Dusting off my disc priest

[Pandacho 286]

Hello, guys :)

Today I went to raid a bit on my disc priest - didn't do it from Pandaria days.

I tried to read stuff before and to get ready more or less, and now would really appreciate some critique and advices.

 

Armory

 

Logs

 

Gear, talents and glyphs as they were during the raid.

I didn't spec into CoW on any of the bosses because we had 5 healers for 18-man and 3 of them were discs.... So I decided that it would be pretty useless.

[Kulia 39]

Looking only at butcher due to lack of time(and because he's a good fight to give advice on because he's high damage and a very stressful fight at times with how low people can get):
Penance: USE IT MORE FOR A HEAL. It is your STRONGEST direct heal. You should *NEVER* cast it for damage. NEVER.

Good use of Archangel, could probably bump that up a little more.

Also, you had 6 casts of Prayer of healing and only 5 empowered AA's - Don't cast PoH outside of Empowered AA, it costs too much mana, your GCDs are better spent bubbling everyone instead. 

Cast Power word: solace more. If you're gonna take the talent use it, you cast it very little and probably could've had a lot more casts out of it. If you find you can't cast solace on CD, just switch to mindbender. 

I do understand you had other discs in the group and I know how frustrating it is to raid the "weakened soul" debuff instead of the actual bosses (it's a distraction because you go to PW:S a target and all of a sudden "You can't do that." and then confusion ensues until you realise "Oh yeah, weakened soul"). (thats what I find myself doing when against other disc priests) in future maybe try and find groups w/o other discs, I know it's hard but I kinda stopped raiding on my priest for awhile because of how frustrated I got running with other disc priests. 

[Pandacho 286]

Thanks, Kulia, I very appreciate your help.

 

I didn't cast Solace on CD?  Well, I'll make a big and shiny WA button for its CD in the middle of the screen...

About Weakened Soul, I made a bouquet for VuhDo to track it, so normally I see my and other priests PW: Shield and WS.

PoH: I have a question here. During the fight I do cast it with Archangel, but in the end of fights when I still have too much mana, I sort of 'dump' it for PoHs even w/o Archangel. Is it wrong to do?

 

Ah, and I made macros for casting Archangel+FH and Archangel+PoH. Is it right thing to do or better to manage Archangel manually?

[Kulia 39]

Thanks, Kulia, I very appreciate your help.

 

I didn't cast Solace on CD?  Well, I'll make a big and shiny WA button for its CD in the middle of the screen...

About Weakened Soul, I made a bouquet for VuhDo to track it, so normally I see my and other priests PW: Shield and WS.

PoH: I have a question here. During the fight I do cast it with Archangel, but in the end of fights when I still have too much mana, I sort of 'dump' it for PoHs even w/o Archangel. Is it wrong to do?

 

Ah, and I made macros for casting Archangel+FH and Archangel+PoH. Is it right thing to do or better to manage Archangel manually?

I'm not too sure if you did, but your 12 casts seemed a bit low for that long a fight, so I just wanna make sure you know to be doing that(didn't calculate it because I don't trust my maths skills).

If you're having too much mana at the end of the fight, adjust how much spirit you need(keep in mind, if you're the only disc priest you'll find yourself casting PW:S more, therefore using more mana). You don't have to dump mana unless people are dying. If you end the fight with some mana and everyone all alive with no deaths during the fight, then that's fine. However if people died and you have mana at the end of a fight then you need to adjust what you're doing so people don't die.

Manage AA manually, I find it much better to do it that way. I generally always cast AA on my own then follow up with the appropriate way to be spending my Empowered AA proc. Plus I don't trust macros to do things like that for me, only macros I use are mouseover macros(I use the default UI so I don't have features like what's built into Vuhdo and Healbot where you can mouse over a target's raid-frame and press a button to cast a spell, so macros are my go-to for that).

Edited January 26, 2015 by Kulia

[Aurelion 1]

Penance: USE IT MORE FOR A HEAL. It is your STRONGEST direct heal. You should *NEVER* cast it for damage. NEVER.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Yes, of course you lose some immediate healing by using it for damage. In the case of the logs for Nascent, it looks like the indirect healing (via Atonement) is almost exactly 30K less per cast than what he'd have gotten by casting it as a heal. But when you consider the added Evangelism, which is to say the fact that you're going to get 5% extra healing for 18 seconds as a result of using it offensively, the picture becomes a lot murkier.

In this case, we'd have to imagine that Nascent was doing about 600K of healing during the 18 seconds that Archangel was up, in order for that 5% boost to represent a breakeven point (at which point the dps from offensive Penance is pure gravy). Sounds like a lot given his gear, but in fact if you look at the logs you can see some bursts to over 60K HPS, and many over 40K HPS.

In general, I'd say that the more haste and haste-boosting capabilities you have (like Power Infusion, Shards of Nothing, Troll Berserking), the more sense it makes to use Penance to build Evangelism. The reason is that you can take greater advantage of the healing boost because you can jam more casts / GCDs in to the Archangel window.

 

[Kulia 39]

I'm not sure I agree with this. Yes, of course you lose some immediate healing by using it for damage. In the case of the logs for Nascent, it looks like the indirect healing (via Atonement) is almost exactly 30K less per cast than what he'd have gotten by casting it as a heal. But when you consider the added Evangelism, which is to say the fact that you're going to get 5% extra healing for 18 seconds as a result of using it offensively, the picture becomes a lot murkier.

In this case, we'd have to imagine that Nascent was doing about 600K of healing during the 18 seconds that Archangel was up, in order for that 5% boost to represent a breakeven point (at which point the dps from offensive Penance is pure gravy). Sounds like a lot given his gear, but in fact if you look at the logs you can see some bursts to over 60K HPS, and many over 40K HPS.

In general, I'd say that the more haste and haste-boosting capabilities you have (like Power Infusion, Shards of Nothing, Troll Berserking), the more sense it makes to use Penance to build Evangelism. The reason is that you can take greater advantage of the healing boost because you can jam more casts / GCDs in to the Archangel window.

 

I personally prefer it as a heal. I don't use my AA for the healing purposes. I use it for the empowered AA proc, and I just simply enjoy increased healing afterwards for a little bit. I can see where you're coming from, but penance is generally 3rd on my healing done, just under divine aegis. And even with what you're saying, I would much, much rather use smite to build up evangelism, that way you don't lose out on the full healing of penance, plus you save mana using smite for dps rather than penance.

[Aurelion 1]

If you didn't use AA for the healing boost but only for the EAA crit, then you wouldn't need to cast Smite at all; you could just use Solace on cooldown and be sure that you'd always have a couple of stacks of Evangelism available for AA. But you *do* use Smite which suggests that even if you're not consciously trying to hit five stacks of Evangelism every time, you've integrated it in to your approach.

Anyway, Smite is very close in terms of overall effect to 'do nothing for one GCD in exchange for a stack of Evangelism'. The 6-7K healing and damage are nearly negligible, the 1.5% mana likewise. Now, *if* you really need to conserve mana through the fight, I can see this making sense: you get maybe 40K+ of healing (counting the Atonement and the 5% AA boost)  for that 1.5% mana, which compares favorably with a lot of other options like PW:S, Flash Heal, PoM and so on, in terms of mana efficiency.

But if you're *not* mana-bound, then it looks like a less clear choice: you could cast PW:S in that GCD instead (or Cascade if it's up), and gain ~55K+ of absorption instead. As a filler, Smite is better than Holy Nova and PoM, assuming you need it to get 5 stacks Evangelism, but it won't maximize your overall throughput unless you are running out of mana. However, I think there's still something to be said for the on-demand healing boost that AA provides (independent of total healing considerations), so I don't hate the idea of using it this way.

 

As for Penance being 3rd on your healing done, it doesn't prove much. Somewhere I have a log where Saving Grace was third on my healing done. This mostly shows a certain perverse spirit of experimentation; it sure doesn't mean that Saving Grace is worth anything.

[Kulia 39]

But you see, penance is consistently third. 

I don't always use smite, infact I barely ever use it due to the way I use AA, but I do keep track of my evangelism stacks and if I've got 4 and can spare the GCD to cast smite to get 5 stacks then I will (providing solace is on CD, if it's not I just use solace).
But, because I can only do PuG content, I often get paired with sub-par healers and find myself needing to conserve mana, and *BECAUSE* I do PuG content only(no guild, shitty server, can't transfer, hence why I PuG) that's where my stance on penance comes from, and in harder hitting content, I.E Mythic, penance is MUCH better used to heal. And the reason I mentioned that here, is because the OP looked like he was in a PuG - due to the stupid amount of disc priests, no guild would do that - and in PuGs it is *SO* much better to not use penance offensively. If I was in a guild group, with decent co-healers, I most certainly see where your point of view on this comes in to be much more worth it. But in PuGs, I'm a strong believer in only using penance as a heal as it is the strongest direct heal we have and in PuGs our throughput healers(holy priests, paladins, mistweavers, etc) may not be the best of players and in PuGs it's best to assume everyone else is a shit player until proven otherwise. 

[Brewmonksta 157]

 

PoH: I have a question here. During the fight I do cast it with Archangel, but in the end of fights when I still have too much mana, I sort of 'dump' it for PoHs even w/o Archangel. Is it wrong to do?

PoH has a high mana cost so outside of EAA it is only IMO worth casting if a very specific set of criteria are met:

- Excess mana, will not overheal, borrowed time active.

 

Penance is not worth casting offensively for its atonement heal ever. Its a cheaper heal that is best used for topping off targets that have PW:S or Weakened soul active.

If you are overhealing fights then an offensive penance will dps the boss and make the fight quicker but as far as healing potential is concerned its a waste.

[Pandacho 286]

Thanks guys for a nice discussion :)

I think that I should clear things a bit: I never do PuG runs - don't have time for it. It was our guild raid group run and a weird composition was a result of 'night off - bring your alts' plus a couple of trialists that I had to look at. Saying that every person with ilvl 655+ is a main, all the rest are alts.
So I felt free enough to test a bit during the raid and after your discussion things start to be clearer.

A couple of questions that I still have and would like an answer from somebody who do use macros and healing frames with tracking of what other healers do. Kulia - no offence intended, you are very helpful, but you play style without frames and macros is so different from mine, that I would like to be sure where from some advices (like not using macro for AA+PoH or never using penance offensive) come from - theorycrafting or not liking macros and not seeing that all the raid have bubbles and there is no point to click on frames.

1. The question is regarding relatively easy content: if there is literally nothing to do for a couple of seconds and I see this in my frames - all people are bubbled, HoTed, on full HP, etc - is it still not worth to go offensive Penance and / or Smite and better to throw a Shield on full HP person 'in advance'?

2. Let's take Butcher for example: soaking group is taking damage and they are on like 60% HP - I bubbled everybody and used PoH with EAA on them. Now AA is on CD and people are still low - still not to use PoH without AA? What to use then in case that everybody has bubble or Weakened Soul and AA on CD? Or there is the time for CoW as a filler?

[Brewmonksta 157]

 

1. The question is regarding relatively easy content: if there is literally nothing to do for a couple of seconds and I see this in my frames - all people are bubbled, HoTed, on full HP, etc - is it still not worth to go offensive Penance and / or Smite and better to throw a Shield on full HP person 'in advance'?

I use this time to stack up evangelism but not through penance, i use smite. I also personally use CoW alot so this is what i do in my downtime generally.

 

 

2. Let's take Butcher for example: soaking group is taking damage and they are on like 60% HP - I bubbled everybody and used PoH with EAA on them. Now AA is on CD and people are still low - still not to use PoH without AA? What to use then in case that everybody has bubble or Weakened Soul and AA on CD? Or there is the time for CoW as a filler?

As i mentioned before i use COW alot so i fill with that.

Having 2 soak groups of 5 and 2 tanks there are 12 possible PW:s targets. Byt the time they are all bubblesd and you have the EAA PoH cast you can pretty much just go back to bubbling the first person and then the second round of bubbling i fill with a Cascade. Be then end of that baubble rotation you will be back to the EAA PoH, rinse repeat.

[Pandacho 286]

Hello once more, guys! :)

Well, it seems like I'd have to switch to my disc for BRF and progression due to our healing team situation. So now I have to do my best and not just play for fun. Yesterday was my first 'proper' raid on disc - started with 657 ilvl.

 

Armory  (I don't have an enchant on the dagger because it was loot from the last boss we did, so will enchant it today)

 

Logs:

Beastlord

Gruul

Oregorger

Flamebender

 

I try to maximize PW:Solace and I know that my Archangel usage is far from ideal. Seems that my current WA for AA tracking is not good - I just ignore it, so will create something new.

I try to use PoH only with EAA procs and going with WoM talent because the other disc play with CoW, so no reason for me to take the same talent.

There are some Smites that I tried to squeeze to max my Evangelism stacks on the start, but didn't work very good for me yet, might be wrong timings.

 

Is there anything else that could be done to improve my play? Will appreciate any help :) 

[Kulia 39]

I don't have time to look over the logs I'll get to them tomorrow - just remind me :p, but one thing I can say. One of you go holy. Two disc - whilst doable. Isn't the best healing comp as it halves the potential healing of each priest(due to the way weakened soul works... Blizzard *COULD* fix this by making PW:S only be affected by the casting priests weakened soul debuff -.-' (sorry, I just get overly ranty and angry about the whole weakened soul thing and disc priests being EVERYWHERE it's gotten to the point where I don't even wanna play my priest anymore because I dislike holy and I'm so sick of fighting with other priests for the PW:S's as all I can do this expac is PuG)), and if one of you can go holy and perform enough as holy then DO. 

[Kulia 39]

Okay, now that I have time I'm gonna look over your Gruul log.

First look: holy cow that's a lot of druids you have. O.O at least you're not gonna run out of tranqs xD

AA usage: 5 uses in a 4 minute fight, you could stand to have used it a couple more times - considering you can use it *roughly* twice a minute(I say roughly here due to the CD being 30 seconds and the fact you tend to wait for some damage to have gone out before using it) But lets say you didn't need it until after the first 30 seconds in the fight, then the usage was good :D And you definitely did a lot better than your other disc (one use in 4 minutes :( )

2 uses of PI, this is good :D

Barrier you could've tried to use again but hey, you use it more than I do!

1 use of Pain Supp, this is pretty good - I assume you were waiting for the tank to call for it.

Solace: This you could've used more. I only see 17 casts in a 4 minute fight