10m heroic(hopefully soon) disc priest

[Grannos89]

My armory
Assuming I have the correct logs(almost positive) 2nd raid team WoL
(our best attempt was a 5pct wipe, which was because our 2nd group(mine) did not have bloodlust because our shaman died >.> /gah @ failing)

Above are the logs from last night, which was our first night on heroic morchok, and above that is the link to my armory. We are the 2nd raid team in my guild, and a little more laid back; but just as adamant about downing content as the main team. While normal modes are the main focus, we progress to heroic as fast as possible.

With the background out of the way, the reason for my post is that I have been doing priest research lately and find that a lot of people are going with a spirit/mastery stack or favoring crit. While those are generally awesome thoughts, I went with a more custom approach. While my approach may be completely flawed in every facet, it doesn't hurt to try it out and talk about it.

Currently my gear is setup at exactly 2025 haste (which is 5 ticks of renew) and then I have been doing a balancing act between crit/mastery and floating between 2500-2700 spirit. What I am looking for is some guidance as to whether I am completely wrong in this, or if someone may be able to give some constructive criticism.

[aresius]

Well im not a priest expert (mine is a alt i dont raid on), so perhaps take what i say with a criticising mindset.
First im assuming your disc (by looking at your armory), this is relevant information as holy and disc priests itemize differently.
To my knowladge, it depends somewhat on your healing focus in the raid (as in if your raid healing or tank healing mostly) which itemization approach is most important as a disc priest. Ive read that mastery is better for raid bubbling, but crit is better for heavy direct tank healing. This because mastery would increase your PWS bubble insta-cast, but crit increases your chance to land aegis on healing.
Aditionaly (again, when i pug around with my priest, dont do current content on her) i dont renew much (if at all) as disc. I bubble the tank and use the haste i get from bubbling (borrowed time) to then penance->flash/greater heal.
Never felt need for any haste whatsoever, i feel i have all i need from borrowed time (it applies to the full penance channel).
My reforging is pretty much all to crit, and for gems i valued mostly int (it would seem very very strange for any priest to use gems without at least 20 int on them, probably any healer or even caster for that matter).
Well, just throwing out my experiences. Hopefully someone will give more knowledgable advice below soon and correct me if im wrong.

On Heroic Mortchok i feel the best secondary stat would be crit for strong aegis tank healing at the final 20% "enrage". Also because a few prayers of healing would be interesting to soak up the damage on the shard stack group. By just bubbling the tank and soaker you should have enough haste to pull it off (all imho).
I was, however, a bit surprised that your logs seemed to show 3 healers. Ive seen people 2 heal and 4 heal this fight, but 3?

[Grannos89]

I am disc ya, and 3 heals yes. I am a fairly strong healer myself, so in my group of 5 was a boomkin throwing out hots from time to time, mainly during the black blood defile stage, or pre-stomp and an elemental shaman throwing down healing raid for crystals. So between my bubble stacking and the druids hots, we could "1" heal my group. The other 5m was made up of a holy paladin/resto druid combo.

[Tschus]

I haven't been raiding with my priest for a long while, so what I'm going to say might be off a bit. The information I have is from previous experiences and other priests' comments I've read on the internet.

Haste is good and there are certain breakpoints for haste. But, 5 ticks of renew isn't the one you should be going for as a disc priest. (And with 5% raid buff and 2% haste talent, you will reach the 5 ticks breakpoint with like around 800 haste iirc.) There are other spells that are better than renew for a disc priest. On the armory I see you have lowered haste to 1325, any reasons? Haste is actually your best secondary stat for HPS, but it doesn't give you more HPM. Mastery is only good if you use PW:S a lot. Crit is good for all spells other than PW:S.

That said, the best approach is to choose your stats based on your healing style.

On your spec, you're speccing into an atonement spec without both SoS and ToT, so I guess you aren't tank healing a lot right? Raid healing without Soul Warding won't be a little bit awkward?

As for your gears, personally I will never go for 3% increase crit effect meta instead of the 2% max mana. I would use 2x intellect trinkets, since for disc priests int is a lot more valuable than all other stats. Rune of Zeth seems very subpar from my perspective, except that you'll need the short boost for your healing.

I've heard some disc priests healing with very low amount of spirit and still doing well, but I have never gone that way so can't comment on that approach.

[Grannos89]

I dropped my haste to be just a smidge above the 12.5pct breakpoint(as my current gear wont go exactly to 12.5 but 12.55pct). I have jaw of defeat and necromantic focus as my 2 in-bag intellect trinkets, and swap around as I feel needed. Tonight we downed heroic morchok and I went with the crit meta and crit stacking for the Divine Aegis bubbles. Then the mastery stacking for the bubble on the tank.

I am not too opposed to reforging during our break if we need to, and that is what I ended up doing tonight once we downed it. But those are my reasonings for the breakpoints and choices I have. If I've missed something, please let me know and I'll do my best to comment on it. Oh and I didn't pick up Soul warding because I don't bubble the raid often enough to make it seem worth while, I just heal through the damage.

[Tschus]

You have 5% haste buff while in raid, so you dont need that many haste for the 12.5% breakpoint.
I have to state again that personally I think for disc priests the 12.5% breakpoint isn't really that important. Just get haste enough to a level that you're comfortable with. BTW, if you do a lot tank healing, Strength of Soul is a good talent.

These are only my personal suggestions. Healing is not like DPS that if you don't do this you'll lose X% of damage etc. So if you're doing good in your current setup I think it's totally fine.

[Grannos89]

Yeah with the haste level I am at, I feel fine, because I cast prayer of healing and renew alot more often then I probably should, but even when I was raiding 25m in firelands as a holy paladin I was trying to heal more than I should by using things I shouldn't have. But that's another story for another time. I mean if the crit/mastery stacking I am doing is wrong then I will gladly fix it, I just don't know enough about priests disc or holy to make that determination.

I went to a haste cap, then started stacking the 2 stats I felt that would be most beneficial to me and my play style. While that may be "correct" because healing is about what you are comfortable doing as long as people don't die, but being comfortable and being correct are 2 totally different things. I can adjust and be comfortable, but if you don't adjust you aren't going to be correct.

[Tschus]

You can't define "correct" in healing imo. There're only pros and cons. For example, when I last checked, EJ theorycrafters suggested that stacking haste is the way to maximize your HPS. By stacking haste you're going to have very good throughput on both single target and AoE healing. But by stacking haste your HPM will not increase, the extra throughput is gained by spending mana faster.

You won't be doing "wrong" by stacking on any of the stats, just that it might not be optimal for you.

According to the armory, you're mostly stacking mastery now. Based on the proportion of your PW:S, I would say it might be better for you to stack haste or crit. Mastery is only good for PW:S.

[Grannos89]

While I don't use PW:S religiously for the majority of given fights, I did use it quite a lot for H Morchok. But I do appreciate the advice, and will take a look at a crit/haste build over the mastery stacking one.

[Undome]

I am going to advocate two things.

First I am going to suggest that you alter your casting patterns as they will make things much harder for you as you progress through more Heroics. You are going to have to be looking to drop some healers soon, since you will need the extra DPS to meet the DPS checks, else, you will find yourself kind of at a wall. PW:S is an amazing tool that you are under utilizing on your encounters.

Secondly, I am going to advocate Spirit/Mastery. Spirit/Mastery has amazing potency through out many of the Heroic encounters in Dragon Soul (minus H Ultrax). You will want your shields to be strong so you can smooth out some of the damage in Heroic encounters, otherwise you will find yourself being like WTF HOW CAN I HEAL THIS!?!?! Liberal PW:S, especially in 10s, is going to be a valuable tool you can, and should, lean on. Crit and Haste may allow you to epeen a bit more on farm encounters, but Crit is random and is not going to help you necessarily in situations that matter and we should have sufficient haste from Borrowed Time. Subrosian has some wonderful posts on Spirit/Mastery on the official forums, I suggest you look through some of them to get an even clearer picture of why this is a good route to go.

Lastly, I'm going to be frank - your DPS needs to step it up if you are going to be looking at doing Heroic encounters. We 4 Heal the encounter, mostly because we can and it makes it a sleepwalk and we killed it 30 seconds faster than you. The DPS checks on some of the encounters are going to be difficult for even our DPS to make.

EDIT: Took out redundant statement.

[Grannos89]

Oh without a doubt dps needs to step it up. As a group we went 3/7H firelands before DS came out. Some of our raid members(myself included) were lucky enough to tag along on our progression team and see 6/7H. So we are a normal mode raid team first and foremost, and then raid heroics when possible. And if we need to drop heals, meaning go to 2 healing, then I am the one who drops as heals and I go shadow. The resto druid and holy pally neither have a dps off-spec. Well correction, the paladin does, but it's a mixed set of gear of prot, holy and ret from as far as 2 tiers ago lol.

I will most definitely try and find the forum post you mentioned about the spirit/mastery stacking.

[Grannos89]

Well I am with the mastery/spirit stacking build and we downed heroic morchok last night for the 2nd time...I spammed prayer of healing, bubbles, and binding almost the entire time, along with smites/holy fire when I could manage it. The fight seemed insanely easier, but I ended with like 80k mana left. So either my fiend was at the perfect time to set me up for the end or the spirit build is just that insane?

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for the constructive feedback and awesome results I ended with. It's much appreciated.

[Undome]

Well I am with the mastery/spirit stacking build and we downed heroic morchok last night for the 2nd time...I spammed prayer of healing, bubbles, and binding almost the entire time, along with smites/holy fire when I could manage it. The fight seemed insanely easier, but I ended with like 80k mana left. So either my fiend was at the perfect time to set me up for the end or the spirit build is just that insane?

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for the constructive feedback and awesome results I ended with. It's much appreciated.

I'm glad it worked out for you. As for the excess mana - that is because it is Heroic Morchok. You'll find your mana is a bit more stressed as you progress through heroics.