Reply With QuoteI have played with several disc priests who are very good at what they do, and do not have the issue you described.
So what is going on? Bad luck/coincidence.
In short: anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.
idk what it is, and I'd like some insight as to what a lot of these disc priests' problem is, but it seems like on normal pulls that holy priests or any other healers have no problems with, disc priests have a hard time keeping me alive and I often die with no heals (sitting at 8k hp for like 10 secs at a time) and that disc priest is like nearly topped off in mana. I just want to know why disc priests have this problem healing. Is it really the discipline tree or am I always encountering some pretty pathetic/lazy disc priests that should probably spec holy ?(because I never have issues from holy priests).
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I have played with several disc priests who are very good at what they do, and do not have the issue you described.
So what is going on? Bad luck/coincidence.
In short: anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.
idk I keep running into these kind of disc priests, maybe I have bad luck with them because they always aren't always there. not talking afk not there, talking more like, everyone died and the healer had 90% mana and said "oh what happened, guys?!"
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Or possibly, you have run with some good disc priests, but didn't notice that they were disc because they did a decent job?
Just throwing that out as a possibility.
My suggestion would be to add bad healers to your ignore list, so you never get paired with them again.
...or they were just plain bad?
You don't notice a good Disc priest.
In a pugged 5 man heroic a shadow priest or a ret pally will have higher healing done/hps than a Disc priest. But they still keep you alive.
Nope, that's not odd.
At all.
SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER
pioneer of representative government who was
killed in the Battle of Evesham on 4 August 1265.
*jumps out from behind bushes* BOO
I like Disc priest on me, never had an issue. Seems like you're running into some bad ones.
There is something FoTM about disc; speaking as a disc priest I've run with a load of terrible ones when I'm on an alt.
I disagree. It's pretty obvious when a Disc Priest is doing a good job in 5mans because everybody has a bubble around their character nearly all the time.Originally Posted by Mačl
I think part of it is that Disc is highly effective on LK (and most of ICC). That gives the spec exposure. Personally, I've been playing the spec in PvE since the pre-Wrath 3.0 patch, and I've loved every minute of it. In Naxx days I was one of the very few Disc Priests on my server. Ulduar increased the Disc population a bit, but then many went back to Holy for ToC (including myself for a while as the gear that was dropping for me had better stats for Holy, especially the T9 2pc).
It's definitely not the Disc tree. If they are pathetic and lazy then they probably won't fare any better as Holy, unless they are a long time Holy Priest who is trying out Disc and hasn't put much thought or research into how to play the spec.
The first time we had a disc priest healing with us in Naxx I remember noticing for the first time the spell effect for penance. I thought "omg that spell looks so cool!" And I had it in the back of my mind to one day level a disc priest just so I could cast penance. Silly, yes?
Well, I'm leveling a disc priest now, and... omg I love penance.
Yeah, the animation for Penance is awesome. It's like it smacks the damage out of my target!
I also like the animation for DA. Reminds me of hamster balls.
Anecdotes are anecdotal.
I've played my priest as Disc since the 3.0 patch, and leveled mostly by healing instances from 70-80. I actually find healing heroics *easier* on a disc priest than on a holy priest. I prevent a ton of the damage that holy has to heal through in 5-mans. For example, poison in HoL? Shield, renew, forget.
The only wrinkles in this are paladin tanks that are bad at mana management and whine like little babies if I shield them a little, let alone all the time like I do the other three tank classes. One even told me I should get rid of the soap bubbles, it was hurting his mana. I told him I couldn't, and he'd have to deal with those, since those are procced by crits, not cast by me.
No, you're not going to want me taking portals on Valithria anytime soon, but I usually solo-heal the raid on that while the high HPS healers do their part.
My priest is level 30 and being disc makes it SO much easier and makes it easier to not be running out of mana all the time. I just got rid of the PW:S cooldown and now I recklessly bubble spam. It is awesome.
You may be having problems with priests who are too used to bubble-and-DPS, which you can totally do in lower level dungeons especially if you're specced Disc. Personally, I like to pre-bubble and then wand away for as long as I can get away with it (I don't have nearly enough mana to waste it doing real DPS though). The thing is that on a priest, you can actually alt tab and have IM conversations between bubbles. I totally do. But I try to keep my healbot visible so if I need to come in and save the day I can. And the fact that I can bubble to give me time for a big long Heal makes me much more comfortable kind of slacking, and could make you wonder why your health is sitting so low. I also tend to just bubble & renew as that's the most mana efficient heals if they're not going to die in the interim (and with bubble, they probably won't!)
Whenever I get a pally tank, I start out bubbling them, and watch his mana. If it looks like the bubbles will mana starve him, then I hold off (woot I get to cast penance more! AMG PENANCE!) and only shield on bigger pulls, when I know the bubble will get beaten down fast.
But yeah... it'd be nice if they all could handle being bubbled. /shrug
OP doesn't really go into what situations he's talking about. "Normal" pulls doesn't really mean much, at least not to me.
However, as Disc priest, I can envision a scenario where a tank will die, in the way described, so I'll try to answer to that.
In a raid, particularly ICC, if the Disc priest has been assigned to "tank heal", he will be healing at least two tanks. Typically, he'll throw up shields and a Prayer of mending, just before the pull (at least, I do). When pull starts, one tank will be establishing aggro, while the other shares some sort of damage (or, add patrol, which will drive a Disc crazy--separate tanks too far, and one tank may not be getting healed, eh? But, that's another scenario...).
The Disc will be throwing shield on someone, most probably a melee, in order to get borrowed time, to set up some quicker heals that will proc DA shielding (the really good bubble). Now, if the tank takes a big hit, his shield will fall off, and he'll be low on health (with said shield having mitigated that big hit). The Disc cannot shield him again, yet, due to the weakened soul timer, and so he'll most probably hit tank with penance, which may or may not proc a DA bubble on him, but will heal for a nice amount. And, be following up with a Flash Heal, or two, if not another shield. Now, here is the difficult part, from Disc perspective. The main tank is hit hard, been penanced, can't be shielded yet, and has no DA proc. The Disc has a choice--use flash heal, and hope another healer is noticing the spike, in time to help, or pull out the one big channel heal he has...you know, the one that should be coming later on, in the fight. No back up heals--tank dies. Or, both tanks are hit hard, and Disc is left with choosing which one he can keep alive. Most of the time, the Disc will not use the big channeled heal, this early on...
In this scenario, the problem is not the Disc, it's the healing group. #1 priority is to keep the tanks up...that's all healers priority, and even the tank's, to the extent he can do so. This is a combination of lack of communication and ignorance of the role a Disc brings to the raid, in the current content. Disc is for mitigation of damage, not reactive healing...we are hamstrung, when it comes to big, save your butt, heals...aside from the one channeled, aoe spell, we can't save the day, in that way.
That's just about the only scenario I can think of, that a Disc would have trouble keeping a tank up...being caught between cds, or having two tanks with big damage at the same time...other than just being really bad healers, or distracted, I guess...
5-man's--no problem, or shouldn't be, as long as everyone's doing proper job. Most people, in 5-man's, are jumping with joy, at my pretty bubbles! (Or, maybe jumping with annoyance, I don't usually know, because there's rarely much being said, either way.).
Raids, where Disc is employed to mitigate tank damage, shield damage spikes happening in the raid, and throwing out pom on tanks/melee, and flash heals on stragglers, setting up DA procs, dispelling nasty dots and diseases--these should make for far less scary fights, for everyone...even those skittery warrior tanks!
BOO!!
Last edited by Blue; 06-11-2010 at 12:44 PM.
-"Just like a buzzin' fly, I come into your life, I'll float away, like honey in the sun..."--Tim Buckley
ahhh no! Not the bubble! Not the bubble! I swear i'll be good!
Tell QQing paladins to sit down 2-3 times to eat crits and take some damage so that you have something to heal so that they get mana.
This is 5man heroics of course, don't tell you paladin in ICC25 HMs to sit down to eat a crit for mana.
That, or tell them to learn how to actually manage their mana in the first place. Chances are they are used to not having to use their other regen abilities, and that is what's causing the issue. I've never had a good Pally tank complain to me about lack of mana from my bubbles.
Healing a 5 man as Disc is a lot different from raid healing. They're probably just bubbling people and never learned how to single target heal or triage. They probably don't even realize they can use the haste buff from casting shield to speed up a different heal.
Just fyi but bubble + PoM = bad. Bubbles absorb the damage that produces the PoM bounce.
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