Well, let me start this by explaining my situation. I've played my priest from 1 to 85 as Shadow, because of the input from buddies of mine that Shadow is the fastest to level. Now that I've hit level 85, I've took the time to gear my priest up to take on a healing role, and I've done some basic research on both specs, as well as run a couple dungeons (just normals) to see how both of them work. Now, the advice I'm looking for is for basically anything you see or have learned from personal experience, such as what spec you think is the most efficient at this point in Cata (Holy or Disc), any problems you see with my gear, anything you would change whether it be gear, glyphs, talents, etc, I'm basically looking for any input I can get. Running through normals is easy with both specs, obviously, but I'm not sure how I'll do when I step up to heroics. Looking to figure out what path I'm focusing on before I go all in. Thanks for any input you guys give.
Oh, and before I forget, a link to my armory. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Zirby/advanced
Keep in mind, I use the same gear for both Holy and Disc, at least for the moment.
You are almost epicced out o.O Only ran a couple normals hm? lol
For stats, I'll go for haste > mastery > crit if use the same gears for both specs.
As for specs, I recommend http://us.battle.net/wow/en/tool/tal...jb!g!ZegTklOnL as disc. Your holy setup looks okay, I'll move the 2 points from divine touch to blessed resilience though.
Because I haven't healed with a priest higher than 40's, I can only offer limited advice. I have both a druid and Shammy, both heals MS. In my experience, if your easily healing norms, no challenge at all, go the heroics for sure. So long as your rotation is right and your not running out of mana... You'll ace it
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I ran through heroics as shadow to get geared up before attempting to convert to Disc. =P From people I've talked to, it seems like I'm leaning towards Disc over Holy, although I'll keep Holy still because fights often dictate what spec is better, so it's nice to have as a fallback. I went through and redid my reforging, and I changed my Disc spec to what you had listed. It makes sense also, because up to this point, I've never needed to use desperate prayer, so it was essentially a waste of a talent point.Originally Posted by Tschus
Desperate prayer is still a handy tool. If I would like to get it, I'll be dropping either empowered healing or darkness. 0.15sec cast time on GH is just too much to sacrifice for it.
Both specs can do 5man heroics just fine, though sometimes one spec will be easier than another. From my personal experience, ZA is easier to heal with holy, especially the first boss. There are just too much random spike and aoe damage, which is a pita for disc priests. But just as I said, you can heal through it as disc with no problem, just need a bit more effort.
For 5 man's I would say keep with discipline. It is far easier to keep people at full hp as discipline due to it's raw power compared to holy which has a harder time due to hots compared to big single healing spells, but you know, rather than having to be constantly putting peoples hp up and struggling to keep at max it is far more enjoyable to view people with full hp bars with added shields on top
Also 5 mans are a brilliant time for atonement healing. If well geared and preferably over geared for the dungeon it becomes really great for keeping even the tank topped up with spamming holy fire and smite, allowing for around 3-8kish dps while healing which is always fun. It is a great way to make the dungeon more interesting as well if you have been running it for ages and you over gear it to help dps everything down with surprisingly good damage.
From all the times I have tried holy (I prefer discipline it might be clear by post) I could never keep people as topped up as I could with discipline, added to by me not being as good as it of course, making 5 mans a lot more hectic with times of fearing I couldn't save someone etc. as it's just, well, easier to keep topped up in such places. Of course holy shines in raids as there are more people and they can heal huge amounts of the raid, but when there are only 5 people a discipline priest spamming prayer of healing with added stacking aegis on top is ridiculously great for healing them. Nothing feels as good as when a huge aoe goes out and it gets completely absorbed by the 50k+ aegis you gave everyone.
But in the end of the day, for 5 mans and normal mode raiding etc. it is really up to choice what spec you want to be, whatever feels more fun for you having the higher flat healing or the more hot and aoe based moves. (Discipline of course feels more fun)
I wouldn't recommend trying to keep your gear the same for both Holy and Disc as both specs are far apart in terms of stats, In my opinion Holy requires a lot of spirit, haste, mastery, and less crit, where as Disc you can get away with as little spirit as you can get opting for more mastery, crit, and haste.
For example I have 1145 spirit on my Disc priest with no trinkets or procs of +spirit, I still have enough mana to heal any heroic 10 man encounter and because of the low spirit my main stats are sitting at, 11% haste, 20% crit, 20% mastery unbuffed. If I tried to play holy with those stats I would last around 2 minutes then would be oom for the rest of the fight, the same would be if I spec shadow I have no where near enough spirit to give me hit cap.
As for how both specs play, to be honest I don't really know much about holy to give you a decent answer in that respect but Disc is sitting in a nice place at the moment due to our scaling with intellect and zero reliance on spirit means we can aim for pure throughput.
Some tips for Disc Tank healing spec if you plan to stick with it, keep in mind these are my own ideas on how tank healing Disc priests should spec with focus on Crit, mastery, and haste, spell casts and not bubble spamming.
2000 spirit is the maximum you need with most opting for around 1500 raid buffed, as your item level goes up you can drop it lower ( 1k ish is the lowest you can get without dropping item level or tier sets ).
As for main stats if you are aiming for high crit I would recommend stopping at around 20% crit if you have the 8% from raid buffs, this is because Weakened soul and strength of soul add another 10% crit on pre shielded targets giving you a total of around 38% crit not including Inner focus adding another 25% ontop.
For haste you only really need around 12% buffed to start off with purely for cast time on longer spells but as you get crit capped out you can start adding more to haste if you want.
And for mastery anything goes by balancing out spirit, haste, and crit you will usually end up with a decent amount of mastery anyways.
Last edited by CoolNitro; 11-24-2011 at 10:35 AM.
After some more experimentation with both specs, I've decided Disc feels more fun to me. I've reforged my gear to try to get a bit more crit, and I've been told that my spirit (~2300) is actually overkill for Disc, so I'm considering reforging some of it off in order to get some more crit/mastery/haste. Any thoughts on that?
Read my last post just above yours ^^
I read it, but I'm a little scared to completely reforge away all my extra spirit with me still in my learning phase. I'm thinking of reforging it down to about 1.9k or 2k even. After looking at my armory now, what do you suggest I do for reforging off some spirit? Haste or crit?
^^ sorry I thought you where some new guy that just happened upon this topic.
Looking at your armory now the lowest you could get to is 1459 or 1859 spirit including DMC. Right now you have 2379 spirit plus 400 from Tsunami, with the DMC you can basically count that 400 as always there in combat so you realistically have 2779 spirit which is way over the top that is required for any disc priest (aside from bubble spammers) let alone one with your item level.
If you can drop it to around 2k you shouldn't notice much difference in terms of mana regen because you should still have more then enough, take your reforges off and redo them using the extra spirit on your items this should give you back all the haste you lost and net you a little more crit and mastery and maybe a bit of haste also.
I should let you know that as your spirit drops mana will seam to be an issue but it's something you get used to the more you heal with lower levels of spirit, believe me Disc has more then enough abilities to overcome mana issues and as long as you don't start panic healing and think about your usage of spells you should always be able to get by.
Start off by dropping some spirit bit by bit, Raid by Raid, and eventually you will start realizing that you don't need passive regen.
Here is a link to my armory so you can see how extreme you can go and still get away with it, though my item level and intellect plays a major roll in being able to drop as much spirit as I do, notice that only 5 of my items have spirit on them (4x tier and rep ring) and all have spirit reforged out
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nitro/advanced
Last edited by CoolNitro; 11-24-2011 at 08:24 PM.
I gave it a shot, reforged alot of spirit off into crit because once I undid my haste->crit reforges, I was sitting at about 8.5% haste, which seemed okay. I'm down to about 1975 spirit unbuffed, sitting at 8.5% haste, 17.5% crit, and 1190 mastery rating which equals out to 36% mastery. Seems like a pretty happy medium to me. =P^^ sorry I thought you where some new guy that just happened upon this topic.
Looking at your armory now the lowest you could get to is 1459 or 1859 spirit including DMC. Right now you have 2379 spirit plus 400 from Tsunami, with the DMC you can basically count that 400 as always there in combat so you realistically have 2779 spirit which is way over the top that is required for any disc priest (aside from bubble spammers) let alone one with your item level.
If you can drop it to around 2k you shouldn't notice much difference in terms of mana regen because you should still have more then enough, take your reforges off and redo them using the extra spirit on your items this should give you back all the haste you lost and net you a little more crit and mastery and maybe a bit of haste also.
I should let you know that as your spirit drops mana will seam to be an issue but it's something you get used to the more you heal with lower levels of spirit, believe me Disc has more then enough abilities to overcome mana issues and as long as you don't start panic healing and think about your usage of spells you should always be able to get by.
Start off by dropping some spirit bit by bit, Raid by Raid, and eventually you will start realizing that you don't need passive regen.
Here is a link to my armory so you can see how extreme you can go and still get away with it, though my item level and intellect plays a major roll in being able to drop as much spirit as I do, notice that only 5 of my items have spirit on them (4x tier and rep ring) and all have spirit reforged out
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nitro/advanced
If you are going to reforge your Spirit to anything I would suggest dropping the crit. It's decent sometimes but you'd be better off with more haste or more mastery. Crit should always be the last stat you think to get and it should be one you're willing to reforge to get other stats from. You could take that 374 spirit you reforge and get more haste to help you with tank/raid healing during 10mans or Mastery to help with your divine aegis spell and shields. Crit will proc the DA which will benefit more form the mastery. Most of the time when we crit it is often times overhealing by a large percent.
If you ever plan to go into a 25man setting you might want to consider keeping your spirit around 2000 to 2100 at least because the regen does help to a point as long as your other stats are high up.
Some tips I might be able to give when speccing is if you ever do go holy you can get rid of surge of light because it's really useless most the time because you'll spam other spells since holy mostly does raid not tanks and pick up the 1min cooldown reduction to Shadow Fiend to help with mana regen. Also get as much spirit as you can because you can rape your mana pool easily as holy with low gearing.
As disc can probably drop crit for mastery and haste. They are the better of the two stats for raid healing and tank healing. Probably keep around a 15% unbuffed crit maybe 14% if you still aren't that high on mastery and haste. Most times haste goes to 12.5%+ and Mastery 17+ depending on preference. You'll probably see increase throughput with those stats than with Crit.
I may give that a shot and reforge it all over to haste. Having a faster GH helps alot, I've noticed.
Personally I am the type to never give up spirit and try keep as much as I can, even though I am discipline. Then again I usually need to help bubble up the raid and the like so I suppose that's why I always try keep spirit as in my 10 man setting, especially if 2 healing something I can't just sit as tank healer like I used to be able to in 25 mans which were far better on my mana. I guess if you can do just tank healing in 25 then spirit isn't as important then since not spending it on keeping raid alive as well as tank.
First off apologies for the long ish post but it includes my reasoning for crit over haste.
I have 2235 mastery that says 20% how is your 1190 giving you 36%?
Kamugi isn't wrong with this statement as I said in one of my original posts Disc priests can be spec-ed pretty much any way and get the job done it just depends on what you expect from your spells.
I personally didn't like the haste mastery build because lack of crits meant more healing was required from bigger heals with less down time and mastery wasn't getting used fully unless you either shield spammed or PoH spammed.
As for our crits being mostly overheal that depends on how much you expect to heal, In most situations I don't worry about over healing as I generally have very little of it take for example this log from shannox heroic 10 man: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/w...?s=3506&e=3785 I over healed 17% on Greater heals that crit at 52% compared to 20% over heal on PW:shields.
The way I look at it though in terms of haste vs crit is: correct me if I am wrong on cast times they are complete guesses.
Haste stacked Priest: A single Greater heal cast non crit with high haste will cast at around 1.5 seconds including borrowed time and will heal for a static 30k.
Crit stacked Priest: A single Greater heal cast + crit with a cast time of 1.8 ish including BT will heal for 60k + 25k DA.
So a haste stacked Disc priest will have to cast 3 times to equal a single heal from a crit stacked priest and the DA shield being almost equal to a PW:shield reduces the required healing next time the tank is hit so over all high crit equals less casting required, less mana required, and less haste required.
Again though Crit is still RNG and you are not guaranteed to crit on each cast but if you have at least 18% unbuffed and the 5% + 3% crit buffs in raids then on pre shielded targets your crit rating will average out to above 30% on single target casts which I find to be good enough to allow me to have the build that I have.
Other then Shannox where I fallow the dog tank out into the middle of no where I generally cast more raid healing spells and shields to assist the second healer I have never been one to focus solely on a single target and generally tanks don't really require constant healing anyways.
I should make note though in my current gear over powered as it is as I said above I have 11% haste, 20% crit, 20% mastery but when raid buffed with all the bells and whistles ( weakened soul on target, inner focus not included ) I have 16% haste, 38% crit, 20% mastery so it's not like I am lacking any stats by choosing a crit based build and at most I am losing around 5% haste ish which is what 0.3 cast time from 16% to 21%.
Last edited by CoolNitro; 11-25-2011 at 12:22 PM.
Just as an update, just healed heroic ZA as Disc, and it actually was surprisingly easy.
in 5 mans discipline is hard to beat. The ability to spam prayer of healing giving even people not being hit 50k+ aegis is just ridiculously good and easy over holy which actually requires some thought into how to heal
You have to remember that when using the same gear set for for both specs one needs to take into account which stat is better for both (Crit = way worst than haste for holy priest). If a person is ever wanting to raise up in skill level and kill more content usually one will be in a 25man raid setting over a 10man raid setting. In a 25man setting I would never value crit over any other stat especially with paladins in my raid. Right now with all the firelands gear you can't help but get close to 18% crit unbuffed with reforging. I'm sitting at 16.70%
As far as crit vs haste. That crit may hit harder and you may have to cast more spells but like stated it's RNG based and most places you won't be the only one solo healing so you are essentially competing for heals. The crit will either land and heal for a lot or land and over heal because another healer beat you to the heal. I for one am in a 25man raid setting and I love the thought of competing for my heals and have as little over heal as possible.
Grats on your ZA run.
That post wasn't actually in regards to both specs it was more of a why I like crit post then anything else I did state in a post above that, that this kind of build does not work with holy or shadow and that if you wanted to use the low spirit high crit build don't use the same gear for holy.
In regards to being unable to reach 18% it is possible actually it's more then possible if I reforged everything into crit I would have around 25% unbuffed but you have to remember or take note now that most of my gear is non spirit with crit rating as one of the two stats so I have more of the 3 main stats then most priests would.
As for competing for heals we don't do that, I two heal all 10 man heroic bosses with a druid or at least the ones we have downed and I have most of his abilities enabled in healbot so I know who is getting what healing and unless someone is getting hit hard or is about to get hit hard we don't actively try to out heal each other unless the healing is required.
My build is going to have to change now though with 4.3 just a day away and the lack of gear that doesn't have either spirit or hit rating on it, I will end up with twice as much spirit as I have now and less over all stats to play with and with int getting even higher and the 4pc proc of double mana from rapture I could cast 3x more then I am now if it was ever needed.
Last edited by CoolNitro; 11-28-2011 at 10:10 PM.
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