[6.2.3] Discipline Priest Discussion

[PosPosPos]

I may not have been as clear as I could have. What I was saying is that there are times during most fights when PoM feels right to hard-cast. This obviously doesn't include the many situations where PWS is used to save a player from potentially imminent death. Even as highly regarded as PWS is it's often underrated or not considered in one aspect - it takes complete effect instantly, only matched in this aspect by Pain Suppression in the disc toolkit (even Barrier requires two button presses). The wait time for PWS is after the player receives the benefit from it, not before. PoM is a short-time cast followed by a travel time before it takes effect. Our other highly regarded spell, Penance, has both a travel time and spreads it's effect out over a long cast time. PWS is a much better "imminent peril" spell to cast than Penance, with Penance being a common follow-up spell to refill the player's life bar.

Returning to Prayer of Mending - perhaps there are prescient disc priests out there who always know who is going to take damage and thus can happily spam PWS the entire fight, but there are many times when I find damage to be unpredictable to non-tanks unless a boss ability is targeting them or an AoE effect is incoming. So when the tanks are secure, all players expected to take damage soon are secure, and there's nothing better to do it seems advisable to throw out a PoM, so that when more intense damage happens later in the fight there's extra support healing bouncing around.

Basically, you are saying that PoM is really only used when you want to pad meters by raid healing. Not saying it's a bad thing overall, but kindly not make it out as though there's anything other than inflating your HPS when you cast PoM.

It's certainly debatable though, since a reasonable alternative is to cast PWS on random players who certainly may take damage in the next 15 seconds. Even if this is mathematically superior in some cases though, it has the problem of being against the mindset of the disc spec, which is to predict incoming damage and shield players against it. It's a mindless activity to spam PWS endlessly throughout the whole fight regardless of whether damage is expected. Also, because Prayer of Mending has a 30 second expiration timer, twice that of the 15 seconds of PWS, it's much more guaranteed to be used (except on tanks receiving clarity of will spam). So it's ideal for circumstances where a target player may well not take damage soon.

Subjective terms like mindset or not, disc priests are more than *able* to mindlessly spam PWS and properly preshield incoming damage. The two do not clash with each other. In the former, shielding random targets is actually mathematically weaker than hardcasting PoM to inflate your meters, but in the off-chance your pseudo-randomly* picked targets take otherwise lethal damage due to a lapse in concentration, you just prevented a death.

*As for why I used pseudo-randomly as the term of choice, when you heal the same people in the raid for weeks on end, you more or less get a feel of who generally mess up mechanics more often than others, and can gravitate "random" shields on them. For example, there are 4-5 people I always shield during bombardment on Maidens, and for good reasons. Sure, most of the time it falls off without doing any "healing", but when they do take a bomb hit, they have a much bigger health pool remaining that random raid damage occurring right after doesn't kill them.

From reading your posts so far, you have a lofty, naive and essentially impractical view on a "perfect" way a disc should play. Like sure, in a perfect world nobody takes unnecessary damage, so in that perfect world a disc priest should never need to "randomly" or "mindlessly spam" shield targets and should PoM during periods of long downtime. Except, in reality when even the best player makes mistakes, "mindless" shield blanketing saves more lives than not at all. It's about reducing the probability of mistakes causing a death at the expense of your own throughput.

[Noradin]

The annoying part about shielding a lot is the debuff, it locks us out from effectively helping players that already have our debuff (unless penance is off cd).
I hate having to watch people slowly dying to theirown stupility (or lag?) while I have no effective tools to do something against it.

[Deleted]

The annoying part about shielding a lot is the debuff, it locks us out from effectively helping players that already have our debuff (unless penance is off cd).
I hate having to watch people slowly dying to theirown stupility (or lag?) while I have no effective tools to do something against it.

That does annoy me about the spec also, although we do still have flash heal

[drivec]

wondering what your guys thoughts are on haste capping yourselfs around 900 to 1000 haste rateing.

with power infusion and hero i feel like i spend a large amount of time being almost gcd capped without going deep into haste.

i think on a 7min fight i am hit the haste gcd 25% of the fight from power infusion and hero/bloodlust alone any thoughts on this?

[Deleted]

don't overlap PI and hero :P

I've never had an issue with it personally and the value is haste outside of hero is just too big to pass up - assuming you have the spirit to support it

[drivec]

i mean with just power infusion alone i am hitting 49% haste raid buffed

[Deleted]

i mean with just power infusion alone i am hitting 49% haste raid buffed

I don't think it's worth gearing around that though, PI has a relatively low uptime, it's largely taken for the mana cost reduction which will allow you to cast more PoH during it. If it really does become an issue I'd probably be more inclined to drop PI than haste on gear, ToF will see some increased value next tier with more healing coming from penance and more mana allowing more PoH casts, or potentially even spirit shell making a comeback as a mana dump.

[Djriff]

Until PoH becomes better thatn 5x PW:S i don't think SS will ever make a return. Now if we could have ToF and SS I could see some nice synergy.

[Yunzi]

Basically, you are saying that PoM is really only used when you want to pad meters by raid healing. Not saying it's a bad thing overall, but kindly not make it out as though there's anything other than inflating your HPS when you cast PoM.



Subjective terms like mindset or not, disc priests are more than *able* to mindlessly spam PWS and properly preshield incoming damage. The two do not clash with each other. In the former, shielding random targets is actually mathematically weaker than hardcasting PoM to inflate your meters, but in the off-chance your pseudo-randomly* picked targets take otherwise lethal damage due to a lapse in concentration, you just prevented a death.

*As for why I used pseudo-randomly as the term of choice, when you heal the same people in the raid for weeks on end, you more or less get a feel of who generally mess up mechanics more often than others, and can gravitate "random" shields on them. For example, there are 4-5 people I always shield during bombardment on Maidens, and for good reasons. Sure, most of the time it falls off without doing any "healing", but when they do take a bomb hit, they have a much bigger health pool remaining that random raid damage occurring right after doesn't kill them.

From reading your posts so far, you have a lofty, naive and essentially impractical view on a "perfect" way a disc should play. Like sure, in a perfect world nobody takes unnecessary damage, so in that perfect world a disc priest should never need to "randomly" or "mindlessly spam" shield targets and should PoM during periods of long downtime. Except, in reality when even the best player makes mistakes, "mindless" shield blanketing saves more lives than not at all. It's about reducing the probability of mistakes causing a death at the expense of your own throughput.

If there's sufficient numbers of problem players in the raid such that you never have reason to not always have someone to shield, then sure, that's a good argument for *you* not casting Prayer of Mending, but that doesn't apply to every disc priest. For you, the shields are not "mindless" because you're analyzing the possibility of incoming damage.

Your argument is good that in terms of single-target incoming damage, PWS is a much better spell than Prayer of Mending, which is a raid-support healing spell. So if you're in a raid with problem players who frequently take unnecessary damage, a PWS on them is much better than a PoM on them. If you run out of problem players to shield, casting a PoM on one of them makes it even less likely they'll die.

The annoying part about shielding a lot is the debuff, it locks us out from effectively helping players that already have our debuff (unless penance is off cd).
I hate having to watch people slowly dying to theirown stupility (or lag?) while I have no effective tools to do something against it.

Well - we already did help a lot if they have the debuff without the shield, because it means the shield was entirely used up on them. But yeah, at that point other healers have to help out unless we are willing to cast a bad spell on them (Flash Heal, Heal), or burn a Pain Suppression. If we had good throughput options on top of our existing toolkit we would be OP (or as some would say, even more OP than we already are).

This is another benefit to Clarity of Will - it can be used on problem players who need more healing than PWS without the "bad healing" problem of the throughput spells.

[Noradin]

Well - we already did help a lot if they have the debuff without the shield, because it means the shield was entirely used up on them.

The problem is players not noticing they are standing in fire as long as their health does not drop :/

[Noradin]

I really wish, atonement would priorize me and my follower above random targets all over the zone and grabbing aggro of anything all around the world. I already get punished for using absorbs (and thus my Dreanor peak of 10% more damage not aktivating when i absorb damage instead of taking it), why do need to get mobbed by everything all around and won't even get them tagged for me?
Not to speak of the stupid outdated half healing from atonement thing.

[Marolen]

leech trinket good at all for disc?

[Pearl1717]

leech trinket good at all for disc?

No, it is much better for every other healer. However, apparently there are reports of the leech trinket working with PWS when people take damage?

But even so, its probably still best for hpriest/rdruid/mw

[Noradin]

No, it is much better for every other healer. However, apparently there are reports of the leech trinket working with PWS when people take damage?

But even so, its probably still best for hpriest/rdruid/mw

It does not work with absorbs at all.

[Deleted]

Hi guys, need tips for Hellfire High Council mythic. I'm going crazy tonight

[Deleted]

Hi guys. Is there any kind of detailed information about the disc class trinket somewhere? I've been searching for a while with no luck. Basically what I'm trying to find out is this: Is it valid to use the trinket in a way that you trying to spam PoH on the raid before the AoE dmg comes in? Unless it saves someone from a 10-20k overkill I don't see it. Considering everything, the subpar PoHs (I'm kinda assuming it's super unlikely that you can make it work in a way that you just stand still for 8 sec spamming possibly overheal PoHs right before the dmg) just for the buff instead of PWS, the moment you use the shield you basically threw out an entire trinket slot, unless it prevents immediate death I don't think it has much value on raid since MW and Rshaman would basically heal back that 7% mitigated dmg instantly anyway, etc, could it be worth it? I'm not sure it's a thing, or is it mathed out somewhere to be worth it. If so: which fights? For what kind of situations would you think it's better to give it a disc rather than anybody else on the conq token?

[Deleted]

There have been some topics about the worth of the disc trinket, but not on how to use it best. But thats probably because its been calculated to be kinda bad and the int/mastery trinkets just give you more absorbs then the disc one will mitigate. So with that said i would give at least all dps and holy pala prio on the trinket first. Im not sure about prot pala, but its also crap (probably even worse) for holy priest.

[Spotnick]

I don't think any healer class really want the class trinket except maybe holy paladins.

[ceddya]

I don't think any healer class really want the class trinket except maybe holy paladins.

Have a look at this. :P https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ht=8&source=21

The 300k raw HPS... if only our trinkets could be as situationally good!

[PosPosPos]

Have a look at this. :P https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ht=8&source=21

The 300k raw HPS... if only our trinkets could be as situationally good!

Yeah, I saw it on the monk forums the other day, it's pretty much a must have for stacked encounters.