Ask a priest: how much spirit do you need?

[langning]

While I respect high skill players/raids, I am NOT in top notch raid (currently at Malkorok HC), and frankly - majority of people are not. And for them chase for lowest spirit possible is NONSENSE.
By lowering your spirit you lower margin for error for whole raid. Raid will repeat the attempt only because you youre OOM more often that from low dmg from you.

Now the important part - I can talk only for 10 MAN, especially when 2 healing.
As you showed your 25man log I understand what you mean.
Definitely - 5 healing 25 and 2 healing 10man is totally different game. You may strive to be absolutely optimal, you have 4 other healers who will fill any gap. You greatly contribute by Divine aegis and PWS on whole raid and right you are.

Isn't it interesting how the atonement narrative has developed over the expansion? Comparing it to the previous expac, I don't particularly recall reading any dps-focused posts regarding atonement until late in Cataclysm. If memory serves it was around the time more guilds started to work on H Ultraxion and then later on the tendon burn for H Spine.

It was in t14 where posts started to appear here and on the battle.net forums where you had people emphasizing the importance of strictly healing via atonement and acting as the half healer, only doing "real" healing before or during peak raid damage of an encounter. As far as I am aware those posts came primarily from 10 man raiders. Raiding in 25 I was still very much of the mentality that I would only use atonement while building evangelism stacks for AA. I think you would also be hard pressed to find any 25 man disc priest doing much anything back then but spirit shell and PoH spam rotation.

All of that changed however when they removed auto-aegis from PoH. We didn't have much choice but to focus more on atonement with a ridiculously buffed HPS from penance they gave in compensation. Sometimes I seriously wonder what they were thinking with that given the large amount of tweets from Ghostcrawler regarding how they want to also encourage us to use penance as a directly heal. Particularly in contrast to the initial posts from him on the Beta forums around a year ago, we received such a large reaction to the QQ regarding 1 penance = 3 evangelism stack changing our rotation that they reverted it within a week. I was shocked by how recklessly they were making and undoing changes with what seemed only player feedback.

Anyway, I think this has got to be the first time in MoP that I have heard a 10 man disc priest arguing for stacking spirit. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your points, just commenting on how inconsistent it is with the rest of what I have been reading the last year.

[Deleted]

Maybe coz I am raid leader and therefore do not give a shit if I am last healer in skada, as long as raid lives. "Unfortunately", I still top the meters most of the time so co-healers do not believe it too much. And it gives me proof that margins we are discussing are smaller than most people think. If I am able to be like 26th best disc priest on WOL in some fight with totally screwed 18k spirit 2 mana trinket no-crit-all-mastery setup forgotten from Holy, It makes you think. "What is the cost of having extra Xk spirit buffer?" And you see it comes cheap. Actually the cheaper the lower your raid is. (were 9/14 HC currently with 3-4 raids per week, someone fighting Garrosh normal now rly should not listen to MIN SPI advices too much)

As for stacking spirit - I am not arguing for stacking spirit like maxing, I am arguing for "make sure youre not focusing only on non-stacking spirit". If you have too much spirit, It seldom wipes the raid. If you're too low on spirit, it tends to wipe the raid much more often. Do not be afraid your throughput will suck from this - If you suck noticeably, you really suck for completely different reasons.
Yes, maybe an advice usually not given in our "max-min" evironment, where even small margins are argued like they gave benefit as high as 50% or so.

Personally I start progress of unknown encounter with good buffer of extra spirit(mana trinkets). For first tries It may help live and learn a bit longer even though everyone stands in everything. Then I rip off some when more throughput is needed. More often it is not needed. Change mana trinket for throughput. Move my focus from raid leading to watching rapture/meta-gem proc. Things like this.

[jason1975]

And it gives me proof that margins we are discussing are smaller than most people think.

I just wanted to take a moment and support some of the things you're saying. I think a lot of players think HPS = DPS where 1-5% differences over the course of the encounter might add up to something. But that's not how healing works. There's this thing called overheal, and this thing called max player health. If the raid only requires X healing for the encounter, then any healing > X just isn't helpful (I'm aware this is a somewhat binary analysis that ignores burst healing, but again it's not tuned to the extent that a couple of % makes a difference). At best you're just sniping heals from your co-healers and driving up their overheals (something Disc does really well to the consternation of our fellow healers!).

There's a big difference between Player A stacking 24k Total Effective spirit and re-optimizing for a low spirit atonement build, and Player B who is sitting at 14K effective spirit who is killing themselves to get down to 12K. Player B might end up with slightly better output numbers, but they are doing so at the extreme cost of their flexibility and overall toolkit.

There is room for the 1/2 healers to optimize to the nth degree, as for them less spirit = more dps. But full healing Disc priests should not confuse themselves with these players.

[Deleted]

As for stacking spirit - I am not arguing for stacking spirit like maxing, I am arguing for "make sure youre not focusing only on non-stacking spirit". If you have too much spirit, It seldom wipes the raid. If you're too low on spirit, it tends to wipe the raid much more often.

I'm not arguing that every disc priest should drop to 5k spirit (although this is an interesting notion and certainly worth it for some guilds/fights), but I just wanted to point out that that argument is not entirely correct.

First let's start off by assuming that even with a low spirit build you will never let someone die just to save some mana because you're afraid that you'll go oom 2min later. So if someone dies you better be oom. This results in a very helpless feeling when you see someone dying which makes that occasion more memorable. The benefit of extra secondary stats (or intellect) is much harder to quantify because their benefit is not instantly recognizable. But you can imagine that at least some close to one-shot deaths in a progression run could have been prevented by an extra divine aegis that you didn't get due to running lower crit. Or that your heals being stronger in a high damage phase (think IJ hc) would have saved some of the people who died.

Also, don't forget that the benefit of extra dps is not only relevant for beating the enrage timers. A lot of fights have mechanics that reward higher raid dps (fewer garrotes in protectors, fewer swelling prides in Sha, faster burn phase in shamans and many more).

Ultimately I agree that having close to perfect play will improve someone's healing output much better than a different stat allocation would and that a decent mana buffer is a good thing to have for progression fights, but you can't discount the benefit of throughput stats.

[Zolvolt]

Disc priest says 8-10k spirit. Depending on how ham you have and if you have a resto shaman mana-tiding you.

THOUGH WHEN YOU GET ENOUGH GEAR ITS HARD TO FOLLOW THAT RULE. Even reforged out of spirit >.<

[appro]

Disc priest says 8-10k spirit. Depending on how ham you have and if you have a resto shaman mana-tiding you.

THOUGH WHEN YOU GET ENOUGH GEAR ITS HARD TO FOLLOW THAT RULE. Even reforged out of spirit >.<

This isn't particularly true, its not hard to use gear without spirit on it (crit/mastery).

[Spotnick]

Seems to me 12k is about the sweet spot. I was running 10k and had to flash spirit and use spirit food on Garrosh.. granted we 2 healed everything but still. Hopefully the Blackfuse trinket will help.

8-9k was more than enough on the early fights.. but on Garrosh, that was just not enough.

[appro]

I found 8k to be heaps on normal garrosh (during progression) with int food and flask. I found despite being such a long fight the downtime during transitions was enough to regen quite a bit of mana.

[HDPriest]

It probably means I wasn't using Archangel enough before the new 2pc, but has anyone noticed needing a touch more Spirit with it since it makes Atonement filler cost more? I thought I used it a lot before, but maybe I was holding on to it longer than I thought for the added throughput when things got hairy. Now I keep it on CD and (in 10man, 2healing with a Druid) have noticed more panicky "ocrap, come off CD Mindbender!" moments when I go less than 11K spirit. Maybe my raiders just take too much damage? Or I should go back to Solace? I used Solace almost exclusively before SoO, but have grown to love the buffed MB for the extra damage and (seemingly) more control over my manabar.

[Spotnick]

I found 8k to be heaps on normal garrosh (during progression) with int food and flask. I found despite being such a long fight the downtime during transitions was enough to regen quite a bit of mana.

You probably had Horridon's Last Grasp though? I never got it. IDK, seems to me tanks are draining my mana on garrosh and shield spam/cascade in phase 3 are also rough on the mana.. seems I'd be dry without 12k. I just reforged to 12k so I can use int flask/food (better alchemy bonus), we'll see how it goes next week.

[Deleted]

You probably had Horridon's Last Grasp though? I never got it. IDK, seems to me tanks are draining my mana on garrosh and shield spam/cascade in phase 3 are also rough on the mana.. seems I'd be dry without 12k. I just reforged to 12k so I can use int flask/food (better alchemy bonus), we'll see how it goes next week.

What is your raid strategy? Most of the time the raid is stacked and we only get 2 empowered whirling corruptions, I don't think cascade is worth it just for that. Divine star also makes it easier to keep ToF up (and is less mana intensive).

[Spotnick]

What is your raid strategy? Most of the time the raid is stacked and we only get 2 empowered whirling corruptions, I don't think cascade is worth it just for that. Divine star also makes it easier to keep ToF up (and is less mana intensive).

Well, I swapped to cascade because as soon as we get into phase 2 and there are adds in whirling corruptions we don't stay stacked when it happens, and quite frankly, while waiting for the weapon or MCs, there isn't really much healing to do, so seemed to me Cascade was the better option.

In last phase we stack at ranged for desecrated weapon, then run to melee for MCs, and we spread out when whirling corruption (unless there are adds), so cascade and pw:s spam seems like the only way to go. Nobody died really, but I don't see how I could do that with 8k spirit, I was happy every time mindbender was off CD.

Divine Star obviously would be better for several parts of the fights (transitions obviously), I also spam PW:S a lot in those once spirit shell is over. Didn't really heal on disc beside flex on those so far this tier so I'm still in learning curve mode, main healed on monk this tier.

But wouldn't be surprised our strat is wrong, it's an alt run, we're all used to 25 man strat.

[Deleted]

Well, I swapped to cascade because as soon as we get into phase 2 and there are adds in whirling corruptions we don't stay stacked when it happens, and quite frankly, while waiting for the weapon or MCs, there isn't really much healing to do, so seemed to me Cascade was the better option.

In last phase we stack at ranged for desecrated weapon, then run to melee for MCs, and we spread out when whirling corruption (unless there are adds), so cascade and pw:s spam seems like the only way to go. Nobody died really, but I don't see how I could do that with 8k spirit, I was happy every time mindbender was off CD.

Divine Star obviously would be better for several parts of the fights (transitions obviously), I also spam PW:S a lot in those once spirit shell is over. Didn't really heal on disc beside flex on those so far this tier so I'm still in learning curve mode, main healed on monk this tier.

But wouldn't be surprised our strat is wrong, it's an alt run, we're all used to 25 man strat.

You get empowered whirling corruption as soon as you get to phase 2? It might be that your dps is somewhat low and you're not handling transitions correctly. I think we got only 2 empowered whirling corruptions on our first kill (one in phase 2 and one in phase 3) and with more gear we usually only get 1 nowadays. But that's my experience on the main guild run, I can't say anything about flex/alt runs.

I was just surprised since there was another thread in this forum from someone who killed it on hc and he said that divine star would be his would be his talent of choice for healing. Although I understand that different things might work for different raids/strategies and I certainly don't blame you for running with 12k spirit especially if you have no regen trinkets.

[Dracodraco]

The reason every priest worth a damn uses Divine Star over Cascade on Garrosh for healing, is because of pre-aegis'ing/spirit shelling before the empowered whirl. You can build up huge +500K shields on everyone before the whirl even starts (and it only deals about that much dmg if you don't get hit). It's better at every other point of the fight too, but if you want to make it work for empowered whirl, there's no reason you can't.
Besides, if you HAD to pick a talent for dealing with whirls, Halo would be superior to Cascade either way. Far bigger return on damage/healing than cascade if positioned correct, and works well in the other parts of the fight too with a little smart play from the priest.

[Malania]

Between 8 and 9 for Disc
13-14K as Holy