Help needed with my priest (disc)

[Zeel]

Hi all..

I just started playing my alt priest again that sat at L60 since the start of BC. Now I got it to L80 some weeks ago
and as I've never ever played a healer/priest before there are lots of things that I'm at loss here and I'm hoping to get some
help from those of you who know their (and my) drill.

here's my priest: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...ncrest&cn=Dome

my main concerns are:

my stat balance

Did I get it right? I tried to learn as much as possible from here and from EJ forums and got the impression that I don't wanna stack spirit
anymore as it seems to be much weaker than it was "back in the days".

I've lived by these rules of thumb:

- don't stack spirit but stack int until mana regen seems ok
- don't stack haste after 11% (ok.. it's gotten a bit over it)
- after int is ok, start gemming for spellpower
- if socket bonus is less than 6 sp, but 23 sp gem on it and if it's more, put sp/crit or something like that.

because of this I noticed that my spirit is very, very low and I have a hunch that it's getting me into trouble sooner or later.

Enchants, gemming & glyphs

I tried to enchant / gem my gear "as big boys do" but I'm not sure if I should have gone more into that spirit I mentioned?
Also I have no idea if my glyphs are as they should. (Penance, PW: Shield and Flash Heal)

Role and behavior on raids

I got the impression that Disc is more single target / tank healing spec as holy is more raid-wide healer.. That probably is so, but what about
my casting...?

- I usually shield just about anyone I can if I have time. At least tanks to get some damage reduce in and boost my haste.
- when PW:S is on cd on target I spam Penance
- when Penance is on CD I spam Flash Heal.. also I tend to "save" Penance for tanks and throw Flash Heals to others
- When at near full health I throw Renews
- I cast CoH PoH when all have taken small amounts of damage

Is there something that I should be doing different?
Also when there are many players in party / raid that take damage at the same time, I really don't know what to do..
Sometimes I try to CoH PoH but with its cast time it's really, really slow when it needs to be fast.
Sometimes I spam-shield all and start throwing Flash Heals and Renews.. but mostly I'm at loss ???
What is my "panic button" on those kind of situations?

Should I be getting same kind of hps numbers as other healers? Imo it really gives a wrong impression of my usefulness on raids
when people stare at recount numbers and don't see shield absorbs etc. OR is it again something that I should be doing differently?

What about if I'd like to try out Holy-spec? Should I totally re-gem/gear or could I use same kind of stat balance / itemization there?

Now.... where am I sitting at here?


Edit: CoH changed to PoH.. sry for confusion

[Aliadra]

Well, I'm not great at Discipline, but your mana regen shouldn't be too big an issue. Priests have good tools to regen mana.
MP5 > Spirit until a certain amount of intellect (Could anyone specify when?)

- I cast CoH when all have taken small amounts of damage

CoH is a Holy spell and is not available for Discipline.

Your panic buttons are Pain Suppression and Power Infusion.

[Elothie]

Can you clarify what specc do you play (coh+penance=no deal) from your armory I guess you are discipline.You gems are ok (the ones with int-spirit could be int-sp/sp-mp5 for socketbonus,just to min/max).As discipline you can both raid heal and tank heal.In raid you spam shield here and there and penance tanks/burst dmg while youe normal heal will be flashheal.As single target you shield/penance on cd/flash as filler and maybe renew a bit.In both roles pom on cd.

[Zeel]

Can you clarify what specc do you play (coh+penance=no deal) from your armory I guess you are discipline.

yes.. sorry for being so vague. I play discipline. And that CoH was typo and I meant PoH... now fixed in OP.

Other than that.. I suppose there ain't any "let's save all" - magic button with disc-priest if some major raid-wide damage occurs?

[Deleted]

Disc priest are, as you said, mainly tank healers. In most raids I do I'm more of a helper, though. I'm never a fully focussed tank healer, nor a fully focussed raid healer. A lot of the time we have two pallies spamming tanks which is enough. On fights like LK25, I just spam shields on the entire raid, because there's quite a bit of raid-wide damage that flies about, like Infest, which hits everyone in the raid, and it keeps ticking away until the damage is healed away.

With shields you can pretty much absorb all that damage. Apart from that, try to always keep the Weakened Soul debuff up on the tank for the highest possible crit, in case you DO need to help. Usually, I do a PW:S > PoM > Penance > FHeal/BHeal/PoH/GHeal with the borrowed time proc, on wherever it's needed. PoH + Borrowed Time makes for a fast cast.

Also you said you don't want to stack haste past 11%. I have a bit more than that, but I've noticed I wouldn't mind having more, so to be able to help out more on the raid. Again, this really depends on your role in the raid. If you really are JUST healing tanks, then haste isn't the best option. More spellpower/int would be better then, I guess.

[Deleted]

To answer your question about switching between holy/disc, though. I sometimes do that too, since in 10man content, I often play holy. The required stats are not as conflicting as they once were for the two specs. However, holy is often more haste-based, where disc is a bit more crit based. Also mp5 is a preferred regen stat over spirit for disc, after int for both stats.

What I've basically done is just gem for spirit over mp5, since that'll help me when I do go holy. I don't miss the tiny bit of additional regen I would gain from mp5.

[Deleted]

- don't stack spirit but stack int until mana regen seems ok

You're right about this one, mp5 > spirit, because of the fact you're chaincasting, so you wont have much time to regen from spirit. Although there is a certain point in intellect where spirit becomes better then mp5, but I dont know the exact number.

- don't stack haste after 11% (ok.. it's gotten a bit over it)

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with showing some love towards haste. Elitistjerks numbers are directed towards the haste you get from borrowed time, which would put your gcd and flash heals below 1 second cast. But I have not geared towards that 11%, i'm actually at 21% + 6% from spec, and I will not stop there, I'm hoping that at some point i'll be able to replace flash heal with greater heal for tankhealing. (and dont forget penance shoots faster)

- after int is ok, start gemming for spellpower

Yes, when you're getting icc gear, start gemming full spellpower, as it is the best choice, although again gem as you see fit. If you need more regen, get some intellect/mp5.


About glyphs, I suggest also getting glyph of shadowfiend when you can get your hands on one. It's very situational but you never know if you're shadowfiend gets stuck in some kind of aoe or voidzone.


Considering general playstyle.
When tankhealing I would keep weakened soul debuff on the tanks and rotate flash heals on both, penance when one gets in trouble. Also keep PoM bouncing on them.

When in aoe situations you have to think about what kind of aoe you're dealing with, is it consistent aoe damage or is it one big burst.

For consisent aoe damage, I prefer to just spam flash heals. As this should be best handled by raidhealers, flash heal is a good choice. You can also opt for casting shields on the entire raid, although you wont get good benefit from rapture this way, i'll come to that at the burst aoe. Also keep PoM bouncing, as it can crit and put divine aegis, it also relieves some of the stress off your raidhealers and yourself.

For Burst aoe it is good to know when exactly that aoe is going to happen, in a typical 10man raid you can start shielding the ranged at 15 seconds before impact, after the ranged shield the melee, do not shield the tanks this time. (they should be able to handle the damage). Then when the aoe happens you will have reduced its amount by 7-9k depending on your current spellpower and gained rapture returns for every single shield that broke. Directly after use penance on the person that needs it.

I hope I clarified a bit for you.

[Twinkeltoe]

- I usually shield just about anyone I can if I have time. At least tanks to get some damage reduce in and boost my haste.
- when PW:S is on cd on target I spam Penance
- when Penance is on CD I spam Flash Heal.. also I tend to "save" Penance for tanks and throw Flash Heals to others
- When at near full health I throw Renews
- I cast CoH PoH when all have taken small amounts of damage

What happend to PoM? It's a great spell especially since you got the 2 piece from T9 (kk you got 4pcs atm but you know what I mean)

Personally I almost never cast PoH.
Raid healers useally take care of the raid. When I use it (for instance on a decimate by precious/stinky) cast a shield on a random char for the haste benefit before casting PoH.

In our 10 man runs we useally have a dudu healing so my renew's are kinda worthless :P

About your spirit:
I wish my spirit was that low....
Crappy items are giving me too much spirit...

[Zeel]

thank you all for your input this far.. they've given me some new ideas. At the moment it seems that I've not done anything horribly wrong
with my stat-balance or gemming? That's great.

About PoM.. I gotta admit that I should use if far more often than I've done. At the moment I've used it as kinda emergency-heal
if tank starts getting big hits. (--> shield, Penance, PoM, Renew and Flash Heal-spam).
Will start using it on every CD from now on.

[Deleted]

I throw PoM out on every cooldown. Most of the time on the tank, if a melee has aggro or something, I throw it on them since it'll just bounce back to tank. It shouldn't happen, but meh, some dps are just too eager.

[Revitalize]

As far as stat balancing, you don't really do this as discipline.
Once you get enough regen and mana, you stack spellpower.
Haste is nice for PoH Ive found, but its not worth gemming haste or anything else.
Spellpower is the only way.
If the socket bonus is 7-9 SP with only red/yellow gem slots, go for it.
However anything with a blue socket is gemmed purely spellpower.

[fabian]

You're right about this one, mp5 > spirit, because of the fact you're chaincasting, so you wont have much time to regen from spirit. Although there is a certain point in intellect where spirit becomes better then mp5, but I dont know the exact number.

I'm pretty sure it is some ungodly high number that is unobtainable even with Int Stacking.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with showing some love towards haste. Elitistjerks numbers are directed towards the haste you get from borrowed time, which would put your gcd and flash heals below 1 second cast. But I have not geared towards that 11%, i'm actually at 21% + 6% from spec, and I will not stop there, I'm hoping that at some point i'll be able to replace flash heal with greater heal for tankhealing. (and dont forget penance shoots faster)

The 11% haste number is a fallacy too, because to actually get your FH down to the GCD, you actually need somewhere around 4.7% haste from your gear, which is not realistic in ICC gear. When mana is not a problem, why would you need regen on your gear? So haste gear is taken by default, which is why most Disc priest that do not have mana problems have Int/Crit/Haste gear.

[grymgroeth]

A note on haste for disc priests:

11% is great if your goal is to run 5mans and never be looked at as more than a patch healer in raids. Flash simply doesn't get the job done and the haste levels available on 232+ gear make 11% trivial. Disc priests should be pushing for greater heal near GCD and penance under GCD given the haste levels available on t9 and t10 gear plus borrowed time.

[DomBomb1]

Disc priest are, as you said, mainly tank healers.

Absolutely, utterly, and completely false.

[balickma]

Absolutely, utterly, and completely false.

No, it isn't.

[fabian]

No, it isn't.

They can tank heal, but are behind both Shamans and Druids, but ahead of Holy by quite a bit. In 10 mans, they can tank heal pretty well, but in 25's, they should be raid healing instead.

[zerachiel]

Didn't see anyone answer it, but there is an "Oh crap" button for massive raid wide damage healing. Inner Focus + Divine Hymn.

Inner Focus makes it no mana to cast and massively boosts the crit chance of its' heals during the duration, and crit is already a nice stat for disc so you're looking at at least a 60% crit chance on every heal, procing aegis and all that fun stuff.

[Pythagoreant]

Your gear and gemming choices are actually not too bad.

Glyphs look good.

Your spec could use some slight tweaking. I use greater heal a LOT on progression fights. You might consider picking up Divine Fury. I had 5/5 DF until recently, when the Sindragosa fight required me to pick up what my guild refers to as "that f***ing talent" (long story), which is "Healing Focus". If your fight has a lot of AoE, this will prevent your DH, HoH, penance, etc. from getting clipped. That 10% spell damage reduction is nice, but it comes at a cost.

As far as what you should be doing ... disc was originally meant to be a tank healer, and was treated this way for a while, but now we are ridiculously good at making the raid take less damage with PWS, Renewed Hope, and Divine Aegis (to a lesser extent) that our tank healing abilities are less good than they once were. Still a viable tank healer on some fights, paladins are still waaaaay better, and probably always will be. Grace provides a nice tank healing boost, fortunately.

Also, macro Inner Focus to Divine Hymn as the previous poster said.

I have about 653 haste. It honestly never hurts to have more.

[DomBomb1]

No, it isn't.

Yes it is. (cwutididthar?)

[Zeel]

about the "oh crap" - macro, would it be something like that:

#showtooltip Divine Hymn
/cast Inner Focus
/cast Divine Hymn

or something else? I suppose that the macro like that casts Hymn even if Inner Focus happens to be on CD?

One more thing that's been kinda bugging me and I don't see anyone answering it was that recount / heal-meters question...
I understood that as a Disc-priest my contribution to raid cannot be seen on meters as clearly as with someone that spams direct/aoe heals?
This is my alt and I probably won't be using this much on guildruns so how can I show my "value" in pugs to clueless raidleaders that stare recount
and don't find my name from where my gear would imply that it should be?
(sorry for horrible sentence...)