clukstank

First thank you! You cleared up a LOT of stuff for me.

What I was trying to get at as far as PI goes is (and this only goes for times when you may have a mana problems):
When a PW:S expires you get mana back based on your mana pool and other factors. All-in-all the % of mana returned to the cost of PW:S is X
IF PW:S cost 20% less; that would not change the mana return, BUT it will change the % of mana returned or X

(for Simplicity I know the numbers are way off)
Say PW:S cost 1000 mana normally. Let's say you get 900 mana returned. So the cost of the shield is ultimately 100 mana. IF you are spamming PW:S on 10 party members, you just spent a total of 1000 mana (after all the returns).

MY QUESTION:
Now if you have PI up in the same situation the cost Per PW:S is now 800, you still get 900 mana back per shield, so the new cost is (neg) -100 mana per cast. If you spam on 10 people; instead of paying 1000 mana you get returned 1000 mana.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know if I am WAY off about this. This is how DI works for palies: we use it, and all spells cost 50% less mana. We get 60% of all critical heal mana back, so on a crit we Gain 10% of the mana cost of that heal.

 

Jazzer

Right now, I find spellpower to be the single biggest factor in the amount of healing/damage prevention I can do. However, it really depends on the situation.


There are times when I'm doing nothing but spamming bubble every gcd (which hits the 1s cap VERY easily with a minimal amount of gearing for haste) along with using mending on cooldown and penance when it's necessary on someone who took a chunk of damage. In this case, both crit and haste do next to nothing to help our effectiveness. Regen stats are pretty worthless too as there's not been a situation where I could run out of mana spamming my shields (this will probably be something they change in the future).

As a note, doing nothing but shield spam assuming each shield gets used up is between 6-7k hp/sec in damage prevention and is entirely possible to do at this point and this also ignores the shield glyph heal. It does take 25 seconds to cover the entire raid, but you also have other healers helping heal the damage that has been done already. This is the method I used for our Freya kill, and found it very effective.

---

If I'm taking the role of healing a tank, my priorities shift to keeping penance and mending on cooldown and flashing in between. Shields will be tossed in the raid as necessary, but penance/flash I will try to keep from using on anyone but the tank so grace doesn't drop. I'm able to keep an inspiration uptime of at least 90% and if my mana drops at all, I have a fiend to top it off which I really haven't had to use so far (haven't done Mimiron, Vezax, or Yogg yet).

In this situation, I tend to gear for crit over haste which only solidifies my uptime of inspiration, and with DA stacking now, there's no real negative side to having too much crit. I don't completely ignore haste, but 6% from talents, 8% from gear, 5% from WoA totem, and 3% from Ret aura/Boomkin puts me at 22% which I find to be more than enough.

So personally, I can't see myself stacking any more haste on my gear when healing as disc in pretty much any case. I see the value in it, though I don't see much of a point to get past the levels I'm currently at. I do wish I had a bit more haste though for when I'm healing as holy.



Edit: As a sidenote, I am, and always have socketed for pure spellpower over anything else. Every piece of gear we have has stam/int/spellpower. We get to choose between mp5/spirit and haste/crit for each piece, so when I say I gear for spellpower I mean that's the gems I choose to use. When deciding between crit/haste I will pick crit over haste, but if there's a haste piece that has significantly more spellpower, I'll get the haste piece. Generally anyway.

 

TheDoctor

Many thousands ahead in theory and on paper numbers.. In practice that high value isn't necessary and doesn't make them the "absolute best must have to raid tank healer". Disc is ahead of everyone else for the role of healing a tank and in pratice not behind Holy Paladins by much if anything.

I think for the most part what you are saying and what I am saying agree. The point I don't think you are following is that Disc can be...
1. MT Healer (providing some raid support)
2. What you describe as all raid support, niche.
3. Some mixed variation of 1 & 2.

And without a pally you should have whom tank heal instead so that you can do what you propose? That would be putting at best the 3rd best tank healer on the job, because the Disc priest wants to play save everyone?

All healers are there to keep people alive. To quote you said "At this point we have two classes that are neither. Druids are neither tank healers nor raid healers, and disc priests are neither tank healers nor raid healers. People call druids 'hot healers' but that doesn't even mean anything. The only reason they do that is because they don't raid heal and they don't tank heal."

I highlighted the important part.. Which is false. Disc can be a tank healer quite effectively. Disc can also support raid healing quite effectively. It can even do both simultaneously based on gear & skill.

It is fairly clear that PW:S is THE option to use on the raid if you are helping out or even supporting the raid as a primary role. Followed up with fast reactive heals Penance/BT'd anything.

Have you even tried MT/OT healing? You talk like you are crippled doing it. When in reality you have plenty of time to do what you say and keep up a tank. Ignis is about the highest sustained damage to the raid and tank over the course of an entire fight. Even on this fight I find it easy to keep up the MT and toss around sufficient PW:S, PoM, and PoH to improve raid survivability. Penance is that good, period... Disc can run with near a 1 sec heal spacing for as long as necessary.


Can Disc MT heal effectively in Ulduar? Absolutely. Even more important they can do this can provide considerable support to the raid simultaneously. In most fights I find that my Healing + Mitigation is equal to or greater than the majority of the "raid healers", while tank healing, because there are plenty of opportunities to toss PW:S around.

Can Disc reduce raid damage a significant amount and support in health recovery? Absolutely. Though Disc is slighly weaker at the second part. During high raid damage situations Disc can easily run over 5k effective healing + shielding.

Is Disc the best reactive healer in the game right now? Probably.

Is Disc some "new" type of healer that doesn't fill any currently understood healing role? NO. Disc is a different type of healer that deals heavily in mitigation... By doing that Disc has the ability to fulfill the roles of Tank Healer and Raid Healer individually or simultaneously with a synergy well beyond other class/specs.

 

Sharajat

I think I see what you're saying. You're right in that I have never seen the tank healing capacities of Disc in full force because we run with at least one holy pally at all times. In addition, our holy pallies are very good players.

I'm merely proposing an alternate role for disc that it is quite strong in. I've never seen disc's full tank healing capacity in action because we were on Mimiron before our server discovered the Penance Glyph. We'll see in the coming months how it evolves, but I've seen first hand what disc can do in a raid healing role, and it's quite, quite strong - and compliments holy pallies exceptionally well. Since I think most guilds will be running with a holy pally, I suggest strongly that disc priests master that role as well as tank healing.

What I disagree with is that disc is not a new type of healer. Until Discipline, the only proactive healing you could do was HoTs and Prayer of Mending (okay, and SS, but they nerfed that). Everyone remembers HoT casting before vortexes, etc. What disc can do there is provide healing for events that haven't occured yet.

Until Discipline, the longest you had to think ahead was the cast time of your longest heal, so you could be casting before the damage lands. With discipline you can plan for events that are 20 seconds away. Moreover, the class plays suboptimally if you're NOT planning for events 20 seconds in the future. I'm finding it very different from Holy Priest, where my 'preparation' was all mental (developing a plan for the event). With discipline, I need to slot the shield spam into my cast order without endangering the tank.

Perhaps this is not new, perhaps if I played druids enough I would have a better grip on how to do this. Certainly their HoTs seem to fill a similar (though not identical) purpose. But it is very new for any priest.

In conclusion, I'd just like to say that I think the roles of tank/raid healer is mostly dead. At the moment I see one 'pure' tank healer (although pallies can be pretty effective on Raid, they're not really optimized for it) and one 'pure' raid healer (though I think Serendipity was theoretically supposed to give Holy Priests something, but it failed rather spectacularly, even with the bug). Shaman can lay heavy bursts on the tank and support with earthshield, druids can tank and raid at the same time, and so can discipline.

 

Avellina

To answer your question, Rapture isn't a refund as a percentage of what you spent on PW: Shield, it is a constant 2.5% of your total mana pool, meaning it is unaffected by how much you spent on the spell itself. Even if it were free (via Inner Focus), you would still gain the same amount of mana as if it were spent at full cost.

 

TheDoctor

Disc is new in that it deals in mitigation. I do agree with most everything you are saying here..

The most important part is that to be a great Discipline healer means that you have to know what is coming so you can prep for it and be incredibly capable of reacting to things simultaneously.


Couple of issues here with what you are talking about ... First Rapture can only proc once every 12 seconds. So During the period of the buff you would maybe get 2 procs from reduced cost shields. IF and this is a really big if you put up shields during the 20 seconds that didn't get consumed until late enough to proc the buff the most you could get is (20+30) / 12 = 4 shields... This requires that the each shield is instantly consumed once the CD is up and not before with a maximum leeway of 2 seconds total. It is likely that you would only see 3 returns at best.

The other thing is PW:S that procs Rapture for just about any Disc priest is gong to regen some mana and at the least the shield is virtually free. Moreso, really all you are doing is saving on the PW:S cast not creating more regen so the most you can benefit is exactly 20% of the mana spent. I find that usually PI is better spent on a dps then myself or another healer, with one exception (Vezax).

 

Tweaksys

Since someone brought up the gear discussion I made out a list of what I felt was BiS as of what had been found at the end of week one and ptr. This is what I currently plan to shoot for until better items end up being found down the line.

Weapon- [Staff of Endless Winter] - Hodir 25 Hard OR [Soulscribe] - 25 Yogg Saron + [Ironmender] - 25 Kologarn
Trinket (Not sure here, lots of interchangeability dependent on encounter)- [Pandora's Plea] - Mimiron 25 AND [Eye of the Broodmother] 10 man Razor AND [Spark of Hope] - 10 man Kolo AND [Sif's Remembrance] - Thorim 25
Ring- [Pyrelight Circle] - 25 Ignis AND [Signet of Manifested Pain] 25 KT (Yes, it is still the best atm. If naxx stops completely I will try to pug it or substitute [Glowing Ring of Reclamation] - 25 Flame Levi)
Head- [Conqueror's Cowl of Sanctification] - Vendors or 25 Thorim
Neck - [Pendant of the Shallow Grave] - Thorim 10 Hard Mode
Cloak - [Pennant Cloak] - Sarth 25 (Yes again, this remains a BiS[though debatable as a nice 230+ has been found but with hit] and [Asimov's Drape] - 25 Ulduar Trash Might be the next best alternative)
Wand - [Scepter of Lost Souls] - Vezax 25
Chest - [Conqueror's Robe of Sanctification] - 25 Hodir
Feet - [Boots of Fiery Resolution] - Leviathan 25 Hard
Hands - [Handwraps of the Vigilant] - Vezax 25 Hard
Legs - [Conqueror's Leggings of Sanctification] - 25 Freya
Shoulders - [Conqueror's Shoulderpads of Sanctification] - 25 Yogg Saron
Wasit - [Cord of the White Dawn] - Tailoring (Fortunately its BoE so any guild either side could get it but it is so far ahead of second placed belt atm it is truly best to wait for a guild to get it imo and upgrade other slots.)
Wrist - [Shackles of the Odalisque] - Razorscale 25 or [Unsullied Cuffs] - Sartharion

 

moowalk

It looks like the days of arena weapons being comparable or superior to easily obtainable raid drops are back.

I'd rate the 2200 rating mageblade ahead of soulscribe - http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...n6_9806_23.jpg

 

clukstank

Great! Thank you very much, that is exactly what I was trying to figure out. So there is not a useful way of getting mana back by using PI. PI should be used as a buff on DPS class and Always be on CD. I was not sure about how Rapture worked. Thank you all. I am going to Spec Disc right now (since bliz was nice enought to give us all our points back with the update today ).

 

Sharajat

Always use it on DPS is a theory. I've dropped it on our holy paladin sometimes. If you want to see something funny, drop an extra 20% haste on Holy Light. He is pretty kitted out in haste gear anyway, so it's like... 1.2 second holy lights. Mere mortals are not supposed to wield that sort of power (though it takes a very specific problem for 1.2 second holy lights to be the solution).

 

Elimbras

Where I find Disc increadibly strong is when assisting the tank healer, and the raid healers, depending on what's needed.

Disc is the best reactive healer in the game, and has good anticipative mitigation also. This makes it what I could call a "O-Shit" healer. When there are big spikes expected on the tank, or when a fixed number of healer is not "enough" to cover the tank withouth too much overheal, Disc is the best choice to swap between tank (when needed) and raid (when tank is OK), because we don't need to precast to have an quick-landing big heal. Just use POM / PW:S on the raid, and be ready to penance / GH the tank when need is. No other healer can swap at will so easily.

I don't say that Disc is not good for tank healer. It's a really good tank healer, as strong as Paladins I would say (maybee less hps, but more burst reaction, which is as important as hps). It is "acceptable" raid healers, usely inferior to real raid healers (except on a few fights, where raid healing is in fact equivalent to random "tank healing"), but not crippled when doing so. But where I find it being unique is the "mixed" role I descibed.

 

Promethia

To be more clear, I argue that a combined score can mislead some player into thinking they need more throughput or mana/regen than they do but that it does not matter a whole lot because even if you don't bother doing anything, you won't be far off. There is nothing contradictory there.

Of course you have some control, and it is best to think about what you need and gear appropriately. However, players can get carried away with "stacking" stats, which may do more harm than good. For instance, a gearset which stacks only crit or haste will generally not perform as well as a same ilvl gearset with a mix of crit and haste. That is a mathematical consequence of their effects being multiplicative.

Many players don't think that way but instead want to know "which is better?" and then proceed to stack that stat without end under the misguided understanding that the stat is always better in any circumstance. That would be an example of "a little knowledge is a bad thing". They would have been better off knowing nothing and doing nothing since that would have resulted in a better mix a stats.

I know that many players love optimizing their gear stats, and they certainly won't stop doing that because of anything I say. However, I'm just not convinced it matters much. Just don't do anything totally crazy with your gear, and you'll be fine.

1. I use PI for both the reasons you cite: output and/or mana. I cast it more on others, but it can be for either reason. The haste does not stack with bloodlust, so I usually don't do it then unless the mana benefit is needed.

2, I'm guessing the context for shield+penance talk is when the tank (or whatever) has taken a spike of damage. The shield provides instant protection (buying you a little time), and you get a haste buff which penance does not consume. So it's a good combo right after spike damage. I commonly do shield+penance after Maexxna's webspray for instance.

3. I almost always cast PS on the tank or myself. It is sometimes a wipe-preventer when used on the tank especially, and so yes, I think that means I use it as a kind of bubble. On most dps, it won't save them in many cases, and they are usually not as crucial either, so I tend to save it for the tank or healers almost exclusively... Maybe others are different, though.

 

dfscott

So, Doc: any idea how "shortly" translates to conventional measures of time?

 

TheDoctor

I have not finished making it other user friendly. It should be ready and posted Friday or at the latest Saturday.

 

clukstank

Thank you for that information. As far as using PS on a Tank, would the 5% reduction in threat be an issue? I am not sure how the mechanics works with that.

Also I went Disp for the first time ever yesterday and I loved it. At level 71, with a 71 DK tank, and a few other under leveled member, we were able to complete a AN run with no wipes. None of us were even high enough to get the quests yet... I was VERY impressed with the spec.

I will continue to try and soak up as much information from you guys as possible !

Clukdoc, 72 Troll Disp. Priest
Windrunner

 

Ceralyn

With most tanks the 5% threat isn't an issue. It's commonly referred to as a second shield wall by our warrior tanks. If there is ever a question of the tank taking too much damage or the tank possibly losing threat, it's easier to recover stray mobs than dead tanks, and usually this isn't a decision that has to be made anyway. By the point they will need the extra protection, typically the tank will have all the threat they need on the boss.

 

Ellyh

How much are people actually using flash heal in disc specs now? For Ulduar PvE healing I find that now that shields do not have an internal cooldown and coupled with the Pennance Glyph I have enough other buttons that I want to press that Flash Heal isn't particularly attractive for raid or tank healing.

When healing the raid I find that Shield on the critically low people followed up by the hasted ~1.7 second GH is far superior and results in less deaths than a small flash heal. For tank healing there are now only 2 GCD's between pennances and with renew, shields, hasted greater heals, PoM I can fill most of these GCD's. For those moments when there is nothing better availalbe and the tank need heals now I find the Binding Heal seems to be a better choice than flash for it's sightly higher average hit, Yes flash has a higher crit % at slighly over 50% raid buffed but I don't feel that 3 points in improved FH can be justified and the extra cost of binding isn't stressing my mana pool at this stage. I suspect that these days Improved Flash Heal may be more of a PvP talent than a PvE one. As a result I am leaning towards speccing like this with a point to buff renew which is still sometimes nice on the tank and desperate prayer for those oh shit personal moments like the slag pot.

 

Xaphania

It seems to me that replacing FH with GH on random raid members is very likely to result in high overheal. Same thing for tank healing, except in scenarios where you know the throughput from GH is going to be necessary. As for using renew instead of Flash Heal...it can't crit and proc Divine Aegis, so why bother? I use renew in some situations (recent example: Mimiron phase 1, before plasma blast starts), but not as a staple tank healing tool.

As for using Binding instead of Flash... I just find it hard to believe that that could be sustainable. Binding costs double what Flash does, with the talent and glyph.

 

Ellyh

Maybe it's how we heal as a guild but when raid healing my job is to smooth out the big hits from the RSTS with shield and then bring someone low on health back to full with the resulting fast 1.7 sec GH before the another random burst of big damage. My overheal on GH is less than 50% in the parses I have seen and mana isn't an issue with appropriate gearing/fiend/consumables. Having people die is however an issue. Shield + GH is the most and fastest protection against follow up gibbing that any class can put out. A guarenteed 14k heals + buffer in 2.7 seconds and 1/2 of that arrives front loaded in case of rapid follow-up damage.

Also on the tank healing side I normally have a better button to push so only ~ 1/7 casts would be FH or BH at most. Again my mana lasts fine with appropriate protections. Maybe on longer fights I will have to re-evaluate but as of 4 bosses down it has not been a problem for me and my gear is a mishmash of Nax 10 and 25 man gear in no way close to full best in slot from T 7.5 content.

I find that if the tank is at full health and I have less than a second of cooldown on shield/pennance I can afford to wait for the cooldown rather than queue up a heal on the tank because of how fast the mitigation/heals arive after pressing the button when healing as disc. This is one of the big attractions of the spec, you don't have to wait 1.5 -2.5 seconds for a big gob of healing to arrive, it's there almost as soon as you press the button alowing a more reactive healing style when compared to holy.

If you are talking pre-empting damage a single tick of renew is going to nearly as strong as the aegis from a crit heal on flash and you potentially can get 5 of them from a single button press. Remember we are talking a situation where the tank is at good health here as on low health you would hit Binding Heal.

Edit Added further thoughts.

 

moowalk

I came to the opposite conclusion. Priests aren't a healing class, as such, in arenas. We're a utility class that heals every 6.4 seconds and spends the rest of the time doing something more important. If you're standing still casting flash heals, you're doing something wrong, and you're going to go oom very quickly.

I'm not so sure about the PvE side of things though. I often find myself keeping penance in reserve for heavy hitting bosses and spam overhealing a tank with flash heal to proc DA and smooth out big hits. Of course mana isn't a big issue for PvE disc, and the secondary +crit effect doesn't come into play here, so I'm not sure if improved flash heal is warranted for this situation either.

 

Hungtar

Threat can be an issue, especially on fight where DPS get large throughput buffs (e.g. runes in the Iron Council encounter or npc buffs in the Hodir fight). And DPS don't really appreciate it, if they get killed because they pull agro because of PS (neither will your tank). Take a quick look at your threat meter before putting PS on your tank.

 

Promethia

I have actually never, ever seen the tank lose aggro from PS. Of course, that may be because I never do it early (before the tank has established aggro). I used to worry about that and check omen before casting it, but I don't even check any more. The threat reduction seems to be more of a theoretical concern, and while there may be cases where that threat drop could matter, there definitely aren't many in practice.

The thing about the threat reduction is that it's only 5%, which is almost never enough to switch aggro. That has a bad side since if a DPS pulls aggro, PS will not likely reverse that. Without an iceblock, feign death, or something, that DPS is often going to die with or without PS, so it can be a waste to use it there.

The bigger risk with PS is that you won't use it as often as you probably should. In addition to the "OMG, the tank is going to die" moments, it is good to consider with:

• some stacking debuffs
• healing debuffs (reducing damage is a great answer to an inability to heal)
• healers picking up add spawns

Obviously if you can dispell a debuff, that's better, but you have to get into the habit of thinking about using pain suppression or you won't use it.

That's a great question. It's still early, and I think flash heal will continue to be useful, but I already find that shield is filling a bit of the niche that flash heal used to fill in addition to increasing the availability of a borrowed time hastened greater heal. So I do think there will be more shields and less flash heals compared to before. There may also be a side effect of more greater heal usage in some cases, although with penance glyphed, I suspect greater heal will only be needed when we really need to crank out some HPS. In other cases, penance on CD will suffice.

Nevertheless, you're sort of suggesting a flash heal for renew trade, and I don't really like that tradeoff. Flash heal is still a very quick and cheap heal, and you need the right kind of healing environment for renew to be very useful. I almost always run with a druid (even on 10 mans), so my bringing renew doesn't add a whole lot to what we already have in raid, while flash heal does help. But others might be in different circumstances where renew might make more sense.

 

dfscott

Frankly if it's a choice between dps dying and the tank dying, I'll sacrifice the dps without a second thought. Most of them have their own aggro dumps anyway. If not, well, a dead tank can wipe a raid, a dead dps rarely will.

I tend to agree. In last night's heroic Naxx, I combat cast about 2500 times (boss and trash fights). Almost half of those (1184) were PW:S. For comparison, Penance was a distant second (535), followed by PoM (266) and finally FH (74).

 

Draetor24

Can someone explain to me why MP5 is better than Spirit for Disc now? With Meditation at 50%, Enlightenment adding 6% to total Spirit, and BoK scaling with Spirit, wouldn't Spirit add more to MP5 directly, and still help with OOC regen (even though it's been nerfed)?

 

Hungtar

What makes Power Word: Shield so absurdly good is the combination of if having no cooldown and predictable AoE damage (or even raid-wide damage). Plus you can use it while moving. But i'm a little suspicious about the distribution of spells you used. Almost half of the time you were casting PW:S? I would think a good amount of those shields were wasted.

p.s.: A (not so) recent blue post (MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Spammable PW:S (the new COH?)) hints that it might deserve a nerf (although the reason in the blue post is really backwards, of well ..).