Discipline HPS

[Highangel]

Do you guys like this playstyle.. ??

I recently made holy my main spec, because i find shield spamming a bit tedious..

i'm in a normal 10 man raiding guild we have done some hardmodes, but far from all and there is no requirements for specs from the raid members other than common sense. I mean it's not like we have holy dps'ers or melee hunters

Would you do whatever to get the best/most efficient spec, no matter what the play style was ?

[G l o w y r m]

I'm really passionate about Discipline so I always write these long winded posts when I feel people just don't appreciate or respect it's power and fun playstyle.

i am sorry becuase i dont understand this whole disc priest thing.

all i hear you guys say is "its okay to on the bottom becuase you absorb"

i have sacred shield and that absorbs quite a bit. i wanna know how much a sacred shield vs disc priest absorbs over the course of a 6 minute fight.

Becuase i can go balls to the walls (twin valks 10man hardmode) and break 6k hps everytime and still have mana (32k mana raid buffed w/ 2600sp+) while the disc priest who has the same gearscore if not higher is only doing like 2k hps.

we didn't down the boss that night but i believe if we had a resto druid instead of a disc priest the boss would've died.


dicuss

/SIGH......that fight happens to favor Resto Druids a bit, don't condemn our spec based on that. if you had a Disc AND a Resto, that would be even BETTER than a Resto and a "whatever else" for that fight. Your Discipline Priest might not be good too, I do believe Discipline is all about the proper combo of your spells to take advantage of our talents and stuff correctly. It's not just spammage like some other healing specs.

Also, I can guarantee all the mitigation and absorption wayyy more than makes up for the 4k hps difference you 2 had. I'll also say once again, HPS is the most horrible thing to measure a player or spec.

Now I'll pretty much list the huge benefits the Discipline Priest brings.

I think every Priest can agree with these points and hopefully each bullet opens the eyes of the people that just don't "get us" Discipline Priests.

• Power Word: Shield is about double your sacred shield, mine can hit about 8k and I'm not in the best gear, that's not adding the glyph either. Then there's also Divine Aegis to contend with. It's not unusual to have about 400k healing and 600k in absorbs at the end of a fight. That's quite a bit of absorption.

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• Our many absorbs and mitigation spells/talents raise the "effective" HP of people which heals don't do. This compliments other healers VERY well while lowering the risk of death so other healers can do their job better!

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• We all know how good PW:S is. Raising the effective HP of people is better than healing most of the time, Discipline Priests can SPAM it and quickly, effectively raise everyone's HP and restore resources to some of them

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• You can also multiply the overall damage the raid took by .97 and add that to what the Discipline Priest mitigated also thanks to Renewed Hope (which DOES stack with BoS...100% yes on that).

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• While the talent Inspiration isn't unique, it's still 10% physical damage reduction.

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• Our burst is unmatched. A Pally can give us a run on MT healing but when a giant spike hits our burst can QUICKLY save the day with Shield+Hasted Penance+Hasted Flash+PoM. All of that happens in less than 5 seconds and it adds up to about 30k or more, while giving resources to the caster AND the tank (rage, runic power, mana).

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• Power Infusion is on such a low CD it can be used up to 5 times in many fights. The DPS increase if thrown on your best caster DPS is very significant do to the haste AND the mana he saves. Power Infusion can also make you a healing machine while it's up and quickly get many people out of the danger zone so other healers can hit them with the big heals.

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• Pain Suppression is extremely handy and also on a low CD.

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• We can still heal just fine, and we heal very quickly and efficiently. It's not like we ONLY absorb and mitigate.

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• We STILL have very good AE raid healing with Prayer of Healing, so we aren't a "one trick monkey". Borrowed Time also allows us to get PoH off extremely fast, couple with PI we can cover the raid with PoH quickly and mana efficiently as well.

--- TLR ---

I'm sure there's some more that I'm missing. The playstyle is fast and furious. We still use almost all the same spells as Holy with a few of our own so it's by no means a watered down healing spec. It's very fast and fun.

Bottom line is... WE SUPPLEMENT OTHER HEALERS BY RAISING THE EFFECTIVE HP OF THE RAID. That is BETTER than healing in a way, it makes the jobs of the OTHER healers MUCH easier and makes it MUCH harder for people to die. We pad people, protect people from burst, mitigate damage. We do this on a large scale. That gives healers time to do what they have to do, and makes it easier to do it. In addition to that, we can still HEAL also! Very efficiently and fast too!

Key word is SUPPLEMENT. The people who heal someone when a druid has 2 HoTs on them (and not taking damage anymore) are the same people who don't understand just how damn well a Discipline Priest works WITH other healers.

**** COOL FACT !!! ****

Would just like to point out that there has been a Discipline Priest in many of the World First kills since Algalon, Yogg+0 and so on into ToC! (Not sure about the recent "A Tribute To Insanity" yet)

[Aegers]

G l o w y r m, can you copy that post and make it as a new thread on the priest forum.

And call it something like, "What to tell your Raid leader about the use of Disc priests" or something better if you come up with something.

Really nice info for the non-priests.

Should have that as a sticky imo..

[Azyoulike]

It makes the raid damage from the fight abysmal.


It really only works on freya though, on any other fight it's a waste.

And Vezax HM, and Mimiron phase 2, and Ignis, and Kolo, and Cat lady and XT and Algalon and Hodir(ish) but yeh, any other fight in Ulduar it's a waste.

Safe?
Good luck with explaining to your raid you wiped because the tank was "Safe".

Disc's ideal job isn't main tank healing, it's main tank burst healing. If you want proactive healing on the tank go talk to a paladin, my job is reactive healing. Casting a FH on the tank when he's at max health makes no sense when I can cast a PWS with reasonable assurance it will be consumed especially if it's to mitigate a raidwide spike.

[Soulssong]

We are a small 10 man raiding guild so we only have one disc priest (my brother) that raids (I actually have a disc priest as well, lvl 80, but I mainly just use him as my enchanting mule, sadly).

But I checked the last raid that our raiding disc priest did (CC 10) on World of Logs and, just looking at the HPS alone, he's doing about the same as you are talking about. The only exception was on Anub'arak where he actually hit around 2.6k HPS. I'm guessing it's due to phase three where prayer of mending/shielding is *awesome* with dealing with the incoming damage while the resto shammy (myself) and holy pally keep everyone topped off.

I mean, as long as someone isn't *clearly* being carried (poor dps, healer just standing around not doing anything), as long as the boss is dieing and your team members aren't, then who really cares?

My suggestion (and I think you're going to do it) is to show him a World of Logs parsing or the recount/guessed absorbs addon and show him that, in fact, you are *doing* something. You are saving people repair bills by not letting the damage hit them to begin with . Hell, he should give you a cookie for doing that!

[-Ethos-]

And Vezax HM,

Disc-> Tank Heal.
Holy -> Raid.

and Mimiron phase 2

Youre gimping the raid if youre disc on Mim. Go holy, take the Nova glyph, spam nova, viola, the HM damage is a joke.

and Ignis

Sorry forgot ignis, havent killed him since our first kill. I suppose spamming would be viable here.

Kolo

Eh i suppose.

Cat lady

Tank Healing.

XT

Holy Raid Healing or Disc on Tank.

Algalon

Disc on Tank or Holy on raid.

and Hodir(ish)

Disc on Tank or Holy on raid.



Being disc for the sole purpose on spamming shields:

it's a waste.

Also, with this:

Disc's ideal job isn't main tank healing, it's main tank burst healing. If you want proactive healing on the tank go talk to a paladin, my job is reactive healing. Casting a FH on the tank when he's at max health makes no sense when I can cast a PWS with reasonable assurance it will be consumed especially if it's to mitigate a raidwide spike.

Yogg 0, Anub 25 HM, Algalon and i suppose there are a few others like twins when the other twin is casting a heal.
On these fights when we should be completely devoted to tank healing, if you leave your tank for even two seconds to shield raid members, your tank can and in most cases will die.

[Azyoulike]

Being disc for the sole purpose on spamming shields: Is a waste

It's also not what I'm recommending.

I'm not saying that shield spam is the only viable way to play those encounters, I'm saying it's one viable approach on those encounters. Your raid may have enough pallies that you're not required to tank heal on Cat Lady or Kolo and if so you'll potentially do a better job raid healing them as disc with shield spam than as holy with PoH.

On vezax HM I really can't imagine speccing holy for raid healing unless there were already 2 disc priests in the raid, same for algalon.

As for mimi, you're just wrong. Disc is so good on the other phases that it's well worth running mimi as disc. So then in phase 2 shield spamming is entirely viable - though I tend to mix in PoHs.

I'm not going to go through all your other points but generally you're assumption that 'disc is on tank and holy on raid' only makes sense if you have a holy priest and no other good tank healer available in the raid. On shield spam viable fights a disc priest can potentially do equal raid healing/absorbing to a holy priest - both in terms of numbers and in terms of reducing the risk of dps deaths - while still having penance ready to help on tank spikes.

It won't always be true - gear scaling will probably kill it as a play style by ICC - but it's true now.

Yogg 0, Anub 25 HM, Algalon and i suppose there are a few others like twins when the other twin is casting a heal.
On these fights when we should be completely devoted to tank healing, if you leave your tank for even two seconds to shield raid members, your tank can and in most cases will die.

And I'm not suggesting that there aren't fights when one may have to exclusively tank heal, I'm just saying that it's not the ideal job for the spec. Just as there are times when a paladin has to raid heal, but it's not his ideal job. There's a perception that disc priests should just get stuck on the tank that you seem to share, that's what I'm trying to break down here.

The ideal job is a mix of burst healing and raid shielding, it's what we can do better than any other spec. Not every fight or raid comp has that niche though.

[G l o w y r m]

Excellent, excellent points Azyoulike. Your last 2 posts above are 100% correct. Some people are stuck in a mindset that Discipline should only be tank healing. We are better at reacting to spikes on the tank while sprinkling on everyone else. Technically we can become pseudo-Holy with shield spamming and PoH.

I see where Ethos is coming from but that doesn't mean we CAN'T possibly help out the raid just because there's a Holy Priest there. If anything a Discipline Priest will make the Holy Priest's job easier.

I said it once and I'll say it again, we supplement other healers very well by keeping people alive so they can heal them...and of course, we can, ourselves, still heal.

Now like you said directly above, of course there are fights/situations where we are completely devoted to the tank or the raid but we are really good at reacting to tanks while keeping everyone else that's in danger of dying out of that danger.

Edit ** Discipline Priest in Mediocrity's Earth Wind & Fire kill!

[Devaston]

Last 10man heroic twin valk I had 2.1k hps.
I also had 8.2k absorb per second. (Guessed Absorb Recount)
Im usually top healer unless put on MT healing.

Armory:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...rhood&n=Athari

tl;dr Disc is good, if your leader/guildmembers still dont know how we work they should fuck off and die

[AcidLillies]

Last 10man heroic twin valk I had 2.1k hps.
I also had 8.2k absorb per second. (Guessed Absorb Recount)
Im usually top healer unless put on MT healing.

Armory:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...rhood&n=Athari

tl;dr Disc is good, if your leader/guildmembers still dont know how we work they should fuck off and die

I giggled. <3

[Yasuu]

I didn't really bother reading the entire thread, but I kinda lol'd when I read people who are supposedly respectable raiders/classleaders etc saying things like "HPS *IS* the indicator to bad play."..

You there, crawl back under the rock you just came from, and stay there. Sacred Shield, one target, PW:S, no cooldown, as many targets as you like for at least 5k absorbed.

People saying they don't want a disc priest in their raid.... You should be ran out of town with tar and feathers. Disco priests are great for a raid, especially on fights with loads of raid damage. Healers should praise themselves lucky that their absorbs aren't counted as healing. On Firefighter attempts I would've topped healing done by about 10k 'healing', would that be the case.

PS: I raid as holy, disc off-spec. But I promise you, disc is great if you have a healing team where everyone knows what they and their team members are capable of. And disco is very raid capable. If you still intend to disagree, go ahead(I only read page 1 ), but I know I wont be QQing when a disco priest joins my raid. (Well I might if he takes my phat lewt..) :P

[Zhea]

1. Don't link meters for Twins. Just makes you look bad; absorb meters are broken for that fight.
2. Disc is amazing for Mim, especially p2. If anything you can heal better than a holy priest spamming nova...
a. Shield for super fast holy nova's
b. PI if you need to catch back up on healing
c. PoM
d. Divine Aegis + Spamming holy nova p2 = win.
3. P1: Shield + Penance on the fire DoT thing = win. You can't get any better burst than that. And a flash heal to follow up if needed.
4. P3&4: Excellent Mim head tank healer + shielder for bomb bots and all the other stuff going on in p4.
5. P1 and etc, Shield yourself and run into 1-3 mines to clear them for melee. Np.

Only thing holy priests have over that is CoH. Myself spamming nova (glyphed of course) in mim, my group doesn't even drop below 90% pretty much.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...athwing&n=Zhea