Why Bring a Disc Priest Absorbs
- Power Word Shield
Power Word: Shield - Spell - World of Warcraft (PW:S)
No cooldown on cast when used by a disc priest. This enables a disc priest to spam the spell on the raid in advance of high incoming raid damage. Also a Disc priest will take improved power word shield for 15% more absorbtion per shield, and Borrowed Time giving a disc priests shield huge absorbtion potential, in the upwards of 7 to 9K per shield in current raid content gear.
- Divine Aegis
Divine Aegis - Spell - World of Warcraft (DA)
Creating additional absorbs, DA has the ability to stack up to 10,000 worth of absorbtion. Making Crit a valuable stat for disc priests, and most of our heals can proc DA including the heal associated with glyph of PW:S, Flash Heal, Greater Heal. It will aslo apply While PW:S is active making for a truly phenominal amount of absorbtion prior to a player taking a single point of Hit Point loss.
Raid Buffs
obviously the easily spotted Power Word: Fortitude's additonal stamina, the spirit, and shadow resist buffs as well, but all those can be brought by any priest in the raid. What does a disc priest bring?
- Grace
Grace - Spell - World of Warcraft
When a Disc priest is assigned to tank healing, it is benefecial to ALL heals that com to him as the disc priest will apply this buff making all heals bigged that hit the tank. Grace is a tough spell to work with though, since it is slow to apply this stacking buff to the tank it can be of debtriment for the priest to move off to heal some one else as he will lose his grace stacks on the tank. I have read articles that consider taking 1 of 2 in the grace talent as to have a 50% chance to not lose the grace buff by throwing a heal to some one else in raid. I do not subscribe to this idea, as it doubles the amount of time it takes to apply the buff to the tank again if you lose that 50/50 chance, and for it to apply initially.
- Renewed Hope
Renewed Hope - Spell - World of Warcraft
Reduces all incoming raid damage to the entire raid by 3% for 20 seconds, each time power word sheild is cast, and lasts 20 seconds. This spell will have a 100% uptime if a disc priest is in your raid, as it is his job to keep PW:S on the tank MINIMUM. and every 15 seconds as the weakened soul debuff falls off.
- Power Infusion
Power Infusion - Spell - World of Warcraft
The priest on a short CD, has the ability to grant this spell to anyone in the raid, from himself as a mana saving tool to another healer, or used as a
- Pain Suppression
Pain Suppression - Spell - World of Warcraft
When used properly this spell can keep a tank alive, on a short cooldown to be used multiple times per fight to mitigate spike damage during suspected times. Also due to its short CD, using it on the DPS that pulls aggro during an AOE pull can save his life, and it will still be up in time for bosses.
How to Heal Properly as a Disc Priest
Though no healer has a true "rotation" there is a of course the series of spells cast in the right order to produce the most healing, and absorbtion in the least amount of time. Referred to as Heals Per Second (HPS). So, as disc how do we provide the most HPS?
PW:S is the staple cast of the disc priest, Each time you cast PW:S you gain a buff called Borrowed Time
Borrowed Time - Spell - World of Warcraft 25% spell haste is huge, it can put a disc priest in, the average 25player raid at only 11% under haste cap. The catch, is it lasts only 1 sepll cast. However, the key to our max HPS rotation lies in the tooltip on Pennance our 51 point talent heal, and extremely affective channeled healing spell. Channeling Pennance at this time will not use your borrowed time proc.
So, we can chain PW:S into Pennance into Greater Heal, and complete both casts hasted by Borrowed Time. Our best choice once this is completed is to flash heal once or twice until pennance comes back off CD then back into PW:S and repeat.
A note for Disc Priests specced into Improved Flash Heal
Improved Flash Heal - Spell - World of Warcraft there is an extremely complicated graph, or chart im unwilling to calculate that is going to say something along the lines, of: if a tank has 51% + health through some #% health it is MORE effeciant to top him off with a greater heal, than it is to use a flash, and then somewhere between 50% health and some #% lower than that it is superior to top him off with a flash heal in hopes it crits. However most of this determination is based on mana efficiancy of a crit flash heal + its DA proc VS a Gheal, and its DA proc and whether or not you actually crit. Its a huge number of variables, to the point where i can tell you that i generally just ignore it.
Can a Disc Priest Raid Heal?
Short answer, yes. It isn't nearly as affective to assign a disc priest to raid heal as it is to assign him to Tank healing, however PW:S is an instant cast huge absorb with no CD so prepping your raid for incoming damage with it is completely viable, our flash heal, prayer of mending, and prayer of healing are good enough to keep a raider up in most AOE damage situations, and both Flash Heal, and Prayer of healing can Proc DA making them even more potent for future incomin damage.
What Stats am I Looking For
The obvious is you, like any healing class make larger heals from having more spell power, and unique to the Disc priest class, is the both PW:S, and DA procs are enahnced by your spell power. So looking at what to stack, Spell power is certianly high on the list as it affects both how much you heal for, as well as how much you absorb. Crit will help a disc priest more so than other healers as well. From your more traditional healer, crits simply make your heals larger at random unpredictable times, and of course murphys law will mean you won't crit when you need to, and will when there is no need. With a disc priest Crit heals proc DA. meaning not only will the heal be larger but will que up absorbs to be used later even if the target is full. Meaning we are welcome to overheal in an effort to proc as much DA as possible. With Borrowed Time the proc from our previous topic increasing our haste by 25% per power word shield, our need for haste is certainly reduced past 11%.
I use 11% as the ideal number to reach the 1 second Global CD, when in a min/maxed raid group, with Borrowed Time up.
So when going for maximum HPS we want to stack
Spell power > Haste to 11% > Crit > Haste
Now as far as sustainability is concerned the disc priest gains his greatest mana eficiancy from Intellect stat because of the talent Rapture
Rapture - Spell - World of Warcraft . Rapture, returns mana when PW:S falls off. able to proc only once per 12 seconds, however can also fall off multiple times in that 12 second, So a disc priest can PW:S an entire raid group prior to large incoming raid damage, and return mana from the expierience. Think XT-002 Tempanic Tantrum. PW:S the entire raid, and return mana from all of them at once. The larger your Mana Pool, the greater your return is.
So when concerning stacking stats for sustained healing throughout a fight
INT > Mp5 > Spirit
We don't have any spirit to spell power conversion in the Disc tree like a holy priest does. So basically 1MP5 is = 3Spirit.
The key for every single class is of course finding the right balance per fight to enable just enough mana to heal the whole thing, and more spell power to safegaurd yourself against emergencies.
When I am progression raiding
INT > Spell power >Haste to 11% > Crit > Haste > MP5 > Spirit
When we are farming content
Spell power > Haste to 11% > Crit > Haste > Int > MP5 > Spirit
Gemming
for Progression Raids my preferences are:
Meta: 21INT + chance to restore mana
the mana return is on a 15second ICD and is about 600 mana, it procs often, which means for a disc priest even disregarding rapture you get a free PW:S to the tank every time you can cast it on him, as Weakened Soul Debuff is also 15 seconds.
Yellow: INT
Red: Spell Power + INT
Blue INT + MP5 (I am currently using INT + Spirit as I am also speccing Holy, and have limited gear but this is inferior to INT + MP5 Gems for Disc alone)
For farming Content:
I will use the same Meta
Red: Spell power
Yellow: INT + Spell Power
Blue: Spell Power + MP5
Ok so Why Dont I make every Priest I have Go Disc?
well, simple question really it cripples both of them to use more than one of them.
You see the weakened soul debuff applied by PW:S is the bane of the disc priests ability to use his key abilities including of course PW:S again on the same player, but his ability to know where he can proc a Borrowed Time.
Your holy priests need to be aware of this as well, and not inadvertantly cripple your disc priest by casting there own PW:S on anyone especially the tank. Without the multiple modifiers to PW:S found in the disc tree PW:S is no where near as strong.
Thoughts
I hope this guide was useful for anyone whos judging Disc Priests as a raid leader, or to anyone thinking of becomming Disc in the future.
I now open it for comments, concerns, trolling and bashing my opinions as though I were claiming them fact.[/b]
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Many priests spec into this in their pve spec and it is not because of smite. Out of the top four specs for holy and disc only one spec opts out of divine fury and that is to put points in imp renew. 
