[Archived] Discipline Priest 5.4

[Krazyito 521]

That's something I need to discuss with the admins, but to say the least, crit is better than spirit in gems.

[Gwenymph 414]

Yes, it's been brought up but the guide does not reflect the changes yet.  You are correct to be gemming for Crit>Spirit

[Espiee 161]

The guide apparently hasn't been updated in that regard. It should better reflect the prior page regarding statistics priority. You're doing it right by gemming potent for red, misty for blue and smooth for colorless and yellow. I'd however not match sockets for at least rings and feet since the gem bonus isn't all that great.*

 

The siegecrafter trinket does help, but the mana return is not as significant as you might think. The heroic version with 4/4 upgrades at 10% haste is roughly worth 20k mana per minute, or just about 3k spirit.

 

* What bonuses are worth going for depends on your inclination towards crit. Talking purely about theory in 570ish gear puts crit at about 0.7:1 ratio instead of the supposed 0.5:1 ratio, but if you want to see a net increase in healing, prioritising pure crit gems over the intellect bonuses do that job. It's not unusual to see people skipping every int bonus save for the chest and head and, if you have the fusespark gloves and/or Belt of the Broken Pact, belt and hands as well.

Edited May 28, 2014 by steve

[Guest Åtonement (guest)]

The geming information is just plain wrong. Disc should never gem for spirit. Even at low ilevel you'll get more from crit than spirit. Perhaps mention that spirit is of lower priority for disc than for other healers due to their efficiency and mana regen (rapture, shadowfiend, level 45 tallents, hymn of hope). Look at any decent disc priest, they gem for crit, and avoid spirit where possible.

I suggest that it should be:
Red Socket: "Potent Vermilion Onyx" Int/crit (throughput) or  "Brilliant Primordial Ruby" int (VERY low ilevel)

Yellow Socket: "Smooth Sun's Radiance" Crit
Blue socket: "Misty Wild Jade" Crit/spirit

In further detail:
Ignore +60 stat socket bonus (boots, rings) and gem pure crit (Smooth Sun's Radiance), otherwise gem for the bonus

[Geoda 253]

Isn't spirit a comfort thing too? Did it really have that low of priority in earlier tier/ilvl? I would think that even if crit is that important, if you don't have the spirit or mana to cast the heal, then it does you no good. 

[Gwenymph 414]

Yes, early in SoO the Spirit level accepted by mainstream Disc was already a low priority.    Yes, spirit is a comfort thing to most.  The more hardcore you are the less spirit you need because you are practicing being more and more efficient w/ your mana usage.  The more efficient you become the more you can get out of your secondary stats, mainly Crit.  The more a player is casual the less important it is for them to be strict w/ mana efficiency.  They oft require more Spirit to assist them in healing less skilled raiders who take more damage, or even to pick up the slack of a less skilled healing partner.  Not to say there is anything wrong w/ a player trying to improve their performance by applying more hardcore approach to a casual team, it just doesnt hold the same weight.

[Espiee 161]

In earlier tiers there have been reasons to stack spirit. Before 5.2 PoH was guaranteed to proc DA making it superior to critical heals as a means to shield the raid outside SS. PoH demanded spirit. Additionally Rapture scaled with spirit. Since then they have removed PoH's ability to automatically proc DA and crit levels have increased in such a way it's somewhat reliable to generate DA for the raid.

 

The thing to keep in mind is that spirit has two uses: a) it can increase the number of spells you have before you run OOM provided you have a net negative mana income and b) allow you to cast more expensive spells in place of less expensive spells with the purpose of increasing your throughput.

 

The changes introduced in 5.2 through 5.4 have pushed discipline priests to use smite more than PoH as their filler and smite is incredibly efficient. It costs 42% less mana to cast continuously compared to PoH, and it's a smart-heal. They also removed Raptures scaling with spirit and instead made it based on the mana cost of PWS.

 

Cutting your PoH use to SS coverage and some for emergency healing allows you to reduce your spirit quite a lot. In fact if used solely for the purpose of SS, using smite over PoH allows you to cut 4-6k spirit and turn it into mastery and crit.

 

PoH is still a bigger heal. It's HPM and HPS is higher than that of smite and in turn it does produce more DA shields. On average. The big dent your crit and mastery is taking lessen the healing of everything other than your filler. It means your SS is less potent, that your L90 gives less shields and smaller shields. Given how low priority your filler is given, it's better to increase the throughput of your main spells, your spirit shell, L90 talent and others.

 

So this change freed up quite some stats. Taking into consideration then how much mana regeneration the metagem and your active mana regeneration(SF, Rapture and L45), and the passive regen from trinkets and base combat regen grants, spirit is not a very desirable stat. YOóu can actually perform your core duties without any spirit. Any spirit is then taken to accomodate additional healing and keep in mind that any spirit that leaves you with mana left when the boss died is effectively points that could have been put to better use as crit or mastery.

 

With that said, spirit levels are not set in stone. If you're inclined to use more inefficient heals for whatever reason, you want the marginally higher throughput PoH spam gives or your raid requires more intensive healing, spirit is a way to cope with the higher demand for throughput. But even in those cases there is absolutely no reason not to gem this way, just replace crit/mastery gear with spirit/crit for the added crit and/or don't go for items without spirit from your raid.

Edited May 28, 2014 by steve

[Guest davesignal]

This is a pretty minor thing, but.. the header pictures for the priest guides are pretty damn lackluster. A pudgy little dwarf in mis-matched Hour of Twilight dungeon gear. Really? C'mon, break out the tier 6 or something!

[Guest Astazha]

I use a different macro arrangement than the one listed in the guide, and I thought others might find it useful.

There are two basic setups, one for penance and one for everything else.  Here's the everything else:

#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover,nodead,help][help, nodead] [@focus,nodead,help] [@player] Flash Heal
Priority order: mouseover, friendly target, focus, self

And here's Penance:

#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover,nodead,help] [harm,nodead] [help, nodead] [@focus,nodead,help] [@player] Penance
Priority order: mouseover, enemy target, friendly target, focus, self

I set my focus on my primary healing target, typically the main tank, and I target the enemy I want to attack for atonement healing.   Smite and HF have no macros and are directed at the target.  Most healing is done with the mouseover macro on raid frames, since  mouseover is the highest priority.  Without a mouseover any healing spell will hit the focus, except penance which will attack the targetted enemy.  This allows more convenient tank healing in some circumstances, such as throwing a PW:S or PoM or Renew while running - I do not need to mouseover or select the tank, just cast the spell.

Penance will be used offensively against my target if possible unless I mouseover a friendly target.

If I want to temporarily change who my default heal target is I can select that person without losing my focus on the main tank.  I rarely use this feature, preferring to just mouseover and keep the boss targetted, but it is available if you want to replace your default direct heal target for a short time.

This is supported by a seperate keybind for casting PW:S on myself so it can be done without mouseover:
/use [@player] Power Word: Shield

And a focus/cleartarget/clearfocus macro:
/focus [nomodifier,target=mouseover,exists,nodead][harm, nodead]
/clearfocus [mod:Ctrl]
/cleartarget [mod:Shift]

This allows me to easily set my focus, to clear my target without hitting [esc] and cancelling a cast, and to clear my focus if required.  For healing I mostly just use it to set focus.

The other exception is Leap of Faith:
#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover,nodead,help][help, nodead] Leap of Faith

where the focus default has been removed because no one wants to accidentally move the tank and self-cast has been removed for obvious reasons.

All of this allows me to keep the boss targetted, keep the main tank as my default heals, see who the boss is targetting in the target's target frame, and heal fluidly with mouseovers.  I do not have to set an enemy as focus for atonement, and this allows tab targetting to work well.  I also do not have to mouseover to cast on the main tank while running, which is helpful when mouse running.  When soloing, I can target and attack mobs as normal and my heals will hit me by default if I have not focused or moused over a friendly.  For 5-mans mouseover is only required for friendly penance and for non-tank heals.  Otherwise you heal the tank and attack your target by default.

The only significant downside I've noticed is that I have to be careful, if I intend to heal my focus or penance my target, to make sure that I am not accidentally mousing over a friendly.  Trying to penance a dying tank only to turn and heal the full-health mage standing next to you really sucks.  This not an issue while running with the mouse buttons or while using right click to control your facing because your mouse pointer disappears during those times.  I tend to keep the right mouse button held down to avoid mouseovers if I'm not running or using mouseover deliberately.

I think it's pretty convenient overall.
 

[Krazyito 521]

I don't see the use for such complex macros to be honest. It may be a personal preference for me, since as a programmer I try to use the least characters possible, but you can do any spells with a much simpler macro.

#showtooltip
/use [@mouseover] "Spell name"

The only thing your macros do different is that it only works on friendly targets, and you don't necessarily have to mouse over someone to use it.

With mine, I always have raid frames to mouse over. If I want to heal someone I just mouse over them. If I want to heal myself, I have a unit frame near the bottom. If I have a focus it's next to my raid frame.

The way I set up my bars too, the tanks are always on the bottom right of my frames (if they are in groups 1 and 2) so it's easy for me to access them.

But even if you do t have that and you have a focus, you can just use mine to mouse over that frame as easily.

Again, the only difference is mine requires a mouse over target, but I've never had than issue where I don't have one and I can't think of a reason that you wouldn't.

[Guest Astazha]

That's legit too.  The key advantages are:
1) Click is faster than mouseover-then-click
2) Your mouse hand is free to do other things
3) You can cast while mouse running, which I do a lot of.

The additional checks take care of a few odd situations.  Penance will correctly work on the focus when the target is dead, for example.  I don't setting up extra code once for functionality that I can use over and over.

How do you get the tanks always in the same place on your UI?  I'm using ElvUI and the tanks just appear wherever they are in the groups.

[Krazyito 521]

There is a sort feature. I set it as Tanks > Heals > DD

[Guest Astazha]

Won't that screw up your visualization of who is in which group for purposes of PoH?

[Guest enforciv]

greetings,

I have a question, in the stat priority you have int>crit>mastery>spirit>haste, 

But the BiS list has mainly Haste and no crit, why?

[Krazyito 521]

Won't that screw up your visualization of who is in which group for purposes of PoH?

 

No, it sorts it like that per group, the groups stay together.