Guide: Solo MSV For Elegon Mount as Disc

[Jimjam38]

Guide: Soloing Mogu'shan Vaults as a Discipline Priest
Hi all, this week I discovered it was actually really easy to solo MSV as Disc to farm for the Elegon mount (just as easy as Brewmaster Monk or Blood DK). I'm sure some of you are already aware of this, and if so that's great, but I'm sure there's plenty of people who had never considered it and would like to have another toon to do it on each week.
I had a quick search around these forums and youtube and I haven't found any real discussion of Disc soloing MSV or any guides for it so I figured I may as well make my own. I'll probably try to record myself doing it next week and upload a video to go along with this guide.

Lastly, yes I'm aware that this guide is far more detailed than is really necessary for all you fantastic wonderful mythic raiders. The details aren't for you lot, they're for the casuals, alts and whoever else might find it helpful.

So first of all, why Disc? Why not shadow?
Well the answer is pretty simple: because it's really easy for Disc, and, at least for myself, its not as easy for Shadow. But also because there are a lot of players who spec Disc/Holy and it's annoying to respec to Shadow just to farm MSV. And did I mention it's really easy as Disc?

Gear Requirements
Note that this is for 10m Normal MSV, and if you didn't know already, there's no difference in the mount drop chance between any of the difficulties.
I was able to do it extremely easily as a poorly optimized ilevel 695 Disc Priest. I honestly found it as easy or easier than my 695 brewmaster and MUCH easier than my 670 Blood DK. If I had to guess I'd say it would still be very doable in 675 gear for most people, and players who are very experienced in soloing could do it from 660 or even lower. If you were able to do this at a lower ilevel, let me know how it went and how hard you found it.

If you're really keen on optimizing your gear for soloing I'd recommend the following stat priority:

Int > Mastery > Crit=>Multi > Versatility > Haste > Spirit

Why is it different to current raiding stat priority?
Well the reason for that is because in raids, haste and spirit are highly valuable because they let you cast PWS faster, for longer. When you're soloing you only have yourself to cast PWS on, and the Weakened Soul debuff is still 12 seconds, so you want bigger PWS (Crit/multi) rather than more frequent pws (haste). Crit and multi also help your dps considerably and the Crit helps with survivability from procing Divine Aegis. Spirit is useless because you use almost no mana while soloing. Versatility is decent because the reduced damage taken can help with survival, especially given our pathetically low armour. That being said, unless you're trying to do this at a much lower ilevel than I did (695), any gear will work fine.

Talents & Glyphs

Talents
Talents wise you want the following:

T15: Desperate Prayer OR Angelic Bulwark
Comes down to personal preference here honestly, though if you wanted to get really technical I'd probably suggest Bulwark since it's akin to similar tank spec passives, and being automatic it could save you from an unexpected large hit, and Desperare Prayer doesn't add a lot more than just Flash Heal or using a Health Pot.

T30: Angelic Feather
This one really isn't optional, you need the mobility on the second boss. If you're not used to using feathers you're playing wrong anyway.

T45: Mindbender
Again, not optional, you need the DPS from Mindbender.

T60: Any
As always this tier doesn't make a damn difference.

T75: Power Infusion
Power Infusion + Mindbender is a significant DPS increase, and you don't want to be dropping low enough to make use of Twist of Fate.

T90: Any
Sadly this tier makes no difference as they don't do dps for heal spec priests anymore.

T100: Clarity of Will
I say Clarity of Will only because the other two choices are really lackluster. In addition, although wasn't necessary for me, CoW can be used to prepare for a big hit, which could be useful if you wanted to solo harder content than MSV or if you're doing MSV at lower ilevels.
I should mention, now that Saving Grace is instant, it could be potentially useful as an emergency heal if you get caught off guard for higher geared players who find they never need CoW, however the healing reduction makes it a dangerous option and should really be a last resort. I wouldn't recommend it for lower geared players though, if you're struggling with a particular mechanic you'd be better off preshielding it with CoW.

Glyphs:
For Glyphs I strongly recommend the following:

Glyph of Reflective Shield
This is 100% mandatory. Reflecting 70% of your PWS is a huge dps increase for Disc. Disc's damage is horrible so this glyph will probably be your top damage on any given fight, and without it you will probably never meet the DPS check on half the bosses. Yes it means foregoing Glyph of Weakened Soul but it's worth it.
Glyph of Penance
You should always be using this as Disc anyway.

The 3rd glyph is pretty much optional but I recommend Glyph of Fade because a 10% cd on a 30 second cooldown is pretty solid. I didn't find I needed it much but it always helps and the other options aren't that great anyway. The smite Glyph is a pretty small dps increase so don't feel like you need to use it, but feel free if you find you don't need fade at all. I wouldn't recommend Inquisitor simply because (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) the self damage will eat some of your PWS and reduce the amount that can be reflected with Glyph of Reflective Shield and basically cancel out any dps gain you get from Holy Fire.


General Gameplay:
You want to keep PWS on yourself on cooldown all times, then standard Atonement rotation (priority: Penance>Holy Fire>Smite) as well as keeping Shadow Word: Pain up on the boss as much as possible (it does more damage per cast time than smite). You want to try to use PWS with a 5 stack Archangel as much as possible, as stronger PWS means more Reflected Shield damage.
For 3+ targets start using Holy Nova over Smite (yes I'm serious, smite is just that bad lol) unless you need to smite for evangelism stacks. Never use Mind Sear, it does less dps than Holy Nova and is target capped (Holy Nova isn't).
At the start of the fight you want to pre shield, pre pot (not mandatory, but it helps), then pop Mindbender and Power Infusion, along with any trinkets or other cooldowns you have, and then usually use them on cooldown for the rest of the fight. Sometimes saving a 1.5min cd for 30 sec to line up with Mindbender will be a dps increase.
Your PWS will generally last most of the weakened soul duration and if not your Atonement healing will usually keep you up until you can PWS again. If the damage is too much for Atonement healing then just Flash Heal yourself once or twice, which should almost always have Empowered Archangel up for the first one to proc a solid amount of Divine Aegis as well.

Bosses

The Stone Guard
This one is extremely easy, just follow the general gameplay advice. Keep moving out of the crap on the ground and you'll be fine. Because of their shared health pool keep Shadow Word: Pain up on all 3 targets as much as possible, it makes the fight go quicker and SWP will end up being one of your top damage abilities on this fight. Once you have 5 stacks of evangelism feel free to swap smite out for Holy Nova too.

Feng the Accursed
Very well geared disc priests can probably just tank and spank this fight. The main issue on this is the stacking debuffs in each phase, which means that if your dps is too low the damage can get out of hand. As a tank spec you can pick up the nullification barrier to remove the debuffs yourself, but as disc you can't, so to counter this, you need to kite the boss at certain points to let the stacks fall off.
Phase 1: Tank him while avoiding the smashes until he starts to cast Epicentre, then run as far away from him as you can. When it ends he'll run after you, and you need to kite him using Angelic Feathers for a few more seconds until the debuff falls off. Then rinse and repeat until the 2nd phase.
Phase 2: This phase is a bit harder to do right since he only channels Draw Flame for a very short time. Tank him while moving out of the wild fire. When he casts draw flame drop feathers and start to kite him. If you do it right the debuff stack should fall off just before he applies it again.
Phase 3: Depending on your dps you can probably tank and spank this and kill him before the debuff stacks get too high. if not, or you don't want to risk it, run away to max range when he starts casting Arcane Velocity, then when it ends and he runs after you, kite him for a few more seconds until the debuff falls off, same as in Phase 1.

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder
This boss is basically the only important one in MSV. If you can kill Gara'jal then you can kill the rest of them. This boss is basically a dps race, as the boss does more and more damage the longer the fight goes on, because you can't go into the spirit world or you'll reset the boss. Fortunately for us, the more healing you can do the longer you can survive at the end. I honestly found this easier on my Disc than my Brewmaster of the same ilevel. Just tank and spank following the general gameplay advice. At the end you may need to use a few Flash Heals or some CoW between each PWS. Its easily doable with around 15k dps and if you're doing less dps than that all it means is that you'll need to heal yourself more towards the end.

The Spirit Kings
This fight is really easy, there's only one thing that will cause you problems and that's Subetai the Swift's Rain of Arrows. What this does is it pins you down with an arrow that stuns you and does damage until someone else kills it. See the problem? Well worry not, if you're a human you can just Everyman it, other races can just equip the pvp trinket for this fight (since you don't need much dps). Oh and right, he usually casts it twice before you kill him (unless your dps is quite high). But didn't I just say you don't need much dps, so how do you deal with the second rain of arrows, because your trinket won't be up yet that soon? Yes I did say you don't need much dps, and you don't, because for the 2nd Rain of Arrows you're going to be watching your DBM timer and saving your Mindbender, which you'll pop a couple of seconds before Rain of Arrows. Then all you need to do is click on the arrow that's stunning you and tell your Mindbender to attack it. It's got very low health so the Mindbender will kill it in 2-3 hits no problem. Now you're free and facerolling all the way to Elegon.

Elegon
Elegon is probably the easiest boss in MSV as long as you're not completely retarded and are able to move off the platform before it despawns. If you can't manage this, I'd like to hear how you got to Elegon in the first place, because, really, that's amazing.
Basically just follow the general gameplay advice, kill the add if you want (or let it kill itself on your reflective shield). If you're super keen you can try to kill the Energy Charges with Holy Nova, which if positioned right can hit all of them when they first spawn and will usually do 50% of their health in the first hit. Otherwise keep dpsing until the floors about to despawn, get off, kill the pillars, kill the adds and go back to killing elegon when the floor respawns.


Rinse and Repeat until you get the Mount.

Will of the Emperor
Pffft, what? Who does this?

[Grumpy Old Man]

Fantastic guide. Thanks a lot.

[muto]

I'd recommend doing it as Shadow if you're 695+ ilevel, the only fight you might have to go Disc for is Gara'jal the Spiritbinder, because if you don't kill him fast enough the damage can be too overwhelming to live through as Shadow, whereas Disc, can easily manage. The reason I'd say doing it as Shadow is because it's wayyyy faster. I'd especially recommend Shadow for Elegon; Cascade kills all the Spheres, and you can tab SW:P the Poles. Otherwise nice guide.

[Deleted]

I'd recommend doing it as Shadow if you're 695+ ilevel, the only fight you might have to go Disc for is Gara'jal the Spiritbinder, because if you don't kill him fast enough the damage can be too overwhelming to live through as Shadow, whereas Disc, can easily manage. The reason I'd say doing it as Shadow is because it's wayyyy faster. I'd especially recommend Shadow for Elegon; Cascade kills all the Spheres, and you can tab SW:P the Poles. Otherwise nice guide.

I remember being in brf hc gear when i first time was in msv, and the problematic boss was spirit kings, not gara'jal
Reason for that was just that i didnt have pvp trinket/human racial. Finally i found out that you can cheat rain of arrows with guise and perfect (lucky?) timing.

e: Never managed to do that tho before t18 gear

[zsun]

I remember being in brf hc gear when i first time was in msv, and the problematic boss was spirit kings, not gara'jal
Reason for that was just that i didnt have pvp trinket/human racial. Finally i found out that you can cheat rain of arrows with guise and perfect (lucky?) timing.

e: Never managed to do that tho before t18 gear

Angelic Feathers can outrun Rain of Arrows. I think this would be a lot easier than Guise


To OP: For your reference, I tried Stone Guards as a disc priest (was ilvl 641 at the time) and I got them down to 65%ish before I ran out of mana. Of course my gear was half blues and not optimized. I then specced shadow and fared even worse, didn't even get below 70%. So I agree, disc is definitely easier at lower ilvls.

[shanthi]

I remember being in brf hc gear when i first time was in msv, and the problematic boss was spirit kings, not gara'jal
Reason for that was just that i didnt have pvp trinket/human racial. Finally i found out that you can cheat rain of arrows with guise and perfect (lucky?) timing.

You can also pop shadowfiend/mindbender before the Rain of Arrows comes out. Even stunned, you can direct a pet to attack the arrow and it just takes a couple hits for the pet to kill it.