1. #1

    Disc tank healer (guild is just getting started in normal FL) needing some advice

    Hi guys, I'm a long time holy spec priest, i was disc in wrath but switched to holy for BoT and BwD, and i've switched back to discipline and have been running that spec since early september (I took a break from wow during almost all of patch 4.1). The guild I'm with now is just starting to do firelands. I have experience with all the bosses on normal mode. The other players in the guild are close to my gear level. It was very difficult for us to do shannox on normal mode... in pugs i haven't ever had issues with any bosses.

    The main thing I need help with is what I should be reforging and gemming for tank healing, I am currently main tank healer (we are running me, a shammy, and a druid). I think my spec and glyphs are good, I just don't know what I need to reforge into, and what kind of balance I should have in my stats. In the gear I have currently, I am flooded with crit.

    Also I would like to know if there is a spell i should be using on high damage phases. Right now im using shield everytime I can with SoS (mainly on high damage phases, other times I try to manage it around rapture) and using a combo of flash heal when hp is very low and greater heal when I feel the tank is high enough that he won't die before the cast finishes. But I still got a couple of spikes that caused a death, and I don't really know what to do to prevent that.

    I don't really have any mana issues, I can go almost the whole fight above 60% mana. I don't know if I should reforge out of spirit or what. I'm really kind of lost. Here is my char. link-

    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...yokoh/advanced

    Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance ;D

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Firsly, Change your bracer enchant to 50 INT. Secondly, if you are finishing fights above 60% mana then I would reforge out of spirit. That or your bringing too many healers.

    I personally enjoy having haste as disc. I think it really it up to you.

    I would save shields for rapture and for when the tank take this "spike damage" you talk of. Clutch shields are awesome. :P

    Other than that, flash heal/greater heal when the situation demands it, and remember to always use inner focus.

  3. #3
    Go for haste for reforges and int haste gems, i'd also suggest speccing into Arch angel and atonement its really awesome for low dmg moments, can dps and heal at the same time.

    Also i'd change the PoH glyph into the barrier glyph but thats just me and if you get into atonement get the major glyph that increases your chance to hit with smite and holy fire by 18% so you won't miss i've gotten up to 10k dps just holy fire and smiting while still keeping up with the other 2 healers its a very good thing to learn.

    annnd.. Hm.. a neat little trick you can do too make sure you pop inner focus whenever it comes off cooldown is too macro it into Greater Heal, Flash Heal, Prayer of Healing, Binding Heal. I found it too make a huge difference and also remember to use Power Infusion when you can aswell!

    Best of luck

  4. #4
    Deleted
    Don't forget to feed your PI to your best caster unless you actually need it. They will love you long time, $5.

  5. #5
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Wablakin View Post
    Don't forget to feed your PI to your best caster unless you actually need it. They will love you long time, $5.
    lol you cheapo

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Gem for the socket bonus on your chest, and then for your tier legs when you get them. But what others have already said are good points. I prefer speccing into Strengthof Soul and Train of Thought, rather than Archangel and Atonement, for (mainly) single target healing.

  7. #7
    Deleted
    I've actually ran with the same healer setup as your self since we started Fireland and I still am only the shammy goes dps most of the time, I mostly found my self in the same situation with loads of mana and wondering where to put stats, at first I tried the mastery setup but I didn't use enough shields to make it worth while. Then I tried a haste build with and without AA but I found it a struggle to keep the tanks topped off and finally I went crit spec and never looked back.

    As far as spirit goes to be completely honest just keep dropping it till you actually have to work to keep mana, atm I am sitting on 1200 spirit with no procs or trinkets I struggle a little for mana in HC modes but if fights go as planned I can hold out. ( we have never wiped due to having no mana ) btw the lowest spirit a priest can have while also using 4pc set is 900.

    As for the stats crit, haste, mastery, the first two do kind of have a cap that you should aim for.

    For haste as long as your Greater heal is at 2.2 seconds cast time you should be good aiming for more haste I found to be wasteful because it takes so much haste to drop it even .1 lower and with BT your cast time will be around 1.9 anyways. I think around 13% buffed = 2.2.

    For Crit below 15% un-buffed I found it to be lacking and unreliable but when you start reaching 25% buffed crits tend to happen a lot more and if you add renewed hope with weakened soul that's 35% crit on shielded targets plus another 25% with inner focus. I have personally stopped stacking crit after I reached 30% raid buffed as again it takes too much from others stats to get it higher.

    And mastery I only started stacking mastery after I reached my personal cap's in haste and crit, as far as I know it has no min / max cap but once you are happy with your other stats you can't go wrong with mastery.

    Again this is my personal stat setup for tank healing with the same healer group but what works for me may not work for you but I will say crit is more then reliable once you have enough.

  8. #8
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    You have way too much mastery compare to the other stats. Crit and haste is really great for tank healing. I think your spec is ok since "heal" heal more than atonment and cost less mana I think or it's pretty similar. Next patch it might change but we aren't there yet.

    I'm spec, reforg, gem in aoe healing and I can tell I have no prob to heal the tank on bealroc heroic. I found that disc priest have the best single target healing in the game right now (if the target have grace on it). Pally can beat us because of there beacon otherwise I think we are better than them. Some will disagree and I won't argue since I don't have any stats but just my experience. Shaman oom way faster than us so they can spam big heal all the time.

    Don't listen Dedo, you will heal less, oom faster and the shaman will burn his mana even faster. If you want to aoe and let the shaman tank heal stay disc. Holy is that bad imo.

    Anyway, no matter what is your choice refrog your mastery into haste and crit. You should never shield more then once every 12 sec, unless you are in panic mod. If you want to be the tank healer I think you can "sacrifice" some spirit by aiming 2 stats gear like haste/crit instead of spirit/crit. I can spam greater heal in bealroc fight 5 min without being near to oom myself and I even flash heal sometime (I might have too much spirit).

  9. #9
    I reforged out of some mastery, and got my haste up to over 12%. My mastery is still pretty good, shields absorb over 25k, and devine aegis absorbs almost 20k with greater heal. My crit is at 15%. I haven't gotten int on my bracers yet but I will tommorow when I find someone with the recipe. I gemmed for the bonus on my chest and replaced my int/mastery gems with int/haste. I also changed my glyph of PoH for Barrier.

    I haven't raided since thursday, but I should be continuing FL today or tommorow. I will see how everything goes and post back if I have any more issues.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Dedomoazul View Post
    Honestly the Holy priest i know destroy disc. And shaman's can tank heal LIKE MONSTERS for years without going oom. Having a shaman 'raid heal' is nearly pointless in 10man... imo chain heal hits 2 people. Healing rain is still amazing tho. But im straying off topic!


    Holy can do some amazng hps, and support. Really. Once you and the other healers get a feel for one another. Instead of just touching which ever bar is closest to empty. You'll go along way
    I'm not going to go holy anytime soon. The shammy was focusing on the off tank and throwing in some raid heal, as I was throwing out PoM and some PoH as needed. The druid was keeping up the raid very well the majority of the time, and we did not have to help out that much. The main issue is tank damage, I was having to help heal the riplimb tank at certain points because the shammy was having issues with mana, while I had enough to spare. The gear level of the raid is not very high, and until everyone gets some upgrades the jobs we have assigned to our healers seems like the best way to go.

    -please don't post any more about going holy,
    "Spec" Trolling
    This will get you banned. So long as both specs are viable (Viable, not necessarily optimum), if someone is asking "How can I do this fight as <spec>" and looking for tips, tricks, or a couple talents to shift, answer in the context. I didn't tolerate "spec disc lolz" for Wrath, I won't tolerate "spec Holy" as an answer to Disc questions, now, or vice versa.
    im not switching and I just want help working with disc-
    Last edited by tomehere; 2011-10-16 at 11:25 AM.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    You had a question regarding high damage phases I don't think anyone has answered yet.

    Tbh there is not much to it in most cases and most bosses the damage tends to ramp up as the fight goes on such as shannox after each dog dies and beth Phase 2 or the odd side cases are the egg spawn bird things on alys when they trow a tantrum they will beat your tanks face in for a few seconds for both cases I just use a normal rotation of shield, mending if available, penance, Gheal - Gheal spam.

    During normal damage I tend to use standard heal spam on the tank/s with the odd shield, penance and / or Gheal to top them off then cast the heal spam again, most of the time heal is good enough to keep tanks up ( works better with crit ) the key thing about heal is when a tank starts taking larger hits he doesn't just drop suddenly but its enough to know you need a bigger heal, You can't really go wrong with spell usage to be honest unless your running out of mana which isn't the case here.

    The biggest advantage you can give your self when doing any sort of healing is raid awareness and knowing what is going to happen next, now when I say that I don't mean just keeping an eye on DBM for abilities watch the room also and learn to think 10 steps ahead of everyone else because for the most part healers can generally sit back and take in the view i.e watching every single mechanic, player and fancy sprite and still do their job watching health bars.
    Last edited by mmocb7bc0f26da; 2011-10-16 at 01:23 PM.

  12. #12
    If you are going to be raid healing as disc, then go for mastery. If you are tank healing, then go for crit. also someone mentioned that you will only be using inner fire.....when you are consistently using PW:S you can use inner will. your job as a raid healer, is to mitigate as much damage as you can, so your buddies heal the rest ;o also, consider going AA. its amazing....

    anyway, we all have different play styles. so find one you like, and one that is working for you

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Disc / Shamy / Druid is a good healing combo. Don't go holy and let the Shamy tank heal, like someone suggested.

    At the moment of writing this your armory looks o.k. except: 50 int on bracers, optionally 50 haste on gloves, and really urgend: replace the Petrified Pickled Egg by some trinket with static int and a non-random secondary effect. Random procs are horrible for healing (except for a straight healing proc like on Eye of Blazing Power or spirit procs). I'd suggest DMC:T. Let's say you get that one - you'd practically gain 400 spirit which would allow you to reforge even more spirit on other items to haste (or mastery as second choice) - which would be a permanent benefit rather than that random haste-proc on the egg-trinket.

    If you don't have mana issues and constantly finish fights with a reasonable amount of mana left, go try and figure out how much more spirit you can reforge while still feeling comfortable.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by tomehere View Post
    Hi guys, I'm a long time holy spec priest, i was disc in wrath but switched to holy for BoT and BwD, and i've switched back to discipline and have been running that spec since early september (I took a break from wow during almost all of patch 4.1). The guild I'm with now is just starting to do firelands. I have experience with all the bosses on normal mode. The other players in the guild are close to my gear level. It was very difficult for us to do shannox on normal mode... in pugs i haven't ever had issues with any bosses.

    The main thing I need help with is what I should be reforging and gemming for tank healing, I am currently main tank healer (we are running me, a shammy, and a druid). I think my spec and glyphs are good, I just don't know what I need to reforge into, and what kind of balance I should have in my stats. In the gear I have currently, I am flooded with crit.

    Also I would like to know if there is a spell i should be using on high damage phases. Right now im using shield everytime I can with SoS (mainly on high damage phases, other times I try to manage it around rapture) and using a combo of flash heal when hp is very low and greater heal when I feel the tank is high enough that he won't die before the cast finishes. But I still got a couple of spikes that caused a death, and I don't really know what to do to prevent that.

    I don't really have any mana issues, I can go almost the whole fight above 60% mana. I don't know if I should reforge out of spirit or what. I'm really kind of lost. Here is my char. link-

    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...yokoh/advanced

    Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance ;D
    Well your spec is nearly identical to my Priests Spec, the only difference is that I have Desperate Prayer which is very situational but dammed useful in a jam.

    You should not be using flash heal when health is low. If you do a PW:S then 2xGreater Heals then another PW:S you get the same amount of effective healing for half the mana cost in the same time period. For me it's about 80-100k healing in 6 seconds.

    Another thing you want to avoid is the entire concept of "tank" and "raid" heals. There is no real difference between the two. As you progress through firelands and go into Hard Modes you will find that you will be preforming both tasks due to the fact that you will be 2 healing a lot of fights. H Domo, H Rhylo, H Rag, H Aly, H Baleroc are all 2 healed. Heck we 2 heal Heroic Shannox now due to the fact that we've been short a healer for the past few weeks. On normal modes you 2 heal Aly and Rag anyways. But regardless you should go in with the mentality that you need to be able to handle both "tank" and "raid" heals.

    If people start spiking there are a few things you can do to prevent it. If the spikes come at specified times during a boss fight, Spear on Shannox or Stomp on Rhylo for example using a PoH to proc DA shields on the raid can be a mana efficient way to mitigate damage before it hits. It is even ok to Pre-Shield a single target if you know they are about to get blown up. Furthermore you can also try to time your Greater Heal so that it goes off just as big damage hits, this is especially useful on Baleroc for Decimation Blades where you can see the timer and you an get your cast off so that it hits right after the blade lands. This gives you an extra heal that you can squeeze in during the few seconds that you have to get the tank back up to full.

    Ok so what if ppl do spike anyways? Well now you have to get their health back up. They method I normal use is PW:S, Penance, PoM, and Greater Healx2. I go with this rotation for a reason because in my mind the shield serves as a cushion, it will absorb 30k incoming damage and it allows me to get a few more heals off. Penance is an instant 30-40k heal, Prayer of Mending is insurance that my target will not die if my shield get absorbed before I can get to the greater heals. Once I get the Greater Heals off I can get another PW:S off to again provide that cushion so I can finish topping off my target.

    Keep in mind, my playstyle may differ from yours, I'm just showing you how I handle these types of situations and the reasoning behind those decisions.

    In terms of Gems and Reforges they are pretty decent. I personally use a more Mastery/Cri setup cause I prefer higher Mitigation via DA procs and PW:S during heroic modes and progression fights. If I wanted to get more raw throughput I would go haste, course if that's the case it would be better to go holy anyways and go for big numbers. I've never really seen much benefit of trying to get more throughput out of Disc when the entire spec is based around mitigation and shields.

    One thing to remember when you ask about reforge/gem advise. The advise you are asking for will only effect your overall healing by at most 5-10%, probably not even that much. Smart use of cooldowns and spell combinations will make a greater impact on your effective healing than any 1 stat. What works for 1 player does not always work for another. Find a healthy balance that fits your playstyle and go with that. The more comfortable you are with your stat point allocation the better healer you will be.

    For all those people who say that shammies are better healers for tanks, you don't know shammy healing. I have a restro shammy and disc priest, both healing firelands. The Shammy is better on progression fights when healths drop below 35% more often. But once tanks and DPS learn the fights their healths don't drop as much and as a result their effective healing tapers off. They are the one class that actually gets worse at healing fights that drop down to farm status. Shammies also lack a lot of the raid tools that Disc brings to the table, and anyone who thinks Spirit Link Totem is a suitable replacement for Barrier should get flogged. Of all of the healer classes out there Shammies are probably at the bottom of the pegging order right now. Don't get me wrong, I love my shammy, he was my first healing toon. But unless they are absolutely exceptional at their class there is no way I'm letting them tank heal with there is a disc priest in the raid.

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