Thank you for your advice. ICC 10 last night:
1. I got rid of overcasting renew on raid members.
5. There was no unnecessary damage on raid members.
These two helped a lot and I did not have any mana issue last night.

Here is a question from the 5 list above:
2. Optimize regen via Rapture.

Rapture - Spell - World of Warcraft
If it happens every 12 sec, it means it will happen every 12 sec by shielding tanks.
Is there any better strategy for optimizing regen via Rapture?

Yes, if you're raid healing, you can do much, much better on rapture returns. If multiple shields pop simultaneously when rapture is off cooldown, they'll ALL proc rapture. For example, shield all the non-tank melee on Gormokk. When he does his stomp, he'll break all the shields simultaneously, giving you a ton of mana back. Similar strategies work very well on Freya with ground tremor, Algalon and Kologarn. This strategy tends to not work as well on fights with aura damage ticks or aoe that varies significantly in the amount of damage it deals.

1. Short answer: it adds to both.

2. Yes, meditation stacks with both, though note that meditation+spirit tap will only take you to 100% regen while casting.

Discipline Priest Gearing:

Hello all, sorry if this has been asked 100 times, I've searched around, read the stat weights, talked to other priest, and am still just left unsure.

I have heard of the disc haste cap of 154 for 1 second GCD's with BT, and about 320 for 11% haste which gives 50% haste with raid buffs and BT. Currently I am a little above that, and experience .9 seconds FL's when using BT or during heroism, which is just wasted haste as I have to wait for the GCD. However, I also find myself tank healing quite a bit, so when BT or heroism are NOT active, haste does help bring my FH's down to about 1.2 seconds.

I also have a lot of crit. Mostly from gear, but I also have been socketing based on a .5sp value to crit. I have been told by guilds that I apply to (and top 100 nonetheless), that my socketing is all wrong, and that I should be socketing for as much int and MP5 as I can get. I have absolutely NO IDEA why, as as a disc priest I have NEVER had any mana issues. Is there something I am missing here? I understand intellect buffs crit slightly as well, but nowhere near as well as socketing for crit.

Should I just regem straight spellpower? I keep reading post as people's opinions saying that crit is pretty useless to gem for as a disc priest. I currently don't really have any problems in tank healing [with a little bit of raid tossed in between; see: festergut] (which is where I like to position myself as a disc priest).

And for the future of my ICC gearing, I was planning on trying to keep around 320 haste and pick up mostly spirit crit gear, as the 'wasted haste' during heroism and BT irritates me. But at the same time, the 'I never have mana issues' part of me see's that spirit could be a useless stat (if I'm not having mana issues) and would be better used as haste (even if it will sometimes, be useless).

In case you didn't want to be crit by a wall of text, I'm going to summarize it quickly. How should I really be gemming re: sp/crit/int? As I continue to progress through ICC should I be reaching for crit/spirit or crit/haste gear?

Thanks for your time.

As for socketing: as a discipline priest, if you have serious mana issues, socket int. If you don't (most people don't) socket straight spellpower, except perhaps if this wastes a seriously good socket bonus.

As for haste: this is/has been debated a lot. The value beyond the soft cap depends a lot on your raid healing situation. There's no short answer - the long answer is in the healing threads here.

I can't ever think why a disc priest would need to gem for crit. I'm currently sitting a tad over 40% unbuffed. Especially if you say that you do a fair amount of time as MT healing then the haste/crit/sp AND int all play a part. Your role in raid varies and that is what dictates what gemming you should aim for. My preference, knowing what my raids needs are, is that I gem mostly 12sp/10 int, with a few straight sp gems.

Thanks for the reply's regarding my gemming all. I will start socketing straight spellpower (save really good socket bonuses) in my discipline gear. I am still wondering as to what your personal preferences will be as discipline gearing in ICC. Are you going to aim for the softcap of haste and then shoot for crit/spirit after there? Or just pickup whatever pieces have the most crit/sp and if they have haste all the better?

I've completely ignored the set bonuses and have gone for full stats in my choosing of gear. As much spell power, crit and haste as I can get, while still keeping my mana high enough to allow me to spam shields, tank heal, or whatever else the raid may need that day. When choosing an upgrade for disc, it's irrelevant to me if it has spirit on it since we do not get an increase in spell power like that of holy priests.

You may want to check out the Discipline thread for more suggestions on stats and gearing for disc.

I gem for pure SP, like most disc here, but still occasionally go for SP/int and have a few SP/Spi left over. On gear my preference is Crit > haste > Mp5 > Spi, but an iLvl upgrade is a SP upgrade (same sockets) even if it has spirit; I loathe to give up thoughput for inferior regen.

Hi there everyone! Yes our T10 bonuses are iffy making our tier less desirable and offset pieces from bosses in ICC look all the more yummy. My question is about our 2 piece T9 bonus ( 20% increase to our beloved POM). Anyone done the math on spell power to figure out when we can switch out of our t9 and take those yummy offset pieces and have our POM heal for the around the same amount?

Your prayer of mending will be bigger with T9 pieces until at least the next expansion, even if you're using 232 T9 but would be upgrading to 277 T10. You gain less than 200 spellpower for upgrading two pieces that much, and you'd need to increase your spellpower significantly more than 20% to get a 20% increase to your prayer of mending. That doesn't mean that you should never replace your T9 though, since prayer of mending isn't your only spell.

I have a question regarding Disc vs Holy single target HPS.

I'm a shadow priest but I am required to heal on 10m runs if encounters are healing intensive, and on 25m for Valithria. I am disc right now as shadow gear can easily be good for disc (haste/crit/sp/low regen). I feel insufficient as disc healing on heavy raid damage/aura fights on 10m. But my priority is 25m Valithria of cos, since dot classes tend to be less useful on "burst adds down" fight.

My question is, can Holy HPS rival Disc HPS for tank(single target) healing (for example, on Valithria)?

With a good chunk of regen, I would say that holy has a better healing throughput.
On a pure throughput fight like Valithria, Disc cannot benefit from all its absorbtion effect, nor from PW:S. Both of them are really significant in its performance. If as holy, you have enough mana to spam constantly on her, you shall be able to give more healing than a disc can with flash+penance spam : holy has just better talents for direct healing (empowered healing, divine fury, serependity, better renew, more spellpower, divine providence (for binding heals), etc.).
But you could be healing on the raid as Disc, and let another healer be on the tank.

Do not underestimate having a Disc Priest that can use Power Infusion on other high throughput healers late in the fight. Last night we did Dreamwalker and had me and another priest go disc and stay outside of the portals to heal tanks. We rotated power infusion on a holy paladin who was stacking the healing buff in the dream world.

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Me as disc, beating a holy on Valithra. I know it doesn't really constitute proof, but disc can do really good on Dreamwalker imo.

Disc can be good, that's correct.
However, I don't understand why your other priest (Elvissa if I'm correct) is not using binding heal instead of flash. On the armory, he doesn't seems to have the 2-T10 bonus, and binding heal is then more heal per cast.
He doesn't have any point in empowered healing, which does not help on this fight either for max throughput.
I also couldn't find the buff from the dream portals, but I assume that both of you had it in similar way.


I just made a quick list of bonus for such a fight for boss specs :

Disc :
4% healing + 9% healing from grace + focused power
6% spirit -> useless here
6% haste from enlightment
4+3% crit from renewed hope (if you cast PW:S) and focused will, + added crit from added intellect (@2000 intellect, that's 300 more, so about 2% crit)
Divine fury ~ 20% haste
Penance and Power Infusion
I didn't count Borrowed time, because it's uptime would be typically very small if you spam on Valithra.

Holy :
10% +3% healing from spiritual healing + blessed resilience
5% spirit for SoR
10% healing on binding heal from divine providence
Serependity+Divine fury (consider for simplicity that a gh heals for twice bh, for a cast time that is similar with 3 stacks) : that's 5 bh in the time of 4, or 25% haste.
More spellpower from spiritual guidance
Empowered healing : for 3500 spellpower, that's about 700 more healing per flash, before other talents (13%) -> 800 more healing per flash, which is about 9% more healing on flash from Elvissa's numbers (8800 for non-crit in mean).
Guardian spirit
A better renew

Cancelling similar effect on both sides (9+4% ~ 10+3% more healing, spirit cancels out, 20% + 6% haste ~ 25% haste), your left with
Disc sides : ~9% crit, Penance, Power Infusion
Holy side : 10% on binding heals, more spellpower, 9% more (empowered healing) on binding / flash / gh, renew, guardian spirit
Left things are difficult to quantify, but I would say that holy side is better (especially if you're the first holy : Guardian Spirit is powerful there).

Now, keep in mind that this was done assuming the same stuff. A holy priest typically has more spirit and less crit-haste than a disc priest has, because you usually need more regen as holy. Which means that with that stuff difference, you might have more throughput as disc than as holy.
The comparison would however still be valid for a shadowpriest which would have the choice of going holy or disc for that specific size, with the same stuff in both cases.

As this is the Simple Q&A thread, thought I'd post here.

I've been searching around, asking people in-game, and I was wondering what your thoughts on the best End-game raiding proffs are.

I've come to the conclusion JC is obviously the best, but then I'm not 100% sure on the 2nd. Some people have informed me that its down to personal prefrence and spec. leading to either Enchanting / Engineering / Alchemy.

Are you asking for a Holy/Disc Priest or Shadow Priest? The answer is simple for Shadow: Engineering and Jewelcrafting. The reasoning is covered in the Shadow Priest Theorycrafting Thread.

I don't think there is a whole lot of difference between professions for a Holy/Disc Priest. In my opinion, Jewelcrafting is the best because it allows you to decide how you want to spend your bonus. That allows you to significantly boost your Haste, INT, or Spellpower depending on your current gearing situation.

Aside from Jewelcrafting, most professions end up being a flat 46ish Spellpower. I went with Enchanting + Inscription, partially because I didn't want to do Hodir dailies back when Wrath first came out.

BS gives you the same ability to pick and choose stats that JC does.

On the Lich King fight(10 man), as disc, is it worth shielding the tanks in phase 3 or should one simply stick to shielding the raid in an attempt to get more Rapture procs? For what it is worth, we're going to use 2 paladin tanks.

Also, on another thread, it said how SP much was needed to absorb the defile in 25 man, but not in 10 man.... how much would be needed for 10man?

Thinking of dropping Tailoring for BS because its getting really worthless atm...

I wanted to know how other shadow priests are handling Val'kyrs on the Lich King encounter. As I'm glyphed for Mind Sear anyway, for Vile Spirits, I'm guessing the best approach would be to put VT on each Val'kyr, followed by Mind Sear on the Lich King, until the Val'kyrs go out of range for it. Is this what others are doing? My Val'kyr DPS is lackluster at the moment, and I'm looking to improve it.