[Disc] Question : 25 man healer?

[Mandorin]

His off spec is actually standard holy tree for raid healing yet he wants in as disc..

No, Im sorry but as a priest healer you dont apply like that, sure your gear is better for your main spec(as disc/holy theres not a big dif tho) but we are the only class in the game that have two healing trees for our talents and if its needed you switch between them. In short if you apply as a healing priest you play both disc and holy especially if you got both the specs to begin with.

About his spec, its not at all terribad but a little off, however it isnt designed at all for pvp(like someone stated) but its a matter of taste and perhaps number of dispels.

Anyways disc is a good raidspec and ofc you should try him out but like I said; he has to be ready to use his dualspec every now and then.

EDIT: Would nice to see what glyphs he uses.

[[-Spiritus-]]

There is quite a significant difference for how Holy and Disco gears.

Holy covets staves over MH/OH.
Disco prefers MH/OH.

Disco prefers Mp5 over Spirit.
Holy prefers Spirit over Mp5.

Disco looks for a specific number to hit for Haste (x5FH within Penance CD), then stack crit.
Holy looks for crit over haste (better synergy with HC & SoL). When crit hits the diminishing returns wall, then focus on haste.

Holy looks to maximize their regen at all times, as they are very mana intensive. Plus side, they have a throughput coefficient through Spirit.
Disco has many built in regen mechanics, therefore will look to gem for throughput sooner than Holy. They do not have a throughput coefficient through stats.


These are all important considerations to know when choosing to bring in a healing priest into your guild... and what gear is best for them. A perfectly geared Disco priest *can* heal well in holy... but he will run oom far faster than a properly geared Holy priest. A properly geared Holy priest *can* heal well in Disco, but he will lack the throughput of a properly geared Disco priest.

[Lithion]

EDIT: Would nice to see what glyphs he uses.

also his glpyhs are PW:S,FH,Penance

[Zeuq]

I don't really have a whole lot to add to the question posed by the OP except that Discipline is absolutely viable for raiding, and you need to be careful not to judge his performance from Healing meters. He very well could have more effective healing through absorption than anyone else and be at the bottom of the meters; similarly, if he's at the top of the meters, one could very well be concerned he's doing something wrong because he's probably not casting enough PWS.

As to the controversy about the cookie-cutter spec, I think people are getting a bit sidetracked. IMO, the basic spec is always 57/14 in which the 57 points in Discipline are all self-explanitory, 8 of the points in Holy are also spoken for (5/5 Holy Concentration and 3/3 Inspiration), and the last 6 points in Holy really don't matter a whole lot where you put them. Some will argue Renew for a little more HPS, or Healing Focus for less pushback, or Divine Fury to make Greater Heal useful, or Spell Warding to be less squishy, or Desperate Prayer for that "Uh oh!" moment. Depending on the player's specific healing style and raid composition, almost any combination of those 6 points can be reasonably justified. For instance, Healing Focus is potentially useful if you're lacking a Holy Pally, but probably not if you have one. I, for one, like Divine Fury because, especially now that Penance has been nerfed and isn't always up when I need it, sometimes I want a bigger heal, and I feel like BT+DF makes PWS->GH a reasonable option for saving a life and quickly getting them out of risk of death. I'm generally against Spell Warding because I just don't have survivability problems, but I could see it being useful if I were in a position to be working on some of the hardest encounters in Ulduar.

So really, my point is, just remember that there is some room for preferences and playstyle adjustment, even with a cookie-cutter raiding Discipline spec.

[Mandorin]

Yea then the glyphs looks alright

Well I gonna go ahead and agree on the quite obvious weapons of choise even tho its not always the truth but overall yes.
The same goes for mp5/spirit. After the spirit nerf and now the boost to mp5 I must however say that mp5 aint a bad stat for holy either.

Haste is important for both specs and tbh you'll want more haste(from gear etc) as holy than disc so I can't agree with you on that one. The five FH per penance I dont understand at all, first of all you should never have a rotation that you follow blindly as a healer, secondly even glyphed before the two sec cd increase as of 3.2 you could cast five FH in 8 secs with zero haste.
As for crit: yes you want stack it alot to get a good mana reg from HC and to get procs out of SoL when your play as holy and the extra healing is always nice aswell. For disc crit its awsome since it'll get you extra shields from DA.
Finally I must add that int might very well be the most important mana regen stat for both disc and holy.
And its not hard to get the extra pieces you'll need to switch spec along the way.

My point is that if you're a dedicated healer you are able to play both specs as its needed.

[Ironfoot]

Disc Priest is very viable in 25 Man raiding.

I've done all pre-Ulduar content as Disc and never had any problems what so ever.

I've also done half of Ulduar, only 10 man mind, again as Disc with no problems.

Also as several people have mentioned don't always trust the healing meters, they don't do a Disc Priest justice. You can get an addon for Recount called Guessed Absorbs, which is fairly accurate.

And when you combine that with healing done it can completely change the picture.

As long as you don't stick him/her on Raid Healing you'll be fine. They will be able to do it, but it's not the best use of their talents. Leave that to Holy Priests/Tree's.

Put him on MT/OT Healing and watch him go. If he's a good Disc Priest he'll also be spamming the raid with PW:S when the tank isn't in danger of dying.

[Zeuq]

The same goes for mp5/spirit. After the spirit nerf and now the boost to mp5 I must however say that mp5 aint a bad stat for holy either.

MP5 is okay for Holy, but Spirit is still a better choice in general.

Haste is important for both specs and tbh you'll want more haste(from gear etc) as holy than disc so I can't agree with you on that one. The five FH per penance I dont understand at all, first of all you should never have a rotation that you follow blindly as a healer, secondly even glyphed before the two sec cd increase as of 3.2 you could cast five FH in 8 secs with zero haste.

It's really better stated as 5 GCDs per Penance (which could include PWSs or effectively 2 for a PoH). Obviously, it only really matters if you're casting Penance at every single cooldown, but if you're trying to push maximum HPS on the tank, chances are that you are. The reason 5 GCDs is the mark is because the CD for Penance starts on cast, so you actually have 6s and not 8. 4 GCDs can be obtained with no Haste, and 6 GCDs requires an silly amount of Haste, so 5 GCDs is the general mark to aim for.

As for crit: yes you want stack it alot to get a good mana reg from HC and to get procs out of SoL when your play as holy and the extra healing is always nice aswell. For disc crit its awsome since it'll get you extra shields from DA.

Crit does have diminishing returns for Holy since HC uptime levels out and you'll effectively have wasted SoL procs after a certain point. I generally find that the 25-30% point is where I just find Crit to not be very useful any more. For Discipline, you're much more bound to CDs than Holy is, so Haste is either awesome or mostly worthless, so Crit is your other option and it scales well with everything but PWS. So for mostly tank healing, Crit is awesome and Haste is useful until you get to the sweet spot plus some adjustment, and if you're doing a lot of PWS spamming, Crit isn't very useful, but Haste scales awesomely since PWS has no cooldown.

Finally I must add that int might very well be the most important mana regen stat for both disc and holy.

It is still the best pure regen stat for both, but with the nerf to replenishment, I think a more balanced Int and Spirit approach will net better results for Holy. Straight Int is still the way to go for Discipline if you need regen, though.

[Jpkto]

If you want to test him out and see what he actually does, you should try to upload your combatlog to http://www.worldoflogs.com

I find their estimated absorption to be very accurate and it is disc priest friendly :P

[Kelesti]

Two problems with the assumptions on haste:
Mandorin: Holy needs alot less than you think, thanks to Serendipity. It's useful, but on a much lower priority.
And Zeuq, you don't want to get too much, as there's so much hiding inside Borrowed Time and pushing yourself over the GCD cap every few seconds kinda sucks. But hey, what do I know?

[cruxxy]

Log a raid, throw it at worldoflogs and see how his shields and DA makes the difference.

This actually is important to dp to know if he is any good. If you just use the standard of "if the tank doesn't die, he's doing fine", you may be dragging along some deadweight healers which will hurt you when you need to maximize your raid's DPS.

A disc priest in 25Uld should have ~35-45% of his effective healing from PWS. This will optimize his mana efficiency and provide the best synergy with the raid. If you see that he's just a FH spammer, you would be much better off bringing a holy pally.

Regarding Haste and Disc, 11% will cap you with the GCD with raid buffs and BT. However, spells like Penance and PoH will still gain from >11% haste. But at ~11% haste, a BT PoH is ~1.9sec, which I think is decent. I do tend to switch out my rings and bracers for more crit or haste depending on the fight. If it's more tank healing, I push crit. If it's more AOE damage, I push haste.

[Pythagoreant]

If you want to test him out and see what he actually does, you should try to upload your combatlog to http://www.worldoflogs.com

I find their estimated absorption to be very accurate and it is disc priest friendly :P

This.

If you want an example of how well a disc priest should be doing vs other healers, look at this (I, Pythagorella, am the disc priest): XT fight, Freya Fight, Yogg-Saron fight.

These are all on 25-man, but if your priest wants to go disc for 10-man, you need to make sure at least one of the other 2 healers is a raid healer, such as a resto druid or holy priest. I actually go holy for most fights in 10-man, cause they usually take a holy pally and a resto druid, but the idea is the same.

For specs, this is mine. I don't use renew often enough for those points to be worthwhile, so I would (and I should) take them out of imp renew, and put them in divine fury. People will say it's not worth it, but if you ever need to cast a greater, which will happen more often now that they increased the CD of Penance, it can be a lifesaver.

[Mandorin]

To Zeuq I just wanna start with a thank you for a overall good post, especially for correctiong me on the pennance issue, in the heat of the moment if forgot that pennance is a channeled spell and therefor forgot about the fact that the gcd start as soon as you press the button.
For some parts you might however missed that my post was a reply to another post comparing stats between disc and holy.
About the mp5 i meant that if you have alot of it stacked from your disc gear you dont have rush to get tons of spirit for a simple dualspec situation. My prime spec is holy and I still find spirit>mp5, but now its such a close call you would be able to survive with quite a few mp5 pieces aswell.

About crit, I too found the 27% i had for awhile to be overkill and changed some of it to gain more haste.
Atm I'm on 23,5%ish crit and 14,5%ish haste in my basic set up of holy gear. Perhaps 25-12% would be better but I just love haste too much and have no real problem keeping my mana up.

Kelsti, I agree to the fact that you should not overdo your haste stacking but remember that serendipity is only realiable on your first PoH if you need to cast a sequense of PoH haste=win. The gcd effect from haste is very usefull for holy aswell(and we don't have BT)

Overall it seems we're all on the same page here, I might have a problem making myself clear since english is my second language and because im in a library studying for an exam(wish me luck^^)

[Zeuq]

And Zeuq, you don't want to get too much, as there's so much hiding inside Borrowed Time and pushing yourself over the GCD cap every few seconds kinda sucks. But hey, what do I know?

You're absolutely right, which is why I'm looking at it from the two extremes because, while not really that applicable, they can't be ignored either. In theory, if you're JUST tank healing, you get 1 PWS every 15s. If we're in this mode, you're only getting 1 BT buff for every 2 Penance Cooldowns, so the theoretical Haste sweet spot may be meaningful. If you're at the other extreme, doing pretty much nothing but PWS spam, you can stack all you want and continue to see a throughput benefit. However, more commonly you'll probably be mostly tank healing and throwing out a few PWSs as you can or they're needed, which means you'll probably average above 1 BT buff per Penance CD, and thus reduce the theoretical amount of haste one would need to reach that 5 GCD sweet spot.

Either way, I would never recommend stacking Crit or Haste through gems because if you need throughput, Spell Power scales a lot better and isn't dependent on whether you're at either extreme or somewhere in the middle. Either way, I think I'm just being a lot more verbose in basically agreeing with you that too much Haste is a waste.

[Zeuq]

For some parts you might however missed that my post was a reply to another post comparing stats between disc and holy.
About the mp5 i meant that if you have alot of it stacked from your disc gear you dont have rush to get tons of spirit for a simple dualspec situation. My prime spec is holy and I still find spirit>mp5, but now its such a close call you would be able to survive with quite a few mp5 pieces aswell.

Fair point, and agreed. I play Holy as my main spec and only switch out a piece or two for Disc. If someone were the other way around, I wouldn't blame them if ended up having some MP5 instead of Spirit or whatever.

About crit, I too found the 27% i had for awhile to be overkill and changed some of it to gain more haste.
Atm I'm on 23,5%ish crit and 14,5%ish haste in my basic set up of holy gear. Perhaps 25-12% would be better but I just love haste too much and have no real problem keeping my mana up.

Kelsti, I agree to the fact that you should not overdo your haste stacking but remember that serendipity is only realiable on your first PoH if you need to cast a sequense of PoH haste=win. The gcd effect from haste is very usefull for holy aswell(and we don't have BT)

I'm in a similar boat I think in terms of stats (though currently a little higher on Crit and lower on Haste). Since I see Crit as almost entirely a regen stat for Holy, I just don't see the point of stacking it beyond a point where I have a reasoning HC uptime. And, yes, Serendipity helps a lot and does reduce the value of Haste, but it's still useful for situations where I find I have to do more than one PoH in a row (eg, Hodir, Mimiron). Besides, when the only other option is Crit which I feel just isn't that useful to me now, why not grab some Haste instead? At the very least, it will help me respond a little faster when I'm spot healing between bursts.