Disc - Where's my mana?!

[Niklicious 0]

Hey all, coming back from a long (~5 year break) and giving disc healing a try for something new.

For being new/rusty/boosted I think I'm doing pretty well, but I run OOM fast. I'd appreciate any advice you may have on that, and I apologize I don't have a ton of data right now... I'm working on it.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/thrall/niklicious

 

Also, I know I need gems and enchants and tier pieces and all that jazz, so please don't shit all over me for that. I've only been playing 2 weeks as of tomorrow.

 

I've tried both Shield Discipline and Mindbender. I've been hesitant to try Power Word: Solace, as it adds more to my "rotation", but I can give it a shot if recommended.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Valks 2,375]

On 19/02/2018 at 2:31 PM, Niklicious said:

Hey all, coming back from a long (~5 year break) and giving disc healing a try for something new.

For being new/rusty/boosted I think I'm doing pretty well, but I run OOM fast. I'd appreciate any advice you may have on that, and I apologize I don't have a ton of data right now... I'm working on it.

You have too much haste and, given that you're somewhat new, you're not used to mana-management with Disc. More Haste makes Disc absolutely destroy mana pools. It makes the spec insanely resource-hungry. 

Try to move away from some Haste when possible, other than that, play more conservatively with your healing. 

[Yunzi 1]

There are mana-regen trinkets out there. Since you're new you probably don't have the Velen's trinket yet, so you can use two pure mana-regen trinkets until then. The easiest to get is Darkmoon Deck: Promises, which should be available at your server's auction house. Even at it's low max ilev of 900 it's quite good, assuming you're hungry for mana. For the 2nd slot there are various options, but perhaps the best is to repeatedly kill Varimathras from Burning Throne and bonus roll for the Carafe of Searing Light. Even the LFR version is very good relative to other trinkets you could use as a newly returning player.

Even if you were a master of mana-management there's just not much you can do in a raid environment with your current trinkets, assuming you have no access to Blessings of Wisdom or Innervates. You can take it piecemeal, so get a Promises, use that, and see how things go in terms of whether you need to acquire a 2nd regen trinket.

[Niklicious 0]

Thank you. I really appreciate the advice. I will look in to getting some mana regen trinkets for sure. I also very much need to improve on mana-management. I'm working on it. It's getting better slowly! :)

 

@Blaine (or whoever)

Would you please elaborate on saying I have too much haste? The guide here says that haste is disc priest #2 stat (#1 is intellect), so I've been stacking it intentionally.

If you could point me to some more detailed information, that would be great. I'm guessing soft cap or diminishing returns are coming in to play here.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

[Yunzi 1]

4 hours ago, Niklicious said:

  @Blaine (or whoever)

  Would you please elaborate on saying I have too much haste? The guide here says that haste is disc     priest #2 stat (#1 is intellect), so I've been stacking it intentionally.

  If you could point me to some more detailed information, that would be great. I'm guessing soft cap or diminishing returns are coming in to play here.

Intellect is really bad at this point in the xpac - it's far worse than any of the secondary stats, in a raid environment (mastery is very bad outside of raids). Leech is the best stat for raiding HPS if you're lucky enough to get a good piece with it.

Haste is the stat most affected by mana regen, so it's sensible to limit it if you don't have a lot of mana. Keep any good high haste gear you get though so you can swap it in once you get more regen.

Icy Veins has improved tremendously from previous expansions, but there are other good resources out there as well, The How To Priest class discord is amazing, as well as the Focused Will website.

 

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Edited February 22, 2018 by Yunzi

[vel13 0]

   What helped me out as a new disc was learning when to use Radiance. Radiance is a very costly spell and if you use it too often, you'll go oom quickly. I rely mostly on pleas to get my atonements out during lighter dmg periods, and double radiance before a large damage burst to get atonements out quickly. 

 

Another important distinction is knowing what damage needs to be healed quickly with more mana, and what damage you can heal slower and more mana efficiently. For example, I was going oom rather quickly on High Command because I was overreacting to the damage before the first Felshield burst phase. To fix this, whenever I see someone with a debuff on them, I plea them to apply my atonement and smite to heal them back up, rather than shadowmending or radiancing. Check out this article from Focused Will for more details about disc & mana:  http://focusedwill.com/discipline-filler-healing-mana/

 

If you're lucky and can get wisdom from a pally, that will make your life a lot easier, and like others have said, Carafe of Searing Light is a must use trinket for me, although with wisdom, I don't need to use it. 

 

Good luck on your disc journey!

Edited March 4, 2018 by vel13

[Valks 2,375]

On 2/22/2018 at 6:42 PM, Niklicious said:

@Blaine (or whoever)

Would you please elaborate on saying I have too much haste? The guide here says that haste is disc priest #2 stat (#1 is intellect), so I've been stacking it intentionally.

If you could point me to some more detailed information, that would be great. I'm guessing soft cap or diminishing returns are coming in to play here.

Thanks again!

It was mainly in terms of you saying you run out of mana - Haste is a very solid stat, it increases the amount of healing you can do per second by reducing the cast time of your spells. The problem with Haste is that, you have a fixed amount of mana during a fight. Let's get rid of numbers and just use percentages. 

You start a fight with 100% mana, right? Let's say, in the opening period, you need to cast 10 Smites with a 1.5 second cast time. At 0.5% mana used, you end up using 5% mana over 15 seconds, averaging out at 0.33% mana spent per second.

Now let's say you have more Haste. Now, your cast time is 1 second, but you use the same amount of mana. You'll be using 5% mana in 10 seconds, meaning 0.5% mana spent per second.

If, for some reason, you have no break, no other spell cast and you just smite all the way through the fight (assuming base mana-regen is the same), you'll be OOM as healer B over 100 seconds faster.

Now, to fix this, you have 2 options. You can either use mana regen trinkets to off-set the increased spending (which was suggested above) or learn to police your own casting. In both scenarios above, you cast 10 Smites, but there was 5 seconds less of damage for Healer B. Healer B, in order to play better with his Haste levels, should be waiting for damage before using his reduced cast time to snipe-heal. Haste, for almost every heal, is exactly this - a snipe-healing stat. It's there to quickly heal up after damage has occurred, rather than keep blanket healing.

This is all obviously a very simple example, but the base principle is that with more Haste, you need to learn to manage your mana. You have faster cast times, so you can very quickly run out of mana if you don't control yourself by either using cheaper spells to fill or by running mana-regen trinkets.