Discipline PvE raiding compendium

I noticed that there is no centralized place for discussing discipline priests in raids and that there is no real discipline specific compendium either. I thus decided to make this thread as a place to discuss and get information about this quite new raiding spec for priests.

Note: This compendium lacks maths, most of the relevant math for both disc & holy priests can be found on the wotlk healing compendium.

Spec

The standard PvE raiding discipline build is 57/13/0. The one free is usualy put in either Healing Focus or Desperate Prayer. It is also possible to drop some talents in the discipline tree to be able to pick up Improved Healing, this would usually be done by dropping Renewed Hope, Aspiration and/or Enlightenment.

Strengths of a discipline priest

Discipline priests are highly effective at single target healing, usually on a tank. This is mostly due to their ability to throw some very powerful shields on the target of their choice and to be able to maintain extremely high hps for a short period of time with certain combos (Power Word:Shield , Penance, Greater Heal would be a good example). Discipline priests are also very efficient and will very rarely run out of mana thanks to rapture. When having a discipline priest in the raid other non discipline priests should be aware to not use Power Word: Shield on the tank at all, and limiting its use on other targets.

Weaknesses of a discipline priest

Discipline priests are weak at raid healing, they can currently not heal more then one person except if they are all in your own party (this is however changing with 3.1 with the addition of Power Word: Barrier and Prayer of Healing healing the party of the target). They do however not do a bad job at it by using a combination of Power Word: Shield (which will gain you borrowed time) , Flash Heal, Prayer of Mending and Penance. Currently, the glyph of PoH's HoT will reapply Grace each time it ticks, which makes it very effective to keep Grace up on your own party (and if it doesn't get changed in 3.1, on other parties as well). A portion of your heals will also proc Divine Aegis, shielding some of your raid members with protection against additional raid damage in the next 12 seconds.

Compared to Holy, Discipline lacks CoH, has a Prayer of Mending that is less effective and also has a more expensive Binding Heal (due to Binding Heal not proccing rapture).


Key talents

Rapture - This spells is the main reason disc priests rarely run out of mana, their heals aren't efficient by themselves, but effective healing and absorbs will return a decent amount of mana back to the priest.

Divine Aegis - This talent will cause the target to gain an extra shield which will also return mana with rapture, this gives double benefit, there will be less healing needed in the next seconds on the target and when the target gets hit the priest will get mana back.

Borrowed Time - This talent allows for very high hps for a short period of time because the buff is not consumed by channeled or instant casts while still affecting them (this makes Penance very fast). A common example would be Power Word: Shield followed by a Penance and then either Greater Heal or Flash Heal depending on the situation.

Penance - This talent is probably one of the best heals ingame, it has an 8 second cooldown with the Aspiration talent. It is a 2 second channel, this has several advantages: The first heal tick occures immediately (it does however have a very short flight time) and after that there will be 2 other ticks every second. This allows Penance to very effectivly save someone that would otherwise have died.

Grace - This talent is very helpful mostly on bossfights, where it being up will cause the tank to take significantly less damage then he otherwise would while increasing the healing you do to him. The damage reducing part does however not stack with Blessing of Sanctuary.

Mana returns from Rapture
The formula for mana returns from rapture is Because the amount healed or absorbed is divided by a constant factor rapture will be able to reach exceedingly high levels in the next few tiers of content.

Spellpower and rapture
Taken from TheDocter's post

Flash Heal -> 3/7*1.88 = 0.80571...
Greater Heal -> 6/7*1.88 = 1.611428...
Penance -> 6/7*1.88 total and /3 to get per tick = 0.537142...

So for looking at spell power to rapture you find that...

Some obvious things here are the mana return contribution of spell power increases the larger the mana pool. I used 0% crit which sets the crit factor to 1 to get the baseline results. You can figure the crit factor using (1.0*(1-crit)+1.5*crit). If you go through the work you find that 1% crit yields 1% increase multiplier against the mana pool, though that should be obvious.

Given a 25k mana pool (what I consider standard raid buffed with Naxx 25 gearing) and treating the cast time as the regen period to get a mp5 value...
Obviously from the data you can see that Penance is the best mp5 from rapture, we already knew that. We also see that 1% haste -> 1% increased mp5 from rapture returns.

Power Infusion
Power Infusion can be used in two ways, either to boost raid dps or to boost your own hps or another healers efficiency. How to use it depends on the encounter, but it should never be off cooldown for too long (to not forget this it can be handy to use an addon like power auras). It should be put on a dps on encounters where the enrage timer is being an issue (examples of this could be Malygos, where using it when there are two sparks on the raid will provide a very nice dps increase). Using it on yourself is good when you need that extra hps and efficiency. You should always keep in mind that Power Infusion does not stack with Heroism / Bloodlust, if both buffs overlap, PI will be partly wasted.

Pain Suppression
This spell is mostly useful when you know a lot of damage is incoming. This is the case on a lot of bosses that enrage (the last 5% of patchwerk would be a good example)

Stat focus
Regen and Throughput need to be balanced in a way you have as much Throughput as possible without running out of mana. Stats that will help Throughput are Spellpower, haste, crit rating and intellect (by granting crit). Stats that will help with regen are intellect, spirit, mp5, spellpower (bigger heals leads to more mana returned from rapture) and crit (mana returns via rapture caused by bigger heals and absorbs from Divine Aegis).

The value of Intellect
Taken from TheDoctor's post

1 Int = .1875mp5 (Replenishment)
1 Int = .208mp5 (6min fight, mana pool size)
1 Int = .083mp5 (6min fight, shadowfiend)
1 Int = .017mp5 (6min fight, DA absorbs procing Rapture) - Might need new modeling
1 Int = up to .5 mana per cast flash/greater heal = 4500/11460*.025*20*200/360*5 = ~.545mp5
1 Int = up to 1.5 mana per cast Penance = 3500/11460*.025*20*3/7*5 = ~.327mp5
1 Int = 1.3675mp5

Crit Stacking
Stacking crit increases your throughput and mana regen from rapture while also leaving a shield on the target that will grant you more mana when (if?) it absorbs damage. This means that stacking crit becomes less effective when your Divine Aegis start overwriting eachother. A reasonable maximum to consider for crit chance is 30%. This is not a hard cap however, as this is highly dependant on the current encounter.

Haste
This was taken from atrinitydream's post.

Below numbers indicate haste rating required to cap the GCD to 1 second. Note that PI/Heroism + BT always cap haste. Haste Modifiers stack multiplicatively. Enlightenment is included.

Haste Modifiers	Talents + Buffs Only	w/ PI (20%)	w/ BT (25%)	w/ Heroism (30%)
<none>	1405.29	624.57	468.43	324.30
3% [Moonkin/Ret Paladin]	1268.85	510.88	359.28	219.35
5% [Wrath of Air]	1182.22	438.69	289.98	152.71
3% + 5%	1052.29	330.40	186.03	52.76

Efficiency
Haste for obvious reasons has a negative effect on rate of mana usage, but what is not widely recognized is that if you are able to add x amount of haste rating and consequently do less overhealing, the additional mana returned from Rapture can easily compensate for the loss in efficiency due to casting more.

At approximately mid-Naxx25 gear levels (2200 spell power, 30% crit, 200 haste) and average amounts of overheal (50% overheal on non-crits, 65% on crits, 25% of DAs lost due to overwriting or non-absorption), for FH adding 10 points of haste requires you do to .5% less overhealing.

This number is variable based on the amount of overhealing you do as well as your current gear level, etc., but the point is that haste does not have as great a negative impact on efficiency as is believed.

Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly, the amount of overheal needed to zero out the mana loss from haste decreases as crit, spell power, and particularly max mana increase (in other words, as gear improves).

Data is below:

The relevant portions of the Python script (I hate Excel) used to generate this data are below (so those more knowledgeable than I can check my math). I left out basic calculations like those for cast time and base flash heal amount. Grace is NOT assumed to be up. NOTE: For clarity, '_add' refers to calculations when adding x amount of haste (10, in my sample runs above), which as they're identical for everything except the last four lines I've omitted to try to save space. I can provide the full script upon request.

Non-tangible Benefits

It also bears noting that haste increases ability (this is more noticeable in large quantities than small) to concentrate on more than one target at once as well as further supports Discipline's already strong ability to reactively, rather than exclusively proactively, heal.

Gems
Throughput
Red slots: [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
Yellow slots: [Potent Monarch Topaz], [Luminous Monarch Topaz] or [Reckless Monarch Topaz]
Blue slots: [Purified Twilight Opal]

Regen
Red slots: [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
Yellow slots: [Brilliant Autumn's Glow]
Blue slots: [Seer's Forest Emerald]

Metaslot
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] is the superior metagem at lower gear levels and when regen is a significant problem.
[Ember Skyflare Diamond] will grant more intellect then the IED if you have more then 1.1k intellect. It is also the prefered metagem for Throughput. It does however usualy provide less regen overal then IED but the fact that it does not require any blue gems in your gear and also grants spellpower makes it the superior choice in most cases.

Regen granted by IED vs ESD
Taken from TheDoctor's post.

IED is worth ~30mp5 on average... So for ESD to equal its regen you need to reach, 30/1.3675 = 21.93 Int + 21 Int = 42.93 Int. This requires an unreal amount of Int somewhere around ~1900 unbuffed. Though at 1500 Int you receive more than the minimum mana regen that the IED models to.


Enchants
Head: [Arcanum of Burning Mysteries] - Kirin tor revered

Shoulders: [Greater Inscription of the Storm] or [Lesser Inscription of the Storm] - Exalted and Honored with Sons of Hodir respectively. If you are an inscriptor you will ofcourse use the inscriptor only enchant.

Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Speed or Darkglow Embroidery if you're a tailor

Chest: Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats

Bracers: Enchant Bracers - Superior Spellpower

Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Exceptional Spellpower

Belt: [Eternal Belt Buckle]

Leggings: [Brilliant Spellthread]

Boots: Enchant Boots - Greater Vitality or Enchant Boots - Greater Spirit, whichever gives most regen at your current gear level. Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality is also viable if survability is needed.

Rings: Enchant Ring - Greater Spellpower (enchanter only)

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spellpower

Glyphs
Major Slots
I consider the [Glyph of Power Word: Shield] and the [Glyph of Flash Heal] a must for major slots, the third major slot can then be filled with either [Glyph of Dispel Magic], [Glyph of Prayer of Healing], [Glyph of Renew] or [Glyph of Holy Nova] depending on personal preference and what encounter your guild is currently working on.


Minor Slots
There are a few decent minor glyphs you can choose between, their advantages vary, I will list them all here.

[Glyph of Fading] - I consider any glyph that can save you mana in combat an acceptable minor glyph

[Glyph of Levitate] - This removes the reagent cost from levitate, this is VERY handy. As it often happens to end up without light feathers right at the moment you need one to prevent getting killed.

[Glyph of Shadowfiend] - With this glyph, it is possible to get mana back from your shadowfiend the regular way, and then try to position it so it dies and you get another 5% extra mana. This is however quite tricky to do but can be quite rewarding.

[Glyph of Shadow Protection] - This glyph will make your Shadow Protection and Prayer of Shadow Protection last longer, this is mostly handy on very long encounters where you find you have to rebuff it midfight (though that is mostly irrelevant if you buffed everyone right before the fight or if a paladin is providing an aura of shadow protection)

Consumables
Flask
The flash you choose depends if you need throughput or regen more, usually [Flask of the Frost Wyrm] is taken but [Flask of Pure Mojo] can be taken when regen is really an issue.

Food
[Firecracker Salmon], [Spicy Blue Nettlefish], [Item not found!] and [Tender Shoveltusk Steak] are the superior choices when it comes to food. It is however also possible that someone in your raid will setup a [Fish Feast] for you to use, providing the exact same amount of spellpower as the salmon would have provided.

Trinkets
There are a few very good trinkets for discipline, what you use as trinkets very much depends on the encounter and on what gear you have.

[Soul of the Dead] - Nice trinket giving a lot of crit as well as a nice on crit regen proc, its internal cooldown is 45 seconds.
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul] - With Disc priests usualy chaincasting, this trinket pretty much equals a permanent 200 spellpower bonus.
[Je'Tze's Bell] - This trinket gives a good amount of spellpower, has a decent regen broc and is BoE, it is a very good alternative to the above trinkets if they don't seem to drop.
[The Egg of Mortal Essence] - The value of this trinket depends how much use you take in the haste proc. If you see yourself getting full use of the haste proc most of the time, its a very valuable trinket.
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness] - The intellect version of this trinket gives a very high boost to regen and procs often enough to combine it with shadowfiend, increasing its value. The amount of regen this trinket gives allows you to remove some regen from other slots.

Optimal gear list
Thanks to Ashnell for this gear list.

Items:
[Hood of Rationality] with [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] & [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
[Cosmic Lights]
[Mantle of Dissemination]
[Pennant Cloak] with [Purified Twilight Opal]
[Digested Silken Robes]
[Unsullied Cuffs] with [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
[Valorous Handwraps of Faith] with [Potent Monarch Topaz]
[Leash of Heedless Magic] with [Potent Monarch Topaz]
[Leggings of Mortal Arrogance] with [Purified Twilight Opal] & [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
[Arcanic Tramplers]
[Band of Channeled Magic]
[Signet of Manifested Pain]
[Torch of Holy Fire]
[Accursed Spine]
[Plague Igniter]

With raidbuffs and enchant you stats will look like this(from rawr):
Spellpower: 2633 + 200 from [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
Crit: 35,89% + (4% from Renewed Hope)
Haste: 25,12%
Mana: 24328
Int: 1383
Spirit: 1066
MP5: 562

[Glyph of Dispel Magic] is really lackluster to me since they nerfed the healing by 3% and the HoT portion of [Glyph of Prayer of Healing] usually gets sniped, however it's still a decent glyph (Mostly for 10's I'd say). I would rather recommend [Glyph of Renew] or [Glyph of Holy Nova] as the third major glyph (Going by personal preference).
Holy Nova glyph makes holy nova comparable to Circle of Healing in terms of hps, downsides being it's range and party limited, but with no cooldown.

As long as we are still awaiting the major buff to PoH in 3.1, the glyph for it may be not that great. However, speaking of 3.1, it gets buffed quite a lot. Therefore, I would recommend using the glyph to "get a feeling" for it as long as we have the time to pratice with it.

Thank you very much for starting this thread by the way. Let's hope for it to develop into a major source of knowledge for the Discs among us.

I think the +16 int gem is a solid competitor to the potent monarch for yellow slots. Also, meta gem [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] to add.

I would argue a 58/13 build, how often does one ever cast desperate prayer? I don't even recall where it is at on my toolbar. A point in absolution would be better, or even 1 point in Imp DS if you are still grinding rep.

I anticipate some of us will be posting a BiS list for Disc gear, my next post will be on 'can I live with the [Life-Binder's Locket] until [Cosmic Lights] drops'?

Being a fan of Constantius, I am collecting a some of the 'meh for disc' gear from his compodium thread, and finding that getting some of this gear gets you a more balanced build (which i feel is necessary to effectively raid heal). With the new info in this thread, and some of the great information in the 3.0 compodium, maybe I can actually backup my feelings and experience with numbers.

And yes, thanks for the new thread! I will be adding to it as I can, i enjoy disc a lot. I would love to have metrics to compare my performance, i get disheartened seeing my hps numbers against the other healers sometimes.

For blue slots, [Dazzling Forest Emerald] and/or [Seer's Forest Emerald] would seem to be two excellent choices for regen, and as mentioned above me, [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] pretty much blows away every other meta gem in the game.

I find myself gearing for throughput as much as possible when it comes to gems.

Red - [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
Yellow - [Potent Monarch Topaz]
Blue - [Item not found!] (on places I don't care about the socket bonus, I usually stick a Runed Scarlet Ruby here. Perhaps I should be using the 9sp/8spi gem, but I don't really notice any problems with mana regen..ever..so it's somewhat of a moot point (though I suppose the spirit would be decent for standing around, and a bit more transferrable when swapping to holy if I have to).

I might start looking at crit/haste gems though, but I think I might just wait until the epic gems come (if they're the same ones I see in WoWhead, there are some very nice gems) before going mad on swapping stuff around.

Thanks for starting this thread! Looking good so far, just a few comments

I think in the section on gems and also the section on stats (for picking gear) we should specify regen versus throughput choices. Several people have mentioned that they prefer one over the other so I think it is important that we mention both. Something like


Throughput
Red slots: [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
Yellow slots: [Potent Monarch Topaz]
Blue slots: [Purified Twilight Opal]

Regen
Red slots: [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
Yellow slots: [Brilliant Autumn's Glow]
Blue slots: [Seer's Forest Emerald]


And in the Stats section I think we should mention the way you weight stats will change with gear level. I mean that when beginning raiding (wearing blues) regen stats like intellect should be a priority but once your mana pool reaches 22k-23k you should start to shift gem/gear focus to throughput stats because at that point with replenishment/rapture you can outlast any fight.

"Gear level" is quite a vague term. I do not see a possibilty to draw a line between "gear levels" as a shadowpriest may have with "under hitcap" and "reached hitcap".
So let's try to stay as clear as possible: more than 30% crit is not that effective as stated above. INT and SPI should be on a level that you don't run oom in the longest fight your guild does right now. Personally, I would recommend about 22k- 23k mana as Squeakster wrote as a good goal to reach for. Then comes the throughput, which means spellpower and haste. The question here is: which stat will provide you with more raw healing/time? I wasn't able to find a mathematical approach to it, so please feel free to post some thoughts on this topic. I will try to get more haste sooner or later because I think that we mainly cast very fast or even instant spells and therefore can profit a lot from lowering our global cooldown.
So my rule of thumb I would like to see discussed:
After you reach 30% crit, aim for more haste.

This my suggestion for the best disc gear avaible in the current content. It may vary dependant on your professions.

Items:
[Hood of Rationality] with [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] & [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
[Cosmic Lights]
[Mantle of Dissemination]
[Pennant Cloak] with [Purified Twilight Opal]
[Digested Silken Robes]
[Unsullied Cuffs] with [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
[Valorous Handwraps of Faith]with [Potent Monarch Topaz]
[Leash of Heedless Magic] with [Potent Monarch Topaz]
[Leggings of Mortal Arrogance] with [Purified Twilight Opal] & [Runed Scarlet Ruby]
[Arcanic Tramplers]
[Band of Channeled Magic]
[Signet of Manifested Pain]
[Torch of Holy Fire]
[Accursed Spine]
[Plague Igniter]
[Soul of the Dead]
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul]

Consumables:
[Flask of the Frost Wyrm]
[Firecracker Salmon]

With raidbuffs and enchant you stats will look like this(from rawr):
Spellpower: 2633 + 200 from [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
Crit: 36,51% + (4% from Renewed Hope)
Haste: 26,24%
Mana: 24298
Int: 1381
Spirit: 1018
MP5(In FSR): 546

[Edit] Exchanged [Valorous Gloves of Faith] with [Valorous Handwraps of Faith]

Regarding the best gear list I mostly agree. Just want to add one variation which is sometimes overlooked: [Valorous Handwraps of Faith] , the shadow version, is actually a very good choice for disc, too. Especially if you only use one Valorous anyway (so no set bonus) I'd prefer those.

You're are absolutely right [Valorous Handwraps of Faith] are the better choice and I had overlooked those. I'll edit my post.

Lovely guide!
I like the [Luminous Monarch Topaz], is there a good reason it's not in the list? It gives us two of our most important stats.
I would also like to mention [Forge Ember] as a very good alternative until you can get the trinkets listed.
Also for foods these are alternatives: [Spicy Blue Nettlefish], [Item not found!], [Tender Shoveltusk Steak]

Edit: Wowhead links, food.

Great thread! Thanks a lot!

I have a question about 2-set T7 bonus you're dropping in your BiS set. If we take holy shoulders and gloves both with 19sp gems we will have

Int: 0
Spi: -39
SP: -18
Crit: 40
Haste: 37

I wonder if it does or doesn't worth 6th PoM bounce. In some fights with constant raid damage (Sapphiron, Malygos vortex in P1 and most of P2) PoM will make all bounced inside the cd but 40 crit and 37 haste should work on every other fight. So I'm really confused choosing between these. May be keep 2 sets?

An "optimal gear list" ist just the best allrounder gear out there (and will vary, depending on taste and playstyle). That doesn't mean that it's the best gear in any given situation, so if you're doing progress it's always worthwhile to bring additional gear (e.g. Setpieces for a specific setbonus, different trinkets, etc.). So yes, even if I had all the pieces on my "optimal gear list" I would probably wear 2 T7.5 on an encounter with elements designed like Malygos vortex.

I would argue that the BiS chest piece is the Sanctum's Flowing Vestments. It seems the crit Vs. haste argument was overtaken in the holy thread and I would like to continue that discussion here. As my final set would opt for more haste.

In agreement with Sureall. The hardest encounters in WotLK require plenty of haste, and the [The Sanctum's Flowing Vestments] can't be beaten for that, especially when considering they have 2 gem slots. I would gem them with [Potent Monarch Topaz] and [Dazzling Forest Emerald], personally.
Evolve's guide is shaping up nicely. Please consider adding [Je'Tze's Bell] and [The Egg of Mortal Essence] as trinket alternatives. Both are pretty easy to obtain, and are excellent for Discipline.

To answer Garantio regarding the T7 2 set bonus, I would say that should better gear drop don't hesitate to lose this set bonus; current fights are rarely causing the 6th Mending to go off before the cooldown is up. If you can heal through Sapphiron or Malygos' vortex fine without it, then don't worry too much about keeping the bonus.

Thanks for posting this. It's nice to have a centralized spot for discipline information. I'd like to add a bit of my own opinions, however.

Metagem: I am currently using [Ember Skyflare Diamond]. Certainly IED is the best regen meta in game, but I have absolutely no regen issues at all anymore. I am sitting at 1224 int unbuffed (without using a single int gem), so the 2% int gives me more int & mana than the IED, plus I get an extra 25 spellpower. If/when I run into mana problems later, I will probably switch back to IED. However, I consider it a very viable option once one has reached a certain gear level.

Trinket: The value of [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] for both Holy and Disc priests has been discussed extensively in the Healing compendium 3.0. I would suggest adding it to the list, as it is an exceptional regen trinket. I was also skeptical of the usefulness of the proc before I acquired the trinket, however, I am never disappointed when it procs, and it procs often. In fact, it procs regularly enough to be able to time using shadowfiend with it, which greatly increases the value of the proc.

I'd like to suggest putting [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] on the trinket list. Quick comparision between it and [Soul of the Dead].
Base Stats
DC:G, 90 int
SotD: 95 crit rating
This is a simple tradeoff between throughput and regen.
Proc
DC:G Provide ~120MP5 on the proc, as well as a small crit boost for the duration (see my other post for maths)
SotD restores 900 mana every 45 seconds in the best case scenario, which is 100 MP5.
Crit Chance:
DC:G, (90int + 300int*30% uptime)*125%(Kings+Mental Strength) = ~225 Int = 1.35 crit%.
SotD, 95 crit rating = 2.07 crit%, which suffers from diminishing returns.
Overall Difference:
DC:G, +1687 Mana, +20 or more MP5
Sotd, +0.72 or less crit%.

edit: looks like I got beat to the suggestion...

I wanted to add two things to this great thread.

1.) When we're talking about 30% crit, etc we're talking 'with raid buffs' right? And that's not counting the extra crit we get from targets having weakened soul, right? It's probably obvious, but I wanted to make sure the terms of the discussion were set early.

2.) Personally, I had a problem as Disc with a lot of my heals getting sniped by CoH/Druid HoTs/etc. So I started stacking a lot of haste so that my reaction time was improved. According to recount, on instructor razuvious I was pushing 4000 hps at my peak when I was healing up the Mind Control NPCs on that fight.

Since we get a crit bonus off targets with weakened soul, why is crit so important to us? Wouldn't haste or spellpower be a much more efficient way of going about it for throughput??

Again this is hard to math out since heal meters suck in general.

On a side note, why does everyone insist on speccing into Inner Focus? Our regen is mostly via our talents, we don't dip 005SR very often.. Personally I have both points in Imp DS just to help raid DPS a bit.

1. I'm by no means expert or have done the math myself. But the benefits of crit when you have specced Divine Aegis and Inspiration should be pretty obvious, as should the reason you can have to much. If you crit again before your divine aegis is used up or inspiration expires then each critpoint start to be worth less.

2. Are you talking about raidhealing? If so ofcourse we are not the best spec to do that.

Haste is nice but rarely needed on tankhealing since you are usually spamming/stopcasting anyway. Inner focus is very good for prayer of healing(25% extra crit) and if you do have a Shaman that gives spellpowertotem, then theres really no other place to put that point that is good enough.

First of thanks for starting this thread. Though the lacking math is a problem in my opinion. The Holy priests thread has a portion of the math that applies to Discipline, however if this is going to be a thorough discussion and centralized location it should have all pertinent information.

This should be a discussion not an initial claim. Holy can cast 1 CoH on a 6 sec CD which from my experience doesn't provide signification advantage over what a skilled Disc priest can manage using PW:S -> Borrowed Time hasted Flashes. I will grant that Holy is better but I don't find it to be "much" better, and Disc surely is not "very ineffective". If you base it on AoE healing then Holy and Disc are both considered ineffective as AoE healers as Holy's only real AoE raid heal is on a 6sec CD and Disc has none. Though I think you intended to discuss it as "Raid Healing".

I find that the trade off is Disc/Holy cast the same number of Flash heals for raid healing with Disc's being on average weaker. Both keep PoM bouncing. Disc replaces 1 Flash with a Penance which is a) about the healing of Gheal in the time of flash b) can be mana free and c) triple stacks grace on 1 target. Then the comparison is 2 PW:S in the 6 second window vs. 1 CoH. CoH touchs more targets for topping up however PW:S is more valuable to 2 targets that will continue taking damage.

The 3.1 PoH change is going to significantly level the playing field so long as the healing buff to CoH isn't extremely high. While Holy's PoH will be stronger and cheaper, Discs will be faster to cast (DA procs will provide some mana return based on crit rate and the shield effective use). Disc will also be getting some sort of multi-target PW:S that we know little about thus far. Another benefit to Disc with the PoH change, though it may well be a bug that will get repaired at some point, it that the hot from Glyph of PoH re-applies grace which is great for keeping a 3 stack on a large number of people.

What leads you to believe that more than 23k mana is non-optimal? Increasing mana pool yields the best regen increase for Disc currently. Larger mana pool > rapture returns > mana fiend returns > replenishment returns. 25k mana vs. 23k mana on a 3 minute fight is the equivalent of, 2000/(3*60/5) = 55.6 mp5 over the fight just account for the difference in mana pool and not any of the other benefits.

Crit has value from a mana return and throughput perspective though to what extent is not sufficiently modeled. Crit heals that are effective increase the mana return from rapture, this is more significant for Flash than Greater Heal due to greater more likely being at/near the 11460 healing mark on non-crits. Conversely, Crits impact to Greater Heal DA's is larger though greater heal is used less. Back to back crits have less value because a non-consumed DA has no value for both rapture and keeping the target alive so overwriting DA's has to be a concern. Not that crit isn't important but without supporting math it is just a guess. Take a look at l337n00bs spreadsheet and you will find that haste is higher value than crit, with which my own calculations agree.

Stat weights vary greatly based on spell selection and playstyle as well. For example if you always use the Borrowed Time proc on Flash, less haste is required because you quickly reach sub 1 sec Flash Heals. Though if you use BT on either GHeal or PoH more haste stacking is valuable.

[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] - Is only superior at lower gear levels and when regen is a significant problem.
[Ember Skyflare Diamond] - Is superior as a combined throughput and regen meta. At 1100 Int it provides more intelligence than the Insightful.

1 Int = .1875mp5 (Replenishment)
1 Int = .208mp5 (6min fight, mana pool size)
1 Int = .083mp5 (6min fight, shadowfiend)
1 Int = .017mp5 (6min fight, DA absorbs procing Rapture) - Might need new modeling
1 Int = up to .5 mana per cast flash/greater heal = 4500/11460*.025*20*200/360*5 = ~.545mp5
1 Int = up to 1.5 mana per cast Penance = 3500/11460*.025*20*3/7*5 = ~.327mp5
1 Int = 1.3675mp5

IED is worth ~30mp5 on average... So for ESD to equal its regen you need to reach, 30/1.3675 = 21.93 Int + 21 Int = 42.93 Int. This requires an unreal amount of Int somewhere around ~1900 unbuffed. Though at 1500 Int you receive more than the minimum mana regen that the IED models too, considering you also receive spell power it is well worth it. Using ESD also frees you from having to use any Purple gems which are in all ways inferior, unless you really want the socket bonus.

As others have noted [Luminous Monarch Topaz] and [Reckless Monarch Topaz] are alternative choices to Potent. In principle I would lean to Luminous first, Reckless second, and then Potent. My own modeling and stat weighting also put the Sanctum's Flowing Vestments as best in slot, and I definitely do not agree with the Digested Silken Robes as best in slot.

Another thought is that healers in general shouldn't be focused on topping the "meters". The "meter" mentality is a major reason why Discipline looks like a poor performer for those that don't dig deeper. Once I complete work on my new combat tracking mod that provides data about Disc priests impact to healing I will make a link available here for those that are interested in using it. Currently, you can modify recount to track PW:S and DA though it is solely tracking the amount applied and has no information on what is used. This causes the data to be incredibly skewed, I have seen recounts where I show doing 5-10% more healing on a 25man full clear of Naxx.

The main problem we will encounter and already do encounter in discussions with other healers is the lack of empirical data. TheDoctor already mentioned the main problem: absorbed damage, though listed in the combatlog, is not specified. No matter how hard you try to find a possibility to track your absorbs, the mechanics of the current combatlog just show:

No clue if the amount of damage absorbed was absorbed by PW:S or DA or even an other ability cast by someone in the raid. If there are questions asked by members of your raid, try to explain why you can't show them what you did during a fight because of the problem shown above. It is highly important that you explain this to prevent further misinformations about Power Word: Shield and Discpriests in general.

Your math seems correct as far as I can see and calculate. The main reason 23k is a "cap" stated in the above mentioned post is that we do not need more manareg as we have got right now as soon as we pass the magial barrier of 20k. However, it is possible that we will have to fight bosses where we need more manareg, especially with Ulduar on my mind. Therefore, we need to state in the main post the math TheDoctor provided us with. Thanks a lot for that, although you could show your calculation and explain the approach you took to achieve these results.

I would like to have more empirical and theoretical input on the question of Crit VS. Haste. My main problem when trying to find a mathematical clue is that if we assume a certain time healing, haste also gets us more crits. Perhaps there is someone out there who could model a formula for our education regarding Crit VS. Haste.