Disc priest in need of help!

[Ashes Remnant]

Hello everyone. So, I've recently begun raiding with a 25 man guild. 25's are a brand new thing for me, in fact, being a healer in a raid at all is. This character, while being my "main" has always been running dungeons/questing rather then healing raids. But now I wanna HOWEVER, I am having some issues. In last night's raid, we had 17 attempts on Shannox, 13 of which were heroic, and we downed Rhyolith and Occu'thar. Healing was a major problem, and I was lowest on the HPS charts. By alot. I'm severely undergeared compared to the other healers, but with a margin this large, I think it was user error. Can I get any pointers?

(I have armory and WoL for last night but I can't post links yet)

Here are links to your wol/armory:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-d9e7ekyfnxkreotd/
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...erner/advanced

Links put in. Thank you, Wuga. ~ Ultima

[thelknatut]

These HPS charts, did they include absorbs?

[Ashes Remnant]

Yus. That's the scary part. I think it MAY have been largely a gear issue (I'm in T11 gear while everyone else is decked out in T12) but it was a rather significant difference.

[Myrlae]

Well what was your job? AoE/Tank healing/Rageface healer?

[Ashes Remnant]

I was supposed to be tank healing/"Hey look, this guy's health is low" healing. Mainly tank however.

[Myrlae]

Well as tank healer your HPS will always be lower than the Raid Healer

[Ashes Remnant]

True, but the other tank healer was 3rd highest in healing done. It was big enough that I was getting whispered asking if I wasn't paying attention, had fishing pole on, etc. I was actually thinking of going Shadow for how bad it seemed.

[Myrlae]

Ok keep your shield up on the tank (shouldn't run oom though) and when you feel there is no danger that the tank will collapse in the next 1-2secs feel free to help out at raid healing to push your HPS a bit. In specific fights it's a good idea to keep up PoM etc.

[Ashes Remnant]

Alright, so one thing I do is I bubble, then immediately begin casting flash heal/greater heal in order to get Weakened Soul off the tank, usually by that time, the shield is already down.

[Deleted]

Can you link your WoL report/armory page without the http part?

[Ashes Remnant]

www(DOT)worldoflogs(DOT)com/reports/rt-d9e7ekyfnxkreotd/

us(DOT)battle(DOT)net/wow/en/character/moon-guard/Ferner/simple

Not sure if that'll work. Maybe someone who can post links can help?

[Kurzior]

As far as general advice, there are a few things to look at.

1.) Overhealing. As a disc priest, this won't be the same as other healers because a wasted shield will not be registered as an 'overheal'. This shouldn't be a huge problem because tank healing rarely results in wasted shields. Check this out, if you have very high overhealing, it likely indicates that you're other healers are just beating you to quick heals. To fix this, make sure you're comfortable with what to cast when. Small, quick efficient heals for topping people off, big slow heals when you know there's time before the next big hit, shields before big hits to smooth spikes, fast heals when you need to save someone immediately and so on. It takes some getting used to, especially since you're new to healing in a raid environment.

2.) Spell usage. Same as mentioned previously, know what to use when. Become very familiar with efficiency/power/speed of all your heals. Know what you can do to keep up mana endurance and so on. It sounds vague, but this is really a practice makes perfect thing.

3.) Know the fight. It sounds pretty basic, but I'm talking primarily about knowing where the damage is coming from. As a disc priest, more than any other healer, your best healing is done proactively rather than reactivly. Knowing where the damage is going to hit next is crucial in being able to keep that next big spike from finishing someone off. A perfect example of this is Rhyolith's stomp ability. Having a few shields up right before it hits will be a big help to the raid. The other healers will have fewer people to worry about and it might just save a few of them from dying to other mechanics following the stomp.

As far as gear is concerned, you seem to be reforging correctly. Only missing thing is a belt buckle, so no serious issues there. I would recommend going back and picking up your t11 gloves for the 4 set until you can get at least 2 piece t12. This will help mana regen quite a bit.

For spec, there are a few changes I would recommend. If you are going to be primarily healing the tank, you need to pick up Inspiration in the holy tree, and possibly Surge of Light as well. These are big boosts to tank mitigation and quick spike healing.

To get these points, I would recommend dropping talents in Evangelism, Archangel, and Atonement. Smite healing just doesn't compete with your shields and direct heals as a tank healer, and the necessity of continually keeping Evangelism stacked is likely hurting your capability as a tank healer. Lastly, to make up for the loss of mana endurance from evangelism, consider switching from Darkness (haste isn't your best stat anyway) into mental agility. At least a point or 2 here will make a big difference in your mana efficiency.

Hopefully this helps. Good luck in future raids.

[Gallywag]

If I'm reading the logs right biggest thing I noticed is that you prefered for the entire raid Inner will over Inner Fire, losing 532 SP which affects all your spells. Unless youre having severe mana issues and I cant see how, thats a nono in my eyes especially as a tank healer.

I dont raid with my priest but I wouldnt favour IW over IF as a tank healer. I'd probably roll with glyph of prayer of healing over barrier as you only used it twice entire raid and did quite a bit of healing with PoH.

You have a lot of spirit and mastery, maybe try and reach a happy medium between them and go for more haste. ahh thats just my opinion but the IF thing is a big one!

[Wuga]

The biggest thing is you have way too many healers. In this situation the people topping HPS charts are the people who snipe heals the best. Since you have basically no haste and very few instants as disc unless you want to PW:S spam, this is going to be pretty hard for you, particularly if you're not that familiar with the fights. On Shannox specifically, it looks like you're healing the Riplimb tank. If this is all you're doing (and it looks like it is) you're also going to be very low because this tank doesn't even take damage for half the fight.

For spell usage, you're using a lot of FH considering it's massively overhealing in most cases. In general you should be using some combination of PW:S/GH/Penance for tank healing.

In terms of gear I would try to swap in a lot more haste for mastery, since mastery is pretty worthless for tank healing and haste is generally your best throughput stat. You should also gem int over anything else aside from two orange gems for your meta.

Here are links to your wol/armory:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-d9e7ekyfnxkreotd/
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...erner/advanced

[Terashi]

It looks like you're missing a lot of intellect with your gem and enchant choices. As a disc priest, int is your #1 stat bar none. Try changing to this:
Gemming:
Red sockets 40 int
Blue sockets 20 int / 20 spirit
Yellow sockets 20 int / 20 haste.
Result: +160 int from regemming. (includes a belt buckle)

Enchants:
You may want to use the int enchant over the spirit enchant for your cloak. It requires more active paying attention, but will likely result in more throughput/mana over time.
20 stats to chest
50 int to gloves
Either 50 haste or 65 mastery to gloves
Belt buckle!
Lavawalker for your boots. (50 mastery if you're dead set against movement speed, but I feel it's invaluable.)
Result: 70 or so int, depending on what you decide to do with your cloak enchant. You may also wish to use power torrent instead of heartsong. (I don't currently, but will be switching before next raid to try it out).

Get your Enchanting up! That's 80 more intellect you're missing.

Get an addon to track your rapture procs. Always try to keep rapture on cooldown. Tellmewhen is great for this.

Talents:
Mental Agility will reduce the cost of your PW:S and any other instant cast by 10%. That's huge. Also the AAA build (Archangel/Atonement) is largely useless in firelands. This is about what I'm running with at the moment.

Spell choice:
While I can't really comment on 25 mans, as I only run 10s myself, your usage of Prayer of Healing seems rather high for an assigned tank healer. Also your overhealing percentages on flash heal are massive. Flash heal is your "this person is going to die in <1.5 seconds" heal, and even then power word shield is better most of the time. Your overhealing in general is huge, which leads to what Wuga said, probably running too many healers for the content.

Hope that helps!

[Cellery]

I would just like to interject about Atonement. You seem to be using Atonement a lot. Somebody above me had some negative things to say about it. There is a time and a place for Atonement and it's not just to proc AA for a PoH increase. I tank heal with Atonement a good deal and it's a lot more useful than people give credit for. The problem is, for Atonement to be useful, you have to watch the tank carefully and adjust and MOST IMPORTANTLY never stop casting.

For example, this week I was healing the Shannox tank on H Shannox. My typical healing went like this: PW:S, Holy Fire, Smite... Smite if tank is above 80% health, Flash Heal if he's below 80% health as I'm finishing my previous cast. I don't personally Greater Heal because I don't have any mana issues while maintaining my Flash Healing Festival of Fun. I'm not saying this is the "right" way to tank heal, but I parse with it and the tank stays alive so it can't be too terrible.

Also: EIGHT healers on normal Shannox? O.o

[Sikizim]

My Advice would be dont just stick to "your tank" if he isnt taking alot of damage, especially as disc you can easily throw up shields on all the tanks or anyone taking major damage, Face rage for example, as long as your current tank isnt having any issues look around the raid for other people to heal, even if there arent in immediate danger, throw a heal on them anyway its just one less thing another healer has to do while you're waiting for your tank to take damage.

One of the biggest problems in larger raids is healers thinking someone else will heal him, its someone else's responsibility to heal them. But its better to just heal any damage anyone takes (within reason obviously) and not worry about responsibilities keeping people alive is paramount. Your assigned role first, everyone else second. Obviously you dont want to let your Tank die but thats the fun bit, trying to balance healing others and your tank at the same time.

And I wouldn't use Flash heal because GH is just better. it heals for alot more, just because Flash is fast doesn't mean its better. i only use it when someone is below 10% and about to die. Eventually you can learn to pre-cast big heals before someone gets hit, say an ability that is incoming from the boss, start casting GH before hand so it lands as soon as someone gets hit with it. Its how we used to have to heal in Vanilla because most mob abilities would 1-2 shot people.

Just remember as a general rule of being a healer in a raid, especially 25 man, you should always be healing something unless mana is an issue.

[Cellery]

FH = 21.5k healing, 1.3s cast time, 5765 mana = 16.5k hps, 3.73 hpm
GH = 29k healing, 2.1s cast time, 5559 mana = 13.8k hps, 5.22 hpm

Greater heal is less throughput but more mana efficient. My measurements were taken based on my personal healing amounts unbuffed, no BT, 3 stacks of grace for both measurements.

Both spells work with Strength of Soul and I find that PW:S--> FH/FH/FH --> PW:S offers incredible throughput, albeit at the cost of efficiency. I also find that I personally have a harder time predictively healing with Greater Heal because of the longer cast time--I have a lot more over healing with it. I'm not saying everybody can afford to Flash Heal all the time, but it IS higher throughput for when your tank is taking a lot of dmg.

[IssuesX]

After looking at your WOL, I see a few problems with your spell choices. The data I am using is from the Shannox Kill.

The first obviously being that it is only counting 20 PW:S for a 1:48 uptime. You can throw PW:S on each tank with 95% certainty that you will gain a majority of that mana back due to Rapture. Additionally, only 19 Penance uses on that fight which is quite low in my experience. My tank healing rotation is keeping PW:S up after every cooldown, penance when off cooldown and needed, then back to the holy fire/smite rotation. Use flash heal if the tank is going down at a rapid rate, otherwise I try to use an Inner Focus + Greater Heal combo to catch back up.

Dropping PW:S on additional tanks is key as well as it is quick and easy to do, not mana intensive, and can really make a difference over the course of a long fight.

To summarize, I would work on establishing a set rotation for tank healing and watch your Shield uptime much more closely. But, back to one of the previous players who responded to you, with that amount of healers sniping and throwing out AOE heals, it is going to be tough to match their healing output in a 25-Man setting.

[Milkshake86]

Hello everyone. So, I've recently begun raiding with a 25 man guild. 25's are a brand new thing for me, in fact, being a healer in a raid at all is. This character, while being my "main" has always been running dungeons/questing rather then healing raids. But now I wanna HOWEVER, I am having some issues. In last night's raid, we had 17 attempts on Shannox, 13 of which were heroic, and we downed Rhyolith and Occu'thar. Healing was a major problem, and I was lowest on the HPS charts. By alot. I'm severely undergeared compared to the other healers, but with a margin this large, I think it was user error. Can I get any pointers?

(I have armory and WoL for last night but I can't post links yet)



Links put in. Thank you, Wuga. ~ Ultima

Ill contact you personally to give u some assistance after reviewing your logs however, 9minutes on shannox is quite long 5 is the overall time it should take 25m H shannox to be killed give or take 30-40seconds. This directly implies a possible dps issue, however in heroic some things are not healable like 30+ stack rageface. Then again looking at your spec gives me the heebie jeebies. Inc priv message.