Disc priest 4.0 Changes

[Repo123]

I honestly believe smite will be situational at best as we progress from 80 - 85.

I also believe that in the progression process, disk will lag behind due to poor scaling with mastery. Disc will be a good support healer, but nothing more.

Priests will be the least mana efficient class of the healers. Disc will have the lowest throughput, and their aoe isn't so great either. Even so, I'll still play disc.

[dekadron]

Ugh, edited for weird internet stuff (currently posting thru a proxy) (also wasn't using the correct archangel term)

Raided as disc the other night with a shammy (our best healer) and holy pally (our guild heal lead). I know this is just anectode and there's no math, but it is simply an example of a disc priest out there being successful in raid environment, and I'm not hardcore by any means. I used skada.

On 10-man heroic festergut the shammy had top heals, but I wasn't too far behind, with the pally in 3rd by a margin. (I think that night he was still working on understanding the massive changes to his class) Heroic rotface I had top output, with the shaman in close 2nd. Heroic putricide (with multiple attempts on this one) I was consistently in top output, with the shammy very close this time.

I was experimenting with smites during lulls in the action, not to get healing output, but to get the archangel healing buff for key fight elements, mainly on professor putricide trying to get archangel-boosted bubbles and POH's for the green slimes.

I was also experimenting with PW:barrier and was a bit underwhelmed. I figured the best time/place to use it was on the collapse point of the green slime during times when there were 2 slimes out at once, but it turned out requiring very good timing. If I placed it too far in advance then the bubble evaporated, having apparently soaked up its max damage before the slime even got to the target. This care for timing made it a bit of a wash for output, I think, because I became a little cautious with my GCD's in order to place the barrier at just the right time. I guess it will take some more practice.

[Surea]

Yeah I've used the barrier several times in ICC heroic too, just to see it pop in 0,1 seconds, still I guess it did it job I suppose but that makes the glyph a bit laughable; and makes the ability indeed underwhelming.

I agree that smiting is not the way to go for healing everything, and that it is situational. But the archangel buff is really good and I suppose that's why I've been smiting, when I knew some damage was incomming.

[Samurai]

Had another play around as disc last night, seemed to go a bit better. But on BQL, which i used to top effective heals, i was getting destroyed by the druids and shamans.

Has anyone noticed that the cooldown for PW:S is slower then the GCD?
I find myself waiting around for .4 a second or so from GCD to when i can shield again, i know its not much, but it puts me out of sync lol

[dekadron]

I have, indeed, noticed that and it kills me!

[babylon]

talking about how disc does vs other healers - make sure you check it on World of Logs or similar.

both skada and recount, even recount with guesses abs, seem to be showing really wrong results. they misscalculate da, none of them counts pw:barrier absorptions. did icc25 (10 bosses hc) yesterday and seeing my recount i was about to cry and go spec holy. seeing wol i say you go disc! im in top 1-2-3 for all fights (on recount with absorps i was last) and mind that it was my first real check of new disc, i did many mistakes like forgetting archangel or smiting too much where i should be focusing on ranged group more.

[Samurai]

PW:Barrier is awesome when used correctly.
Even though it only absorbs 9k, if the hit is more then 9 it will take the entire hit :O
I had the raid stack under one for LK, and the infest didn't hit anyone

[Shidanti]

I'm going to have to go with Samurai on this one, as we went 7/12 heroic ICC 25 last night and disc was lowest on Healing AND Healing & Absorbs /gasp!

Are you also taking into effect that recount now shows our heals and absorbs as straight heals? The heals & absorbs is no longer viable on recount, it's coming in a DOUBLE what it really is, found this out the hard way last night in raid. *sad face*[COLOR="red"]

[Madam]

Are you also taking into effect that recount now shows our heals and absorbs as straight heals? The heals & absorbs is no longer viable on recount, it's coming in a DOUBLE what it really is, found this out the hard way last night in raid. *sad face*[COLOR="red"]

I was running Recount and Recount Guessed Absorbs, yes Recount is showing absorbs as healing done, but the numbers DO NOT match. Recount shows DA much lower than Guessed Absorbs and so on... ATM it seems that only WoL reports are working, but I will wait to see what the number crunchers say. I disabled Guessed Absorbs for now, and can really only "guess" what our true absorbs really are.

[Kelesti]

Divine Aegis is supposed to be lower than what everything else was reporting. Really.

[Diber]

@Samurai: So PW: Barrier suicides itself if someone hits it for more then it can absorb in one hit? ex, get hit for 9k under it, and it goes away, even though there's another 30k left... I've noticed that, especially in BG's where I'm the only one under it, and it'll go away before the effect is even done. In 25 mans, it seemed like it was going away really quick, but I guess I've got my answer now lol

Also, on high damage fights, such as BQL, or (in my case) HM Marrowgar 25, Shamans in particular seem extremely powerful at the moment, due to them using some scary number Chain Heals... Look on the bright side though, at least we as Disc priests get to go in portals on Dreamwalker now

@Madam: Divine Aegis is nice, but should only be even close to a decent number if your tank healing, or using a high number of targeted heals, and few shields. I've noticed that the meters, with both Recount and Skada, will shuffle absorption from PW: Shield to Divine Aegis.

[Madam]

@Madam: Divine Aegis is nice, but should only be even close to a decent number if your tank healing, or using a high number of targeted heals, and few shields. I've noticed that the meters, with both Recount and Skada, will shuffle absorption from PW: Shield to Divine Aegis.

The point I was trying to make was do we really have a true number on absorbs?!?
The issue with the meters still seems off, read Harky's sticky as I think it still applies.

Edit: Darn his sticky is gone...

[Diber]

In general, I figure the total number is more or less accurate, but that each individual section to be juggled around. Also, PW: Barrier isn't even counted anywhere, I did find that out last time I was in ICC, used my PW: B only in a fight, and no healing came up at all. Note: This was with recount, I didn't have Skada running at that time.

[Kelesti]

Illuminated Healing (the Holy Paladin mastery) is also not being tracked appropriately. So I believe Blizzard is aware that the whole "incorporating absorbs into the combat log" wasn't as simple as they'd hoped.

At least, now that they're are of the still persisting problem, there is a hope that it can be fixed appropriately.

[Repo123]

I'm surprised noone has mentioned the holy nova change, limiting it to 5 people healed.

[Kelesti]

I'm surprised noone has mentioned the holy nova change, limiting it to 5 people healed.

It's been mentioned, but hiding in the State of Holy thread.

[Trillianna]

I am new to this forum. I am a Discipline Priest and I have been for 2 years now. My guild runs ICC 10 regularly. I average 6k + HPS as a discipline priest. Patch 4.0 was VERY good to me. I see a lot of negative comments about Discipline overall since the patch and I totally disagree.. If 6k average HPS is low at level 80 (with peaks upwards of 8.6k) then I guess Discipline is a dead spec. Feel free to Armory me (I am not even that well geared) .

Thanks and please be NICE..
Trillianna - Lightbringer - us

[harky]

6k HPS in ICC is in fact quite low, even for Discipline post-4.0. 'Peaks' of 8.6k are actually under what most healers are capable of currently. Try to keep in mind that most people finding these issues are competing at a much higher level than what you're probably used to. 6k healing in the environment I'm used to, even for 10s, is most likely going to get you removed from the group. Try not to take that the wrong way though, because we also expect people to be in near full 277 gear, etc.

If you'd like to bring that up though what you need to be doing is Reforging all your Crit and Spirit into Mastery and regemming to whatever will give you the highest Int while staying above ~700 Haste. You'd also want to tweak your spec to take 3/3 Darkness instead of 3/3 Empowered Healing.

Anyway, most balancing discussions like this usually only applies to people who are serious about min/maxing. If you're 3-healing 10 man content then don't worry about it so much, just have fun.