Disc. Priest - How much spirit?

[LostDignity 12]

There are plenty of disc priests that run with 5-6k spirit with the least amount of haste available.

 

I don't think 5k spirit is viable for progression. Words can't describe how great it is for boss farming though. You must also take into account on whether or not you have priests/shamans as mana batteries though. There are breakpoints for Disc though (for Spirit Shell). Not saying haste is the most optimal but Spirit Shell breakpoint is viable. i personally run on 8k spirit with no problem at all (and an amount that shall not be name for my holy set). I do reforge for higher spirit on some fights though (e.g. Thok). You want to finish fights with as low mana as possible, but never go OoM. Going OoM is worse than having too much mana.

 

 

If you've been raiding for most of this tier, you've had quite some time to acquire the right items. 

 

Almost 40 sha of pride kills, and still using flex trinket. Worse part is that if the trinket does drop, i'll be giving it away like every other equipments that people want CoughHeroicWarforgedEverythingCough. My Holy set hasn't even past the 570ilvl mark yet and my druid companion is over 580. Even my raid's off-healer's heal set has a better ilvl than my disc set. So very sad. Coin roll is the only chance i have at upgrading. #hope

 

I'm bad

-Lostdignity

[Espiee 161]

Mana is definitely a product of circumstances, but in general spirit is not a very desirable secondary stat. I was running with 7.1k when we did progression from Thok and onwards. Mana was never a particular issue for me. Granted we were running with 2 disc priests and 1 shaman which may have lightened the burden somewhat. Spirit is however a costly way to find yourself mana. Trading say 2k crit for 2k spirit is trading 3.3% crit for one extra PoH every minute. Spirit, sitting at 0.564 mp5 per point, is a particularly weak source of mana regeneration, you're likely to save more mana by being more conscious about your spell choices than you are markedly increasing your spirit. One wrongly used PWS for example would cost you the mana you'd gain in a minute from having 2k spirit.

 

Discipline does have HBPs. Both Solace and Renew gain additional ticks at certain points and Shadowfiend/Mindbender gains additional attacks at certain points. The former two are hardly desirable to reach for, but the mana from SF/MB might be worth what little haste you need to reach it(12.5% for SF and 10% for MB grants you an additional attack). Spirit Shell doesn't have breakpoints however.

 

You're right that at certain levels of haste, you're able to squeeze in an additional PoH, but it far from guaranteed unlike the additional ticks/attack from the abovementioned spells. You might need to move or be otherwise interrupted and you might simply lag too much to pull it off. There's only value to discussing those breakpoints if you're using the 4pc however, otherwise you need a lot of haste to get an additional Spirit Shell off, and you're still relying at least somewhat on luck to get off all five(unless you're decking yourself in haste).

 

You might have been unlucky, I shared the same fate with the siegecrafter trinket where I went months with the flex one before it finally dropped for us and I didn't have to pass it to people still with DPS, ToT or LFR trinkets, but in the grand scheme of things now that the tier has been out for some time, provided you have the content on farm, you can reasonably expect items to have dropped and you getting them.

[LostDignity 12]

Spirit is a bad stat in terms of efficiency. Aside from the base mana regen and abillity (solace/sf/mb etc) how else would we gain mana? The shado pan trinket gives flat mana, not that its good anymore. The only other way i can think off my head is through haste: giving you extra ticks on mb and hymn. Even though spirit isn't that great of a stat in comparison, its still the best way to get mana.

[Espiee 161]

You can gain mana through the use of a regen trinket, from external cooldowns(innervate, MTT or others hymns), you can make use of the metagem, and importantly, you can work on optimising your choice of spells. Like I said in a previous post in this thread, mana regen from spirit makes out a little portion of our mana economy, a 4k spirit increase from 6 to 10k spirit would increase your total amount of mana by 7.5% over a 6 min figh(4k secondary stats are 6.67% crit or 10.67% mastery for comparison). And unless you're playing perfectly already, you gain more by looking through logs and frapsed attempts ironing out erroneous spell casts than you do increasing your spirit by a said amount

 

Through WCL I for example identified several occasions where PWS wouldn't be fully utilised meaning it wouldn't proc Rapture and effectively costing me 14k mana each time. Similarly not having PoM bounce around when it won't be fully used is another way to save mana(or not recasting it before the last charge is used). Ironing things like these out can easily amount to more mana than a 2-4k increase to your spirit would, not to mention all of your heals would be hitting harder.

Edited June 20, 2014 by steve