NEW player! Quick, easy, Disc questions. Item comparisons + MORE! Tips appreciated!

[Interrogate]

What items would you guys choose and why?

Im brand new to disc, need to be mythic ready for next tuesday. Don't know a shitload about the class. Anything you guys can post to help is appreciated.

How do you use EAA?
I have 2 set, how do you use penance, what is spell priority?
PoM > Shield?
Penance > PoM?
Smite if not at 5 stacks or wait a second or two for penance/solace?
PoM ON CD?
Penance for dps ever?
Cancel penance after 1 tick for evangelism?
125 mastery food over 125 crit food?
Mindbender now or still solace?
How many fights do you use CoW on?
Stat priority with 2 pc? Mastery, crit, haste=multistrike, versatility?
Stat priority with 4 pc? Mastery, crit, haste, multistrike, versatility?

HALP!

[Jimjam38]

I'm not sure about the gear. With the gloves, my gut feeling is Mastery above everything, so the prismatic means more mastery, even though it comes with filthy versatility. I'm not sure at all with the Ring, but spirit is certainly pretty valuable, and it will depend on the rest of your gear. Someone else who's better with stats could give you a more definite answer.

You use EAA with PoH for a big fuck off-heal on the group with the most damage. Given BRF mechanics, this will generally be a melee, and the DA will absorb some subsequent cleave on said melee. If no one's injured best to save the mana unless you've got the 4pc.

With 2pc, you use penance both offensively and defensively as the situation demands. Either you can use it for a big single target heal, usually on a tank, and generate 1 evangelism, or you use it on the boss for atonement and 2 stacks of evangelism. You want to get the most out of Archangel, so put very basically if AA is on CD, use penance for healing, if AA is off cooldown and you have less than 4 stacks, use it for damage for quicker stacks.

Spell priority is PWS all the things and use as much AA as possible without going OOM. Solace is top priority except in emergencies, and penance should be utilized as much as possible too in order to generate evangelism, but basically its all in the PWS spam.

PoM > Nothing. Dont cast it. Get free PoMs from WoM or don't use it.

Keep smite to a minimum. Casting smite depends on the situation but is usually not beneficial; either you'll need AA immediately as you're about to blanket PWS or you have a few seconds spare, in which case your Penance or HF will usually be off cooldown in time. Only cast smite when you have a few seconds before you need to PWS spam and Penance/HF won't be off cd in time. That being said, in almost every situation, you'll likely get more HPS out of just using those extra few seconds to spam extra PWS, with a weaker AA.
With 2 pc you will only need to smite if you don't manage your Penance and HF/Solace usage properly.

No. Don't cast PoM. You're not Holy.

Penance for DPS (with 2pc) when you need to quickly generate 2 Evangelism instead of 1.
Without 2pc ALWAYS penance for DPS

No, don't cancel Penance, that's silly. Maybe in emergencies, or if you're using it for healing and they got topped super fast. Have it glyphed and use that time to move instead of cancelling it.

Mastery is the top stat, so yes, Mastery food over crit food.

Mindbender vs Solace, basically Solace for longer fights, mindbender when you are GCD capped, but 2pc should help free up a lot of GCD's. Mindbender comes out ahead once you get to some haste cap, but it's pretty high and if you're hitting it you've had horrible gear luck or you're gearing wrong.

COW for fights with High tank damage and low raid damage. For me that's basically just Maidens, Hans&Frans, Operator.

Someone can correct me if I'm mistaken, since I haven't been particularly frequent here for a month or so, but the stat priority shouldn't be affected by 2 or 4 pc. Its always basically Mastery > Multi=Crit > Haste > Vers. It's a lot more complicated if you wan't to get into using Myllior's spreadsheets but since you're newto disc, the stat priority i just outlined should suffice.

[PosPosPos]

What items would you guys choose and why?

For gloves, it depends. Haste/Mastery still pulls slightly ahead even though the Vers/Mastery glove has a socket. However, the latter is fantastic for longer and more damage intensive fights where you need the longevity and would also benefit from the damage reduction.

For ring, I always pick the Vers/Mastery ring for the Mastery.

How do you use EAA?

1) Pop AA
2) Preferably cast PoH within 18 seconds(to benefit from the increased healing)
3) Definitely attempt to cast PoH within 30 seconds(EAA's buff lasts 30 seconds)

I have 2 set, how do you use penance, what is spell priority?

2x Offensive Penance - 2 stacks of Evangelism each for 4 stacks
1x Defensive Penance - 1 stack of Evangelism for 1 stack

Total: 5 stacks

As for how to use the spell itself, if you need to dish out additional healing because the raid is dipping, cancel Penance with another spell as soon as the GCD ends - the Evangelism stacks are frontloaded the moment you cast the spell.

PoM > Shield?
Penance > PoM?

Never hard cast PoM over just spamming PW:S. Costs the same mana, but does significantly less effective healing if PW:S is used properly

Smite if not at 5 stacks or wait a second or two for penance/solace?

Don't run into this situation where you have to smite or HF to obtain stacks. Keep Penance on CD.

PoM ON CD?

Not worth it.

Penance for dps ever?

Definitely. It's the most optimal way to generate Evangelism as long as you are 3 stacks or less.

Cancel penance after 1 tick for evangelism?

Sure, PW:S spam has higher throughput than channeling Penance. Cancel when you need to put out more shields.

125 mastery food over 125 crit food?

Mastery always.

Mindbender now or still solace?

Mindbender.

How many fights do you use CoW on?

Depends on your raid comp for the most part. If you don't run with a Holy Paladin, or if you do and the tanks are still spiking, run CoW.

Also, any fight with predictable specific targets taking high damage, run CoW. Like Iron Maidens for example.

Stat priority with 2 pc? Mastery, crit, haste=multistrike, versatility?
Stat priority with 4 pc? Mastery, crit, haste, multistrike, versatility?

HALP!

Stat priority is partially right depending on your cast priority. If you always consume EAA for PoH every time, Multistrike is higher than crit. Haste is only marginally lower than Mastery from a throughput perspective, so it's Mastery > Haste till comfortable > Multi > Crit > Vers.

[Deleted]

My 2c, it may not match reality.

How do you use EAA?

On encounters with predictable party wide damage utilize EAA and PoH to assist in pre-shielding, 100% crit = hefty DA shields, the heal portion should be considered the bonus if its needed. EAA can be used with Flash heal to boost tank healing but dependant on the fight its best to cast PoH to get the most out of it.

HALP!

1: Offensive casts; Use offensive casts.. Atonement, small smart heals with DA procs + AA stacks + mana regen from solace, micro hot with micro DA stacking, the list of good albeit minor things you gain from casting offensive spells is highly in your favor. Focus on the over all goal of having 5 AA stacks for when you need them just don't go overboard on atonement based casting simply make room for the odd cast during down times.

2:Solace is better for disc simply because we will be casting holy fire / solace on cooldown anyways, I believe mindbender restores roughly the same amount of mana as solace if you factor in the cost of holy fire. Both are optional but solace offers us more utility.

3: PoM can be useful on some fights, if there are no other priests cast one every now and then but don't rely on it, if the fight works well with PoM consider using WoM talent and never hard casting it.

4: lvl100 talent choice:
CoW is a powerful stacking single target absorb, its basically your old school Gheal for tank healing, it can stack on it's self up to around 200k and more then one instance can be on a target so two disc priests can stack double 200k CoW abosrbs. I'm not even 1% sure on the actual math behind it but you can pretty much double tanks health with two, although I've never seen an instance of more then two disc's stacking CoW on a single target.

As above CoW is a single target, expensive, long cast time, direct absorb, use it on fights with mostly tank damage and time to make most use of it. Hans'gar and Franzok for example is a heavy tank damage encounter with minimal unavoidable raid damage.

WoM is usually switched to on fights that don't give you time to sit and cast CoW, its better to have a free spell then to have a large one and not cast it.

Saving Grace, I've tried messing about with this and although its first cast is a powerful heal and DA if it crits the debuff is more pain then its worth in its current form, you can use it once hopefully not every 10 seconds or so, the first debuff isn't that bad if it was a good heal but any form of reliance on the ability will cripple your healing.

5: Stats:
I am in no way any form of expert when it comes to current stat priorities but I'm guessing that mastery wins all currently, crit and multistrike have the same sort of effect on our abilities even though you can't see them procing on absorbs in logs, Haste is more viable to use for some spells but I don't see it beating the above 3 any time soon, balance Spirit for what you need and ideally dump overflow into versatility.


All in all though playing a disc well comes down to how well and far you can plan ahead in the boss encounter, if you plan right all the abilities synergies off each other but if you get it wrong we are shockingly bad at putting pieces back together so plan things so you have time to use more then just shields.

[Sard]

Couple of things to really stress imo..

1) To get the absolute MOST out of your free guaranteed crit PoH, you need to cast it within the 18 seconds of Arch Angel and the 30 second Empowered Arch Angel buff AND you, if at all possible, want to cast it in such a way that it both heals with the heal part, and the crit shield is consumed. A properly setup PoH like that does insane HPS and has got to be one of the most efficient HPM heals out there once you get 4 piece. A great example is P1 on Blackhand during Demolition. Build to 5 stacks, pop AA and Power Infusion, start spamming shields 10 seconds before the first damage and THEN hit your PoH onto a group that is low halfway into the demolition. It will do bonkers healing.

2)Don't underestimate CoW. People will say that WoM is better for most fights, but its the worst kind of low level aoe healing out there - small hits that you have no control over. CoW turns Disc into a monster tank healer who can use Penance, PW:S and CoW to single handedly keep tanks up during insane moments. I try to run with CoW whenever I think tanks might be in real danger.

3)I think haste is a huge trap stat for Disc and you will seriously regret having more than a basic amount invested into it when you get to long, mana intensive fights. I'm really glad I have given it such a low level of value now that we are working on M Beastlord.

[Interrogate]

2x Offensive Penance - 2 stacks of Evangelism each for 4 stacks
1x Defensive Penance - 1 stack of Evangelism for 1 stack

Thanks everyone for the replys! I think I'm going to go with the versatility gloves and versatility dps ring. Im not having mana issues at all and I think the more mastery the better for me at the moment with 2 set.

As far as this quote goes... What about holy fire/solace? You are using mind bender? But if you are using mind bender why would you not use holy fire at all? Seems like ur wasting a lot of throughput/min maxing HPS by using 2 penances offensively 100% of the time to build your stacks, no?

[Sard]

Thanks everyone for the replys! I think I'm going to go with the versatility gloves and versatility dps ring. Im not having mana issues at all and I think the more mastery the better for me at the moment with 2 set.

As far as this quote goes... What about holy fire/solace? You are using mind bender? But if you are using mind bender why would you not use holy fire at all? Seems like ur wasting a lot of throughput/min maxing HPS by using 2 penances offensively 100% of the time to build your stacks, no?

The thinking behind that approach is that discs job is to pre shield dangerous mechanics, not trickle modest hps into targets when there is no risk of them dying. In other words there are times where I would rather "waste" my penance to get out more pws or cow, because shields are what help trivialize mechanics. Solace turns holy fire from a mana cost to a mana Gain - there is no reason to cast holy fire if you don't have solace because you have better ways to get yir 5 stacks of aa every 30 seconds now.

[Interrogate]

The thinking behind that approach is that discs job is to pre shield dangerous mechanics, not trickle modest hps into targets when there is no risk of them dying. In other words there are times where I would rather "waste" my penance to get out more pws or cow, because shields are what help trivialize mechanics. Solace turns holy fire from a mana cost to a mana Gain - there is no reason to cast holy fire if you don't have solace because you have better ways to get yir 5 stacks of aa every 30 seconds now.

Interesting point.