what should i be working on?

Hello all,

I've been doing a lot of reading on my class and picking up tips here and there. the only problem i've been running in to is when i try to do icc raids. I can easly tank heal on the lower spire, i start to find it a hard to heal on festergut and rotface. i wont say it's not my fault and all that but i need some idea as to what i need to do to be able to gett my two tanks up during it. i've read the strats, watched tankspot's videos a bunch and even followed what other's say should be done. but after all is ssaid and down, i can't seem to keep them up. any tips or ideas as to what i might need to fix or work on?

link to my character: armory link | wow-heroes

*note yes i know i have some gear with hit on it, but it's about the best i can get at this time*

Well, first of all, you won't be able to solo heal Festergut at 3 stacks, the other healer has to pitch in at that point and possibly at 2 stacks as well. Make sure the tank is using correct CD's also during that part of the encounter. Rotface...there isn't a whole lot of damage that goes out on that fight, if there is it is usually because people are doing it wrong(ie: kite tank getting big ooze too close to Rot's tank, people standing in slime spray, etc) that isn't your fault, it's theirs. That said, your gemming is weird. +20 spirit is horrible, change it now! lol Also, do you really need that much intellect? I would gem...Luminous in yellows, Runed in reds and blues that have bad socket bonuses but places with good socket bonuses(ie: +7 or +9 spellpower) gem Purified or Royal dreadstones there. Your spec and glyphs are fine....What are you using to keep the tank up? He should ALWAYS have pw:s or weakend soul on him. But like I said, Festergut your other healer HAS to help tank heal after 2-3 inhales, he hits like a truck. Rotface tank damage isn't very bad, so if the tank is getting slammed he is either: a) not tanking correctly b) undergeared or c) taking splash damage from the big ooze. If it is c) then the kiting tank needs to alter his path a bit to avoid this.

Good luck!

ok so change out the gems? too easy to fix those. as for what i use, i stick to pw:s, pom, and flash heal spam them when it's needed. then once in a while a pen. if they take a big damage hit. always keeping pom up on tank as soon as the cod is up.

As Bellatrix said, an important part of this fight is being very flexible with healing assignments. For this fight, we have our usual healing assignments but they are loose priorities (if both tanks and a DPSer are near death, I will deal with the warrior, our disc priest with the paladin and our druid with the raid member. This way we prevent deaths by knowing who to heal first)

However, an important thing to remember about Festergut is that there is only one source of damage going out at a time, more or less. The more orange there is on the ground, the more damage your raid is taking and the less your tanks are taking. At that point one healer can easily handle the tank(s) and use spare GCDs for the raid while the other healer(s) focus on the raid. As the orange gas gets inhaled and the tanks start taking MORE damage, the raid takes LESS damage. With each inhale, your raid healers should focus more and more on the tank--until the third inhale, when they should spamming the bejeesus out of the tank, keeping half an eye on the rest of the raid (but I honestly don't think I've EVER had to spend a heal on anyone but a tank on inhalex3) and the tanks should be popping cooldowns.

I'm not thaaat familiar with disc priests as far as what cooldowns you have, but you would want to pop any mana cooldown and do any healing ramp-up BEFORE the inhale if possible. Wasting GCDs or thoughts on mana potions or whatever can very well kill your tank.

It is exactly as Errvalunia said though with your gear 10 man Festergut is a two healer fight as long as the tanks and other healer know when to pop cooldowns or switch healing targets also find out from your tanks what cooldowns they will be using and how long they last because you may end up using pain suppression at some point but it is a waste to over lap it with the tanks own cooldowns. Another thing I found works great on this fight is greater heal but it depends on if you are speced into it, if the other healers are doing their job and spamming the tanks on the third inhale then you should have time to cast GH and with the chance of a 20k crit then a fallow up 9k DA shield chances are the tank will never drop below 80%, if they do drop down low do a PW:shield penance GH if you crit a lot like me you will have healed the tank for around 45k and also placed 20k shield on him giving you more then enough time to pre cast another GH to stack DA higher.

The reason I suggest GH is because sometimes flash healing alone with the odd cooldown of penance just isn't enough to punch though festers really hard hitting punches.

Many good points have been addressed in this thread, especially regarding your co-healer. They should be focusing on raid for the first few phases, then slowly swapping to the tank until by 3 stacks, they are 100% focused on the tank just like you. What class/spec is your other healer?

Make sure you communicate with your tanks - let them pop their cooldowns first, and then when theirs run out (likely will happen with a Paladin tank, since they really only have one) they should ask for Pain Suppression, which is 8 seconds of awesomeness (much like me in the sack).

Personally I think you have more mana than you need. This can vary on a few things, especially depends on whether you have Replenishment in the raid or not, but I find it hard to believe you need 30k unbuffed.

Your gemming is all over the place too. There are two main stats that a Disc Priest should be gemming for - Spellpower is your #1 throughput stat, and Intellect is your #1 mana stat. I would replace some int gems with more SP, and get rid of some of those hybrid gems (especially the useless +10 stats gem) for more SP. More spellpower = more throughput = less tank death = happy raid. Overheals are not a big issue for a Disc Priest so long as you have good mana, because overheal crits will still proc DA.

For single-target spam healing, make sure to use Penance and PoM on cooldown.

1. You have so many hybrid gems that your gemming just looks plain awful gem SP unless your having mana issues don't have 6 purple gems when you need ONE. 10 stats is a bad gem for disc.
2. Pretty much every other class is better suited to tank healing disc just happens to be a raid heal/tank support class we do very well at contributing a penance here and there...
3. Without more information as in a combatlog its very tricky to know exactly what went wrong.

Just for a side note:

Disc priests are not big bang healers like holy pallies. Disc Priests simply have PWS every 15 seconds and divine aegis that only shields for 3k max. Penance is an 8 second cooldown which is painfully slow in fast paced fights like that. Pain suppression can help but only for a few seconds. And the only heal priests use these days, Flash Heal, is only for around 10k health. Since greater heal is out of the question for constant spike damage fights like festergut, Disc Priests need help on P3 and maybe even P2. I find myself struggling on fights that have a constant large amount of damage coming in so don't feel like you're doing something wrong.

In all D Priests are more of a utility healer that couples with another healer like a pally. A lot of people misunderstand and believe that we can dish out the same heal potential as pallies. I hate to say it but that is never true. DPriests are damage mitigators not healers. So if boss damage is tearing apart your tanks with you using every utility you have then you are doing your job and you simply need more healing help.

Festergut is a team healing fight. Tank healer tosses a hand on raid during phase 1, raid healer starts helping out around phase 2 and 100% on phase 3 (god that fight was tough with much less gear than you had... i felt like fester was beating me up through the screen the hits were so hard).

Rotface is about avoiding damage. You should be able to keep the tank up with normal damage. The issue may be that he's taking extra damage. If he's in slime spray then you have a raid positioning issue and you're not going to heal that with his normal damage. If he's standing in bad stuff... same. Take a look at his damage. If the raid avoids avoidable damage, it's a pretty easy fight. When the raid is geared it's even easier, but you still have to avoid the damage.

thanks for all the advice. i was able to get my other heals (two druids) to help out. they weren't all that familiar with fester so then didn't help out thinking i could do it. tried what y'all said and we were able to get him down on a second try. as for the geming i think i got it about down. so stack sp unless it's a good bonus and then stat a combo gem? right now I've been able to hit crits of 10k on flash heal and up to 21k on my greater heal. this has helped me a bunch. thanks :D