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Holy to Disc
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Post by
Korpimieli
Hi there, mates!
No stickies around anymore, so I gotta ask some BASIC questions.
As a holy priest I´ve concentrated in stacking Int > Spirit > Haste. (In that order.)
Now I have respecced to Disc. It would appear to me that because the spells I use most -- Shield, PoM, Renew) are instant cast, haste won´t do all that much good as it does with Holy. Am I right?
Then again, it is good to have haste for Penance, Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing.
The basic question: should I change my stat priorities?
Btw, I am enjoying Disc healing a lot. I am not an expert at it yet, but it would appear to be simpler and more effective than Holy in 5-mans at least.
Post by
BrigKline
The thing with our secondary stats is that they have a lot of Synergy with each other, keeping a close balance, in lieu of one 'super' stat will take you far. Consider for instance that Aegis has a hard cap at 40% of our health, a heavy mastery set would hit this cap quickly and 'overheal' on all but the hardest hitting encounters. The actual stat priorities in terms of healing output are Int>Mastery>Haste>Crit. Haste is great for us because of the massive output of Prayer of Healing, and also benefits Greater Heals (good to cast because of the Train of Thought effect), and Penance notably.
Also, due to the rapture mechanic, we don't really need much spirit. Anything in the 3K range is overkill. If you are below the 378 level of gear, I can see wanting 2.5K or higher mana regen, but once you get into DS levels of gear, don't go above that level. I raid with 2.2K myself (I only heal our H chock however). Of course 2 healing heroic raids are another story, and I'd talk to a full time heroic healer if you need specific values for that route.
In reference to Renew, don't use it EXCEPT on the tank, who should be your main Penance dump to maintain Grace keep Inspiration up and proc some Aegis. It simply doesn't heal for enough to warrant using as disc unless the target has a full 3x grace stack. The exception of course if when you are required to heal on the move, since our options in that dept are woefully weak. Obviously, because of this, it isn't worth balancing your haste around Renew Ticks while playing Disc.
FYI about the stickies, a lot of them got adapted into the guides section of wowhead when the feature was added.
Post by
Korpimieli
Thank you BrigKline!
It would appear to me that I have too much spirit for 5-mans so I will reforge that extra spirit to mastery.
It would also appear to me that a gear with spirit, haste and mastery would also be rather good for Shadow spec aswell!
Post by
BrigKline
Thank you BrigKline!
It would appear to me that I have too much spirit for 5-mans so I will reforge that extra spirit to mastery.
It would also appear to me that a gear with spirit, haste and mastery would also be rather good for Shadow spec aswell!
Indeed, I main spec Shadow so healing Disc is something that has always made more sense considering their stat values. Holy just has too much Spi reliance, which would take me way over my hit cap with the shared gear.
Post by
Korpimieli
Indeed, I main spec Shadow so healing Disc is something that has always made more sense considering their stat values. Holy just has too much Spi reliance, which would take me way over my hit cap with the shared gear.
I just did a dungeon with much less spirit and more mastery. I had no mana problems whatsoever. So this is the way to go. Thanks!
Post by
Izichial
I believe it was simcrafted a while back that crit was superior for PoH spam throughput of the secondary stats because of the double dip DA. It's probably not really relevant for you since only really dedicated raidhealers in 25man HC guilds would want to reforge heavily for it, just figured I'd offer all angles.
Some 10man HC discs swear by haste in part because of the cap on DA BrigKline mentioned but reforging is a bit simpler than weighing the benefits of haste and mastery against each other would appear - when you get into a good chunk of heroic gear and want to reforge spirit on most items those items will have spirit and either haste or mastery, not both, so you'll just reforge spirit to whichever stat the item doesn't have. The DS items you share with casters that don't have spirit have crit on them instead, which means you'll reforge crit into whichever other secondary stat the item doesn't have instead (except in the cases mentioned in the first paragraph).
Keep in mind that the healing trinket from Spine of Deathwing is roughly (because of the stacking) equivalent to 780 (raid finder) / 880 (normal) / 990 (heroic) spirit so whether you have it or not may affect how much you want to reforge.
You've probably figured it out already, but Rapture has a 12 second internal cooldown; the closer you can proc it to the expiration of that the better mana returns you'll have.
As for the basic questions in your original post, haste lowers the global cooldown so your instant spells still benefit from haste. Renew gets extra ticks at certain levels of haste - but the spell isn't particularly good for disc. You can throw one on tanks if you have really nothing else to do and expect them to take damage (but you'll probably rather want a PW:S up and if it is, stack DA instead) or have no other instants ready while running somewhere but that's about it.
In general, disc as a spec rewards awareness in a way many other healing specs don't. Getting shields up ahead of big hits (and knowing when they'll come throughout encounters) in particular, maximising mana returns from Rapture (I just wing it myself and still manage fairly close to the icd, but there's addons like Ingela's Rapture Tracker and the priest module of ForteXorsist adding it to cooldown slider (both should be on Curse) if you want some extra help with it), using PoM properly, stacking Grace properly, knowing when you can blanket shield / DA stack etc.
Post by
blowtorch
I go disc/holy and am pretty close to the 3k spirit mark. All crit/mastery reforged to haste (I heal 10m). I could probably drop some spirit, but I don't want to keep reforging back and forth, so eh.
But definitely get Ingela's Rapture Tracker. Huge help as a disc priest.
Post by
Izichial
I've reforged out of spirit on every item that has it dropping me to just under 2k without having any version of the spine trinket, but I also play disc exclusively of the healing specs.
Post by
Korpimieli
Actually I am not familiar with the ideas of getting everything out of Rapture. I remember watching a Youtube video a long time ago. There it was suggested that shield should be spammed. AoE triggered the mana returns when hittin the shields.
Is the basic idea still the same? To have many shields up?
Post by
Izichial
There used to be a loophole where multiple shields breaking at the exact same time would
all trigger Rapture
but that was fixed a long time ago. Blanket shielding is not sustainable and though there are exceptions generally you'll want to stick to shielding the tank or some other target where a shield breaks predictably in order to proc Rapture as close to the 12 seconds internal cooldown as possible.
Post by
Korpimieli
There used to be a loophole where multiple shields breaking at the exact same time would
all trigger Rapture
but that was fixed a long time ago. Blanket shielding is not sustainable and though there are exceptions generally you'll want to stick to shielding the tank or some other target where a shield breaks predictably in order to proc Rapture as close to the 12 seconds internal cooldown as possible.
Allrigt, so basically I should try to get a shield to break every 12 seconds?
Post by
blowtorch
To maximise mana return from rapture, yes.
Post by
Korpimieli
Thank you guys!
I´ve found new thrill in playing my Priest with the Disc spec. I also enjoy the fact that I can use the same gear and stats for both Disc and Shadow.
One question, though! I´m about to get tier set bonuses. Which gear would you aim first if you were me: healing set or shadow set?
I intend to play both specs.
Post by
Taenamyr
well it depends what you do more, myself I only play disc... but I know for my shammy I am resto/enh... I heal on her more than I dps so I got the healing set first. For my Resto/feral druid and Prot/Holy pally I got the tanking sets first since I tank on them more than I heal. It's all about what you personally do more, or which spec is more useful to your raid group / guild.
Post by
Korpimieli
well it depends what you do more, myself I only play disc... but I know for my shammy I am resto/enh... I heal on her more than I dps so I got the healing set first. For my Resto/feral druid and Prot/Holy pally I got the tanking sets first since I tank on them more than I heal. It's all about what you personally do more, or which spec is more useful to your raid group / guild.
Yeah, I was thinking that maybe one tier set bonus is better than the other. And the stats differ a bit, too!
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