Discipline Healing Compendium

More additions to come...

This compendium will work hand-in-hand with Constantius's thread general priest items will remain there primarily. Disc specific items, additions… etc will be here. This is a compilation of data contributed on threads such as the "WotLK Healing Compendium v3.0..." and the previous Discipline Priest compendium thread. For specific information about Shadow specs please refer to there latest threads for the most current information.

Disclaimer: This thread and this post will evolve with current theorycraft. While the data presented here should be accurate it is advisable that you use it with some discretion. Errors, omissions, and significant additions should be PM'd to me to ensure I update the main body of this post. Remember Discipline has only been a viable PvE healing spec for a short time and doesn't have a long theorycraft history from which to draw.

Terminology
A short list of terms that will be used in this thread and in the dicussion following.

BT - Borrowed Time
DA - Divine Aegis
WS - Weakened Soul
oo5sr - Out of 5 second rule
i5sr - Inside of 5 second rule
PoM - Prayer of Mending
PoH - Prayer of Healing
HpM - Healing per Mana, a measurement of efficiency
HpS - Healing per Second, a measurement of throughput
MpS - Mitigation per Second, a measurement of throughput

I. Spec's & Talents
A. Disc Specs
There are currently two baseline methods for talent spec as a Discipline priest. There have been several more exotic multi-tree spec’s proposed though as of yet the viability of them has not been demonstrated well enough to be included. The primary difference between the two base spec’s is the Holy talent Improved Healing. Based on the depth into the Holy tree to acquire it (IH) some items in the Disc tree have to be sacrificed.

In either of the following specs the focus is single target healing through the use of both mitigation and direct healing. Raid healing support can be accomplished through PW:S, BT’d PoH, PoM, and quick reactive heals.

57/13/0, this spec has all of the Discipline tools available. The remaining point is discretionary.

53/18/0. This spec trades 4 points in Disc for Improved Healing. In Disc I would sacrifice and go with 1/2 Grace, 1/3 Improved Flash Heal, and without Power Infusion. The 2 points in Spell Warding can be spent at your discretion.

B. Talents
Q: What are the most important talents for Discipline?
A: The majority of the PvE talents in the Discipline tree are necessary to reach full potential. The most important talents are Penance, Divine Aegis, Focused Power, and Aspiration. There are quite a few other good talents though I would not sacrifice these from any build.

Q: How valuable is Improved Healing?
A: This is an efficiency talent and only has value so far as your difficulty with mana management.

Penance is 618 x 15% = 92.7 mana saved if used on CD. It is worth…
~72.42 mp5 (w/Glyph)
~57.94 mp5 (w/out Glyph)

Divine Hymn is 2434 x 15% = 365 mana saved. Because of the long CD on this ability it isn’t a significant amount over the duration of the fight, the longer the fight the less mp5 contribution.

Greater Heal is 1236 x 15% = 185.4 mana saved per cast. This is a decent savings and you can calculate the equivalent mp5 you would receive based on the number of casts of your play style. You can approximate it at 15 mp5 for each cast of GH over a one minute period.

Q: Is 1/2 Grace superior to 2/2 Grace?
A: It provides the chance that if you FH/GH off your primary healing assignment that the Grace stack does not transition with a single heal. If you Penance off target there is a 1/8 chance it doesn’t transition. For this reason some people consider taking 1/2 superior though this would be the incorrect reason for it to be superior.

Re-stacking Grace on the primary target comes as a cost. Rember Penance counts as 3 heals… This section has been reworked to better display the cost of going down to 1/2 Grace.

1/2 Grace – It will take 6 direct heals to ensure a triple stack of Grace at greater than 98%. The average cost to Healing/Mitigation provided during this time is 6.5% and it could cost as much as 8.3%. If there is some bad RNG it could take longer than 6 heals which will increase the average over a 7% loss.

2/2 Grace – It will take 3 direct heals to re-stack Grace. The total loss of healing on the target is the equivalent of 4.7% of the total Healing/Mitigation during the process of restacking when compared to 1/2.

While maintaining Grace on the primary target is great, the cost that is incurred if it does move with 1/2 Grace is quite a bit higher than if you have 2/2 Grace. If you don’t off heal it is a viable option because it will not take long to stack it and is not likely to fall off. Though it is not better because it give the possibility of the stack not moving and the point shouldn’t be dropped for this reason. It is actually overall better to keep the second point if you will off-heal because the penalty is less. You could drop the point in the process of pickup Improved Healing if you plan to not off-heal and risk the stack to often.

II. Mana Regeneration
A. Base Regen
As a traditionally "spirit based" mana regeneration class. The level 80 version of the mana regeneration from Int and Spi now follow the following formula's:

oo5sr = 0.016725 * Spirit * SqRt(Intellect)
i5sr = oo5sr * .17/.33/.50 (Based on the points in meditation. 3/3 Meditation is standard in all specs.)

This portion of the mana regeneration model is the only reason for Discipline to utilize Spirit at all.

B. Rapture
Rapture had a major overhaul with the 3.1 release. It was quite imbalanced in its previous incarnation, though the current mechanic has some issues. Rapture provides 1.5/2.0/2.5% of total mana when a PW:S is completely consumed or dispelled and can only occur once per 12 seconds.

The maximum regeneration from Rapture is:
(Mana Pool) x Return% / 12 * 5 = X mp5

The maximal return is unrealistic and should instead be evaluated based on the amount per proc and the proc rate received. Instead you find that:
(Mana Pool) x Return% / 12 = X mp5 per proc, where the proc rate is from 0-5 proc’s/min.

Example:
21568 x 2.5% / 12 = 44.93 mp5/proc... The PTR proc rate data I was running was ~3.4 proc/min. So this would indicate ~152.8 mp5.

There needs to be more data collected and theorycraft analysis on the proc rate. The proc rate depends on multitude of factors. For a single target the proc rate is maximally 4/min based on the WS debuff. How close to this can be achieved is based on damage income and pattern, target avoidance, target mitigation..etc calculating an average “time to consumption”… Optimally a time to consumption of less than 3 seconds yields 4 proc/min.

1 Int = ~0.1538 mp5, maximally
1 Int = ~0.1045 mp5, 3.4proc/min

The mechanic behind Rapture indicates that PW:S should be used with regularity on any target that will benefit from being shielded and provides the potential or guarantee of the shield being completely consumed.

C. Replenishment
Replenishment is a talent available to a multitude of class/specs... The buff provides a 15 second buff on up to 10 people that restores 0.25% of total mana every second for the duration of the buff. Mental Strength couples well with Replenishment in a raid/group environment for Discipline.

1199 Int provides 17705 mana. That 17705 mana at 0.25% is 44.2625 mana per second or ~221 mp5. Based on the 221 mp5 @ 1199 Int you find that -

1 Int = ~0.18458 mp5 (not accounting Blessing of Kings or Mental Strength)

D. Mana Pool
The larger the mana pool the better the longevity over the course of the fight. This equates to mana regen based on the fight duration.

Mana Pool / Duration * 5 = X mp5, working with a 5 min fight duration at the previously demonstrated Int amount it works out too.

17705 / 300 * 5 = ~295.08 mp5

1 Int = ~0.2461 mp5 (not accounting Blessing of Kings or Mental Strength)

E. Spirit vs. mp5
The more Int the more valuable Spi becomes, though without a secondary benefit of having Spi it is a fairly weak stat for Disc. It takes approximately 3 Spi to equal 1 mp5.

Giving the opportunity Disc should choose quality mp5 gear over spirit.

III. Raiding as Discipline
Discipline can be used very dynamically in a raid environment much like Holy was in BC and before 3.1 released. While all healers should be less concerned with meters and more about keeping people alive, as Disc you need to be even less reliant on current meters. The majority of Disc contribution is not visible on most meters (see Add-On section).

A. Tank Healing
The primary tools as a tank healer are Penance, Flash Heal, PW:S, PoM, and occasionally Greater Heal.

Q: Should PW:S be saved for “burst” healing on the tank?
A: In most cases it is far and away more important to maintain the Weakened Soul debuff on the tank to ensure the highest crit rate possible. There are occasions where it may be necessary to line-up the application of PW:S with large strikes on the tank. Even at these times the cast shouldn’t be delayed unless absolutely required for tank survival, instead the order of casting should align such that the PW:S lands prior to the big strike as often as possible. Penance alone is significant “burst” and provides enough for most encounters.


B. Raid Healing Support
The new talent Soul Warding and the change to PoH group targeting provide significant improvement to Disc raid healing. The large amount of predictable raid damage in Ulduar provides ample opportunity for Disc to pre-shield to help create time for the other raid healers. Shielding of raid members provides additional BT casts on either the tank or for reactive raid healing and works well with the new Rapture mechanic.

Disc is NOT an optimal choice for raid healing. It is however the only choice for raid mitigation so switching specs isn't optimal. Weaving PW:S onto raid members, well timed PoH, and PoM are more than enough to allow Disc to fill a niche in any raid. All this can be done while healing the MT if necessary.

C. Specific Fight Information
This section will be updated with some best practices or helpful play style information that applies to specific fights, damage patterns …etc. <Still In-Progress>

IV. Healer Interaction
Q: Disc and Holy Priests working together reducing PoM performance due to PW:S?
A: Discipline and Holy priests complete each other very well in a raid situation. Shielded targets will delay the bouncing of PoM though it is not enough to greatly reduce the healing of the Holy priests stronger PoM. The goal is to keep the raid alive not to “win the meters”. The use of PW:S provides a great amount of survivability and even if it slows a PoM bounces.

V. Maximizing
A. Stat Weighting
The stat ratings presented are generated from the Disc Spreadsheet that will be attached in a later section.

Thoughput stats...

• Intelligence - 0.16
• Spell Power - 1.0
• Crit Rating - 0.48
• Haste Rating - 0.59

Discipline through use of BT and with Enlightenment has a lower need for gearing to haste. It is valuable for total output at the above stat weighting up to the point you reach the "soft cap" of a total haste of 50%. At that point the GCD is 1 second and more haste impacts less of the Disc arsenal of tools. This point varies based on the buffs available and should be individually calculated.

Longevity stats...

• 1 Intelligence = 0.74 mp5
• 1 Spirit - 0.33 mp5

For those that utilize a combined stat weighting you can use the following. Though I usually work with them seperately in order to better balance my gear selection. The longevity stats are important to balance mana burn and mana gain for your playstyle, mana beyond that point is unnecessary.

Combined stats... Using a 60/40 split for throughput vs. longevity.

• Intelligence - 0.65
• Spirit - 0.22
• Haste Rating - 0.59
• Crit Ratng - 0.48
• Spell Power - 1.0
• Mp5 - 0.67

B. Gearing
When gearing you need to consider what stats you are short on at the current time. This means looking at do you need more mana regen or greater throughput? Be sure to consider which gems and enchants will couple with the piece.

Discipline priests should always consider gear with Mp5 in place of Spirit. For regen Intellect is ultimately the best stat because it has dual value through conversion to crit at a rate of 132:1. Once you consider Blessing of Kings and Mental Strength 1 Int very nearly compares to 1 Mp5.

*The following post will present the current BiS "known" options.

C. Gemming
The most valuable gems are... There are more obviously, though these are the ones to consider for Discipline gearing. If gearing for Holy/Disc combined refer to the WotLK Healing Compendium to get help select the best overal gem.
Red
[Runed Scarlet Ruby]
Yellow
[Brilliant Autumn's Glow]
[Smooth Autumn's Glow]
Purple
[Royal Twilight Opal]
Green
[Dazzling Forest Emerald]
Orange
[Reckless Monarch Topaz]
[Potent Monarch Topaz]
[Luminous Monarch Topaz]

Metagems
Primary choices... Selection based on whether you need more regen or more throughput.
[Insightful Earthsiege Diamond] - The highest regen meta available until extreme levels of Int. A 45-second ICD proc that restores 600 mana and 21 intellect.
[Ember Skyflare Diamond] - A good choice for mixed throughput and longevity.

After additionally theorycrafting it is possible this could be a contender for the best throughput meta.
[Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond] - Possible contender with ESD for output.

D. Enchants
Currently the enchanting of either Disc or Holy is fairly similar. Reference the WotLK Healing Compendium v3.1 for specific enchants. Discipline can generally focus on the higher throughput enchants as regeneration is less of an issue generally. In some cases such as Boots taking a Spirit enchant may be the best option even though it wouldn't be the optimal choice with different options available.

E. Trinkets
<Still In-Progress>

F. Glyphs
Major Slots
Required:
Glyph of Penance

Viable Options:
Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Glyph of Flash Heal
Glyph of Prayer of Healing

Of the options for the remaining 2 Major glyphs dropping FH is an option if you don't need additional efficiency in order to keep glyphs that improve throughput. If efficiency of FH is something you need then it would probably be PoH that would be on the chopping block.

Minor Slots
There are a few decent minor glyphs you can choose between.

Glyph of Fading - Good savings on mana.
Glyph of Levitate - Saves from purchasing or farming spell casting materials. Kind of handy.
Glyph of Shadowfiend - With improved Shadow Fiend survivability this glyph may be outdated.
Glyph of Shadow Protection - Not necessary but could be the replacement for Shadowfiend Glyph.

V. Add-On
The RecountGuessedAbsorb addition to Recount made available by Elisa, is proving to be a viable current option for giving general information for mitigation/absorption provided. This can be used by raid leaders and healers looking for more real-time informaiton about the contribution of Disc priests to the larger raid healing environment.

VII. Spreadsheet
Disc Priest Spreadsheet this link will be updated as I continue to evolve this information source.

This is the first ready for public consumption copy of my spreadsheet. I am still working on adding more things to this spreadsheet. It is not complete yet but is in a workable form that should be usable by most people, you will notice some areas of the sheet are blank because they have not been ported over from less 'pretty' spreadsheet.

Please do NOT clutter this thread with discussion of the spreadsheet. If there are items that you require assistance with, improvements that you think should be made, or corrections to any mistakes that may be present please PM me. If there is sufficient need for discussion it may warrant another thread but at this time I would like to keep it in PM.

PM me any specific information not listed you would like in the compendium, or sections that you think would be valuable.

Has anyone figured out what the new crit "soft-cap" for us is? Before 3.1, it was believed to be 30-35% after raid buffs because DA did not stack, and any more after that was usually lost as overheal. How much crit is now needed to maintain a a decent uptime on DA currently?

Some nice trinkets for us from Ulduar:
Pandora's Plea - Mimiron25
Sif's Remembrance - Hodir25 (hard mode)
Eye of the Broodmother - Razorscale10
Energy Siphon Flame Leviathan10

Is crit really even any good? About 30% or more of my casts are PW:S currently. PW:S gets almost no benefit from crit (glyph).

I wouldn't even seek it out, and I'm strongly considering something else over Soul of the Dead - If I had Illustration of the Dragon Soul, it wouldn't even be part of my throughput set for Disc.

Of course it's useful, it increases heals and procs DA. But I still don't know up to what point it's good before it becomes "useless". Surely the other 70% of spells you cast debefit from it?

30% shield are abornally high to me, even without a cooldown, I still get more Penance and flashs heals than shield, which both benefit from crit. I don't see how that's even possible unless you're trying to heal the raid, but if that's so, you might as well go holy instead.

But even before the current patch, I did not like Soul of the Dead. There were lots of crit to be had from gear, and with the old rupture, the mp5 gain from the proc was wasted. I prefered the spellpower +proc trinkets like Forethought Talisman and Illustration of the Dragon Soul, and for extra regen I had the JC rabbit trinket socketed with 2x int gems.

Admitedly, I haven't stepped into Ulduar yet since I'm still waiting on an invite from my new guild. Though I don't see how crit can be completely useless, or that we have lower output than a paladin. Maybe we show up as having lower hps or healing on recount because our shields don't show. But compared with a a paladin that has similar gear, I can heal a tank just as well. The holy paladin in my old guild always had more overheal on the fights when I was disc, and I always managed more healing on the tank than he did. Even before 3.1, I felt that a disc priest was superior to a holy paladin when it came to tank healing, mainly because we didn't just have high burst with the correct gear, we also offered damage mitigation through shields, but the biggest thing which hindered us was that our shields screwed up rage/mana regen for tanks.

And I didn't say I valued crit over spellpower. Right now I'm gearing for sp > haste > int > mp5/spi > crit as I already have 29% crit unbuffed with renewed hope. But I would still like to know what the crit "soft cap" for us is. Maintaining decent DA uptime is very important imo. It's still our biggest damage mitigator, and since it relys on crit to proc, crit is pretty important.

And what about the other 70% of your heals which aren't shields? They should benefit from cit too.

I'm transfering servers atm, so my armory hasn't updated yet I'm guessing, it's been a week already though. But my self-buffed stats are 2480sp, 8% haste, 29% crit, 21900 mana pool, 310mp5. I can bump my haste up to 10%, but i lose about 3% crit that way. When I start raiding again, I'm going to start upping my regen stats a bit first, mainly due to the rupture nerf.

For glyphs, I settled on Penance, Power Word: Shield and then as the last one Prayer of Healing. I don't think Glyph of Flash heal is needed yet. I haven't been close to having any issues with mana yet. Perhaps during the hard modes. I am however, no matter what role I have, likely to use Prayer of Healing to help deal with raidwide aoe damage. So that Glyph gives good value.

What are peoples view of Penance? I tend to just use it in a normal rotation. If it is up, I use it. Otherwise I Flash Heal. It seems too useful a general heal to just save for situations where someone needs burst healing. Anyone tried a tactic where you mostly flash heal and just have Penance in your back pocket ready for a situation where someone needs a heal very fast?

It's reasonably simple. The HPS on Holy Light is around 7-8,000, so is the HPS on Penance. The HPS on Flash is about 4-5,000. This is with Aegis factored in. Current content you don't really see this disparity because there's nothing that's hitting for nearly what the mobs in Ulduar are.

Meanwhile the HPS on PW:S are about 8-9,000 if borrowed time is up (7k shields, 1.3-1.4k heal, 1 second cast). Holy Light falls short, and everything, EVERYTHING falls short of holy light. On any fight where another priest might be casting Flash Heal, a druid Nourish, a Shaman LHW (or even a badly jumped CH), PW:S is much, much better. Add in how you can use it to trivialize mechanics like Tantrum and Jets, and suddenly you're not a tank healer any more. You're a raid healer with a sidejob on the tank.

PW:S is your major spell, and that spell is too good to have any crit on. I'd agree with the breakdown you posted, but as I said before, my feeling is that the soft cap on crit is 0% - any more than that, and you're already looking to shed some crit.

Spell Power is a great stat... Easily the best throughput stat as Sharajat points out. Though not having Crit isn't an option I find reasonable. Divine Aegis is extremely strong as well from a single target and raid healing/mitigation standpoint.

PoM - Procs DA. That is a 1500-2000 shield which doesn't require any effort.

PoH - Is extremely useful in the heavy raid damage environment that Ulduar presents. DA procs on PoH provide DA shields that will be very useful. BT'd PoH considering DA and the glyph's HoT is > PW:S spam alone.

As a MT healer for my guild I have been able to heal the MT while providing a great deal of raid healing support. It is fairly easy to weave PW:S between heals on the MT without presenting an overt risk of the tank dying. This is especially true once the Penance Glyph is in use.

As it stands right now I see there being 2 Roles for Disc in the raid environment.

MT Focus
The primary healer on the MT. Most fights there are periods where assistance with the raid can be provided via 1 second PW:S, PoM, and through PoH on the tank group at a minimum. For which Crit/Haste both have value. Haste such that raid buffed you reach 1 sec GCD with BT. There are some phases of fights where the tank healing is either non-existant or light enough that a lot of raid support can be provided. At those times PW:S and PoH are strong choices, PoH is greater than PW:S if it is effectively used... If the time is available prior to events such as Frozen Blows then pre-shielding is stronger.

Mitigation Support
In this role mitigation via DA/PW:S is provided where ever it is needed on demand. In some situations this will be as much of the raid as possible others it could be gripped/slag-pot'd/etc raid members and even other times it could be tanks. This is a new role for Disc as it previously wasn't possible with the 4 sec CD on PW:S, and now that there is no CD it opens up opportunities for Disc to contribute at a larger level.

Neither of the above two is greater than the other. Which role filled by the Disc priest needs to be driven by the need of your raid composition and healers available. If you have a Holy Paladin that is available for being the primary healer on the MT then transitioning to more of a mitigation support role may be greater benefit to the raid.

With Ulduar 25 man falling quickly, and gear becoming available I was wondering what the current thoughts were on gearing for Disc.

I for one am specifically interested in everyone's thoughts on the 4 piece set bonus on tier 8.5, and if you think the bonus will outweigh possible Best in Slot non set gear.

It was obvious with tier 7.5 that the bonuses were for the most part entirely worthless for Disc so it was much more beneficial to simply grab best in slot based on stat weights.

While looking at the pieces the only thing that stands out as being not entirely favorable for disc would be the large quantities of spirit.

[Conqueror's Cowl of Sanctification]
[Conqueror's Robe of Sanctification]
[Conqueror's Leggings of Sanctification]
[Conqueror's Gloves of Sanctification]
[Conqueror's Shoulderpads of Sanctification]


Edit: Also since I already opened up a gear discussion. What are everyone's thoughts on [Pandora's Plea]

As Disc I'd imagine the 4pc T8 bonus will have close to 100% uptime during a boss encounter. Almost every piece of T8 is best in slot for all of the currently known gear. I'm sure there's at least two pieces out of the five slots that will be better and are yet to be discovered, but that bonus just seems too good for Disc.

This is about inline with where I am, as a MT healer with sporadic PW:S on the raid.

I agree with this, the problem is, you select a "role" when you raid. You cannot proclaim to be the "damage mitigator" you are either assigned a group to heal, or a MT... as such, you should gear accordingly. IMO gearing for throughput is very effective if you are doing either of those. In Ulduar I have noticed a substantial increase in the need for mitigation, throughput and crit helps with both of those.

Once again, this is based on role. you are going to see a lot of back and forth regarding this and is based on play style/role. I do agree throughput is evermore important now, but crit is still a stat which has some clout depending on healing assignment. I do not believe that magical 30% number still holds true. I believe it is lower, but that is primarily based on the reduced cast times of our bread and butter spells as well as the new found emphasis on PW:S.

Bingo, you hit it the nail on the head here. It appears this became the goal with the buff which reduces all damage taken for the entire raid.

My .02... There needs to be a clear definition of what one's role is and perhaps gear accordingly. Some stats will weight more heavily then others based on spell rotation. Crit is not dead, haste is more important now that PoH and others are effective raid heals and throughput is probably the most important stat because so many of our abilities are SP dependant. I will see if I can help come up with numbers to back these opinions.