Disc- Frustrated and could use some advice.

[zodiaak]

So I've been playing disc for a while now, in wotlk, then had a brief stint as holy in the beginning of Cata. The last few weeks I've gotten frustrated with disc, I've been having mana issues. So I reforged, regemmed, and respecced about 2 weeks ago. I backed off my shields, and backed off healing entirely. On Thursday we did our normal farm bosses, and once again I was having mana problems. I had backed off my shields and backed off healing again. I talked to a friend of mine who is disc aswell, he said to specc into archangel, and while I am not a fan of it at all, I did. Im still frustrated and really not having a good time. I have a resto shaman that I'm gearing up in the meantime, but theres no chance of me switching to it. The more and more I seem to play my priest the more Im starting not to like it anymore. I am really awful at holy and just have a hard time with it, so thats not really an option. Should I give up on the priest or keep trying to play through my frustrations? My numbers are not low (we do 10ms btw) so the raid leader told me its not an issue, but if Im truely miserable playing it, should I just quit for a while till I lose my frustrations and try again in a few weeks? As this goes on Im feeling more and more emo. Thinking of getting a hairstyle to match.


Please keep it to something constructive, I dont believe its a L2P issue. I dont use flash heal, I use my cds, I dont overuse shields. I dislike the idea of shields being entirely used for rapture, so maybe thats where Im having issues.

[Koilie]

I only do 25 mans on my main, but I have a second priest which is shadow with a holy offspec. Sometimes I have gone disc though. I have found Holy to be a little better suited for 10 man. Just my personal experience. If you want to play disc in 10 man you may want to try forging and gearing around tank healing, as that is a bigger role in 10 man for disc priests usually. (Value Haste and Crit up a little more as opposed to straight mastery. I don't know what your doin with your stats now so it's hard to say what you could improve on.)

I run a AA/A spec as my primary on my main and a non atonement spec as my secondary. I pretty much only use the non atonement spec for sinestra and al'akir since they are too damn fat for it to actually work. It's nice though to just blast away at a boss whilst maintaining a steady flow of decently sized heals on your tanks and melee/stacked range during light damage. Then if your tank is getting blasted or your about to toss out some PoH just pop AA and hit the big numbers.

Running a non AA spec allows you a few talent points to place into some extra goodies if you just can't get into the whole do damage to heal thing. Then you just use Heal for low damage to keep inspiration up on your tank. Shield tank whenever WS is off for rapture. Big Gheal penance rotations for heavy tank damage and Shields and PoHs for raid spikes. More haste/crit certainly doesn't hurt now that shields only last 15s. It's ok for them to be a little smaller since it gives them more chance to be used up when cast on non-tanks and hte haste/crit will boost your tank healing a good chunk more than Mastery.

[Docta]

attonement wont actually give you any mana, its purely for the healing bous of archangel.. if you give us a log or even a ss of recount we might be able to give you better advce about your spell usage, or even just telling us your asignment in your 10m (tanks, raid? etc). For 10m normals I personally found holy to be a bit more effective, but tbh its by and large based on healing assignments/raidcomp/etc. Some more info about your spell usage/gearlevel/healing assignments will allow us to give you better advice.

[zodiaak]

Sorry no ss of recount. Uhm, 10m consists of me as disc, a resto druid, and holy pally. They usually have me as a floater between raid and tank, depending on the fight. Fights like maloriak I help on the add tank and heal up raid. Chogall Im helping main tank heals and some raid heals. The usual breakdown of spells is about 30% shield, 20% gheal, then penance and prayer of mending. Depending on the fight, if Im more raid heals (Like on twin dragons) prayer of healing takes the place of gheal. I usually average anywhere from 9k hps - 13k hps. With the other healers close if not above me. Last raid I backed off shields so they were about 15% of my total healing, with prayer of healing or gheal taking the top spot over shields.

My ilvl is 360, all 359 gear. I have one piece without spirit (the shoulders off the blind dragon) and I have reforged spirit onto it. I am prioritizing mastery on gear and gemming all int cept to meet my meta (2 int/mastery gems). The problem I have with holy is that I dont like it, and really just cant get it down correctly. I played it for about 2 months and just waited for the buff to shields so I could go back to disc.

[Docta]

In 10m I run with the same raid comp/role but I prioritize more haste than mastery (mainly due to swapping between holy/disc for chim, atramedes, halfus). If you're having mana problems that may not be the way to go; though I feel like if you're only doing 15% healing via shields mastery isnt really ideal to stack... I would probably try to grab a little more haste/crit and balance stats a bit with your spell breakdown. Not sure if you mentioned it but I would also reccomend grabbing some concentration pots, pretty much every fight has a bit of downtime you can use one during as long as you communicate it with your healing team (maloriak blue phase, headphase magmaw, chimaeron after massacre/just before the double strike, etc).. I would spec out of attonement if you're still having mana issues and try picking up train of thought perhaps... Also remember you can 'stance dance' Inner fire/Inner will if you're gonna preshield a little bit and this will save tons of mana.

[Deleted]

And why not try shadow? Enough to calm down from healing.

[Imurbandaid]

Idk i love my disc priest and ive never had mana issues really...the problem may be in your other healers and you having to overcompensate for their bad healing? if not that then maybe priest isnt for you and you should try something else out...or maybe try dps or tank...but if you like healing and are starting to dislike priest more and more then id say just pick a different healing class.

And i have even gone back to lots of bubbles...~40-50% of my heals and i still dont have mana issues so idk

[zodiaak]

This really helped, ty all. Shadow isnt an option for me, I have 0 attention span for dps. I actually think its harder than healing for me. While our other healers are very good, it might be the constant switching between tank heals and raid heals thats stretching me too thin. I have 2 young children so my day starts out at 0/100 patience and by the time its raidtime, I'm at 95/100 patience. So I think Im a little more easily frustrated than most of my guildees. Im going to try atonement out in a raid setting tonight, and if I still have issues to the point of being miserable, I'll try to talk to my raid leader again. I think my friends idea of trying out atonement was so the healing buff I get at 5 stacks, cuts down on how many heals I have to use to get people up to full. Once again, I appreciate it. I even have some guildees backing me up about trying out my shaman if nothing else

[Afflictid]

Get a Rapture timer and if you time it right, using bubbles is actually a mana increase. Obviously bubble if you have to to save someone. Otherwise use it on the main tank as a mana cd!

[Hunto]

Rapture is the main mana regen ability of disc priests. I know you don't think it's an L2P issue, but if many other people are raid healing as disc without mana issues, and you ignore the main regen mechanic....it's your playing dude.

Do yourself a favor and install that rapture timer thingy. Not only am I never OOM any more, but I was able to reforge out of spirit and into throughput stats once I started shielding immediately upon CD.

[kynd]

Are you using Inner focus each and every time you can? I macro inner focus to every single main healing spell, flash heal, PoH, etc. This makes sure you use it on CD. I hope you are timing your fiends right, i.e. an 8 minute fight, you are popping it as early as possible to get it back up in time. You should be procing rapture every single time the CD is up. Pre-emptively cast PoH when AoE dmg is inc. Its much more effective to proc aegis on 5 people and have to heal up a smaller amount later than casting PoH after they have taken a ton of dmg and you are using this high mana spell to bring them back up, essentially wasting your aegis ability by not mitigating anything.

[Tharrag]

I can't understand why you have mana issues. Of course if i am going for spam shields i have to deal with low mana but if you use rapture on cooldown and heal with innerfocus macro on GH. flash, PoH there should be no problem.

If you are going to heal the tanks its very difficult to get out of mana you just have to keep up shields on tank heal with gh (inner focus macro) and keep PoM on cd with every gh you reduce the inner focus cooldown (if specced as mt heal you should). So you will get your rapture proccs for mana and have every ~30 sec innerfocus rdy if you are going to be oom you also have your shadowfiend and HoH left.

When you have to heal grp you should also macro innerfocus with PoH spam PoM on CD and use shields on tanks or teammates which will take dmg to get rapture proccs

[Callypso]

I'm a bit confused by your posts, as you say you have no issues with healing done relative to the other healers yet you say you run into mana issues a lot. Aparantly it's just the lack of mana that's frustrating you, not a lack of performance?


Here's a few thoughts to consider, some of them have been mentioned already:

- Are you spamming too much early on in the fight, running yourself oom later? (would explain the good numbers while you still have mana issues. Healing is teamwork, so don't overcompensate).

- Are you using your fiend optimally? (early so you can use it at least twice).

- Are you making sure you get a rapture proc ever 12 seconds? (Easy to forget if you're raid healing, but a shield on the tank every time the debuff drops is both good for your numbers and mana)

- Are you using your inner focus on cooldown? (macro it to your abilities for easy use)

- Are you keeping your 4 set bonus up? (This is a bit tricky since using penance on cd isn't always a good choice)

All of these point are things you could/should be doing to ensure your mana will last as long as possible, while barely affecting your playstyle or healing assignments. Each of these things will make a notable difference in your mana management, and if you combine everything together your mana should pretty much be fine, unless your raid is taking far more damage than they should.

[zodiaak]

I'm a bit confused by your posts, as you say you have no issues with healing done relative to the other healers yet you say you run into mana issues a lot. Aparantly it's just the lack of mana that's frustrating you, not a lack of performance?


Here's a few thoughts to consider, some of them have been mentioned already:

- Are you spamming too much early on in the fight, running yourself oom later? (would explain the good numbers while you still have mana issues. Healing is teamwork, so don't overcompensate).

- Are you using your fiend optimally? (early so you can use it at least twice).

- Are you making sure you get a rapture proc ever 12 seconds? (Easy to forget if you're raid healing, but a shield on the tank every time the debuff drops is both good for your numbers and mana)

- Are you using your inner focus on cooldown? (macro it to your abilities for easy use)

- Are you keeping your 4 set bonus up? (This is a bit tricky since using penance on cd isn't always a good choice)

All of these point are things you could/should be doing to ensure your mana will last as long as possible, while barely affecting your playstyle or healing assignments. Each of these things will make a notable difference in your mana management, and if you combine everything together your mana should pretty much be fine, unless your raid is taking far more damage than they should.

It could be my raid taking more damage then they should on certain points. I know I go through recount after all of our raid nights and check damage done, interupts, dispells, damage taken, and overheals. I usually am the top of dispells by a long shot. They used to tease me about being a jerk about dispells in wotlk. But I think maybe I will have to pay attention a bit more to my rapture timer. I probably am off on that. I do not have the 4pc. A few weeks ago they took me off my priest and onto my druid for a better raid makeup. Then one of the other healers complained they wanted to go on their freshly dinged 85 druid, and so I got sent back to my priest. I just picked up off pieces in the meantime, not entirely sure if I was staying on the priest. So I will go grab the rest of my pieces after this raid week is over.
After talking some more with my friend I also think it might be a lack of communication with the other 2 healers. There has been numerous times where I thought I was supposed to be on a certain tank, only to see the other one is dying. So i have to run and spam heal them, then oddly enough the next one dies. So I think maybe the other healers are switching at the same time so its really not accomplishing much but draining my mana. Idk, gonna reread this thread, look at my gear, watch a little more carefully during tonights raid and see if I can pinpoint what im doing that I wasnt noticing before.