Disc-build for PvE healing in Wrath

[dionadar]

Bleh, you have all forgotten that you miss out on Holy conc - therefore losing over 16% (I would guesstimate sth about 20% w/ 5 sec rule taken into consideration) of your mana while doing what you say you are about to do: MT healing with gheal (and shield for the disc specc)...

so, good luck finding 20% mana return for your nuke... (and i am consciously not taking serendipity into account right now!)

[Itania]

I think a disc priest with good gear could gain more mana with a pw : shield than it cost, and same with a critical gh. PI reduce the mana cost of spell by 20% for 15sec every 2mn, and the disc tree as 15% more intel.

[dionadar]

And where are 20% in there?

[Merin]

I think a disc priest with good gear could gain more mana with a pw : shield than it cost, and same with a critical gh. PI reduce the mana cost of spell by 20% for 15sec every 2mn, and the disc tree as 15% more intel.

and same with a critical gh

Uh...? Did I miss something about Rapture? It's a 2.5% return on a GH, so you'd have to crit a heal so large it'd crash the game servers to get a freebie out of it. The main problem with a talent like Rapture is that it's based on throughput in a talent tree with none.

PI is not something you can rely on, and the swap to Intel was a nerf.

Imp. Holy Conc and Serendipity blow Disc sustainability out of the water, and let's not even get to how gimped Disc throughput is.

Blizzard has got to go back to the drawing board with Disc if they want to make it PvE worthy. Hell, I don't even think it'll be nearly as viable for PvP in most circumstances anymore either. The entire tree is just fully obsessed with PW:S and Penance, despite neither being that strong or reliable, it's filled to the brim with garbage talents. It's nowhere near as clean as Holy or Druid's Resto.

[derevka]

Uh...? Did I miss something about Rapture? It's a 2.5% return on a GH, so you'd have to crit a heal so large it'd crash the game servers to get a freebie out of it. The main problem with a talent like Rapture is that it's based on throughput in a talent tree with none.

Youre forgetting the Aegis aspect of Rapture.

Just take Gheal 7 -base cost 825 mana (even assuming not getting Improved Healing, which you can get by lvl 80), and on beta servers, in 5/8 T6 gear, as disc I am critting for around 9600. Lets assume ALL of it is overheal, meaning I don't get 2.5% of 9600 back) Which gives a Aegis of (9600*0.30 = 2880), Which returns mana at 25% (2880*0.25 = 720 mana) = net cost 105 mana.

Now if you didn't overheal your target, you'd only need to heal your tank for 4200 to have no cost.

Now if you had Improved healing, just the Aegis negates the cost of the spell.

[derevka]

I posted this on the Beta Forums.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...24783&sid=2000

Ok... so I've been pretty much COH spec since January, pushed through TK/SSC, cleared BT/MH, and now working my way through Sunwell. IDS prior to January.

Disc has always been laughable. The red-headed stepchild/PVP only spec. Yes, having IDS is great, but more than 1 IDS priest in a raid... waste-- deep Disc spec in a raid is generally a waste. Perhaps having someone spec PI for that little bit of extra DPS for Brutallus... arguably not a horribleidea... but perhaps not the best.

Lots of priests who haven't spent time healing in beta are screaming "WTF Blizzard... disc still sucks". At first glance the issue was going to be mana... missing out on a lot of the deep Holy talents. (Imp Holy Concentration and Serendipity). Now that you can leverage Weakened Soul for more crit, thus more Aegis procs, and in turn more mana returned from Rapture... it works out quite well, heck, very well. I've been pleased with how that currently works.

Seeing the changes to priest, and disc... I have to admit, I was one of the naysayers regarding Disc. But since it had an interesting healing strategy (much different than COH in BC has) I wanted to give it a spin. I have to admit... I'm kinda liking it, but there are some needed changes to really make the spec shine.

The big issue that exists with a Disc priest is the rage generation. Blocking incoming damage (which, is really the focus of Disc now) to a Warrior, Bear Tank, or Pally tank. Is very tricky... it prevents rage (warrior/bear) or mana regen (for pallies).

Koraa stated in a Blue Post:
By the way, I did Naxx 10-man the other day as Discipline and our tank didn't notice any reduced threat with Divine Aegis (with around ~30 spell crit) or Power Word: Shield. It probably did lower his threat, but it was pretty minimal and it definitely wasn't an issue for us.

I've healed both Nexus and Utguard Keep, and have copied over an 80 to spin this weekend. Yes, on heavy hittng bosses, where the tank is gonna be pretty much rage capped it wont be a major issue, and I didn't experience much threat gen issues on the tank.

However, the issue needs to be addressed that a Disc priest is currently blocking rage. There is no question about that. Perhaps just having it be an innate part of rage generation, if its absorbed damage, you still generate the rage as if the damage was dealt. I'm not 100% sure the best way to fix it... or even have it be a 50% of the rage generated to prevent pre-pull shields to give the tank full rage generation, but a huge shield/hp buffer on their run into a boss.

However the biggest issue with the shield generation is chain shielding, mixed in with Aegis Procs... which is what happens when the throughput of Renewed Hope.

PW:Shield a tank, they get Weakened Soul & the shield... I then cast Gheal on them and crit. (with my current gear Im critting on tanks for around 9600, boom another shield for ~2600 damage. Assuming you don't crit again on the tank before Weakened Soul falls off. You now have effectively chained huge shields on the tank blocking large amounts of rage to them.

As is, Disc isn't bad... however some changes need to be made if the Disc PVE Raiding priest is here to stay.