Healing Help: Disc

[Valextina]

This is my first post here, so I hope everyone will be nice!

To start off my name is Vale, I'm a disc/holy priest on the server Trollbane (US). My main spec is disc though and it's the one I play with.

I joined a new guild a little while ago (3 weeks) and I am the bottom healer now.

I used to be top healer in my old guild doing anywhere from 17-21k hps
Now that I'm in this new place I'm last and doing about 14-17k hps depending on the fight.

I'm placed as a raid healer.

I'm outgeared by the other two healers aswell.
My ilvl is 390 equipped with t12 2pc and t13 2pc
Our paladin is 396 equipped with t12 2pc and t13 2pc
and our druid is 398 equipped with t12 2pc and t13 2 pc

The pally is usually top healer and our druid is usually only a couple % away from him.

Currently my stats are a little confused.
I'm rolling 3.1k spirit, 17.5% mastery, 10.5% haste and nothing in crit.

For aoe fights I prayer of healing and prayer of mending spam,and flash heal those that drop.

Some help would be greatly appreciated! :)

(As a side note we are indeed a 10 man, if no one caught on.)

[Nefaie]

Disc isn't really that great right now.

What you are is a proactive healer. You prevent damage.

Most other healers are reactive, meaning they start healing once there is damage going out. You still heal while damage is going out, of course, but you dont so much as react as you do proactively heal.

Even if people aren't taking damage it's a good idea to keep rolling prayer of healing to build up divine aegis.

If you mana can handle it spam some bubbles here and there.

Don't use flash heal. Its mana inefficient and isn't that great a heal. it should be more used for emergencies.

Also if your mana can handle it you can drop some spirit and reforge it into other things. As a 25 man disc priest I'm pretty comfortable around 2500 spirit. I favor mastery over everything else and I find that it works for me. Pieces that have spirit haste I reforge the spirit out instead of the haste and it's working really well for me.

[Thotz]

In 10 mans you can try out haste reforges rather than mastery. Try out Atonement spec If you don't already have one on; though you might want to take Inspiration into your spec in order to keep that 10% physical damage reduction on tanks. Atonement is a great filler when raid is not taking damage.

The reason why you are maybe doing less HPS than other healers is that Holy Radiance and Efflo combined with Wild Growth are quite powerful heals while stacked. As a Priest you roll a big role in raid healing especially while your raid is NOT stacked or people are spread. At this point If the most of the raid members are wider than 10 yards apart Holy Radiance and Efflo won't heal them all and Prayer of Healing comes out handy.

Prayer of Mending is less attractive for Disc but it's a sufficient heal to keep Inspiration buff on tanks, in particular when both of them are somewhat close to each other.

Disciple is indeed about preventing the incoming damage and mitigating it so that raid won't blow up. Therefore assimilating the boss mechanics and predicting certain damage abilitys might "help" your HPS and also improve you as a healer in raids.

If you are not finding yourself oom in raids you can drop Spirit into other secondary stat. Crit as a stat for Disc is delusive. It's a little bit better for Disc since its crits proc Divine Aegis, but it's still A CHANCE to crit and you shouldn't rely on luck as a healer.

Does your Paladin/Druid have Maw of the Dragonlord? It's a tremendous HPS increase, but again its procs are random but increase your healing per second. You can also try int/3% crit effect increase meta.

PS. As long as you are doing around same percentage of all healing done compared to other healers you are fine. By that point it shouldn't matter are you 3rd or 1st. And btw if you are assigned to heal raid you might want to consider Holy over Disc.

[holystone]

MOst people say that disc is not that great, but they are not right in my opinion! disc is not soppos to give mass heal! disc exist to absorve damage and is prety good in my opinion.

I already trayed holy priest in this last patch and it sucks for me, because dont absorve damage and dont give heal, target to target or AOE, ye the AOE heal for the holy priests is like a jock xDD

Tray to use more the shields because disc priest is not possose to give 20kps like palas, druids or even shamans ;) actualy 16k hps is a prety good score!!!

^Holystone

[Taiphon]

If you have fairly good healers, two are sufficient for most fights - even on heroic.

Healing done can never exceed damage taken, so if you take too many healers they each do lower HPS.

And I think Disc suffers especially, because it doesn't have a smart AoE-heal. PoH is great when everyone in the raid is at 50% HP, but when half the raid is at full HP you have to be very lucky to have the damaged half all in the same group. Wild Growth and Effloresence don't have that requirement.

Either suggest the raidleader to two-heal more fights, or spec Atonement. It's very good at sniping heals.

[Afua]

Actually, disc is very good now. Not only it has insane regen, especially compared to holy, it actually produces very high HPS.

Absorbs are used before anything else, so disc is naturally higher on HPS meters than other healers. This is especially evident on farm, after raid nerfs and people overgearing it.

It sounds like you are doing something wrong if you can't overtake other healers in HPS. You didn't say whether you are running normals or heroics, but either way only a couple of fights are usually 3-healed. In your healer-stacked raid disc should shine even more (absorbs).

It would be helpful if you post some logs, but I can give you some general overview on spell usage.

- Prayer of healing is your best spell. Best HPS and HPM. Use it a lot. Make sure you are hitting as many targets with it as possible. Some people even use it 100% overhealing to stack Aegis, but I'd rather use PW:S to pre-shield squishier targets in a 10-man.
- Power word:Shield is your best single-target spell. If players drop lower then the rest, shield them, don't use flash heal, unless the Weakened soul is already on the target and Penance is on cooldown. You need to know the fight to use this spell to max potential. Example: shield the tank in Madness right before he gets impaled, shield people on phase 2 who are targeted by shrapnel, etc.
- Prayer of Mending is great with ticking incoming damage. Its also good if 2 or more targets take continuos damage and stand close together (like tanks on Blackhorn, on last phase of Madness, etc. Use on cooldown on a tank (don't forget to glyph it). Tip: it doesn't stack the purple debuff in Yorsaj, so you should be using it every cooldown on a tank. With 2p T12 also your primary way to activate the bonus.
- Penance isn't seeing much use nowadays, but its still the best single-taget heal after PW:S.
- Use Archangel! Its very good this tier. Know the fights to stack it before a big damage phase comes, enjoy 15% more healing for 18 sec.
- You can give Power Infusion to your best caster DPS, or save it for yourself for HPS boost (or mana saving at lower gear lvl).
- make sure you use Inner focus on CD, you can macro it in your PoH, GH, etc if you forget to.
- get an addon to track Rapture cooldown (Ingela's Rapture, or something else). If you maximize Rapture mana gains, you'll never run out of mana.
- make sure you use your hymns only with Borrowed time. If you wont get extra ticks, it still shortens the channel time.

Well, this turned into a wall of text, sorry =)
TL:DR Use PoH a lot, PW:S otherwise, PoM on CD, maximize Rapture and your cooldowns. Always be casting.