Perhaps I'm reading skada Absorbs and Healing wrong

[Honen]

Hello.

I tank heal for my 10man ICC group. we're pretty casual in that we only raid one night a week. I'd like everyone to show up the second night but it just doesn't happen. Currently we're up to 6 cleared one shot with USUALLY no deaths at all. We pug in our raid healer(s).

What I'm trying to figure out is if I'm reading Skada wrong. I have it set to track absorbs and healing. In the example I'm going to talk about I don't have the exact figures as I'm at work on lunch right now.

Festergut
Absorbs and Healing
1) Honen -70%
2) Druid - 12%
3) Shaman - 9%

Fourth and down are usually dps classes with healing components such as a shadow priest etc..

Am I reading this right? Am I really pulling that much weight or am I reading something wrong? Generally I open with a PoM on the pulling tank and a shield. Shield the OT and then flash heal the MT for a few seconds. At this point my shields are back up and the tank is okay. I throw a couple shields on some of the dps out in the gas to help with the steady AoE damage the boss is doing. At this point, I'm back on the tanks usually hitting the MT with a penance because he took some damage while I was shielding the raid. I rarely have to use Penance on the tanks because my flash hits pretty hard with grace applied and save penance bursts for when a DPS is about to die.

Am I being a healing hog by shielding the raid? Should I let the raid healer(s) do their job? Am I not trusting them enough and give them a chance to prove themselves?

I know healing meters are only part of the story but I have to have some way to see if they're doing their job other than "X player didn't die".

As far as rolling 3 healers on this fight... not my decision. I feel like we could 2 heal it no problem with a competent raid healer.

[Fenixdown]

The only people I ever bubble on Festergut are those affected with Vile Gas. Beyond that, raid healers can easily handle the small amounts of AoE damage done to the raid.

As I stated in an earlier thread, there's a major difference between playing discipline smart and playing it to "win the meters". Unless you have absolutely terrible raid healers, allow them to do their thing.

Also, if this fight's being done on normal, just 2-heal it. You only really "need" three for heroic. If you have a holy paladin or resto shaman, you can very effectively 2-heal this fight by having him spam on the tanks while you simply bubble and PoM/PoH the rest of the raid. Your third healer can go DPS.

In the end, being high on absorbs really only counts for one fight: Lich King. Beyond that, provided you're not having to pick up slack, you don't have to be that high.

[Honen]

We have never had the luck of having a Holy paladin in our group.

I am not intentionally shielding to "win the meters" so to speak.. I just do it because I feel like I should.

I will relax some on raid and see if it's me being overzealous with my shields or if I need to be.

[Kimano]

There are basically two assignments for Disc priests, tank healing/support and raid healing.

If you're raid healing, this is your priority: Replace Penance with FHeal if it's cooling down.
Shield on people in danger/damaged w/out weakened soul.
Penance on people in danger/damaged w/ weakened soul.
Shield on Tank.
Shield on People in the raid w/out weakened soul.
Penance on Tank.

If you're tank healing or supporting tank healers:
Shield on Tank in danger w/out Weakened Soul.
Penance on Tank in danger w/out Weakened Soul.
Flash on Tank not in danger.
If you know there won't be much damage incoming (boss casting/etc), Shield on someone in danger/damaged in the raid to keep BT up.

Rinse and repeat. Standard 'This can change for specific fights/healer comps/mechanics/etc' applies.
It's also worth noting that for the vast majority of 25 man encounters, it isn't worth is to try doing almost anything but raid shielding, since other healers will clean up raid and tank damage far more efficiently and quickly than you can. If someone is in serious danger you can obviously penance to help save them, but in the vast majority of cases you're better off continuing to shield the raid.

[Kelesti]

There are basically two assignments for Disc priests, tank healing/support and raid healing.

If you're raid healing, this is your priority: Replace Penance with FHeal if it's cooling down.
Prayer of Healing when 3 or more people are in danger/damaged in the same group
Shield on people in danger/damaged w/out weakened soul.
Penance on people in danger/damaged w/ weakened soul.
Shield on Tank.
Shield on People in the raid w/out weakened soul.
Penance on Tank.

Thought I'd add in one clear area that's often overlooked.

It's also worth noting that for the vast majority of 25 man encounters, it isn't worth is to try doing almost anything but raid shielding, since other healers will clean up raid and tank damage far more efficiently and quickly than you can. If someone is in serious danger you can obviously penance to help save them, but in the vast majority of cases you're better off continuing to shield the raid.

Whilevyou had an excellent tip about sneaking in Borrowed Time even on tank healing, this is something I can't really agree with.

If you don't bother casting heal spells because "they do it better/faster" then you have too many healers. Period. With Borrowed Time, a Prayer is 1.7 seconds. That's faster than Holy's, or Chain Heal, for a pretty comparable output. What's not worth it is casting anything when you have 7 healers on a fight that shouldn't need more than 4. All healers suffer from this, but Discipline has a way to meter-whore and be "effective" whole everyone else fights for scraps to get through.


Accepting mediocrity seems to plague Discipline much more than any other healer. If you can't do anything but shield (due to time/output) then stop bringing too many healers. If you think it's "not worth it", ask yourself a couple questions: One, what is the real output of a shield vs Prayer? Two: What is the real Health per second I'm capable of in either circumstance? Three: If I'm mass shielding, doesn't that take more time to cover the same amount of people? And four: what difference do my shields make after they fall off?

If it's mana, when has mana actually mattered?

TL;DR If you think it's only "worth it" to bubble spam, either drop healers until that changes, or if you can't then may I suggest you reroll?

[Fenixdown]

Or just go to raids as shadow, since it's about as effective.

Seriously, in 25-man there's not an encounter I can think of where bubblespam's even necessary, let alone what should be the standard.

I can think of several encounters where well-placed bubbles make things easier, but that's about it. Sindragosa on ice block targets it's nice, Saurfang on Boiling Blood targets it's nice, Festergut on Vile Gas targets it's nice, Marrowgar on Bone Spike targets it's nice. None of these are necessary, a raid healer should be able to handle all of them unless they're bordering on braindead or still running around in quest greens (which even then, shouldn't be hard with a 25% healing increase).

Most fights I tank support and bubble certain things that are as listed above. Definitely not the entire raid, that's a waste of time. Simple equation time!

One bubble (1 sec GCD) + 1 PoH (1.7 seconds) = 5 targets, 2.7 seconds
Five bubbles (1 sec GCD) = 5 targets, 5 seconds

Even at my low haste totals, PoH with no raid increases is 2 seconds flat. That's still 3 seconds opposed to 5, and it's even more mana efficient (not to mention I'm not even glyphed for PoH, since I still primarily tank support).

Like I said before, in another post, there's two ways to tell if your discipline priest is bad.

-If your disc priest only heals and never shields, they are bad.
-If your disc priest only shields and never heals, they are equally bad.

It's up to the individual to know when, what, and even moreso WHY to shield over casting a heal. Something that, as Kel pointed out, does not seem very commonplace.

[gunner007]

Change Skada to "Healing and Absorbs"

[Ihsatakar]

You're reading it correctly, Skada is just horribly innacurate.

[Will]

You're reading it correctly, Skada is just horribly innacurate.

it is? perhaps on shorter fights, but over a long session skada numbers start to come closer to recount ones. I never would have called that 'horribly' inaccurate.

[Ihsatakar]

it is? perhaps on shorter fights, but over a long session skada numbers start to come closer to recount ones. I never would have called that 'horribly' inaccurate.

If you look at Skada's absorbs on any given fight compared to a parse, you're going to find a major difference.

edit: used a word wrong.

[Boogar]

Festergut 10 man is for 2 healers even on heroic...
Disc priests are ridiculously scaling up with the icc buff, my shields are absorbing about 11k dmg in icc now and with my 1080 haste I am able to shield up much more targets in short time, so imagine you are throwing 11k instant heals every second + glyph of power word: shield... thats why you will be always first in healing + absorbs... the bigger the raid dmg is, the more effective you are... im having 9500 absorbed per second on festergut 25 hc + about 3k healing per sec, others are way behind, because my shields are absorbing most of the raid dmg thus leaving much less to heal for them... on 10 man its even more ridiculous if you are keeping weakened soul on everyone, you will just degrade other's healing...

[Lysdexic]

so imagine you are throwing 11k instant heals every second + glyph of power word: shield

Renew heals for 18-19k, and you can throw that out every second!

There needs to be a sticky for all priests (aimed at disc) that should be something like "read me first before posting" and then we can give infractions for posts like this. Yes... I can see it now...

Infraction #1: [HARKY'S DISCTARD BRAND STAMP] on your forehead for 2 weeks.



On a more serious note. Your shields should be absorbing more than 11k. You also don't need 1080 haste. In fact, to "shield up much more targets in short time" you only need ~160(?) haste. Anything after that only helps your heavy tank/raid healing (GH/PoH).

[Boogar]

First off in my holy off spec my renew is healing over 21k total, but we are talking about effective healing, right? you throw renew on someone and i throw shield on him... making at least half of you renew wasted till the shield is down...
and this spec i have have from our LK hc progressing in 10 man where i have to shield up everybody before every infest and to heavy but really really heavy heal the tanks as you said... is something goes wrong i have to spam prayer of healing, when the spirits are not properly soaked or if infest make in through... we downed him with 15% buff when i had this haste build i have i have it since that

[Honen]

Change Skada to "Healing and Absorbs"

umm.. I did? That's what this post is about

Secondly, this isn't about 25man. I have run 25man twice... I am in a 10man guild that only runs 10man. I cannot run 25man on my off nights because of my work schedule so the 25 advice, while appreciated, is not needed.

Also, if the tank is shielded or not taking big damage am I suppose to just stand there? This is when I normally bubble the raid. I don't have mana issues at all so why not use the free GCDs on it?

I have no control over the amount of healers as stated in my original post. the 3 healers was the raid leader's choice and although I urged against it so we could down him faster..

[Checksmix]

At least in most heroic encounters bubble spam is very effective and very nice. The damage prevented by them is generally able to out way what healing you can do, and since every other healer can heal and only you can damage prevent it is a big bonus.

There are many times where i just put shields on people like oh say princes, and they where not taking damage. But then an orb explodes because its princes and we don't take it seriously and people get knocked around and someone is at 2000 hp or less! they had a shield. W/o it they would have been dead. And for the run back it really is nice for shadow prison.

On aura fights its very nice to do it too.

But i agree i really can't stand theses reso druids, holy priests, and disc priests playing JUST to top meters with their renew spams, rej spam, and shield spam. Certain fights its very effective. But imo they are not "healing". Omg they healed 20 people for 300damage! WOO HOO! that's not effective. that's being a meter maid.

To the OP though, yes if you sheild effectively on a normal festergut with 3 healers you can pull that much. its just how the fight works. You can shield everyone in in 10s and heal for 5. The shields will last for most of the 15s that weekend soul is up (if you are any where near decently geared) giving the healers NO change at healing. i recommend you drop a healer. and your numbers will go down and theirs will go up.

[Bigslick]

On aura fights its very nice to do it too.

But i agree i really can't stand theses reso druids, holy priests, and disc priests playing JUST to top meters with their renew spams, rej spam, and shield spam.

If you're spamming shields on aura fights where the ticking aura damage will clear your shields much before you're able to re-apply them (which is most of them, in about 1/2 weakened soul's duration), you're basically 'healing' them for a few seconds and then doing nothing whatsoever to help them until you return to reshield them. If you rotate 3 groups, that's about 50% of the time you're afk as far as their healing is concerned. If you're spam shielding 5 groups you're ignoring their needs about 70% of the time. In either case you are taking your most powerful instant 'heal' off your action bars as far as 1/2 the raid is concerned at any given time.

Leaving their survival 100% to the other healers the rest of the time so you can maximize your absorbs is playing to top meters. You're there to ensure each player survives the whole encounter, not just 6-8 seconds out of every 15-25.

[gaymer77]

You keep saying how the 3 healer make-up is not your idea but nobody is asking you if you have asked your raid leader why he is so dead set on bringing 3 healers to a 2 healer fight on normal-mode. Unless he has a valid reason (ie people keep dying but you said that you guys go 6 bosses with a one shot with no deaths so that doesn't sound like its the case) you should either bring him over to this very thread so he can read how his desire for 3 healers is only gimping your raid for that fight or explain to him that people aren't taking enough damage (except the tanks) to justify having another healer instead of another dps.

Currently I'm in a 10 man focused guild with some RL friends (went from a 25 man guild working to down LK to a guild that was 11/12 HM 25 man to this guild that is pushing 1 of our 2 10 man groups to get a LK10 kill) that does one night of 1/2 pugged 25 man 4-6/12. In our 10 mans we always run 2 healers until we get to PP or the other wings and our 2 healer set up is typically (set up is MT healer/raid healer) holy pally/disc priest, holy pally/holy priest, holy priest/shaman, disc priest/shaman, disc priest/druid, holy pally/druid, or disc priest/holy priest and of those set ups its more frequently its either holy pally/disc priest or holy pally/holy priest or disc priest/druid for the healing.

What YOU need to do is talk with your raid leader (or GM if the raid leader is not your GM) and explain why its unnecessary to 3 heal fights like that. Come prepared with Skada's Absorbs and Healing meters, Overhealing done, and Healing Done. Show him why its unnecessary to have that extra slot taken up by a healer that is literally wasting their mana to overheal or cast hots on people that aren't even taking damage when it could be taken up by someone attacking the boss and helping you clear ICC faster.

Just for morbid curiosity, are you running 3 healers for everything in ICC or does the 3 healers start with Festergut/Rotface? I'm really hoping that your answer is that you run 2 healer for that first wing because if not we've all got some talking to do with your raid leader.

[Nisala]

Thought I'd add in one clear area that's often overlooked.

Whilevyou had an excellent tip about sneaking in Borrowed Time even on tank healing, this is something I can't really agree with.

If you don't bother casting heal spells because "they do it better/faster" then you have too many healers. Period. With Borrowed Time, a Prayer is 1.7 seconds. That's faster than Holy's, or Chain Heal, for a pretty comparable output. What's not worth it is casting anything when you have 7 healers on a fight that shouldn't need more than 4. All healers suffer from this, but Discipline has a way to meter-whore and be "effective" whole everyone else fights for scraps to get through.


Accepting mediocrity seems to plague Discipline much more than any other healer. If you can't do anything but shield (due to time/output) then stop bringing too many healers. If you think it's "not worth it", ask yourself a couple questions: One, what is the real output of a shield vs Prayer? Two: What is the real Health per second I'm capable of in either circumstance? Three: If I'm mass shielding, doesn't that take more time to cover the same amount of people? And four: what difference do my shields make after they fall off?

If it's mana, when has mana actually mattered?

TL;DR If you think it's only "worth it" to bubble spam, either drop healers until that changes, or if you can't then may I suggest you reroll?

How wonderfully idealistic... But no. Discipline raid healing fulfils it's own niche; pre-emptive, 100% effective protection. We have other raid healers to cover reactive healing, and that is something largely forgotten. You have to trust your team and work with them, allowing each individual to fulfil their strengths. Discipline's strengths are not in prayer of healing, but in PW:Shield, and PoM (though not specifically a discipline strength). I appreciate the importance of healing to keep people alive, rather than healing to top meters, but shield is unbelievably strong and effectively increases people's health by ~50%. Blanket-shielding is extremely powerful and we should work with that, not go against the grain because in an ideal WoW-world we use our super cool AoE heals.

Pre-emptive healing is an incredibly important niche, and one that discipline priests fulfil the best by far and away. Why try and deny that?

[Honen]

You keep saying how the 3 healer make-up is not your idea but nobody is asking you if you have asked your raid leader why he is so dead set on bringing 3 healers to a 2 healer fight on normal-mode. Unless he has a valid reason (ie people keep dying but you said that you guys go 6 bosses with a one shot with no deaths so that doesn't sound like its the case) you should either bring him over to this very thread so he can read how his desire for 3 healers is only gimping your raid for that fight or explain to him that people aren't taking enough damage (except the tanks) to justify having another healer instead of another dps.

Just for morbid curiosity, are you running 3 healers for everything in ICC or does the 3 healers start with Festergut/Rotface?

He wants to keep 3 healers on these fights because we are pugging our other healers as I'm the only hybrid class player that actually enjoys healing. We have a shaman in the guild that doesn't mind but he's off and on when it comes to showing up. What I'm getting at is we are pugging people we have nothing to go on but their gear (we do a wow-heroes check before the invite. What we're looking for is "what is their spec like? Are they gemmed and enchanted correctly for the role?"

We run 2 healers in the first 4

[Checksmix]

If you're spamming shields on aura fights where the ticking aura damage will clear your shields much before you're able to re-apply them (which is most of them, in about 1/2 weakened soul's duration), you're basically 'healing' them for a few seconds and then doing nothing whatsoever to help them until you return to reshield them. If you rotate 3 groups, that's about 50% of the time you're afk as far as their healing is concerned. If you're spam shielding 5 groups you're ignoring their needs about 70% of the time. In either case you are taking your most powerful instant 'heal' off your action bars as far as 1/2 the raid is concerned at any given time.

Leaving their survival 100% to the other healers the rest of the time so you can maximize your absorbs is playing to top meters. You're there to ensure each player survives the whole encounter, not just 6-8 seconds out of every 15-25.

While this is true your not forgetting your "biggest heal". You would still use PoH WHEN PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY LOW! i am sorry if you run with a group where healers let them keep 7k damage done to them long enough to well... do anything. Most of the times on aura fights the shield WILL pop asap. But you let a different healer heal someone else. Most of the time on an aura fight only at specific times will they take enough damage to warrant a PoH cast. Because slow but elongated healing from Rej and stuff will keep they close enough to top off that PoH would be as useful as a disc priest using renew.

---------- Post added 2010-07-17 at 03:41 PM ----------

He wants to keep 3 healers on these fights because we are pugging our other healers as I'm the only hybrid class player that actually enjoys healing. We have a shaman in the guild that doesn't mind but he's off and on when it comes to showing up. What I'm getting at is we are pugging people we have nothing to go on but their gear (we do a wow-heroes check before the invite. What we're looking for is "what is their spec like? Are they gemmed and enchanted correctly for the role?"

We run 2 healers in the first 4

try running it with just two healers. Often times the extra dps would dissolve heavy healing necessity. (like a faster boss encounter so no gas release... or what ever its called.)