Priest Simple Questions/Simple Answers: Cataclysm - Page 21

keith7766 · 08/29/11, 3:47 PM

Originally Posted by flo-joe86

To get the most benefit from BT, you have to fit in as many spells as possible. Penance and PoM do not consume BT, so you have some ms over to cast GHeal bevor BT ends. Instead of PoM you can also cast Renew or any other instant cast.

I could understand Renew, because it would tick faster and potentially add an extra tick. However, PoM makes less sense because the heal gets no benefit from haste (at least, no benefit that I'm aware of). The only reason I could think PoM would be stuck in there would be to lower the GCD of it. Just wasn't sure if I was missing some other reason for it.

Starfire · 08/29/11, 4:03 PM

Originally Posted by keith7766

I could understand Renew, because it would tick faster and potentially add an extra tick. However, PoM makes less sense because the heal gets no benefit from haste (at least, no benefit that I'm aware of). The only reason I could think PoM would be stuck in there would be to lower the GCD of it. Just wasn't sure if I was missing some other reason for it.

It's only because of the lower GCD, that's all.

Keep in mind though, that's a powerful effect. Remember when haste only lowered the gcd of instants and yet we still used it till the soft-cap? Same thing.

pessadilla · 09/05/11, 11:35 PM

Hello. I just recently returned from a military deployment and I'm trying to catch up on the game. I have a Disc priest, using a non-atonement spec, and well, I'm having some difficulty on Baleroc's encounter, as well as some other questions. Everything revolves around the fact that I find myself using too much mana (which shouldn't be the case).

1. During Baleroc encounter, when healing the dps that has torment, I've tried two different approaches:

a. Use penance on c/d, PW:S, and PI+ heal. Got Baleroc to 17% this way and wiped.

b. Use penance on c/d, PW:S and I use flash heals (normally I don't flash heal as disc, but for this encounter I do to build up stacks faster on the first torments). This works well except it drains my mana, and then I find myself mana starving later on.

On either case, I wasn't using PoM since its not direct healing. What is the correct strategy?

2. Should I be casting PW:S on the tank on c/d during heavy damage phases? Normally I will bubble, PoM, penance, greater heal, in that order, so I don't spam bubble the tanks or anyone else, which leads me to my next question.

3. What is the correct healing spell priority as a disc priest?

4. How important is Strength of Soul talent on the non-atonement spec? As I said before, I don't spam PW:S on tanks or anyone else since rapture can only proc once every 12 seconds, so what is the point of reducing weakened soul debuff?

5. Between Darkness and Veiled Shadows talents, which talent provides a better benefit? 2% haste increase is big for me, since I’m still under the soft cap, but 60sec off shadow fiend c/d is also very beneficial since like I said, I'm having mana problems.

onceler21 · 09/06/11, 12:28 AM

Baleroc is quite different to most fights, and is the only fight I typically use flash heal on (outside emergencies).

The biggest advantage you can give yourself is to pick up as many stacks of vital spark as possible from the first crystal. Ideally, you will have someone who can take all 25 stacks of torment without dying (shadow priest w/ dispersion is best), and use penance and flash heal spam to keep them up and build your sparks as fast as possible. Don't use shield - it doesn't help build sparks, and it's worth missing a rapture to get extra sparks. The more you have, the more mana you can save throughout the whole fight by using cheaper heals on the tank. We usually use bloodlust at the start of the fight - use PI on yourself if your group does not.

After that, it's a case of switching between tank healing and torment healing at the right times, conserving mana where you can, and reacting to the damage the tank is taking. We find having priests on the tank for decimation blades, and off for inferno blades, works best, but your group may do things differently. As long as you always have people healing the tank, people healing the torments, and don't let anyone fall too far behind on their spark stacks, there are plenty of different rotations that work.

Between blades, the tank damage is fairly low, and you can recover mana using heal (plus shields for rapture). During decimation blade, you absolutely need to get the tank back above 90% hp before each swing (or have a big enough shield on them to cover any shortfall), and will be burning mana in order to do so. Use PW:S as often as possible (flash heal between shields if needed to get weakened soul off faster, or use heal if your tank dodges/parries to conserve mana). During inferno blade, damage is high but not extreme - use your/your tank's damage reduction cooldowns (which do nothing during decimation blades) and a standard healing rotation (but always looking to drop down to heal rather than greater heal where possible to conserve mana; how much you can do this depends on how far ahead you can keep your spark stacks)

Strength of soul really shines on Baleroc, but I find it quite useful on other fights as well. It's certainly worth taking if you aren't speccing into atonement. PoM is next to useless on Baleroc. And darkness/VS is not a clearcut thing, as it depends on you and the fights - VS is useless if it doesn't net you an extra fiend, or if the extra fiend isn't needed, while the extra haste from darkness also can vary greatly in utility. Personally, I like haste (and 2/3 darkness lets me get 6 tick renews under borrowed time) and don't tend to have mana problems, so I take darkness, but that doesn't mean it's the better choice for you. I'd recommend trying out VS, and keeping it if it works for you or switching back if you find that you aren't getting extra fiends from it.

Edit: I should add, this is mainly second-hand advice, as I've been shadow for all our heroic kills of baleroc (I'm one of those taking 25 stacks of torment to help the healers get ahead), but this is what I see our healers doing, and what I did when I was healing it on normal mode. I've also only done 25man. Others may have better advice.

grishaan · 09/06/11, 2:38 AM

If you have the Glyph of Power Word: Shield (which you should have) it will add stacks so it's one of your best spells in this case due to being instant. If someone takes the first spark to 25 stacks you should be able to get to 90-105 stacks of Vital Spark with just this one spark using mainly FH and PW:S (Penance just until 17stacks of Torment, because above 17 it's weaker than our other heals in terms of Vital Spark stacking). After first spark pop Shadowfiend and HoH together and watch your mana rise. Afterwards you should be able to keep the tanks up with just PW:S and Heal in normal Phases and PW:S and GH while Shdow Blade is up.
SoS is important in most fights due to your Shield-Debuff being 15sec, rapture-CD being 12s and rapture being your stongest mana reggen ability by far. In perfect execution you will miss about 20% of your main mana source if you don't have SoS.

Vintoran · 09/06/11, 6:56 AM

I'd like to see a log where someone gets 90-105 Vital Spark stacks from one crystal (post change). I haven't bothered to do the math, but I doubt that more than (if even) 70 are possible. I usually have somewhere between 122 and 127 stacks after 2 shards.
bad luck first kill - 3 times Countdown with tormented people
good kill

To pessadilla:
Do you mean normal mode or hardmode? It's usually a very different healing strategy. The generally accepted tactic for hardmode is 2 healers stacking Vital Spark on the first 2 (or more) shards and then only healing the tank(s). In normalmode the healers swap from Torment healing to tank healing and back.

Torment people: start with a PW:S, Penance when they drop a bit and then just PW:S/Penance/GH unless you can't keep up, then 1-2 FH if you HAVE to (shouldn't happen). This is for the non fast stacking of course. If the damage in normal mode is low enough to get away with Heal, that's good as well of course. Just keep in mind, that due to ToT a non overhealing GH is roughly as efficient as a non overhealing Heal, so you don't really gain mana there, just reduce overhealing.

During Decimation Blade (heroic) I'd heal like this: Keep PW:S up and cancel-cast FH (but make sure Vital Flame is being refreshed) until PW:S is used up, spam FH until you can use PW:S again (usually not long), repeat. It's also useful to look at the timer on the boss' buff: it lasts for 15 seconds, every 2.14 seconds one swing comes.

During Inferno Blade I'd keep PW:S up, Penance, GH and FH if needed. When no blade is up you can usually get away with PW:S/Penance/Heal until later in the fight.

SoS is very usefull for tank healing, because PW:S is still our highest single target HPS spell. If you can use it more often, you heal more. I usually don't even try to keep track of Rapture when I'm healing a tank that takes a beating, because due to the high frequency of PW:S (if you always cast either Penance/GH/FH/heal and most reduce Weakened Soul by 4 sec) you get a quite good uptime anyway. If you wait for the 12 seconds to pass, cast PW:S and the tank dodges the next 2 strikes you're back to 15 seconds anyway, so I prefer the higher HPS route.

Veiled Shadows is usefull if you can use Shadowfiend one more time usefully in a particular fight. If you can't (or don't need the mana), it's wasted. Baleroc for example: 6 min fight. If you use the first after 30 seconds, it's ready at either 4:30 or 5:30. If you can last the extra minute without Shadowfiend, you don't need it.

There's also no haste soft cap for disc priests.

grishaan · 09/06/11, 10:14 AM

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis this is one of my own logs where I got to 91 with the first Spark completely soaked by a Shadowpriest but me in crap gear. With a little more haste 100 should be easily achievable.

Vintoran · 09/06/11, 10:41 AM

I just noticed that the stack nerf didn't happen on normalmode and you still get 1 stack per 3 stacks of Torment. Therefore I have to change my previous statement: I doubt you can get 70 stacks on hardmode.

edit: 25 man hardmode. 10 man hardmode hasn't got changed either.

grishaan · 09/06/11, 1:52 PM

it is easily doable just some random WoL-parse: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis Priest with 99 stacks on hardmode. The nerf just happened to the 25 heroic difficulty as far as I know. So if you're making statements don't forget to mention the difficulty you're talking about because it differs much these days.

meero · 09/13/11, 10:07 AM

It's important to know how the mechanics of the stacking works as well. If you have someone soaking 25 stacks you should be casting penance at 24 (so get 3x8) and then before that at 12-14 (so it's off cooldown at end). When people are doing less stacks i.e. 12/8 you should be saving penance for the end as well where gain more. Make sure using lust of the start as well or if not available power infusion for last 15secs. 10man guild, I usually get about 75-80 on first torment from spriest, druid gets about 100. He is on spriest from start, I swap over about 9-10 stacks.

Later on in the fight if having mana issues etc... just don't start healing (or use heal) until 6 stacks and then flash for rest to build stacks, spamming flash entire way will oom you pretty fast for little benefit. Also use shield on rapture cooldown on tank even while on tormented guys.

I find most important thing is just watching the cooldown on tank healing. Making sure you don't get caught without buff on tank when required. Nothing worse than a tank get decimate blade and you winding up a gheal that only hits for 40-60k.

grishaan · 09/13/11, 4:19 PM

This is just wrong. You don't get 3*8stacks by casting penance at the the end but 3*2 (1/3 of 8 rounded down, penance just gives you 1/3 of the stacks a normal heal would get you). So instead of casting a normal flash heal at 1.3sec for 8 stacks you cast penance in 1.8 for 6 stacks. You essentially waste stacks this way.

Kimano · 09/13/11, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by meero

It's important to know how the mechanics of the stacking works as well. If you have someone soaking 25 stacks you should be casting penance at 24 (so get 3x8) and then before that at 12-14 (so it's off cooldown at end). When people are doing less stacks i.e. 12/8 you should be saving penance for the end as well where gain more.

This is wrong. Penance gives 1/3rd of the stacks per tick, rounded down, as compared to a normal single target heal (such that all three ticks sum to the stack's closest multiple of 3, rounded down.) If Flash Heal would get you six stacks, penance will give you 2 per tick. If Flash Heal would give you 8 stacks, penance will still only give you 2 per tick, because 8/3 = 2.66 which is rounded down to 2. This means that Penance is inefficient over 5, because a flash heal will calculate it's stacks at the end of a cast, meaning more spark stacks.

The only time a disc priest should Penance is under 5 stacks (because each tick cannot give less than 1 stack per tick, which nets you bonus stacks) or when your target may die.

The shadow priest rotation for me on stacks is shield > penance > heal until about 7, where I pop Shard and PI and spam Flash the rest of the way up. For a normal target, I'll usually just use shield > penance > healx3 > shield > healx3 > shield.

Edit: Grishaan beat me to it.

Garantio · 09/14/11, 3:52 AM

I found this tactic to be the best for me for stacking on shadow priests:

start with PW:S as soon as you see the ray from the crystal, then penance, then just spam flash until it's 25. At 25 make sure to finish the last flash (you should get some feeling of this spam to understand which flash is the last) and imeddiately follow with PW:S to instantly get 5 more stacks. You'll be very low on mana at this point but sending fiend will help and later on you'll be able to regen by rapture on tanks.

grishaan · 09/14/11, 4:23 AM

I would suggest the normal PW:S-Penance start on a shadow. From then on FHspam till 10 stacks, then PI yourself spam FH until 25 and finish with a PW:S. Pop Shadowfiend and immediately start Hymn of Hope (for the 15% max mana bonus and even more mana from the hymn). This should almost get you back to full mana.
And to be exact penance is efficient until 8 stacks because it gives you 3 times 1 stack while every other heal would just give you 2 by then.
Another trick that helps a lot is to have PowerAuras or some similar addon to be set up to show you exactly when your Vital Flame drops because always before it drops, Shield the tank then when it drops you can just shield the spark target for some extra stacks followed by a penance on the tank to get Vital Flame back up. Especially when your shadowpriest takes another 25 (or even if he takes just 20 later on) it nets quite a lot of free stacks.

meero · 09/14/11, 8:59 PM

hmm oh well stand corrected on penance, good to know. seems to be pretty common misconception out there from quick Google which is probably where I got my information from originally. Seemed to make sense so didn't check it.

Not sure why people aren't using lust for first shard with spriest on heroic, only time in fight where both healers can be on the shard and tank can use cool downs to get through. Coming out of first shard with both healers on 80-100 stacks is nice and makes it easier if one of them gets tormented later. Priests can use PI but not so good for other classes.