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.

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.

@Garantio: I agree with coloneclaw the 2-set bonus isn't worth the tradeoff.

BiS list I made, is of course made to fit my current playstyle. It might be a good idea to trade some crit for haste, I don't know yet, but I hope to find out.

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 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.

Well while our regen is good now once we can target PoH and depending on the cost of Barrier... More regen might be well worth it. I run 26k+ mana raid buffed right now and don't worry that I have too much and am not sacrificing other stats to get there.

Speaking about maths , did I miss the "rapture cap" on any of those threads ?

What is the exact amount of heal or absorb that will give us back those 2,5% ?

I ran some tests tonight and I ended with a number close to 9330 but then I have a few other questions :

- If I land a Crit Greater heal for 10K (just an easy number for calculations) , will I get 2,5% from rapture + the approx. 0,8% from the aegis ? Or will it consider the total "healing" being 13K and then give me back only 2,5% ?

- Rapture regen scales well , because it does with int AND Spellpower, but did anyone made a model of wich one scales the better at differents levels of gear ?




Done with rapture...

Now about crit vs haste topic : I think we have 2 great tools (Power Infusion and BT) that allow us to haste ourselves when needed and so Crit seems to me a better option for regular troughput , even if it seems weird I admit it, the fact is that I value the absorptions effects high , mainly because it IS our strenght and a shield can not be sniped by another healer, making Haste less "needed" , even being a very good troughput stat . I found 40% crit on my tank(s) (raidbuffed and renewed hope) being a good number to avoid losing some aegis but this is totally my feeling.


Sorry for my english.

I posted a good deal on rapture returns in the other thread but the end result is....

Rapture Mana Return = (Healed or Absorbed Amount / 11460) * 2.5% * Mana Pool

The fact that the divsor (~11460) is a constant factor will cause rapture returns to reach exceedingly high levels in the next tier or two of content. Very rarely does the 11460 not result in the right amount in calculation and when it is off it underestimates by less than 5 mana from what have ever witnessed.

I'm not worried about the maths for crits vs haste. It's quite easy to compute best hps numbers, once given a model.

But we all know that healing is not just hps : it's more about timing the right heal at the right moment. That's one point for haste, it allows more timing, even if it does not reduce the cd on our best heals (penance, PW:S and maybe POM).

The second problem is the one of the model : the answer will highly depends on some parameters of the model, such as the self over-writting of the DA shields. One key factor is also the damage pattern, and whom you are healing (heal pool and avoidance), and the healers that assists you.

For all this reasons (and because I'm currently heavily busy at work), I won't compute hps number for haste and crit. But you may find them in Rawr for example ;-)

That's also one point I'd like to give a warning. I agree it is sup-optimal to stack heavily crit. 30% for me is a fine value indeed. But please do not remember this value as a magic number : it's an estimate, not precise, nothing like the hit cap for dps for example. So don't bother whether weakened soul is included or not, it's not that precise and clear, and will depends on fights.

One point about raid healing : holy has not only COH for raid healing. It also has a better POM than Disc, and a better binding heal (mainly, binding heal is heavily mana-consuming for disc, as it does not proc rapture). In 3.1, serependity will also change, but that's not yet.