Discipline Priest Raiding Guide 5.2 Edition

[Amaxas]

Had the chance to look into the Incribed Bag of Hydra Spawn buff? It would be so sick if the absorbs benefited from mastery.

[Noradin]

What is this doing down here? There should be a disc guide for beginners at the front.

[Deleted]

Great threat! I have really enjoyed reading it and getting to know priest healing better!

One thing I still havn't figured out yet is if Inner Will should be up all the time (accept for SS capping). To me the 10% spell power increase from Inner Fire seems awesome. Is the lower mana cost from instant spells and less spell dmg taken really better?

---------- Post added 2013-04-16 at 12:10 AM ----------

Is that Weak Aura setup coming soon? As a newcomer to Priest raid healing I struggle to track my cooldowns properly!
Great threat!

[Kalmah]

Inner Will is very situational. You should be running Inner Fire as your default.

[Arlee]

@Vamor - Not 100% sure if this is up to date but it should still be pretty helpful either way http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-CODE-INCLUDED

[fernis]

I have trouble keeping Power Word: Solace on cool down while in a boss fight since so much other stuff is going on. Is there something you guys do such as macro with another commonly used spell to help keep Power Word: Solace on cool down to realize the full mana regen benefits?

[Sabien]

Fernis I'm not at my pc atm but I'm pretty sure the macro goes something like this.

/castsequence [nochanneling:Penance] Smite
/cast Holy Fire

You can just spam that button and it will cast smite without clipping penance and then cast holy fire (or solace) when it is off cd. It will then go back to spamming smite until holy fire comes off cd again.

[Kalmah]

I have trouble keeping Power Word: Solace on cool down while in a boss fight since so much other stuff is going on. Is there something you guys do such as macro with another commonly used spell to help keep Power Word: Solace on cool down to realize the full mana regen benefits?

Make sure you see the cooldown of your spells. After that it's just practice to be honest.

[Vilbu]

I have trouble keeping Power Word: Solace on cool down while in a boss fight since so much other stuff is going on. Is there something you guys do such as macro with another commonly used spell to help keep Power Word: Solace on cool down to realize the full mana regen benefits?

You might want to change solace for mindbender if you struggle with the cd. 1 global and in most scenarios you don't even notice the difference in mana. I am swapping between bender and solace quite a lot depending on the fight. Sometimes you just can't afford wasting a global every 10 sec for a solace.

[Deleted]

Fernis I'm not at my pc atm but I'm pretty sure the macro goes something like this.

/castsequence [nochanneling:Penance] Smite
/cast Holy Fire

You can just spam that button and it will cast smite without clipping penance and then cast holy fire (or solace) when it is off cd. It will then go back to spamming smite until holy fire comes off cd again.

I doubt that works. What's preventing it from just casting smite ad infinitum? That kind of "cast sequence" macro has been broken since TBC times afaik.

[Sabien]

I doubt that works. What's preventing it from just casting smite ad infinitum? That kind of "cast sequence" macro has been broken since TBC times afaik.

#showtooltip Smite
/castsequence [target=target, harm] [target=targettarget] [nochanneling:Penance] Smite
/cast [target=target, harm] [target=targettarget] Holy Fire

That is the macro I currently use and it works perfect as described in my original post.

[Noradin]

That seems a bit odd, certainly not working like it should from the describtion of the commands used - which would be only ever casting Smite and throwing error messages or ignoring the Holy Fire part. (Since Holy Fire is not an usable item but a spell.)
On another note: does it allow to clip Penance with Holy Fire? Looks like it would. In fact it looks like it should only ever attempt to cast Holy Fire when you are channeling Penance.

[Sabien]

That seems a bit odd, certainly not working like it should from the describtion of the commands used - which would be only ever casting Smite and throwing error messages or ignoring the Holy Fire part. (Since Holy Fire is not an usable item but a spell.)
On another note: does it allow to clip Penance with Holy Fire? Looks like it would. In fact it looks like it should only ever attempt to cast Holy Fire when you are channeling Penance.

Well I dont know what to say, maybe you need to relook at your macro writing.

To address Holy Fire clipping Penance. The macro will always try to cast smite before holy fire therefore the logic would suggest that the nochannel part would stop it in its tracks.

As I have said twice now it is spammable to cast smite and holy fire when it is off cooldown. I would probably say it would be faster than you could cast holy fire right after a smite without the macro. I've tried, although I'm in Australia with 200ms ping so that might just the reason.

It pretty clearly say cast in front of holy fire so not sure where you got the idea it was dealt with as an item?

[hatchetman240]

#showtooltip Smite
/castsequence [target=target, harm] [target=targettarget] [nochanneling:Penance] Smite
/cast [target=target, harm] [target=targettarget] Holy Fire

That is the macro I currently use and it works perfect as described in my original post.

I just tested this and it appears to actually work, which is blowing my mind right now, except for the fact it clips penance. I removed the harm/target stuff and added the nochannel rule for penance. Also I noticed the holy fire portion worked, even though I specced for Power Word: Solace (and you should try it too, if you haven't, because it's better mana if you use it on CD)

This never missed a PW: Solace CD, and never clipped a penance that I saw.

#showtooltip Smite
/castsequence [nochanneling:Penance] Smite
/cast [nochanneling:Penance] Power Word: Solace

I'll test more tonight.

EDIT: I just saw the flaw, it requires you to cast one smite prior to your HF/PW:Sol, which is technically not optimal for two reasons. One being you fail to get the 20% damage boost from the HF DOT if you glyphed, and second because this means you need to burn two GCDs to reach your PW:Sol which is a problem if you're trying to do some real healing and only are interested in getting your PW:Sol off for mana.

For my part, I'm always interested in saving bar space, but the Atonement rotation was already easy enough and consumed only a few spots anyway. It was still interesting to see this work, and I might implement it on other classes I have.

[Sabien]

I dont understand why people are surprised , lol

Also I would suggest leaving Holy Fire in rather than changing it to Power Word: Solace. This way you wont have to change it for fights like Horridon where mindbender makes the mechanics abit easier when youspec out of Solace. Solace tooltip actually says it replaces Holy Fire and that extends to mention of it in macroes.

[hatchetman240]

I'm shocked because rotation macros were largely removed from the game some time ago. Did I miss something with the smite casting before HF? Is that how it functions for you?

Also noted your comment about HF in macros, thank you.

[Sabien]

Yes that is how it functions. Its not perfect for the first cast since since the smite doesnt get the bonus damage from the target having holy fire but for a macro that means you never miss a cd I thought that was ok.

I have been using castsequence macros like this since the start of MOP.

[Deleted]

Surprised myself because I tried to macro it like that back in cata, and it wasn't working, the macro would always cast smite. Nowadays, I prefer using them independently due to the glyph/penance timing, but it does look odd.

[Noradin]

Well I dont know what to say, maybe you need to relook at your macro writing.

To address Holy Fire clipping Penance. The macro will always try to cast smite before holy fire therefore the logic would suggest that the nochannel part would stop it in its tracks.

As I have said twice now it is spammable to cast smite and holy fire when it is off cooldown. I would probably say it would be faster than you could cast holy fire right after a smite without the macro. I've tried, although I'm in Australia with 200ms ping so that might just the reason.

It pretty clearly say cast in front of holy fire so not sure where you got the idea it was dealt with as an item?

The "nochannel" part only concerns the command it is linked to, which is the "/castsequence" containing only smite. According to the guidelines and explanations blizzard published about those commands the "/cast" part should only ever be able to execute a spell if no other in that macro command tried to execute one before, which is only ever the case if all brackets in the castsequence command returned false.
Furthermore those brackets don't seem to do what you implied now that I have taken a second look at them. If you can harm your target it will cast smite whether you channel pennance or not, canneling it. Even if that target is friendly or does not exist it will attempt to cast smite at your target of target and throw a error message if there is none, again whether you are channeling pennance or not. Even if you got somehow past those two it would still try to cast smite whenever you are not channeling penance. You would have to include the nonchanneling part into both of those brackets to achieve the ends you hope for.

For your information, "/cast" and "/use" have been synonyms for some time and can be used interchangeably. Both will be ignored for most spells if you try to call them after already trying to call other spells, whether you succeded with those or not. Only spells like Inner Focus, and use effects of items will be called regardless.
While it is possible that there was an oversight with Solace I doupt there is one with Holy Fire which was around for a long time. If there is, then it is a bug that will most likely get fixed.
Such a bug would allow your macro to seem to work halfway, as in, it could maybe cast Holy Fire when Holy Fire is off CD if there is enough lag involved, but I don't exspect that to stay around as it something Blizzard took action to make impossible whenever a way to make it possible was found in the past.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 09:05 PM ----------

I dont understand why people are surprised , lol

Also I would suggest leaving Holy Fire in rather than changing it to Power Word: Solace. This way you wont have to change it for fights like Horridon where mindbender makes the mechanics abit easier when youspec out of Solace. Solace tooltip actually says it replaces Holy Fire and that extends to mention of it in macroes.

Yes this was added in a patch recently.

---------- Post added 2013-04-29 at 09:20 PM ----------

The way I would have tried this would have been:

#showtooltip Holy Fire
/castsequence [nochanneling,@target,harm][nochanneling,@targettarget,harm] reset=10 Holy Fire,Smite,Smite,Smite,Smite,Smite,Smite,Smite,Smite,Smite

This will always start with Holy Fire.
It will only cast if nothing is channeling. (Which means no Penance and no Hymne of Hope, we only have those two aside from specials that are part of the encoutnters or conjuring things with warlocks or portstones.)
It will first try to cast on the target if that can be harmed, then the target of your target if that can, if neither it will not do anything, not even stick some spell to your mouse or some stupid stuff like that.
It will try to cast Holy Fire again 10s later, which is hen its CD is up.
It always shows the tooltip of Holy Fire, you already know what Smite does, the only reason you want the tooltip is so you can find the button faster and to see when the CD of Holy Fire is up. So why show the tooltip and symbol of Smite? You could omit the tooltip entierely and it would change to Smite whenever Holy Fire is on CD, but it would show nothing when you have no target.
There are 10 spells in there since you can never ever cast more than those in 10s due to GCD limitations - so you won't run out.
This macro comforms to blizzards guidelines.

[Chimaera]

What is happening with that macro is that it is operating as if it is a Smite then Holy Fire cast sequence but because of the way it is structured it is resetting after each Holy Fire whether you are able to use Holy Fire or not, unlike a typical cast sequence. This is most likely the best way to put them both on the same bind outside of a keyboard macro that presses 2 buttons to activate them both in succession so Holy Fire is always cast first if possible, but is still inefficient on the whole.