Stubborn Smite healers

[Lightshand 0]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm currently raiding as a Shaman myself and we have a healing team of 4 rotating people (Shaman, Druid, Paladin and Priest). The problem that we are having at the moment, or rather I have the problem, is that our Disc Priest refuses to step away from Atonement.

 

In my own opinion I think Smite healing is great when you are 3-healing and when the damage is either not too spread out or not too deadly (Like tanks taking huge chunks of damage). But when it comes to fights where you need control Smite healing just does not keep up. It does not allow you to choose who to heal and it does not stack Grace.

 

What I want to ask you on this forum is what I should do with our Disc Priest and how to aproach him. Basically at the moment we are progressing on Garrosh Normal, first tries yesterday. We are going for 2-man healing since the dps is a bit low. I am the natural choice to go dps considering the many adds on phase 1 so we have a Druid and a Disc Priest healing the fight. Problem is that our Disc Priest is doing Atonement healing all the time and it's just not keeping the tanks alive, his HPS is obviously high but that does not stop the tanks from dying. Our Priest keeps on saying that he is using regular heals but looking at meters 25% is always atonement and the rest is Mastery: Shield Discipline and some other random heals. When I point this out to him he just says that other heals are not quick enough and that he does more healing with Atonement. In HPS yeah he probably does but the tanks still die. Am I wrong in this argument or am I right that he should start using his real spells more? And how can I tell him this without insulting him too much? Anyone with similar experiences are welcome to give tips.

[Ceraius 34]

You are absolutely correct. Smiting, as you stated, is great for that little additional oomph when 3 healing for example and covering small damage. Sure it nets you good standings on the meters sometimes, but thats only good for e-peen. The lack of control in Atoning is its biggest issue, imo.

 

High HPS doesn't equal good healer in itself. I would even go as far as to say the best healer is the one who keeps everyone alive with the least amount of healing. (Although this is not something anyone should strive for in practise.Don't start throwing stones at me pls)

 

I could refer this thread to a friend of mine who has healed as disc ever since a little before it's been considered pve viable, as I don't have first hand experience in playing one.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Ceraius

[Coreldan 1]

I switched to mostly playing Holy in MoP, but I still used disc in several encounters in every raid instance.

 

That's pretty much the thing, atonement is great for topping meters on many fights where damage isn't crazy. That doesn't really mean it's necessarily the best way to heal, as usually the HPS you gain is away from others cos atonement is the ultimate way of sniping heals. While atonement has it's strenghts too, such as being that 50-50 healer/dps if you dont quite need 3 raw healers but could use some more DPS or the fact that the heals are based on a radius from the target. Something like Immerseus P1 or Jikun comes to mind where it's pretty sweet to be able to reach pretty much everyone while being actually quite far for them. The reason I mostly moved away from disc was just how atonement-centric the playstyle had become. You could make disc fun too, but it was hardly the optimal way of playing. I'm not quite sure about disc priests and atonement anymore, as I've since rerolled from a priest as well as atonement has been nerfed a bit, but ultimately the playstyle would largely come down to atonement and then spirit shelling at the right time. Also the fact that your co-healer might not have 2 piece T15 anymore changes things a bit too.

 

There arn't really that many worthwhile "normal heals" to cast. Anything single target isn't really worth it except for Penance and most of the time that is used offensively for atonement. While I havn't been on Garrosh yet myself (guild has killed it though), it is sorta what makes a good healer to be able to realize when you have to adapt to things. Prayer of Healing is quite meh outside Spirit Shell blanketing. The few things that I used to find great were ProM (although with 2 piece T15 it was more awesome) pretty much even as a single target heal, obviously the single target PW:S, inner focued Flash Heal/Greater Heal that could be used as a makeshift bubble (due to divine aegis) when the target had weakened soul. I was personally often specced into Divine Purpose, so I would get the bubble procs that ignored and didn't cause Weakened Soul at all. It's a bit random By nature but over time it still does sorta even out to be a sustained boost in tank healing. Sometimes I would even just cast heals on the tank when no other damage went around just to lower the weakend soul duration on him (I suppose this is still in the game), but that needs sort of a special condition to be worth it over atonement.

 

It's sorta funny as several times my co-healers would tell me to "just use atonement", but I think that is not what makes a great healer. In fact, I think it's quite terribad if you're not throwing in at least that one bubble every 15s (cos its basically free thanks to Rapture), but even then a good healer knows when to throw in the ProM, some more bubbles, some speed boosts (be it through bubble or Angelic Feather), Spirit Shell, Penance offensively or defensively.

 

I think the problem is as much in the spec as it's in your co-healer. He's too stubborn, but that's cos the spec rewards you on the meters for being a lazy healer by just doing atonement. Bad disc priests are typically easy to spot in encounters where atonement can't keep up with the damage anymore, yet it's still really the only thing they have in their recounts in addition to the byproducts like Divine Aegis etc.

 

I feel the only way to teach someone out of this kind of playstyle is have them play Holy for a while or some other healing class. When they don't have an easy button for topping meters, they have to learn how to make the heals count. I guess something like World of Logs-stuff could be an easy way to show your friend that while he might top healing, his Atonement-lazyness at point X of the fight was largely why people died. It's easy to see who healed who and with what and when in those logs, when all other healers spike at that point on tank healing while the disc priest is still doing the static atonement-healing that lands to random raid members, meh..

 

But I know the kind of person you are talking about and I don't know any solution how to make him open his eyes really. I've sorta healed with a similar disc priest co-healer for quite a while. Recently he switched to renew-spam Holy though (while pretty much equally dull, at least requires a bit more I feel). That said, I'm not saying all disc priests are just lazy/dumb/something. Actually good disc healers are near impossible to beat except on some niche encounters, but the thing is that you can get away by doing so little while looking good on the meters and it's hard to point it on the disc priest when he appears to be doing more healing than the others, just on the wrong people and wrong time  Buuut at the same time you can probably get away just fine by just spamming atonement on most fights too, but it's the few fights that require something else.

 

I still enjoyed disc when I could consider Atonement as maybe.. 1/3 or 1/4 of my playstyle, but slowly it creeped up too important to disc that I just decided to go Holy at that point and actually enjoy healing Nowadays when I heal I'm on a resto shaman though.

 

But then again I'm also not sure if at least with the information given this can be pinned on the disc priest, might also be a problem with the tanks, other healers or just the healers working together. Some 25% healing done from atonement isn't too alarming yet. When you're looking at 40%, ugh..

 

The "other heals" arn't really too slow though, most of the things he should be using outside prayer of healing and atonement are pretty much instant. Except for that inner focused FH/GH, I typically just worked with instant cast spells and Penance (channeled). While renew is weak, there's usually a spot when theres nothing better to do to have it rolling on the tank, that's really the last prio, but like I've said, then there's also ProM that can be used just as a single target spell on a tank and consider the extra bounces before it's off CD just as an added bonus  I recall there was a glyph that increased the first proc of ProM healing by some amount but removing one bounce from ProM as a whole. I used that for most fights that didn't have the kind of.. aura'ish damage that would make ProM go through its full cycle reliably.

 

It is however somewhat true that while Disc has really amazing single target tools, when they are all on CD (mostly PWS, ProM, Penance and as a bigger CD Pain Suppression), you are pretty much screwed. Spamming FH won't get you anywhere as disc. However, those things I listed, by the time they are on CD, the disc priest has taken the biggest edge off of the damage spike and it should be easy for the other, pure healers to top it off. Nowadays as a resto shaman I love getting those occasional 500k single target heal crits on tanks, something you would never be able to do as a priest of any spec, but at the same time that's almost all I have, just big healing numbers. I don't have absorbs, I don't have a tank cooldown that both priest specs have. In the end it's also a joint effort where everyone plays to their strenghts. The disc priest should be able to take the most of the edge off the damage spike, but it's just as much your job to finish topping off the tank, cos outside atonement, nothing the priest has does worthwhile ACTUAL healing and even the atonement is largely so great cos of divine aegis.

 

Disclaimer: You can probably read some bitterness towards the spec in this wall of text, it's cos I used to love it but in MoP grew to hate it. The other thing you might notice is that I havn't mained one since early 5.2. or something when I switched to holy for most fights.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Coreldan

[Brutalpriest 60]

Who's the other healer?  If it's a paladin then it should be the paladins job to keep the tanks up anyway.  If it's a the druid, then yeah Discie should be helping out to a greater degree.

 

The other issue is when are your tanks dieing?  I can think of three instances. 

phase 1: Add buff.  Use a cooldown (either tank's, or external, like barkskin, smokebomb, pain sup...)

phase 2: empowered whirlwind adds.  When you spread out, make sure the healers come closer to the tanks and have the ranged dps be the ones backing away from the boss.  You don't want healers to range the tanks.

phase 3: tell him to start flash healing at this phase, tank damage gets kind of crazy.

 

There's nothing wrong with attonement healing in general, but you DO gotta cut that shit out if tanks need the healing.  

Edited October 22, 2013 by Brutalpriest

[kitsu 55]

if your tanks are dying in p1 when the adds are out, it's because warsong makes all the adds do a ton of damage. it's heavy no matter what and more healing isnt the solution. stun the adds and while theyre stunned cast earthquake under them. the random knockdown will stutter the damage enough for the adds to be cleaved down. phase 1 isnt a race, its okay to cleave down the adds instead of knocking them into the star.

 

high attonement is probably best for tanks, really. use archangel on cd, and if a warsong goes out, pain suppress when the tanks health bar is high. spirit shell is best used to dampen the star aoe on the whole raid. i like fdcl as disc because the free flash heals give me a chance to get a health bar back up and its nice to knock a few seconds off ws because any shield used in full is worth it regardless of rapture. fdcl also helps to keep grace up if you directly penance the tank rather than atoning with penance.

 

barrier is extremely helpful in the heart phase, so they cant be spared for adds.

 

one final note, as disc, consider the end of p2 the end of the fight mana-wise. the second he hits p3, hero and your priest should put shadowfiend on the boss and hymn. that will get them pretty near 100% again for the crucial race phase.

Edited October 22, 2013 by kitsu

[Storm 426]

The reason atonement healing doesn't work for a fight like Garrosh is because the fact it is a smart heal actually makes it a dumb heal for this fight in particular. At most points during this encounter tanks are only 2-3 global cooldowns from dying, so they need constant attention. Then when a weapon hits the ground you suddenly have an entire raid ready to soak up your atonement heals. It's exactly the situation atonement is not made for. 9 guys that aren't full health so they're potential atonement targets. and 1 guy that needs the heal right now or he's going to die.

 

Your disc priest just needs to learn when it's safe to atonement heal, and when he/she needs to prioritize direct heals/shields on the tanks.

[Demyndra 6]

Im not familiar with MoP priest healing, and it seems like the other posters covered it very well, but I noticed that most didn't address your second question, in how to approach the priest.

 

I'm assuming you are RL and here is how I would approach them.  I wouldn't directly approach the priest at first and say "you need to heal more, cuz the tanks are dying blah blah blah."  I would tell the entire raid group "we're going to try something a little different tonight to see if we can get past phase 1 or reduce healing necessities, etc"  and then describe your new strategy. 

 

This should include telling the priest you want him/her to focus mainly on the tanks, & make sure they stay alive.  Make it known that they are important and needed (most people will rise to the occasion)  Tell your druid to keep Lifebloom rolling on one of the tanks, and then also add instructions to DPS.  Like Brutalpriest suggested, instruct your dps to use stuns, damage reductions during intense phases, encourage tanks to use cooldowns smartly, to aide in high dmg phases.  Hit everyone in the raid, including yourself (tell them how youre going to help/do something different)  this will only enforce the team dynamic.

 

If it is still an issue after this, then I would go directly to the priest and have a more stern (not hateful/mean) convo with them, that they need to perform better.  Just remember, progression content can be very frustrating and people can be more sensitive than normal to criticism.

 

Hope this helps! :)

 

Good luck!

[Omnae 8]

No offence but with out logs, it just seems like you and/or your group is putting all blame on the priest. 

 

More info would be helpful, like logs, plus who is the other healer, who is assign'd to heal who. Also if the tanks are taking that much dmg maybe both healers need to be healing the tanks and not just one. Are the tanks using cds right? Is many one tank tanking too many adds along with the boss? etc. things like this would better help us to better help you.

 

Mastery: Shield Discipline

^ by that you are referring to Divine Aegis? As disc DA should be in your top "heals" whether through atonement or normal healing that's just how disc is.

 

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I feel the only way to teach someone out of this kind of playstyle is have them play Holy for a while or some other healing class. When they don't have an easy button for topping meters, they have to learn how to make the heals count.

^ This kind of statement is just bad. Every heal class has an "easy/lazy" way you can play them and top meters.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Omnae

[Brutalpriest 60]

Disc is just overpowered right now, that's how it is, that's how it's been all expansion =/  Attonement healing is just too good and too easy to use.  I feel like all you did is "penance / holy fire / smite" and that's it you'd STILL do fairly well.

[Alucard 0]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/Shadowsong/Alucarddp/advanced

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2zu7anmzse4iapvw/sum/healingDone/?s=2181&e=2648

 

Attonement is fun but HPS is round about 70K combined with shields ect

 

Progress bosses Attonement = Bad very bad unless he still does 80-100k HPS then by all means atone your heart out but if you don't make that cut start healing  :P 

 

Getting him off Attonement will have to be done by force you get into a lazy grove with Attonement healing my raiding team told change or get the boot after i changed my healing style to shield and out healing the other healers he will be much better healer and thank you for it or he will leave and you can replace him with some one that knows the class 

 

I placed a link for my world of logs and char

if you need any help add me on Real ID Alcuarddp#1447

[Brutalpriest 60]

Alucards post is in dire need of puncutation.

[Scoggleon 1]

You could 3 heal, and just have the discipline priest atone the entire time anyways. That is essentially what we do in our raid group, we were somewhat tight on soft enrage in P3 with desecrates, so the 80k from the disc helped push us over the top. I play as a Resto shammy and our other healer is a druid, and we don't have too much of a problem keeping our pally/monk tank combo. Other than the tanks occasionally asking for an external bubble or pain suppresion, and the raid needing spirit shell or barrier, we just have our priest atone full time. If you are pretty close on enrage give that a try.

[Brutalpriest 60]

The reason most guilds go 2-heal is because it pushes him through phase two and 3 faster.  The longer you spend in p2, the more often you have to "not fuck up" on the mind control and empowered whirliwnd adds. 

[humphfry 0]

He has around 5-10% uptime of archangel on most fights, when it should be 50%+. He is according to me using smite to little and using PW:S way to much. He is also using way more Flash Heal than should be needed with 3 healers. I haven't looked at the tank but I'm guessing they aren't using their defensive's correctly.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/2zu7anmzse4iapvw/sum/healingDone/?s=10573&e=10882

 

PS: Oh I was looking at Alucarddp, so there are some tips for you.

Edited October 27, 2013 by humphfry

[Nemo 27]

Atonement is insanely good... When used in conjunction with the rest of a disc priest's toolset.

 

Archangel is huge for setting up burst healing, whether tank healing or raid healing.

Also atonement has a low mana cost, is a smart heal and contributes damage in addition to healing.

If you're a disc priest; use atonement! 

That doesn't mean that you should use it exclusively, just as you shouldn't cast any other heal exclusively.

If there is high damage comming in, throw out some shields, pop archangel, spirit shell, or another one of your amazing cooldowns and start pumping out your traditional healing spells.

 

If the tank is taking heavy damage, and you're responsible for keeping him alive, stack grace on him with a single penance cast, shield him, throw out a free greater heal, if it's gonna be rough pop Pain Sup., Archangel, or even spirit shell in advance.

Then go back to atonement healing.

Seriously, if you want to be a great disc priest, you need to use atonement. Just not all the time.

[Tarazet 144]

Archangel is not just for setting up burst healing. By default, you're always going to heal 25% less than a Holy Priest with the appropriate chakra on. Archangel closes the gap. If you're just healing without stacking Evangelism via nuking and consuming it with Archangel, then you will get better results playing Holy. Conversely, if you're just nuking all the time and holding onto Evangelism stacks, that's also not maximizing your healing potential.

 

Smite and Holy Fire/Solace enough to keep near-optimal uptime on Archangel, then use healing spells while it's up, rinse and repeat. Watch as your Mastery makes your performance pull away from the pack. It's a little bit clunky but well worth it. Using mouseover macros makes it a good bit less annoying.

[kitsu 55]

looking back at your original question, you say youre the smart choice for going dps because CL does good damage on the adds in p1, but p1 has no effect on the fight. either you kill all the adds before the next wave comes out or you aren't knocking the adds into the iron star to kill them. it wont one shot them, but minor cleave from 6 dps is going to get them low enough that a star can finish them.

 

if youre dying to regular whirlwind, there isnt much a disc can do, sometimes smite healing and cascade are all they can do. i would pick cascade over divine star because teh hard part of the fight is empowered whirlwind. PoH isnt just party wide. it has a range too, and people can easily defeat that range by spreading out too far. individually shielding people just plain takes too long, so a mix of shields and smites may be all they can do.

 

out of your heal team, i think shaman druid would be strongest and paladin disc would be the most difficult by far. if the sham or durid are very strong disc or pally backup would be fine.

[humphfry 0]

For the empowered whirlwind you can pop archangel spirit shell the raid and move out and halo both groups.

[lothos1103 0]

To be completely fair to the disc priest doubt that's seems to be running in this thread, I would compare the class to druids. Granted this is just my observation of the healing classes but hear me out:

 

Every healing class is capable of doing any type of healing in a raid situation with the caveat that they will be lacking in one area where another class will shine. Druids, for instance, are awesome raid healers in the way that they blanket the raid with HoTs. Sure, they could tank heal on the side if they wanted, but their mana pool wouldn't last in a fight where they're being called to use big heals that would normally drain their mana (i.e. Regrowth or Heal Touch w/o Clearcast and what not). What they lack in single target healing though, they make up for in multi-target healing.

 

Disc is much the same though their "healing" is rather an inverse since a majority of it is absorbs. This much is apparent when you can look at any good disc priest's meter and see that Divine Aegis is either their number one or two source of "healing" (depending on their crit of course). Their mastery is specifically engineered towards this so, naturally, this is where they shine; in mitigating raid damage rather than healing it. By default, their throughput is going to lack since half the heals that other healers normally get on crits is going to instead be used as a shield. However, since absorbs are fundamentally OP (damage prevented is normally better than taking damage), this is something any raid should desire. I've been in raid situations where merely switching out a pure healing class such as a druid and switching it out for a disc priest has made an enormous impact on the healing of a fight. 

 

As far as the Atonement is concerned, you really can't harp on disc priests so much. The Penance, Holy Fire/Solace, Smite rotation used by pure Atonement priests is not without justification. Normally in those situations, they are stacking crit and every time they crit with one of those three, a shield goes out. Atonement is, by far, one of the best ways to blanket shields on your raid and prevent damage. Blanketing the raid with just PW: Shld is going to drain your mana save for the one free one you get due to Rapture. Greater Heal, like Healing Touch with a druid, is slow, mana consuming, and will either get sniped or the person you were trying to heal up is going to be dead. Best way to use that is with a Inner Focus/Spirit Shell combo. Flash Heal is fast but weak and, again, consumes too much mana for it to be consistent. Our Level 90 talents are, by far, the best way to help keep up with high raid damage moments. Each one is engineered to be very optimal depending on your situation and can potentially put your entire raid in the safe zone if timed right.

 

The only thing that separates the bad Atonement priests from the good ones is the ability to adapt to a situation. As stated earlier, they need to time their Level 90 talents right to compensate for the lack of healing they will get from Atonement and PoM during moments with high ticking raid damage. Also, while there may come times where it may need to be timed right, Spirit Shell/Inner Focus w/ PoH is usually always used on Cooldown. And, as always, making sure you throw a shield out that will be consumed to get your Rapture. 

 

So, if there was really a point to this post other then shedding some light or understanding on the situation Disc Priests are usually in, I'd say your priest is doing their job as long as they are weaving in the necessary heals in between Atonement. If it isn't working for your raid, you may need to consider a different heal make up that has been mentioned earlier here. Hope everything works out for ya, man. :)

[Painagain 2]

Hard to say much without logs. As others have posted, Atonement heals are great for when they are appropriate. IMO, lower damage periods, targets out of direct heal range, stacking archangel, etc. While there is room for complaint about the heals and DA bubbles going to non-tanks, you can't ignore that healing was needed by others and saves another healer from using a heal that may be too much or too little for the job, hence Smart Heal. For the most part I atonement heal, and  when I look at my logs two of the top three receiving heals always include both tanks. The heals are smart heals, and with tanks taking the bulk of the damage, the smart heals seem to go to them based on what I see in my logs. HOWEVER, a smart disc priest knows when to bubble and send the penance directly to a tank and more if needed. I don't burn SS or archangel on CD, and I know some that do. I burn AA and spam PoH when needed and when things are about to hit hard I burn my SS macro. I macro'd Inner Focus, Archangel, Spirit Shell, and PoH and spam PoH when incoming damage is about to happen to build SS. And when I burn it, I usually stack it on the tank group 1st. That's advice I was given and it seems to work well.

 

Look at your worldoflogs and see if the Disc priest has the tanks in the top 2-3 people healed, and if he does, let it be. Heals land because they are needed. If too many heals are going elsewhere, maybe you should look at why. Is the OT getting the ads together and off ranged/heals, are people getting hit by the siege engine, are people moving out of the weapon impact zone when they first see the ground effect, etc.?

 

Having defending atonement healing, we can't ignore the advise in the Disc guide to not make others have to pick up their healing with inefficient mana burning heals to carry a poor Disc priest. In the end, someone has to keep the non-tanks alive too. The dps of the dead is zero.

[woogieboogie 0]

dono bout all this talk kinda laughed at it tbh. We 3 heal and on some fights 2 heal. I only attune heal and direct heal when needed, my heals all target the tanks in out raid (10 man norm SOO). i go balls to the walls in smite HWS and pen, while shielding tanks on CD and anyone who usually takes more damage (usually mele). Even raiding with other guilds i have rarely been out healed, guess it just is purely on the guilds and people, because if you look at top on some fights in WOL its disc stacked and druid ect. but i for one even 2 healing it will out due anyone i have faced (unless i am smashed). But the guide should defently change, because i followed it for a while then of lately i look at the top ranking Disc priests and they forge different. i now only have 10k spirit, and gem crit (yellow smooth) in most of my slots or orange crit and int gems and i have seen a huge boost in DA. 

http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/297474/

WoogieBoogie 562 disc Stormrage 

http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/us/Stormrage/woogieboogie/

[kitsu 55]

disc is output. if lifebars will unavoidably be put down you will have trouble getting them up again quickly. disc will always win meters because their heals cant be pushed to overhealing, but to actually get someone's lifebar back up to full again is tough for them. if you found someone who specialized in doing that and worked with them, itd be a good time.