[6.2.3] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Djriff]

We killed it with 4 heals as well, before the ring though. It was pretty tight with 4 heals, but honestly was doable. Did it this week with half the raid having rings and it was lol easy mode.

[Deleted]

Hey, was wondering If anyone could take a quick look at our Disc priest. His healing isn't terrible for his ilvl in comparison to other healers, but every disc I see seems to outperform. Any advice I could relay back to him would be great.

here's our recent Gorefiend HC progression night.
LOGS

[Overdispersion]

Hey, was wondering If anyone could take a quick look at our Disc priest. His healing isn't terrible for his ilvl in comparison to other healers, but every disc I see seems to outperform. Any advice I could relay back to him would be great.

here's our recent Gorefiend HC progression night.
LOGS

He casted smite 25 times and holy nova 24 times. Shouldn't use any of those abilities unless you know what you're doing, which in this case, he does not. He also used Archangel twice in a 9 minute fight where he should aim to use it on cooldown. He should also aim to use penance on cd (use is as a damage if there's nothing to heal since even then with 4-set it's better than pws) and not lose his reparation stacks. That's pretty much most of the problem.

[Pearl1717]

Hey, was wondering If anyone could take a quick look at our Disc priest. His healing isn't terrible for his ilvl in comparison to other healers, but every disc I see seems to outperform. Any advice I could relay back to him would be great.

here's our recent Gorefiend HC progression night.
LOGS

-Too much PoH (should only be used once with AA, or when you're more experienced and know what you're doing)
-Using holy nova, a big no no
-Not using AA on cd. It should have a >50% uptime.
-Poor management of evangelism. Using too much smite, as overdispersion said, it should be avoided by new priests and only use by experienced players.
-Too much flash healing
-Not enough penancing, offensively or defensively (preferably defensively though, theres always something to heal on Gorefiend). His 2pc set bonus buff should have a >95% uptime, his is around 60%.
-Poor management of PI. On Gorefiend, PI should be used within the first 20-30 seconds of the fight, so that it is back up during the first feast.
-Along with PI, he's using Intuitions Gift as one of his trinkets (on use crit). He should be macro'ing that with his PI and using it with PI. Now it can be used outside of PI, but what I do (and from what some top priests are doing) is using it with every PI instead. The CD doesn't line up perfectly, but PI+AA+IG is a pretty strong CD.
-He simply isn't casting enough. On your 10 minute pull, he wasn't even near being oom yet, and thats with spamming PoH. He either needs to drop spirit or spam more spells in general. Comparing my logs to his, I nearly double (on some pulls even more) the amount of casts he does in the same amount of time.
-Make sure he's always shielding debuff targets first. Is he shielding people that get doom debuff right away? Is he shielding the people who are linked right away?
-Not casting solace enough. He's getting about a 40-45% uptime. He should be at least 60%. Otherwise he is just better off taking MB.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the quick replies guys, I thought something was off, but as I don't play disc myself, I couldnt offer advice.

[PosPosPos]

Thanks for the quick replies guys, I thought something was off, but as I don't play disc myself, I couldnt offer advice.

What Pearl said is mostly correct, except:

-Too much flash healing

Specifically on Gorefiend, Flash Heal is fine if it's on the Tortured Essences - absorbs don't do anything to the essences. There shouldn't be more than a handful of casts on players though.

-Not enough penancing, offensively or defensively (preferably defensively though, theres always something to heal on Gorefiend).

Not on heroic until the feast phase. Offensive is better for non-feast non-stomach phases

[Alroxas]

Specifically on Gorefiend, Flash Heal is fine if it's on the Tortured Essences - absorbs don't do anything to the essences. There shouldn't be more than a handful of casts on players though.

Yeah that's my thought as well. Of 230+ casts of FH, 126 were to Essences but nearly 100+ on other players seems excessive.

Now is it just me or does Reparation tool tip seem to be the Holy bonus instead of the Disc bonus on warcraftlogs?

[Djriff]

Well FH on players isn't necessarily bad. If they just took a big hit, have weakened soul, and penance is on CD ( as it should be) then FH is the next best choice. It's a quick cast powerful heal and if it crits you get a shield which can save a raiders life in a pinch. Heal isn't even worth casting as disc imo.

[Spotnick]

For those with the 2pc/4pc, what are you doing for evangelism? penance off/def, smite?

I'm just curious. I kind of use penance way too offensively now to avoid smite and I'm not sure it's efficient with the set bonuses unless I understand it wrong.

[PosPosPos]

For those with the 2pc/4pc, what are you doing for evangelism? penance off/def, smite?

I'm just curious. I kind of use penance way too offensively now to avoid smite and I'm not sure it's efficient with the set bonuses unless I understand it wrong.

As a rule of thumb, if you can achieve less than a ~30% overheal defensive Penance, it's better than offensive Penance.

Usually, 6 stack defensive Penance only overheals below a 50% margin on a target lesser than 50% health and you are the quickest to get to him on most encounters. Then the throughput healers generally snipe you with a variety of hots or even a direct heal from the holy paladin with class trinket.

[Talhooo]

Is it me or did they change our 2set slightly ? It used to procc when penance reached the target, but now it immediately proccs when you cast penance.

[Sergo]

Hello, what do you think about the 4P T18 bonus for disc priests ?
I'm asking this because I'm not really convinced about it, and I'm actually playing with 2P only (hands and legs since there are mastery on them) and 3 full mastery pieces.
Do you think this is ok, or is the 4P bonus really good and I should play with it ?

I also have a doubt for my weapon : I have both Gorefiend's Staff (heroic 710 ilvl, with a lot of mastery and some crit) and Xhul'horac's Staff (heroic 715 ilvl, with haste and multistrike instead of crit/mastery but with more Int and SP). Until I have acces to Archi's one, wich one should I play with ?

[Talhooo]

For weapons 5 Ilvls higher is always better, don't think there's ever an exception to this. The difference is 100sp. Which outweighs having the right stats. This is not always true for non-weapon stuff.

For 4P T18 it's difficult, most seem to prefer 2T17/2T18, and I think most say that they'll only go 4T18 when they can replace it with mythic tier.

[Deleted]

The 4 set is "ok". I just wish it was something else most of the time. [Also, I haven't started on mythic progression yet, so keep that in mind]

I personally have it in use mostly because I decided the stats of going from T17 HC to T18 HC were worth it, and although I haven't done the math/really looked at the logs, I assume the set bonus will still cause more healing then going without it.

That said it generally doesn't help you heal that one person who's actually in danger of dying, so it's kind of worthless in that regard.

[Deleted]

Disc 50% healer 50% damage spec confirmed
Holy 100% healing, WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO WHERE HOLY CAN HEAL???

http://www.buffed.de/World-of-Warcra...-mehr-1167364/

POWER WORD SHIELD I WILL MISS YOU HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE nvm pw:s staying

16 mins in

"We're actually going to be focusing the discipline priest to be a much more offensive healer, we're going to take another spin at the atonement mechanic and really make the class a lot more about using atonement, they will still have some heals, and power word shield, but the way they will sustain their healing will be much more as a DPS"

"Atonement we want to make more interactive...use to be just spam and healing was smart, wasnt deep or interactive, we're imaginging more gameplay like where you throw out single target heals, like an offensive paladin beacon. You throw out some buffs on people and then the next time you deal damage they will get the healing"

"Discipline priests were actively subtracting the fun that other healers had" Q_Q, but what about my fun?

[Yunzi]

Disc 50% healer 50% damage spec confirmed
Holy 100% healing, WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO WHERE HOLY CAN HEAL???

http://www.buffed.de/World-of-Warcra...-mehr-1167364/

POWER WORD SHIELD I WILL MISS YOU HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE nvm pw:s staying

16 mins in

"We're actually going to be focusing the discipline priest to be a much more offensive healer, we're going to take another spin at the atonement mechanic and really make the class a lot more about using atonement, they will still have some heals, and power word shield, but the way they will sustain their healing will be much more as a DPS"

"Atonement we want to make more interactive...use to be just spam and healing was smart, wasnt deep or interactive, we're imaginging more gameplay like where you throw out single target heals, like an offensive paladin beacon. You throw out some buffs on people and then the next time you deal damage they will get the healing"

"Discipline priests were actively subtracting the fun that other healers had" Q_Q, but what about my fun?

WTF???

This is reflective of the grab-bag kitchen-sink approach of the expansion - so now Disc is atonement, it's Paladin-beacon, it's throughput healing, it's shields, it's...

Disc might become a terrible hot mess to play. It sounds like it's becoming more of a tank-healing only spec (no more using Words of Mending to become a tank-support raid healer) - a large majority of the time the beaconed player is going to be a tank. It's bizarre that he mentioned the "frequent activity" of deciding who's the beaconed player, just like paladins have the amazingly difficult and constantly updated decision of who gets the beacon right now.

If much of the focus of the spec is going back into atonement, can we at least get another spell to use with atonement? The Divine Trinity of Smite, Holy Fire, and Penance could use a friend. Maybe something that interacts more dynamically with atonement, that re-introduces the spec to it.

[Djriff]

If much of the focus of the spec is going back into atonement, can we at least get another spell to use with atonement? The Divine Trinity of Smite, Holy Fire, and Penance could use a friend. Maybe something that interacts more dynamically with atonement, that re-introduces the spec to it.

Holy Nova!

I think they may approach it more of a quick buff similar to how Extend Life works for MW monks. Would be a nice short duration buff that disc could just put out there ~10 seconds before damage and during damage start attone healing. That would be interesting.

[Noradin]

That said it generally doesn't help you heal that one person who's actually in danger of dying, so it's kind of worthless in that regard.

It is a true smartheal.

[MaronKun]

I need help T_T.

This week I got my t18 4 piece so I switched from my 2piece-2piece tier sets. Before, I was able to atleast maintain a 50-60% uptime on 5 EAA but it dropped immensely to 20-30% when I got my t18 4 piece. I'm having troubles stacking up my EAA now that defensive penance doesn't give me Evangelism. What should be my priority for evangelism builder? 3 smites and 2 solace?, should I be casting 3 smites right away? I find that i'm getting behind by at least 10-15 seconds because I keep forgetting to use smite. I've never experienced using smite to build evangelism stacks as I only started playing Disc on t17 in which I technically grew up as Disc with the t17 2set.

[Spotnick]

Just do offensive penance.. it works with the 4pc anyways.