Disc priest + renew glyph/talent + inner will = win?

[wallowire]

I was thinking about this yesterday afternoon, my priest is my main, i was wondering if spamming renew and heal instead of just flash heal would be better.
thoughts?

[Deleted]

You spam Flash Heal?
I don't have the mana regen to do that.

But anyway, without proper math, I don't think you'll ever want to cast renew as disc.

[wallowire]

i was spamming flash heal without many problems till i hit 83. now i have been using renew as a topper upper for people in the group so i can focus my heals on the tank

[iPriest]

i was spamming flash heal without many problems till i hit 83. now i have been using renew as a topper upper for people in the group so i can focus my heals on the tank

sounds good to me, renew, pw:shield, a heal here and there.

try to smite abit when you can too, so you can archangel, too bad it got nerfed abit, still somewhat useful and with atonement it still heals!

[fiddyep]

If you just want to spam heal and renew why not just go holy?

[wallowire]

im using bubbles mostly. flash heal costs too much mana now for it to be a main heal and penance is only ever 8 seconds.

[yjmark]

What glyph are you getting rid of to use the Renew glyph?

[wallowire]

the power word barrier one

[yjmark]

the power word barrier one

Interesting concept. Renew may have a decent HPM at that point. I might have to give it a shot to see how it works.

I especially like the thought of PW:S -> Renew since Renew will get the BT haste, and most likely get that extra tick

[wallowire]

they said we would have to learn how to heal in new ways, i just thought this was one way worth trying, i tried it in wotlk, with a hybrid spec, but didnt give it enough time to actually learn how to do it properly, now im excited it may actually work

[Jahoota]

Interesting concept. Renew may have a decent HPM at that point. I might have to give it a shot to see how it works.

I especially like the thought of PW:S -> Renew since Renew will get the BT haste, and most likely get that extra tick

Assuming a fully talented Borrowed Time, you will get a fifth tick of Renew at 0 haste. A sixth tick with BT will require ~2640 haste. I'm not advocating the use of Renew as Discipline just giving you some numbers.

[Orapronobis]

Maybe I'm just anti-hot, but it just doesn't seem worth it to me. According to my napkin math (assuming no borrowed time since I'm lazy and at work) the renew is worth ~5.4k for 21% of base mana across 12 seconds while heal is worth about 13.6k and takes would take up 36% of base mana across the 12 seconds.

Using the base mana calculated by Bobturkey (would link, but I'm not allowed to until my post count is higher, apparently), you get renew having 1.25 hpm and 450 hps while heal has 1.83 hpm and 1,133 hps.

Heal's just a much better fit for just about any job, unless you're just dropping a hot on a player to top them off while concentrating somewhere else.

[Azelric]

I think this is where I get confused. To me Bubble + Renew is nice for DPS. On the tank it's useless, but as it stands I feel like tanks are taking to much damage for me to spend time casting heals on all 4 dps to top them off. If renew will do it, even for a worse HPM, I'd almost rather have that because it saves me time so I can get back to the tank.

-- Edit --
Just a thought, what about glyph of prayer of healing? What's the HPM on that? I feel like in dungons (I havent done heroics) where DPS are taking damage that it could top them off, give a bubble, and put a hot on everyone with one spell?

[PlatedPriest]

I think this is where I get confused. To me Bubble + Renew is nice for DPS. On the tank it's useless, but as it stands I feel like tanks are taking to much damage for me to spend time casting heals on all 4 dps to top them off. If renew will do it, even for a worse HPM, I'd almost rather have that because it saves me time so I can get back to the tank.

-- Edit --
Just a thought, what about glyph of prayer of healing? What's the HPM on that? I feel like in dungons (I havent done heroics) where DPS are taking damage that it could top them off, give a bubble, and put a hot on everyone with one spell?

you have to realize that renew mana cost is stupidly high now. and disc doesnt get all those crazy benifits like holy does for casting it. so spaming renew is just bad for us now. also PoH is the way to go (glyph it)! as far a shielding dps i wouldnt do so untill they are at 60% and you a positive that the bubble will be eatan.

[Ebbikenezer]

you have to realize that renew mana cost is stupidly high now. and disc doesnt get all those crazy benifits like holy does for casting it. so spaming renew is just bad for us now. also PoH is the way to go (glyph it)! as far a shielding dps i wouldnt do so untill they are at 60% and you a positive that the bubble will be eatan.

Spot on. I have run a LOT of heroics, and done TB Boss and Halfus WB in Bastion and... Disc is NOT good with renew, I switch glyphs often to try and mazimize my output with as little overhealing and as much efficiency as possible. PoH is great for when there is going to be high damage as it shields, HoTs (with glyph) and heals.

Renew is an absolutely ridiculous mana cost to be tossing it on a lot of people, as well as shields, with a bit of disregard to your mana pool.

As per usual, disc is great to mitigate some incoming damage, and holy is great for reactive healing. Imo, Holy has win hands down right now, it gets better mana regen since they fixed Rapture and both Chakra states are amazing if used on a situational basis. As a matter of fact, I found healing tanks, AND the DPS, through heroics to be somewhat of a joke with Chakra Serenity, and the occasioanl CoH for burst party damage.

There can be some pretty serious raid damage going on at times as far as raids so... renew spamming would seem great.... but it just doesn't cut it as far as efficiency:mana when healing as Disc.

[yjmark]

Maybe I'm just anti-hot, but it just doesn't seem worth it to me. According to my napkin math (assuming no borrowed time since I'm lazy and at work) the renew is worth ~5.4k for 21% of base mana across 12 seconds while heal is worth about 13.6k and takes would take up 36% of base mana across the 12 seconds.

Using the base mana calculated by Bobturkey (would link, but I'm not allowed to until my post count is higher, apparently), you get renew having 1.25 hpm and 450 hps while heal has 1.83 hpm and 1,133 hps.

Heal's just a much better fit for just about any job, unless you're just dropping a hot on a player to top them off while concentrating somewhere else.

So you are comparing a non-talented, non glyphed, non-BT, non mana reduced, not counting any DA procs, single instant cast Renew vs spam casting Heal for 12s? That hardly justifies the point you are trying to make.

However, I do agree that Renew is not a very good spell for Disc to invest in. After trying it out, you just lose too much healing capability by putting talents and glyphs into Renew. Maybe at higher levels of gear it will be a more viable option. I just don't see it with our current level of gear.

[Orapronobis]

So you are comparing a non-talented, non glyphed, non-BT, non mana reduced, not counting any DA procs, single instant cast Renew vs spam casting Heal for 12s? That hardly justifies the point you are trying to make.

(EDIT: For Clarity, thank you for pointing out some of my mistakes and I didn't take any of this personally and no one else should. The rest of this post is me trying to clarify some of my assumptions and some revisions to my math. Read on if this interests you, otherwise you can just skip it. ^_^)

You're right, I did miss a few things in my math (like forgetting the cost benefit of Inner Will and Mental Agility), but unless the cost changes are additive instead of multiplicative (as well as the added benefit of Improved Renew, the only renew talent Disc can reach) the numbers won't change too much, as I did include the glyph in my calculations. Assuming BT isn't really useful, as chances are you won't drop both, as the mana cost will be pretty much 30% of base for both and while I can think of situations where it'd be up I've found that I generally need that gcd spent on something besides renew, but if we can push it out to 6 ticks it does become fairly powerful with a hpm of roughly 2.75 (not counting in the cost/healing of the shield). I didn't do this, though, as I was using a simplified model that pretty much has the priest naked and untalented,having the Glyph of Renew and the 12 seconds to stand there. Now obviously this isn't how things are going to be, but for a simple comparison it's not bad. And when you take into account that your average disc priest will pick up Empowered Healing and Divine Fury heal just has more improvements to it.

As far as DA procs, with our current crit you're unlikely to get more than 1 crit per cast of renew which with all the talents and glyphs disc and pour into renew equals a shield of 667. Compared to a priest with Empowered Healing and procing a DA from an average heal crit you'd get a shield of 1754, which just lends itself even more to the efficiency of heal.

And obviously there are things to be considered when you're looking at 1 gcd verses 12 seconds of casting, but I was looking at it from an efficiency stand point, and even if you used renew and 3 heals (still using the initial model, as nothing here has proven to me that it's not an alright estimation) you'd still come out at a worse efficiency, than casting 4 heals. Once mana becomes less of a problem time will be what we're pushing against, but I've found that in current content I've been going oom much more frequently than I have been wishing I could optimize my gcds.

So yes, in the end I did make mistakes, but as I was trying to indicate by saying it was napkin math, it was just supposed to be a simple model to show that in general renew is just too expensive of a heal for disc priests to be casting. And with the points you brought up with BT and taking haste into account it does become more interesting, but I doubt it would be enough to overcome the efficiency of heal if I were to apply all the talents and and haste and spell power etc to both.

[Bigslick]

you have to realize that renew mana cost is stupidly high now. and disc doesnt get all those crazy benifits like holy does for casting it. so spaming renew is just bad for us now. also PoH is the way to go (glyph it)! as far a shielding dps i wouldnt do so untill they are at 60% and you a positive that the bubble will be eatan.

Spamming renew as disc? Dumb. Using renew as disc? Situationally very smart.

Example: If only one person aside from the tank in the party is taking damage needing restoral, PoH is pretty poor HPM. So what are your options for that person that don't remove grace from the tank? You could shield them, but that doesn't actually restore their health bar. You could bounce a PoM off them, but that's only going to do so much (and realistically will only restore -- and likely only partially, at that -- health lost from the next attack they receive, if they take more damage at all). Your only other option is Renew, and while it isn't as great as Heal in terms of HPM, it's better when you take into account that you'll have to rebuild your 3 stacks of grace on the tank. Even if you have your Penance off CD to do so, you still have diminished healing done (and therefore reduced HPM on the Penance) on its three ticks.

The same holds true whether in a 5-man or raid scenario, if you're responsible for keeping up a tank who's taking damage. I'm not suggesting that talenting and glyphing for Renew is or is not the way to go but rather that, given how crucial it is to maintain grace on the tank, Renew seems to generally be a better option than Heal to apply to others when PoH isn't called for. Add to that the fact that the single GCD of Renew can restore more health than the cast of Heal, and you're less likely to have to deliver a second, followup Heal to that player and again wipe your tank's grace as you would with a subsequent Heal.

[Apostolic]

@Bigslick - You are correct. Spamming it is bad. Not using it at all is bad. Using it in the correct situation is Pro.

1. After PoH and 1 person is still to low. Use Renew
2. PW:S Tank, Renew, Heal spam to keep tank up.

There is no time where you should be casting Renew on more then 1 (maybe 2 people), if you get to that point PoH becomes more effective.

The key to healing in Cata is:
1. CC, CC and more CC.
2. Smart triage healing.
3. Using the correct heal for the situation.

Also, in pugging I keep track of "Damage Taken" in recount. I point out the people that are taking to much unnecessary damage, usually by "No One". This usually means things such as "Cave In", "Fire", etc. Or specific damage from adds/bosses that should not happen, such as charge, reaper, etc.

Its not about getting pissed, elitist, or rude over the situation. Its about teaching people the proper way to do the instance or encounter. That takes time.