Switched to disc, question for 25h thok

[Drsolders]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...tlock/advanced

I want to note this is my OS, so some pieces are rough (ie: the flex trinket, a hit ring which is still better than the lfr one I had)

On heroic thok I noticed I couldn't get a full penance off between screeches once it capped.

Is it worth sacrificing some mastery for haste so I can get them off faster?

Sorry if it seems like a stupid question but I am still learning some things for disc since I just switched from shadow.

[Thirteen]

I don't play disc, but why not just clip it? You're probably much better off sticking with crit/mastery. I'd consider switching to the DPS cloak too. Or avoid casting it altogether when the interrupts start at short intervals and stick to PW:S/Divine Star.

[Drsolders]

I don't play disc, but why not just clip it? You're probably much better off sticking with crit/mastery. I'd consider switching to the DPS cloak too. Or avoid casting it altogether when the interrupts start at short intervals and stick to PW:S/Divine Star.

I guess I could clip it, just was using it to help our solo tank be kept up. That would prob work well, thanks for the help!

[Nestar]

Remember you can use borrowed time to shorten the cast duration for penance as well. Ill have to do the math here quick but if I recall it wasn't very much haste required to fit a penance in between interrupts. (obviously takes some good timing too).

Edit: You should be able to fit it inside Screech's even without.

Penance with no haste is 2 second duration. With no haste on gear but borrowed time and spell haste buffs its a 1.656 sec cast. Bloodlust on top of that is a 1.27 sec cast.

Thok's screeches have a 1 second cd past 8 stacks and a 1.5 second cast meaning you have 2.5 seconds between interrupts.

[MDWiemann]

I will walk you through how I do it, have some top 200 parses. Stick with crit>mastery>spirit>haste, I will assume you have at least 1 resto shaman in there for mana tide.

At pull, I open as usual, penance, holy fire, smite till 5 stacks for AA. Keep smiting until the first screech.
Screech 1: pop AA and divine star, start casting spirit shell, with lust you should be able to shell all 5 groups.
Screech 2: choice of either atonement (my preference) or get a few more prayer of healings off for shields
Screech 3: divine star on CD, holy fire on CD, once screeches start picking up to where you cannot get a penance off just start shield spamming, yes, shield spamming.

your resto druids, shamans and pallys will heal everyone to full with your divine star, just spam shields until your raid starts rolling aura masteries.

during aura mastery spam prayer of healing

when the boss transitions after first person gets targeted do mana hymn and have resto sham drop mana tide, this will almost top you off on mana, and you can attonement heal until you repeat phase 1 again.

TLDR heal as normal until you cannot cast, then shield spam. depending on gear you will be at 4-500k hps easily

[Tehterokkar]

You can fit a Penance easily within a screech with raid haste + random haste from gear(assuming you are not full BiS).

[Deleted]

Even in full bis you can fit 1 penance in, just start casting it the moment the previous screech ended and it's fine.

[Deleted]

Don't forget to enchant your boots!

[Deleted]

I second what MDWiemann suggested.

Atonement -> Shield -> AA -> Divine Star -> SSx5 -> Divine Star -> Shield Spam with Holy Fire on CD for AA (use it as soon as it is available agin) and DS on CD.

When the aura masteries are underway if you've SSed early enough it will be off CD, so you may be able to get off another set to tide over until the stack. Aura masteries might not give you full SS coverage for the second, so remember you have access to Inner Focus to get off the last 1 or 2 PoHs during SS. I have also experimented using my second SS on more shield spam with the 4 set, which seemed to produce similar results - remember though that shield spam is hard on your mana.

I really to impress what s/he said about the mana CDs immediately - if you do a short P2 it's not quite as bad in some ways, but from the 2nd screech phase with the shield spamming and mass dispels it's going to be absolutely BRUTAL on your mana - it's imperative that you have enough mana for the 3rd screech phase. I have found myself so low that I was unable to use my barrier on 3rd screech phase and it was Not.Good.

Disc is the healer (With the possible exception of resto druid) who is going to have the most mana problems on this fight, mainly due to the spamming of expensive spells, and the responsibility to be doing mass dispels, so make sure you call out or organise the mana CDs available in your raid; remember there are:
Hymns of Hope from Shadow, Disc or Holy priests on a 6m CD.
Mana tides from resto shamans on a 3 minute CD.
Innervates from druids (Though a fat lot of good they are).

Mana tides should be used at the end of each screech phase or wherever they come off CD and depending on the number of priests, it might be worth staggering them i.e. 2 after first and another after the 2nd or something. Running out of mana during a screech phase is not fun, so try to keep a moderate amount of regen going on.

[Dracodraco]

Unless you're going for whoring HPS, that is not exactly a great way to go about it Deleze. Up untill the fifth roar, the healing is extremely easy to manage (because of the huge gap between each roar), which means going atonement->shield->AA (should be AA->shield, by the way, as shield benefits from AA)->divine star will see you casting your first divine star before the first roar. That means the 5x spirit shells will end up covering the 2/3 roars, both of which are irrelevant (especially as you get divine star for the second roar aswell as there's ~15 seconds between). You waste a decent amount of mana getting spirit shells up for virtually no gain.
Also, your aura masteries should start chaining when thok goes on to his 5th stack. 5-30, there's the same time between each, so starting early will let you use the masteries during bats in the next phase, and let your casters have longer uninterrupted dps time. This means that spirit shell should be used with the masteries at 5+ stacks, which you wouldn't be able to if you waste it at the start.

Also, disc having mana problems on this fight? Are you insane? Do you not manage your mana? Fiend at around 5 stacks (when you start to cast spirit shells), you should stay at full mana for the duration of the fiend, and end P1 with about 70% mana, which you then can hymn up and fiend the next phase early on when you're mass dispelling/spamming shields again. Mana is *never* an issue for disc on this fight, there's simply too much downtime (chase-phase) where you just atonement for it to be an issue.

[Drsolders]

I second what MDWiemann suggested.

Atonement -> Shield -> AA -> Divine Star -> SSx5 -> Divine Star -> Shield Spam with Holy Fire on CD for AA (use it as soon as it is available agin) and DS on CD.

When the aura masteries are underway if you've SSed early enough it will be off CD, so you may be able to get off another set to tide over until the stack. Aura masteries might not give you full SS coverage for the second, so remember you have access to Inner Focus to get off the last 1 or 2 PoHs during SS. I have also experimented using my second SS on more shield spam with the 4 set, which seemed to produce similar results - remember though that shield spam is hard on your mana.

I really to impress what s/he said about the mana CDs immediately - if you do a short P2 it's not quite as bad in some ways, but from the 2nd screech phase with the shield spamming and mass dispels it's going to be absolutely BRUTAL on your mana - it's imperative that you have enough mana for the 3rd screech phase. I have found myself so low that I was unable to use my barrier on 3rd screech phase and it was Not.Good.

Disc is the healer (With the possible exception of resto druid) who is going to have the most mana problems on this fight, mainly due to the spamming of expensive spells, and the responsibility to be doing mass dispels, so make sure you call out or organise the mana CDs available in your raid; remember there are:
Hymns of Hope from Shadow, Disc or Holy priests on a 6m CD.
Mana tides from resto shamans on a 3 minute CD.
Innervates from druids (Though a fat lot of good they are).

Mana tides should be used at the end of each screech phase or wherever they come off CD and depending on the number of priests, it might be worth staggering them i.e. 2 after first and another after the 2nd or something. Running out of mana during a screech phase is not fun, so try to keep a moderate amount of regen going on.

I actually had 0 mana issues... although I am at 9k spirit I may go down some because I ended the fight around 60%ish mana, during the 2nd door phase 1.

[Jimjam38]

I can't give you any hc thok specific advice since my guild has dead weight and we're only just up to spoils, but if you're new to disc and want to master the finer points of it, try to get Wave 30 Proving Grounds as it. It will be hard and you'll need to regem/reforge into spirit which you usually wouldn't, but you'll quickly learn to manage mana, inner focus, spirit shell, rapture, shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope, borrowed time, and basically every other mechanic and ability of disc. H2P has a great guide for the Proving Grounds. Getting wave 30 won't help with timing abilities between interrupts on thok, but it will get you used to every other disc mechanic so that when you actually do thok you can concentrate on the screeches and just have the rest come naturally

- - - Updated - - -

Also, you said you were shadow, yes? I assume that means you probably have the hc immerseus trinket? Draco or otherwise can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm believe the amp from the immerseus trink will be better for you than the flexi cleave trink, especially if its wf

[Deleted]

I actually had 0 mana issues... although I am at 9k spirit I may go down some because I ended the fight around 60%ish mana, during the 2nd door phase 1.

When I discuss mana issues I tend to mean "needing to be very careful of expenditure" as I run with 6.4kish spirit. - though perhaps I should be more clear in future - our shadow priests can rarely be bothered to mass dispel, nor hymn, so being careful is a must for me on that fight What I stated above works for me personally.

[Jimjam38]

When I discuss mana issues I tend to mean "needing to be very careful of expenditure" as I run with 6.4kish spirit. - though perhaps I should be more clear in future - our shadow priests can rarely be bothered to mass dispel, nor hymn, so being careful is a must for me on that fight What I stated above works for me personally.

I don't want to be 'that guy', but I'm gonna be 'that guy' anyway, and say that your shadow priests need to get their act together. How many raids would accept a warlock that couldn't be bothered to place his gateway or give out lockrocks, pallys that cbf using devo or BoP. Everyone is expected to use their utility when it's needed, for a shadow priest that's mass dispel and hymn of hope. And last i checked, raids weren't taking shadow priests on the merits of their tunnel vision single target dps. Sure hymn might be a minor dps loss, but mass dispel is completely negligible. I'd be on their case if I were you. Its a different story if its full farm, but there's still no need to place extra strain on the healers on a fight that is as healing intensive as thok

[Deleted]

I don't want to be 'that guy', but I'm gonna be 'that guy' anyway, and say that your shadow priests need to get their act together. How many raids would accept a warlock that couldn't be bothered to place his gateway or give out lockrocks, pallys that cbf using devo or BoP. Everyone is expected to use their utility when it's needed, for a shadow priest that's mass dispel and hymn of hope. And last i checked, raids weren't taking shadow priests on the merits of their tunnel vision single target dps. Sure hymn might be a minor dps loss, but mass dispel is completely negligible. I'd be on their case if I were you. Its a different story if its full farm, but there's still no need to place extra strain on the healers on a fight that is as healing intensive as thok

It is full farm.

[Dracodraco]

When I discuss mana issues I tend to mean "needing to be very careful of expenditure" as I run with 6.4kish spirit. - though perhaps I should be more clear in future - our shadow priests can rarely be bothered to mass dispel, nor hymn, so being careful is a must for me on that fight What I stated above works for me personally.

If you ever have mana issues as a disc running with the siegecrafter trinket, you need to work on your power word: solace usage and timing your fiend with hymn+ getting fiend out early so you can fit an extra in to the fight. I had to heal thok on my priest last reset with a disc trial (that's since been let go), and the difference was pretty extreme - he cast 4x shields and one fiend with no hymn and just kind of tried to keep his mana up, while I got my rapture on cooldown, double fiends, timed with hymn. He regenerated 200K mana. I regenerated 400K.

[MDWiemann]

If you ever have mana issues as a disc running with the siegecrafter trinket, you need to work on your power word: solace usage and timing your fiend with hymn+ getting fiend out early so you can fit an extra in to the fight. I had to heal thok on my priest last reset with a disc trial (that's since been let go), and the difference was pretty extreme - he cast 4x shields and one fiend with no hymn and just kind of tried to keep his mana up, while I got my rapture on cooldown, double fiends, timed with hymn. He regenerated 200K mana. I regenerated 400K.

First, I run 4-5k spirit max and have mana issues on every boss that I dont gen mana tides for.

Second, mindbender>solace. Significant dps boost and very similar mana return and easier coordination with humns

Third, Rapture on CD is only good pre-meta gem. If you always use a shield during meta gem you are garunteed free mana from it, as rapture is mana neutral now.

my opinions, take them or leave them, but there are reasons that I am doing 150-220k dps on fights while ranking top 200 with 5-6 healers.

[Dracodraco]

First, I run 4-5k spirit max and have mana issues on every boss that I dont gen mana tides for.

Second, mindbender>solace. Significant dps boost and very similar mana return and easier coordination with humns

Third, Rapture on CD is only good pre-meta gem. If you always use a shield during meta gem you are garunteed free mana from it, as rapture is mana neutral now.

my opinions, take them or leave them, but there are reasons that I am doing 150-220k dps on fights while ranking top 200 with 5-6 healers.

First, good. You should be running 4-5k. Although in close to BiS gear, that's impossible, you get too much .

Second, you're abso-fucking-lutely wrong. The difference between Mindbender and Solace used on-cooldown is the same as the difference between having HCWF siegecrafter trinket, and NOT having any regen trinket equipped. Please, do your homework before making false claims. I'll even give you some quick math as I've done it before:

Mindbender = 17.5% mana per usage, or 52.5K mana per 60, or 4375 Mp5.

Solace = 1% mana return per usage, and 3780-5400 mana saved per cast. Let's take the average of that, and say 4.6K mana saved per. Thus each cast of Solace = 7.6K Mana. 6 usages in a minute equals 45600 mana per 60, or 3800 Mp5. We are now seeing a -575 Mp5 difference between Solace/Mindbender.

Shadowfiend is however still available, at 9 hits of 3% mana (or 27% mana = 81K returned), thus giving us an additional 2250 Mp5. We are now seeing a 1.7K Mp5 plus in favor of Solace, between Solace and Mindbender.

There's also some HoH interaction that adds another ~100 Mp4 (as the mindbender hits for less, the shadowfiend gains more from being used during a hymn).


My HCWF Samophlange gives me approx .96 procs per minute. Let's make it 1 per, just to make it easy.
It returns 32600 spirit, which is then lowered by 1630 every .5 seconds untill zero, over ten seconds.
That means over 10 seconds it gives:
32600
30970
29340
27710
26080
24450
22820
21190
19560
17930
16300
14670
13040
11410
9780
8150
6520
4890
3260
1630
0
Spirit. Adding all the numbers together, we get:
342300 spirit, which is divided by 20 (due to the number of stacks), providing you with a neat 17115 average spirit for 10 seconds every minute (this works because spirit is a linear scale - it doesn't give a crap if you get 342K spirit in .5 second or 17K spirit over 10, the output will be the same).
Now that we have a number we can work with (17K spirit), it's pretty easy to calculate how much Mp5 it gives - 1K spirit equals about 616 mp5. So 17*616=10472 Mp5 during the proc, average.
Of course, there's 60 seconds in a minute, not 10, so divide by 6: 1745 Mp5 provided through the regen proc of the trinket.

That's even slightly overvalueing the trinket, mind you. So as you can see - Solace is clearly far stronger than Mindbender. It's basicly the difference between running a regen trinket and NOT running a regen trinket.
You are correct that mindbender gives more DPS, and if you truly are 6 healing the fights, you might aswell use it because you don't have to do any healing except smite anyway (and don't need any mana to shield the raid etc). We're usually 2-4 healing the different fights depending on our raid setup/absenses etc in my raid, which means I actually get to heal (read: Pre-shield the raid, react to dips in health with PW:S etc), not just stand there and atonement.


Third, do you understand how math works mate? Rapture is good on CD. The fact that you "gain" mana by using a shield during the meta gem is absolutely irrelevant. In fact, you gain LESS mana by forcing rapture procs during meta procs, because you sit on your rapture procs.

I'll put it extremely simple, and just assume one spell "inside" the meta gem and one outside, just to get the point across:

Let's say you have 200K mana out of 300K.
You cast a rapture-shield inside Meta gem. You get returned 14K mana afterwards, putting you at 214K. You then cast another shield, costing you 14K mana. This one does not have rapture. Your end result is 200K mana.

You cast a shield that doesn't trigger rapture inside meta gem. The shield, however, is free. After the meta proc, you cast a shield that then triggers rapture. Your lose 14K, then regain 14K mana. Your end result is 200K mana.

See how it doesn't matter if the proc is inside or outside? The fact that your mana pool goes up makes your brain think that you are "gaining" mana, while in reality, it's really the exact same thing that happens.
Of course, disc's best usage of the gem is lvl 90 talent+PW:S spam (because those are our fastest, most costly spells = highest benefit of free cost proc), so if you get a gem, get in there and throw some shields up.
But the fact that you think that holding on to your rapture procs untill you get a gem proc is... Dumb, to say the least. The way rapture works it's best used on CD, because a free cast is a free cast.
On the other hand, you WOULD lose mana if you were to cast Solace during a meta gem (because solace is a free spell, not a spell that returns its mana cost).


Also, last but not least, when you go "there are reasons that I am doing XX and YY on fights etc" you make it seem like I should know who you are. You have no signature telling me about you so I can't look you up, and you've linked no logs <.<. Might want to add either of those.

[Nestar]

His armory is http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...gheal/advanced

Logs
http://www.raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/...n/kimjongheal/


Top 200 ranks is a vast exaggeration. You have 1 currently, Its Malk at 171st with 444k HPS.


7128 Spirit is not 4-5k. Even with this "new math" you can't round that far.


As far as doing tons more damage while doing good healing, Not so much. My own ranks compared to you have a higher average on hps for thok and about 5-10k dps higher. I'm MS shadow so I only healed thok for our first couple kills when we needed it.

[Jimjam38]

I have seen Draco consistently make top 200 rankings on WoL and Warcraft logs over the last 6 months on almost every fight, well before i started posting here. As im sure you know, logs have expiration dates, and draco probably hasnt been raiding on his main so frequently these days, so many of his rankings have probably expired.

I know for a fact that he had the top ranking on iron jug not very long ago