The way it looks to see yourself jumping up the healing meters after a well time archanjel+spirit shell is worth having to chuck a few smites out. Especially when you have people telling you Disc currently sucks :P
The way it looks to see yourself jumping up the healing meters after a well time archanjel+spirit shell is worth having to chuck a few smites out. Especially when you have people telling you Disc currently sucks :P
Smiting is not MANDATORY, you could go the lazy route and just build your stacks up with HF which is only 1 gcd. Some top ranking disc priests sometimes don't even smite at all, it's all up to you, but it's kind of stupid if you decide NOT to at least build your stacks up slowly.
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Why do you think it is mandatory? Because they made it a base talent for disc? You can play however you want to play, they just made it so that you can take the decision making out of the equation and just play in whatever way that makes you happy.
That being said, there's a lot to be said for the extra damage you can put out, not to mention the easy heals. And... it's pretty fun. Just remember to keep your rapture going and you'll be fine.
i mean, if you don't want to min/max your priest and play it to the best of its abilities then no you don't have to smite ever.
The important part of the Atonement functionality that you'll need to care about is Archangel, and a +25% healing cooldown is very nice. You can stack it with instant cast holy fires and pop your big CD for a large incoming damage phase.
If you're looking to spam two spells (PoH/PWS) for optimal performance, then no, you cant do that and that's definitely a good thing.
Then again, if you were gemming/stacking hardcore mastery in Cata then you weren't playing optimally anyway so not smiting might not be a big deal for you. But if you want to mastery stack and cruise to top HPS just via the nature of absorbs without regard for any other spell, then no you can't do that. Now you'll have to exercise some skill in spell selection to be effective.
i think there is some misunderstanding and mixing smite-healing with archangel.
while archangel buff is awesome and worth using, you can stack it by just hitting instant holy fire macro once in a while.
you dont have to smite all the time, you dont have to use smite at all.
if you only going to do 5mana nd lfr you dont have to use archangel at all and its still doable
No Atonement is not the only way but it makes sense in some situations.
If you really can't stand smiting or using Holy Fire, than don't - it won't affect your healing too much unless you're trying to progress-raid. But it just feels good beating an Enragetimer by just a few seconds and looking at recount reveals you have done 5 mio damage (or whatever) while still healing your group but maybe that's just me
Furthermore, I have to admit i had a hard time to manage my mana well until the recent Hotfixes but now i find Disc more fun than ever. Also because the healing style is so different and as Castalya mentioned a well-timed Archangel+Spirit Shell is absolutely awesome and will save your raid numerous times, because there are many bosses where you precisely predict when a huge amount of raid damage is coming in.
If you love absorbs you will adore spirit shell.
Last edited by Aldur; 2012-11-23 at 02:07 PM.
You can avoid using atonement during the fight but you must at least always have x5 Evangelism ready on Archangel's cooldown.