The point of disc?

[Nem2k]

so ive played disc since the beginning of wotlk and have enjoyed it, however that was mostly in 25man raids. now that my schedule is tighter with university etc I find myself in more 10mans

we were trying to do mimiron hard mode earlier and gotta say, it was tough and there was a hell of alot of wiping. with a druid or shammy off healing the tank I was still not able to keep the guy up through the crazy burst that mimiron has

Ive always loved playing disc, and while I realise the spec offers quite alot of damage prevention, I dont feel like my actual healing cuts it.
In 25mans I love being there to support the holy paladin on the tank. But thats the thing, just as support. When in a 10man raid and no holy paladin is present, I dont feel like im able to pick someone up quickly. tanks have like 50k hp, after my shield is broken my penance will heal for 15k, thats barely anything before I start spamming flash heals in hope of getting him up to full before he takes another big hit

so being mediocre single target healers compared to holy paladins, and mediocre raid healers compared to say a holy priest, what is the point of disc outside of mere support? especially in 10man hard modes where, if no paladin is present, youre expected to keep a tank up through big damage, does disc cut it?

I feel like I would be of more benefit to the raid as holy and actually being able to do my job of keeping a raid up, than being disc and not able to keep the tank alive. The raid would probably be better off with me giving up my spot as the tank healer to a holy paladin. if this is the case in 10mans, what is the point of bringing a disc along if he cant do anything unsupported?

If I cared about big numbers on the meters then I would be holy already, but thats not what I care about. I do however care about being able to keep a tank alive while being the primary healer on him, which I am not achieving at the moment. anyone else find this or am I just doing it wrong?

[Deleted]

I've solo healed both tanks in Marrowgar even, it's not hard.

[Deleted]

I think you're doing something wrong then actually. I find myself, as a disc priest, to have alot of burst healing. Maybe you're focussing on the wrong stats / gear, what ever. Maybe you pick the wrong spells. I dont know, i dont get how you can not keep up the tank. Or do you mean, he dies when Mimiron uses Plasma Blast? Cuz he should use cooldowns or ur Pain Supression with it.

[Revitalize]

I two healed mimiron hardmode as discipline months ago.
It's just all about knowing the incoming damage and what to expect next.
This also revolves around the other healers ability to heal as well.
Healing is a group effort and sometimes one of the healers aren't pulling their weight.

In most cases as disc, you always make sure you shield the current tank.
Weakened soul must have a very high uptime on the tank.
Save penance mainly for the tank, use it as an ohshit raid heal if necessary.
Prayer of Mending should always be used on CD.
Flash heal as filler.
Never use renew, it's a waste of a GCD.

And don't forget if you make it past phase 2, it gets pretty easy from there on out.
Divine Hymn in phase 2 for sure.

The thing about being a disc priest is absorption through divine aegis and shielding.
It may not seem like healing is very high, but if you look at World of Logs, you can actually see the results.
Pre-shielding is always a must and you must be proactive as possible.
If you can learn to mitigate damage before a large AoE goes out, you're saving yourself and the other healers tons of trouble.
To be honest, yes, were slightly mediocre to tank healing (lolbeacon), but as much as people want to say it, were not purely tank healers.
And if you're assinged to tank healing, yes, you can still do the job fine, just not as effectively as a shaman or paladin.
You could possibly have a low crit rating which is resulting in this.
But in all seriousness to your answer, yes, discipline cuts it.
I heal 10/12 ICC as discipline/resto druid.

The thing about both specs is that they all have their pros and cons for every fight.
I myself adapt to this and as much as I love disc, go holy in some circumstantial encounters.
When it comes to high damage AoE encounters, sometimes disc is just limited in its powerfulness where holy will still top out in usefulness.

Ive done it both as holy and discipline in most fights, so I can say you just need to find what spec works for you in which encounter.

Both are exteremely viable, but with different playstyles and roles.

I hope this gave you some insight.

[Egeldi]

If you find yourself having to tank heal often I'd suggest getting a few points into divine fury. My tank-heal oriented disc spec allows me to get 3 points into it.

When you need burst healing, chuck a shield, do a greater heal. It'll go out almost as fast as your flash heal, and will heal for a good bit more.

Other than that its just about shield, penance, prayer of mending, and renew. Toss renew when the tank is topped off, it provides a nice buffer when the tank is dipping down.

To answer your broader question, of what the 'point' of disc is: the point of disc is preventing damage. The trick is learning each fight, and figuring out how to predict the damage, and then have a shield there to prevent it.

VoA has two simple examples: the frost boss does whiteout every 40 seconds or so. This deals damage to the entire raid. When hes got about 20 seconds or so till he casts it, shield everyone. Your raid healers won't have to work nearly as hard, and will have much more spare time to help the tanks. The flame watcher is similar, at 20 seconds to burning breath, shield everyone up.

Those are two really clear cut examples, not every fight is as simple as those two, or Festergut in ICC.

TLDR: as disc you need to know when damage is coming and have a shield there before it hits, don't try healing reactively as disc, if you heal reactively, you're better off as a holy priest.

[Revitalize]

The point of disc is to not wait around for your tank to take damage, but prepare for when it happens.

I agree with this notion and going to say this is no longer the vanilla or BC times of healing.

[Revitalize]

Also if you're three healing, I don't see why you wouldn't fit the role of a support healing still.
Shamans generally make better tank healers than priests in general, regardless of spec.
While you shield the tank, and shield the raid.
The druid HoTs the tank and the raid.

As you can see, healing is a group effort.

[Nem2k]

ah this is very interesting. what I usually do is throw a shield whenever weakened soul falls off and then just flash heal in between (pom on every cd as well)

so I think what Im struggling with is, say on mimiron plasma blast, I get a big warning for when its happening, but I dont have a shield ready for the tank because of spamming it and having weakened soul up. When really what I should be doing is saving my shield when I know big burst is coming and using it just before it happens? this would probably absorb 10k of the plasma blast which makes my following heals much easier as I dont have as much HP to pick up

If this is the way that disc is truly meant to work (ie knowing when big damage is about to arrive and being ready for it) then maybe holy is a better spec for me? I tend to prefer reactive healing, seeing HP dip and then throwing some heals out to pick them up, as opposed to preparing for it beforehand
In all honesty I dont enjoy PVE that much, im a PVPer, and its a chore for me to learn encounters in so much depth that I know exactly when big burst is about to come and all the timers for these abilities etc etc

so basically when it comes to healing I want to see hp get low and then have the power to bring that back up to full. I dont want to have to plan out beforehand everything I do based on what abilities the boss has and when, because in all honesty, I dont enjoy raiding enough to learn every boss in this much detail. correct me if Im wrong but Im pretty much describing the holy playstyle right? Even when tanking healing?

and as a side note, how do paladins tend to heal? like disc or holy?

[lifesavers]

on mimiron's plasma blast you should be tossing out PS or having a tank pop one of his CDs.

[Fenixdown]

I think you're doing it wrong, and I'm not trying to insult you in saying such.

I've also been discipline since 3.0, and I have to say I've had no issues keeping tanks alive through much of anything. I did Firefighter about two or three weeks after ToTC came out, and while we did spend about up to two hours wiping it wasn't for the tanks taking too much damage. Mimiron is far more of a coordination fight, especially with cooldowns. If your MT is a paladin, he has fewer cds to vlow than say, a warrior, as an example, so Pain Suppression becomes far more vital for p1. However, after that phase, there isn't any phase where tank damage would end up spiking to a level where it may be perceived as "unhealable".

[Ultima]

I healed Firefighter 10 man 2 or 3 weeks ago, I kept bubbles on the raid (fire, mines, explosions, everything) and kept bubbles on the tank, I think he only did one Plasma Blast in which I would use Pain Suppression -> Penance -> Flash Heal spam (GHeal if I had borrowed time), but that wasn't really a concern, I imagine the tank popped his own CDs.

Only annoying bit of the fight was keeping a Hunter tank up on Mimi's head in P3, though I think he was dancing in the fire sometimes.

[Inept]

If you're not able to easily clear old content with current gear, then theres a bigger problem and not so much a problem with the spec itself.

[Strykie]

PROTECTIVE HEALING.

Disc priests have never heard of the word overheal.

Inb4 anyone says anything else.

[Revitalize]

Greater heal is nonexistant in ICC.
No mechanics suggest the use of this spell.
I attempted trying this divine fury spec and to be honest, I wish I used my GCDs more effeciently when I was using it.
It's crap healing for the way healing is nowadays.

[TiduZ]

Discipline isn't great for tank healing but its so-so. Topic of thread was what's "the point of disc?"

It changes between 25 and 10 man. On 10 man, which it sounds like your doing, use flash heal a fair bit, you often end up tank healing unless your 2 healing with a paladin, and your preventing gibs and mitigating damage with pw shield wherever you can. In 25 man your mitigating as much damage as possible with pw shield, preventing gibs with pom/pwshield/penance, and pretty much only healing tanks when healing on them drops or they get hit hard or some mechanic requires a lot of tank healing. The spec is definitely better in 25 man and personally I prefer 2 healing with a paladin rather than a druid, since tank healing difficult fights as discipline in 10 man, particularly fights with 2 tanks taking damage, can be pretty ridiculous.

[Contri]

You summed it up ?

[Izenhart]

I think you're doing something wrong actually...

First, even if you're Disc, is common sense to drop a renew on tanks everytime, then you'll have PoM, FH, Pen, PW:S and GH depending on your spec.
You summed it up as like "I shield, it breaks, I penance, and then I have to spam FH or he's gonna die", wich is not the way you heal in Discipline.

You need to prevent damage.

A PW:S followed by a critical GH, let's say with 3500SP raidbuffed, will shield the tank for roughly 16k damage, plus of course healing him for around 20k.
Then you have penance, 2/3 criticals is 4k of absorption already, then close to 1.1 FH casts, then PoM, then Penance again, and all this BEFORE he's going to get a burst of damage.


Discipline is perfectly capable of MT Healing someone, of course, the paladin nowadays is way better not because of the heals on the tank per se, but because of the Beacon that basically doubles their heals, see Lich King tanks with crossed Beacons by 2 paladins.

Greater heal is nonexistant in ICC.
No mechanics suggest the use of this spell.
I attempted trying this divine fury spec and to be honest, I wish I used my GCDs more effeciently when I was using it.
It's crap healing for the way healing is nowadays.

Get to 900 haste and start casting it in 1.70 without BT and we'll talk again..

[Revitalize]

I think you're doing something wrong actually...

First, even if you're Disc, is common sense to drop a renew on tanks everytime, then you'll have PoM, FH, Pen, PW:S and GH depending on your spec.
You summed it up as like "I shield, it breaks, I penance, and then I have to spam FH or he's gonna die", wich is not the way you heal in Discipline.

You need to prevent damage.

A PW:S followed by a critical GH, let's say with 3500SP raidbuffed, will shield the tank for roughly 16k damage, plus of course healing him for around 20k.
Then you have penance, 2/3 criticals is 4k of absorption already, then close to 1.1 FH casts, then PoM, then Penance again, and all this BEFORE he's going to get a burst of damage.


Discipline is perfectly capable of MT Healing someone, of course, the paladin nowadays is way better not because of the heals on the tank per se, but because of the Beacon that basically doubles their heals, see Lich King tanks with crossed Beacons by 2 paladins.

Get to 900 haste and start casting it in 1.70 without BT and we'll talk again..

Yea, nothing like gimping 300-400 of my SP just to get greater viable.
Sounds perfect.

[Kelesti]

Yea, nothing like gimping 300-400 of my SP just to get greater viable.
Sounds perfect.

Because oh you can totally turn that haste on gear into Spell Power, or somehow magically get Spell power from spirit like Holy and Shadow can. Picking up crit/haste gear (like you should) isn't hard to break 900 haste, at all, and you aren't "gimping" your Spell Power to do it either.

[Immapwnu]

I'm just going to throw my 2 cents in...
If you want to be a reactive healer then Disc isn't for you. As many others have said being disc its about preventing and mitigating expected damage. I have played disc in all aspects since TBC and TBH it isn't a numbers generator. It is the epitome of support (especially back in TBC when you had to have a spirit bitch to get get Divine Spirit, so the other healers could heal better.) This is when I learned to play the spec and now when I play holy I am Godly even in subpar gear.

The role has changed going into Wrath and you were given better spells with better scaling spell power and damage absorb. To the people who say G Heal and renew are useless in Wrath I laugh at you.. learn to time your GH so that right after a big hit (IE Meteor strikes on Koralon) you land a 20k heal that re ups the tank, while your other preventative measures mitigated the damage and you can still penance when necessary.


Another thing to consider is the way you don't have to manage your mana in Wrath, you can flash heal and get the numbers on the meter because nowadays every priest worth a damn has so much mp5 and spirit you rarely need to use your pet, or can even afford to use the revamped Hymn of Hope(lessness)
Yeah I guess you could call me a TBC fanboy and I would agree with that, but Going through Black Temple, and especially the brutal Sunwell Plateau before nerfs made me a significantly better healer than most priests today.

TLDR Disc Is fine, fun and different... if you want numbers roll a pali or go holy, also reactionary healing isnt for Discreventing and preparing for damage is. It is the harder of the two priest healing specs and certainly the least rewarding.

EDIT: Gah spelling...