WotLK Disc Priest Guide

[Swam]

Well thanks, hit 80 and the next day 2 healed naxx with crap gear, huzzah!

[chainsawal]

I have been healing Disc for some time and I love it... in fact I got rid of my Holy Spec and went Shadow for my dual...

I can PW:S an entire 10 man group effectively during XT's tantrum... Hodir's Frozen Blows... etc...


The only place I ever get in trouble as a Disc priest is when I get a 7 or more noobs in the group who can't seem to not stand in the black stuff... or keep moving during Hodir... etc... but that is their own fault. I have had other healers die during Iron Council and stood in the middle and healed / shielded both tanks at once successfully on opposite sides of the room.

As you progress with gear.. the Tier 8 offers +250 SP with every PW:S casted which is a great buff also...

Mana regeneration is incredible... I rarely have to pop my Shadowfiend, Arcane Blast, or Hymn of Hope to get more mana. In most boss fights, I rarely cross 50% of my mana pool.

Pain Suppression is a must have when all hell breaks lose...

The only 2 downsides you will hear over and over again as Disc when PUGing (which is all perception so keep letting people know the truth):

(1) "Don't PW:S me because I can't keep rage" - FALSE as of a patch some time ago like 3.1 or earlier.

(2) "We only have 3 people doing all the healing..." (meanwhile if you add my mitigation to my healing.. I am always #1 or #2... but most people don't look at absorbed or mitigation so as a Disc Priest my healing only number is between #3-5 usually in a 25 man group) - not to mention the healing buffs we put on the tank when we are involved. Get GuessedAbsorbed addon for Recount... so you can quantify to others your impact on the raid should it come in question.

[Optional]

I wholeheartedly disagree with one part of your guide.

Renew.

It's invaluable when tank healing. This is what I do,

PWS, PoM, Renew, begin flash heal and penance rotation until PoM is cooled, then PWS when Weakness is off, renew, and repeat.

Renew is 12-15% of my healing. I'd say that's pretty valuable.

[chainsawal]

I will admit, I use Renew frequently too....

I know people say it isn't the most efficient use of mana.. but when the tank is at 100% of health.. and I never run out of mana.. why not throw a renew on him (along with PW:S. POM, etc..) just in case while I am shielding other raid members he takes unexpected damage....


If I am ending fights with tons of mana.. why not use it?

[Tahriel]

I wholeheartedly disagree with one part of your guide.

Renew.

It's invaluable when tank healing. This is what I do,

PWS, PoM, Renew, begin flash heal and penance rotation until PoM is cooled, then PWS when Weakness is off, renew, and repeat.

Renew is 12-15% of my healing. I'd say that's pretty valuable.

12-15% of you're healing yes, but how much % when you factor in your shields?

/Tahriel

[chainsawal]

I can't speak for anyone else.. but my mitigation (per Recount Guessed Absorbs) usually equals my healing (per Recount Heals).


So, if my renew is about 10% of my healing... it is about 5% of my overall impact on the raid.


Does anyone know a better mitigation / absorbed meter besides Recount?

[Nicki]

Sure disc has the potential to end fights at full mana.

However if you gear and play like me you won't be so comfortable with mana. I don't have the mana or the time to cast a spell that only looks good on meters. A 1700~ HoT isn't worth it to me...

[chainsawal]

I really only use renew in two scenarios:

(1) During 5 man heroics when we have a couple of weak links in our group... I will through a renew on the tank while he is 100%. That way if I am trying to heal a weak player or two and take my eye off the tank, there is always some level of HoT. Especially if his PW:S falls off and I am too involved trying to keep a Hunter or Lock alive who drew aggro...or accidentally pulled another MOB.

(2) During large raids I will often throw a Renew on the tank for good measure heading into a high damage encounter.

I know most people run with regular groups.. so they can expect their raid mates to stay out of trouble and not make dumb moves, but when pugging that is easier said than done...

Sometimes when we have a weaker group.. I will actually DPS between heals which is dangerous... which is another reason I will stick a Renew on the tank from time to time.

So, I think your approach to healing will change dramatically depending on what kind of groups you are running with. In raids with my guild, we know each other's play styles and abilities well enough where I don't use Renew much at all. With Pugging.. I use it all the time as insurance against the unknown.

[Ollin]

I can't speak for anyone else.. but my mitigation (per Recount Guessed Absorbs) usually equals my healing (per Recount Heals).


So, if my renew is about 10% of my healing... it is about 5% of my overall impact on the raid.


Does anyone know a better mitigation / absorbed meter besides Recount?

I've been using Skada recently.

It's got absorbed built in, and perfectly done healing meters.

[ImmortalParrish]

I have seen this argument time and time again..... Using renew as disc is really user preference. I use it in my play style. It helps a bit and i'm not ooming so I agree with Tahriel. Since you are picking up Mental Agility anyway, it seems like a waste to not use renew =/

[Goomba]

it took a lot of thinking practice to work out how to use renew now that i'm disc, and I still do use it in some situations, like when shield has taken a beating already and shield debuff is in place and penance is on CD, and i'm lighting off flash heals, and there are 1-2 other healers on tank in togc25 during gormack....but other than that, I'm really glad that I put in the time to learn to use flash heal instead....unless i'm limited to instant cast heals (mobile fights) renew really isn't satisfactory to me since I put my head into using flash heal more....renew doesn't proc any of the kool stuff that I do more and better than any other healer, so its just not a tool I bring to the table real often....

so yeah...its play style...but don't justify it with numbers....they aren't going to back you up in many situations....dedicate yourself to eliminating renew for a week or two and see what changes....you'll come back to it, i'm sure, but you'll also have learned some other valuable tools, is my guess.....and I say that as someone who will argue with anyone to defend my playstyle before i break down and try something new...rofl

[Tahriel]

With the Renew discussion to one side, i'm curious to how many of you actualy use Greater Heal?

I've always had it drilled into me that as Disc, Greater heal is to an extent useless, since you can just use Flash Heal. Flash heals benefit from the Flash Heal talent that is in the Disc tree and you can also glyph to make it cheaper.

Anyway, after already knowing all of this, i finaly decided to play around with Greater Heal and talented it for the reduced cast time.

I've been using it in raids and probably most often after a shield for a 1.6second cast of Greater Heal if i remember right, and i'm kind of liking the use of it to push the tanks health right back up again.

Now i'm not sure if i just like the see a big number for once, or it is actualy helpful. I could of probably just used a couple of flash heals instead, ofcourse Penance if it's not on cooldown.

So how many others out there throw some greater heals around as a Disc Priest?

[Dizco]

Thank you Aliena for this excelent Guide, I played Discipline before, but with the addition of your nice Guide, i think many of "new" healpriests are now playing better with this guide!

I am Holypriest with Discpriest 2nd spec and i do 10man hardmodes at the most of a time. In totc i´m disc at most of the time. We got mostly a healcombo of Healpaladin, Healshaman and Healpriest. Disciplinepriests, when theyre played well, are very Powerfull as healers AND allround support. One good example is when Icehowl hits the ground and throw all the Raidmember at the walls... in this phase i got my PW:S on every Member (my shield is 10man-raidbuffed @ about 11-12k absorb). THIS is mitigating so much damage! My Healingbuddies were surprised how helpfull a disc can be.

I hope through those guides more players will get more fun to try out some new stuff, i love my 2 Healspecs

[Spiritus]

If you have a large enough mana pool, exceptional regen, a high amount of haste, and 5/5 DF you can get an HPS increase out of using GH as disc to replace FH. I'm talking about insane gear, though.

If you aren't replacing FH w/ GH, then I wouldn't suggest spec'ing 5/5 DF as the PW:S, Penance, GH combo will work just fine.

I've tested this out and it is viable, but as I said, make sure your mana pool/regen and haste can handle it.

[Goomba]

I was spec'd for and used GH when I first went disc (a hold over from holy). I didn't have the haste gear for it, and I dropped it for FH

now I'm looking at ways to boost my throughput, and i'm over-hasted (378 or something like that) so I'm thinking about GH again....

flash heal has serious crit potential (spec'd and buffed, mine with crit almost 60% of the time) and that causes all sorts of fun stuff

but greater heal (if its fast enough) might just be needed.....I two healed toc10 last night, and got very frustrated with my throughput during faction champs....we normally blow through voa10, ony10, and toc10 with nothing more than a death or two, and we wiped 5x on fac champs and I just couldn't get more throughput going on the fight

by over-hasted, I mean that my flash heal is now below global cooldown for cast time, and its the spell i cast the most that has a casting time....so i'm looking at longer casting spells now

so....i'm over-hasted, over-mana'd (fights end with 10k+ mana all the time), and reconsidering greater heal

[Tahriel]

If you have a large enough mana pool, exceptional regen, a high amount of haste, and 5/5 DF you can get an HPS increase out of using GH as disc to replace FH. I'm talking about insane gear, though.

If you aren't replacing FH w/ GH, then I wouldn't suggest spec'ing 5/5 DF as the PW:S, Penance, GH combo will work just fine.

I've tested this out and it is viable, but as I said, make sure your mana pool/regen and haste can handle it.

What sort of Haste are we looking at to make Greater Heal viable?

My mana pool can keep up with it fine, i have 38-41k raid buffed mana in 10man content.

I'm in a 10man progression guild only, and every hardmode available to us at the moment leaves me with around 10-15k mana without using a shadowfiend. Arcane torrent and Inner Focus on constant cooldown though. I know i'm stupidly high if i'm ending up with so much mana left over, but i'm going to see how ICC is for Healers to see if the extra mana for the hardmodes will be needed, if not i'll start switching back to some SP stacking.

At the moment i'm around 11.46% Haste, (Think i read that 11% is the soft cap for Disc Priests), Would you consider that high enough? I certainly have all the loot to easily make the change to switch some Crit for Haste. Sitting around 37% Crit unbuffed at the moment so i can afford to loose a little bit if needed.

/Tahriel

-Goomba - I find my healing on Faction Champs is terribly low, i throw a couple of shields and some PoMs around, but other than that, i try to mass dispel a decent amount, i find dispelling is actualy much more powerful in that encounter than actual healing. I expect you're doing a lot of dispells also?

[Spiritus]

I run 465 HstR, which, with talents & totem, puts me at about 24% haste, which drops my FH down to 1.15sec w/o BT. With 5/5 DF (which I do not currently run), it would drop my GH down to 1.9 sec (1.5 with BT). Even with that I feel like GH is too slow and not worth the marginal HPS increase.

I remember calculating the soft cap for this at some point, but I cannot remember it at the moment. For the most part, x2FH=x1GH in terms of raw throughput, however x2 FH takes (with my stats) 2.3sec and a GH takes 1.9sec. The more haste you have, the better GH becomes over FH.

You can even "fully" spec into GH by dropping Imp FH for 2/3 Imp Healing, saving you 10% on each GH cast.

Use at your own peril, however. I would only try this if you can cast GH in less than 2sec w/o BT.

[Amamaeth]

Eh, a marginal HPS for using a slower and bigger spell. Most heals are over heals anyway I don't see why someone would want to use GHeal anyway. I'd imagine using the faster heal to give the tank more HP for the next attack /ability would be more beneficial then a marginal HPS gain.

Guess the question is gearing for Gheal by stacking that much haste worth it compared to just getting enough for flash then stacking spellpower. I'd be inclined to say no since spellpower effects all our heals / shields where haste would only be benefiting 2? IDK I'm not a math wizard, would be interesting to see some testing on.

[Spiritus]

When I mean stacking haste, I mean on gear choices, not gemming. Once you reach a comfortable regen level, then you should be gemming SP as Disc. I would also recommend MH/OH. The haste level I have is all from gear.

As a note, there is absolutely nothing wrong with FH. The GH build has only become marginally viable with T9 level gear and is still relatively untested. It is an option however and would theoretically provide an HPS increase. I think some fights would favor FH and others would favor a properly spec'd/geared GH.

EDIT: Of course, with the T10 2pc, this may become a moot argument.

[Hobnob]

from the perspective of my FH crits doing nearly the normal amount of a GH an then being able to do just under 3 FHs to every GH then i cannot see GH becoming useful compared to FH,

FH raid crit- around 7500+ (with weakoned soul + other talents FH crit rate is fairly high, without working it out i imagine around 50% ?? anyone able to confirm?)(normal hitting just under 5k)
so in 3 seconds you get between 15k and 22.5k + divine aegis......

GH, 2.5s for the cast... normal being 9k heal, crit- 15k.
so 1/5 of the sp (for the extra 0.5s to make the calculation worth while = ) 1.8k normal, 3k for the crit,

so 10.8k- 18k for the GH + divine aegis.........


thats with standard gemming, not for haste, gem for haste, lose the spell power, sure you can do more GH but they are less powerful, and you might as well go holy because disc has the haste values there to make FH effective for the spec.