First day as Disc...and I need help :(

[Devia]

So yeah. I've been reading up on Disc and what not and have learned, of course, that Disc priests are mostly tank healers, and a lot of our effectiveness is from shield and DA absorption which do not show up on Recount. I went from always being 2nd or 1st on healing meters to almost always last. And although I know the healing meters do not say anything for a Disc priest the raid leaders think it does. They are not convinced to let me stay Disc even though we already have 2 holy priests.

I'm sorry I don't have WWS. The fights we did tonight were Thaddius, Plague Quarter, Sapph/KT and our first(unsuccessful) attempts on Malygos. I think we must have been healer heavy because I did not find a single fight where I could just heal 1 or 2 tanks and bounce a PoM without doing a tremendous amount of overhealing, or sitting and doing nothing. We had 2 CoH priests, a resto druid, 2 paladins, 2 resto shamans and me.

I would always keep shield up on MT(and I have the glyph) and make sure I had a PoM bouncing around. I found myself not actually using Penance that much(as mine do 10k-15k) because no one would ever be at a health deficit of 6k or more for more than 1 or 2 seconds(unless they just completely died to easy mechanics like some morons did). So I ended up flash healing people most of the time especially since Penance is annoying with people having to be in front of you.

Did we just have too many healers? Or do the rest of the healers have to understand a Disc priest in order to work well with one? I am being forced to respec Holy at least until the patch comes out. So...my main question I guess is why go Disc for raiding over Holy? Even after CoH nerf I still see holy being better.

Edit: Oh also my gear is definitely not tailored to Disc - I only have 20% holy crit raid buffed and butt tons of spirit...I never once found myself going below 75% mana even though I was almost never out of the 5SR. That's possibly why people thought I was bein a baddie too. I felt like a paladin just sitting there and spamming shit and never going oom.

[Kelesti]

First off: Tell your raid leader to not be an idiot and understand that Discipline is more about preventing damage than healing it. Second: Drop the spirit and get more spellpower/crit. Third: Penance is your most efficient heal, learn to love it.
And fourth: Yes you were healer heavy, grats on 3.0.8 going live with CoH though, when your two holy priests respec/pick up an alt. :P

[Vel]

Check here. The first part is about holy and the second is about raid disc.
As raid dis you don't have any advantage of 5 sec rule, so you have to take mp5s->crit->haste cloth gear instead of spirit->haste->crit.

And actually dis is a cloth paladin, so if you don't have enough palas in raid - that is a good choice, if you already have at least 2 - you'd better be holy. A good build is Holy with a spirit buff, if noone else has it. You even don't have to improve it, thanks to elem shaman.

Btw if your guild will somehow try Sart+3 or +2 your RLs will beg you to become dis again that will be your time :

[Danner]

Spirit isn't a horrible stat for discipline, but it's not your best stat either. I'd go with MP5 instead of spirit if I could as discipline; you need a lot of int to make the stats equal. Then again, getting a lot of int is not that hard as discipline. However, you really want crit and a lot of intellect. Being a "weak" healer, additional spellpower will also make a major improvement to your output.

Being a blood elf, you will likely get slightly more out of intellect, as your racial ability is downright excellent with +15% int from talents and +10% int from BoK.

But yes. Disc priests is mostly about damage prevention and small fast heals, while retaining most of the priest versatility. I use as a rule of thumb that you can add 25% of your healing done as healing absorbed. That makes discipline healers very very good. You don't stack well with other discipline priests, but you make a wonderful partner to a healing paladin.

[Wardley]

Howdy,

While I was levelling up, I was a hybrid disc/holy spec (with spirit tap as well) which meant that I could still quest, but also meant I was a good enough healer to handle 5 mans.

Now that I'm at 80 I want to spec either holy or discipline to get raid ready. In my guild we've got another holy priest already and I'd like to give discipline I try anyway (cos most people go holy for healing and I want to try something different).

However, is Discipline something you can do only after you've got good enough gear for it. At the moment my spellpower is around 1460 and my mp5 is only 145ish. Should I go holy, run heroics (which I haven't started yet) and maybe get into Naxx to get better gear with more mp5, int and crit first before I go discipline or can I respec now anyway?

Personally, I don't like respeccing that often - I'd rather just find a spec and then get to know it well rather than holy this week, discipline next week etc.etc.

[Vel]

Does not actually matter. In raid you must suit raid setup witch may deffer a lot.
In a 5-men group - you can be as good as holy.
In 10-men - competitive with holy.
In 25 - RL will tell you whom you are needed . Dis is a direct heal and holy is still good direct/aoe heal even after CoH nerf.

Btw - these specs need specific gear and playstyle. You'd better choose now what you like more.

[Gahijnu]

I use as a rule of thumb that you can add 25% of your healing done as healing absorbed.

How much of your healing is added as absorbtion is quite personal and depends on how much crit you have.

After som fast (probably flawed =) math I get it to this:

(1+0,5*crit)*x = (Amount healed - Healed by renew)... Calculate x from this formula

Shields added by Divine Aegis = crit*1.5*x*0,30.

Note that crit is formated like 0,25 for 25% crit. With this calculation a value of 10% of total healed (minus Renew) is added as Divine Aegis absorbtion if you have 25% crit.

What is so good with the Glyph of Power Word: Shield is that the amount healed does register with Recount, WWS etc so all that is needed for calculating how much the shields absorb is to take that amount times five. In other words, the value of absorbtion from our shield depends on how much you use it.

Maybe 25% is a good value in average, that I don't know about... just wanted to try to give a more factual value here

Edit: Made the formula a little shorter...

[Deleted]

Howdy,

While I was levelling up, I was a hybrid disc/holy spec (with spirit tap as well) which meant that I could still quest, but also meant I was a good enough healer to handle 5 mans.

Now that I'm at 80 I want to spec either holy or discipline to get raid ready. In my guild we've got another holy priest already and I'd like to give discipline I try anyway (cos most people go holy for healing and I want to try something different).

However, is Discipline something you can do only after you've got good enough gear for it. At the moment my spellpower is around 1460 and my mp5 is only 145ish. Should I go holy, run heroics (which I haven't started yet) and maybe get into Naxx to get better gear with more mp5, int and crit first before I go discipline or can I respec now anyway?

Personally, I don't like respeccing that often - I'd rather just find a spec and then get to know it well rather than holy this week, discipline next week etc.etc.

I heard some people say holy is more geardependant, but I'll leave that to the pro's.

How much mana do you have? your regen depends mostly on the amount of mana that you have through rapture restoring 2.5% of your maximum mana on effective flash heal, greater heal and penance healing, and full absorption of powerword:shield and divine aegis.

You have enough spellpower to get you through heroics and naxxramas. but try get a bit more regen if that 145mp5 is OO5s

As far as itemization goes, aim for intellect and critrating over spirit.

And as Vel mentioned better decide quick what you like, because the itemization is a bit different then holy.

[Wardley]

Sorry - should've made it clear.

Ok, my mana is 13318, mana regen is 467 ooc, 149 in combat.

Actually, might as well just give you my armour profile - http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...mar&n=Colbalen

I should probably work on haste and crit if I'm going Discipline yeah? Haste is 144, crit is just under 6% (int is 649. spirit 640).

[ccckkk]

Just stack more int and ignore mp5/spirit - you will get a bit anyway from some items you have. The frostsavage set is probably a good bet if you can't find anything better in the short-term (I'm not saying perfect to all you qq'ers - just that it would do the job if someone wants to heal heroics as disc.)

(i) It's cheapish from AH - you may even know a tailor
(ii) It has enough int, spellpower (& crit) for doing heroics

[and as an added bonus it gives you a bit of resilience (useless at moment I know) - but if you want to try a bg sometime as disc it's a start ;D.]

Get your mana pool to about 17k - alot of which comes from spec'ing mental strength which your disc spec will have anyway (could getting more mana be any easier ;D).

Get the glyph of flash heal.

Spam penance & flash heal while keeping weakened soul on the tank.

Mana will not be a problem unless **you** waste it casting loads of renews or something.

Have fun.

[iLive]

There is no difference between MP5 and spirit when you are playing as a Discipline Priest, so choose what you like, but choose the thing that gives most of it. But you rather want to stack spirit as Holy, because of spell power increase etc.

(2*spirit)/5 tells how much MP5 spirit gives.

2,5 spirit = 1 MP5
15 spirit = 10 MP5

[Vel]

You forgot about int influence on spirit. So the formula is wrong. Or correct to a exact amount of int.

[hmgamer]

ive been disc since 80 and never had any trouble doing heroics besides HVH and teh void dude and getting the achievment =( now im in 3 t7 (shoulder chest and gloves) and im usually the best healer and i would top charts if the amount absorbed was showed...(u can do this by x5 of what ur glyph of power word shield does ... well it gives are great estimate)

[Silkath]

As far as I know 1 mp/5 = 3.5 spirit for a Disc priest at roughly 1k intellect.

One of the hardest things I found going from Holy to Disc was learning to spam and not care about overhealing. It's almost never worthwhile cancelling a cast. It's almost never worthwhile sitting outside the 5sr. Spam like crazy and use penance + hasted flash heals to snipe heals from those paladins.

PS 8 healers in heroic naxx is way too many. We typically run with 4, 5 for Patch/Sapphiron.

[Breklin]

So yeah. I've been reading up on Disc and what not and have learned, of course, that Disc priests are mostly tank healers, and a lot of our effectiveness is from shield and DA absorption which do not show up on Recount. I went from always being 2nd or 1st on healing meters to almost always last. And although I know the healing meters do not say anything for a Disc priest the raid leaders think it does. They are not convinced to let me stay Disc even though we already have 2 holy priests.

I'm sorry I don't have WWS. The fights we did tonight were Thaddius, Plague Quarter, Sapph/KT and our first(unsuccessful) attempts on Malygos. I think we must have been healer heavy because I did not find a single fight where I could just heal 1 or 2 tanks and bounce a PoM without doing a tremendous amount of overhealing, or sitting and doing nothing. We had 2 CoH priests, a resto druid, 2 paladins, 2 resto shamans and me.

I would always keep shield up on MT(and I have the glyph) and make sure I had a PoM bouncing around. I found myself not actually using Penance that much(as mine do 10k-15k) because no one would ever be at a health deficit of 6k or more for more than 1 or 2 seconds(unless they just completely died to easy mechanics like some morons did). So I ended up flash healing people most of the time especially since Penance is annoying with people having to be in front of you.

Did we just have too many healers? Or do the rest of the healers have to understand a Disc priest in order to work well with one? I am being forced to respec Holy at least until the patch comes out. So...my main question I guess is why go Disc for raiding over Holy? Even after CoH nerf I still see holy being better.

Edit: Oh also my gear is definitely not tailored to Disc - I only have 20% holy crit raid buffed and butt tons of spirit...I never once found myself going below 75% mana even though I was almost never out of the 5SR. That's possibly why people thought I was bein a baddie too. I felt like a paladin just sitting there and spamming shit and never going oom.

Disc is certainly less gear dependent than Holy.

8 Healers is pretty excessive for Naxx, 7 is a better number even if you're just starting to clear it and then usually tone down to 5 or 6.

I used to not work Penance into my rotation as much as I do now for the same reasons as you, notably the facing requirement (thank god it's getting changed next patch!). As Disc, I tend to view my job as being the buffer for all the other healers so they can do their job better and we have less deaths overall than we would have otherwise. Except on certain fights I'm never on a tank full time but rather splitting my healing between tanks and the raid. A lot of that raid healing can be Flash Heal Whack A Mole but I found once I was more familiar with the fights (and had 10% paper doll haste) I could be the first to land a heal on many people.

Try looking for more places where you can use Penance. If it's off CD and you aren't going to need it to heal a damage spike on a tank, toss it on a raid member whose taken damage. The first tick probably won't be overheal, the second maybe 50% and the third probably will which is fine, you're not always going to get 75% efficiency from it.

As for how much healing your shields are doing - I went over a couple WWS logs some weeks ago and calculated out how much damage was being absorbed by everyone in the raid (which is shown by WWS if you look for it). I then subtracted Sacred Shield absorbs from this, assuming an 80% efficiency on them. I ended up adding up to 1.5mil on top of my regular 9.5 mil healing which is basically 15%. I think assuming a 25% rate is probably excessive, even with a higher crit rate (although I typically have around 28% raid buffed), 20% may be more likely and that would be an OK number to run with.

As a final note, healing meters are terrible and any raid leader or player truly evaluating performance based on them needs to be shot. Fortunately I play with a bunch of exceptional people and we all recognize what each brings to the table without having to constantly look at numbers.

[Marlom]

Dont bother going for spi or mp5.
go for Crit->int->sp->hast-> then u take some spirit/mp5.
as disc u want atleast 20%crit
mana is almost never a problem if u get the right talants..

[Mandible]

DO NOT Gem for crit EVER. If you absolutely want to avoid spirit just gem for these 3 things INT (+ some spirit) > SP > HASTE due to one little thing - int adds; mana, crit, and regen (depending on... tadaa... spirit). Once regen is fine, some 1300 buffed ooc, go all out on sp and haste.

[Breklin]

If you are just starting out in raids, Gem for Int.

Once you get better gear you can gem for more spellpower (fortunately there is a spellpower/int gem which you should learn to love).

NEVER gem for crit OR haste. You do want around 10% paper doll haste but it will come from gear and anything beyond that is a waste as your flash heals will go below 1 second raid buffed with a Borrowed Time proc. Therefore, any haste you stack beyond that will reduce the effectiveness of one of your key talents.

On paper, spirit looks terrible for Disc and Mp5 looks much better but in practice, that doesn't remain to be the case. You might think 'Hey, I'll never need OOFSR regen as Disc, I'm like a Paladin!' The key word there is never and absolutes are always a bad thing. There have been times where I've been saved because of my OOFSR regen (between 1000 & 1100 spirit raidbuffed). Should you gem or enchant for spirit? No. Should you shy away from it because it's the devil? No.

There is nothing wrong with having a healthy amount of spirit on your gear but you don't want to have it at the expense of other stats. The more Int you have, the more value spirit has and Mp5 becomes less valuable. Given gear usually has STA, INT, Spirit & other stats OR STA, INT, Mp5 & other stats you have a clear cut choice. Evaluate the other stats on gear besides the spirit/Mp5, see which is going to round out your stats better and go from there.

Just like DPS "Rotations" have evolved into a "Priority" system, so should your gearing mindset.

[Fenixdown]

I only glanced a bit over your post OP and I think I see the problem. Your guild is not utilizing you properly as discipline.

As a discipline priest, your biggest and best area is healing one target. Just one. You can heal a tank until Hell freezes over and giant dinosaurs once again roam the Earth and rule us all. Raid healing is NOT your forte.

So, in essence, it seems your guild needs to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each healing spec better. I still have to re-educate one of our GMs every now and again because he forgets that discipline is a MT-healing spec and he tries to place me on raid healing.

[jgnoel86]

I agree with Fenix, one GL's sometimes really need to either listen to their people or assign people in charge of each class who know the strengths and weaknesses. This is almost as bad as the guild I was in not assigning raid assignments then at the end of the raid when im looking at stats almost every healer had 50% overhealing, thats a HUGE waste of mana and should never happen.