Quick disci priest question

[Contrivez]

Rather than the notation at the bottom you should have altered your first argument to reflect your position. You directly implied that you shouldn't be raid healing much, but just spamming shields as much as you can. That's extremely bad advice.

So, then we're to take anyone from a famous guild and take everything they say as scripture when there's no proof that what they're saying is correct beyond that they're one of 25 people in a raid? Your armory shows you as using Trauma, sitting at 450 haste, the majority of your gear being spirit pieces, etc? Shall we pretend that any of that is optimal?

You don't need to be any any high end raiding guild to understand that raid shielding is only great on about 5 fights (Twins, Fester, Putricide, Blood Queen) and has mostly limited use on other fights. You don't need to do anything but stand and spam heal yourself to realize why Flash Heal is doing so poorly either. The point is that the reasoning Disc uses to show that they're competitive and good are a bit flawed. Low haste FH spamming Disc is much worse off than people would like to admit.

Anyway, that's not the point. Come up with any number showing that Greater Heal with high haste will output less healing per second than Flash Heal. I can save you some time if you'd like though. If you're in 245+ gear Greater Heal will win. The difference? You can Flash Heal spam without using any cooldowns and end with a healthy mana pool, while you can translate more mana to healing with Greater Heal. You're about 200 haste short of where this becomes evident because you can't fit as many Greater Heals into your Penance CD as you'd be able to at ~650 haste. So tell me, have you actually tried it? Have you dropped the crappy Holy-centric gear you're using to stack enough Haste to compete this way? Or are you just going to hide behind your guild tag and pretend that's an excuse for not being able to argue your position?

Want to know a little secret? You can't shield spam any better than someone stacking haste. In fact, you can't shield spam, or FH spam as well as someone stacking more haste. It's not just about Greater Heal and PoH, those are excellent perks when you do need to help support a tank, but it isn't as if stacking haste somehow makes you incapable of doing your old job. The difference? Instead of a ton of wasted spirit, you have a ton of haste in reserve.

I definitely switched into haste gear, respecced and messed around with it. You can call this viable all your want but it is in no way competitive in terms of tank healing. Also, I am not hiding behind my guild tag or trying to claim that because I'm from a high level guild I know what is right. But I do know that no seriously decent guild is going to bring a disc priest for every raid encounter as a tank healer.

You are right that there are some fights where shielding isn't superbly important. Which ones are those right now? Well, the only ones when my shields aren't superbly effective at the moment are gunship, that's it.

You fail to understand the fact that 9 times out of 10 shielding is as effective if not more effective than a rejuv spamming druid.

It's preventative maintenance in terms of incoming damage, and it always works to benefit the raid.

I'm not going to respecc, and regear to spam greater heal without BT and drop about ~300 spell power just to do this.

And I wouldn't honestly suggest for any disc priest who wants to be competitive in a raid environment to do the same.

Also, in terms of people harking on me for my gear.

Trauma was a direct upgrade to what I had. We gear out dps before healers in Vodka. Loot council. I don't really have the viable capability to claim every crit/haste piece for myself. It's going to go to spriest/mage/lock first, always. Until all of them have it.

Spirit is still a great stat as long as you can play in a method that allows you to sit OO5SR for a little while and get some regen for yourself.

What I have in terms of current gear should not reflect on my ability as a priest. Go read our logs, look at my gemming, check my spec. But don't assume that in a new instance I am going to have the priority on every item that drops. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. I take what is an ilvl and overall spell power / throughput upgrade, and I use it until what I really want is available for me.

This thread has derailed beyond compare. Let us settle on the fact that yes you can greater heal spam and stack haste and try and pretend your some kind of holy paladin. Should every priest out there give up the shield spamming techniques and filler flash heals for this method? Is it worth it to give up the 10% spell warding reduction in preperation for hard modes where such a talent spec might be mandatory (hello, freya3, mimiron hard)? Probably not.

Does Harky have a point that you can gear for greater heal? Sure.

But allow me to say that the most basic thing about any healing class ever in WoW is that they find what works best for them individually, and they gear for it. Druids strongest spell is rejuv? Stack sp. It's instant cast? Hit the GCD cap.

Paladins get SP/Mana/Crit from intellect? Stack this. Holy light with talents and judging is 1.8 seconds or less? Stack haste to increase throughput.

Shamans most effective healing spell has a very high coefficient, is smart, but is superbly slow in cast? Stack haste. They have high passive spell power and benefit more from longevity? Make sure you have the mana to back this.

Classes find the niche that makes them strongest and they exploit it.

Shamans with no haste, spamming LHW/Riptided Healing Waves and tons of spell power don't get far.
Paladins stacking spell power and trying FOL spec don't get far.
Druids going healing touch spec and trying to snipe heals don't get far.

Also @fabian.

World of Logs.

It's a public website, much like WMO and it documents most of the high end guilds if they log (most only hide logs during progression, and there hasn't been any of that.)

Just go look, I'm not speaking for other guilds, I'm pulling my information from the internet where it is publicly shown.

And above all, Harky is correct in saying that this is viable. The most important thing is that it's about your own personal raid setup and how you run your healing team in each encounter.

In vodka, I raid heal 24/7. I am perfectly capable of tank healing. I do it on occasion, but we know that resto shamans and holy paladins do it better and my strong point is controlling the streams of raid damage.

[Taxidermy]

I'm not sure you understand why Greater Heal is being encouraged. It is not so that you can spam GH the whole fight non-stop. It's so that you can at critical times switch to higher throughput. Best example in ICC thus far is for Festergut. At none, or one stacks you can raid shield, toss out some PoH, help a little here and there on a tank (mostly unneeded). At two stacks you can start helping more on the tank than the raid. At three stacks? The raid is taking no critical damage. The tank on the other hand is now dealing with a very hard hitting, very fast hitting boss angrily trying to pop him open and eat the squishy insides. Your flash heals and the related DA at this time in the fight is nothing. You may be able to keep Fester from bunny-hopping the heal and instead of being one-shot the tank will have 15% health for a moment. Greater Heal is a much better heal for that situation. Greater Heal allows you to watch for times when your Paladin has to plea and help cover him temporarily.

People arguing against Greater Heal are basically saying that they prefer a one dimensional low output strategy to a flexible one. You can still do that with high haste regardless of having GH talents. The difference is the ability to switch to substantially more throughput when needed. You can sit back and spam FH in non-hardmodes with a few extra healers if you want. The only difference is that you can now handle high burst situations in a more efficient manner.

Good thing you can read

The only times i find myself Ghealing the tank are when my paladin has to move/he loses control of his character, He is out of range, I cannot sustain the tank with Flash heal/penance alone, He has plea popped and We cannot sustain the tank, or I have popped PI on myself along with Engineering gloves to significantly reduce my cast time on my Gheal while being at 50% haste

Bolded from my previous post maybe you will read this time

Edit: Contrivez explains everything you need to understand in his post

[fabian]

Also @fabian.

World of Logs.

It's a public website, much like WMO and it documents most of the high end guilds if they log (most only hide logs during progression, and there hasn't been any of that.)

Seriously, just because there are parses out there does not mean that said guild will not allow anything other than that spec. You've got the voice of 1 healer (who is not in the highest rank of the guild) from 1 guild, you can not say for certain another guild might be experimenting with a GH build on the side. You need to comprehend/read better.

[harky]

@Contrivez: I'm not sure you got my point, actually. I'm sure you are a good Priest, actually. I also understand the issues of taking what you can get. My point was that dropping your guild name as you did just leads to silliness anyway. People may look at you and say, 'Well, they're in a high end raiding guild, I should emulate that.' They may get the false impression that Trauma is a good weapon, or other nonsense that arises from a guilds loot system. Heck, for a time my Warlock rolled around with only 300 haste as Destro because well... the right gear never dropped.

Honestly though, do you have any mana problems whatsoever? Do you even need to burn fiend? Even when I was still in 245 gear when going for shield spam, flash heal, etc I had issues dumping my mana fast enough. Meanwhile my heals were ineffectual and despite your claims raid shield spamming really isn't as great as you're assuming. If there is a large quantity of high consistent raid damage then it's good, yes. Will it beat Resto Druids? No. It's not a mathematical possibility. Their GCDs are filled purely by spells higher in throughput than you are. Yes, raid shielding is great in some fights and worthwhile right now due to it working well for both Putricide and Blood Queen, but is it good on Marrowgar? Not really. Good on Deathwhisper? Certainly not. Good on Saurfang? Nope. Good on Rotface? Nope. Festergut it's great for 2/3rds of the fight. Please note that when I say raid shielding, I mean blanket raid shielding. GCD locked with shield spam. I'm not talking about assisting off Deathwhisper with PW:S, or PW:S use in general. It's a great spell.

The issue I'm getting at is BT. When you're geared to optimize FH and PW:S only you are relying on BT. When you gear beyond this you get to a point where you no longer need to rely on BT. Instead it becomes a useful addition to your arsenal instead of a linchpin. Once you start doing that GH becomes part of your arsenal. It is not your entire arsenal and it does not fully replace Flash Heal. You continue doing what you did before, except that now when you do need high burst healing you're much more efficient. The HPS gap between GH and FH is larger than you're thinking. Your healing will surpass Shaman single target. You can mess around with Rawr, or something if you'd like, just to model pure single target spam. Yes, Druids and Paladins still beat you single target. You don't really have anything that can touch either. However, you're still increasing your personal throughput by 20% or more in those situations.

You and Taxidermy seem to think that this is some form of playstyle change, when it really isn't. The only difference is that instead of only having FH spam when you need to heal a tank you now GH spam. I realize you claim to raid heal 24/7, but really there are a good number of fights where the vast majority of damage is centralized on tanks and the raid is taking virtually no damage. Are those the harder fights in ICC? Absolutely not, but there certainly are many fights where there low raid damage and high tank damage to the point that even Holy Priests will be on tanks.

As you said it really is about playing to your classes strong point. Paladins strong point is throughput. They have so much raw healing that all they care about is speeding up their heals and having enough regen to compensate. By far their largest goal? Get more regen. Now, what's a Disc Priests prime strength? Raid shielding? Not really. It's nice, but it's just a GCD locked 7-9k healing, essentially. The biggest strength is the strong regen. What do we do? Make up for our biggest weakness, which is throughput. Moving towards haste and adding GH to the arsenal is just another way to get around it. Otherwise we're basically trying to turn ourselves into a FoL Paladin. Good for a few fights? Absolutely. Flexible? No.

[Azyoulike]

It's not about more healing on the tank there will be a holy paladin healing with you for the most part. You keeping PW:S and DA on the tank will allow a huge buffer for large incoming melee swings and the paladin will top the tank with a HUGE holy light. AKA you are supporting the paladin by healing the tank. Borrowed time does in fact effect your FH and it also effects your PW:S and other global cooldowns by reducing the cast time on your global cooldown.

You can't 'keep' a shield on the tank, or DA for that matter. He gets hit once and his shield is gone, and PW:S ain't coming back for 14 seconds. If you are shielding your tank when he's topped up that's a massive waste of a shield. And yes BT does affect your FH, it pushes the cast time below 1s, but that doesn't help your throughput much does it - since you are inevitably massively past the BT cap. BTW, it would really help you if you didn't overstate your case. PW:S is a huge buffer against a large incoming melee swing? What boss in ICC doesn't hit for more than a PW:S? So huge is smaller than large in your world? The same world in which the disc tree is entirely about FH? And more haste helps shield spam? That world?

Are you implying i should spec 5/5 Divine fury and spam Gheal on the tank when penance is on cooldown with full haste gear so i get massive amounts of overhealing or my paladin gets massive amounts of overhealing? Or are you implying that i cast very fast flash heals and stack Divine Aegis on the tank so he does not die and my paladin is effectively healing with Holy Light.

No I'm not, my post simply pointed out that your post stated a bunch of things that either made no sense or were flat out untrue. You haven't actually responded to my points presumably because you've realized you were wrong - so instead you attempt to argue with a point I'm not making.

This is called a straw man.

I'm implying you should spec DF 5/5 so that during moments when you need to you can spam GH on the tank. I'm simply agreeing with Harky that GH is viable in certain places, and to ignore it is foolish. You're presuming a paladin healer on the same tank target, in range and able to cast. You're also assuming that the combination of your heals and his will always go into OH, those are both big assumptions.

There are plenty of fights right now where a healer may be temporarily or permanently out of commission. Your pally may be boned, your pally may be running to the slime kiter, your pally may be kiting the gas cloud, your pally may be dead.

During these moments there is no huge HL bomb descending inexorably on the tank, at least for a few seconds. Penance is on CD, the tank has WS, but you have BT up. What do you cast? A 0.7 second FH or a GH that is a close substitute in speed an power for the HL that would have been coming?

The point is that haste is superior to crit even for FH spam, until you're at GCD cap without BT. Crit is only superior to haste for prayer of mending and glyph of PW:S. Once you have enough crit to ensure Inspiration is up on the tank, more to 'stack big DA' just isn't sensible, because it won't stack big DA at all. Tanks are getting hit far too fast for you to stack big DAs.

Speccing to increase throughput on the tank during critical moments at the cost of taking a small amount more raid damage seems a wise move, particularly in the current environment where raid damage is managable - we simply don't have a firefighter encounter to worry about right now.

[Taxidermy]

Long post is long for thoose that don't want to read. Why i feel spell warding is > Divine fury. Why i do not Gheal often, Why i feel i shouldn't change what is not broken. What works for some players in their guilds will not always work in other guilds and their healers playstyle.

Now if a boss is hitting the tank for 20-30k a swing I am not sure what you don't understand about him only hitting my tank for 15k based on my PW:S Absorb. Also saying i should not shield him with the cooldown is absurd considering i could shield him proc weakened soul and him not get hit for 5-10 seconds which will reset the cooldown sooner on my weakened soul. Tanks parry and dodge melee swings all the time. Now if my paladin tank gets locked out on Festergut. Penance is on a very short cooldown. Inner focus may be off cooldown. chances are my PI might be coming up. or maybe even my engineering gloves so it works for me to spam penance/flash on the tank and be able to sustain him. During 3stack festergut my guild finds it best to roll cooldowns on our tank being shield wall pain sup and GS. IF I was unable to sustain my tank using flash/penance/PoM/PW:S/chain heal turret (Does not happen) then i would find this to be an issue, But since this is not the case i do not find this to be an issue in any way.

As for festergut Spell warding wins on this encounter. While if you had divine fury you may be able to Gheal the tank but who is healing the tank when you and the paladin are both moving to stack for that delicous spore? With spell warding i take 10% less spell damage. This means I do not have to even stack for a spore besides the first one because i can survive pugnent blight with a PW:S on myself and 10% less spell damage taken. I am in fact getting A lot MORE healing done on this encounter than you stacking for 3 spores during a heavy hitting boss phase

I have yet to have a problem sustaining a tank this way. I have also yet to have a problem sustaining 2 tanks this way with the exception of VERY limited fights and grace being one of the biggest factors. Now I am not saying i never cast greater heal. I understand how efficient this spell is and in fact at the beginning of expansion I used this spell to the fullest to heal tanks . But my casting of Greater heal would be the same amount of that of a holy priest with 3x serendipity. Should the need arise and there is nothing else i can do, no better option or should i not be able to sustain the tank with other heals i will cast greater heal. Should the paladin healer get locked out and no defensive cooldowns be up or not needed later I will pop haste cooldowns and Gheal the tank. But chances are with the amount of defensive cooldowns blizzard has implemented you can call for one and it will be up. GS/Bubble wall/Shield wall/Last Stand/Barkskin/Frenzied Regen/Survival instincts/pain sup/Bubble sac.

As for the comment about my being BT Capped and wasting time on flash heal I am not BT capped outside of blood lust. I am very close but not capped. And i say to you during bloodlust, Why change what is not broken? If i was sustaining the tank before bloodlust Why on earth would i suddenly switch and start Gheal Spamming the tank because it provides more throughput when it is not needed? Chances our my guild is blood lusting for dps now this blood lust is effecting all of our other healers who are healing the exact same damage they have been the entire fight. This frees up their global cooldowns and they will probably throw heals on the tanks as well. In my current guild with our current healers if i switched to Gheal the tank during bloodlust unless they were perfectly in time with the bosses swing timer i would be obtaining a little under 90% Over healing while spamming flash will only give me a little under 50% (math is not exact but i will link a parse to show the overhealing should you want to see it)

Simple enough what works in your guild and your raid environment might not work in mine. It may be more throughput sure i am not denying you this. It may work better under specific conditions sure I am not denying you this. It may be a better approach at sustaining the tank under certain conditions I am not denying you this either. But why are we trying to change what is not broken here? I have yet to be unable to sustain a tank unless he was hit for more than his life pool very quickly. Chances our if that is the case he was doing something wrong like tanking anub and a burrower at the same time. The death would come so fast to even consider this being a relevant tank death.


Also to the person that said disc shielding is not viable on Death whisperer.. LOL @ Frost bolt volley? Disc shielding is possibly the best thing made for that encounter considering the damage from frostbolt volley can be fully negated by shield spamming and players that may get hit from Frostbolt volley and a ghost at the same time will no longer die. Usually on lady D i will just set her as focus and shield her target while sustaining other players. come phase 2 it's shield shield shield shield shield mending pom pom pom pom

Also like Contrivez said I am specced based on our hard mode progression I have points into spell warding because it is very good on fights where spell damage is taken. Sustaining the tank will not be an issue on many fights at all thus far. Lets look at fights that Do not have some sort of spell damage that is randomly taken. Thus far i see a grand total of 1. Deathbring lolfang. Lets also look at the fact that this fight is largely a joke to heal and there is no need for me to Gheal spam the tank. Therefore I will not spec into divine fury because our Paladin is "Good" and our shaman is chain turreting melee for the most part of the encounter should melee damage not be present he will probably HW the tank.

[prettycute]

why would u gh when u can penance bubble fh pom

[Revitalize]

tl;dr: I like being unique, regardless of it making me terrible.

[fabian]

tl;dr: I like being unique, regardless of it making me terrible.

Seriously, how does switching just a couple talents around and not restricting your gear choice make you terrible? If you're not dedicated tank healer(which a disc priest should not be), then the only points you're changing is going 5/5 DF. 53/18 build would probably be for a disc priest in a 10 man guild in which you do not have a paladin as a MT healer.

[Samurai]

why would u gh when u can penance bubble fh pom

Bubble -> Penance -> rest imo

PoM is too random, and has a CD. On fights like Festergut, Disc really needs a bigger heal, which is where GH is good imo.
I also use Divine Fury. My guild normally runs with 2 Paladin healers, but they both went for a break at the same time, so i ended up MT healing the 2nd wing of IC25 as Disc. I definitely needed GH for that.

[Revitalize]

Bubble -> Penance -> rest imo

PoM is too random, and has a CD. On fights like Festergut, Disc really needs a bigger heal, which is where GH is good imo.
I also use Divine Fury. My guild normally runs with 2 Paladin healers, but they both went for a break at the same time, so i ended up MT healing the 2nd wing of IC25 as Disc. I definitely needed GH for that.

No, you dont need g-heal for that.

[Dharmabhum]

Haste/Crit >>> Haste/Crit >> Haste/Crit > Crit/MP5 > Haste/MP5 > Crit/Spirit > Haste/Spirit

[fabian]

No, you dont need g-heal for that.

So an 8s Penance while FH spamming will keep a tank up? No, it won't.

[harky]

Haste/Crit >>> Haste/Crit >> Haste/Crit > Crit/MP5 > Haste/MP5 > Crit/Spirit > Haste/Spirit

Totally dependent on both spec and current gear. For insteance Crit/MP5 and Crit/Spirit are only better than Haste/MP5 and Haste/Spirit if you're over the BT cap and under the haste needed for a GH cycle, while also having very low crit (<20%). For pure tank healing in high end gear it's actually Haste/MP5 > Haste/Crit > Haste/Spirit > Crit/Mp5 > Crit/Spirit. Or Haste > Mp5 > Crit > Spirit. For more generalized use it's Haste/Crit > Haste/MP5 > Haste/Spirit > Crit/Mp5 > Crit/Spirit. The values you put up are only true in some very specific circumstances.

[llDemonll]

revitalize ur bad if you dont rotate gheal into your rotation anymore

[Samurai]

No, you dont need g-heal for that.

PW:S -> Penance -> GH

Single greatest burst heal in the game. BAR NONE!
With the haste buff on GH not being used up by Penance its amazing.

[Weena2]

I just looked through all my guilds logs for the past month as well as another 3-4 top guilds i know and non of there disc priests used GHEAL!!!??? I don't know why because it sounds totaly viable to bring a disc priest just to spam gheal on the tanks, rather than bring a resto shaman or pally.

^incase you haven't realized, im being sarcastic

[fabian]

I just looked through all my guilds logs for the past month as well as another 3-4 top guilds i know and non of there disc priests used GHEAL!!!??? I don't know why because it sounds totaly viable to bring a disc priest just to spam gheal on the tanks, rather than bring a resto shaman or pally.

^incase you haven't realized, im being sarcastic

Read more posts? Most of the arguments for GH is not on tank healing(although 53/18 would probably be viable for 10 mans with no paladin) but when it is a raid oriented Disc priest.

[Weena2]

Read more posts? Most of the arguments for GH is not on tank healing(although 53/18 would probably be viable for 10 mans with no paladin) but when it is a raid oriented Disc priest.

What i don't get is why people would bring a disc priest...to Gheal. Maybe some of your guilds bring friends and people they know and let them do whatever they want. I know for a fact that more 'hardcore' guilds bring disc priests to raid PW:S, while throwing out some heals if needed here and there. Most higher end guilds would probably agree on the fact that you bring holy paladins to tank heal, resto druids to raid heal, disc priests to raid bubble/heal and resto shamans to raid heal and/or tank heal.

I actualy don't even know why i am aruging, some of you are so hell-bent on trying to prove disc priests should heal with gheal its not worth it.

[fabian]

The idea of using GH is that as Disc is not that it will be the primary spell used but the filler spell. It has more HPS than FH but at the cost of more mana. At the gear level we are at now, mana is not an issue so we can freely use GH without much concern about mana, but to actually get GH down to a decent cast time, you either need the 11% haste "soft cap" and BT or gear for more haste where you do not have to worry about the need for BT but have it as a bonus. 53/18 is tank healer spec; for raid healing, you still go with 57/14 but with DF instead.

Plus PW:S -> Penance -> GH is indeed, the best burst heal in the game.