Disc Priests, what spec?

[Madam]

What spec are you using for raids?

[Loriginalediscipline]

where is the option : i smite heal when its the good time to do it?I dont recommand to smite healing when raid is taking LOTS of dmg.I suggest that you have your 5 stacks for archangel ready for the big inc burst dmg ^^.

disc ftw!

[Madam]

How you heal in a Smite spec is not the question, I am more interested in seeing how many Disc Priests are truly using the Smite Healing spec in raid.

[Facerockker]

I can't imagine a real Disc. Priest actually Smite healing in a relatively tough raid. Unless it was a situation of say facerolling over Naxx. in live right now, then maybe I could see the healer throwing up a few bubbles here and there and then begin hitting Smite over and over again. As a person who personally heals most of the time I tend to throw in as much damage as possible (i.e. putting down a Searing Totem, using Smite for example) but also trying to find the balance between helping out with the DPS and making sure everyone is in tip top shape. As for a Disc. Priest, I can only imagine this strategy becoming easier, putting up a Power Word: Shield on the main tank and spamming Smites in some of the easier five-mans and maybe on some of the easier trash pulls that are esentially just burned down shortly.

[Ansa]

Well, thing is that Smite shouldnt be used to more than you would otherwise use Heal for example, if more healing needed, throw out a Greater Heal and you can go back to the normal rotation

A lot of people seem to forget that you cant really use Smite in certain situations, and most of the time Smite is more mana efficient due to Archangel

[JustTed]

I chose Smite Healing, but like others have said, I'm taking it as the assumption that I will just be maintaining 5 stacks of Archangel to use when necessary. I've read some really decent "rotations" that will help with this, but until Cataclysm, I won't really know which is more effective.

[harky]

At 85 it costs as much, or more to maintain a 5 stack of Evangelism as Archangel returns. You shouldn't be taking Evangelism/Archangel unless you expect Atonement to be an important part of your healing.

[Surea]

At 85 it costs as much, or more to maintain a 5 stack of Evangelism as Archangel returns.

Archangel is a talented shadowfiend times three.

Evangalism reduces the mana cost of smite each time you cast it. In return you get archangel that gives you 15% of your TOTAL mana back (which is bugged atm in the beta though.)

So don't say it costs as much, I tested it frequently, it really helps you not to go OOM.

[Kelesti]

The point of that, Surea, was that a 5-stack Evangelism (reduced mana cost) of Smite is still more expensive than Archangel + 0-4 stacks. It was in response to people above suggesting that they would cast a smite every once in awhile to keep the buff up, but not really trying to take advantage of Archangel/Atonement.

[Surea]

The point of that, Surea, was that a 5-stack Evangelism (reduced mana cost) of Smite is still more expensive than Archangel + 0-4 stacks. It was in response to people above suggesting that they would cast a smite every once in awhile to keep the buff up, but not really trying to take advantage of Archangel/Atonement.

ah yes of course. I misunderstood that then, sorry

You really need a minimal of 4 stacks for it to be beneficial, manawise, otherwise it's just a waste.

[makominami]

I kinda use it as a cooldown rather than the heal, kinda smite once make sure i et a few heals in then smite again as long and people are not in danger i kinda like to hold the archangel in reserve for the +% to healing

---------- Post added 2010-10-23 at 07:08 AM ----------

also some fights like saurfang you can heal most of the whole fight spamming the hell out of smite

[harky]

Surea, the point is that Archangel's mana return at 85 is about the same, or slightly less than the cost of the Smite's needed to activate it. Keep in mind that Smite at 85 costs ~4k mana, while each stack returns 3% mana. It takes just over 70% of your base mana to get it fully stacked, which is right around 14.4k mana. A 5 stack of Evangelism with 100k mana returns 15k mana, so at 100k mana you'd gain 600 mana. Shadowfiend is actually many times better.

Point being unless you're using Smite for some other purpose it's completely pointless to be using Archangel to help stabilize your mana. If you're going to be casting Smite as a heal you get 'free' mana returns, but you should also keep in mind that you're getting more mana from Evangelism than from Archangel. In the above example of 100k mana you'd find that it's more expensive to use Archangel than it is to not use it. Archangel gives you a gain of 600 mana, right? However, after using it you lose Evangelism and your Smite cost is reset. So instead of 3.4k cost Smites you have 4/3.88/3.76/3.64/3.52. The difference works out to 1,800 mana. So even at 100k mana you're losing a net of 1.2k mana if you were already spamming Smite.

Archangel really is not meant to be used for regen at all. It's a complete and total waste. Archangel is meant to supplement Smite based play, nothing more. If you don't use Smite, you should not use Smite solely to activate Archangel under any circumstance. It is a mana loss, not a mana gain in most cases. If you are already using Smite for some other reason you should use Archangel, it's great. Otherwise not so much. It sucks.

[Aliahna]

I truly do believe the developers figure the Archangel + healing buff into disc priest healing output.

[axxey]

I use archangel every cooldown, it's bound to use on every single one of my heals, how many smite's I've used in the interim is irrelevant, it's a passive boost to my healing that happens and i use smite as a filler when there's time to use.
If i were to go heavy mastery shields/Aegis I wouldn't use it.

[harky]

You know, I wish I'd see Disc Priests instead of getting this idea that they should Smite/Archangel actually use that time to cast Heal on a tank. Maybe it'll crit and the DA will help.

Got a moment with nothing to do? Maybe next attempt tell your raid leader you'd like to go Shadow, or tell your healing lead that you'll be DPSing. If you have lulls where you think, "Hey, I'ma cast Smite," you have too many healers.

Edit: Also note, in a perfect rotation where you have Archangel up at full 60% of the time you spend 20% of your time doing virtually no healing, since Smite is actually weaker than Heal by quite a bit as a healing method. Even if you waste none of the Archangel uptime on Smite you won't be able to actually gain any healing by using this method. Your healing will always go down as a result. If Blizzard is considering the 15% buff from Archangel as a Disc healing cooldown they need to reconsider, because it isn't.

[Surea]

You know, I wish I'd see Disc Priests instead of getting this idea that they should Smite/Archangel actually use that time to cast Heal on a tank. Maybe it'll crit and the DA will help.

Got a moment with nothing to do? Maybe next attempt tell your raid leader you'd like to go Shadow, or tell your healing lead that you'll be DPSing. If you have lulls where you think, "Hey, I'ma cast Smite," you have too many healers.

Edit: Also note, in a perfect rotation where you have Archangel up at full 60% of the time you spend 20% of your time doing virtually no healing, since Smite is actually weaker than Heal by quite a bit as a healing method. Even if you waste none of the Archangel uptime on Smite you won't be able to actually gain any healing by using this method. Your healing will always go down as a result. If Blizzard is considering the 15% buff from Archangel as a Disc healing cooldown they need to reconsider, because it isn't.

Sorry sweety but maybe you should go back to the holy priests part of this forum, as you have it all wrong :P

* DA proc from atonement, when smite crits.
* Smite does more damage and thus heals more with evangelism
* With Divine Fure, smite is 0,5 seconds faster then heal, thus making it even better.

You don't need a full uptime of achrangel anyway. I use smite as a filler or to lower my CD of penace faster when I'm healing the tanks, but no good disc priest will spam smte alone and think he can get away with it. Besides the archangel proc is fantastisc, yes, it doesn't give more absorbtion but it gives a lot more healing for those difficult moments.

I'm getting a bit frustrated by the lack of knowledge that some people produce when it comes to smiting. When I'm in a raid I do 800 dps per fight or something, which is the same as a silly searing totem.

[harky]

Sorry, random attempting to be condescending person, but maybe you should actually analyze your abilities first.

Yes, Smite is .5 faster than Heal and does +20% damage with Evangelism, but its HPS is still lower than your lowest HPS heal. I know that might be hard for you to grasp, but let's try to clarify a bit. Smite's base damage is 620 average and it gets a 5% and 20% modifier as well as ~72.5% scaling. So at 4k SP you'll hit for ~4.4k and GCD capped this will be ~3.3k HPS. Heal on the other hand has a base healing of 2,529 average, and a 5%, 10% and 12% modifier from Grace that I'll leave out for now. However, it only has a 30.2% scaling. So at 4k SP it *gasp* heals for the same as Smite.

Now, you are right in that Smite is .5 faster so it does have higher HPS by ~20%. So it's 20% higher than your lowest HPS spell. With Grace included it's only about 10% higher. The problem is Smite is assigning it's heal mostly at random, so when just popping a Heal off on a tank you'd be doing a better job. That is, by casting a spell that shouldn't be on your bars at 80 because it's healing is just that low. Flash Heal doubles it's HPS and Greater Heal comes pretty close to double as well. Renew depending on spec triples it. PW:S easily doubles it. Penance quadruples it. And so on. This is with Evangelism.

You're talking about 800 DPS, which is translating most likely to ~950 HPS from Smite assuming you never overheal.

Either way, I don't have a Holy spec at the moment. So tough luck? Being critical of Archangel/Evangelism as a raid healing method should be the norm. It's pretty bad.

[Popesickle]

How beneficial is the reduced cooldown (train of thought) and reduced mana cost of Penance? I'm currently spec'd shadow pve/pvp and have yet to heal anything other than 5 mans since 4.0.1. Keeping renew on the tank, smiting your ass off, and penancing the tank more often at a lower mana cost, while passively healing melee doesn't seem terrible. On the heroic target dummy, I was able to pull off 3500dps, not sure why you only do 800?

[Nurvus]

One of the points of Archangel for healing is not just the mana return.
You build Evangelism in dead phases, and unleash a 15 sec duration 15% healing boost for heavy healing phases, as well as actually giving a little help in dps - wich isn't useless you know?

[Surea]

Sorry, random attempting to be condescending person, but maybe you should actually analyze your abilities first.

Yes, Smite is .5 faster than Heal and does +20% damage with Evangelism, but its HPS is still lower than your lowest HPS heal. I know that might be hard for you to grasp, but let's try to clarify a bit. Smite's base damage is 620 average and it gets a 5% and 20% modifier as well as ~72.5% scaling. So at 4k SP you'll hit for ~4.4k and GCD capped this will be ~3.3k HPS. Heal on the other hand has a base healing of 2,529 average, and a 5%, 10% and 12% modifier from Grace that I'll leave out for now. However, it only has a 30.2% scaling. So at 4k SP it *gasp* heals for the same as Smite.

Now, you are right in that Smite is .5 faster so it does have higher HPS by ~20%. So it's 20% higher than your lowest HPS spell. With Grace included it's only about 10% higher. The problem is Smite is assigning it's heal mostly at random, so when just popping a Heal off on a tank you'd be doing a better job. That is, by casting a spell that shouldn't be on your bars at 80 because it's healing is just that low. Flash Heal doubles it's HPS and Greater Heal comes pretty close to double as well. Renew depending on spec triples it. PW:S easily doubles it. Penance quadruples it. And so on. This is with Evangelism.

You're talking about 800 DPS, which is translating most likely to ~950 HPS from Smite assuming you never overheal.

Either way, I don't have a Holy spec at the moment. So tough luck? Being critical of Archangel/Evangelism as a raid healing method should be the norm. It's pretty bad.

Sure you should be critical about these things, but that doesn't mean you have to say it's worse then heal, because clearly it isn't. I agree though, that the more randomness factor could make it annoying, but I have yet to discover (both on the beta and on live) a real problem with it; as in the tank dying, because of my atonement healing something else.

I talk about 800 dps because I want to show you that even though I smite I also use other spells. Atonement would count for maximum 20% of all my healing, with shields, mending, DA and ending on top. Yes, I use shields/ pom/ renew and flash heal on live too. These (apart from shields sadly) are even better when you have archangel though. I like the smite idea, but I don't spam it. We have a full arsenal of healing spells that are pretty decent. Why not use them all at the right timing.

And to answer popesickle, train of thought is very situatiol really. There are times when you have a lot of use for it, there are times when it's useless. I do only 800 dps because i don't 'smite my ass off'. While I tank heal I have time to shield the raid, cast pom, and shield and penance on the tank. If I only do lolsmite I will not be able to reach the amount of healing that other classes are able to uphold at this current patch. Sure, I can spam shields as well, but I'm kinda tired of it, so I like doing stuff the more fun way.

I think it's time for people to realise that even though you smite, dps isn't important, doing a good job as a healer with the tools at hand is.