need some rough criticism to prep for mythic

[massac0r 3]

hey guys, I recently started applying to guilds that raid mythic because I think it's time for me to experience more serious raiding.

 

All the guilds I have either trialed or interviewed with seem to like me a great deal, but the problem is, I am simply not satisfied with my healing and frankly quite disappointed that I have not received any sort of assessment by these guilds. I just want to gain some objective and insightful criticism from a discerning, experienced eye. Be as harsh as you can be; I have tough skin and I am prepared to hear whatever will help me improve. I don't want to hear that I'm fine as is.. I want to be better than just good, and to rank in the 90th percentile more. So I will need all the advice I can get :D

 

 

my most recent Heroic run, a trial (starting with H Kargath)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/WGpHQNDmRXBPLdqv/#type=healing&fight=2

 

H Imp

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/GYzMp8DvfT4ZJdn2#type=healing&boss=1705

 

my first H Imp

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/jvMw43dZnfCaB7Rg

 

another Heroic run

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/W24wjcdvZ9H1rqYt#fight=1

 

a couple Mythic Ogrons attempts I filled in for my friends guild (their healer was away) (note that this link is for the last lengthy attempt - there are 5 attempts that are 6min+)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/PZXYV42AqzJp8fHc#type=healing&fight=13

 

 

Some specific things I am curious about...

1) My ratio of offensive to defensive penance casts?

-I seem to use penance offensively more than I do defensively. I presume this is due to the amount of damage going out in heroic... there is none. There is no fight with constant low-health players who need penance cast directly on them without it overhealing. In general the rule I go by, though, is unless someone is in danger of dying, just use penance offensively and use it on cooldown. Is this generally a good idea?

2) COW over WOM. The debate over which is superior sparked with the release of WOD and I think further down the line it will be on fire. I used to be the biggest COW fanboy, but lately I can't not use WOM--on ANY fight. Are there fights where COW is definitely superior? My general rule is... if my tanks get hit hard/are undergeared, or there is not a lot of aoe and/or spike raid damage, go with COW. In Heroic since my tanks are NOT getting hit hard, I find it a waste to use COW. Many people have questioned my use of WOM; I possibly may have even been rejected once because of it

3) If using COW... does one hard cast POM? 

4) Who is the most optimal Cascade target? Tanks, myself in a good position, melee, random ranged... ? 

5) Is my divine aegis healing where it should be? Is my crit too low...? right now I am heavily stacking mastery over crit (30%~ mastery, like 10% crit or so..) 

 

This is all I can think of for now...

 

 

last but not least... raid frames. I have been using default UI raid frames since SOO and they are simply what I am most comfortable with. I have the in-game settings and addons required for me to play and raid efficiently, and my philosophy is that unless your UI gets in the way, unless it hinders your ability to play, there is no need to change it if you are comfortable with default. Like I said, I am comfortable with default, however there are some added functionalities that I would like to start using for mythic. I just cannot for the life of me adjust myself to Grid/Vuhdo/Healbot (believe me I have tried. The setup takes too long for my OCD/ADD ). I really hate making requests of this nature... but is there anyone who can help me get the exact Grid/Vuhdo/Healbot settings I am looking for? I would ask to simply copy the settings of someone else, however I am VERY picky with how I want my raid frames look and feel, and picky with what I want them to do/show, and simply not proficient enough in setting those particular addons up

 

 

Thanks in advance, and apologies for the lengthy post

Edited January 17, 2015 by massac0r

[Kulia 39]

Just gonna answer your questions, don't have time to look over the logs rn, but I'll get back to it.

1. ALWAYS use penance for healing. ALWAYS. Especially in mythic.

2. WoM > CoW for ANY fight with lots of movement. CoW fights are: Kargath, Butcher, Brackenspore(only if necrotic breath is an issue) and Ko'ragh(OP for the soaker in the shield). NEVER EVER hardcast PoM. it does nothing for disc. Even with WoM NEVER hardcast it. If you hardcast it you're doing it wrong. ONLY reason WoM>CoW is bc it's free healing and better than benching a talent row completely.

3. Answered above. NEVER HARDCAST POM EVER. WASTE OF MANA.

4. Anyone. Just anyone, it doesn't matter because of the way cascade works.

5. Mastery>crit. Mastery is the best stat atm since all of your healing should be coming from PW:S. But, don't glyph PW:S. Only PW:S related glyphs that are viable are weakened soul and reflective shield. DA heals should come from using your empowered AA.

As for UI.

Use default if you like it, it's what I use. TBH, I wouldn't change it unless you're having issues with default not doing something grid/vuhdo can do. Changing raid frames is VERY jarring and takes a few weeks to get used to and if you wanna go into mythic, you can't afford to babysit your raid frames until you get used to them. What added functionalities are you looking for tho? Because you might be able to do something like that with another addon(Weak auras, Clique, etc)

[Kulia 39]

Okay, I have time to look at the logs now. Gonna compare your two Imp fights.

DO NOT GLYPH PW:S. JUST DON'T. It is NOT worth it.

AA usage could go up on the longer fights. - same amount of AA uses in each Imp fight(one being shorter than the other) 

ONLY cast PoH with the Empowered AA buff. Otherwise it's a waste of mana because it heals so little.

Use cascade more. Cast it after every AA(which you should be using in prep for big boss ability X or just after big boss ability X)

ONLY USE PENANCE FOR A HEAL. It is our BEST pure healing spell, using it for DPS = bad.

Other than that you're doing pretty good. You just need to brush up on the things I've said here.

Also, just a tip. Use healing tonics from first aid rather than healthstones, they heal for a LOT more.

But, I'm now gonna look at the mythic fight to see how that went for you and how you fared in more difficult content.

First thing I noticed, two disc priests I know it was you filling in for a healer in a friends guild who was away, but try and not heal alongside another disc priest, it seriously gimps our healing potential. (seriously Blizzard, just make PW:S only be affected by the casters weakened soul debuff >.<)

Again, unglyph PW:S, use penance as a heal only, use 90 talent more.
Try and use Empowered AA only PoH only as that is where you get the most out of it.

That's pretty much all I can see.

Just one thing tho. If you are gonna use solace, try and use it on CD, otherwise you're wasting a talent and may as well be taking the fire and forget Mindbender.

And remember: You CAN CAST AA BEFORE GETTING 5 STACKS OF EVANGELISM! Infact, in most cases you SHOULD be, just because the perk is REALLY strong!
(hopefully someone a bit more experienced than I can come along and either agree or disagree with what I've said..)

Edit: reason why you don't glyph PW:S is because from what I can tell it actually takes the heal from the absorb of the shield. Therefore you lose 20% of your absorb, which is FAR more powerful than the pitiful little heal(can I get confirmation on this from someone who's done the math?)

Edited January 17, 2015 by Kulia

[massac0r 3]

alright, glad to know I'm not alone in the belief that POM should never be hard cast. I had a priest tell me my lack of POM casts was a cause for concern, and this is something that went against my intuition and knowledge. 

 

Also wow, I had absolutely no idea that 20% of the ABSORB from the shield is converted to healing... otherwise I would NEVER have used it >.< this is terrible and I am going to get rid of it as soon as I get home.

 

That's great advice about ONLY casting POH with EAA, because the only times I have mana problems are when I cast POH without AA, and also great advice for casting AA more than I already do. I can actually get away with NOT casting it with <5 stacks because I am very good at getting 5 stacks and maintaining them, considering I use PW:So and I use it on CD (I never have mana issues :D). I guess the reason I don't cast AA enough is because I'm too frugal... I try to save it so much for big damage that it just ends up being counter productive

 

However... I'm not sure I entirely agree with only defensive penances. Perhaps in a mythic environment in which people are constantly low enough for me to heal them with it, but I know in heroic, I want to use penance STRICTLY on cooldown - I strive to use it every single time that it's up. As such, there is not always a chance for me to directly heal with it on every cooldown, because even when someone is at 70%, there is always a risk of one or even two ticks of penance being overheals because someone else might get a heal off before additional penance ticks. That's why even if someone is at 70%, I opt to cast penance OFFENSIVELY so that I can get an atone heal on some random person who actually needs it, even if just a pet, and that way I can get a divine aegis bubble on a random person from a penance tick's crit. Basically, my logic is that using penance offensively when there is no one at or below 50-60% reduces the risk/chances of overhealing

 

I suppose penance is my main concern, so please tell me if any of the above is wrong. Also, what do you other priests think about this? I'd like to hear input from all sides!

[massac0r 3]

oh also... the added functionalities I like are

1) arrows. When I tried Vuhdo, this was the best feature by far - arrows that show me which direction a player is so that I'm not running around like a headless chicken looking for them

2) currently, my default raid frames only track bubble, weakened soul, COW, POM, PS and barrier. 

I want to also track things like divine aegis, track absorb amounts for when I am using COW (this doesn't matter so much for just PWS/DA...), and preferably even track OTHER healing/defensive CDs on that person. I use Hermes so I know WHEN other CDs are used... I just don't know /on who/

3) I suppose that's pretty much it... the things I don't like about other raid frames are the way they track debuffs. I prefer a system in which ALL debuffs are shown and not just the ones that I have to set up manually... ie with Grid I would have to go and enable every boss debuff and it just sounds like such tedious work to do after the release of each content. But more importantly.... I don't like the frame highlighting way that those addons track debuffs. I don't want my frames highlighted at all - I just want a simple icon the same way default ui tracks debuffs. Just a simple icon

 

 

Anyway I greatly appreciate the time you took to read and reply and your advice has been quite enlightening

I hope to hear more from you as well as others :D

[massac0r 3]

I'm actually looking at the logs of a ranking disc priest on H imp... I'm not quite sure how to read their penance reports. I see that their penance did so much more healing than mine, but doing the math, it looks like this priest is also casting penance offensively more than defensively - just that they are using it defensively more than I am 

 

still, I don't know how to read this

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/82Bq73cDmKhPtvdb#type=healing&source=1&ability=47750

 

What does the Hit (Ms) mean, and also for example 6(3)? Does that mean there were 6 ticks and 3 were overheals or...? Does the (Ms) mean miss=overheal? 

 

I think the reason my penance healing was so low in that 2nd imp kill is because I just didn't cast it ENOUGH. This person cast penance 68 times and I did an embarrasingly measly 14 times. In my other imp kills (ie the one last night) I cast it way more, but this just gives me an idea of the strength of penance.

 

I'm just still not convinced of whether to use it strictly defensively, as it looks to me like this person is using it offensively more than defensively, unless I'm reading the report wrong

[soonjung 3]

I'm new to priest, so I hesitate to comment on spell usage and logs. I do, however, *obsess* over my raid frames and personally recommend you look at VuhDo again. While it does take some digging, I have been able to make it track everything I need, including PW:S/WS, CoW, DA, PoM, and PS, as well as other players' combined HoT's. The debuff option for the icon to "fly in" or other wise be animated can easily be disabled.

[massac0r 3]

I just find it very difficult to set up Vuhdo to show everything I want it to. I know it's possible.. I'm just saying it takes a damn long time and requires too much customisation. But like I said, my main concern is its debuff highlighting. I don't want the whole frame to go green when someone is poisoned - I simply want the poison debuff icon to show in the corner, and for me to be able to mouseover it for the tooltip information (to see how much dmg it does etc). 

 

Speaking of tooltips, that's another thing I didn't like about Vuhdo. Maybe my addon was bugged, but when I disabled Vuhdos own tooltips when mousing over a player (I wanted Blizz's default tooltips), I just got NO tooltip information. I just could not find a way for Vuhdo to show Blizz's default tooltips when mousing over a player

[Kristraza 0]

Not a disc priest, shadow only, but does grace still exist? As in for each penance tick your target gets a stack of grace?

[massac0r 3]

no, they took out grace in WOD :( quite unfortunate, as I abused it by hitting the tank with a penance prepull and making sure to keep grace up as much as possible

[Kulia 39]

no, they took out grace in WOD quite unfortunate, as I abused it by hitting the tank with a penance prepull and making sure to keep grace up as much as possible

Grace is still here! It's just a flat 30% increase to all your heals :D

[Kulia 39]

alright, glad to know I'm not alone in the belief that POM should never be hard cast. I had a priest tell me my lack of POM casts was a cause for concern, and this is something that went against my intuition and knowledge. 

 

Also wow, I had absolutely no idea that 20% of the ABSORB from the shield is converted to healing... otherwise I would NEVER have used it >.< this is terrible and I am going to get rid of it as soon as I get home.

 

That's great advice about ONLY casting POH with EAA, because the only times I have mana problems are when I cast POH without AA, and also great advice for casting AA more than I already do. I can actually get away with NOT casting it with <5 stacks because I am very good at getting 5 stacks and maintaining them, considering I use PW:So and I use it on CD (I never have mana issues ). I guess the reason I don't cast AA enough is because I'm too frugal... I try to save it so much for big damage that it just ends up being counter productive

 

However... I'm not sure I entirely agree with only defensive penances. Perhaps in a mythic environment in which people are constantly low enough for me to heal them with it, but I know in heroic, I want to use penance STRICTLY on cooldown - I strive to use it every single time that it's up. As such, there is not always a chance for me to directly heal with it on every cooldown, because even when someone is at 70%, there is always a risk of one or even two ticks of penance being overheals because someone else might get a heal off before additional penance ticks. That's why even if someone is at 70%, I opt to cast penance OFFENSIVELY so that I can get an atone heal on some random person who actually needs it, even if just a pet, and that way I can get a divine aegis bubble on a random person from a penance tick's crit. Basically, my logic is that using penance offensively when there is no one at or below 50-60% reduces the risk/chances of overhealing

 

I suppose penance is my main concern, so please tell me if any of the above is wrong. Also, what do you other priests think about this? I'd like to hear input from all sides!

Well, I always use my penance for healing rather than dps. and it does healing under my Diving Aegis normally. I always cast it on someone if they're at 90% or less, as it still has a chance to crit and give them a DA and generally since it's a tank, they're gonna use that DA immediately. I don't think Atonement is worth it enough to do that. Literally the ONLY time you atonement is when there is nothing else you can do, no shields you can be throwing out, no nothing. Which is VERY rare. I mean, I pop my haste trinket at the start of a fight and DPS a little bit to help, but that's generally all you'll see from just pure atonement. (For example, sitting at the target dummy in garrison and just DPSing it and the atonement goes to heal the healing one it does about 2-5k hps.... not really worth it considering it's generally like a 5th of my HPS normally). So I tend to hold onto it for that. You'll probably find going into mythic you're not gonna want to use penance for DPS so it's better to get into that habit now. (Kargath may be the only exception in the ENTIRE instance where you can purely DPS for the first minute or so of the fight..)

And in the logs you linked, they used penance for DPS 33 times, healing 68 times. Also MS means multistrike I believe. and the Hits(MS) shows how many hits were multistrikes. (Multistrikes being in brackets).

[Kulia 39]

oh also... the added functionalities I like are

1) arrows. When I tried Vuhdo, this was the best feature by far - arrows that show me which direction a player is so that I'm not running around like a headless chicken looking for them

2) currently, my default raid frames only track bubble, weakened soul, COW, POM, PS and barrier. 

I want to also track things like divine aegis, track absorb amounts for when I am using COW (this doesn't matter so much for just PWS/DA...), and preferably even track OTHER healing/defensive CDs on that person. I use Hermes so I know WHEN other CDs are used... I just don't know /on who/

3) I suppose that's pretty much it... the things I don't like about other raid frames are the way they track debuffs. I prefer a system in which ALL debuffs are shown and not just the ones that I have to set up manually... ie with Grid I would have to go and enable every boss debuff and it just sounds like such tedious work to do after the release of each content. But more importantly.... I don't like the frame highlighting way that those addons track debuffs. I don't want my frames highlighted at all - I just want a simple icon the same way default ui tracks debuffs. Just a simple icon

 

 

Anyway I greatly appreciate the time you took to read and reply and your advice has been quite enlightening

I hope to hear more from you as well as others

1. I don't know about this one w/o using Vhudo or anything like that. Might be an addon for it, but I don't really know.

2. Weak auras can do that. I track my CoW strength on my focus-target, which is generally the lesser geared tank(I'm stuck pugging my way through this expac unfortunately so I've had some pretty bad tanks.. (629 Brewmaster tanking HEROIC Butcher anybody? Yeah, didn't think so)) you can probably set up a list down the side of your screen to track it via player names of everyone in your raid, same with PW:S/DA. You can also do the same with other healers CDs. Unfortunately I don't know how to do that myself, but it should be possible. Just ask around on the forums for help if you choose to do it this way.

[massac0r 3]

oh, multistrike makes sense!! thanks for clearing that up!! 

also, I see how the logs work in that regard now.... you would have to go to casts to see how many were used offensively.. I get it now.. thanks for clearing that part up too :)

 

And yes, I will definitely try to use it defensively more often to prep for mythic. I'll see how that goes, so thanks again 

[Kulia 39]

oh, multistrike makes sense!! thanks for clearing that up!! 

also, I see how the logs work in that regard now.... you would have to go to casts to see how many were used offensively.. I get it now.. thanks for clearing that part up too

 

And yes, I will definitely try to use it defensively more often to prep for mythic. I'll see how that goes, so thanks again 

No worries, happy to help :D

[TheRaidBoss 11]

As answered, (MS) on WarcraftLogs is Multistrikes.

 

But for tracking shields, I use Grid2 for all my frames. I only see debuffs that I can clear pop up in the corner, weakened soul (with a timer) in the bottom left, and if they have my PW:S on I see the icon on top. (So I know if another dirty priest casts it...) CoW is on the bottom right and whenever they have a shield I see the strength of it, regardless of what ability. I like to know when my DK or Warrior popped their shields, as well as locks and everything.

 

I remember an addon that did arrows but I don't remember it as I find it un-needed. I know where my people are standing. (And they hear about it when they stand incorrectly... locking their knees and what not)

 

I use WeakAuras to track procs, buffs, and CDs that are important to me. (Need to add butcher's debuff and a focus target for debuff-yay new stacking job)

 

I use penance offensively on pull to quickly build evangelism stacks then I let out a smite or 3 and then solace it up.

[Brewmonksta 157]

Personally i hate vuhdo and healbot.

 

Elvui is a good healer pack UI. It uses grid(has arrows) and is best with mouseover macro's. It also does an "install" and you tell it you are a healer and it will activate the relevant buffs/debuffs you will need to track. Others can be done manually.

It also has a toggle and you can move frames/sizes to wherever you like. You can also have bars that toggle on and off as you enter or leave combat etc.

 

With regards to penance offensive it is a waste of the GCD's when you could be bubbling someone else etc. If it can heal for each tick it is mana efficient provided that it wont overheal. I use penance more of a when i have to move heal and a topup on a tank if they have weakened soul.

 

Only thing that i do personally that you dont is i try to keep a high uptime on the weakened soul on the tanks. Gives them a higher effective health pool and they are most likely to take damage.