Elitist jerks Disc guide confusion

[Bake-o]

I was reading this guide to Disc raiding and I came upon the spot where it says 11% haste hard-cap. Yet, when i got down to his best in slot list almost all the pieces have haste on them can someone please clarify for me.
http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t83203-w...thas_downfall/

[Eleri]

It's a guide to healing priests, not a guide to disc priests. If you read the whole post, it definitely feels like the OP plays holy more and disc is a bit of an afterthought. That BiS list in particular is obviously tailored for holy, which prefers haste more due to lack of a Borrowed Time-esque talent. It doesn't invalidate the sections that are focused on disc, but only the sections that are focused on disc are actually tailored more to disc priests than holy priests.

If you want a sensible way to build your BiS list, check out Rawr: http://rawr.codeplex.com.

[Bake-o]

So may i ask is 11% still the disc hard cap?

[Eleri]

With Borrowed Time (i.e. after you've cast PW:S), yes, 11% haste will bring your Flash Heal to 0.96s casting time, at which point you're GCD-limited.

[harky]

It's also important to realize how inconsequential that 'cap' is. That is, it only applies when chain casting PW:S. It applies to absolutely nothing else. The cap is 154 haste and can be reach with a ridiculously small amount of gear. Oh if you don't believe that's the cap, here's how it works out: You get a 3%, 5%, 6% and 25% haste bonus. These are all multiplicative so: 1.03 *1.05 * 1.06 *1.25 = 1.4329875, or 143.29875% haste. You need 150% to reach the GCD cap, so 1.5/1.4329875 = 1.046764190197053358804595294795. 4.6764190197053358804595294795% haste. Multiply by 32.79 and you get 153.3, so you need 154 to cap. This is where the "11%" myth comes from. 4.6% on gear = 50% in raids with BT. But again, that 'cap' only matters for spamming raid shields. It is completely meaningless otherwise.

Important caps as Disc:
154 - Shield spam cap
655 - Point where 6 Flash Heals can be used within the Penance cooldown.
690 - Point where 5 GCDs are free during BT/GH rotation during a Penance Cooldown
1012 - Point where 4 Greater Heals can be used within the Penance cooldown / Hard GCD cap.

11% as quoted is a nonsense cap. It's 360 haste and has no real noticeable gain. 655 can be considered a cap for any build without Divine Fury because to fit 7 FH's into a Penance CD you would need to surpass the GCD hard cap without BT, so any more is superfluous. GH builds should stop at 1012 maximum and should consider their playstyle at 690 and determine how much more haste would help them.

[Worshaka]

With Borrowed Time (i.e. after you've cast PW:S), yes, 11% haste will bring your Flash Heal to 0.96s casting time, at which point you're GCD-limited.

That still isn't a hard cap because it's reliant on casting PW:S before hand... and there are plenty of situations where you can't afford a GCD and have to chain cast on a single target and obviously you can't cast PW:S on a single target every 2nd spell.

So 11% haste will GCD cap you on the priviso you were able to PW:S previously but when that isn't the case you can make use of a lot more haste from your gear which isn't an awful thing to have.

[harky]

The only time the '11%' (aka 4.6%) cap means anything is when the only spell cast is PW:S. If you cast any other spell in your entire arsenal it is no longer a cap. If all you cast is PW:S and Penance, then it's a soft cap (more haste still applies to Penance). If you cast any other spell it as at best a pseudo-cap. For instance you cast a cycle of PW:S>FH, with PW:S>Penance>FH when it's up. In this cast haste benefits everything you do, except PW:S. Penance is using, but not consuming BT, but FH is consuming BT. So you're only 'capped' with FH. Your PW:S and Penance both benefit from Haste still up to 1012, at which only Penance benefits (until 1298).

The '11%' cap is, as mentioned earlier, only applicable to pure raid shielding. If you're consuming BT then guess what, you can benefit from haste. Now here's the fun little quirk... what stat would you trade haste for if you believe this is the cap? It's only a cap when raid shielding, so Crit is nye worthless. Spirit is worthless. So... what are you taking instead? You can't get more SP in exchange for Haste on normal gear, only gems...

TL;DR: The '11%' cap is a meaningless.

[Ultima]

Not to mention that when the alternative is Spirit, Haste isn't the worst thing in the world.

Again, I'm stacking Haste at the moment to try to get some funky GHeal spec working.

[Ândrömèdâ]

Nice answer as usual Harky

People always want to get some caps but in the case of disc for instance, the well known 11% doesn't mean that much in reality as Harky demonstrated. For me evaluated haste score required when you are buffed with BT is more or less pointless : you already have a haste boost then. The only critical point is when you're not under BT, then it's worth looking closer.

And then it will greatly depend on your own playstyle :

- If you are a only PW:S spammer, then don't stack haste (but what will you trade instead?)
- If you have the DF talent points and thus play with GH within your cast sequence then haste is of very big value
- If you are not using GH at all, only FH, then less haste is required but still some is helpfull.

I am playing with GH and use to consider haste as even more valuable as crit since you can rely on one, not on the other.

[Ultima]

How's that spec working for you Ândrömèdâ?

[rubberbands]

Again good answer from Harky. Whether it is a "cap" or not really depends on you. Never take EJ as the be it and end all.

[anmax09]

I used to have a GH spec, worked ok with about 600 haste, but with T10 i kinda have to switch to Flash heal for tank-healing. I guess i still aim for over 30% from gear (not counting talents and totem) to get close to 1 second flashes.

[Ultima]

600 Haste is a bit low, also do you not think that T10 "Healing" set is a bit poor for Disc? I don't really consider that as a reason to ditch GHeal.

[Peacemoon]

As Holy I don't tend to use greater heal much, don't even take improved healing.

As Disc I think Greater Heal is important and take both divine fury and improved healing. 16K crits make lovely divine aegis'.

Last week I was tank healing on Festergut for a change and cracked out my Disc spec and with Pw:Shield-Penance-GH spam. Worked wonders and actually reminded me of my Holy Paladin back from classic.

Whatever the mathematics show, I think its clear that when playing ingame, the benefit of having haste is huge. Don't let figures get in the way of your natural intuition too much. Besides, if you are tank healing, You can only apply PW:shield once every 15 seconds, which leaves a lot of time without Borrowed Time.

[Ândrömèdâ]

The spec has nothing extraordinary. Just introducing GH to be quite efficiently casted during fight. This is the classical 5 DF points spec nothing more.

But please don't misunderstand me : I would certainely not spamm GH! However when it comes to very big Tank hits then I feel a little more efficient than just spamming FH. I am currently standing at 748 haste score which is quite comfortable for casting GH. So to give an idea let's say for 3 FH I will cast 1 GH on average (something like that). Without haste not even worth casting it I would say.

HPS is bigger for GH (which is required when tanks are heavily hit) and when bigger DA pop up. So bigger HPS and mitigation during ocrap tank phases, this is what I mean (of course this is also mana counsumming, disc is not meant to GH spamming eh ;p)

[Ultima]

Yeah, I know...I was just asking how it was working for you ;D

I'm using the same thing at the moment.

[Revitalize]

Yawn, Greater heal.

[Adelycia]

Yeah, I know...I was just asking how it was working for you ;D

I'm using the same thing at the moment.

Can i see your spec. I have been tossing around the idea about a solid gheal spec too cause I am mainly on Tanks in my raid. I find that sometimes it's really handy. This is my spec currently. Yes I have 2 specs for disc. 1 including healing focus and 1 not including it. I was just testing out a few ideas. Also switching around a few gems too so don't mind a few of my "bad" gems.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...fair+Advantage

[Ândrömèdâ]

@ Ultima : sorry I misunderstood your question (I am not english native so sometimes I shall not correctly get to the point ;D)

In fact, this spec is working very well according to me. The very pleasant thing is that you really have a flexible spec that allows to adapt to different types of encounters. It's been 2 evenings that we are trying Putrecide 25 with my guild but without holydin (ours is not available at thta moment) so I am taking care of the tank with a shaman and this is working quite well. We have failed to defeat him but not due to a healing lack, it was almost a dps issue (some mistakes with oozes which induced very strong damages). We put him at 12% and I was not feeling inefficient for keeping the tank alive with my sham mate. Then I used some GH quite more often than usual without too much mana issues (I don't have improved healing talents)

When we have one or two pallies, then I switch more to FH casts with no issue and more PW:S spamming into the raid, with GH support on tanks when burst tank damages income. Today I'd like to increase again my haste for having an even more effective GH, it's working amazingly well (I mean the mitigation with DA is really good).

Hope this time I answered your question correctly

[cruxxy]

If you really want a GH spec, go 53/18. Drop Imp FH and a point from Grace and get Imp Healing. After seeing the big tank damage on LK, a BT-hasted GH is very useful and I'm considering going back to that spec.