1. #1

    New to disc healing - Please advise

    been playing shadow on my priest alt up to 72 now. Dual specced into disc and thoroughly enjoying it. I have a few questions for the more experienced disc raiders out there.

    1. What order to place importance on int, spirit, crit, haste?
    Read haste is important for disc priests but i fail to understand quite why. PWS is instant, and crit penance/FH/POM procs divine aegis.

    2. Aside from PWS/Penance/FH, what heals to you tend to use to fill with?

    3. Spirit vs. MP5?


    Any other things you've learned along your playtime would be appreciated. Thanks again.

  2. #2

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    prayer of mending is amazing in raids, and verry good in 5 man aoe fights.

    On heavy aoe situations like in ToC 5 man heroic I often use PI on myself and use prayer of healing.

    In 5 mans spirit is better then Mp5 for regen, in raiding intelect is actually better then spirit for disc becuase of replenishment and you also get more crit (from the intel) procs more devine aegis.

    I dont use renew like I would on a holy priest, I only have it up on the MT. Everything else I use my other heals otherwise I often over heal which is not mana smart on anybody but the tank.
    When people say "pls" just because its shorter then "please", I feel totally justified to say "No" just because its shorter then "Yes".

  3. #3

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    1.) Int > Haste > Crit > Spirit

    2.) Prayer of Mending and Prayer of Healing. PoH is just if you need to help on AOE heals. PoM just throw it on a tank and let it bounce. Try to rotate PW:S and PoH so that the PoH will be hasted when AOE healing.

    3.) 11 spirit = 4 mp/5, but Int is a superior stat for longevity.

  4. #4

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Intelligence ftw. It scales very good with mental strength and with good gear you'll find yourself easily with 22k+ unbuffed mana, which you basically never run out of when MT-healing. This is also good for Rapture which gives you more mana back the more you have. I find that in 25-man raids, I actually get about 100 more mana back from rapture than it cost to cast the shield ^^

    Haste is also very good because with me about 500 haste and borrowed time from shielding, I can dish out about 15k healing in 1.1 seconds with penance. I'd like to see any other healer achieving that. Of course it can also bring your PoH down to ridiculous levels if needed, such as 1.8 seconds if you shield someone up before.

    Renew isn't all that great, it's more of a holy spell. A filler to cast on the tank, really nothing else though.

    If I was a Blizz server technician, I'd hijack a server and use it to download porn 24/7. Guess why the instance servers always are full B]

  5. #5

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Quote Originally Posted by foreverjian
    been playing shadow on my priest alt up to 72 now. Dual specced into disc and thoroughly enjoying it. I have a few questions for the more experienced disc raiders out there.

    1. What order to place importance on int, spirit, crit, haste?
    Read haste is important for disc priests but i fail to understand quite why. PWS is instant, and crit penance/FH/POM procs divine aegis.

    2. Aside from PWS/Penance/FH, what heals to you tend to use to fill with?

    3. Spirit vs. MP5?


    Any other things you've learned along your playtime would be appreciated. Thanks again.
    1. Int < Haste < Crit < Spirit. Haste is great for Disc priests because once you get a large chunk of it you are able to use Gheal and PoH a lot more effectively. Flash heal is complete garbage for tank and raid healing, so you really need to be able to crank out some Gheals when the tank is dipping and PoH when the raid is under duress.

    2. First off stop using Flash Heal, it's embarrassingly small and expensive compared to a Pally's FoL, Druid's Nourish, Shaman's LHW, or even a Holy Priest's Flash in a raid environment. The only time you should use it is if you have a couple raid members who need small heals but they already have Weakened Soul and PoH is gonna be a waste. It's helpful when you're the only healer around, like in a Heroic, but I stopped using Fheal the day I stopped doing Heroics. Aside from PW:S and Penance you should keep your PoM on cooldown, PoH for raid heals and when you get some haste, Gheal on the tank.

    3. Neither if you can avoid it (gogo crit/haste gear). Int is your regen stat, but if you have to choose between them, someone mentioned above that 11 spi = 4 mp5 ish. Spirit gets better as you get more Int, and it also scales with talents and Kings, but certain pieces of mp5 gear will be better. Grab an add-on that allows you to compare stats then you won't have to worry about it.

  6. #6

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    1. SP > Crit > int > haste > mp5 > spirit
    (depending on youre stats ofc) i normaly say aim for 21% crit then start stacking more haste and if you ever feel youre going low on mana focus int and mp5 abit more. til youre up to a nice point agen. reson for this is that crit benefits you better then haste getting alot of haste from tallents and procs its not that important for the disco priest.

    2. PwS >Penan>FH spamming in my book it heals for dicent amounts (and got +75% crit if youre tank drops below 50% hp) procs DA alot and is relativly mana cheep. besides that PoM PoH and binding are some nice options for ya (never forget the inner focused Divine Hymn free of mana and agen the extra crit helps alot when shi* hits the fan)

    3. 1:1 take mp5. but as a over all try and keep youre spirit about 100 to a max of 150 behind youre int (when you get more then that spirit is becomming a better regen stat)

    this is my experince from Wotlk as a main tank healer and in random heroics etc.
    i have retired my priest thou but is running ToC25 whith the guild on a weekly basis(not hardmode thou), thou i need to update gems abit to update gems to reflect the recent replinisment changes (and make em purple)
    my armory link

  7. #7

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Quote Originally Posted by Relina
    1. Int < Haste < Crit < Spirit.
    I'm assuming you meant Int > Haste > Crit > Spirit, not the other way around...

    2. First off stop using Flash Heal, it's embarrassingly small and expensive compared to a Pally's FoL, Druid's Nourish, Shaman's LHW, or even a Holy Priest's Flash in a raid environment. The only time you should use it is if you have a couple raid members who need small heals but they already have Weakened Soul and PoH is gonna be a waste. It's helpful when you're the only healer around, like in a Heroic, but I stopped using Fheal the day I stopped doing Heroics. Aside from PW:S and Penance you should keep your PoM on cooldown, PoH for raid heals and when you get some haste, Gheal on the tank.
    This, on the other hand... is just wrong. Disc Priests should not be using Greater Heal is almost any circumstance. The only feasible time is if you have Borrowed Time up, no other healers are around, Penance is on cooldown, the target has Weakened Soul and you are over the soft cap on Haste for Flash Heal. In that situation Greater Heal is 'okay' assuming your spec takes Divine Fury instead of Spell Warding. Flash Heal and Great Heal have almost identical HPS and HPM, while Flash Heal is quicker and less likely to dramatically over-heal in a raid situation. Greater Heal is dead. Greater Heal on tanks instead of Flash heal results in harder to manage Penance cooldowns, less smooth healing and more wasted mana.

    Tank healing should be prioritized like this: PW:S > Penance > PoM > Flash Heal. Flash Heal was a joke in BC and it was easy to spot bad healers by their use of it, but that's simply not the case anymore.

    In regard to SP>Crit>Int>Haste>MP/5>Spirit, that certainly works once you're already soft capped on Haste, but that's true of almost anything. It's assuming you're not at any soft caps, or other plateau. It's not worth stacking crit beyond 30% for instance. I think SP>Int>Haste>Crit>MP/5>Spirit is a better overall model with that in mind, especially since the crit plateau is easier to reach than the haste soft cap.

  8. #8

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    For regular non-hardmode/heroic fights, my suggestion for tank healing Disco is this:

    (1) PW:S on CD
    (2) FH filler
    (3) Penance saved for spike damage
    (4) Renew 100% uptime

    For hardmodes/heroic:

    (1) PW:S precast for spike damage followed by BTed Penance+FH/GH.
    (2) FH filler
    (3) Renew 100% uptime

    If you are seriously attempting HMs, you should have at least another healer on the MT(s). Disco's strength in these situations is extending the healthpool of the MT and burst healing. Disco can honestly not compete with a holy paladin in raw single target HPS. However, a paladin cannot compete with a Disco priest in damage prevention and burst healing. The best thing in hard content is to play to the strength of your class. Let the paladin drop the big wampum heals while you boost the effective health of the tanks followed by burst healing after a large hit.

    Make sure to throw PW:S on the raid while your tank is at a high %health so you always have BT up for a Penance+FH/GH combo. It will make your raid healers happy while boosting your eHPS and keep yourself always ready to burst heal on the tank.

    This, of course, would be different if you are sans a second healer on the tank.

  9. #9

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Quote Originally Posted by Relina
    1. Int < Haste < Crit < Spirit. Haste is great for Disc priests because once you get a large chunk of it you are able to use Gheal and PoH a lot more effectively. Flash heal is complete garbage for tank and raid healing, so you really need to be able to crank out some Gheals when the tank is dipping and PoH when the raid is under duress.

    2. First off stop using Flash Heal, it's embarrassingly small and expensive compared to a Pally's FoL, Druid's Nourish, Shaman's LHW, or even a Holy Priest's Flash in a raid environment. The only time you should use it is if you have a couple raid members who need small heals but they already have Weakened Soul and PoH is gonna be a waste. It's helpful when you're the only healer around, like in a Heroic, but I stopped using Fheal the day I stopped doing Heroics. Aside from PW:S and Penance you should keep your PoM on cooldown, PoH for raid heals and when you get some haste, Gheal on the tank.

    3. Neither if you can avoid it (gogo crit/haste gear). Int is your regen stat, but if you have to choose between them, someone mentioned above that 11 spi = 4 mp5 ish. Spirit gets better as you get more Int, and it also scales with talents and Kings, but certain pieces of mp5 gear will be better. Grab an add-on that allows you to compare stats then you won't have to worry about it.
    You're wrong in every single point you just said, I'll explain it only for the OP to understand and for you I'd like not to reply because you're incredibly bad with your conclusions (and most likely gameplay).

    As discipline priest, you want high mana pool due to Rapture talent, that's your regen mechanic (there's mp5 you get from spi on gear too and Replenishment).
    You also want crit because of Divine Aegis talent and spellpower to make shields more powerful, hence Intellect compliments your crit and mana pool here.
    Your heals are Penance, Flash Heal, Power Word: Shield, Prayer of Mending.
    You can use Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing, but it's not needed and situational.
    You mainly heal the tank and shield the raid.


    Now, as the guy who I quoted said - Flash Heal is weak. False.
    Flash heal has huge crit chance as disc and that's the reason you want Flash Heal. I have gear that puts me at 52% crit with Flash Heal on a person who has weakened soul and I'm critting for 8500 with it (note: I mix my gear, I prefer one with 35% holy crit unbuffed).

    You can't rely on crit always, however you have tools like Divine Aegis and PWS that are great for keeping tanks alive until you have Penance back again. I've been MT healing / raid shielding trough most of the Ulduar hard modes, saying flash heal is weak for tank healing is plainly stupid, you won't heal 5k damage with Penance or Greater Heal. If you will, then you're an idiot but that's not the point now.

    You also DO NOT NEED HASTE IN HIGH AMOUNTS - there, bolded. You can abuse your talents in order to get hasted heals. You get 6% spell haste from talents + 25% haste once you cast the shield.
    If you know the encounter, you can time your heals properly. If you gem / gear for haste - I just hope we will never play together.
    I usually use what I get from gear as haste, but I tend to keep at 35% holy crit (talents included, then +4% from Renewed Hope, 5% moonkin aura / oath and occasional Focus Magic if I get a mage to throw it at me, and there's Improved Flash Heal too that grants 10% on targets at or below 50%).

    As for healing, you do PoM > Shield > Fheal (aim for crit for Inspiration) at boss pulls.
    Your tank will be safe there, he'll have around 6500 absorption from bubble, around 3k-ish heal from pom (that tends to crit a lot) and what you managed to get from Divine Aegis on Fheal crit.

    From there onwards it's up to you. I prefer to shield the raid, it helps a lot. Tanks also have paladins healing them with me, so it's not a job that's so stressful for a disc priest (except at TOC 25m hc).

    And people thinking haste is way to go with any healing priest spec - just roll shamans and think you own, gemming and aiming for haste as priests is so bad but you probably won't grasp why and will try to flame here so have at it.

    To answer the original question:

    1. What order to place importance on int, spirit, crit, haste?
    Int = spellpower > Crit > Haste > Spirit

    2. Aside from PWS/Penance/FH, what heals to you tend to use to fill with?
    Stated in the wall of text before.

    3. Spirit vs. MP5?
    None, your regen stat is high mana pool. Don't avoid spi / mp5 gear if it ups your crit and spellpower at the same time.

  10. #10

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Quote Originally Posted by Relina

    2. First off stop using Flash Heal, it's embarrassingly small and expensive compared to a Pally's FoL, Druid's Nourish, Shaman's LHW, or even a Holy Priest's Flash in a raid environment. The only time you should use it is if you have a couple raid members who need small heals but they already have Weakened Soul and PoH is gonna be a waste. It's helpful when you're the only healer around, like in a Heroic, but I stopped using Fheal the day I stopped doing Heroics. Aside from PW:S and Penance you should keep your PoM on cooldown, PoH for raid heals and when you get some haste, Gheal on the tank.
    I'm dual spec holy/disc. I don't recall ever using greater heal in a long time in either specs. For disc, you want to spam flash heals. It's results in a lot less overhealing.

  11. #11

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Also I belive geming for haste is the worse benifit per stat point. Its better to find it already on gear and things and gem for other stats then get those stats on the gear and gem for haste. Its on EJ if you want to check that out, they have the # breakdowns and stuff.
    When people say "pls" just because its shorter then "please", I feel totally justified to say "No" just because its shorter then "Yes".

  12. #12

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    That completely depends on where your crit and haste are. For a while I was sitting at 9% haste and 32% crit. I decided to shoot for the hardcap on haste and dropped crit to 29% and it certainly feels better. Probably stems from the way I simply spam heal tanks though ever since the Aegis change in 3.1.

  13. #13

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Quote Originally Posted by Relina
    1. Int < Haste < Crit < Spirit. Haste is great for Disc priests because once you get a large chunk of it you are able to use Gheal and PoH a lot more effectively. Flash heal is complete garbage for tank and raid healing, so you really need to be able to crank out some Gheals when the tank is dipping and PoH when the raid is under duress.

    2. First off stop using Flash Heal, it's embarrassingly small and expensive compared to a Pally's FoL, Druid's Nourish, Shaman's LHW, or even a Holy Priest's Flash in a raid environment. The only time you should use it is if you have a couple raid members who need small heals but they already have Weakened Soul and PoH is gonna be a waste. It's helpful when you're the only healer around, like in a Heroic, but I stopped using Fheal the day I stopped doing Heroics. Aside from PW:S and Penance you should keep your PoM on cooldown, PoH for raid heals and when you get some haste, Gheal on the tank.
    What? Just what?

    As a few people have pointed out this is very, very wrong. Flash Heal is very powerful for a Disc Priest and should be your main go-to spell when Penance is on CD. If you're spamming GHeal your leaving your tank open to huge spike damage and they have a much bigger chance of being smashed.

    FHeal provides the necessary filler that tops the Tank up and keeps them alive until PW:S and Penance are ready again.

    Also I tend to go for:

    Intellect > Crit > Spell Power > Haste > Spirit.

    I usually gem only for Intellect/Spellpower and get most of the crit from Talents/Gear.

    I am Priest - Play Free Online Games

  14. #14
    Deleted

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Quote Originally Posted by Ironfoot

    Intellect > Crit > Spell Power > Haste > Spirit.
    I would agree with it but to some point. I followed it until my mana poll went over 30k.
    Now I'm over 32k raid buffed and slowly switching gems to SP. The reason is, I rarely go below 50% of my mana pool even when I'm spamming shields like crazy. Only PoH heavy fights MIGHT make me oom. So after considering pros' and cons I think you can go:

    SP > int > crit > haste > spirit

    when you reach a decent lvl of your gear.

    Even though int provides really nice regen for discs it gives only a small +crit and nothing else, while SP gives higher HPS / stronger shields / stronger Aegis.

    And since my main role in raids is MT healing PLUS shield spam I would really like to make you think more about Spell power. Especialy when you guys have no mana problems in the raid enviroment.

  15. #15

    Re: New to disc healing - Please advise

    Mostly here just to reitterate a lot of what's been said. Like with any healer, you stack regen until you've got enough mana for the content you're doing, then you stack throughput. For Discipline, Intellect is easily the best regen stat, and SP is the best throughput stat. You shouldn't socket anything else except maybe a SP/Spirit, Int/Spirit, etc. for a nice bonus.

    Haste is nice, and actually necessary up to a point so that when you are forced to spam the tank, you can squeeze in an extra Flash Heal between Penance Cooldowns; however, IIRC that only requires about ~19% Haste, but you get 6% from talents and 8% from buffs, so you only really need 5% plus some buffer to reach it. When you aren't spamming the tank and are PWS spamming the raid, Borrowed Time gives plenty of Haste and you'll get much better throughput through SP. So, get a few Haste pieces, get maybe 5-8% from gear (depending on your latency) and then ignore it. You should never socket it.

    Crit is also nice and scales better than Haste. However, since PWS doesn't scale with it, and a lot of the harder encounters call for a fair bit of PWS on the raid, it ultimately loses out to SP for throughput. Since it's generally the only other option to Haste on gear, and you cap on Haste easily, you should have tons of Crit already just from Intellect, gear and talents. You shouldn't socket it.

    Spirit and MP5 are last because they only provide regen and Intellect not only provides better regen but a bit of Crit as well. In general, pick whichever one happens to be on an up. That said, I would probably prefer MP5 at lower gear levels, but at higher ones, with all the Intellect you'll have, Spirit is gets better and gives good OOFSR regen for phase transitions and is ultimately more useful than MP5 for Holy or Shadow off specs.

    TLDR: low gear levels: Int>SP>Crit>Haste>MP5=Spirit; high gear levels: SP>Int>Crit>Haste>Spirit=MP5



    For spell priority, most of the other people got it: PWS>Penance>FH/GH for burst damage, FH for filler. In general, I would advise against GH except for when you need the burst healing, Penance is on CD, and you have the BT buff, otherwise FH provides not much worse HPS, but has better HPM and a higher crit chance. I'm also pretty strongly against Renew in all but 5-mans because, generally, if you'd Renew the tank, a Flash Heal is a better choice, and if you'd Renew a raid member, PWS or possibly FH is probably a better choice.

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