[Disc] Cord of Maiev, Priestess of the Moon: How to optimally capitalize on the proc?

[Xepperoni]

New account so I can't post links, but the effect of the item is that each Smite has a 30% chance to reset the cooldown of Penance.

So on paper this thing seems pretty amazing (if mana isn't going to be an issue). I got one yesterday and turns out that it is indeed pretty sweet.

However, it very quickly became apparent that the proc is difficult to utilize optimally, despite how straightforward the actual effect is. If I'm casting Smite, it's because I'm happy with my Atonement timers, PWS and PtW just went out, and Penance is on cooldown. Chances are I'm going to have time for at least a few Smites in a row before needing to cast something else. Here's where my gripe comes in.

Because of the way latency works for casters and the general best practice of pre-casting your next spell just before your previous cast completes, here's what happens in practice: I cast a Smite, the belt procs from that Smite and Penance is taken off cooldown "immediately". But because of the aforementioned pre-casting I'm already casting another Smite because the server takes some fraction of a second to inform me of the proc (and because it's silly to wait after every Smite just in case a 30% proc happens). So I just get to wallow in my self-pity for that entire 1.1 second GCD and stare at Penance on my bar, off cooldown, sad, lonely, and not being used. This happens like 5 times every minute.

Also, because Penance is on such a short cooldown anyways, the proc often happens when it's 1-2 seconds away from coming off cooldown on its own, so that last unnecessary Smite means the proc itself is completely wasted and it just feels crappy to watch that happen. This happens constantly as well.

Is there any trick, addon or macro I can use to reduce the frequency of this happening, besides waiting half a second after every Smite just to see if the belt procced before using my next spell? Or should I just stop complaining about my awesome Legendary and accept that my Penances are very often going to be used one GCD later than they theoretically could have been?

First world problems, I know, but it would obviously be a game changer if I had a way to make every other Penance happen a full GCD earlier, so it seemed worth exploring.

Thanks

Edits: typos

[Mayna]

If you're going to wait a half second anyway, you might as well queue up the Smite cast while you do so and just cancel it to cast Penance if it procs. That's what I do anyway (easiest way would be to just start moving which will both cancel the Smite and allow the Penance). No reason to just sit there doing nothing for half a second.

[Xepperoni]

If you're going to wait a half second anyway, you might as well queue up the Smite cast while you do so and just cancel it to cast Penance if it procs. That's what I do anyway (easiest way would be to just start moving which will both cancel the Smite and allow the Penance). No reason to just sit there doing nothing for half a second.

I was mostly joking about waiting. That would be an output decrease in any circumstance, I think.

Cast-canceling is what I've started doing. I set up a fittingly obnoxious WeakAura to let me know when penance comes off cd.

I guess I'm just missing the way macros used to work where you could put multiple abilities in a list and it would just use the first one in the list that wasn't on cooldown. I don't want to go back to the days of mashing one button, though. I suppose it just is what it is.

[Silvaren]

First of all, grats on the leggy!

Secondly, I'd like to say that most people overlook Smite. Imo, for tank healing, it's better to just spam Smite, even if Penance is off cool down. Penance is higher DPS, which obviously means it's also higher group-wide atonement healing, but that's not always what's required. What I'm trying to say is casting Penance on CD is not always the best play. Also, since Penance can be cast while moving it's sometimes worthwhile holding off on it for a second or two if you know you'll need to move soon. So, realistically, how often are you actually "missing out" by not casting it ASAP?

[Xepperoni]

First of all, grats on the leggy!

Secondly, I'd like to say that most people overlook Smite. Imo, for tank healing, it's better to just spam Smite, even if Penance is off cool down. Penance is higher DPS, which obviously means it's also higher group-wide atonement healing, but that's not always what's required. What I'm trying to say is casting Penance on CD is not always the best play. Also, since Penance can be cast while moving it's sometimes worthwhile holding off on it for a second or two if you know you'll need to move soon. So, realistically, how often are you actually "missing out" by not casting it ASAP?

Penance is definitely more healing (and obviously more damage) than Smite. One of the non-tank Atonement targets typically needs heals as well at about any given time.

Smite might be a better heal if the tank is already full HP due to lack of overhealing, but even if the tank is full HP you should still focus on doing more DPS.

That said, Penance is 3x as much mana. I dunno about other discs but mana is one of my primary weaknesses in M+ multi-chest runs, and I tend to run full oom on mythic raids as well. Granted, I don't have the cocoon yet. I imagine once I do I'll care quite a lot less about throttling my DPS for mana efficiency.

On the topic of the legendary, I've already stopped cast-canceling. It doesn't seem worth it to worry about that one GCD. I just finish the redundant Smite and move into the Penance, and take whatever minor output increase that comes with, if any. It was worth the brainstorm, at least.

[Franarok]

Indeed the main problem is that most of times sure that the proc will jump when no no you 1 or 2 seconds left to have penance haha.

Also is true that Discipline has serious mana issues compared with others healers. And not only means end oom onnraid bosses with the consequent lower dps and healing, also affect us on mythic + dungeons, where stop some seconds could be terrible for time... O for non stop crazy tanks

And Blizz is going to nerf the mana mindbender gives.... Can't understand it

[Xepperoni]

And Blizz is going to nerf the mana mindbender gives.... Can't understand it

Wait, really? That's ridiculous. I can understand that they'd be disappointed everybody chooses Mindbender instead of Solace or the PWS mana regain, but the answer should be to either buff those other talents or reduce the cooldown of Shadowfiend. The real value of Mindbender is that it's the closest thing we have to an "Oh sh*t" button. If we're unprepared with Atonements on the group and AE damage happens, we can pop Mindbender (+PI if possible) and/or Rapture and start applying Atonements to everybody while the pet heals for us, and just before the pet stops healing we can go back into our rotation.

Neither of the other mana regain talents fill that role, and 3min is way too long for Shadowfiend's cooldown.

So if they nerf Mindbender's mana regain people are STILL going to pick it for the healing potential, and we're going to have even bigger mana problems than we already have.

Ridiculous.

[Yunzi]

I brought up this exact issue months ago, not long after the Cord received it's effect. What I recommended to Bliz was to proc the spell on the beginning of the cast, so that the player would know that Penance was available immediately after beginning Smite, rather than immediately after the spell completed. It would also have to be coded so that Smite has to finish casting to enable the Penance, otherwise players could begin a Smite, get the proc, cancel the Smite and cast Penance.

[Xepperoni]

I was thinking the same thing. The smoothest thing would be to make it so casting Smite has a 30% chance to give you a buff, call it Empowered Smite, which makes it so the next Smite you cast resets the cooldown on Penance. It would make the Cord stronger because you could save your next Smite and plan out a Penance-Smite-Penance burst, but the caveat is that the proc would require an additional Smite to trigger it. And Penance-Smite-Penance can technically already happen, it's just difficult to take advantage of in the current format.

That idea may not work either though because the actual cooldown reset is server side, so pre-casting Penance on the Empowered Smite may not work without pausing a beat for the cooldown to reset on your client.

In any case, with latency being the way it is, I've just set up WeakAuras to get my attention every time Penance comes off cooldown and I'll hit it on the next available GCD and I'm trying not to worry about the redundant Smites in between. It's a bummer that it feels clunky, but it's still a non-trivial increase in output so I'm trying not to complain.

[Dracodraco]

I was mostly joking about waiting. That would be an output decrease in any circumstance, I think.

Cast-canceling is what I've started doing. I set up a fittingly obnoxious WeakAura to let me know when penance comes off cd.

I guess I'm just missing the way macros used to work where you could put multiple abilities in a list and it would just use the first one in the list that wasn't on cooldown. I don't want to go back to the days of mashing one button, though. I suppose it just is what it is.

In all honesty, I still think cast-cancelling would be the wrong thing to do. You've queued up a smite and you're halfway through it by the time you register the reset and can hit penance; let it through instead. Else it means you just added .5 seconds to your Penance's cast, effectively (.5 sec casting smite cancelled to be ".5 sec of nothing", and then penances duration). It's going to reset at bad times - no way around it with such a short CD spell.

[Xepperoni]

In all honesty, I still think cast-cancelling would be the wrong thing to do. You've queued up a smite and you're halfway through it by the time you register the reset and can hit penance; let it through instead. Else it means you just added .5 seconds to your Penance's cast, effectively (.5 sec casting smite cancelled to be ".5 sec of nothing", and then penances duration). It's going to reset at bad times - no way around it with such a short CD spell.

Yep I stopped cast-canceling about an hour after I started. I tested on a dummy to confirm that there's no benefit to canceling vs letting the redundant Smite complete. If latency weren't a factor it might work out, but if that were the case then there'd be no problem in the first place because you could just start Penance immediately.

[anon5123]

Because of the way latency works for casters and the general best practice of pre-casting your next spell just before your previous cast completes, here's what happens in practice: I cast a Smite, the belt procs from that Smite and Penance is taken off cooldown "immediately". But because of the aforementioned pre-casting I'm already casting another Smite because the server takes some fraction of a second to inform me of the proc (and because it's silly to wait after every Smite just in case a 30% proc happens). So I just get to wallow in my self-pity for that entire 1.1 second GCD and stare at Penance on my bar, off cooldown, sad, lonely, and not being used. This happens like 5 times every minute.

Is there any trick, addon or macro I can use to reduce the frequency of this happening, besides waiting half a second after every Smite just to see if the belt procced before using my next spell? Or should I just stop complaining about my awesome Legendary and accept that my Penances are very often going to be used one GCD later than they theoretically could have been?

I recently asked about this as well, here's the macro for it:

#showtooltip Penance
/stopcasting [nochanneling:Penance]
/cast Penance

This will interrupt your Smite cast on the first press, and then cast Penance on the second press. Because Penance is a channeled spell, you can modify the /stopcasting so that it only stops cast-time spells, and ignores Penance. So you can mash the macro as much as you'd like and it will not interrupt Penance.

[tachycardias]

I don't have this item, but it works similar to other mechanics that have existed in the past such as the guardian mangle mechanic. I'll make recommendations based on this.

You shouldn't cancel a smite that is in progress after a proc. The GCD is just as long as a smite cast so you gain nothing by this. Just finish the cast then cast penance.

To maximize the cool down reduction, calculate how many penance you cast on average between penance casts. It's probably 2-3. Rather than casting those in downtime, cast those 2-3 directly after penance. You'll find that the other spells in the rotation fall in line after you cast these. This is a general guideline.

More specifically, A smite cast right after penance is the most valuable one. Ones cast after that are progressively less important as the cool down on penance nears its end. A smite cast right after penance may be even higher in value than PWS. Later ones might not be, but play around with this.

[anon5123]

You shouldn't cancel a smite that is in progress after a proc. The GCD is just as long as a smite cast so you gain nothing by this..

Eh? Using the macro above, I've found that I can cancel Smite 25% of the way through its cast and immediately cast Penance; never hindered by the GCD.

[Xepperoni]

That's a good point to internalize regarding the diminishing value of proc fishing as Penance's natural cooldown ticks down. The first GCD after Penance should probably always be Smite unless Atonement is about to fall off a key target or some other clearly-more-important thing is necessary (scary damage requiring Shadow Mend, Dispels needed, or movement required).

Another note is that this item makes Schism a much less viable talent choice. I've tested on a dummy using both Castigation and Schism with 100% Schism uptime. For me they're almost dead even for DPS while HPS potential is substantially higher with Castigation than with Schism. Removing Schism also obviously simplifies the rotation and affords you freedom to apply more Atonements when necessary. That might change with really high Haste, though, since then you could possibly fit more spells inside Schism's 6 second window.

[Dracodraco]

Eh? Using the macro above, I've found that I can cancel Smite 25% of the way through its cast and immediately cast Penance; never hindered by the GCD.

This is correct. The GCD is only invoked as a "minimum time spent finishing a cast"-sort of thing. If you're down to .5 second casts and have a 1 second GBC, you'll finish your cast at .5 but be locked out of doing another action for another .5 seconds due to the GBC (this was very easily seen in WOD with the mass-dispel glyph that made it a .5 second or so cast). Likewise, a .9 second cast will lock you for another .1 seconds (at which time it can barely be felt apart from normal "delay" due to the latency-smoothing tool that's usually set to have a few miliseconds of buffer to queue up your next spell).

In essence; The GBC only triggers *after* a successful spellcast. An attempted cast does NOT trigger a GBC. What the guy you're quoting ment is, "you've already spent X amount of time trying to cast the smite - that is time that is 100% lost if you cancel it to cast penance. Is it worth it to lose that time in order to use Penance sooner?".

[anon5123]

"you've already spent X amount of time trying to cast the smite - that is time that is 100% lost if you cancel it to cast penance. Is it worth it to lose that time in order to use Penance sooner?".

I would assume that it is worth it to cancel Smite for a Penance, (less than halfway through the cast at least) being that Penance does so much more damage than Smite.

But I'd have to test it out.

[Dracodraco]

I would assume that it is worth it to cancel Smite for a Penance, (less than halfway through the cast at least) being that Penance does so much more damage than Smite.

But I'd have to test it out.

I don't have the answer; I was "blessed" enough to get a Sephuz Secret for my alt's legendary, so I've purposefully avoided the "good" legendaries because of extreme salt levels. Gut instinct from playing a DPS has me thinking "NEVER CANCEL A CAST", though; Unless you clicked something wrong (EG, started hardcasting a pyroblast instead of casting a fireball on a mage), I can't think of many (if any) scenarios where it's worth stopping your current cast to react to a proc. Healing isn't exactly dps, though, and mana is also a concern (can you sustain all of the penances if you keep interrupting smites?).

[anon5123]

Gut instinct from playing a DPS has me thinking "NEVER CANCEL A CAST"

The thing is, Penance (with Castigation) does damage equal to just over 3 Smites, so I'd say it's probably worth canceling a single Smite to cast your Penance that much faster.

I can't think of many (if any) scenarios where it's worth stopping your current cast to react to a proc. Healing isn't exactly dps, though, and mana is also a concern (can you sustain all of the penances if you keep interrupting smites?).

In a raid, I don't really monitor the Penance CD resets very closely, as I'm often paying attention to other things. Really making the best use of the Penance cancelcast macro to cancel Smite really quickly, requires a good bit of attention as the timing is really tight.

The legendary belt is mostly useful in questing and heroics when you can just DPS your heart out without worrying about mana or healing. It's less useful in raids, but could be used to gain some extra HPS during burst healing moments (which Disc excels at); getting an extra Penance would be a significant boost to your healing with so many Atonements out.

[Dracodraco]

The thing is, Penance (with Castigation) does damage equal to just over 3 Smites, so I'd say it's probably worth canceling a single Smite to cast your Penance that much faster.

Emphasis on DAMAGE - remember that smite provides significantly more *healing* than it does *damage*, because of the absorb debuff on the enemy target, unless you're rolling a LOT of atonements in order to make the absorb part insignificant.