new to disc

[coldwarkids]

So I recently hit 80 and within and I have a decent gearscore but I recently just did a toc 10. And I realized I don't know how to really play a disc priest. We had holypally, me, and resto drood. So I bubble spam'd and used pom and flash healed. It ended being that I just spamd bubbles. Is it normal, I understand there were prolly too many healers.

But I just read this thread http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Healing-wrong

And people are saying very conflicting things about bubble spam. Really, I'm just cnfused now.

Thanks

[Danner]

Quite normal. A geared and skilled paladin can easily solo-tankheal TOC10. A druid can easily solo-raidheal TOC10. To be honest, you were a bit redundant on that fight.

That said, your primary role as a discpriest is healing support. That is, if the tank does take a massive spike damage, you should be there helping the paladin, and typically have a shield on the tank mitigating the spike before it happens. If the raid takes a massive spike damage, you should be there helping the druid, and typically have a shield on all people taking damage already, mitigating it. Keeping inspiration up on the tank is more helpful than you might believe, and those shields truly makes most raidwide damage trivial.

On your own, you would probably have had issues keeping the tank alive, or issues keeping the raid up properly - though overgearing content makes it trivial. This is the lot of priests in wotlk. We're not permitted to outshine the "real" healers. Instead, we have our niches of things we do well. Discpriests are support healers with strong damage mitigation. Holypriests look awesome after dying

--

As far as bubblespam goes, it's a mostly valid and often used healing style. But whether to use it or not totally depends on the encounter. Bubblespamming on the northern beats is mostly useless; the only place it is any good is on icehowl before he throws the raid back into the wall. On the other hand, bubblespamming on the twin valkyrs will make a massive difference as a shield is mostly able to negate any mis-colored balls hitting random raiders. This dramatically increase raid survivability. And on Anub'arak, in phase 3, shields are just insanely effective. And that's just TOC.

When to use bubblespam is mostly a matter of experience. The major pitfall is to not look at the meters to decide whether your shields were any good or not. The meters are horrible liars, as pointed out in the sticky made by Harky on the top of this forum. You can still get some information out of the meters, but don't accept it at face value. More on that in Harky's sticky.

If you ask me, it's not really how many shields you can cramp out (with a few exceptional fights, of course). It's a question of when you use your shields that really matter. Putting a shield on the tank every 15 seconds is only going to push that paladinhealer into overhealing more. Putting a shield on the tank in before big hits is what makes the discpriest so amazingly strong. Because suddenly your tank is never in danger of being twoshot. And the paladin, who has a moderately taxing but quite doable job of keeping the tank(s) alive without you, are suddenly not able to fail. That is due to you.

[Fenixdown]

As a person that posted in that thread, and as a discipline priest, the only thing I can tell you is this.

The reason there are such conflicting opinions is because the mechanics are still something very new and unique, even this far into Wrath. Many in the community, even those that play the role, do not understand what their true "niche" is as a discipline priest.

"To spam or not to spam" is actually not the question, as equally "to heal or not to heal" is not the question, either. Discipline, like a resto druid or resto shaman, needs balance. A resto druid who only spams HoTs on people will top a meter, but those HoTs will not likely save someone from dying in a freak circumstance. Likewise, a shaman spamming chain heals on the melee is neglecting their true role as a raid healer, on top of neglecting their other very powerful spells (Lesser Healing Wave, Riptide, ect.).

The rules you should live by as discipline are as follows (and even this will be contradicted).

-A discipline priest who only shields and rarely heals is doing it wrong.
-A discipline priest who only heals and rarely shields is also doing it wrong.

In a raid environment, where you will have more than one healer, several encounters PW:S should be saved for particular situations. Those situations include, but are not necessarily limited to, examples such as what follows in my list below.

-Sindragosa: shielding Frost Tomb targets before they are encased in Frost Tomb. This prevents nearly the full amount of incoming damage, and buys more time to DPS down an ice block if needed.
-Professor Putricide: shielding the target of a green ooze. Most especially if this person is "left on an island", this can be a factor in saving a life or not.
-Festergut: shielding Vile Gas targets. This can help save the raid healers a little mana while they continue to raid heal, as this person will not need as big of a top-off as normal.

The only real "bubblespam" encounter currently in terms of game mechanics is Lich King. Not because Infest will kill a raid if not shielded, simply because shielding the entire raid through it just makes dealing with the mechanic much easier.

-Do NOT shieldspam for encounters with some form of aura AoE damage. If you look through that same thread, you will note a person attempted to post "proof" that sheildspamming on such encounters was effective. Amusing since that same so-called proof also provided us with the fact that the raid came very close to a wipe. Sine the person was only spamming shields when they weren't necessary, he had Weakened Soul up for each time that they were needed most.

-Likewise, do NOT attempt to be a healer hero in any encounter. Don't say things like "oh, I can solo heal that Mark" or something crazy. Fact of the matter is, even through mitigation, you can't. There are certain things you could solo heal, and certain things you cannot.

Essentially, it boils down to one primary thing: knowing what it means to be a healer first, and applying a different playstyle to that motto. The motto of all healers is this.

-Meters don't matter. What matters is living and dying.

And the only way to prevent the latter from happening is to play your role the way it's most effective from encounter to encounter.

I hope that helps.

[coldwarkids]

Thank u very much fenix and danner. I was lolbuble spamming and during anubarak when I needed emergency help people had weakened soul. Alll these things will be noted I suppose experience will be my best teacher. Also all the examples were great. I've healed with every other class and bubbles donwright confused thanks for clearing it all up!

[Azyoulike]

-Professor Putricide: shielding the target of a green ooze. Most especially if this person is "left on an island", this can be a factor in saving a life or not.

Ironically on heroic mode it's probably better to shield spam when the green ooze is due since a shield won't save an isolated target anyway, and it's a good way of making sure that people are topped up going into the subsequent explosions. In 10 man normal I'd agree though.

My personal rule of thumb is to cast PW:S whenever I have nothing better to do unless something in the encounter mandates against it. On aura encounters there's generally something better to do, such as PoH - though I would weave in bubbles to keep BT up.

[Kelesti]

Ironically, if it's on heroic, a Body and Soul can help. :P
And if someone on their "island" is way the frak out of the way and gets it, you can Pain Suppress/Guardian Spirit them, because you really want the shield there to hold out against the Plague.

Either way, the person targetted by Green will get hit, if you're ready or not, it'll come for someone else. If your group can't diminish the damage enough by grouping up to survive it, then you probably shouldn't be doing heroic. :P

[Fenixdown]

I never said heroic to begin with. I just meant normal. I'm not certain if this guy is doing heroic mode anything with his priest, so I'm just feeding the baby steps, so to speak.

[Syya]

You’re forgetting some of the most important mechanics to shield for. I'll give you a few more examples.

-Professor Putricide: shielding the target of a green ooze. Most especially if this person is "left on an island", this can be a factor in saving a life or not.

You should be mass shielding melee, and anyone else stacking on green ooze, not just the target.

-Festergut: shielding Vile Gas targets. This can help save the raid healers a little mana while they continue to raid heal, as this person will not need as big of a top-off as normal.

At the absolute least, shield the entire raid for pungent blight.

The only real "bubblespam" encounter currently in terms of game mechanics is Lich King. Not because Infest will kill a raid if not shielded, simply because shielding the entire raid through it just makes dealing with the mechanic much easier.

Really? Show me your H LK parses. Shielding H LK 25 infest is critical, because if infest takes hold, the dot is too massive to handle when it affects say, more than 10 targets, without a cooldown. Not only do you have to outheal the dot, but you have to get the person back to over 90% health before it stops ticking. Show me a raid that defeated H LK 25 without a disc priest, and I'll agree that "it just makes dealing with the mechanic much easier".

-Do NOT shieldspam for encounters with some form of aura AoE damage. If you look through that same thread, you will note a person attempted to post "proof" that sheildspamming on such encounters was effective. Amusing since that same so-called proof also provided us with the fact that the raid came very close to a wipe. Sine the person was only spamming shields when they weren't necessary, he had Weakened Soul up for each time that they were needed most.

What you are saying is so wrong on so many levels. But since you found what Kelesti said to be so amusing, allow me to amuse myself by throwing the information at you since I actually looked at it.

Show me where the raid nearly wiped. The raid did not nearly wipe. There were only four deaths, and since all four people finished out the fight alive, I'm preeeeetty sure they were battle rezzed. That is nowhere near wipe. Don't believe the hype.

Tiduz could not have saved the druid that Kelesti blamed on him. Here’s the killing blow:

[19:51:08.812] Volatile Ooze Ooze Eruption Yumzlol 36640 (O: 24223)

See that? Overkill by 24k. Check this out too. Kelesti used the same argument about the priest dying.

[19:51:08.812] Volatile Ooze Ooze Eruption Asurez 36406 (O: 24231) (more)

No shield would have prevented either of those deaths.

What caused the deaths was that there weren’t enough people stacked for volatile ooze explosion. I saw no evidence of the druid having weakened soul debuff on him at the time of death, maybe I can find it if I keep looking, but was it there from a previous volatile ooze explosion like it was for the priest? Yes, that's what I said. The priest (Asurez) had WS on him when he died, but that was because he was shielded for the explosion that happened just seconds before. Still though, no shield could have held up to that.

Think for yourself and look at the log like I did. Don’t take people’s words as the gospel, particularly when something is said that could lead you to believe that something personal may be fueling their argument.

I don't understand why people that are less experienced come on here and act like they know everything, and everyone else’s opinions are sh#!, including Tiduz. Disrespect Tiduz’ play style, REALLY? If his method of playing disc was bad, you’d think that Cuties would have caught on and replaced him long ago, because I assure you that Cuties has no shortage of applicants. There’s a reason why top disc priests play the way they do, and it’s not from reading bad advice from a bunch of MMO champion forum trolls that either don’t play disc, or have barely downed Lich King on normal mode. Unless you’ve got the kills and parses to prove what you’re talking about, show some respect where it’s due, to people that have the experience or that have parses to support their claims. Or more simply, just let the vets do the teaching.