What exactly is wrong?

[Mirume]

Hello and good day to you all.

I dont know if and how draenei go to confession or no, but if they do then I think I would need a very patient listener, because the things I've screamed and did lately are "so" not meant for innocent eyes or ears.

I started playing my priest with BC, and was disc ever since, through ups and downs of the spec, through PvP and PvE, and ussaly was very happy and got my share of praise for being a good healer. Now, I am by far no wratbab and acctually enjoy the challange heroics proove these days... Even though it was a wipefest yesterdays run through deadmines filled many hours until we reached its end and while I gladly paid the repair bills, somethign seemed.. well, odd.

I don't know what it is, and this is my problem. People, including my private tank, just die beneath my very hands even with me chain-spamming what should be a livesaving spell. Well, yes, I DO still wear three green items, naming gloves, robe and hood. Anrafet keeps teasing me with my robe in HoO.. urgh, I swear that statue is a sadist. And, come ON, no blue cloth cap with spirit in all non-heroic content, what kind of blasphemie is that?

Well, with a few tears in my eyes, I paid my trainer a visit and turned my second specc into holy, because my private tank asked me to do so, because it appearently works better and disc is broken. So she said. Well, for her sake I should give it a try I thought, just skipping the comment about broken and not mentioning it.
So, next try, we end up in stonecore. And this is where my joy got literally obliterated. I mean, hell, nearly every trash pull someone died. I thought its because I haven't wrapped my mind around the whole Chakra thing, but keepign Serenity up and popping cooldowns issnt that complicated... well, we made it to the first boss. Hurray for nomming that gnome sucker, by the way. Well.. needless to say, the worm kicked us out the door rather brutally.
And after a rather depressing evening of checking my gear upside down.. enchanted and gemmed to the best of what I can do, I just don't find the flaw in whats missing.

So, not much else I can do. Here I am, preparing to get flamed for being a noob that can't adapt to the new healign system. Go ahead, I see it comming anyway. but here is the deal. Feel free to tell me whats wrong so I can correct it. if its not on the gear.. thn I guess its back to training camp.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../mirume/simple
( And I still wonder why Im just displayed as a shadow. Hmpf. )

[Samurai]

You gear is only just enough to do heroics. So don't worry if people die. Few more upgrades and you will be smashing it

I am upto 350 ilevel, and am finding Disc much better then Holy in heroics. Disc is bad at low gear levels, but after the Rapture buff and some upgrades you should be good to use disc again if you enjoy it

[Jakebert]

I feel you. Today's run of HoO took almost two hours, and we wiped 4 times on Temple Guardian Anhuur. I find that some heroic fights are punishingly hard (example: Temple Guardian Anhuur. If I wasn't above 75% at all times, one hit from the blue lazer of death would kill me) while others are easier. I also find that even private tanks or tanks that appear geared can mess up. I have almost the same gear as you (3 greens) and I've done fairly easy heroic fights and really agonizingly hard heroic fights. I don't even have any of my sheesh enchanted.

I doubt I'm being helpful, but hang in there! It will come!

Edit: This cool cat above me has a good point.

[Gallywag]

I sympathise! I’m having a similar problem and it seems right now at the lower levels and even in the early heroic stages that playing Discipline is a gear check and group check, well, from my experience anyway. I recently posted a thread in the Raid & Dungeons forum about the easiest heroic to start out in, VP being the one most suggested and to my amazement it was, well, read on. Didn’t have any trouble with it at all as Disc, no wipes, not even a death (true story) but then the group was really good, DK tank with 160K health, and a mage and rogue CC every pack. Need I say more?

It was only the other night I did a random normal GB with a less versatile group shall we say and I was instantly brought back to reality, no CC, no communication etc, I was having to spam the Pally Tank with GH just to keep him up let alone above 50% HP. I felt a little disheartened. It is me? Is it the group? Is it the tank? Is the Disc spec genuinely broken? So many questions!

I absolutely love Disc, the play style etc, tried holy but I couldn’t get on with it, I suppose it’s just a matter of accepting the change and time but I like Disc too much and I shouldn’t have to substitute a spec to get by.

Here’s my armoury should you want to compare

eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/emerald-dream/gallywag/simple

I’ve accepted to just wait for more guildies to level and group with and learn the encounters with. I’m in more of a casual guild now so in no real rush but I am the first to be heroic ready in my guild 

Hopefully there might be some changes to come in the 4.1 patch but I think that’s a while away.

TL;DR Hit and miss really, Disc is good and bad depending on group and gear and the player I guess :s

[Vashi]

You both are still bit undergeared for Discipline. It needs moar mana regen and less Flash Heals. Shields, Heal, Innerfocus + Flash, POH or Greater heal, Mending is your friend. POH is actually imba. Giving you Divine aegis buble on whole party, which absorbs 21kish dmg for 10secs. Also dont worry to use Pain suppresion, Barricade on tanks or melees when you need to top anyone else. And Power Infusion at yourself when you know it will be mana intesive fight. Also hymns. Use all those you were not using in Wotlk. It just need practice and patience. Trust me.

Your fellow priest friend :P

[Momome]

I'm not a priest, but I have run a lot of heroics with guildie priests, both Disc and Holy. They all had trouble too, especially wearing greens/blues from levelling and normal instances. Once you get some good 346 kit I expect you'll find things much more manageable.

Also, don't be afraid to spend lots of mana if you need to. Water is easy to come by, and it's better to have to drink after every few pulls than to wipe.

[zenkai]

I said this yesterday in a separate post, a lot of things factor in on your ability to do a heroic, not just your skill and gear, but also your groups skill and gear. I haven't healed as Disc so I can't comment there but as Holy it's Chakara w/ heal and serenity and refreshing renews is your friend.

Now in Stonecore a good group will never let the earth element transform so if that was out, that's a problem and hopefully the rest of the mobs where CCed but if it does get out then POM/POH followed up by COH is your friend, so is your groups ability to not let that happen.

Worm boss, he spawns crystal shards, those shards put a debuff on people that increases damage taken, so it's the DPS job that they die and it never gets on a tank. They die really fast there is no reason for this to ever get out of hand. During the burrow phase people should be avoiding getting thrown, if they get thrown they are bad, DPS should be taken down adds while tank picks them up. Wash rinse repeat.

The best thing you can do as a healer is to research all Heroic boss fights and understand the damage incoming so you are prepared on what heals you need. Also is our friend is a damage meeter that reports deaths, if someone dies and I am not sure why I look at what kind of damage taken and heals I used to determine if I failed as a healer or they did something dumb like stand on a land mine.

[Jakebert]

It was only the other night I did a random normal GB with a less versatile group shall we say and I was instantly brought back to reality, no CC, no communication etc, I was having to spam the Pally Tank with GH just to keep him up let alone above 50% HP. I felt a little disheartened. It is me? Is it the group? Is it the tank? Is the Disc spec genuinely broken? So many questions!

Grim Batol is Cataclysm's Heroic Halls of Reflection. There's a very specific way to do it. If your group doesn't do it THAT way, you'd better hope your healer or your tank (or preferably both) are pro. I HATE grim batol trash, just because there's so much of it. Even with the awesome dragon fights, it took a group nearly 3 hours to get to the end. But they sucked.

[zenkai]

Grim Batol is Cataclysm's Heroic Halls of Reflection. There's a very specific way to do it. If your group doesn't do it THAT way, you'd better hope your healer or your tank (or preferably both) are pro. I HATE grim batol trash, just because there's so much of it. Even with the awesome dragon fights, it took a group nearly 3 hours to get to the end. But they sucked.

3 hours wow! GB was my first heroic and even though half of us never been there and half of us failed on the dragon we only ran like 1 hour and 40 min and this was quest blues and greens, you're dps group must have been really bad

[Sedative]

3 hours wow! GB was my first heroic and even though half of us never been there and half of us failed on the dragon we only ran like 1 hour and 40 min and this was quest blues and greens, you're dps group must have been really bad

I have intentionally not discovered GB entrance on my druid tank, now everyone wants to queue random HC with me

[Jakebert]

3 hours wow! GB was my first heroic and even though half of us never been there and half of us failed on the dragon we only ran like 1 hour and 40 min and this was quest blues and greens, you're dps group must have been really bad

Watching the DPS explode as Dragha's fire elemental plows into them still brings tears to my eyes. IT WAS SO PAINFUL. boo hoo hoo hoo....

[Zipbolt]

It's only in severe cases that a healer can't keep a tank up due to gear, if your tank is taking too much damage just try to communicate with him and let him know.


He might not have looked at your gear and may be tanking too many mobs at once, ask him if the group can use more CC. just an example.

[Jakebert]

It's only in severe cases that a healer can't keep a tank up due to gear, if your tank is taking too much damage just try to communicate with him and let him know.


He might not have looked at your gear and may be tanking too many mobs at once, ask him if the group can use more CC. just an example.

I'm tempted to macro the phrase "CC is for wusses, eh Mr. Tank?"

[Dashield28]

The Healer i normally run heroics with is Disc and she does very well. Her biggest improvement came after I pointed her towards some disc guides i saw on here. Before we would struggle through trash. Now, she barely has to drink and no one dies. We've done many heroics and her mana with cooldowns seems to run out pretty much when the boss dies. IMO, thats great.

I would suggest you take a look at some of the disc guides in the priest forums.

[spleen1015]

There are blues out there you can get even though they don't have spirit on them. The Spiritmend Cowl comes to mind.Reforge the crit to spirit.

[Oxna]

Just tried Heroic Deadmines as Disc on my little priest:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...alomath/simple

The DK tank thought it was funny to link recount of healing done for the first pull where he was close to me on healing done...we didnt wipe via "my fault" till Ripsnarl but we lost a guy here and there because he wouldnt let me drink and kept chain pulling and its not like we were taking a long time, it seemed to be flowing smoothly timewise and I thought I did great to keep up (btw I think Disc is better then Holy in heroics atleast for me) anyways we wiped on like 100k hp left or something but it was technically my fault because I accidentally used Shadowfiend when I had like 80% mana *facepalm* AND I didn't use my Corrupted Egg trinket at all hurrdurr so they decided they would kick me out of the group and now I don't really want to play my priest its just REALLY hard to start off especially if like me, you havent been playing one that long.

*note I have all the heroics as Resto on my Shaman

[Wilsan]

I was holy right through Vanilla and TBC. Wrath came and I realised how awesome the Discipline changes were so I switched to Discipline and did all of Wrath that way, then Cataclysm came out and it all changed for me.

Gearing up was a nightmare I couldn't keep groups up, people kept dying, I wasn't healing enough, running OOM it was horrible.

Then I respecced to holy (I really didn't want to as I loved Discipline so much) and I managed my first Cataclysm heroic (Shadowfang Keep) without much problem, it took me a while to get the Chakra system down but the output was there, people were staying alive and I just about managed to keep mana at a good place.

I really didn't like the idea of switching specs but now I'm glad I did, I might switch back to Discipline now that I've geared a bit (avg Ilevel 341) but honestly I'm really quite enjoying healing as holy again, I feel with Chakra it's a much more versatile spec.

[Lysdexic]

Check out the link in my sig, you might find stuff that helps you there. Gear is a big part of it, but the group is too. Speaking of the group, something almost as important as a pet tank is a pocket ret/enh shaman. I haven't run much with an enh shaman, but my ret pala friend and I hit 85 at about the same time and began the gearing process together. In our first heroics he was a godsend tossing occasional +30k WoGs at whoever needed them (typically the tank) and also using Holy Radiance whenever there was lolaoe.

[sacrypheyes]

Gear is a big part of it, but the group is too.

that says it all. i began doing heroics with about the same gear as OP. depending on dungeon and group setup, some dungeons are extremely doable while others can be a nightmare.

hc grim batol or deadmines are sort of a healer gear checks. had quite some trouble (translate : lot of wipes) there until i began gearing in 346 blues.

get a decent group which 2-3 good CCs and it'll be fine.