't see much more customisation for shamans than disc, sorry to say.

[Noradin]

Most "interactions" of disc are about as interesting as a mage buffing himself with intelligence and calling it an "interaction".

Yes I see the interactions, it's just they are so incredible lackluster. Borrowed Time? Come on, it is a miniscule general throughput buff attached to a spell you would use anyway. It has no effect on our spell selection at all.

AA? Well the effect is ok, even if I'd rather they seperated them back into IF and AA. The buildup of the "ressource" it takes is just cluncy, the way it is right now, still more interresting than borrowed time.

Riptime has direkt impact on the spell selection. Borrowed time has none.

[Deleted]

T1 - no real impact, choise between selfheal/invis/proc shield.
T2 - no real impact, movement talents.
T3 - No real choise, solace for max regen (same as EB).
T4 - No real impact, CC talent.
T5 - Current go to is PI, but spirit shell / ToF could be situationally viable. Kind of like Ancestral vs the other two.
T6 - Divine star for stacked, Halo for spread (just like rushing streams vs conductivity).
T7 - WoM for raid healing, CoW for tank healing.

Hold on a second, did I miss a change to Divine Star? Isn't Cascade still a better choice in nearly all situations since the target cap for DS can be reached by targets the star won't even hit?

[Dracodraco]

Hold on a second, did I miss a change to Divine Star? Isn't Cascade still a better choice in nearly all situations since the target cap for DS can be reached by targets the star won't even hit?

*shrug*. Either way, even if it's cascade vs halo, it's about as big of an impact as rushing streams vs conductivity (EG: You'll basicly take one in 9 out of 10 scenarios).

Most "interactions" of disc are about as interesting as a mage buffing himself with intelligence and calling it an "interaction".

Yes I see the interactions, it's just they are so incredible lackluster. Borrowed Time? Come on, it is a miniscule general throughput buff attached to a spell you would use anyway. It has no effect on our spell selection at all.

AA? Well the effect is ok, even if I'd rather they seperated them back into IF and AA. The buildup of the "ressource" it takes is just cluncy, the way it is right now, still more interresting than borrowed time.

Riptime has direkt impact on the spell selection. Borrowed time has none.

And Archangel has a direct impact on spell selection aswell. Borrowed time only seems lackluster right now because it's a direct scale with our stats (of which we have very few, as we're in freaking 630 ilvl). When we get to 700 item level at the end of this tier (695 mythc+6 warforged), we'll be looking at a much higher benefit from it. As for riptide having a meaningful interaction, it's not really more so. It's just the only button you have as a resto shaman when you're moving.

[Adhemar]

He was being sarcastic, and the first sentence of his post made that clear, which is why he objected to your quote. Borrowed time is a pretty weak mechanic, as the current state of disc's toolkit is such that PW:S is used at any possible opportunity to do so, which means you have a very high uptime on it (80-90% I'd guess) without actively caring about it, and it's effect is so small that it doesn't really matter (though this may change with gear).

[Deleted]

Holy Nova interraction: Cast pw:s, get haste buf, spam holy nova, cast pw:s again, get haste buf, spam holy nova again..

No wait.


Why do you even want holy nova fixed? The entire spell is shit.

[Deleted]

Holy Nova interraction: Cast pw:s, get haste buf, spam holy nova, cast pw:s again, get haste buf, spam holy nova again..

No wait.


Why do you even want holy nova fixed? The entire spell is shit.

Because we don't actually have that many other skills... Then again, that goes for the rest of the healers too.

[Adhemar]

Riptide->wave/surge is more meaningful because right now, we have no stats. Just like their Elemental blast is wickedly powerful (a base +500 ratings and +1000 spirit on cast) because it won't scale at all. On the other hand, a flat 100% increase in crit chance is much more powerful than a 30% increase. Likewise, shaman has no "empowerment" like Archangel to give them +25% healing in a pinch. You could argue there's too much interaction because you have to try and weave PW:S->casted spells if possible (especially when we start getting more gear - during mythic raiding, I wouldn't be surprised if we get +10% haste from borrowed time).
Likewise, Riptide is pretty much an empty global you spend as it does next to no healing, but you need to keep that and ES up for chain heal to work properly (and that's actually an interaction I did forget, chain heal does more healing if the target has riptide). PW:S is far from an empty global, it's our most potent one. If you could have your next 2x flash heals have 30% more crit, or next 2x heals hit 20% faster, vs cutting PW:S from 50K to 18K (over 18 seconds), then sure. But right now, you hit riptide to get the empowerment - it's just like hitting smite to get archangel, just more consistent.

PW:S is 37k on my 637 disc, not 50k, riptide is 18k (and costs 2/3rds the mana and provides numerous "interactive" boosts). That's an empty GCD? Sure, buddy. It heals for 15% less than HW/HS for less than 3k mana. It also gives you two quick efficient casts for each time you use it and interacts in a brilliant and interesting way with the last level 100 talent. I didn't say it was "better" than a 37k instant shield, but it's not the only trick in resto's repertoire (where PW:S is pretty much the only thing that keeps disc from being useless).

A 90 second cooldown is short now? That's neither consistently in use, nor reliable. By that logic, we may consider our +50% healing on next spell from empowered leap of faith frequent, as it's also a 90 second cooldown. Heck, is the cutoff between 90 and 120 seconds? Because if not, then power infusion is frequent and insanely much stronger as a talent. I'd argue that anything "short" is below 30 seconds, which makes them so frequent that they become "hit on CD"-buttons.

Yes, I consider a CD you can use at least 5-6 times per fight "short" (whereas 5+ minutes would be "long" and 3 minutes would be in between). I don't really consider 30 seconds to be a "cooldown" as it is practically a rotational ability at that point. But who cares? You're derailing with this entire line of argument.

A 25% increase in healing is very much so important enough to warrant using 3x smites outside of archangel, where you're already doing 25% less healing. If you don't think it'll be used, then I'm looking forward to seeing your logs.

No, it's not, because that 25% healing doesn't apply to our shields, which is well over half of our healing done and probably nearing 80% due to PW:S spam and CoW. You get 2-3 stacks per 30s for using solace/HF on CD and the time spent smiting is not worthwhile beyond that unless you're looking at downtime with nothing better to do. Without solace's mana return, it might not even be worth using HF more than once every 30s if there's actual damage to be healed.

Not really, though. You say that smart heals are unreliable and almost not worth using, then say HST is is still valueable? Why?

Really? This is an idiotic question. Maybe because it ticks for 5k several times and costs 1 GCD? Fire and forget is what makes it useful. The repeated ticks make it almost certain to put some healing where you need it, whereas solace is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off more often than it does.

With the talent it does a good bit of healing, sure - 50K on each target over 15 seconds (or 100K total). That's the same as you get from one singletarget cast. I mean, sure, that and healing rain are worth putting down, but they are both just used as things to top off people who have lost little health - they're the holy nova/atonement output of resto shamans. They might be more effective, granted, because they're fire and forget, but their healing isn't exactly meaningful. The only thing keeping a group alive with a resto shaman healer atm, is constant direct healing. On which note, chain heal being partially controlled? Compared to what? Our aoe heal, PoH, which is 100% controlled? Okay then.

PoH is not controllable. It targets a party member whether they're injured or not and you can't pick which, it just targets them all. I can guarantee that 3 injured targets get hit by my CH cast (with High Tides), regardless of what group they're in, and the remaining 2 hits have a pretty good chance of being useful (as opposed to targeting the two other people in the group who aren't even injured), and then there's the tidal waves proced from using CH to quickly target anyone it missed. What do you get after you cast PoH, again?

As for earth shields stacking, you can't compare that to PW:S I'm afraid. Earth shield is mandatory for the shaman to get enough output on the tank to keep him up - CoW has no such limits, either. Likewise, earth shield isn't an absorb, but a heal after the fact, which means having more of them on one target isn't balance breaking. It's also retarded to compare a spam able absorb spell like PW:S to a buff you maintain on the tank once every half minute (you do know that you don't actually throw ES around in the group/raid, right?).

PW:S isn't mandatory for a disc priest to get enough output on a tank to keep him up? Really? Do you even read the things you write here? Weakened Soul makes a second disc priest a huge liability, period, and that's because we're incredibly dependent on PW:S to be of any use to the raid. Have you tried running with a second disc priest since the HN nerf? Please let me know how it works out for you. Resto's penalty for stacking with other resto's (ES) was removed, even though it was already negligible in comparison, and ours was multiplied.

Please tell me how resto shamans talents give you more customization. I mean, PLEASE fucking do, because that's just bullshit.T1 - no choise, mandatory self CD.
T2 - no real impact, default is windwalk for freedoms.
T3 - no real impact, could go with either double totem (so you can still HST while healing tide is out), or totemic recall if you want another HST quickly/need windwalk or such more often. Utility at best.

T1 - Not sure if it's still true, but the shield totem was better than the damage reduction in the past.
T3 - Double totem is "no real impact"? Sure. HST+HTT at the same time is insanely useful. Not really a choice, unless you need Call for another totem (grounding, tremor, cap, etc).

T4 - no choise, Ancestral is mandatory for the added haste and much needed boost to mobility. I mean, if you can stand still the ENTIRE fight you could consider elemental mastery, I guess.

You need to sit still for 20 seconds to use EM (or press it with spirit walker's grace to increase your output to compensate during a raid move), and echo is viable in the right situations, too (lol double cleanse). This tier is the absolute definition of an interesting decision which you can make to suit either encounter mechanics or your raid's healing comp.

T5 - choise between rushing streams and Conductivity, depending on the amount of stacking, with Rushing streams being the go-to.

So another AoE CD (AG) is just useless in any circumstance? Sure. AG is yet another AoE cooldown, and shouldn't be written off. Again, this allows you to tailor your healing to the rest of your healing comp, opting for either a significant increase in throughput when stacked, doubling of the most useful smart heal in the game or another CD to respond to AoE burst. Way more interesting than choosing between PI, SS and the absolute garbage they made out of Twist of Fate.

T6 - no choise, Elemental blast because of the added regen and stats (in current gear).

Unless you don't need the regen, in which case UF is a significant tank healing boost or PE is yet another minor cooldown for responding to burst.

T7 - as far as I have seen, cloudburst seems to be the go-to for everything.

Storm elemental is junk, granted, but High Tide will be powerful in the hands of a quick thinking shaman.

for priest?

T1 - no real impact, choise between selfheal/invis/proc shield.
T2 - no real impact, movement talents.
T3 - No real choise, solace for max regen (same as EB).
T4 - No real impact, CC talent.
T5 - Current go to is PI, but spirit shell / ToF could be situationally viable. Kind of like Ancestral vs the other two.
T6 - Divine star for stacked, Halo for spread (just like rushing streams vs conductivity).
T7 - WoM for raid healing, CoW for tank healing.

T5 - ToF is useless and runs counter to our niche. For predictable burst, we will use SS and for responsiveness we will use PI - decided for us by encounter mechanics, regardless of who else we're healing with pretty much.
T6 - DS is garbage, Halo is better for stacked fights (just run out, drop it and run back in). Again, mostly decided by encounter mechanics, random bursts of damage will favor cascade while predictable damage will favor halo.
T7 - which is to say CoW, because WoM is pathetic output for disc and doesn't help our niche (which is the only reason to bring disc to a raid). Forget about trying to AoE heal and just leave it to the resto druids and resto shamans, or switch to holy if you need extra AoE throughput.

I don't see much more customisation for shamans than disc, sorry to say.

That's because you're not looking.

- - - Updated - - -

As for riptide having a meaningful interaction, it's not really more so. It's just the only button you have as a resto shaman when you're moving.

The only button when you're moving? HTT. HST. UF. AS+Surge/Wave/CH/HR. Cloudburst or storm elemental. Oh, yeah, and spiritwalker's grace, but we all know that's useless when you're moving. Plus ghost wolf to get there faster if you somehow run out of buttons.

- - - Updated - - -

Why do you even want holy nova fixed? The entire spell is shit.

Honestly, I don't want it fixed. But why give it to us and then nerf it into an entirely unusable state? Oh, because they suck at actually making disc's toolset work correctly without being overpowered or exclusive. Right.

[Dracodraco]

PW:S is 37k on my 637 disc, not 50k, riptide is 18k (and costs 2/3rds the mana and provides numerous "interactive" boosts). That's an empty GCD? Sure, buddy. It heals for 15% less than HW/HS for less than 3k mana. It also gives you two quick efficient casts for each time you use it and interacts in a brilliant and interesting way with the last level 100 talent. I didn't say it was "better" than a 37k instant shield, but it's not the only trick in resto's repertoire (where PW:S is pretty much the only thing that keeps disc from being useless).

If your shield is only hitting for 50K, your gear must be stacked with multistrike and versatility. Standing in Warspear without *any* buff at all, mine's hitting me for 44K non crit. That's with spirit on my neck, and the DMF trinket instead of throughput stats (more mastery). Add all of the various buffs (mastery, 10% spellpower, versatility all directly affects the bonus), yea, 50K+ should be happening. Riptide for 18K was with my ES up (and included the initial heal).

As for the last level 100 talent interaction, I haven't gotten much use of the chain heal one - you're literally better off spamming singletarget heals than casting chain heal in almost every scenario right now (that is, assuming you have enough time to hit everyone with a singletarget heal).

As for PW:S being the only trick, you're not utilising your pre-emptive spells enough. I get it that people love CoW for tank healing, so people are very quick to dismiss WoM, but in 5 mans, getting 4-5x PoM's bouncing due to 10 sec cd 30 sec duration and loading up proc's, they actually do a noticeable amount of healing. All of which can be done before a fight. You have the entire archangel mechanic and PoH shielding the entire group for heavy amounts (I've yet to see a stronger AOE heal than PoH). PW:S being "the only thing" keeping priest going, is just... Not true.

Yes, I consider a CD you can use at least 5-6 times per fight "short" (whereas 5+ minutes would be "long" and 3 minutes would be in between). I don't really consider 30 seconds to be a "cooldown" as it is practically a rotational ability at that point. But who cares? You're derailing with this entire line of argument.

And that's the entire point. 30 Seconds is short - 1.5 minutes is a cooldown. You won't be using it on cooldown either, because you'll be saving it for an emergency. I also don't see how I'm derailing anything - I'm arguing that the shit you seem to think is used oftenly and meaningfully, really aren't; atleast in current content (CMS/heroics). I can't foresee it in raids, either, but that's just me. Generally, anything above 1 minute isn't used "rotationally".

No, it's not, because that 25% healing doesn't apply to our shields, which is well over half of our healing done and probably nearing 80% due to PW:S spam and CoW. You get 2-3 stacks per 30s for using solace/HF on CD and the time spent smiting is not worthwhile beyond that unless you're looking at downtime with nothing better to do. Without solace's mana return, it might not even be worth using HF more than once every 30s if there's actual damage to be healed.

Urh. What. Do you even disc, bro?
Go test it. Please, I emplore you.
Here's my numbers on PW: S: 44378 no AA. 55472 with. 44378*1.25= 55472.5
And CoW: 48814 with no AA. 61017 with. 48814*1.25 = 61017.5
Mother of god, I'd say that's within the margin of error.
Likewise, you say that it doesn't affect our absorbs, but... That's just not how this works, you know? Our absorbs scale directly off of our heals - if I have 50% mastery, and I crit with a flash heal for say, 50K, I get a 50K heal and a 75K absorb shield (50K absorb * 1.5 due to mastery). If I get a 62.5K flash heal (because AA = +25% healing), then I get a 93.7K shield. Which you'll notice is the exact same as 25% more.

So yea, if this is how you've been thinking AA works (only on our heals), I can understand why you're so underwhelmed, but it's really not. It's extremely powerful.

Really? This is an idiotic question. Maybe because it ticks for 5k several times and costs 1 GCD? Fire and forget is what makes it useful. The repeated ticks make it almost certain to put some healing where you need it, whereas solace is a huge gamble that doesn't pay off more often than it does.

But you just said that smart heals were unreliable and bad. Now smart heals are good because more of them might heal something important? I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but when it ticks for 6-7k a second/average (shared on two targets), it's still not meaningfull. It's not going to save anyone, it's just going to buffer untill you can get to them with a proper +50K heal. It mostly gets used because it's something you can hit when you're moving, and to top people off without having to waste casts on them (EG, dps sitting at 80%, tank needing immediate attention, dps in no danger).

PoH is not controllable. It targets a party member whether they're injured or not and you can't pick which, it just targets them all. I can guarantee that 3 injured targets get hit by my CH cast (with High Tides), regardless of what group they're in, and the remaining 2 hits have a pretty good chance of being useful (as opposed to targeting the two other people in the group who aren't even injured), and then there's the tidal waves proced from using CH to quickly target anyone it missed. What do you get after you cast PoH, again?

I... What? The fuck dude? PoH is controlled by *you*. You pick the group to hit. You make sure it hits everyone in the group by picking the right target (hint: Cluster finder). If not everyone is injured, then you won't be using PoH, you'll be using your singletarget heals. PoH is about as structured as it gets - how good it is depends on how good you, as a player, is at gauging the current situation and the specific needs of it. As said earlier, CH isn't even worth casting over just spamming surges/healing waves if no one's going to die unless you use HW.
And what does PoH give me? double the output of chain heal, and an entire group shielded against incomming attacks if combined with Archangel.

PW:S isn't mandatory for a disc priest to get enough output on a tank to keep him up? Really? Do you even read the things you write here? Weakened Soul makes a second disc priest a huge liability, period, and that's because we're incredibly dependent on PW:S to be of any use to the raid. Have you tried running with a second disc priest since the HN nerf? Please let me know how it works out for you. Resto's penalty for stacking with other resto's (ES) was removed, even though it was already negligible in comparison, and ours was multiplied.

Now you're taking the stuff I'm saying out of context, though - clearly you implied a raid situation (because how else would there be more than one healer?), in which case, no. You do not need 2x disc priests to both keep up PW:S on the tank in the raid to keep the tank alive. PW:S doesn't act in any way like the other "healer buffers" (BoL, Lifebloom, ES). It's not supposed to. It's far too strong for that. You're now babbling about raid healing, which earth shield has absolutely no fucking business being even remotely related to. That spell is purely used on the tank for the shamans benefit.

T1 - Not sure if it's still true, but the shield totem was better than the damage reduction in the past.
T3 - Double totem is "no real impact"? Sure. HST+HTT at the same time is insanely useful. Not really a choice, unless you need Call for another totem (grounding, tremor, cap, etc).

As for defensive talent choise, for overall damage reduction, maybe it used to be the best. It's complete shit right now. It shields me for 14K initially for 10 seconds, then 3.6K every 5 seconds for 20 (so a total of another 14K). Total absorb of 28K, or about 14% of my unbuffed health. Not to mention it requires a global to use, while Astral shift is off the GBC. Yea, I much prefer a pure 40% reduction for 6 seconds, thank-you.

And... "insanely usefull". Really? I mean, really dude? You're reading what you're writing, right. Your HST is going to be on a 15 second cooldown either way, and if you've got HTT running, adding HST's healing to it is insignificant (and probably better saved for after HTT runs out, to pick up where the healing boost just left off either way). That's not to say I don't run it out of pure lazyness - I like not accidentelly overwriting my healing tide like a buffoon because HST comes off CD and I click it per automatic. But it's... Insignificant at best.

You need to sit still for 20 seconds to use EM (or press it with spirit walker's grace to increase your output to compensate during a raid move), and echo is viable in the right situations, too (lol double cleanse). This tier is the absolute definition of an interesting decision which you can make to suit either encounter mechanics or your raid's healing comp.

Echo being viable, good joke. If your raid ends up relying on you proc'ing double cleanses, there's not much hope left. Not to mention that you forget that EM lowers your overall output (passive 5% haste) to increase it at one point. It might be viable, as said, but I don't foresee it being used more than you'd pick different level 90 talents.

So another AoE CD (AG) is just useless in any circumstance? Sure. AG is yet another AoE cooldown, and shouldn't be written off. Again, this allows you to tailor your healing to the rest of your healing comp, opting for either a significant increase in throughput when stacked, doubling of the most useful smart heal in the game or another CD to respond to AoE burst. Way more interesting than choosing between PI, SS and the absolute garbage they made out of Twist of Fate.

At this point, I'm beginning to question if you have even played a resto shaman. AG is pure, utter garbage right now. If you think it's a better choise than PI vs SS, then you have not tried it yet. Let's say you're pumping out max healing. Here's a log of a Skyreach gold run on the second boss, with a shaman healer:
http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...7&end=18492394

He's pushing out 33K HPS. Now, AG takes 20% of your healing and spreads it as AOE healing. This means that AG adds 6.6K HPS to a critical moment, on the most healing intense scenario we can find right now. This is the same amount that HST adds with 100K healing over 15 seconds. It can be used MUCH more frequently, though. The downside is that AG *is* a little burstier (10 sec vs 15), and that it's off the GBC. But generally? If you're taking AG out for a spin, prepare to be severely dissappointed. That thing has been neutered. Badly.

Unless you don't need the regen, in which case UF is a significant tank healing boost or PE is yet another minor cooldown for responding to burst.

Dropping 1.5k secondaries on a 66.6% uptime (so 1K secondaries)? Huh. Yea, no. Especially with how rare spirit is. That's literally like giving up the secondaries on my helm, neck, shoulder, cloak, chest and wrist right now. It might be viable much later on, but I don't expect anything to be stronger this tier - after all, more regen means more surge spam (or alternatively, dropping regen stats on gear for output stats). Either way, PE/UF doesn't seem to come near (if only UL+HR was still a thing )

Storm elemental is junk, granted, but High Tide will be powerful in the hands of a quick thinking shaman.

How is high tide in anyway a quick thinking talent? If anything, that thing resembles a disc priests style the most - if you want to get optimal use of it, you'll have to prepare your riptide targets 6-7 seconds in advance before popping off your CH (or glyph riptide and lose out on a third of the healing it does - and then it still requires 2x globals and a CH cast). It's a passive boon on an encounter where you will be raid healing and have riptides out, not much more.

T5 - ToF is useless and runs counter to our niche. For predictable burst, we will use SS and for responsiveness we will use PI - decided for us by encounter mechanics, regardless of who else we're healing with pretty much.
T6 - DS is garbage, Halo is better for stacked fights (just run out, drop it and run back in). Again, mostly decided by encounter mechanics, random bursts of damage will favor cascade while predictable damage will favor halo.
T7 - which is to say CoW, because WoM is pathetic output for disc and doesn't help our niche (which is the only reason to bring disc to a raid). Forget about trying to AoE heal and just leave it to the resto druids and resto shamans, or switch to holy if you need extra AoE throughput.

So T5 has customisation. Good that we agree on that. It has as much customisation as Resto shaman's T4 talents do (EM vs AS), if not more. Saying your talent is decided for us by the encounter is retarded - that's pretty much every single talent for every single class and spec.

T6 also has customisation. Again with your whole "the encounter decides what's best"-bullshit line. Same goes for resto shamans - The encounter decides if you pick rushing streams or conductivity, because the encounter decides if you're gonna be stacked or spread. The encounter picks if you use EM or AS, because the encounter decides if you need the burst moment or the passive buff more. I mean, I really have an issue with the fact that you seem to think that disc talents gets picked "for us", but shaman talents doesn't. It's beyond insane. You *must* be able to see that, right?

As for Lvl 90 talents, there's about as much room to pick something as there is in the lvl 100 shaman tree. The whole "customisation" thing still doesn't hold true, though. The chosen talent is very much decided by the encounter for shamans.

As for CoW being the only choise, that remains to be seen in raids. In CM's, my CoW is usually wasted, but I might run with better than average tanks who actually tries to mitigate damage (the amount of warriors using shield barrier 99% of the time and block 1% is... Alarming), but I can build up many PoM stacks before a heavy healing encounter to heal the group-damage going out, which helps keep us topped (which is something you'll know disc is pretty bad at). It's AOE healing vs tank healing, and CoW doesn't really give me anything I don't have in heal/penance/flash heal/PW:S, but WoM gives me more AOE. I can imagine if we need to assign tank healers, you'll be right - but for now, it's very much a decision on what you prefer.

That's because you're not looking.

And yet you came up with no real additional "customisations" that the general talents of any healer doesn't match. Because that's what the freaking talent trees *TRY TO DO*. For dps, a dps talent tree will usually give you a passive, weak buff,

The only button when you're moving? HTT. HST. UF. AS+Surge/Wave/CH/HR. Cloudburst or storm elemental. Oh, yeah, and spiritwalker's grace, but we all know that's useless when you're moving. Plus ghost wolf to get there faster if you somehow run out of buttons.

*sigh*. Now you're just naming random buttons that can be used while moving. Let me dumb it down so you can understand what I said:

You don't pop fucking healing tide totem, AS, or spiritwalkers grace because fire landed on you and you have to spend one global jumping to the side. You pop those things when you need the output and have to move.
You time your movements with riptide, and I guess, UL, so you are actually *doing* something when you're moving, rather than doing nothing. That is what is ment by "the only button you can hit while moving". Riptide is something you use when you have to sidestep out of the fire, because you've got nothing better you can use - just like a holy paladin hits Holy shock when moving, because they don't really have other buttons they can hit when they move.

[Floopa]

idd if your PWS hits for that low your gear is poorly itemised.

[Adhemar]

idd if your PWS hits for that low your gear is poorly itemised.

I will get to his insanely long, rambling post when I have more time, but for now, this deserves a response. The actual number that your PW:S hits for is irrelevant, what matters is its output compared to riptide (for the purpose of this discussion). I gave raw unbuffed numbers for both in similar gear with the advantage going to my priest. He made up numbers that aren't valid, and now he's comparing his "fully raid ready" disc priest with a full set of raid buffs to a random number with no controls. My resto off-spec shaman stacking as much mastery and multi strike as possible except the two spirit pieces I swap out when I switch out of elemental spec heals for 17.5k with a riptide and no buffs. Riptide scales with spell power and secondaries, too. The initial hit average for riptide in the log he linked is 13k, and that's less than half of the healing done. Comparing a hypothetical 50k PW:S to an 18k riptide is invalid. It's #4 on that guy's healing output even though he's blowing out his mana on HS at a rate not sustainable in a raid encounter and it also contributes something on the order of 15% of the HPS for his top two abilities. Calling it an "empty GCD" is utterly ridiculous.

[Well]

Any tips for today's CM daily? (grimrail depot).

Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

Oh, the first boss might be hard.



Oh nevermind, I guess it just needs "no mistakes". Most cm fights become easy when the factor "don't do mistakes" is handled.

[Overdispersion]

Any tips for today's CM daily? (grimrail depot).

Thanks in advance.

On the second boss there are two safespots as a caster, at least on hc. Both on the rail of the cannons where you don't need to run and heal. Just alternate between them when it gets all fiery and make the tank and dps stay LoS to you via voice comms if you aren't pugging.

[Deleted]

The second boss is the easiest in the instance, but, it requires to not do mistakes. e.g. on heroic runs you practically have to heal nothing at all if you do it perfectly. If people do it wrongly, the healing output at least quadruples or it's undoable.

[Dracodraco]

I will get to his insanely long, rambling post when I have more time, but for now, this deserves a response. The actual number that your PW:S hits for is irrelevant, what matters is its output compared to riptide (for the purpose of this discussion). I gave raw unbuffed numbers for both in similar gear with the advantage going to my priest. He made up numbers that aren't valid, and now he's comparing his "fully raid ready" disc priest with a full set of raid buffs to a random number with no controls. My resto off-spec shaman stacking as much mastery and multi strike as possible except the two spirit pieces I swap out when I switch out of elemental spec heals for 17.5k with a riptide and no buffs. Riptide scales with spell power and secondaries, too. The initial hit average for riptide in the log he linked is 13k, and that's less than half of the healing done. Comparing a hypothetical 50k PW:S to an 18k riptide is invalid. It's #4 on that guy's healing output even though he's blowing out his mana on HS at a rate not sustainable in a raid encounter and it also contributes something on the order of 15% of the HPS for his top two abilities. Calling it an "empty GCD" is utterly ridiculous.

Except, you know, I have both a resto shaman AND a priest, and the 45K shields on my priest and 18K riptides on my shaman were aquired under the same conditions (not counting crits or multistrikes without any buffs on either character), with similiar levels of gear. Thus the fact that your shields are hitting for 20% less than mine are fully relevant. My numbers aren't "made up" - they are both ingame numbers that *I HAVE TESTED*. It really turns the entire thing into something else when you use your numbers of a poorly optimised priest (and just for reference, my shaman is stacking crit>mastery, with as little as possible versatility/multistrike, as neither has any interaction with anything, while crit returns mana and mastery returns +5% more due to specialisation).

As for my post being rambling, really fucking looking forward to you defending against not knowing what Archangel even does, and PoH not being "smart enough".

[Myuer]

As for my post being rambling, really fucking looking forward to you defending against not knowing what Archangel even does, and PoH not being "smart enough".

Prayer of Healing under Archangel is very powerful. Maybe the best AoE spell that we will use in Raids with Cascade. Because Cascade will be our best choice imo, I don't think that we will use Halo so much. For Divine Star, I think that is the weakest lvl 90 talent that we have.

With proper gear, with stacking Crit + Mastery I'm not having problems healing, I am doing most of the CM dailyes in a PUG group and getting a bronze rating everytime and I don't have hard time healing, so Discipline is still good.

And for PW:S sometimes I usually do 40-47k or even 70k. Sometimes I've reached 100k too.

[Deleted]

The second boss is the easiest in the instance, but, it requires to not do mistakes. e.g. on heroic runs you practically have to heal nothing at all if you do it perfectly. If people do it wrongly, the healing output at least quadruples or it's undoable.

I was perfectly right about that. The 2nd was an absolute faceroll without mistakes, the 3rd was almost easier.

The 1st was a small challenge to heal, however I think avoiding fire + avoiding the interrupt,

might be all a disc needs since what healing spells can be spammed are too obvious.