Disc Priest Help

[nicarlitos 13]

Hi Folks,

 

I don't usually peruse this forum, but I was hoping for some advice.

 

I'm a bit concerned that our disc priest is having some problems- I thought that they were really strong right now, but she always seems to be at the bottom of the pile.

 

Case in point is this one wipe on Thok from last night.

 

I was solo tanking on my DK and putting out more healing.

 

Here's the log:

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Z3vhXNHxwq8FrpMD#type=healing

 

I know one wipe isn't too much to go on, but as I know very little about disc priests I was hoping that you kind and generous people could give us some pointers around rotation, talents, etc.

 

Cheers!

[Gwenymph 414]

The best help you could offer them is have them read through forums.  Undoubtedly there is someone else who has had the same questions or shortcomings.  There is a great wealth of things to be learned by having them put in effort to look for forums that address their issues.

 

That being said it really is tough to tell after just one wipe but there are some things that they can change the next time you go in.

 

In a 6.5min fight they didn't use Inner Focus at all.  It allows you to get 2 uninterrupted PoH casts off back to back.  They can squeeze in 7 Inner Focus uses in that 6.5min window if they use it pre-pull or on the pull. 

 

During the first Devo Aura they did not cast PoH at all.  Make sure that they have some sort of indicator on their UI to let them know when Devo is up.  Devo was actually used over a minute into the pull, so they can use Inner Focus and Spirit Shell on the pull and it will be up again and ready when Devo is being used so they can reblanket the raid.  On the second Devo they did get 2 PoH/SS casts off, to their defense.  Their UI should probably highlight Thok's casts bar, they were interrupted 7 times.  PoH will be their go to spell when not using instant casts but they only cast it 3x!

 

I see a Flash Heal cast, just one, but have them switch Flash Heal with Binding Heal if they really feels the need to fit this spell in (in all instances, not just this fight).

 

Changing those few things will put them on the right track and then we can get a better idea of what can be done to try and get a kill with a larger sample size of pulls from your next Logging.  If you don't get him down the next trip in!

 

GL

Edited February 13, 2014 by Gwenymph

[Brutalpriest 60]

OP I want to ask you two things.

 

1) Please describe exactly how you do the fight in p1.  How are people stacked. 

 

2) Do you have any other logs?  I don't know how warcraft logs work, so I don't know if you fought him at all the rest of the night.  Is this your first time fighting Thok? 

 

Also, this fight is pretty ideal for Shamen and Druids (healing rain and efflo with the entire raid on it for long periods) so they might outshine a disc priest on this fight. 

 

Give me a Protectors log.  That fight is among the best for disc priests to shine, I want to see that one.  If she's not keeping up on THAT fight then I'll agree something's wrong.

 

Anyway looking at the one log you gave me it seems like she's using the right skills, I think she's just getting interupted a lot.  If it's the first time fighting that's expected, if you've had thok on farm for a while not so much.

[drumsmani 47]

Hey Brutal - If you click on Thok's name in the log above, you should be able to see some of the other boss fights that is present in the log. It looks like it has only 1 attempt on Thok but few other kills starting from Shamans.

[Brutalpriest 60]

Can we get an armory?  Maybe we can at least optimize her.

 

I tried to parse it, but for some reason the bliz site won't let me armory on EU characters.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/eu/character/Silvermoon/Ilista/simple

 

Bring her to the site.  I'll try to help her.

[nicarlitos 13]

Hey all,

 

Thanks for the feedback so far.

 

We did actually kill Thok that night, but I switched off logging after the first wipe. I wanted to check out the logs during a break, then I forgot to switch back on -_-

 

Here's her EU armory link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/silvermoon/ilista/advanced

 

Some other answers:

 

1) Please describe exactly how you do the fight in p1.  How are people stacked. 

 

Tight stacking on left of boss, timewarp, rotation of healing cooldowns. The usual I think- sorry, I don't raid lead on this encounter.

 

2) Do you have any other logs?  I don't know how warcraft logs work, so I don't know if you fought him at all the rest of the night.  Is this your first time fighting Thok?  

 

We know this fight, reasonably well. We've killed it 4 times now, including that night.

 

We've not been doing the early bosses as a guild for a while now, so no protectors log I'm afraid.

 

Thok and siegecrafter from last week (with a slightly different raid make up, but sill her healing with a druid and shammy).

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JqbAHD1NY6L89Zfm#fight=6&type=healing

 

Spoils from last month:

 

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/hzauecjp44t80dz5/analyze/hd/source/

 

 

I will try and bring her to the site too....although, maybe not this thread! I don't think she's an officer's wife/GF, but I have been raiding with her since ToT and don't want to upset her too much.

 

Hopefully we can get her on track!

 

Cheers,

N

[Ceraius 34]

Definitely bring her in here. Veins' community is one of the friendliest and most constructive I've ran into regarding anything WoW related. I barely even go anywhere else anymore.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Ceraius

[Brutalpriest 60]

Edited.

 

Bring her in, I'd love to help.

 

In the meantime, she has WAY too much spirit, like 6000 too much.  More than 11k is a waste if you're making proper use of the legendary metagem.  Get rid of the spirit enchants too (legs as well) and put mastery on the hands instead of haste.

[Jhazzie 0]

First of all, 

 

She has WAY to much spirit, she needs round 8.5k ish spirit and should replace her gems with 80int 160crit or 160spirit 160crit.

Secondly, for Atonement Healing she can use the Legendary DPS cloak since that will provide the best stats for a Disc priest.

 

Secondly, she should just be fine with spamming Smite / HF / Penance almost all the time throughout the fight, except when there is AoE dmg incoming. 

 

Thats about the best advice I can give, since I'm always topping the HPS Meter with 559ilvl no legendary cloak

 

Best of luck,

 

Jhaz

 

EDIT: Here is my link to my Armory : 

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/twisting-nether/Jhaznun/simple

Edited February 14, 2014 by Jhazzie

[Gwenymph 414]

Secondly, she should just be fine with spamming Smite / HF / Penance almost all the time throughout the fight, except when there is AoE dmg incoming. 

 

 

On Thok, spamming Smite and Penance is not an option past 8 stacks during Phase 1 iterations.  The time between interrupts is only 1sec. You can unglyph Penance or create a stop cast macro to still use it on CD w/o being interrupted.  IF should be used during non Devo instances for PoH/SS.

 

@ OP: During both kills her Prayer of Mending uptime is less than 50%.  It should be 100%.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Gwenymph

[nicarlitos 13]

Thanks for this so far, guys.

 

Reforging seems to be the first stop.....looks like dropping the spirit will yield tons of haste. I did a quick AMR and got an additional 20% haste (up to 40%) by dropping 9k spirit (to 8.2k).

 

Does that sound like it will make much difference? 

 

@Jhazzie - how do you find your mana regen at 8.5k?

 

I'll talk about the Prayer of Mending uptime too.

 

Cheers,

Nic

[Brutalpriest 60]

Don't do haste.  Priest stat priority is crit > mastery > haste.  Gem so that every slot has at least some crit in it (80int 160 crit) (320 crit) (160crit 160spirit). 

 

Attonement is good durring p2, do it lots.  P1, continuing to use holy fire/PW:Solace, as well as penance, may be wise. but no smiting.

 

Seriously, bring her to this site.  Have her post a "help me" thread.  If you want I can hide this thread entirely.

[Gwenymph 414]

Reforging seems to be the first stop.....looks like dropping the spirit will yield tons of haste. I did a quick AMR and got an additional 20% haste (up to 40%) by dropping 9k spirit (to 8.2k).

 

Does that sound like it will make much difference? 

 

 

I know you said you were doing this for a raid member to improve the overall team, so I wanted to be clear that they should be dropping spirit for Crit>Mastery>Haste.  Your Haste should not be at the 40% or the 20% mark.  When I'm nosy and take a look at those offering help on the forums who have Disc Priest I can find, most of them carry under 9% Haste.  Personally I carry 6%.  A lot of the gear will have Mastery on it, so it's safe to pick up as much Crit as you can from reforging and gemming.    Sorry if any of the help was unclear for the haste mistake.  Brutal also mentioned that they should drop the Haste enchant and pick up the Mastery on the Gloves.  Hope this does not deter you from continuing to help them or from them taking some notes from you.

 

Again, GL

[nicarlitos 13]

Reading this back now, I really don't know where I got the idea for Haste reforging from....probably from some bastaridised AMR stats.

 

I will try and redirect her here, but I was going to try and suggest a reforge to her first and see how things pan out on our next raid (with logging).

 

I'm looking at AMR now, so I think I will suggest the following to her:

 

1) Use the PVE Defaults

2) Add spirit cap of 8k

3) Add haste manual rating to be 500 (e.g. something very low)

 

This yields about 3% more crit, 13% more mastery and 1.5k intellect (all from the 9.5k drop in spirit).

 

I was expecting more crit, but as is evident, I'm not the most knowledgable chap when it comes to Disc Priests....

[Gwenymph 414]

That sounds and looks a lot better.  She can even slowly work her way down to a lower spirit level.  It takes discipline, pun intended, to make the most of your toon at the 8k mark.  If she is not comfortable after a couple of encounters have her go to 10k then up or down from there til she finds a spot where she is not OOMing and comfortable as well as having fun healing the encounters.

[Brutalpriest 60]

Agreed.  Super low spirit is IDEAL but do it gradually.  You don't want to start wiping on fights because she's suddenly OOMing every fight =P

[Metallikat 2]

Don't do haste.  Priest stat priority is crit > mastery > haste.  Gem so that every slot has at least some crit in it (80int 160 crit) (320 crit) (160crit 160spirit). 

 

I hope OP doesn't mind me piggy-backing this thread but I have a question here. Priority crit > int? So I should be gemming oranges in red slots in yellow in yellow slots?

[Brutalpriest 60]

Matallikat: I believe there's a little contention over that, but the generally accepted geming priority is crit over int.

 

However, the 320 int JC gem > 480 crit JC gem.

[Gwenymph 414]

Im going to back Brutal up.  Crit > Int for gems is the rule of thumb in my circles.

[Gryffyn 1]

I was looking for priest help as my time for theory crafting is limited these days and found this thread.  I reforged about 9k spirit into crit and LOVE the changes in my character (noncrit flash heals ao 130k YES PLEASE!).  If someone could be so kinda as to eyeball my armory and give me a run down on what I should swap out it would be AMAZING.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/shattered-halls/Gryffyn/advanced

 

Also, I've gotten in a bad habit of atonement healing with a penance and a flash or a prayer when its needed and I am topping charts with the exception of a shaman. Should I be direct healing more and atone only when everyone is topped off?  Should I be using my bubbles more? shells on CD? prayer spams? I see all this stuff in pugs but i'm really not sure what direction I should be going.  I'm in fear of becoming a glorified healing mage.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I would really love to get my anti-priest tank a reason to shut his mouth :-)

 

Thank you!!!

[Brutalpriest 60]

@Gryffyn

 

Red: int crit.  Yellow/prismatic: crit.  Blue: crit/spirit.  You'll need to replace nearly all of your gems.  Mastery enchant on hands.  Stats on chest.  Int crit leg spellthread.  Always activate socket bonuses (change your boot gem.)  Buy glyph of sha to take your shadowfiend of GCD... nevermind you're using mindbender.  Angelic Bulwark is bad, get Desperate Prayer.

 

For your second paragraph, go go attonement healing.  Stop when there's more significant damage but I'm attonementing most of the time.  As for the rest, need some logs.  But I guaruntee you're not using spirit shell enough =)  Use it whenever a big boss ability is coming up, or any time there is raidwide damage goin' on.

[Charladuce 1]

In regard to dropping spirit - you need to be sure that she knows to proc rapture on CD - ingela's rapture tracker is super for that.  Additionally - she'll want a WA or something to tell her when meta gem procs.  it's a 4 second window so she needs to be sure that she's getting all use out of it.  

 

For thok (or any fight where everyone is stacked) she should always take divine star - low CD, insta cast, OP as hell when people are stacked.  IMO this fight is one of the ones that seperates disc priests who really understand the class from those who generally smite spam.  

 

Typically I use DS on CD, pop a spirit shell before the interrupts get too bad (troll racial does help), use PWB at my assigned point in the healing rotation, and at some point in the fight when instant casts are all that's available, I switch from IF to IW and start individually PWS people.  

 

During p2 I go back to IF and atone the living shit out of thok, while staying in range of the tanks for PWS and PoM.  While having DS is a bit of a loss in p2, I find that it's useful enough for p1 that I keep it anyway.

[Gwenymph 414]

I was looking for priest help as my time for theory crafting is limited these days and found this thread.  I reforged about 9k spirit into crit and LOVE the changes in my character (noncrit flash heals ao 130k YES PLEASE!).  If someone could be so kinda as to eyeball my armory and give me a run down on what I should swap out it would be AMAZING.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/shattered-halls/Gryffyn/advanced

 

Also, I've gotten in a bad habit of atonement healing with a penance and a flash or a prayer when its needed and I am topping charts with the exception of a shaman. Should I be direct healing more and atone only when everyone is topped off?  Should I be using my bubbles more? shells on CD? prayer spams? I see all this stuff in pugs but i'm really not sure what direction I should be going.  I'm in fear of becoming a glorified healing mage.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I would really love to get my anti-priest tank a reason to shut his mouth :-)

 

Thank you!!!

 

 

I wanted to add that you should be using Binding Heal instead of Flash Heal.  Atonement is always the way to go w/ the rare exception the tank needs a defensive penance.  So no, it's not a bad habit to be using Penance offensively, it's preferred.  Post us some logs to go over and I have faith that we can get you on top of that Shaman too.  The tears of Shamans taste so good when they hit the lips.

[Jhazzie 0]

I was looking for priest help as my time for theory crafting is limited these days and found this thread.  I reforged about 9k spirit into crit and LOVE the changes in my character (noncrit flash heals ao 130k YES PLEASE!).  If someone could be so kinda as to eyeball my armory and give me a run down on what I should swap out it would be AMAZING.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/shattered-halls/Gryffyn/advanced

 

Also, I've gotten in a bad habit of atonement healing with a penance and a flash or a prayer when its needed and I am topping charts with the exception of a shaman. Should I be direct healing more and atone only when everyone is topped off?  Should I be using my bubbles more? shells on CD? prayer spams? I see all this stuff in pugs but i'm really not sure what direction I should be going.  I'm in fear of becoming a glorified healing mage.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated because I would really love to get my anti-priest tank a reason to shut his mouth :-)

 

Thank you!!!

Hi Jhazz here again sry for my inactivity .

 

As you asked I looked over your Armory and you should start replacing your int-spirit to crit-int since those provide way better stats overall since you will be needing Crit. And for Atonement healing, you should normally never touch Flash Heal unless they need to be topped off. And ofcourse use PW:S on Rapture CD on the Tank which will return you some decent mana. Prayer Spams only is nessecary to pre-shield a big AoE dmg spell from the boss, same for Spirit Shell. You should aim round 8-8.5ish k spirit. If you are going OOM faster then you think you should, aim for 10k. Ow, use the DPS Cloak for most fights in SoO except Malkorok and Thok. ( Maybe even on Garrosh if your groups mocks up some part of the fight ). 

 

Here's my armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/twisting-nether/Jhaznun/advanced

EDIT: Combatlog of LFR Galakras kill : http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/PvJWGkqnz2mK4Ahj/#type=healing&sourceclass=Any

 

Best regards,

 

Jhaz

Edited February 22, 2014 by Jhazzie

[nicarlitos 13]

Just reporting back.....we did a big reforge over the weekend, using stat priorities previously discussed.

 

We opted for a 10k spirit cap, but still had plenty of reforging options for crit and mastery.

 

We've had a raid hiatus for a week or two, but we should be raiding tonight. I shall log and report back!

 

Thanks again all the input....hope it helps get the HPS up a few notches :)