Disc toping the meters? - Allways.

[brokenmirror]

If you're beating other healers as disc by just healing, then there's some serious issues. We don't have those kind of healers on illidan for the most part thankfully.

[bigjenk]

Finally, thanks for your wonderful constructive posts. Good luck to you as well, I doubt you'll need it though.


Got any calculations to back that up maybe? And did you check the same log as I did, because there's 6 healers.

sorry got one ret mixed in there on overall, you still ran with 8 heals on that run. All you seem to be trying to do is pad stats because people are still dying which means you are not using you reactive heals such as pennance to stop that. Disc has a high potential no matter what as absorbs start before other heals kick in but as you guys start running with less heals (most ulduar requires 5 Good heals, which you probably dont have) other healers tend to reach their full potential. I feel bad for you that you lack the creativity and capacity to make full use of the priests arsenal of spells. But you guys are almost to the keepers

[bigjenk]

and btw wow you guys are not even past freya in 10 man wtf please dont pretend to give the rest of the priest community your vast wisdom then

[nikkita]

Damage mitigation shouldn't be counter as Healing done.

When you mitigate damage: for example sheild 10 people before ground tremor on freya 'hard mode', you will mitigate most if not all (depending on amount of spellpower you have) the damage. This is a huge difference between healing done, since your not healing them your preventing them from taking a specific amount of damage.

People that constantly follow the metters of HPS, healing done, effective healing done, should really learn how to read the meters. A discipline priest should mainly mitigate damage - if its threw divine ageis and sheild's while healing the tank/tanks, or if its threw sheild spaming on raid before a big inc, of damage. If there were mitigation meters you'll find yourself toped there. Yes there is worldoflogs, who counts the sheild absorbtion and the divine ageis as a heal - but is this mean it i actually a heal? no it doesn't.

The value of a healer is not how much healing done, how much random spam, how much he mashed his button. The value of a healer is counter by using the correct heal at the correct time, especially a priest that has so many ways of healing and saving his target. Reading the meters requires more then "i'm number one" but also looking at the details, you could be number one and be the only healer that can be replaced, you can be last and when you'll be replaced the wipe fest would begin.

abit about the op's combat log he posted:
I am looking at the OP combat log he posted from world of logs, seeing you use 8 healers (i didn't take my time to check the wipes), i looked at ignis - a encounter that holy priests, resto druids and discipline priests are extremely effective and strong there. seeing 5 of your healers were: 2 shamans and 3 holy paladin (that didn't use beacon properly even). And i'll reveiw the discipline priests stats: The main spell he used was power word sheild, like every disci-priest, in a encounter like ignis you can precast them, ofc it would contribute high "healing done" on the combat log of worldofraids, i can see only 22 Prom casts (220 sec's uptime of prom, considering a 10 sec CD, that is roughly 3 mins uptime out of a 7 min kill try), on a encounter like ignis where your prom requires 1 GcD, jumps around and gives divine ageis when it crits the value of prom becomes higher - and was barely used by the discipline priest on the log, compared to the 243 shields that were casted, i also see 48 dircet heals from penance (16 times casted) and 11 direct heals from poh (i'll assume 2 poh's casted, 1 on a group with a pet). So the OP way of toping the meters was merely spaming his shield on the entire raid without continously re-casting prom (which has a very high healing and mitigation value as a discipline priest on ignis), at the same time i see 3 power infusions, but no painsuppressions (this ofc regarding to build but painsuppression or Gaurdian spirit should have maximum useage on every encounter - especially when you already have weak healers this will allow a passive help to other healers heals). Over-roll i must say, shield spaming is a incrediabley good way of mitigating effectively, yet you must not forget the true power of your spells, keeping penance on the tank every CD and increasing his hp pool with divine ageis, allowing Prom to jump around on times where there is a repeating damaging effect (aura, tantrum, jets etc). So yes you toped the meter on this encounter, i am sure that if you played with better healers - they wouldn't accept your style and would notice what i notice: the lack of prom uptime, the lack of penancing the tank after landing from jetflames, and the constant sheilding on raid that i'm not so sure it that required. I wouldn't call it casting the correct spell at the correct time. If i have the best example for it: we have 2 resto druids in our guild, one that uses main and only rejub, and keeps his rejub on every raid member, and another that uses rejub alot less but combines Nature swiftness, Wildgrowth and more. We went to mimiron hard mode and had a awefully terrible time there, we used 3 holy priests, 1 resto druid (the rejub one), a holy paladin and 1 resto shaman. The druid was top of the meters by miles above others, having rejub on every raid member during phase 2, but we kept wiping. Aventually the 2nd resto druid was swaped in for a holy priest who was using holy nova more then other spells, the 2nd resto druid was considerbly lower then the rejub druid, but did what he was supposed to do. We ended up needing the 3rd PoH, so we swaped a different holy priest in for the rejub spaming druid, and made threw phase 2, we wiped at phase 4 6 times, and got the kill. Conclusion: spaming 1 spell is never good, being top meters doesn't make you valuable, not casting the correct spells at correct times won't help you get the kill.

If the OP idea was to point out that discipline priests are valuable: yes they are, they have no replacments on encounters where the damage mitigation is important. Do they top healing meters: no they don't. Does it matter: no it doesn't. Toping meter's doesn't make you needed, required or important, looking at meters on who is number one and who is last doesn't specifically mean that if you were last you were least important. Healing is a task filled by 5-7 healers, that work together, one being top doesn't mean he's doing what is needed and whats good. When you look at the healing done or mitigation done, always notice which spells were used, did he use his life saving abilities (nature swiftness, swiftmend, gaurdian spirit, pain suppressions, power inffusion - even if these spell's like GS didn't proc using them on a tank helps the healers, if it makes it easier to heal in that moment or just allows them to regen abit more mana). In the healing there are alot more parameters then "who is top meter and who isn't". (and the dps meters are becoming more alike: a dpser can be top on dps but never DpS roots/gifts on freya, skip killing life sparks on XT heart break, which will lower his value as a good dpser. Just like a tank that never uses CD's when he's required to).

[derevka]

If the OP idea was to point out that discipline priests are valuable: yes they are, they have no replacments on encounters where the damage mitigation is important. Do they top healing meters: no they don't. Does it matter: no it doesn't. Toping meter's doesn't make you needed, required or important, looking at meters on who is number one and who is last doesn't specifically mean that if you were last you were least important. Healing is a task filled by 5-7 healers, that work together, one being top doesn't mean he's doing what is needed and whats good. When you look at the healing done or mitigation done, always notice which spells were used, did he use his life saving abilities (nature swiftness, swiftmend, gaurdian spirit, pain suppressions, power inffusion - even if these spell's like GS didn't proc using them on a tank helps the healers, if it makes it easier to heal in that moment or just allows them to regen abit more mana). In the healing there are alot more parameters then "who is top meter and who isn't". (and the dps meters are becoming more alike: a dpser can be top on dps but never DpS roots/gifts on freya, skip killing life sparks on XT heart break, which will lower his value as a good dpser. Just like a tank that never uses CD's when he's required to).

^^This

World of Logs and Recount GUESSED Absorbs assumes that 100% of all shields and Aegis will be used. Spamming PWS isn't all that effective of a healing strategy. Yes, you'll get some that will be 100% absorbed, but exclusively casting PWS as 73% of your spells is likely not the best use of your mana.

Yes, Disc is viable. Yes Disc is a welcome and a strong addition to any 25 man healing team. Yes mitigation counts. Yes shields are good.No, meters arent gospell. No, spamming one spell is generally a good idea. No, this style of healing isn't sustainable in the long haul or on hard mode fights where you need to make use of every GCD.

Disc is generally best suited for MT healing, and tossing out a shield here and there on non-tanks.

As an aside, your healing team is running with 7 healers I'd strongly suggest cutting back to 6 if not 5 for more DPS. More DPS leads to faster fights, thus less healing needed, and tertiary, less 'healer fighting' and 'sniping'.

[Shibba]

Christ its like talking to a child that all he wants to do his smash his shield all day, go ahead do that makes you a great healer depending on other healers while you just shield raid and maybe if theirs an aoe absorb 5k dmg. Do what you want but as I said I gurantee you will change your strategy. By the look of your logs youy might as well be trying to top the over healing charts. Apparantly geared dps take alot less dmg...
Such a good team player

Goodnight and goodluck.

team player? rofl i thought i stated it clearly that my role is mitigation and not healing.
Maybe i should also dps to be a good team player?
oh i should tank some loose adds to be a good team player and cover for all the others?

good team player does his role perfectly, so that other memebrs of the raid dont need to cover up his mistakes but always rdy to help withing the boundaries of his class - thats a good team player. if some healer cannot keep up with healing left to do after the mitigation i do snipe penance and fast GH/PoH after that, yet if i continue healing i loose much more HPS and mana than shielding.

you simply miss the point of mass damage mitigation. you are stuck in the stigma that discs are ONLY GOOD FOR "MT healers" and here i showed that disc can effectively have much more HPS than any other healer and do a very good job as raid healer role and i get all this bulshit it wont work it is bad it is stupid.
well sorry to say this but untill now it worked just fine, and my raid wide mitigation helped alot to lower the stress of other healers. so untill im proven other wise by more than mere words on a forum without facts im still thinnkin that discs are gread raid healers.

Simply put: there is no healer that can provide the same ammount of HPS raide wide as disc spammer with his efficiency (HPS/MPS).
if you think that your druids or pallies or who ever can provide the same ammount of HPS pls support it with numbers. and stop bullshiting around that im stupid and that its bad tactic coz so far it works.

I speak out of experience and in my experience, those shields are never wasted and when u say maybe get absorbed i say that they almost always absorb some ammount of damage.
I wasnt talking about the effectivness of other healers, should i start flaming about other ppl overhealing and wasting mana? stay on topic please.

[Shibba]

Here is my opinion on disc raid healing.

Firstly I agree that spamming shields to mitigate incoming damage is quite effective and relieves the stress of other healers.

However, I think this is all quite situational. After all shielding the targets is still considered as single target healing. As a raid healer you are still healing (or shielding) the targets 1 at a time. Surely you can counter this by saying that by the time raid damage hits, 5 or 10 people, (or even 20 people if you have fast fingers) might have that damage prevented, but in the end it has still taken you at least 5 or 10 or even 20 GCDs to build all that up. For a raid healer, all he needs is 3 seconds of casting time or even an instant cast CoH and he could do the same as what you just did. In other words, there are times where healing 5 targets at a time is required in under 5 GCDs. Say for example during Hodir Frozen Blows, shielding is definitely not the way to go during that encounter. It deals roughly 2.5k every 2 seconds to the raid, assuming you are spamming those shields you can only prevent at max around 6k per second from shields. This is clearly not enough even if you use other spells like PoM. Even if you have the whole raid shielded up during the Frozen Blows CD, I'd think its better off for you doing something else like Mass Dispels during that time.

However I did say it is situational because there are encounters where shielding is really effective. Kologarn Left Arm Shockwave is a good example. It is a one-off damage with maybe a 20 sec cooldown, giving you the chance to absorb 70% of the damage taken for about 70% of the raid. That is assuming you spent the entire 20 second CD duration purely building all those shields up. If that is the case then on Kologarn you'd be an excellent raid healer. Also shielding the gripped guy on the right arm is effective as well.

Also I forgot to mention that shielding targets is really effective on trash. No sarcasm intended there.

By all means i never wanted my tactic to be see as pure and only shileding one its definetly not.
You can see from the logs i spend 70% of my time shielding, the other 30% i do other suff - dispells, helaing, MT helping etc.
so yes it wasnt only shielding, during the raid, in case of hodir after just few ticks most of the raid has alrdy eaten their shields and got WS so i cant reshield even when i want to, thats when aoe PoH and BH come in and somtimes even a Divine Hymn if its my turn to use it i try penancing the tanks every GCD can to keep up 25% more armor on them.

I replyed above to some one that im allways assesing the situation, if i dont see imminent danger incoming or some poor fella desperatly needing direct healing, i spam shields.
When i do spam them i still choose the key players first , healers/tanks/kiters etc...

[Shibba]

I'm still kinda lost on this topic and what the OP's intent really is. If we go by the title, sure, in pugs I can usually top the meters as disc from pure healing alone (no shield absorb estimates counting towards my total heals). Not exactly what I'd consider an amazing feat, just tells you the quality of the other healers.

If we're talking about disc being a viable raid healer over MT healer.... sure, you can do it, it's just a bit harder and only performs really well when you know the amount of damage the raid will take and on what targets. The spamming PW:Shield on the raid does have its place, when you know everyone shielded will take enough damage to simultaneously pop all those bubbles at once so you get mana back. Beyond that, it starts to get hairy if you have 2-3 bubbles out of 20 actually pop burst.

Here's my playstyle: I'm usually doing both MT healing and healing the raid if possible. I'm a haste junky, and if I can get away with it, I will bubble someone in raid that is not the MT (if the MT cannot be shielded still, so perhaps an OT is shieldless) just so I can pump out a faster cast on a heal while preventing damage on a target. Great for when you need to use those long casts for big incoming spikes you know are coming. I'll bubble-haste purposefully almost any spell that has longer than a 1.5 second base cast time or channel length, so long as I have the mana to spare or I'm sure the target will have the shield broken. I'll throw out PW:shields to knock off time on my rez cast time. The point is that you may be assigned to MT healer or heal the raid, but a good disc priest knows how to multitask to help others while boosting your own performance at the same time. Never known another healer in raid complaining that, God forbid, I threw a shield on their target to help them out in healing.

the topic name was made attractive to make more people heck it out and thus understand that disc's are as good raid healers as any other class. (which was my original intention of showing)

hehe yeah shielding others to have your greater heal even faster with alot of haste makes MT healing a joke for us as well as keeping him up with WS ;D
About 2-3 bubbles poping out of 20, well i dissagree with you. in my not so imba guild, there is almost no bubble that goes off after 30 sec being full without any absorbtion used.

since i can keep up with alot of spam even if it abosrbs only 2k out of its full potential im still happy coz i know that those 2k wont be healed by other healers. (saving them mana for bigger spams during hard moments)

[Shibba]

and btw wow you guys are not even past freya in 10 man wtf please dont pretend to give the rest of the priest community your vast wisdom then

Im sorry your highness, i thought this forum accepts fredom of speach.
do you have anything usefull to say ON TOPIC MAYBE probably hard to think straight when you see somthing you never saw before and you dont know how to eat it, you never met a disc raid spammer who knows what to do in your life so you just say its bad coz... coz.. coz... coz it has to be? beacuse some one all mighty like your self didnt met one... am i geting close?

And saying that i shouldnt share my insights and post on forums coz i didnnt kill freyah? rofl... "i killed alga i may speak not you..." thats your best argument. pity...

[Vaxall]

I u as Disc healed most then ur other Healers are very bad. Druid is (most of the time) top after Holy Priests. Sure u can Shield ppl, but as Disc ur mostly MT Healer, but if u know XY will take YX dmg in 4 sec. u ll shield him. I doubt u ll do 8k EHP on Iron Council HM like druides do.
But still impressive, i only shield ppl in 10 Ulduar cause i know they will take dmg after Freyas Adds etc.
But i dont think that a Disc s job should be to shield everyone

[Keh]

This was posted to give other raiding priests and RAID LEADERS some insight into the way that they can utilize their disc priest and abilities... and not for show off.
I find raid shielding far more raid benefitial than simple tank healing. but thats just my oppinion.

I must have this post somewhere.. 7 pages and still looking.

Because you prefer to spam shields to absorb damage that _may_ be taken doesn't mean every other Disc priest does. There is basically no difference what so ever in you shielding someone and absorbing a 4k hit (if they even get hit) than a Holy priest stopcasting Flash Heal. (and without actually wasting mana. Both is simply predicting efficiently, and IMO pre-Shielding thats using mana when not needed is not efficiently.) Pretty sure theres about another 6 spells Priests share between Holy and Disc that would be much more useful to use than spamming PWS.

[Shibba]

Damage mitigation shouldn't be counter as Healing done.

When you mitigate damage: for example sheild 10 people before ground tremor on freya 'hard mode', you will mitigate most if not all (depending on amount of spellpower you have) the damage. This is a huge difference between healing done, since your not healing them your preventing them from taking a specific amount of damage.

People that constantly follow the metters of HPS, healing done, effective healing done, should really learn how to read the meters. A discipline priest should mainly mitigate damage - if its threw divine ageis and sheild's while healing the tank/tanks, or if its threw sheild spaming on raid before a big inc, of damage. If there were mitigation meters you'll find yourself toped there. Yes there is worldoflogs, who counts the sheild absorbtion and the divine ageis as a heal - but is this mean it i actually a heal? no it doesn't.

The value of a healer is not how much healing done, how much random spam, how much he mashed his button. The value of a healer is counter by using the correct heal at the correct time, especially a priest that has so many ways of healing and saving his target. Reading the meters requires more then "i'm number one" but also looking at the details, you could be number one and be the only healer that can be replaced, you can be last and when you'll be replaced the wipe fest would begin.

abit about the op's combat log he posted:
I am looking at the OP combat log he posted from world of logs, seeing you use 8 healers (i didn't take my time to check the wipes), i looked at ignis - a encounter that holy priests, resto druids and discipline priests are extremely effective and strong there. seeing 5 of your healers were: 2 shamans and 3 holy paladin (that didn't use beacon properly even). And i'll reveiw the discipline priests stats: The main spell he used was power word sheild, like every disci-priest, in a encounter like ignis you can precast them, ofc it would contribute high "healing done" on the combat log of worldofraids, i can see only 22 Prom casts (220 sec's uptime of prom, considering a 10 sec CD, that is roughly 3 mins uptime out of a 7 min kill try), on a encounter like ignis where your prom requires 1 GcD, jumps around and gives divine ageis when it crits the value of prom becomes higher - and was barely used by the discipline priest on the log, compared to the 243 shields that were casted, i also see 48 dircet heals from penance (16 times casted) and 11 direct heals from poh (i'll assume 2 poh's casted, 1 on a group with a pet). So the OP way of toping the meters was merely spaming his shield on the entire raid without continously re-casting prom (which has a very high healing and mitigation value as a discipline priest on ignis), at the same time i see 3 power infusions, but no painsuppressions (this ofc regarding to build but painsuppression or Gaurdian spirit should have maximum useage on every encounter - especially when you already have weak healers this will allow a passive help to other healers heals). Over-roll i must say, shield spaming is a incrediabley good way of mitigating effectively, yet you must not forget the true power of your spells, keeping penance on the tank every CD and increasing his hp pool with divine ageis, allowing Prom to jump around on times where there is a repeating damaging effect (aura, tantrum, jets etc). So yes you toped the meter on this encounter, i am sure that if you played with better healers - they wouldn't accept your style and would notice what i notice: the lack of prom uptime, the lack of penancing the tank after landing from jetflames, and the constant sheilding on raid that i'm not so sure it that required. I wouldn't call it casting the correct spell at the correct time. If i have the best example for it: we have 2 resto druids in our guild, one that uses main and only rejub, and keeps his rejub on every raid member, and another that uses rejub alot less but combines Nature swiftness, Wildgrowth and more. We went to mimiron hard mode and had a awefully terrible time there, we used 3 holy priests, 1 resto druid (the rejub one), a holy paladin and 1 resto shaman. The druid was top of the meters by miles above others, having rejub on every raid member during phase 2, but we kept wiping. Aventually the 2nd resto druid was swaped in for a holy priest who was using holy nova more then other spells, the 2nd resto druid was considerbly lower then the rejub druid, but did what he was supposed to do. We ended up needing the 3rd PoH, so we swaped a different holy priest in for the rejub spaming druid, and made threw phase 2, we wiped at phase 4 6 times, and got the kill. Conclusion: spaming 1 spell is never good, being top meters doesn't make you valuable, not casting the correct spells at correct times won't help you get the kill.

If the OP idea was to point out that discipline priests are valuable: yes they are, they have no replacments on encounters where the damage mitigation is important. Do they top healing meters: no they don't. Does it matter: no it doesn't. Toping meter's doesn't make you needed, required or important, looking at meters on who is number one and who is last doesn't specifically mean that if you were last you were least important. Healing is a task filled by 5-7 healers, that work together, one being top doesn't mean he's doing what is needed and whats good. When you look at the healing done or mitigation done, always notice which spells were used, did he use his life saving abilities (nature swiftness, swiftmend, gaurdian spirit, pain suppressions, power inffusion - even if these spell's like GS didn't proc using them on a tank helps the healers, if it makes it easier to heal in that moment or just allows them to regen abit more mana). In the healing there are alot more parameters then "who is top meter and who isn't". (and the dps meters are becoming more alike: a dpser can be top on dps but never DpS roots/gifts on freya, skip killing life sparks on XT heart break, which will lower his value as a good dpser. Just like a tank that never uses CD's when he's required to).

thanks, i never siad what i do is the best way and that im the best, just shared on what im doing hopingly to improve with replies like this.
I am aware of the fact that my Penance/PoM/PI uptime aint great and im doing my best to remind my self of using them with powerauras and such... its just some times i get carried away with the shield spam.
I agree i have much to improve on and doing less shields for other important stuff is the way to do it.
As you said i wanted to destroy the illusion that disc can do only MT heal and nothing more.
Some argue that resto druid is a a waste for MT pupposes, I argue that disc priest is a waste for MT job, yet both classes can do it perfectly.

[Shibba]

^^This

World of Logs and Recount GUESSED Absorbs assumes that 100% of all shields and Aegis will be used. Spamming PWS isn't all that effective of a healing strategy. Yes, you'll get some that will be 100% absorbed, but exclusively casting PWS as 73% of your spells is likely not the best use of your mana.

Yes, Disc is viable. Yes Disc is a welcome and a strong addition to any 25 man healing team. Yes mitigation counts. Yes shields are good.No, meters arent gospell. No, spamming one spell is generally a good idea. No, this style of healing isn't sustainable in the long haul or on hard mode fights where you need to make use of every GCD.

Disc is generally best suited for MT healing, and tossing out a shield here and there on non-tanks.

As an aside, your healing team is running with 7 healers I'd strongly suggest cutting back to 6 if not 5 for more DPS. More DPS leads to faster fights, thus less healing needed, and tertiary, less 'healer fighting' and 'sniping'.

wrong, world of logs shows exact abbsorbs not the 100% ammount just read the log average per shield is 2.5k not 6k... this was coverd allrdy by earlier posts pay attention.
as for the recount thingy it was mentioned as a side note and not somthing that i rely on for my data.

[Shibba]

I u as Disc healed most then ur other Healers are very bad. Druid is (most of the time) top after Holy Priests. Sure u can Shield ppl, but as Disc ur mostly MT Healer, but if u know XY will take YX dmg in 4 sec. u ll shield him. I doubt u ll do 8k EHP on Iron Council HM like druides do.
But still impressive, i only shield ppl in 10 Ulduar cause i know they will take dmg after Freyas Adds etc.
But i dont think that a Disc s job should be to shield everyone

who slammed the mighty hammer and rulled that disc is only MT healer?
oh youre toalking about your personal set up when u never put your disc on raid role try it some time see how it works.
you think that discs job is MT healer only, well I dont think that disc should be only MT healer as you think, and i showed that quiet effectively that i can do more than that - dont you think?
I agree that in MT role we are very powerfull but we all im saying is that we can do more.

you think...
i think...
isnt it fun just to think

[exochaft]

hehe yeah shielding others to have your greater heal even faster with alot of haste makes MT healing a joke for us as well as keeping him up with WS ;D
About 2-3 bubbles poping out of 20, well i dissagree with you. in my not so imba guild, there is almost no bubble that goes off after 30 sec being full without any absorbtion used.

since i can keep up with alot of spam even if it abosrbs only 2k out of its full potential im still happy coz i know that those 2k wont be healed by other healers. (saving them mana for bigger spams during hard moments)

Well here lies the problem: unless they changed Rapture recently, the mana you get back from a shield popping still is restricted by the 12 second cooldown. Only having 2-3 bubbles popping simultaneously out of 20 is a complete drain on your mana (I've mistimed one of my mass PW:shieldings of the raid and went from full to half mana when I was done and all the shields were popped >.<). As disc, we rely on int-based mana regen through rapture/replenishment a lot more than spirit-based outside of 5 second rule mana regen. The bubbles have to pop all at the same time to get rapture returns from each bubble, or you wait 12 seconds before you start receiving the effects again. Again, spamming shields on the raid has its place, but you can get a lot more effective healing out of other spells that won't tax your mana nearly as much if you can't get all the bubbles to pop at once. Think along the lines of Prayer of Mending, for example. Having it bounce 5-6 times, along with crits and divine aegis procs for less mana cost than a PW:shield can be a lot more sensible than spamming 5-6 PW:shields that will drain you for a lot more mana while essentially performing the same job. Just because I CAN buffer and prevent damage doesn't mean I should in every case. A tank could blow all their tanking cooldowns when they're off cooldown, but that doesn't mean it's the smart thing to do. Same goes for DPS, except ret paladins (just kidding! <3 rets). Healers are no different. We all have priorities, and as disc, PW:shield spamming w/o regard for what will happen to our mana pool isn't the end-all answer.

[Shibba]

I must have this post somewhere.. 7 pages and still looking.

Because you prefer to spam shields to absorb damage that _may_ be taken doesn't mean every other Disc priest does. There is basically no difference what so ever in you shielding someone and absorbing a 4k hit (if they even get hit) than a Holy priest stopcasting Flash Heal. (and without actually wasting mana. Both is simply predicting efficiently, and IMO pre-Shielding thats using mana when not needed is not efficiently.) Pretty sure theres about another 6 spells Priests share between Holy and Disc that would be much more useful to use than spamming PWS.

another poor soul who thinks that disc are mainly healers.... :/ did ou rad my first post? we mitigate damage far better than we retro active heal. how many times i need to say it...
its like asking holy priest keep shielding ppl coz you have that great skill and spam less CoH.... like wtf?!
I shield better than i can heal. thats why 70% are shields and 30% are heals.

you speak on paper but lack the exprience, for every 1 shield that some how vanished withaout taking damage i get 20 shields that were fully absorbed they energized theyr targets they gave me mana back they saved other healers mana and so on...

and i never said that we replace other healers, we coop with them. one disc simply cannot prevent all dmg and put other healers out of work - but we can make their life alot easier.

you say that you are sure that we have more usefull rotation than spaming shields whe we "RAID HEAL" well dont just talk, show it to me and prove it with numbers, go and dont spam shields and try "helping" with your crapy heals as disc and then show me the logs where you even come close to what i have in my math.

[Shibba]

Well here lies the problem: unless they changed Rapture recently, the mana you get back from a shield popping still is restricted by the 12 second cooldown. Only having 2-3 bubbles popping simultaneously out of 20 is a complete drain on your mana (I've mistimed one of my mass PW:shieldings of the raid and went from full to half mana when I was done and all the shields were popped >.<). As disc, we rely on int-based mana regen through rapture/replenishment a lot more than spirit-based outside of 5 second rule mana regen. The bubbles have to pop all at the same time to get rapture returns from each bubble, or you wait 12 seconds before you start receiving the effects again. Again, spamming shields on the raid has its place, but you can get a lot more effective healing out of other spells that won't tax your mana nearly as much if you can't get all the bubbles to pop at once. Think along the lines of Prayer of Mending, for example. Having it bounce 5-6 times, along with crits and divine aegis procs for less mana cost than a PW:shield can be a lot more sensible than spamming 5-6 PW:shields that will drain you for a lot more mana while essentially performing the same job. Just because I CAN buffer and prevent damage doesn't mean I should in every case. A tank could blow all their tanking cooldowns when they're off cooldown, but that doesn't mean it's the smart thing to do. Same goes for DPS, except ret paladins (just kidding! <3 rets). Healers are no different. We all have priorities, and as disc, PW:shield spamming w/o regard for what will happen to our mana pool isn't the end-all answer.

i never said i only spam shields regardles of situation... its only 70% of my casts... so i do use other abilities.
Should i use the other abilities more like u suggest? definetly, and believe me when i say im trying to perfect it.

im sitting with 33.5k mana raid buffed.
and yes i burn 3k mana every 5 sec BUT never stated i have mana issues tbh it will become even less of an issue when i get even more better gear ;D

So for all those who go and worry about "you waste mana you will run oom": Speak for your own setup. I cant spam shields any faster and i dont have mana issues, if go low i use my CD's.
Mana, I waste it and im loving it coz it never ends!!! just use your hymn and fiend properly and drink the pot if all fails.

[Vaxall]

who slammed the mighty hammer and rulled that disc is only MT healer?
oh youre toalking about your personal set up when u never put your disc on raid role try it some time see how it works.
you think that discs job is MT healer only, well I dont think that disc should be only MT healer as you think, and i showed that quiet effectively that i can do more than that - dont you think?
I agree that in MT role we are very powerfull but we all im saying is that we can do more.

you think...
i think...
isnt it fun just to think

I know, yes i do, that almost ever healer can be use to heal raid or tank, but disc is mainly MT Healing and DMG prefe. on targets who take a lot of dmg. I dont see myself as grp healer or want to play the grp healer.
If u (i choose IC HM cause of the raiddmg) heal IC HM and u ll shield everyone in the Raid i lasts 2 ticks, with more sp 3-4. Or other HM they rather take u as MT Healer and let Drudes heal raid

[Shibba]

I know, yes i do, that almost ever healer can be use to heal raid or tank, but disc is mainly MT Healing and DMG prefe. on targets who take a lot of dmg. I dont see myself as grp healer or want to play the grp healer.
If u (i choose IC HM cause of the raiddmg) heal IC HM and u ll shield everyone in the Raid i lasts 2 ticks, with more sp 3-4. Or other HM they rather take u as MT Healer and let Drudes heal raid

I agree, being MT healer and helping the raid with occasional pws is very effective way to go.
unfortunatly with our current setup we cannot allow not to have that type of raid dmg mitigation, while tank healing doesnt seems to be an issue for the most part.
i find it abit boring being tank healer, you go through your rotation like a dps, and just being trigger happy with PS for the oh shit moments....

[Haskel]

FWIW, I heal 10-man Ulduar on my alt priest (well geared in mostly 213/219 gear). And have found raid shielding to be quite effective at times. I don't run an absorb meter, and never really cared about topping healing meters. It just doesn't mean the same thing as DPS topping meters (which still has to be taken w/ a grain of salt).

Given proper timing, I can get a shield on the whole raid just before tantrum, negating about the first half of it. I can get a shield on the whole raid before Kologarn's "Oblivion" shockwave attack, almost completely nullifying it. For mimiron phase 2, i pretty much just chain-shielded, and it seemed quite useful.

If my shield absorbs 6k damage, and costs 600ish mana, I'm getting just short of 10 health per mana (if I don't get a rapture proc). When holy spec'd, my Circle of healing heals for about 2300 on 5 targets (or 11,500 total) for about 930 mana, this amounts to 12.3 health per mana, assuming none of it overheals. Shields only overheal if they're not consumed within 30 seconds, this is unlikely if you use them at appropriate times. CoH, however, can overheal by quite a lot, so it's efficiency is diminished by a bit. I'm not trying to say disc shield spam is better than CoH, just the the efficiency isn't terribly far behind, and it can really help by keeping the other healers from getting "behind" on healing when half your raid is sitting at half health.

My priest is only my alt, so I'm not up to speed on all the ins and outs of priest healing. But people don't die, I don't have mana issues, and bosses are going down.

Note: we always have a paladin for tank healing, so I've been trying this because I hate holy spec.

@OP: I think you'd get a better response if you'd get off this "disc priests aren't healers" trip. Shields are heals too, just backwards ones, and in many, many encounters, disc priests should be casting heals, not only shields. Penance is amazing HPS, especially with borrowed time up, and flash heal isn't too shabby either. Sometimes, direct healing is simply more useful. Maybe you should change your motto to "PW:S is a powerful raid heal." Comparing a disc priest to a healer is like comparing an affliction lock to a destro lock. They both serve the same purpose, they just go about it in a different manner, using mostly different spells.