Main Spells as Disc?

[raziel083]

Since i didn't see a sticky on it, unless i missed it....just woke up, i figured i'd post about it. I'm main spec shadow, but i also enjoy healing a lot...i did it with my paladin. So i made a secondary spec for discipline. I'm just wondering, besides penance(obviously) and flash heal(i assume?) what are gonna be my main or go to heals. I'm wondering mainly for efficiency, and because it seems like there's a crap ton to go along with heals like our cd's and mitigator spells. I don't seem to have enough to put in for clique, and i don't want to overwhelm myself. Though, holy paladin for clique was pretty simple as far as set up. Not as many buttons to push...so mabe thats why?. Thanks.

[Phaelix]

Some people like it when Disc priests spam PW: Shield on the raid, that's another spell.

Really, you're gonna' be using alot of other spells for certain situations, for example, PoM and PoH.

But when it boils down to it, yeah, flash heal and penance.

[Correlia]

I know a few disc priests that use a renew here and there aswell but your main spells are PW:Shield, Prayer of mending, Flash heal, a renew if needed (But it's rare to use) and Penance

[St1ckman]

It depends on the roll you wish you fill.

Generally however you want to play it, PWS has to go up on what ever your main target is to keep your mana returning through rapture and give you some slight healing with glyph of pws and a chance to get divine aegis if that heal crits. Prayer of mending is your friend, it is a ridiculously CHEAP powerful spell in your arsenal due to the high chance of crit to proc Divine Aegis and smart healing it provides.

When it comes to renew:
Renew is not a spell you want to look at for using ever.... yet.... (we'll see how renew's will play out for disco when their effected by haste and can crit in cataclysm) Your a spec that is meant to shield a target from harm not generally heal it. Yes there are a few spec's out there for disco priests that can use to make full use of their generally superior regen over holy. Its viable, but if you just wanted to throw our renews its best to go holy.

However if your target has PWS, and divine aegis, and isn't taking much damage it doesn't hurt to add a hot into the mix. Or if you need to move and you can't shield a target its a nice spell to throw out.



On a side note, its good that your looking into disco priests for the shielding aspect since were getting a shield effect for all our heals as our mastery as holy pally's. Also if you didn't already know, get skada. It'll show you were you really stand if some idiot tries to point out total healing to get you kicked from a raid rather then looking healing and shielding skada can show you.

[raziel083]

It depends on the roll you wish you fill.

Generally however you want to play it, PWS has to go up on what ever your main target is to keep your mana returning through rapture and give you some slight healing with glyph of pws and a chance to get divine aegis if that heal crits. Prayer of mending is your friend, it is a ridiculously CHEAP powerful spell in your arsenal due to the high chance of crit to proc Divine Aegis and smart healing it provides.

When it comes to renew:
Renew is not a spell you want to look at for using ever.... yet.... (we'll see how renew's will play out for disco when their effected by haste and can crit in cataclysm) Your a spec that is meant to shield a target from harm not generally heal it. Yes there are a few spec's out there for disco priests that can use to make full use of their generally superior regen over holy. Its viable, but if you just wanted to throw our renews its best to go holy.

However if your target has PWS, and divine aegis, and isn't taking much damage it doesn't hurt to add a hot into the mix. Or if you need to move and you can't shield a target its a nice spell to throw out.



On a side note, its good that your looking into disco priests for the shielding aspect since were getting a shield effect for all our heals as our mastery as holy pally's. Also if you didn't already know, get skada. It'll show you were you really stand if some idiot tries to point out total healing to get you kicked from a raid rather then looking healing and shielding skada can show you.

Wow, all great info, thanks and it answered my questions. Yeah i always new disc to be more of a dmg mitigating type healer more so then a direct hp replenisher. So would prayer of healing be worth it at all to have on my list of clique spells? I only ask because its an aoe and it wasn't listed. Not to mention, i'll be running heroics for gearing up first so i won't be doing just "tank" healing right away. And thanks for the add-on suggestion. I can just imagine some ignorant people looking at a recount healing meter and being like wtf on the amount i healed instead of dmg i prevented. so i'll look to get that as well.

Edit: i did just see one of the previous posters mention PoH, as something that may be used but i guess i was more or less wondering if i should keep it in my main clique arsenal of spells.

[Cloud92684]

High end disc gear does not use much haste but instead includes lots of crit. This is obviously so divine aegis will trigger more and many disc priests will actually absorb more with their divine aegis than their shields. Therefore, all of the priests heals minus renew (disc priests will have pws glyph) will trigger divine aegis. PoH is especially nice since an inner focus PoH will make sure almost all the people hit by prayer will get a divine aegis shield.

As mentioned your go to spells are pws, penance, pom, and fh. But as the fight warrants, well used poh, binding heal, or even holy nova can be helpful. In terms of renew, if you have spare time, toss them on the tanks, it won't hurt. Spam shielding is not recommended except for fights with high predictable aoe damage as the only real reactionary spells that disc has are pws and penance. If some raid member is taking lots of damage and it has weakened soul and your penance on cooldown, your choices are very limited.

[Bigslick]

...Not to mention, i'll be running heroics for gearing up first so i won't be doing just "tank" healing right away.
...
Edit: i did just see one of the previous posters mention PoH, as something that may be used but i guess i was more or less wondering if i should keep it in my main clique arsenal of spells.

Ideally, you won't be doing 'just tank healing' at all in WotLK raiding. Disc's best contribution is in hybridized raid/tank support, though it can be a very good secondary MT healer when tank survival is an issue. With the ICC buffs, the effective health of a tank is already so high that the contribution towards it by a disc priest is marginalized against unchanged incoming damage.

As to 'should I clique this spell, should I clique that spell' it really comes down to how many clique bindings you feel comfortable managing before it becomes easier to use traditional keybinds. There's no law saying every ability you want to use needs to be bound via clique (it failed in the senate).

High end disc gear does not use much haste but instead includes lots of crit.

High end disc gear is what the priest selects it to be for their style. You can only do so much to boost your SP with gems, and SP is for the most point the same (aside from trinkets) in different slots of same ilvl. So at high gearing, continuous throughput when not shielding is generally better achieved by increasing haste, not crit, if you had to choose between the two. That being said, the only gear you can say was absolutely designed for high end disc was also absolutely designed for high end holy and, to be candid, it is not ideal for either. When it comes to non-tier gear, haste and crit are both very valuable and equally accessible on gear, though when seeking to obtain it it's important you weigh the benefit you will derive against that to be had by dps casters who might want the same piece featuring both stats.

[Sarcasm]

The main spells you use will also depend on the fight itself (which I don't think I saw anyone mention yet, I skimmed over the responses though).

On a high pulse-AoE damage fight (such as Sindragosa, Blood-Queen Lana'thel) when you know the raid will be taking constant AoE damage, then covering the raid in shields is a good idea because you know the shields will get fully eaten up.

On fights where the raid damage is a bit more random (such as Lady Deathwhisper, Blood Princes) or there is no light raid damage but instead heavy single target damage (such as Sarfang's Mark of the Fallen Champion) then pre-shielding the raid isn't very helpful and you'll want to switch to your healing spells rather than your PW:Shield (these being Flash Heal, Penance).

In all situations you should try to have PoM on cooldown.

Knowing the fight and knowing the spells in your arsenal will generally be the biggest dictator in what spells you want to be using to be most effective in a given fight.

[KnickKnack]

Flash Heal: Cause Gheal is god awful unless you spec it but even that is not that great.
Penance: Duh.
PW Shield: Disc is all about mitigation.
PoM: It is at your disposal, use it.
PoH: Combine that with your DA and Inspiration crits, and go to town.
Pain Supression: Saves your ass.
Power Infusion: Some caster DPS love you for that (great for portal healers on Dreamwalker)
-----NOT RENEW-------

[Fichek]

PoM on cooldown. Doesn't matter if you are spending all of your GCDs exclusively for shielding you should always PoM on cooldown. And Penance too. Other than that, Flash Heal if there isn't much to do.

[Tylmarande]

On fights where the raid damage is a bit more random (such as Lady Deathwhisper, Blood Princes).

On the contrary, Lady D is another fight where shield spam shines. Frostbolt + ghost explosion can easily gib a player without a shield (even at 30%) - spamming shields in P2 simply increases your raid's EH to survive these bad RNGs (talking about HM of course).

And haste gear shouldn't be underestimated as Disc - if you're seeking to maximise your single target throughput, hard capping your FHeal with haste is the most efficient way to do it. Of course, you should be stacking spellpower on this gear to maximise your shield spamming ability.

[Kelesti]

Deathwhisper is a fight where people try to pound a circle peg through a square-shaped-hole when they shield spam.

Deathwhisper would be awesome if you could shield spam ghost explosions. But you can't. You spend so much time cycle-target-shielding that it's gone from Frostbolt Volley long before its useful. You might get lucky and take off 2k from a Ghost. "but its being used" isn't an excuse for a poor playstyle.

While it may be different at 30%, shielding didn't use to save someone taking 2 ghosts at the same time, they'd still die. It gets even worse when you factor Frostbolt Volleys or Mind Controls into it.

With the exception of Enhancement Shaman running around wtfglobal on your cloth-wearing-raiders (which, thanks to earlier effects, can't be blocked by mass shielding either), shields protect the lower HP members of the raid much better. Someone's low health after a Frostbolt Volley, and ghosts are going out? Probably gonna die. <insert shield of awesome> Tada!

Heroic Lady Deathwhisper is an excellent testing ground for who knows how to play Discipline, and who knows how to tab-target and think it's always awesome 100% because it's "shields being used". Infact, without costing your guild some attempts on the wing-end bosses, it's the perfect one to do it on.

[Auraye]

High end disc gear does not use much haste but instead includes lots of crit.

Sure it does. I grab all the +crit +haste gear that I can, avoiding spirit and MP5. BIS items for disc include haste, because haste becomes more useful than crit since you start seeing DR on crit after 30%. At current gear levels, seeking additional crit is unnecessary, just like picking up additional MP5 is unnecessary due to the amount of intellect is on our gear. You easily get over 30% crit. I’m seeking haste now so I can cast faster PoH and penance.

This is obviously so divine aegis will trigger more and many disc priests will actually absorb more with their divine aegis than their shields.

It’s literally impossible to absorb more with DA than shields unless you’re hardly using PW:S. If you’re basing this info off of looking at combat logs, allow me to direct you to the stickied thread in this forum that addresses this exact issue in “Understanding Meters and Logs (Absorbs)”.

To the original poster: do not forget binding heal. Although it’s more mana costly, it heals for about the same as FH on two targets, one being yourself, simultaneously. You don’t want to cast it much unless you’re marked on Saurfang (for example), or you’ll find yourself OOM pretty quickly. But yeah, I use (order varies depends on fight) PW:S, PoM, Penance, PoH, FH, binding heal, and renew (renew goes to support tanks). Holy nova has its niche, useful in only certain fights like H LK Frostmourne room.

Kelesti, the point of mass shielding on P2 of H LDW isn’t that we expect the shields to hold up for the ghosts, it means that if someone gets volley + ghost, they won’t die because their health didn’t get as low from the volley. It makes the ghost much more survivable when their health pool isn’t already at 50%, because there really isn’t much time for people to get healed between volley and ghosts. I don’t think anything can save someone from an unpredicted double ghost explosion, even with the 30% buff. People just have to pay attention. The only fight that I don’t spam is H Dreamwalker, and we’re doing 12/12 HM just fine, so I have a real hard time thinking that your way is the "right way".

[Samurai]

Haste is useful, don't not get it.
PoH still uses haste upto 4000 or something crazy lol

[Tylmarande]

Deathwhisper is a fight where people try to pound a circle peg through a square-shaped-hole when they shield spam.

Deathwhisper would be awesome if you could shield spam ghost explosions. But you can't. You spend so much time cycle-target-shielding that it's gone from Frostbolt Volley long before its useful. You might get lucky and take off 2k from a Ghost. "but its being used" isn't an excuse for a poor playstyle.

While it may be different at 30%, shielding didn't use to save someone taking 2 ghosts at the same time, they'd still die. It gets even worse when you factor Frostbolt Volleys or Mind Controls into it.

With the exception of Enhancement Shaman running around wtfglobal on your cloth-wearing-raiders (which, thanks to earlier effects, can't be blocked by mass shielding either), shields protect the lower HP members of the raid much better. Someone's low health after a Frostbolt Volley, and ghosts are going out? Probably gonna die. <insert shield of awesome> Tada!

Heroic Lady Deathwhisper is an excellent testing ground for who knows how to play Discipline, and who knows how to tab-target and think it's always awesome 100% because it's "shields being used". Infact, without costing your guild some attempts on the wing-end bosses, it's the perfect one to do it on.

I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with what I said. What else would a Disc do on this fight? I generally priority shield the melee, as they have the hardest time escaping ghost explosions and/or have the highest chance of an explosion chained to them - after that, whichever ranged I know are the worst at avoiding ghosts and whoever else is in range as the lowest priority. It's the most extreme example of Disc's ability to add EH to the raid to survive mistakes they'd otherwise die to.

[Sarcasm]

With regards to the LDW comments:

This is a prime example of knowing the fight and knowing which spells to use. In phase 1, the damage is more random and unpredictable, so you're best to stick closer to your heals. In phase 2 (speaking for heroic here), the ghost damage is intense and fairly raidwide, so covering the raid with shields isn't a bad idea.

Everyone's right.