Disc in proving grounds

[JFrombaugh]

Has anyone else found that based on the mechanics and the "gear level" of the NPCs Disc is just completely unviable for Proving Grounds?

I have average ilevel 480 healing gear from Timeless Isle and I can clear about 4/10 Gold as Holy, yet I can't even clear BRONZE as Disc. I have usually played Holy instead, because I have always wondered if the problem is me...that I just naturally find reactive healing easier. But the two biggest problems I have always had with Disc in this game:

1.The lack of a good AoE bubble you can use for when you know party wide AoE is coming. Spirit Shell + PoH is an option, but it has a cool down. Atonement might work in Heroics, but it just doesnt heal enough to keep the NPCs alive in Proving Grounds. PW:B helps somewhat but it only covers melee in most cases. Blanketing the party in PW:S takes too much time. Spamming PoH causes you to go OOM in no time. In case anyone from Blizzard is reading this, Purifier (Rift), Mystic (EQ2), and Scholar (FFXIV) ALL have a spamable AoE bubble spell for mitigating AoE damage! Admittedly it costs a lot of mana and must be used sparingly, but they still have it.

2. Lack of many useful cooldowns Holy has that can avert a wipe (again, I've wondered if this is partly me).

Has anyone beaten Gold as a Disc Priest? If so, can you share some tips? Because it's putting me off playing Disc right now...based on this experience I don't know what people are talking about when they say Disc is OP right now.

[voidillusion]

Completely viable to do. Did endless healer 30+ waves myself.

I could share some tips with you but tbh it's best to just see some work well done by others here: http://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4627

Lots of good and detailed info there, up to you now.

GL

[Nzete]

I did Gold as disc with the my raid gear. Now that I have a challenge mode set (four gear sets in my bags sucks! raid, shadow, pvp, and challenge), I'll have to give endless another crack.

[Daveon]

Has anyone else found that based on the mechanics and the "gear level" of the NPCs Disc is just completely unviable for Proving Grounds?

I have average ilevel 480 healing gear from Timeless Isle and I can clear about 4/10 Gold as Holy, yet I can't even clear BRONZE as Disc. I have usually played Holy instead, because I have always wondered if the problem is me...that I just naturally find reactive healing easier. But the two biggest problems I have always had with Disc in this game:

You do know that ilvl doesn't really matter in Proving Grounds, since it lowers all your gear to 463 right? (just make sure all your gear is at least 463) It's not so much the ilvl, but more the itemization (secondary stats) that is important. There's a reforger inside the instance exactly for that reason. Make sure you have the correct secondary stats for the spec you want to play after you go in. Reforge if you have to. Use a flask (I had to use a spirit flask to not run out of mana in PG, which I don't normally use while raiding).

Timeless Isle gear can be pretty poorly itemized, depending upon what you randomly get (or if you keep doing the same pieces over and over, you can get the exact itemization you want).

The most important thing with the Proving Grounds is practice. Know what's coming, the waves are always the same, so you can be prepared, and know when to use your cooldowns, etc.

[Noradin]

You do know that ilvl doesn't really matter in Proving Grounds, since it lowers all your gear to 463 right? (just make sure all your gear is at least 463) It's not so much the ilvl, but more the itemization (secondary stats) that is important.

Yes, for Disc it is more like the better your gear in other situations the worse it is in the Proving Grounds since the ressources (mana) you need to keep up your healing is basically constant (lower with meta) regardless of your item level or even going down, but scaling down your item level will destroy your regen just as it does for damage dealers to scale down hit.
Other gearing strategies that increase healing done by increasing regen and haste have less of a problem with this than those who use crit/mastery.

[Nurasu]

The most important thing with the Proving Grounds is practice. Know what's coming, the waves are always the same, so you can be prepared, and know when to use your cooldowns, etc.

This. I did endless 30 with my crit gems since I didn't want to come up with another set. I went with Int food/flask instead of spirit as I found my throughput entirely too low at that ilvl without them, but mostly it's just figuring out when to use mind bender, spirit shell, archangel, and pain suppression to save mana and prepare for the next wave. Just keep a high (90%+) uptime on ToF and it's entirely possible, just not as easy as some classes. I thought it highlighted disc's focus on preventing damage rather than healing it very well.

[Nestar]

You do know that ilvl doesn't really matter in Proving Grounds, since it lowers all your gear to 463 right? (just make sure all your gear is at least 463) It's not so much the ilvl, but more the itemization (secondary stats) that is important. There's a reforger inside the instance exactly for that reason. Make sure you have the correct secondary stats for the spec you want to play after you go in. Reforge if you have to. Use a flask (I had to use a spirit flask to not run out of mana in PG, which I don't normally use while raiding).

Timeless Isle gear can be pretty poorly itemized, depending upon what you randomly get (or if you keep doing the same pieces over and over, you can get the exact itemization you want).

The most important thing with the Proving Grounds is practice. Know what's coming, the waves are always the same, so you can be prepared, and know when to use your cooldowns, etc.

Sockets are substantially more valuable than the stats on gear, at 463 each piece has like 500 of each secondary or something stupidly low, but if you can grab a piece with 3 sockets, thats 960 extra stats. Even if the itemization is poor, the sockets outweigh it.

[Deleted]

Got the proven healer title as disc myself so it's certainly doable. Basically just dropped all my regen and went pure int gems everywhere. Learn to use your CDs + Spirit shell as needed on each wave

[Vilbu]

I went and min maxed gear for holy, went full spirit + mastery with haste breakpoints. It worked fine until wave 18 or something. Then I gave disc a go, didn't even change gear and boom, title. Spend some time trying it as a holy. Just find some guide or learn by trial and error how the waves work, where to use cd's and regen abilities. The hardest part was to not rely too much on atonement, only when the extra dps was needed. SS and pre-shield burrow targets. Restorative amber for the breaks after 10 waves.

[Deleted]

I'm stuck at wave 16 (IIRC) endless mode with my disc priest. Actually, while I managed to reach wave 16 once, I am no longer able to reach that point. I have seen some improvement though when I followed the howtopriest guide.

Basically, bringing a differently customized gear helps. Gems do not get scaled down, so the more gems you can bring the better. Reforge so to have much more spirit (comepared to other stats) than you usually need in raids. Remember the flask. Try to make a list in which you plan your CDs so that you have them available when you need them (e.g. wave 3: mindbender+PS,wave 4:barrier,wave 5:...). Unglyph penance! Choose your talents carefully, e.g. Halo is suboptimal in 5mans. Your tank is using shield wall when his HP drops, make that happen at scheduled points. Find ways to save mana (e.g. use PS even if there's no emergency). Void shift is good for emergencies. Watch out for chomp!! You need to bring the chomp'ed npc to full hp or he will keep losing life. Notice that some mechanics do not work: IIRC the legendary meta gem never procs (use a regular one instead), tier bonus does not work, no potions.

However, I found proving grounds a bit frustrating at some points. Sometimes DPS is not clearing wave n when wave n+1 is up. Sometimes DPS stands in fire. Sometimes the rogue "fails" to kick-interrupt a spell and the party gets hit heavily. While a part of the damage can be expected, these random spikes are annoying, and make you feel powerless against them.

Also, I would have loved to have *fixed stats* in proving grounds instead than normalized ilvl. Optimizing gear just for that is boring.


Final note: wave *49* has been reached as discipline, so I guess I have much room for improvement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1JBg2ew-G0

[muto]

Get as many sockets as possible, gem spirit-crit (blue and green), and spirit-int (red), and use double regen trinkets. I also suggest rooting the Flamecallers with Tendrils in Wave 8? I think it is, so that they will melee your roots instead of shooting fire all over Africa, and putting the fire debuff on the npc's. I also suggest use PW:B for this phase as well since Pyroblast hits like a truck. Always dispel the Rogue, Warrior, and Mage over the Hunter or yourself, if two DoTs go out, since they tend to be in melee range. I also suggest using Pain Supression on the tank for the Aqualyte's in Wave 4 since they hit pretty hard. You will have time to Mana Hymn after Wave 3 or 4, so that's the best time to do so. I also preemptively used Inner Focus-PoH-Spirit Shell before each Wave.

I took Roots, Body, and Soul, Mindbender (since there's exactly one-minute between waves, Desperate Prayer, Twist of Fate, and Divine Star. I made a macro to use Healthstone, and Desperate Prayer after I used Voidshift.

[Deleted]

I did gold with 2.9k spirit or something like that (I run 6.4k normally...) using mostly Atonement and shield on the tank for rapture aswell as the occasional PoH/Star.
Havn't tried endless but i ended the 10th wave with 60% mana and Mindbender up.


But yeah, make sure you're fully enchanted and get items with lots of gemsockets as those won't be scaled down.

[fernis]

I did gold with 2.9k spirit or something like that (I run 6.4k normally...) using mostly Atonement and shield on the tank for rapture aswell as the occasional PoH/Star.
Havn't tried endless but i ended the 10th wave with 60% mana and Mindbender up.


But yeah, make sure you're fully enchanted and get items with lots of gemsockets as those won't be scaled down.

I did a similar strat and was ok.

[Talhooo]

I've done 49 waves myself, and definitly feel 63/64 is possible, after that it might be impossible. The biggest problem is not making a mistake after 30+, if you do you'll need to catch up with flash heals/gheals which is very mana intensive and you might just go oom because of it. Disc is probably better then holy.

Atonement is defenitly enough to keep up the NPC's at certain times. I'd even say it's recommended to do as much atonement as possible because its very good to conserve your mana, and how faster the first mob dies how less you'll have to heal in the end. (I always like opening with shadowfiend when a new wave spawns because of this).

Also even if all gear is the same ilvl, gear optimization IS important. having an item with same stats but with an extra socket makes a decent enough difference.

Disc being OP doesn't have to do anything with being bad at proving grounds btw. Disc and palas are probably the worst, then monk, then druid which is much much better for it.

Some people here seem to give the advice to drop spirit. Don't because you'll never get passed 30. Crit and spirit seems the way to go. If your gear is optimized enough you might be able to drop a bit of spirit. I like to play with about 10k spirit if I still remember right because it's been a while.

There's a very good guide on H2P forum with loads of tips ( http://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4627 )

[Deleted]

I'm not saying drop spirit, I'm saying that's what I had when i did it with my normal gear

Since you're actually bumped down to 463 ilvl in there, spirit definitively has value. That said, you shouldn't have any issues doing 10 waves on gold with your normal raiding gear unless maybe it's full timeless or something, cause those suck when scaled down.

[Deja Thoris]

I used ToF / mindbender / desperate prayer / divine star and gemmed for spirit / whatever. I got to wave 34 and the only thing that wiped me there was bad dispels on that wave.

Disc excels at preventing damage and this is what you need to do as much as possible. You also need to abuse every little trick like maximising borrowed time / archangel / ToF / rapture and grace.

If you want to prevent damage you need to learn the waves. In an ideal world you will end the last 10 seconds of a wave preparing for the next (inner focus / spirit shelling can negate chomp damage so they don't get debuffs for example). On waves where the big enrage dude is up penance the tank to stack grace and an inner focus / gheal and pain sup if needed can take care of it an so on.

That being said it can be quite frustrating, I guess a bit of rng is needed so you can't just learn the wave rote but having the hunter lick fire or the tank actually move out from under my barrier made me want to headbutt my keyboard.

[Sakamae]

I think one of the biggest issues for the OP is that they are decked out in timeless isle gear. That gear has virtually NO gem sockets. You need to find gear with the most sockets possible, and the ilvl doesn't matter as long as it is above 463, as it gets scaled down. Pretty much any raid finder piece from any of the tiers is better than isle gear. Lei Shen neck has two sockets, crafted 522 boots have two sockets, belts have 3 sockets (isle belt just one from buckle), etc. Do a key run on Isle of Thunder for Elder Charms. You can run MV, HoF and TotES raid finder and bonus roll every single boss. You will have a much better proving grounds set in no time.

[rgirty]

I was able to obtain gold and called it good. Like others have stated here a specialized set is best for this. From what I understand while gear scales, gems do not. I used gear with lots of gems and reforged everything over to spirit with all spirit gems.

[Teegs]

This is pretty important for when you get to endless waves for your title which will be more difficult, most important thing is you should become familiar with the type of mobs that are coming out each wave + their abilities. Like someone said earlier, *falling behind is a no-no* so that is why be prepared to know exactly what each wave does.

Aim to start each wave with SS up, keep PWS's on rapture CD, plan your cd's early so you can use them again (ex, PS/PWB/manabug). Buy the klaxxi food. And always keep a hawk eye at the timer's to know when to expect the next round.

[Malania]

Nah I had no problems with it, did endless 30 as disc. The only issues I had were mana based.