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  1. #1

    How good is priest in for mythic keystones ? (Holy and shadow )

    My mains a heal/dps monk and I have an arcane mage alt and I mainly do mythic keystones runs
    I don't like the 7.1.5 arcane play style so I'm planning to level a priest as alt
    Personally most holy priests I've seen are quite bad but I'm not sure if it's the spec or the people
    I've never seen any shadow priest so I can't tell, and disc seems to be not viable in keystones

    I run 10+ regularly, Any advice on their viability?

  2. #2
    Just as good as any other healer. Disc could also make the deal. World First +15 runs had lots of disc priests, too. A good coordinated group +12 with a bunch of cc's and stuns makes it for the healer like a really bad +7 group. It's easily doable with any healer if your group comp is good.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Shadow gets better the higher the M+ you go, but it is also great if your group is bad. And inversely pretty awful if your group is good.

    For instance with my normal group Hunter/DH + me, they both do over 600k dps over an arcway 12 for example, while im doing 460.

    But then if you go into a pug M+ where the other 2 dps are doing 350k, you will do 550. At least that's how it goes for me.

  4. #4
    As a tank, I had some amazing disc healers running M+ dungeons, so suggest trying it out, if you 'get' the playstyle. I haven't seen many shadows, so can't comment.

  5. #5
    I main shadow, it's definitely not super fun on low level but the higher the better. You can do well with trash but you shine in the boss fights. So far shadow looks like it will be doing better aoe come 7.1.5 though so that may change a bit
    Last edited by Tjo106; 2016-11-25 at 09:44 PM.

  6. #6
    Holy is solid. No issues so far running up to +12. I feel like disc would be strong too, but I personally haven't seen it. I usually run enlightenment/Binding heal for M+

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by zox2 View Post
    As a tank, I had some amazing disc healers running M+ dungeons, so suggest trying it out, if you 'get' the playstyle. I haven't seen many shadows, so can't comment.
    Disc in high level M+ is literally just Shadowmend / Penance spam, for the most part.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by danieltang34 View Post
    My mains a heal/dps monk and I have an arcane mage alt and I mainly do mythic keystones runs
    I don't like the 7.1.5 arcane play style so I'm planning to level a priest as alt
    Personally most holy priests I've seen are quite bad but I'm not sure if it's the spec or the people
    I've never seen any shadow priest so I can't tell, and disc seems to be not viable in keystones

    I run 10+ regularly, Any advice on their viability?
    Lol disc is probably one of the best healers for high end keystones. Twist of Fate is basically like a hpal having wings with no cooldown that autoactivate whenever a target is below 35%hp, Shadow Mend is the strongest spamable heal in the game and PWS, CoW, Pain Sup and Barrier let disc priests prevent people getting 1shot by high damage abilities in high mythic+. Disc has easy life with aoe healing and single target healing isn't an issue with the right talents and stats. And they do solid boss damage and okay AoE damage (in the +9 i did the other day I was doing 250k+ boss dps and 150-250k AoE depending on how well I could multidot, with no difficulty keeping the party alive). Disc's only drawback is its limited CC, but Dominate mind can be extremely valuable in specific dungeons to remove a problematic mob from a pull, and Shackle Undead can also be used to great effect in certain dungeons (mostly BRH, some HoV). Mass Dispel also does work in situations where the entire party gets magic debuffs (E.g. the first boss CoS, saves casters from having to jump, or if an interrupt is missed between the 2nd and 3rd boss on Maw, a quick mass dispel and a life grip has prevented many a wipe).
    And anyone who says that disc only shadowmends and penance at high mythic+ is just a bad disc priest.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Shadow does nice trash damage at the higher keystones, when thing's live long enough, but is really bad for farming the low keystones when you pull like 15 mobs and aoe them all down in 10 seconds. Its boss damage isn't amazing either, but again, it gets better the longer stuff lives, so it's decent at the high end keystones.

    Can't comment a lot on holy in 5mans, but given it's utility and mobility are its biggest weakness in raids, I can only imagine how problematic that can be for mythic+. It does have much better AoE dps than disc, but can't make as much use of it since it can't heal high damage and dps at the same time. It's cc is also substantially better than disc due to Chastise, but it doesn't have any of the damage absorb or reduction that disc does, so it has literally no way to deal with 1shot damage, and also has to choose between its very limited mobility (feathers) or its only possible personal cooldown (Desperate Prayer).
    Disc Priests: Just 2 mana trinkets away from becoming Withered

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Atonement View Post
    Lol disc is probably one of the best healers for high end keystones. Twist of Fate is basically like a hpal having wings with no cooldown that autoactivate whenever a target is below 35%hp, Shadow Mend is the strongest spamable heal in the game and PWS, CoW, Pain Sup and Barrier let disc priests prevent people getting 1shot by high damage abilities in high mythic+. Disc has easy life with aoe healing and single target healing isn't an issue with the right talents and stats. And they do solid boss damage and okay AoE damage (in the +9 i did the other day I was doing 250k+ boss dps and 150-250k AoE depending on how well I could multidot, with no difficulty keeping the party alive). Disc's only drawback is its limited CC, but Dominate mind can be extremely valuable in specific dungeons to remove a problematic mob from a pull, and Shackle Undead can also be used to great effect in certain dungeons (mostly BRH, some HoV). Mass Dispel also does work in situations where the entire party gets magic debuffs (E.g. the first boss CoS, saves casters from having to jump, or if an interrupt is missed between the 2nd and 3rd boss on Maw, a quick mass dispel and a life grip has prevented many a wipe).
    And anyone who says that disc only shadowmends and penance at high mythic+ is just a bad disc priest.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Shadow does nice trash damage at the higher keystones, when thing's live long enough, but is really bad for farming the low keystones when you pull like 15 mobs and aoe them all down in 10 seconds. Its boss damage isn't amazing either, but again, it gets better the longer stuff lives, so it's decent at the high end keystones.

    Can't comment a lot on holy in 5mans, but given it's utility and mobility are its biggest weakness in raids, I can only imagine how problematic that can be for mythic+. It does have much better AoE dps than disc, but can't make as much use of it since it can't heal high damage and dps at the same time. It's cc is also substantially better than disc due to Chastise, but it doesn't have any of the damage absorb or reduction that disc does, so it has literally no way to deal with 1shot damage, and also has to choose between its very limited mobility (feathers) or its only possible personal cooldown (Desperate Prayer).
    I love disc in five mans. But I ran into mana trouble in +11-12 range with the tyrannical bosses - for example, even with double mana trinkets at 881 equipped, I ran dry on helya before the end. Granted that's an extra long fight, but still. Any advice other than the group just take less damage?

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by PeopleReady View Post
    I love disc in five mans. But I ran into mana trouble in +11-12 range with the tyrannical bosses - for example, even with double mana trinkets at 881 equipped, I ran dry on helya before the end. Granted that's an extra long fight, but still. Any advice other than the group just take less damage?
    I haven't personally done Maw on +11 or higher, but in raids mana managment is the main issue for disc, so I'd imagine some of the same things can apply.
    I'm assuming you're already using Castigation, Mindbender, Twist of Fate, CoW and Grace for high mythic+, and that your mana trinkets are Darkmoon Deck: Promises, and Amalgam's Seventh Spine. Other mana trinkets probably won't cut it (the Kara one would be good though); the cacoon is especially bad since you'll just have to spend the amount you gain while sleeping to catch up on the damage that happened while sleeping. I'm also assuming you're using an int>haste>crit>=vers>mastery build for dungeons (take note that intellect is indeed highest priority for dungeons; this is due to high shadowmend usage, which has a very high% spellpower). Lastly, I'm assuming you are flasked and prepotting the boss unless you've used an invis pot to skip trash earlier. For your prepot Deadly Grace will be higher dps, so a shorter fight length, but Prologned Power will last a lot longer and also benefit your hps more, especially shadowmend. Your pot during the fight should be an Ancient Mana potion, because I doubt you'll have time to drink a leytorrent without the same issues as the cacoon trinket, but if you can then go for it. Also I'm assuming you're at full mana when the boss starts, and you absolutely should be if the fight's are taking long enough to go OOM. Helya particularly always has a few seconds outside combat because of her roleplay crap, and during this time you should be drinking back to full mana. The knockback she does just before combat begins won't interrupt your drinking, so make sure you reach 100% before you enter combat.
    If you aren't doing any of these things, making these changes should be the first thing you try.

    More specific things:
    1) You can swap from mindbender to Shield Discipline for more mana sustainability, but this will only be worth it if you are still using PWS on cooldown, which you really should be, even with such high damage requiring a lot more SM than usual. Unfortunately this means you have to change talents for the whole dungeon, so one of your hps cooldowns is now 3min rather than 1min, but it will return a large amount of mana if the fight is really going that long. This option should be a last resort tbh.

    2) Weave more to make use of borrowed time, which helps you do more damage (so shorter fight, hopefully don't go OOM as easily) while still keeping atonements up, so that you don't have to waste time applying atonements them after someone takes damage. This in turn lets you do more atonement healing, and rely less on the expensive Shadowmends. Weaving is especially efficient if there's constant aoe or random damage.

    By "weaving" I mean you want your 'rotation' outside of emergency spot or tank healing with SM to look something like this:
    Applicator > Filler > Applicator > Filler > Filler > Applicator > Filler > Applicator > Filler > Filler > Applicator > Filler > Filler, etc
    where "filler" is Penance, refereshing dots or multidotting, or smite, in that priority, and "applicator" is PWS, Shadowmend and Plea, prioritising PWS first and then Plea, but using Shadowmend when necessary.
    When using plea, make sure to use it to refresh the lowest duration atonement, or apply it to someone new, whereas PWS or SM can be used more for tank healing or spot healing, not necessarily prioritising the lowest duration atonement.
    Basically you want to weave between applying atonements and doing damage, making sure you prioritise PWS over plea when it's off cooldown, don't use two atonement applicators twice in a row (which wastes borrowed time), and if you're multidotting or refreshing SWP, you want to make sure you use a Penance or Smite before or after the SWP, to consume Borrowed Time (which SWP won't). You also don't want to just alternate between applicator and filler, because with a 15sec window, you'll be refreshing atonement too early and wasting mana. Adjust the ratio of applicators to fillers depending on the level of damage, and of course the amount that you need to shadowmend.
    If you have the legendary chest, weaving is an even more efficient gameplay approach because it lets you get a high uptime on the haste buff, in which case you want to prioritise a lot more Plea (still lower than PWS) and try to refresh atonements while its still on 5 players, in order to get the most out of the haste bonus.

    3) Don't shadowmend if you don't have to. Yes, they might have taken a chunk of damage, but you know the fight and its mechanics, if there is no more immediate damage incoming, then just using your atonement healing should suffice. There isn't any random target spike damage on this fight, so unless a torrent interrupt is missed (which it absolutely shouldn't be) then you do have a little breathing room.

    4) Dispel fast. The dot damage will be enormous at +11, and the faster you dispel the less mana you waste on keeping them up. Be ready for the AoE damage that follows the dispel: have your atonement on all 5 people before you dispel (which you should if you're weaving like I explained earlier), have SWP already going on at least 1 tentacle (it should be on all available targets), and have penance ready to cast as soon as you dispel. This easily counters the AoE damage. Have the dps positioned so that the puddle from the dispel isn't going to force them to move or take extra damage.

    5) Watch your mana, and if it's going down faster than the boss's health, you need to start cutting out smites and pleas from your rotation, so long as doing so doesn't result in you having to shadowmend more. Typically this means cut out smites if your atonement targets will mostly overheal from it, and cut pleas down to only refreshing at an atonement count of 3 or less, so as to not be casting the less efficient 4 or 5 atonement count pleas. If you cut out too much though, you'll find yourself falling behind on AoE or tank healing or not having atonement's up when you need them, which ultimately leads to you having to cast more Shadowmends or even use a PWR to catch back up.

    6) Make use of all your cooldowns, the more you use and better you use them the less mana you spend catching up afterwards.
    Rapture can be used for excellent mana efficency and mobility, especially if you end up using Shield Discipline.
    Mindbender/Shadowfiend is a great healing, dps and mobility cooldown, and it's even better if you line it up with hero and a prolonged power potion.
    Barrier is an incredible survival and AoE healing cooldown; a well used barrier can prevent a 1shot or let you easily atonement heal through something you'd otherwise have to spend a lot of shadowmend and mana on.
    Pain Suppression is an incredible tank cooldown, but make sure you use it early - the earlier into the tank damage you use it, the less healing you have to catch up on afterward, which of course means less mana spent.
    Light's Wrath is best used for a solid (nothing amazing, but still decent) AoE atonement heal or even just a little dps boost; just make sure you use it with 5 (or more if there's pets) atonement targets.
    Disc Priests: Just 2 mana trinkets away from becoming Withered

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by PeopleReady View Post
    I love disc in five mans. But I ran into mana trouble in +11-12 range with the tyrannical bosses - for example, even with double mana trinkets at 881 equipped, I ran dry on helya before the end. Granted that's an extra long fight, but still. Any advice other than the group just take less damage?
    Overheal less(which also means apply less atonements that aren't necessary) and don't dps unless you need to group heal.

    It's very tempting to smite spam or even penance when there's no group healing to do, but you just oom yourself faster for very little benefit.
    "My successes are my own, but my failures are due to extremist leftist liberals" - Party of Personal Responsibility

    Prediction for the future

  12. #12
    problem with Disc in +11 and higher is you require a perfect group, ones who wont make mistakes ( miss interupts or stuns etc ) because else youll just be spamming shadowmend trying to catch up on the massive amount of dmg the group takes making your mana drain fast, i prefeer Holy simply because you can atleast handle those mistakes ( and unless you have a group of friends/guildies always running m+ your gonna be in pugs that will do mistakes ) and on the 1shot thing Holy has Guardian angel to cover those and if you get the cloak you have a superiour Ankh aswell.

  13. #13
    Shadow is not as bad as many think but it's hard to find a group. Many have prejudices when seeing Shadow Priests doing Mythic+. I'm ILVL 860 and many just won't take you with them.

    On trash, especially when your group has massive AoE damage class wise, it's hard to "shine". I switched to Shadow Crash in the talents and it's pretty nice. In the end it has mostly 10-12% overall damage. It's a nice skill for heavy AoE instances and helps at least until 7.1.5 hits the live servers.

  14. #14
    Running with a Shadow and atm its Great.

    I'm playing Disc, 870 ilvl, i do a ton of mistakes but we can easily clear +7.

    I tried Holy, it has definitely more throughput, but is less mobile.

  15. #15
    Below Average/Below Average

    Shadow gets better the higher the mythic level, but that's also very dependant on the dungeon itself and how viable s2m is.

    Holy suffers from immobility and minimal utility.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by PosPosPos View Post
    Overheal less(which also means apply less atonements that aren't necessary) and don't dps unless you need to group heal.

    It's very tempting to smite spam or even penance when there's no group healing to do, but you just oom yourself faster for very little benefit.
    Aton and Pos - thank you. I was doing everything mentioned in Aton's first paragraph (talents correct, both mana trinkets dead on, etc.,) but I do think my issue was being too quick to shadowmend and too inclusive on keeping five atonements up. It was a full guild group minus me (pug from the finder) so I was certainly playing very safe with their health, probably to my mama bars detriment. Thanks a lot guys.

  17. #17
    While I understand disc is good for timer pushing for obvious reasons, there are scenarios that are very challenging even for pure healers, like tyrannical CoS, Nelth trash, how well does disc handle these things? I lve never brought discs for 10+s so i have no idea

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by danieltang34 View Post
    While I understand disc is good for timer pushing for obvious reasons, there are scenarios that are very challenging even for pure healers, like tyrannical CoS, Nelth trash, how well does disc handle these things? I lve never brought discs for 10+s so i have no idea
    If you're somehow still under the illusion that disc is something other than a "pure healer", you have some research to do.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by danieltang34 View Post
    While I understand disc is good for timer pushing for obvious reasons, there are scenarios that are very challenging even for pure healers, like tyrannical CoS, Nelth trash, how well does disc handle these things? I lve never brought discs for 10+s so i have no idea
    Isn't it wonderful that disc happens to be a pure healer and more?
    "My successes are my own, but my failures are due to extremist leftist liberals" - Party of Personal Responsibility

    Prediction for the future

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by danieltang34 View Post
    While I understand disc is good for timer pushing for obvious reasons, there are scenarios that are very challenging even for pure healers, like tyrannical CoS, Nelth trash, how well does disc handle these things? I lve never brought discs for 10+s so i have no idea
    While disc does do damage while healing, it's still a 'pure' healer. It doesn't trade healing for damage, instead you should consider it's damage as part of its utility (compared to say druids who have more cc).
    Disc does very well with the right talents, let me use some numbers to explain.
    Compare all the healer's "quick heal" spells, those are the 1.5 second, higher mana spells. We will assume no secondary stats, and only baseline mastery, and no artifact traits or legendaries

    Disc: Shadow Mend: 750% spellpower
    Holy: Flash Heal + EoL (10% baseline): 475% spellpower + 47.5% = 522.5%
    Hpal: Flash of Light + Lightbringer (12% baseline): 450% spellpower * 1.12 = 504% spellpower
    Druid: Regrowth + Harmony (4.8*3): ((350% *(40% increased crit chance)) + 60% hot over 12 sec (10% per 2 sec, 6 sec)) = 629.2% spellpower
    Sham: Healing Surge + Deep Healing (24%): 475% spellpower *1.24 = 589% spellpower
    MW: Effuse+Gusts of Mist (80% sp): 250% spellpower + 80% = 330% spellpower

    As you can see, disc has by far the strongest single target, spammable heal out of all the healers, even without it's mastery affecting it.

    All these other healer's masteries will increase their flash heal, but disc's doesn't, however its a simple matter of gearing for haste, crit and vers, and avoiding mastery to keep us easily on par with, or ahead of other healer's outputs for 5mans. On top of that, we take the grace talent, which basically gives us 30% more healing on shadow mend and PWS, and then we take Twist of Fate, which gives us 20% increase damage AND healing for 10 seconds after healing someone below 35% health. This makes our 5man triage healing extremely powerful.

    On AoE, we will compare baseline AoE healing spells on a per second basis, 1 cast. Same assumptions, 5 targets max.
    Disc: Penance + Absolution (Atone on 5 people) = (570%*0.4495*5)/2sec = 640.5% spellpower per sec
    Holy: Prayer of Healing + Echo of Light: (200%*5)/2sec + 100%/6sec = 516.66% spellpower per sec
    Hpal: Light of Dawn + Lightbringer: (180%*1.12*5)/1.5sec = 672% spellpower per sec
    Druid: Wild Growth + Harmony: (238%*1.144*5)/7sec = 192.48% spellpower per sec [note, this isn't quite accurate, since the per second amount starts high and slows down]
    Sham: Chain Heal + Deep Healing: ((400*1.24)*(0.7^0 + 0.7^1 + 0.7^2 + 0.7^3))/2.5sec = 502.54% spellpower per sec
    MW: Essence Front: (110%*3*5)/3sec + (36%*3*5)/6sec = 640% spellpower per sec

    Cooldowns
    Disc:
    Power Word: Barrier: AoE 25% reduced dmg for 10sec, 3min cd
    Pain Suppression: 40% reduced dmg for 8sec, 4min cd
    Shadowfiend: ~240%sp (hard to get an exact coefficnent on shadowfiend melee coefficent, extrapolating from logs) dps for 12sec, converts to 107.88% sp/sec atonement healing (total=~240%*0.4495*5*12 = 6472.8% sp, this is actually equal to about 2/3rds of a divine hymn or tanquility, its a bit weaker, but a bit longer, and also does dps and is mobile), 3min cd
    Rapture: PWS spam, 8sec, 2min cd

    Holy:
    Divine Hymn: 750% healing over 8 sec and increases healing on targets by 10% for 8sec, double in 5mans = 750*1.1*1.1*2*5 =9075% sp
    Holy Word: Serenity: 2000%*1.1 = 2200% sp heal, 1min cd, reduced by other abilities
    Holy Word: Sanctify: 600%*1.1*5 = 3300% sp AoE heal, 1min cd, reduced by other abilities
    Guardian Spirit: 10sec, 40% increased healing on target, prevents target death but is consumed, 4min cd.

    Hpal:
    Aura Mastery: 6sec, various effects, 3min cd
    Avenging Wrath: 20sec, 35% increased healing, 20% increased crit, 2min cd
    Lay on Hands: Max Health heal, 10min cd
    Blessing of Protection: Physical Dmg immunity, 10sec, 5min cd
    Blessing of Sacrifice: Transfers 30% dmg to paladin for 12 sec, 2.5min cd.


    So as you can see, in terms of it's healing abilities and cooldowns, disc is just as good as any other healer.
    Disc Priests: Just 2 mana trinkets away from becoming Withered

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