Disc priest for hm, Crit or mastery?

[Deleted]

Hi
We cleaned normal mode+ 2 hm
Tonight we're going on garaj'al hm
We'll be 3 healers but i'm going to smite a lot to beat the enrage timer
Anyway, for hm, is crit better than mastery?

For the moment i always put mastery first, after intel and spirit of course, but i think in Hm crit is going to shine
Do you think a full spirit/crit reforge is good, or should i remain mastery?

I ranked wol in all 4 bosses of terasse+ 3 or 4 of HoF with mastery, but for specific fights like garaj'al hm, is crit better?

Thank you for your help!!

[mily]

You should go full mastery, no question about it. Crit is ruined and way too expensive in MOP. Plus Inner focus now works with SS.

[ramennoodleking]

If you are going smite dps for garajal then go haste/crit over mastery. It will also help you potentially get more healing off in the spirit world, aiding your dps.

Otherwise, for plain Jane healing, mastery.

[Maleric]

If your guild's plan relies on the disc priest being geared for Smite DPS, it is probably a bad plan. Gearing for Smite DPS won't do much to increase your DPS in comparison to the DPS increases that actual DPS players can get from improving their play. And it's a pretty big HPS loss, since it almost reverses your stat priorities from actual healing.

In regard to stat priority, go for either mastery > haste > crit or mastery > haste = crit. Don't gear for crit specifically, as it's less consistent and worse than the other stats, point for point. The only reason to prioritize it at all is that it stacks multiplicatively with your haste and mastery.

[ramennoodleking]

If your guild's plan relies on the disc priest being geared for Smite DPS, it is probably a bad plan. Gearing for Smite DPS won't do much to increase your DPS in comparison to the DPS increases that actual DPS players can get from improving their play. And it's a pretty big HPS loss, since it almost reverses your stat priorities from actual healing.

In regard to stat priority, go for either mastery > haste > crit or mastery > haste = crit. Don't gear for crit specifically, as it's less consistent and worse than the other stats, point for point. The only reason to prioritize it at all is that it stacks multiplicatively with your haste and mastery.

It's actually a sound strat for 10s, it can be three healed as it is, but if you're tight up to the enrage the third healer serves as a dps pad that helps buffer voodoo doll rng that can bone a two heal setup. I served this role in our first kills, and it really helped. Extra set of healing CDs (pain sup, barrier), good healing, and an additional supply of dps. I think in the first minute of the fight me and my resto Druid buddy supply something like 160,000 dps. Sure, this was like a month ago, but if his guild is working on the fight for the first time the 2.5 heal setup works.

[Deleted]

I would strongly recommend considering 2 healing, especially if the 2 you can have heal are strong, capable players. That said, having a disc smite a lot and throwing prom/shields around in between all the atonement heals is a very common and successful strategy.

[Zolvolt]

While I did this in 25m, when we first killed it I went a haste/crit build and did atonement heals the entire time and was never sent down. My entire goal was to do as much damage as a I can without running out of mana and while keeping atonement heals up. I also used spirit shell on the tank and voo doo targets when they needed it.

[Irielle]

Haste>Crit>Mastery>Spirit for smite spec Garajal. DPS trinkets as well. There isnt a need to worry over regen you will get plenty in the portal.

[ramennoodleking]

Mastery all the way. Crit maybe for high smite healing. I usually only smite the 5 stacks needed for Arch, then I stop. Once the CD is getting close to up again, I'll do the 5 stacks, then rinse and repeat. I hardly ever just sit there and smite the majority of the time.

His original post speaks specifically of smite dps on garajal, which is a common strategy. In that case haste/crit are the way to go for that boss. All others, sure, mastery.

[Ariahna]

As others have said, that actually read your question, on a fight like Gara'jal where you are going to be DPSing the majority of the fight (at least how most guilds use their disc priest when they are progressing on this encounter) crit and haste are more valuable. Also you may want to consider swapping to int food and flask IF you are in the rotation to go down, if you are not in the healer rotation to go down then stick with spirit food and flask. Good luck.

[snaxattax]

10 man smite healing just go for haste/crit. it's a very viable strat for 10 mans, especially if you're running a DK tank, who will desperately need the extra painsup/barrier to keep from getting destroyed.

[Dorfie]

What about for 10 man Disc in general? Currently I'm 9/16 HM and I've been rolling with heavy mastery for a while, but I find myself smite healing A TONNE since the 40 yard range buff. Would Crit > Haste > Mastery, or at least Crit > Mastery > Haste work better? I find it's really easy to cap spirit shells on 2 groups in 10 man, so maybe that extra mastery isn't being put to good use (although I guess SS scales with crit as well).

[snaxattax]

mastery is still OP until they nerf spirit shell. the only reason to go full haste/crit to smite heal on an enrage/gearcheck fight is to get that extra 2-3% dps out. if you wanted to tweak your gear, assuming you can max out spirit shell otherwise, for slightly more damage i would go for haste just for consistency reasons.

[ramennoodleking]

mastery is still OP until they nerf spirit shell. the only reason to go full haste/crit to smite heal on an enrage/gearcheck fight is to get that extra 2-3% dps out. if you wanted to tweak your gear, assuming you can max out spirit shell otherwise, for slightly more damage i would go for haste just for consistency reasons.

Sure, but on peices that already have haste you would reforge mastery or excess spirit into crit.

[Syri277]

What about for 10 man Disc in general? Currently I'm 9/16 HM and I've been rolling with heavy mastery for a while, but I find myself smite healing A TONNE since the 40 yard range buff. Would Crit > Haste > Mastery, or at least Crit > Mastery > Haste work better? I find it's really easy to cap spirit shells on 2 groups in 10 man, so maybe that extra mastery isn't being put to good use (although I guess SS scales with crit as well).

you bring a very good point there! two poh are usually enough to cap spirit shell. I always find myself wondering what I should do With the rest of the spirit shell buff haha, I usually end up refreshing it on a group before it ends just so it lasts longer. I'm really tempted to try reforging some mast to crit now. do you have any certain value you wouldd recommend?

[Deleted]

It's actually a sound strat for 10s, it can be three healed as it is, but if you're tight up to the enrage the third healer serves as a dps pad that helps buffer voodoo doll rng that can bone a two heal setup. I served this role in our first kills, and it really helped. Extra set of healing CDs (pain sup, barrier), good healing, and an additional supply of dps. I think in the first minute of the fight me and my resto Druid buddy supply something like 160,000 dps. Sure, this was like a month ago, but if his guild is working on the fight for the first time the 2.5 heal setup works.

A bit off topic but voodoo doll rng can be reduced by a huge factor by simply using better setups for totems from the start. This way it is possible to "guess" which people are going to be dolls next time, thus, leading to almost non-existent rng. Like this it is easily done with 2 healers and 1 off spec healer to top one time it happens that both of your healers cannot go to spirit world. Hope this helps a bit.

We had lots of problems at start with 2 healers due to not being able to heal spirit world but when we figured this out it was really really easy.

This is a good example where people tend to blame rng when, however, it is just bad playing like it was for us at the beginning. Of course there can be really bad situations sometimes, but usually 1-2 players in spirit world can be saved (say LoH or something similar) and then ress the last one. However, in this fight you never wipe to rng but just plain bad playing.

EDIT: With off spec healer I mean something that every comp has e.g. retri pala, boomkin, shadow priest, ele shaman...

[Deleted]

Since my raid team 3-heals most bosses, I go haste > crit > mastery and mostly do atonement healing. I keep my spirit at 9k and use a spirit flask whenever I have to actually heal at some point, int flask for pure smiting. Works pretty well for us. Going shadow only seems to be about a 25k dps increase anyway, even after reforging down to hitcap. But maybe I'm just bad at playing shadow.