Question about disc priest

[nicocba]

First, I need to clarify that I've never played a priest.

We have a disc priest on our group and he says that doesn't like to dps while he heal, currently we're progressing on H Iron Qon and probably can use a little bit more dps on first and last phase to reduce the fire damage, not asking for a lot of dps, probably 50k dps will be enough.

The question is, Is (very? moderately?) hard to dps while healing as disc? Will his healing be affected if he dps and heal? Is better for him to go holy if he doesn't want to dps?

Sorry for my english and thanks in advance.

[TirielWoW]

Atonement is a core part of a Disc Priest's performance in a raid. Atonement consists of using Smite, Holy Fire, and Offensive Penance to damage the boss, which procs healing on party members, as well as builds Evangelism stacks, which can then be consumed by using Archangel to boost all of the Priest's healing by 25% for 18 seconds (on a 30 second CD).

If your Disc Priest is not using Atonement, your Disc Priest is bad.

[Amerrol]

If your Disc Priest is not using Atonement, your Disc Priest is bad.

Even worse if you are a 10 man guild.

[Deleted]

hard to dps while healing as disc?

pretty easy

Will his healing be affected if he dps and heal

yes and over all in a positive way, like HeatherRae said, its one the core parts of disc

s better for him to go holy if he doesn't want to dps?

if he is really strict against smiting, yes i think he should go holy or some other heal classes ( except monk, there you'll have the same problem indirectly (you don't have to, but doing it sometimes could be very beneficial ))

[Lundmark]

Crit > all
Penance > Holy Fire > Smite

But yeah if your Disc won't use all the tools in the shed he should seek out another shed.

[Deleted]

I'm playing disc so I know what am I speaking about. And first and last phase is hard to heal by atonement. There is too much damage to only atonement heal through it. So he is right.

[nicocba]

I'm playing disc so I know what am I speaking about. And first and last phase is hard to heal by atonement. There is too much damage to only atonement heal through it. So he is right.

Actually, he doesn't dps in any fight, even those normal we have on farm. I know IQ can be very dependant on heals, specially first phase. It was curious about attonement because i've seen many disc doing great dps while healing.

Thanks for all the answers, i guess i'll talk to our RL and try to encourage the priest to try attonement

[Spotnick]

You know, it's stuff like this that really doesn't help the Ragnaros server reputation. I seriously wonder how you managed to get this far with a priest who doesn't know how to play his class. If he doesn't like to dps, have him play holy full time. Plus Iron Qon is easier as holy.

Atonement is what makes disc priest OP in 10 man.

But it's true that in the final phase of Iron Qon heroic, you have very limited usage for atonement, so I wouldn't count on his dps to fix your issues. But if you had logs, we could probably point problems.

[appro]

My main is disc. As others have said, if he's not doing some atonement damage he's playing the spec wrong.
It's easily worth a holy fire, a pennace and 3 smites for the 25% increased healing from archangel. If he's not using archangel then he doesn't understand his class at all as its a core component.

When my guild was progression with H Iron Qon it was necessary to atonement heal and use archangel during the 1st phase, its a major boost to healing.
During the last phase it is harder to have enough time to use atonement between fist smashes, but its still damn handy and something I did during prog. Using archangel is like using a small cooldown, getting the most out of it is vital to playing discipline in a progression guild.

[schwank05]

If he doesn't want to Atonement heal then he should be Holy, Granted my Disc is only an alt, but I leveled him purely as Disc and he has never been holy, nor have I ever cast Greater Heal on my priest. I just don't see they point in healing regular mode (Holy) if you are specced as Disc.

[nicocba]

You know, it's stuff like this that really doesn't help the Ragnaros server reputation. I seriously wonder how you managed to get this far with a priest who doesn't know how to play his class.

Actually, we've been trying to replace our healers for a long time, but we can't find any good healers. We got this far because out prot paladin can solo tank and heal better than our both healers, and our dps is good enough to kill the bosses. I have to agree that Ragnaros have a very bad reputation

I take logs for personal use, i like to improve on everything i can, I'm not the raid leader so probably the group wouldn't like me pointing out things on them, when I get to my place i'll upload the logs from monday, and maybe you can help us a little.

Thanks

[TirielWoW]

At the very least, he should be using Offensive Penance on CD during the last phase.

[nicocba]

Here are the logs, thanks again for the help

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/8y2gpsjhi4ndo7ld/

[appro]

Just checked your logs, you're only 2 healing?
3 heal this fight on 10m heroic through progression. we've cleared it a bunch of time and we're still 3 healing it.
You'll never get through final phase with 2 heals and that dps.

[Deleted]

I haven't played my priest in a long time, but the biggest reason to actually play disc is because of atonement. Tell him to learn to dps (it's really easy), not only it's very beneficial in progression fights it makes farm/easy content much more fun (and in those cases also makes your resto shamans/druids cry).

[Deleted]

In general yes he needs to use attonement and if he doesnt he isnt living up to disc potential.

Specifically about the fight in question, when it is his groups turn to stack he wont be attonment he will be spirit shelling, prayer or healing, shielding etc.
But when it is the other groups turn to stack its back to attonment spamming.
Last phase when the shield add is up it can be hard to attenment if you get bad luck with position but you have to deal with that as it comes.

Generally on all fights if you aren't spirit shelling then you should be attonmenting.