[6.2.3] Discipline Priest Discussion

[Nurasu]

Haha I love the new name for PoH. 10/10

But how? I find that Disc uses way more mana than Holy, so how does one conserve mana, per se?

I mean, "CoW on tanks, spam PWS for raid damage, solace+penance on CD" is pretty much how I play Disc as well, and while it does have good HPM, it definitely runs out of steam a lot faster than Holy. And this guy was OOM at the start of phase 3 Imperator. (around 50%)

Yeah, what Draco explained is mostly what I meant by "utilizing CoW." When you're spamming that on the tanks, you're not spamming PW:S on the raid, slowing your mana consumption and letting more efficient heals take care of raid damage. Disc can't maintain shield spam like Holy can for renew, at least for longer fights like Imperator.

[Deleted]

Yeah, what Draco explained is mostly what I meant by "utilizing CoW." When you're spamming that on the tanks, you're not spamming PW:S on the raid, slowing your mana consumption and letting more efficient heals take care of raid damage. Disc can't maintain shield spam like Holy can for renew, at least for longer fights like Imperator.

Yup. If you spam shield you can definitely run oom if you're not careful. CoW is so nice for people that soak on ko'ragh.

[Thirteen]

I didn't say all the healer specs are balanced, but the fact they are more or less balanced. Like, barring overhealing fights and doing lower difficulties, all healers are comparable with each other.

I think what you meant to say is that some healers are more balanced and others are less balanced, cause that's how it actually is. And it's not about the goddamn absorbs. Yes, partially it is, of course it is, but not entirely. If it were, paladins would be right up there with discs. Even if fights where there's no overhealing, discs just obliterate most other healing classes to the point where it's not even funny.

Just look at top guilds and their healer compositions for their first mythic kills - Disc Priests are strong, but nowhere as strong as people make them out to be.

By all means, let's. And in doing so we'll notice that every single guild that killed Imperator had a disc priest. They're not overpowered. They're mandatory. And all the world first kills? They all had discs in them. And it wouldn't even bother me, if it wasn't literally an almost one-button spec. And it has been both on top, and one-click-win for years.

[Dracodraco]

I come bearing gifts. A log of 2x disc priests in the same mythic raid. Rejoice, for our victory is glorious.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...4&type=healing

Foot notes: Fuck warrior tanks here guys. Fuck'em. Do not want. Ew. We had to go 5x healers to make sure everything was stable. As you can see, I was mostly sticking to what comes natural for disc (PW:S/CoW spam), while Xart was backing up on the tanks and playing with mushrooms. Honestly, didn't have a ton of issues with 2x discs - sure, sometimes you wish you could get a PW:S off on the tank when he dips to 20%, but then you realise "well, the reason I can't is that he already has it", and by the time you finish thinking that, your CoW cast has finished anyway.

Also, we'd have had it on https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...50&end=5345053 this attempt about 15 pulls earlier, but our warrior tanks net decided to cut out. Apparantly, we healed him for 25 seconds, at which point our prot pally taunted, and proceeded to tank a enraged big add, the boss, for about ten seconds till big add died, but eventually, the rots caught up to him. But 2 minutes left, with 25M hp to burn on boss + big add #4 dead (AKA focus boss/spore shooters, ignore all else-territory) it was looking good. I shed a tear (cutoff when the pally died as we just kinda stopped doing stuff then).

Honestly, concidering all the padding you are able to do during the raidwide AOE that you don't actually need to heal up (1x raid CD is enough for everyone to survive as long as you actually stand in barrier etc), I'd say disc is doing more than well on bracken. If the tank damage is anything similiar on other tanks, then holy can go get lost <.<. Penance on the move to get to the living mushrooms and top it off worked sweet aswell.

[PosPosPos]

I think what you meant to say is that some healers are more balanced and others are less balanced, cause that's how it actually is. And it's not about the goddamn absorbs. Yes, partially it is, of course it is, but not entirely. If it were, paladins would be right up there with discs. Even if fights where there's no overhealing, discs just obliterate most other healing classes to the point where it's not even funny.


By all means, let's. And in doing so we'll notice that every single guild that killed Imperator had a disc priest. They're not overpowered. They're mandatory. And all the world first kills? They all had discs in them. And it wouldn't even bother me, if it wasn't literally an almost one-button spec. And it has been both on top, and one-click-win for years.

Imperator isn't the only boss that matters. Just because there's one fight that it's arguably mandatory to bring disc on doesn't make them overpowered.

Cherry-picking one or two fights doesn't prove anything. If anything, it only shows different healers have different strengths on each fight.

And lolno, any other healer class played by someone worth a damn should never lose in terms of raw throughput to a disc, just refer to Butcher.

P.S. Keep harping on pointless semantics(like more or less balanced versus more balanced and less balanced) if you think it helps your argument(or lack thereof).

[Nurasu]

I come bearing gifts. A log of 2x disc priests in the same mythic raid. Rejoice, for our victory is glorious.

<3

How did Xartt like Solace on that one? I was thinking about using Mindbender so I don't have to switch off the mushrooms as often (damn mushroom duty). It's interesting to me that you kept about the same HPS even with him casting way fewer shields.

[Dracodraco]

<3

How did Xartt like Solace on that one? I was thinking about using Mindbender so I don't have to switch off the mushrooms as often (damn mushroom duty). It's interesting to me that you kept about the same HPS even with him casting way fewer shields.

Can ask him tomorrow when he's around. Generally, this is a fight where you could just go mindbender and not give a damn - mana isn't tight at all (pretty sure I barely ever hit my candle-button after the first 10 or so wipes because fuck it, not needed), but that may just be because we had a decently high uptime on the blue shrooms (23.5%, I've seen plenty of kills with sub-10%). On the other hand, the tank damage is so damn intensive (on a warrior tank - looking at logs, if you have a DK/monk, you're in for an easy ride) that I wanted my archangel to have max uptime while spamming the tanks, so using solace gave more meaning anyway.
Xart and I kept pretty close all night this way - he was doing more raid spot-healing (spore shooters damage, helping on the mushrooms etc), while whenever we'd call "pop the mushroom up" I'd be the one healer who ignored the fuck out of the order and just kept spamming the tanks to make sure they didn't die. You'd be surprised how quickly they die if all healing just stops on them for even five seconds <.<.

I think a fair bit of his HPS did come from him casting PoH during the "rough" mushrooms, though - 1.5m healing from it, and 1.3m divine aegis more than me.

[Well]

I'd like to ask how I should go around healing Imperator hc. We reached him yesterday and we will be progressing on him today. What's the general strategy as disc? I healed him as holy in normal, seeing my gear is largely suited for holy. Highmaul just has no gear for Discipline ><

[Dracodraco]

I'd like to ask how I should go around healing Imperator hc. We reached him yesterday and we will be progressing on him today. What's the general strategy as disc? I healed him as holy in normal, seeing my gear is largely suited for holy. Highmaul just has no gear for Discipline ><

Heal the tanks, let the other, better suited raid healers heal up all the damage taken slowly. Spot-heal with shields if needed. During intermissions, pop power infusion and spam shield the raid to combat the waves of AOE from dying adds. Keep up archangel.

[Well]

With that said, my plan is this:

All phases: PW:S on wrath targets. PW:S on tanks on cd when they are tanking. CoW as filler.

During intermissions, pop power infusion and spam shield the raid to combat the waves of AOE from dying adds. Keep up archangel.

How often do I want to PW:S on P2,P3 & P4? Just spot heal as you suggested?

Also, we already have a holy pala on tank duty most, if not all, of the time. We are druid, priest, pala & shammy for healing.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, should I still use the Holy gear I have for Disc?

[Banzhe]

Imperator isn't the only boss that matters. Just because there's one fight that it's arguably mandatory to bring disc on doesn't make them overpowered.

Cherry-picking one or two fights doesn't prove anything. If anything, it only shows different healers have different strengths on each fight.

And lolno, any other healer class played by someone worth a damn should never lose in terms of raw throughput to a disc, just refer to Butcher.

P.S. Keep harping on pointless semantics(like more or less balanced versus more balanced and less balanced) if you think it helps your argument(or lack thereof).

A Discipline priest isn't mandatory at all on Imperator Heroic (Can't really see any boss in Highmaul where that would be the case, even in mythic).

The two reason's I stopped playing Disc is due to the lack of items specific for Disc's main stats in Highmaul, and because of the 1-button LK-style shield spam (It's just not fun, in fact it's directly mind numbing in my eyes)

I've played as Holy since Highmaul release, and we haven't had any issues on any of the bosses where we thought a Disc would be more suited.

[Thirteen]

And lolno, any other healer class played by someone worth a damn should never lose in terms of raw throughput to a disc, just refer to Butcher.

I'm sure you're right. It can't be the spec. It's the disc players that are better than all the other healers. And let's also ignore the fact that the only reason paladins are an top is because double beacon is retarded on this fight.

Imperator isn't the only boss that matters. Just because there's one fight that it's arguably mandatory to bring disc on doesn't make them overpowered.

Cherry-picking one or two fights doesn't prove anything. If anything, it only shows different healers have different strengths on each fight.

No, see, you're the one cherry picking fights. Kargath doesn't matter, Imperator doesn't matter, and all the ones in between where disc is on top don't matter either. If a spec is top 2 on every single fight in a raid, guess what - all it has are strengths. The log I linked above is heroic, but it applies to mythic too. There aren't enough parses for all the bosses, but all the fights with a half-decent amount of them (Kargath, Brackenspore, Twin Ogron) show disc as the clear winner. Imperator will very likely be the same, and disc is potentially only going to lose out on Butcher (to paladins; again, because of Beacon), and and Ko'ragh, which is essentially the Malkorok of this tier. And we all know that even they started off "okay", once everyone got some gear, disc was at the top on that fight too.

A Discipline priest isn't mandatory at all on Imperator Heroic (Can't really see any boss in Highmaul where that would be the case, even in mythic).

Not literally mandatory, no. But it obviously makes it so much easier to the point where it might as well be. Not that discs trivialize any encounter by any stretch of the word, it's just that given a choice of disc vs. anything else, disc is almost always the better choice.

If the tank damage is anything similiar on other tanks, then holy can go get lost <.<.

And there it is. I think that's 0-3 in the last three expansions? And honestly, I do get that it's pointless to even discuss it because disc is obviously not going to get nerfed... well, ever. But it's absurd that people playing it refuse to realize how overpowered it is. You're not holy or disc at this point. You're either disc or you're not. And just plain screw you if you're not.

[Jimjam38]

@Atonement I don't really like your statement "And now I leave you with this: The highest ranking healer on mythic butcher" because there are only 8 healer ranked in total. This could shift as soon as another guild downs the butcher. But with only 2 guilds having their logs ups, statements like this are really... taken with care.

Much more interesting is that Sarva did not take the Solace talent but rather went with mindbender. Both Mana resource graphs looks the same and it looks like Sarvas way works in a short fight like the butcher. And to be honest, it looks like it makes sense here. With 13 cast Holy Fire he would have gained 13*3200 mana = 41600mana where the mindbender generated 63.6k mana. Did someone do some calculations how long a fight needs for Solace to be better than mindbender? And with a good uptime of AA it looks like he did cast it on CD most of the fight but not towards the end?
Fastnik "only" casted 13 times Solace and with that had 20k less mana than Sarvas had in his kill.
Or was this a dmg decision? Sarva did around 200k more with mindbender than Fastniks shadowfiend

Please explain to me how the number of parses and the ranking of players can affect the amount of absorbs Sarva used?
I could have chosen any random disc priest in any fight from any difficulty. I chose Sarva because to have defeated mythic butcher at this time means that their skill and class knowledge is unquestionable; no one's going to say "oh, a good disc priest wouldn't use that much PWS".

As to the question of why mindbender: DPS. Mindbender does significantly more damage than shadowfiend. Sarva is also using glyph of reflective shield and SWP, indicating that dps was undoubtedly a major concern.

There's also another reason as to why they opted for Mindbender over Solace, and again, its not mana related.
If you look at the length of the fight: 4 min 15 sec, and the number of Holy Fire's used: 13, you can see that they weren't using HF on cooldown. If used perfectally on cooldown they could have gotten 25 Holy Fires (and hence why you're hypothesis about mindbender giving more mana in the short term is incorrect; the only case in which mindbender gives more mana (~10 attacks per summon, 0.3% mana per attack =~4800 mana per summon) is if the fight lasts less than 20 seconds, since 2 solaces beats mind bender, which will never happen, nor will you be able to spend enough mana in that time).
If you then look at the number of smites and offensive penances (/3 since it counts each tick as a cast apparently) then you can see that they weren't consistently getting a 5 stack archangel. In fact if you take a detailed look at the casts tab, you can see they're often using it with only 1-2 stacks.
Based on my own experience on just heroic butcher, I can only conclude that asides from dps, the other consideration was that they were GCD capped and frequently didnt have time to use solace or get a full stack of evangelism to make full use of Archangel. Specing Mindbender over Solace frees up a lot of GCD's if you can't make much use of AA anyway.
To further support this conclusion, Sarva also specced WoM over CoW. Again, this is something I also concluded during my own experience on heroic butcher, that CoW is too slow for tank healing on this fight, and that Disc is far better PWSing the tanks and cleave groups on cooldown, while letting the holy paladins do the real tank healing. And if you're not using CoW then WoM is an obvious choice.
I highly suspect this is also something they considered when choosing to take Reflective Shield over Weakened Soul glyph. It's likely that because of the number of people needing to be shielded, the 2 second reduction on weakened soul didn't matter too much, meanwhile because of the relative inflation of HP and thus healing, compared to DPS, reflective shield, even only on their self, did significant damage.

- - - Updated - - -

I come bearing gifts. A log of 2x disc priests in the same mythic raid. Rejoice, for our victory is glorious.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...4&type=healing

Foot notes: Fuck warrior tanks here guys. Fuck'em. Do not want. Ew. We had to go 5x healers to make sure everything was stable. As you can see, I was mostly sticking to what comes natural for disc (PW:S/CoW spam), while Xart was backing up on the tanks and playing with mushrooms. Honestly, didn't have a ton of issues with 2x discs - sure, sometimes you wish you could get a PW:S off on the tank when he dips to 20%, but then you realise "well, the reason I can't is that he already has it", and by the time you finish thinking that, your CoW cast has finished anyway.

Also, we'd have had it on https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...50&end=5345053 this attempt about 15 pulls earlier, but our warrior tanks net decided to cut out. Apparantly, we healed him for 25 seconds, at which point our prot pally taunted, and proceeded to tank a enraged big add, the boss, for about ten seconds till big add died, but eventually, the rots caught up to him. But 2 minutes left, with 25M hp to burn on boss + big add #4 dead (AKA focus boss/spore shooters, ignore all else-territory) it was looking good. I shed a tear (cutoff when the pally died as we just kinda stopped doing stuff then).

Honestly, concidering all the padding you are able to do during the raidwide AOE that you don't actually need to heal up (1x raid CD is enough for everyone to survive as long as you actually stand in barrier etc), I'd say disc is doing more than well on bracken. If the tank damage is anything similiar on other tanks, then holy can go get lost <.<. Penance on the move to get to the living mushrooms and top it off worked sweet aswell.

Good to see that multi disc isn't impossible. Wondering how you went about coordinating with the other disc? Did you allocate certain groups or just fuck it free for all and hope you don't waste clash much. In my experience healing with another disc who certainly isn't as skilled as you two, I can say that while it's not impossible, it's certainly less convenient. I opted for FFA because allocated groups turned into them doing almost nothing because I constantly had to save the people in their group because they're a slow turd of a player. Or me going holy... that happened a lot too...

I also reached the 'fuck warrior tanks' conclusion back in dungeons. Their lack of consistent self heals really synergizes poorly with disc. Druuids and Pallas i find are the smoothest. DK's are still spiky but much better than warriors because their self healing still works well with disc - and a very skilled Dk won't be very spiky anyway if they time their death strikes well. Monks are somewhere between DK's and Warriors. Although I havent had much experience with monks

- - - Updated - - -

A Discipline priest isn't mandatory at all on Imperator Heroic (Can't really see any boss in Highmaul where that would be the case, even in mythic).

The two reason's I stopped playing Disc is due to the lack of items specific for Disc's main stats in Highmaul, and because of the 1-button LK-style shield spam (It's just not fun, in fact it's directly mind numbing in my eyes)

I've played as Holy since Highmaul release, and we haven't had any issues on any of the bosses where we thought a Disc would be more suited.

Highmaul just has no gear for Discipline ><

Multistrike isn't as bad as people think. For pure absorbs (PWS, COW) its exactly the same as crit. Crit only pulls ahead when you start using actual heals, because of the Mastery-DA interaction. Considering the majority of disc priests are above 60% from PWS and CoW, multistrike isn't so bad. It's still frustrating, because we're never going to be purely PWS/COW absorbs, so crit is always going to be ahead, but it's not a case of "guess im going holy with all this multistrike".
Haste is also good enough for throughput (theoretically the strongest with BT) that we don't need to avoid it, but it will take it's toll on your mana. The only thing I'd say to avoid is versatility. There is mastery available on almost every item in highmaul, and the few that dont have any mastery have a Crit/Multi option which is good enough.

- - - Updated - - -

And there it is. I think that's 0-3 in the last three expansions? And honestly, I do get that it's pointless to even discuss it because disc is obviously not going to get nerfed... well, ever. But it's absurd that people playing it refuse to realize how overpowered it is. You're not holy or disc at this point. You're either disc or you're not. And just plain screw you if you're not.

Stop your whining, you'd think you're a 12yr old who mained a resto druid. Do you think we asked blizzard to make us overpowered, for the 3rd xpac in a row, because we just love other healer's tears? Do you think we like 1 button spam? Do you need me to recount how in every other xpac the strength of disc is the result of abysmal design during the beta and subsequently retarded hotfixes? Do you need to go back to the start of this thread and discover how the majority of the contributers spent months and months debating disc's viability in the beta, holding our breaths every single build to see if they would address our extremely bad design and seriously bad throughput, and then see our outrage as they did so through a passive buff to all healing and even more buffs to PWS, while nerfing anything else we might have been trying to make use of? Do you think any of us thought it was a good idea for PWS to do almost 600% spell power, and then get another 20% buff?

There's only a few people here trying to defend disc's strength, and you decide we all refuse to acknowledge it's overpowered? Jump the fucking gun some more, is there anything else you'd like PosPosPos et al to say on my behalf and everyone else's behalf, because apparently you decided they speak for the entire fucking community?

And holy shit, lets jump to more conclusions about what's mandatory when the majority of guilds have havent even stepped into mythic yet. Paragon got their world first a few days ago and its its GG holy cant be played because paragon and the few other guilds who have gotten there had a disc priest? I'm not saying you're wrong, because you're probably not - every day I jump on mmochamp's front page expecting to see nerfs to PWS - but it's just a bit early to be whining so loudly.

[Bazylov]

Is it worth using CoW on imperator hc? My guild is on him now, but after 20 wipes i dont really see it useful. I cna only cast it in p1-2 when healing is easy anyway. I switched to WoM only on this fight and imo its better becasue theres much more raid dmg than tank dmg. Only bad thing is that PoM heal isnt very high, its doing about 5% of my total healing (where CoW was doing 9-10%) but at least its raid heal, not tank one.

My logs from last raid:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ling&source=17

Any tips what i can do better? We are dying in last phase and it just feel like we lack healing. Are you guys using 5stacks aa+poh? It heals so good (on melee group after nova) but its quite expensive. Also Im using cascade almost on cd, becasue after p2 most of raid is not full health anyway. Should I stop doing that?

[Deleted]

With that said, my plan is this:

All phases: PW:S on wrath targets. PW:S on tanks on cd when they are tanking. CoW as filler.

How often do I want to PW:S on P2,P3 & P4? Just spot heal as you suggested?

Also, we already have a holy pala on tank duty most, if not all, of the time. We are druid, priest, pala & shammy for healing.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, should I still use the Holy gear I have for Disc?

I auctually go WoM on that fight, mainly cause we also got a pala healer but also cause i dont see myself needing to/time too cast CoW alot. Only place i saw it usefull was with the big melee add where tank takes big damage, but we sorted that with tight single target cds.

Also keep archangel up like Draco said and EAA+PoH on aberration and aoe phases when you got the mana to spend it on (and most likely after/between spamming Pw:s) Save barrier for the intermission add phases. Like you said Pw:s the branded and spot heal with it. At least this is how i do it and it works really well.

About using holy gear for disc. Im not sure how well that works out. If you mainly got multi + haste then you be lacking alot mastery to power up those shields you are using literally all the time.

Any tips what i can do better? We are dying in last phase and it just feel like we lack healing. Are you guys using 5stacks aa+poh? It heals so good (on melee group after nova) but its quite expensive. Also Im using cascade almost on cd, becasue after p2 most of raid is not full health anyway. Should I stop doing that?

Im not expert log reader so i wont try to say if healers are doing it wrong or not. You look like you are doing fine and cascade should be cast everytime there is people to heal (pre and durning damage). But the last phase is much about position and raid cooldowns. We are stuck there right now aswell, but its getting better.

Rest read above. PoH is expensive but very good coupled with EAA, if your mana is fine for it every now and then, use it. Also depense on how much spirit and regen gear/trinkets you got. I don´t have any mana problems unless people take to much damage that could be avoided.

[Deleted]

And honestly, I do get that it's pointless to even discuss it because disc is obviously not going to get nerfed... well, ever. But it's absurd that people playing it refuse to realize how overpowered it is. You're not holy or disc at this point. You're either disc or you're not. And just plain screw you if you're not.

Nope, not anywhere near as overpowered as it was in SoO once the gear inflation started. A nerf to PW:S is definitely needed and healing needs to be redistributed into other areas such as PoM, L90, HN and Atonement.

However, the Discipline vs Holy argument and preference for Discipline is not going to go away for the reason that as long as Discipline deals so strongly in absorb healing it competes in a niche with only two paricipants while Holy battles against four healers for a spot. Which isn't good game design and shouldn't have gone live but Blizzard appears to balance at the whims of perceived imbalances from the viewpoint of other healers which only makes things worse it seems.

If Holy gets too good, it is not Discipline that becomes less predominant. If Discipline is nerfed, you don't draft in a Holy priest to compensate. I guess this is one of the issues with having two very different healing specs on the same class.

[Deleted]

Yeah if you think about it, they really should have made MW another absorb class when they first introduced it in MOP.
That way we would now have 3 throughput classes vs 3 absorb classes in the healing meta game.

I guess paying 10euros each month is not enough for healers to all be happy :s

[Deleted]

Yeah if you think about it, they really should have made MW another absorb class when they first introduced it in MOP.
That way we would now have 3 throughput classes vs 3 absorb classes in the healing meta game.

I guess paying 10euros each month is not enough for healers to all be happy :s

Alternatively, actually toned down absorbs and allowed for things like Atonement, HN and PoM to provide filler healing with PW:S reserved for specific targets.

That would have been sufficient for Discipline as the spec is only a problem when too much of its healing comes from absorbs i.e. ICC, MoP with PoH DA, SoO with uncapped L90s. Buffing PW:S and nerfing HN too much was a big mistake along with gutting Atonement and PoM. CoW is in a fine place given its high cast time and tank-healing niche but the filler niche of PW:S shouldn't exist and should be fulfilled by Atonement + PoM or HN + L90 depending on the situation.

[Deleted]

I hope someone can help a noob disco priest here.

I became the offcial absorb healer for our raids and learning discipline spec. I slowly start to understand but 1 thing that really confuses me is the difference between Power Word: shield amounts from time to time and i see do not why it sometimes absorbs a lot more.
Just now i was in garrison and all i did was pw:s while spamming myself with heals, sometimes it said absorbs 50k, other times 90k with really random numbers.
I must miss something here so hoping someone can enlighten me how this actually works.

[Deleted]

I hope someone can help a noob disco priest here.

I became the offcial absorb healer for our raids and learning discipline spec. I slowly start to understand but 1 thing that really confuses me is the difference between Power Word: shield amounts from time to time and i see do not why it sometimes absorbs a lot more.
Just now i was in garrison and all i did was pw:s while spamming myself with heals, sometimes it said absorbs 50k, other times 90k with really random numbers.
I must miss something here so hoping someone can enlighten me how this actually works.

Does this help?

Basically, it is due to crit and multistrike and permutations of those events happening with and without AA.

Edit: With multistrike and PW:S, additional events are not shown in the combat log. Instead they are summed into one PW:S occurrence.