[Priest] State of Discipline 4.1.0

[Suzaku]

They never actually said a number, we did. What they did say was they wanted you using more of your toolkit, instead of just 85+% of your output from one button spam.

They did make a post before Cataclysm's release regarding PW: Shield spam and listing a number of where they want the absorb v healing percentage should be. I remember it being around 30%, however the post was so long ago.

[Shakalager]

Well I think that we could definitely benefit from a buff to our Prayer of Healing. That and Divine Aegis could be worked into something really cool. If I got a small form o DA or something from more heals than just Critical ones than I would be casting my other heals more.

QUESTION: If I get a critical strike with SMITE or HOLY FIRE, will a Divine Aegis go onto the friendly target that I heal with said smite/holy fire through AA/Atonement?

[Velenei]

Well I think that we could definitely benefit from a buff to our Prayer of Healing. That and Divine Aegis could be worked into something really cool. If I got a small form o DA or something from more heals than just Critical ones than I would be casting my other heals more.

QUESTION: If I get a critical strike with SMITE or HOLY FIRE, will a Divine Aegis go onto the friendly target that I heal with said smite/holy fire through AA/Atonement?

Atonement can proc Divine Aegis.

[Shakalager]

Cool beans, thanks. I've read all of EJ and such on Disc Priests but do any of you reforge into Crit? I've personally put a lot into Mastery and Spirit until I felt comfortable. Sitting at 18% Mastery which is +45% absorption. Crit would give you a higher chance to proc Divine Aegis, but which has more throughput?

[Velenei]

Personally I reforge out of crit, as primarily a raid healer for hardmodes. At the current gear level it is very unreliable, whereas mastery and haste provide static benefit.

[Shakalager]

Personally I reforge out of crit, as primarily a raid healer for hardmodes.

Currently I OS Disc heal when a healer doesn't show up (which has been past 2 weeks >.>) and I top charts at 12k-14k HPS by pretty much shield spamming and I wasn't sure if some extra crit instead would be better. I see what you mean though, it is unreliable. How's haste for us? I rarely cast renew so I'm not looking for an extra tick, maybe faster casting on Smites, Gheals? What is your Haste % Velenei?

[harmfultohumans]

Remember when Blizzard said they wanted healers to think more about what spell they choose and when? They didn't want Disc Priests spamming PW:Shield. Not in PvP, and not in PvE. So they upped the mana cost. But as players gained larger mana pools and better regen, it was still worth mindlessly spamming shields.

Reducing the duration of PW:Shield to 15 seconds still allows for some pre-shielding. But now you have to actually think more about who you are shielding and why. It's wasteful and mindless spamming when shields fall off of teammates without being absorbed. It is a welcomed change in my opinion.

[Deleted]

I might be living in hope but does Atonement/AA disc look any more viable than current?

Zom

[phyx]

nerfing pw:s to 15sec duration means nothing. PvE wise its a very small nerf. priests that are doing hc will still spamm pws. just look at the 25hc logs. all disc. Hps will remain the same. If blizzard doesnt want us to use Pw:S (which is for some reason like A LOT) they will need to overhaul our spells. without pw:s out hps is too low.

[Kelesti]

nerfing pw:s to 15sec duration means nothing. PvE wise its a very small nerf. priests that are doing hc will still spamm pws. just look at the 25hc logs. all disc. Hps will remain the same. If blizzard doesnt want us to use Pw:S (which is for some reason like A LOT) they will need to overhaul our spells. without pw:s out hps is too low.

You're forgetting how many of those logs were based before the mana cost hotfix?

[tsokin]

also if your hps is too low without shield spamming then perhaps your button pressing could use some work.
when i raid heal as disc I've found the archangel/prayer of healing combo can provide some very very nice hps
the fights in bastion of twilight particularly lend themselves to this style of healing.

simply using atonement to pull some decent hps/dmg in low raid dmg phase (proccing absorbs and heals on tank or nearby melee in fire) and then when the burst dmg starts begin by precasting your prayer of healing between a glyphed prayer of healing and the aegis any sustained aoe works very well for this disc healing style

it does have its weaknesses (heroic atramedes) but the combo can work very well and with some well played rapture procs you should be one of the most mana efficient healers in your raid

[OverClokx]

Okay, so after some serious testing, and a rather rigid 2-day raiding schedule this week, including my guild's first H Atramedes 25man kill, I think my opinion of disc has changed a bit. (for the record, all of the following is my playstyle in a 25man raid environment, please do not confuse it with 10man, thanks)

First of all, we're not as broken as a lot of people say we are. Yes, we are indeed 'hard' to play effectively, but in most situations/scenarios, we can excel in both raid and tank healing far better than any other class in the game.

First off, the role of a disc priest is viable as both either a tank or a raid healer, with interswitchable roles on the fly. How so? Very simply, the replacement of mastery in higher tiers of gear for haste. Speaking honestly, I was gemming/enchanting/speccing into the best absorbs humanly possible to maximize my PW:S/DA procs on tanks, and also making sure to get Inspiration/SoS/etc. After messing with haste, and breaking down more of the heroic 25 fights (Atramedes/Halfus/Chimaeron), I've come to the conclusion that as long as you have a mildly competent raid, you no longer need some of these tools, mostly due to a few reasons. The biggest is the sheer fact that most of them seem to be gimmicks. Tracking the reduced WS on a target with utilizing GH+PI heals is silly, and the latency behind (speaking as a person that has 40ms latency to their realm) the delay in the removal of the debuff at 0 after 2 SOS procs on a tank feels like a wasted GCD to me in all honesty. Secondly, crit talents/crit increasing talents just seem very trivial at this point as well. As where 3% haste into darkness is a permanent, all-time buff, crit is strictly RNG, even if it is a 10% increase, and while it might not play out on paper as well as it does in practice, stacking haste for encounters I have found is a great way to maximize throughput, maximizing the chance of DA procs on single targets, and making your group healing sickly overpowered. Overall, however, I find that utilizing Atonement+AA is actually worth something now, since there's going to always be downtime (even in some heroic fights gasp) that you can use to increase your mana pool (albeit slightly), and assist your raid in beating a tough enrage timer while healing the raid simultaneously. Yes, I do believe that AA is viable in a disc spec.

Taking a look at Heroic Halfus/Chimaeron/Atramedes, let me break down a few scenarios in which haste is actually far better than mastery in almost every accord. Halfus off the bat is a very fun fight, and a great point to utilize how good skills such as Lifegrip/Barrier/AA are in this fight. Using 4-5 tanks, my guild usually has 1 tank pick up Storm+Halfus (MD+TOT), who builds aggro (blood DK) at the edge of the platform. Upon him establishing enough aggro on both Halfus and the Drake, I LG him into the center, where my raid has already positioned themselves, and this we begin the fight. Speaking honestly, I've found that with stacking haste, I can easily single heal any single tank in this fight bar them sitting with 6+ stacks of MS debuff from Halfus. This is mostly why we have 7 healers, and have 1 healer for each tank, 2 healers for the MS debuff/halfus tank specifically, and 1 healer focusing strictly on the raid. Once one drake is down, I can immediately switch to smite healing. As long as your raid is competent in avoiding fireballs, this part is strictly a joke from here to the end of the fight, where tanks are the only people taking any form of significant damage, and pumping out smites with PI during breath phases makes it a quick gg vs Halfus.

Next, let's look at H Chimaeron. Very similar to standard chimaeron with the few tweaks that're hardmode. Bar having 1 healer per each group in our raid to prevent massacre gibs and to keep everyone above 10k, we use 2 disc priests for this fight strictly for barriers+PW:S into the end of P3. Long story short, my role in this fight is a few critical things. Keeping the Double Attack tank topped at all times, with a PW:S/full health+POM idle, barrier'ing as soon as poison bolts come down in P2, healing the MT/OT during the feud phases (I strictly focus on tanks, all other healers are focused on the raid at this point, and I find it very easy with a Prot Paladin OTing the first portion of Feud as we can rotate Bubble/LOH/Argent Defender/PS regardless of how RNG feud phases are. And of course, resuming shield spam into P3. What I've noticed however, is that during P1, I have a lot of downtime, so I can smite, regenerate mana, and eventually maintain a high mana pool, while at the same time saving melee (and even some ranged!) from impending death very, very often. Not only does this help other healers with their mana, but it also makes it so we can beat the rather tight enrage timer on this boss. Overall, a healer doing an additional 700k damage as compared to everyone else DPSing come phase 3 really helps. Long story short, easy peasy, probably the least-stressful H Boss in the game for Disc.

And then comes Heroic Atramedes. This fight, speaking honestly, I initially started working on with my spec involving no Atonement/AA, with SOS and everything else, and stacking mastery, and I found this fight to be brutal, relentless, and eventually frustrating. However, after reworking my spec to a more haste-based platform, I've found that disc priest utility really shines in these mid-tier heroics once you get away from shield spamming, especially when this guy's throwing sound discs at you so frequently, and there's very little time to cast. Overall, this fight is a POH/awareness encounter. Getting off POHs immediately after modulation quickly enough to make it in time for the next modulation/sonic breath is key. Same thing with the pre-nerf Modulation->searing flames->modulation again, which we had to deal with for our attempts/actual kill. Once again though, haste seemed to be key in this fight, both in p1 and p2, as you can get off the POHs from grp 5 downwards and have the whole raid healed up from a 'bad' modulation (late P1 for example) in under 7 seconds (gogo 2 second POH cast).

Anyway, bar all the mumbling I've done above, I think disc really improves this xpac once you hit an appropriate gear level for throughput, and then gets a lot better once you learn how to manage your mana, and get away from shield spamming like we were encouraged to do in icc/togc/etc. I will also say that players finding themselves in difficult scenarios and not having the necessary tools to complete a fight/find their niche to respec, and try different specs, with and/or without the improved inner fire/focus, with and without SOS, and the like. Just find what's comfortable. The class isn't bad in any way/shape/form. Lacking a little bit in some departments, and overcompensating in others a bit, sure, but hardly the weakest healing class, and definitely not terrible. I do wish that we had a more viable instant cast ability that allowed us to have a COH/LOTD like effect, but what can you do.

[Bigslick]

I do wish that we had a more viable instant cast ability that allowed us to have a COH/LOTD like effect, but what can you do.

/waves at weather

But... but we have holy nova!!!

PS: Make sure to heal that new nub druid you guys picked up ;-)

[Lellybaby]

If blizzard really want to make discipline decent they need to trim down our tree and combine some talents.

There should be no reason why disc priests should have to choose between going AA/Atonement spec and SoS spec.

We should be able to have both and that way we can use smites/holy fires etc instead of just shield spamming which is really what they are trying to stop.

In PvP I still wont go with an AA/Atonement spec because Mind Spike/Mind Blast is just better to use to help burn down a target.

No chance of getting your holy spell school locked out either.

[Suzaku]

If blizzard really want to make discipline decent they need to trim down our tree and combine some talents.

There should be no reason why disc priests should have to choose between going AA/Atonement spec and SoS spec.

We should be able to have both and that way we can use smites/holy fires etc instead of just shield spamming which is really what they are trying to stop.

In PvP I still wont go with an AA/Atonement spec because Mind Spike/Mind Blast is just better to use to help burn down a target.

No chance of getting your holy spell school locked out either.

I agree. I find it to rather asinine that Evangelism/Archangel/Atonement costs 5 talent points and is not an ability that can be used every fight. There are just certain fights where the boss model is too big and Evangelism/Atonement feels completely like a filler talent for the main goal of getting Archangel. The entire implementation of these talents feel clunky and needs a complete overhaul. To the many priests that are touting the benefits of Evangelism/Atonement, if Blizzard allowed Penance to tick Evangelism regardless of nuke damage or healing, then 95% of the priests currently using Evangelism/Atonement would immediately drop Atonement. Evangelism itself should be changed so that it provides a minor mana and heal benefit to the Priest while its active and then you can pop Archangel to consume the buff for a pure healing benefit for high spike damage phases.

[iorcedurmother]

We are behind? Why my recount shows other things.

Yea I'm with this Guy, I use skada which shows absorbs and heals and disc priests are owning in that, at least the ones I've ran with.

[Deleted]

What do we have?
[list][*]Shield's mana cost has been increased substantially, but this is already live.

sorry to ask I am not sure to understand : does that mean that the cost of the shields will not change from today to 4.1?

Thx for your precisions.

[Deleted]

sorry to ask I am not sure to understand : does that mean that the cost of the shields will not change from today to 4.1?

Thx for your precisions.

Yes it does mean that.

[Prod]

In hindsight, the whole damaging while healing concept should have gone to Holy Paladins since they're the ones with a pseudo dps/healing tree to begin with (okay, not so much dps, but hey, they do have damage related talents in Holy!)

I was wondering, I know that for 10 mans, 3 healers is standard while better geared groups can pull if off with 2 healers. I was thinking, what if we went for 2.5 healers instead with me focusing mainly on Smite and occasionally helping heal? Obviously, this will make Disc priests seem less effective since they're going to bottom out both dps and healing charts, but with my guild, on some fights it feels like I don't really need to heal that much. I end fights with 30% mana, without using mana pots (except Chim on normal 10m).

[Suzaku]

Yea I'm with this Guy, I use skada which shows absorbs and heals and disc priests are owning in that, at least the ones I've ran with.

You are talking about absorbs and healing, while I am talking purely about our healing. If Blizzard wants to change the way that Discipline Priests "abuse" PW: Shield, then the way to do it is to lower our APS while increasing our HPS to compensate. Absorbs and healing are two separate things and thus are calculated separately in Skada.