Cataclysm Discipline Priest Compendium - Page 4

Kasamir · 12/14/10, 1:40 PM

Originally Posted by Affinity

I wonder if anyone has a good way of tracking the internal cooldown of Rapture. I would be very interested in a mod that helps accomplish this.

Personally I use the CD tracker onForteXorcist. It tracks all your cooldowns internal or not.

Raiek · 12/14/10, 1:48 PM

I'm inclined to agree with the strategy of utilizing GHeal + ToT as our primary method rather than Shield + Heal + SoS, but this brings up question regarding Inner Will and Inner Fire. I hadn't seen the worth of these two buffs compared and contrasted in the OP, and I figure it was just assumed we'd all be taking Inner Will for the mana savings. However, with this GHeal strategy, which will utilize shielding and our other instant casts less, would the throughput from Inner Fire prove more valuable than Inner Will?

Glowyrm · 12/15/10, 7:22 AM

Originally Posted by Affinity

For me, my biggest concern with mastery is that I cannot find a way to effectively utilize aegis procs from PoH. By the time I've casted my first PoH, in most cases the raid damage is over and my aegis procs fall off unused. This follows for direct heals cast on raid members following spike damage from unavoidable single target boss mechanics as well. I have attempted to tell our healers to leave a 10-15k health deficit so that I can heal preventatively, however there are so many HoTs and passive area heals that this is rarely accomplished. This leaves only Aegis on tank critical heals and PW:S every 12 seconds. Because critical strike benefits all of our heals, and I cannot find a way to derive benefits from Aegis on non-tanks, I currently believe Crit outweighs Mastery. I would caution that if you find yourself healing tanks primarily and focus very little on raid healing, then the disparity between Crit and Mastery will be reduced. With my raiding style in mind, I use the below priorities:

Intellect > Spirit >>> Crit > Mastery > Haste

Extremely valid concern about Mastery that really made me stop and think.

After a little thinking, there is plenty of raid damage to heal with PoH that is "ticking" and not just one big hit. Chimaeron, Valiona+Theralion, Atramedes, Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Maloriak, etc...I think I might be missing a few. Those fights have HARD hitting ENTIRE raid wide damage attacks that come in quick successive ticks. The DA's from the LAST PoH of the attack might not get used (I'm sure 1 or 2 of them will though from other mechanics that follow) but the previous ones will definitely get used.

So far I've raided 6/12 (guild is 8/12) of the bosses on 25m Normal mode. My #1 heal is PoH and #2 is more often than not DA, so it's definitely being used. I also do not sit on tanks primarily, I do a bit of both.

Originally Posted by Raiek

However, with this GHeal strategy, which will utilize shielding and our other instant casts less, would the throughput from Inner Fire prove more valuable than Inner Will?

I would have to say yes, if you play the way you describe. The beauty of IF and IW is that they are free, so if you find yourself in a phase of a fight that you will be moving very, very much, like Atramedes air phase (I actually glyph and spec Renew for that fight) you can just switch to Inner Will and use your PW:S / Renew and then switch back to IF when it's time to cast again. I think they had that in mind when they made them free cost.

Holy may choose mastery or haste, Disc may want extra mastery (depending how close
to the soft cap you are).

On another note, there was a question I wanted to ask.

What "soft cap" is the OP speaking of in that sentence, the Divine Aegis cap? Does that mean that Mastery cannot make DA break passed 20% of your health?

Affinity · 12/15/10, 9:16 AM

Extremely valid concern about Mastery that really made me stop and think.

After a little thinking, there is plenty of raid damage to heal with PoH that is "ticking" and not just one big hit. Chimaeron, Valiona+Theralion, Atramedes, Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Maloriak, etc...I think I might be missing a few. Those fights have HARD hitting ENTIRE raid wide damage attacks that come in quick successive ticks. The DA's from the LAST PoH of the attack might not get used (I'm sure 1 or 2 of them will though from other mechanics that follow) but the previous ones will definitely get used.

That is good to know, I'm only getting into the raid encounters and the ones that I have attempted either have random damage which tends statistically not to repeat on the same target (Magmaw) or ticks too quickly for PoH Aegis to be useful (Magmatron's AoE).

So far I've raided 6/12 (guild is 8/12) of the bosses on 25m Normal mode. My #1 heal is PoH and #2 is more often than not DA, so it's definitely being used. I also do not sit on tanks primarily, I do a bit of both.

This begs one question that I haven't seen asked in these forums yet. The obvious advantage of AoE healing as a Discipline Priest is that we have no reliance upon positioning, which I have found to be very advantageous on fights that do not allow for this, whereas each of the other healing classes (and specs, in the case of Holy) require close stacking in order to fully utilize their most effective heals. Assuming that one's goal is to maintain the maximum effective HPS would it be worthwhile to have a holy offspec encounters that are friendly to group stacking?

Personally I use the CD tracker onForteXorcist. It tracks all your cooldowns internal or not.

Thank you.

Zigizi · 12/15/10, 12:27 PM

Originally Posted by Mazlowe

Last night I decided to use the GHeal strategy that was posted in a few earlier posts.

I definitely see the benefits of using GHeal with the crit chance over spamming Heal/Shield.

I just feel like spamming Heal restricts me. I'm basically required to spam it on the tank to keep him alive, and because it only heals for about 3% of my party member's team.. having to switch between each ally and hit them with a heal is almost pointless as the cast time per heal value does nothing but warrant distress.

I'm not sure how others are effectively healing heroics as Disc.. but as of right now, I think I'm going to stick with the GHeal strategy.

I was also intrigued by the numbers on ToT, so I redid my disc spec, took Strength of Soul out of my build entirely (which was also gimping my Rapture gains, as noted above), and I found my mana and general stress levels while healing to be much more manageable by using GHeal to keep the tank nearly topped off whenever necessary. After having severe mana problems with a holy build, and just throughput problems with a Heal/Strength of Soul build, I'm really liking the GHeal rotation, backed up by Atonement healing/Archangel for mana regen during periods of low damage right now. And of course, Penance on cooldown.

I also am on the low end of gear for heroics, so I think when I can get more regen from items I will probably go back and re-evaluate the holy spec's viability.

Eyphix · 12/15/10, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Mazlowe

Last night I decided to use the GHeal strategy that was posted in a few earlier posts.

I definitely see the benefits of using GHeal with the crit chance over spamming Heal/Shield.

I just feel like spamming Heal restricts me. I'm basically required to spam it on the tank to keep him alive, and because it only heals for about 3% of my party member's team.. having to switch between each ally and hit them with a heal is almost pointless as the cast time per heal value does nothing but warrant distress.

I'm not sure how others are effectively healing heroics as Disc.. but as of right now, I think I'm going to stick with the GHeal strategy.

I started out with heal+shield spam in non-heroics but found it insufficient throughput in heroics so I tried supplementing it with GHeal casts but eventually just switched entirely to GHeal+penance+shield and ignored heal completely. There is still a fair amount of burst present, have my tank drop 100k+ health in about 5 seconds quite often, and heal just doesn't have the HPS necessary to be viable. I now just get the tank up and then cancel cast GHeal until he takes a hit to HP large enough to warrant the GHeal or shield comes off CD.

Thinking of speccing out of SoS completely and putting the extra two points into inner sanctum or focused will (I don't know if that 10% health hit includes general raid wide AoEs or not) for the damage reduction and also also prioritizing crit over haste as well for the added divine aegis from huge GHeals.

Ingela · 12/15/10, 1:06 PM

Ingela's Rapture - Addons - Curse
Here's a lightweight addon I made back in WOTLK to track rapture cooldown, it's probably a lot more useful now though!

Does anyone have more information about the stealth buffs by the way? I tested my rapture before and I gained about ~6% mana back instead of 2,5%. A well timed shield now to procc rapture on every cooldown is a must now since you actually gain mana from it if the ~6% stays true.

gia · 12/15/10, 1:31 PM

I'd like to add that Archangel/Atonement fit really well into the ToT build playstyle. Instead of cast-canceling GH you can just spam smite during periods of low incoming dps and have pretty good efficiency with 30% cost reduction on Penance, cheap Atonement heals and one PW:S every 12-15 seconds. When you have to cast your first GH/PoH you pop AA/IF (even if you don't have a full stack) and top everyone off taking advantage of the 15% heal bonus and then go back to stacking Evangelism when things calm down.

You also have the option of pure Atonement healing since it's situationally really good during boss vulnerability phases. Ex: 40k+ Atonement heals (plus aegis procs) on Halfus when drakes are down. (World of Logs)

On fights where Atonement doesn't work due to boss hit box issues (ex: Magmaw) not being able to make full use of Archangel is quite noticeable though.

Vintoran · 12/15/10, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Lusey

So now that crit is determined to be better than haste, what would the stat priority be like?

Intellect > Spirit > Mastery = Crit > Haste ?

With intellect and spirit being standard gear choices in the sense that as you upgrade gear, those will upgrade. The only choices being in trinkets and gems. And even then spirit has its cap based on your own mana usage per fight.

So should we maintain similar levels of mastery and crit as they play off each other, or should still favor mastery whenever possible, and supplement it with a sizable amount of crit?

My calculations have shown that mastery is worse than crit for single target heals (other than Power Word: Shield) and that is supported by the stat weights in the OP.
To quantify this:

This image shows my current character and the hps gains of Greater Heal with corresponding crit and mastery ratings from -300 to 300. As you can see the gradient relative to crit is much stepper than the one relative to mastery. (Numbers are without Grace) Taking into account the fact that we can't cast Power Word: Shield that often (at least not on tanks healed by Greater Heal) it is questionable if we shouldn't reforge from mastery to crit altogether. In addition to more hps you also get a higher uptime of Inspiration.
I have not mentioned hpm so far, because it scales linear with hps if you only exchange crit and mastery.

On the other hand mastery is stronger than crit for Prayer of Healing, but only if Divine Aegis is consumed and then not by far. (e.g. PoH on 5 targets with my character and 100 mastery more: 73.9 hps increase; 100 crit more: 62.5 hps increase)
Skimming through logs there are a lot of discpriests using mainly Prayer of Healing in a lot of fights, so I'm keeping some mastery until I've seen the fights myself.

Obviously the numbers will change once we get overall higher stats, but for now I think Int > Spi > Crit > Mastery > Haste is the way to go. Unless you are mostly raid healing with PoH and Divine Aegis is consumed, then I'd say mastery=crit. Strictly speaking haste delivers more hps than mastery, but I think we still need to watch our mana first and foremost.

I created a small discpriest model for MatLab, but I'm not sure if I can just post a link to a .zip file here, so just send me a PM if you're interested.

Raiek · 12/15/10, 5:55 PM

Originally Posted by gia

I'd like to add that Archangel/Atonement fit really well into the ToT build playstyle. Instead of cast-canceling GH you can just spam smite during periods of low incoming dps and have pretty good efficiency with 30% cost reduction on Penance, cheap Atonement heals and one PW:S every 12-15 seconds. When you have to cast your first GH/PoH you pop AA/IF (even if you don't have a full stack) and top everyone off taking advantage of the 15% heal bonus and then go back to stacking Evangelism when things calm down.

You also have the option of pure Atonement healing since it's situationally really good during boss vulnerability phases. Ex: 40k+ Atonement heals (plus aegis procs) on Halfus when drakes are down. (World of Logs)

On fights where Atonement doesn't work due to boss hit box issues (ex: Magmaw) not being able to make full use of Archangel is quite noticeable though.

I actually think this will be the healing style I try out as well. However, I'm debating if I want to keep my points in Soul Warding in a build like this. I'd either move them to Surge of Light or Darkness if I dropped it, since I find myself bubbling far less than I used to. Having a three second cooldown on the shield might be perfectly fine, though I'm still not sure you'd end up smiting enough for a 6% chance of a instant flash heal to be worth the points. I still might take SoL over Darkness though, given the feedback here on the worth of haste for this kind of build.

I wanted to open up the Primary Glyph discussion a bit more. Obviously Penance is the absolute no-brainer, but the next two I've been debating on. With the dungeons I've run so far, I seem to be getting a lot more mileage out of PoH than shielding (not to mention the obvious mana issues with bubble spamming). With PoH being our primary group heal, I think dropping the Power Word: Shield glyph for the PoH one might prove more beneficial. The added heal on the end of a Shield is barely noticeable as it is, and a little more healing for those raid damage periods would be nice.

Also, for 5-mans I've also stopped using the Barrier glyph in favor of Renew. In a raid environment, where you have more healers than just yourself, I think glyphing Barrier would be preferred. For 5-mans though, I find myself using Renew + Shield FAR more to bring up DPS so I don't lose Grace on the tank.

Koilie · 12/15/10, 11:54 PM

Originally Posted by Raiek

I wanted to open up the Primary Glyph discussion a bit more. Obviously Penance is the absolute no-brainer, but the next two I've been debating on. With the dungeons I've run so far, I seem to be getting a lot more mileage out of PoH than shielding (not to mention the obvious mana issues with bubble spamming). With PoH being our primary group heal, I think dropping the Power Word: Shield glyph for the PoH one might prove more beneficial. The added heal on the end of a Shield is barely noticeable as it is, and a little more healing for those raid damage periods would be nice.

PoH glyph is defiantly trumping PW:S on most encounters. WHile shield is often a sizable portion of my healing breakdown, the subsequent heal from the glyph is not because generally in this healing environment I am throwing them only on a few targets, primarily tanks and they tend to be topped off a lot of the time anyway. PoH however is very consistent as my top heal along with DA. I have a World of Logs here from Ascendant Council 25N tonight. The last "wipe" is actually a kill but this fight is bugged on WOL. The previous attempts I was using PW:S glyph. Penance/PoH/Barrier seems to be the best glyph set. Also dispel magic is a great major as there is a LOT of dispelling in this content.

Glowyrm · 12/16/10, 12:53 AM

Originally Posted by Affinity

That is good to know, I'm only getting into the raid encounters and the ones that I have attempted either have random damage which tends statistically not to repeat on the same target (Magmaw) or ticks too quickly for PoH Aegis to be useful (Magmatron's AoE).

Magmaws Lava Spew hits in waves, 3 big ticks to be exact so DA gets used on that. After Lava Spew 3-4 people get hit by random fire balls every few seconds, so usually the leftover DA will get used again.

This begs one question that I haven't seen asked in these forums yet. The obvious advantage of AoE healing as a Discipline Priest is that we have no reliance upon positioning, which I have found to be very advantageous on fights that do not allow for this, whereas each of the other healing classes (and specs, in the case of Holy) require close stacking in order to fully utilize their most effective heals. Assuming that one's goal is to maintain the maximum effective HPS would it be worthwhile to have a holy offspec encounters that are friendly to group stacking?

If there's no other Holy Priests, yeah. I stay Disc through every encounter because we have 2 awesome Holy Priests with us usually. Stacking fights are an awesome time for PW:B use. Like on Valiona+Theralion, when we stack for Blackout ever 2 minutes, a Pally uses Divine Guardian on the first stack and then I PW:B the 2nd, then another Pally Divine Guardian 3rd stack and I PW:B the 4th. So PW:B is pretty damn powerful on stack fights, which is like almost half the content.

Genzen · 12/16/10, 2:46 AM

I have two (unrelated) questions now.

Firstly, does the recent 'stealth buff' to Rapture, whereby it gives 6% mana back instead of 2.5%, have any effect on the choice of weapon enchants? The OP seems to have recommended Power Torrent prior to the buff, so with the buff, will it now be far superior to Heartsong? I don't really understand how Int procs in the middle of battle can really compare to a straight-forward regen proc like Heartsong, but you maths guys always get it right, so I think it's worth enquiring and re-addressing.

Secondly, and this is more a of a play-style thing, how effectively can I be the 'tank healer' in raids now? By this, I mean, can I keep one tank alive by myself? Can I keep multiple tanks alive by myself? Should I keeping up a tank and helping on the raid, or will this leave me short on mana? The way I've been envisioning it is that I'll be solely responsible for my one tank, such that no one else should really have to heal him, and I won't really have to heal someone else. However, I'm not sure how realistic this is. It might be that I'll need help. It might be that I'll be doing far less than I should be contributing - I'm not sure, so I'm looking for some insight into how much I should be able to offer without OoMing in the first two minutes of the fight.

Koilie · 12/16/10, 4:04 AM

Originally Posted by Genzen

Secondly, and this is more a of a play-style thing, how effectively can I be the 'tank healer' in raids now? By this, I mean, can I keep one tank alive by myself? Can I keep multiple tanks alive by myself? Should I keeping up a tank and helping on the raid, or will this leave me short on mana? The way I've been envisioning it is that I'll be solely responsible for my one tank, such that no one else should really have to heal him, and I won't really have to heal someone else. However, I'm not sure how realistic this is. It might be that I'll need help. It might be that I'll be doing far less than I should be contributing - I'm not sure, so I'm looking for some insight into how much I should be able to offer without OoMing in the first two minutes of the fight.

You should be able to keep a tank up by yourself, but I find it is generally better all around to AoE heal though PoH or Atonement or both depending on the encounter and just keep inspiration up on your tank with Penance and PoM while the hots and splash heal/smart heals/HoTs from your atonement and the other healers in the raid will take care of all but the most grievous hits. If your tank or raid is taking heavy damage you can consume your evangelism for the AA buff and go to town with the GH/FH to get your tank up or PoH for the raid. When it gets real hairy pop that AA with your PI and enjoy massive hps while remaining fairly efficient.

As far as healing multiple tanks. Not really a good idea. You can heal one tank and support heal another, but losing grace on your tank is never a good idea. You should only use penance and your Heal/FH/GH on your primary target unless its an emergency save. I Like to toss sheilds and PoMs and an occasional renew onto the other tank. If you are using mana cooldowns and your potion correctly and are in decent gear then you should not have too much mana issues. Healer and general raid communication helps a lot. My resto shaman always gives me a 3-2-1 count before dropping tide so that I can pop my spirit trinket first and the shadow priests or holy priests always announce when they are mana hymning so that I can align cooldowns ect. If you look at the log I posted a couple up you can see I am primary heal on the warrior tank but also doing substantial raid healing and maintaining enough mana to finish the encounter.

Zarcath · 12/16/10, 9:11 AM

I'm curious how many disc priests have time to smite/archangel? It seems like i have so much going on that I don't even have time to target whatever we're fighting and smite to 5 stacks. Is it more useful on raids? I'm hard pressed just keeping people alive in heroics.

I'm using the attonement/archangel build posted but I'm thinking of switching to Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - dropping all of the smite related talents and dropping SoS.