help with disc priest

[neytirri 3]

hopefully this is in the right forum.....

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sargeras/Nêÿtiri/simple 

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/fbKrQzPvLhmHj8d3#type=healing&source=1

 

so there is my armory link and a combat log link, let me know if either arent working and I'll see what i can do. Tonight in this log i was trying something a bit different i was spot healing a lot with shadow mend.  My priorty stats arent where i want them to be due to crappy mastery gear but its a work in progress.  Before anyone trolls- ive been playing wow for 2 months. 

[Cynistrix 0]

You are using shadow mend waaay too much.  Basically, the goal of disc is to use PW:S, plea, and PW:Radience to spread atonement. Then the vast majority 60-80% of your actual healing should come from your damage done. Shadow mend is only for when someone is in immediate danger of dying, or when you have over 6 atonements out (this makes it cheaper on mana than plea). You probably want to use schism if you can handle the harder rotation, as it is a damage and healing increase over castigation unless you have the smite legendary. You want purge the wicked over grace. With the way you were healing technically grace was the right choice, but you need to change how you were healing.  You basically shouldn't be casting healing spells on targets with atonement on them outside of pvp and 5 man dungeons.  Power infusion beats out twist of fate on some fights, basically any fights where there is no predictable and regular amount of heavy burst that would keep twist of fate active.  

 

TL;DR: Less shadow mend, more damaging spells.

[neytirri 3]

the method i was using was another disc priest who uses shadow mend.. hes ranked and says it works. So was giving it a shot. I am doing more HPS now using purge the wicked, still not using schism due to the every 6 s thing, but i am running out of mana around 75% im using mindbinder on cd. 

[TheJamou 0]

Hey Sugartits, 

Cynistrix already gave you all the tools you need to perform well as a disc. It is important to note that he did not tell you not to use Shadow Mend at all. Not repeating this here but carefully read his reply again because it is very good. 

You just telling us you are running out of mana is a bit hard to deal with as I don't know what exactly you are doing. But I'll give it a shot. 

The only thing I can imagine is that you use either too many PW:Rs or still too many shadow mends, or you are trying to keep up attonement on too many targets using plea.  As you are not taking Schism (hope you took The Penitent instead) your main DPS rotation is actually really mana efficient. Combined with regular use of your mindbender, you should actually not experience any mana problems, except your damage dealers are just too weak and fights are going too long. 

Keep Attonement up on the tanks at all times using PW:S. Use Rapture when you expect high raid damage to proactively mitigate some of that damage and put attonement on those targets at a fairly low mana cost. If single group targets are taking damage, apply attonement using Plea. ONLY if you have failed to do so or Rapture is on CD, then you have to use PW:R to get some quick attonements out and maybe Shadow Mend to prevent targets from dying. You might also wanna use Shadow Mend if tanks are taking severe damage, but you have to watch out not to burn too much mana. But most of the time you wanna spend simply performing your DPS rotation. 

Also it is important to always have the mana channel pots at hand for scenarios where you really need mana. 

If you are following all these tips you will not experience severe mana problems, if so,  you are doing it wrong. 

Hope I could help you out. If you have any more questions, feel free to post them here. 

Best regards.

EDIT: Typos. 

Edited October 5, 2016 by TheJamou

[Pandacho 286]

I went shortly through your logs.

First, a small advice: better not to rely on people with high rankings if you are not very good in reading logs, so you'd be able to understand how exactly this rank was achieved. I don't know who was this person you checked so wouldn't say anything about them but there are enough players and guilds that are interesting in playing specifically for high ranks. Many times they use different from 'normal' raid comp, different talents, etc.

Now to your logs. Everything that Cynistrix said is pretty much accurate so I will just add a couple of things.

First, why are you choosing Twist of Fate over Power Infusion? You are progressing on early HC bosses, is the raid damage so high that people constantly drop below 30% HP?  I looked at your Nythendra kill and ToF uptime there is 10.95% which is extremely low. You should use PI in this situation.

Second, you are 6-healing the encounters. In this situation there's no way for a disc priest to use a heavy direct healing spec instead of Atonement - you have 5 other healers for this, your job is shields and Atonement healing through dps.

Btw, I'm not sure I understand your tank situation - why it's always shows like you have only one tank in logs?

Third: you amount of casts is low. My guild disc priest in the same fight (Nythendra HC kill) which was 26 sec shorter cast 189 spells, you cast 139 - 50 casts less which is almost 30% less for the same fight length.

As it was already mentioned, you hardly cast dps spells which should be actually the biggest part of your casts. 6 Smites and 15 SW:Pain during a 7 min. fight is literally nothing.  Halo - 4 casts from the possible 10, Mindbender - 3 cast of 6, Artifact - 2 casts of 4. 

I really think you should look into your casts and make sure you cast the right spells and the right amount of them.

PS: I personally find the recent posts in the guide comments section pretty useful.

[Benjignome 1]

On 2016-09-27 at 8:36 PM, Sugartits said:

hopefully this is in the right forum.....

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sargeras/Nêÿtiri/simple 

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/fbKrQzPvLhmHj8d3#type=healing&source=1

 

so there is my armory link and a combat log link, let me know if either arent working and I'll see what i can do. Tonight in this log i was trying something a bit different i was spot healing a lot with shadow mend.  My priorty stats arent where i want them to be due to crappy mastery gear but its a work in progress.  Before anyone trolls- ive been playing wow for 2 months. 

As others have mentioned the 'shadowmend trap' in raids can be very mana intensive and deplete you quite quickly. The prevailing role of disc priest per the above comments is through atonement healing (applying atonements then dpsing for healing). With pacing and a bit of knowledge of when to upkeep spread atonements for raid damage and then letting atonements lapse in periods of less extensive raid damage your mana usage will be more effective. This is best achieved my A. Knowing the periodic ebb and flow of each fight to maximize efficiency with above and B. utilizing talents to maximize atonement spreading potential and overall damage done to promote atonement healing (read PtW, schism, power infusion).

Honestly, playing 5 man content and raids feels entirely different as disc and it's a playstyle that really takes some getting used to (as you see bars dropping and you attempt to resist hitting shadowmend instinctively). You have to have confidence in your other healers to fill the emergency spot healing role and to be honest with how the new disc is, the majority of non priests aren't sure where to peg us. It helps to outline this to your other healers so they don't expect you to fill that role and give you the freedom to explore atonement healing as your main venue for healing.

P.S.

If for whatever reason you do have to focus on more direct single target heals (shadowmend) then grace and twisted fate are your best allies. With a 3 healer heroic raid comp Ive been volunteered for focused tank healing in my raids quite often (for some reason we struggle with this at times) and you can do it (tf empowered-grace boosted shadowmends are actually pretty crazy) but that's on primarily two targets not an entire raid. Just don't expect to be able to cover the entire raid with such a strategy as you'll run yourself dry pretty darn quick. Also mastery REALLY falls off in this playstyle since you're not relying on atonement heals as much. The above disc priest style being highly unorthodox and the source of my personal crucifixion in the guide comments. At the end of the day if you're contributing positively to your raid's success and you're enjoying that type of playstyle then fill your boots. Heck, we'll have heroic xavius down this week and onwards and upwards to mythic :). 

Disc is a really interesting and highly flexible spec from my experiences so don't give up and best of luck in your next raid :)

[neytirri 3]

im doing more atonement healing now and using shadow just for spot healing, so generally my top 3 is atonement, pw:s and shadowmend. 

 

my issue now is running out of mana. >.< 

[Pandacho 286]

14 hours ago, Sugartits said:

im doing more atonement healing now and using shadow just for spot healing, so generally my top 3 is atonement, pw:s and shadowmend. 

my issue now is running out of mana. >.< 

Can you please share the logs? It's hard to check things not seeing them ^^

And please, before staring to log, enable Advanced Combat Logging in WoW System Settings - we are missing a lot of data (including mana management) without it.

[neytirri 3]

1 hour ago, Pandacho said:

Can you please share the logs? It's hard to check things not seeing them ^^

And please, before staring to log, enable Advanced Combat Logging in WoW System Settings - we are missing a lot of data (including mana management) without it.

next time i do a raid ill log it. 

[Benjignome 1]

On 2016-10-07 at 9:18 AM, Sugartits said:

im doing more atonement healing now and using shadow just for spot healing, so generally my top 3 is atonement, pw:s and shadowmend. 

 

my issue now is running out of mana. >.< 

That's awesome to hear! It's okay to have some healing from shadowmend but learning to swap between spot heals and when to dps for atonement healing really is a science. It'll only get better with practice!

Do you use mana pots? Honestly your best friend in raids and mythic+. Even with a wod level alch  (I use my 100 Druid) it's really easy to get rank 3 mana pots for extra procs. Saves you a lot of time and money vs buying pots straight off the ah. 

For mana conservation in general, it's ok to slow things up when the raid isn't taking a lot of damage by sitting on smite spam without putting out many atonements aside from the tanks. Again just takes practice, it'll come :)

 

[neytirri 3]

OK guys so after EN first came out, I did a couple bosses on normal/Heroic and then stopped raiding altogether because my stats were all out of whack... thus the first parse up there^^^ 

 

here is my new one from tonight, I've been practicing in LFR i got the pawn add on to help work out my gear stats which was a big issue. The first parse I linked here was just me trying it the way I saw in a video on youtube- no i dont always use shadow mend THAT much but I do use it when someone dips into the red

And I've only been playing disc priest (and WOW) since a couple weeks before legion came out.

 

(I should add i rarely do mythics (only for quests) so my gear is as good as its going to get unless i get some raid drops.)

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/vWpZwMVhgJyB9GbT#fight=29&type=healing&source=25

Edited October 15, 2016 by Sugartits

[Drkdragon 9]

Well a big red flag that jumps out at me is that you are using Purge the Wicked for you 100 level talent but you only cast it once for the whole fight. You want this to have as close to 100% uptime as possible on as many mobs as you can. Using Penence to spread it when possible.

You use Shadow Mend a lot. This has been a tendence for a lot of disc priests and some have been able to use it affectively but if you want to be that kind of healer you will need to go with Grace as your level 100 talent. If you want to embrace disc use more smite instead of shadow mends and trust in your atonements to get the heals out. 

I do not have a lot of time to dig deep into it but hopefully these two points can give you something to start at.

[neytirri 3]

I only cast it once? seems odd. And the reason more are using shadow mend is because certain ranked disc priests swear by it 

 

I like it.

 

***Ok i reviewed the log. that must have been an off night.

Edited October 28, 2016 by Sugartits

[Dradreydreys 3]

I assume it was Flintoid's video that did it?  I disagree with his playstyle, but in the end, if he does his job, he does his job.

I strongly advise against a playstyle as shadowmend-heavy as yours is, though.  Your Shadowmend casts far outnumber even the disc priests who are using Shadowmend more often.  

If you'd like a good reason, look here in your logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/vWpZwMVhgJyB9GbT#fight=29&type=damage-taken&ability=186439

That's how much damage Shadowmend did to your raid that fight.

Subtract that 2.8 mil out of your 42.68 mil healing, and your effective HPS that fight was closer to 149,924, putting you right down in the grey parses.

It's worth noting, that in Ursoc specifically, there are not many ranked healers that are running a shadowmend heavy playstyle.  Those that are, are still popping Rapture and using that to build up their Atonements for LW.  Even they are getting about 14% of their healing from Shadowmend, where you're sitting at about 26%.

Ursoc, especially in higher difficulties, requires a lot of damage to be put out, and has many predictable damage phases.  So it's really easy to blanket atone then burst with LW, and run damage rotations in-between.    

If you really want to stick to a shadowmend-y playstyle I suggest:

Use Power Word: Shield more.  This should be used off-cooldown.  If nobody else, then pop it on your tanks as their atonement refresh.  Make sure that the shield is going to get used though.  It's best placed before a Roar or Charge.  

Use Rapture.  This cooldown provides a TON of healing when used correctly.  In Ursoc's case, you can pop it right after the roar that happens before one of his charges, then spam PW:S on the entire group that's going to soak the charge, and anyone else in the raid that you can.  Once charge happens, use LW to top everyone off again. 

Cool down on the Shadow Mends and be OK with letting the other healers pick up some of the spot healing.  In place of the Shadow Mends you would cast, throw in Smites and Purge the Wicked to get your damage up.  Your damage plays a huge role in your HPS even in a shadowmend playstyle, and it's part of the reason you are brought to the raid.  You want to strive to be around your tank's DPS in normal.  You might not make it there, and it's OK to be around 90% of their damage, but you certainly should be much higher. 

Try and pick up a Darkmoon Deck: Promises and drop your Twisting Wind.  This at 850 and Amalgam's (at 880) are your BiS trinkets until Night Hold Mythic at the moment.  If you can afford it, get it.  If you can't, try and work toward it, possibly with your guildies (and the new blood vendor makes it way easier to craft for Obliterum!)

Edited October 28, 2016 by Dradreydreys

[Doode 0]

Hey there.

 

Couldn't help but look into this forum and read as i am a fellow long time disc priest myself.

 

I dont dissagree with using alot of shadow mends, but you are using the style wrong. The shadow mend style (i use it alot) depends on that you shadow mend different people. The reason is first and foremost to heal up single targets quickly but, and maybe the most important part, it is because the dot that shadow mend does gets healed by shadow word pain. By having pain on the boss full time basically one shadow mend dot gets healed by that dot on boss which spikes your meters, and that is why people get so good ranks with it, because it delivers consistency.

 

If you spam shadow mend on a person, this dot gets magnified and it becomes unbearable as you can se in the link from previous poster. This style of play depends on trinkets ALOT. Deck: promises and amalgam trinkets are a requirement to pull this off so it is no wonder you loose out on mana. You will realise once u get deck and amalgam that each fights gets alot more simple. You can also have the cocoon but then you need to find good spots to use it and its less consistent.

 

The best way is to have around 8-10 atonements. You will not spike as hard as prediction and radiance style but its way more consistent. Also you need castignation talent. Schism is a good choice but it destroys your mana. I found that during a fight that lasted about 5 minutes i wasted 935k mana on schism alone. And castignation costs no mana for roughly the same price. 

 

As of 7,1 i think shield discipline is more worth it rather then mindbender since you get so much mana back from rapture. Also dont forget to mix and match both styles. Fights like renferal, the first phase is better with radiance prediction while second platform is way better with shadow mend. So keep that in mind.

 

Hope it clarified some things :)

Cheers

Doode

[Dradreydreys 3]

 

On 11/3/2016 at 9:23 AM, Doode said:

If you spam shadow mend on a person, this dot gets magnified and it becomes unbearable as you can se in the link from previous poster. This style of play depends on trinkets ALOT. Deck: promises and amalgam trinkets are a requirement to pull this off so it is no wonder you loose out on mana. You will realise once u get deck and amalgam that each fights gets alot more simple. You can also have the cocoon but then you need to find good spots to use it and its less consistent.

 

The best way is to have around 8-10 atonements. You will not spike as hard as prediction and radiance style but its way more consistent. Also you need castignation talent. Schism is a good choice but it destroys your mana. I found that during a fight that lasted about 5 minutes i wasted 935k mana on schism alone. And castignation costs no mana for roughly the same price.

Well no, it doesn't.  Shadowmend's debuff gets refreshed, it doesn't stack.  So the damage never becomes unbearable.

And on top of that, SW:P's healing does not cover Shadowmend's full debuff, even if it did, it wouldn't be "Canceling" the debuff, as SW:P's healing is going to be happening anyway, with or without the debuff.  You're causing damage and there's no two ways about that.

The shadowmend style is not for consistency.  The Radiance spam style is perfectly consistent.  Shadowmend heavy healers generally do so because it is A) Good for spot healing. B) Easier to do.

In fights like ToV Odyn or EN Ursoc, a radiance style is immeasurably better.  The damage that comes out in these fights is widespread and always at specific intervals with little RNG. Being able to ignore Odyn's Unerring Blast is a huge boon to a raid, as the rest of your healers can focus on keeping people up through the more consistent mechanics.  

Fights like (Heroic) Il'gynoth, however, are where a radiance style doesn't make much sense.  The damage during the majority of it is on specific targets and not widespread, and along with that there's a lot of random damage from failed mechanics that needs spot healing.  There's never a chance to really make a radiance burst work until mythic.

Most importantly, however, the reason Radiance seems less popular (outside the best of the disc priests where it's much much more popular), is because it's not easy.  It requires knowing which mechanics are the best to use your LW vs a smaller burst.  It requires knowing the timers of everything in the fight.  It requires knowing how best to position so you have a lot of time to stand still for your ramp up.  It requires knowing every damage pattern so that you can block anything you need to, etc.  

Radiance spam is not easy to do.  You can't enter a raid and radiance spam at random.  Usually on my first time seeing any fight I'm pulling the lowest HPS and contributing very little because I just don't know what's most important, and I haven't planned out when I'm going to use Rapture, Barrier or LW yet.  But once I've determined that, it's very very easy to keep up with and surpass a lot of healers in our raid while doing ~110k DPS.