Priest discussion

[Jhazrun]

UPDATE!

So this thread has been… neglected by myself to an extent I quite frankly find very embarrassing and undeserved, and would like to turn around.

For quite a while the raiding-light period has left my attention to leak into Cataclysm beta and an unending flow of uni work, but I feel I could and absolutely should put aside the minuscule effort asked by this Q&A.

As such, I'd like to officially reactivate my presence here. However, I must request that those with remaining interest in any questions above this post  LET ME KNOW with either a small note here (don't quote the whole thing) or by forum PM.

At this point in time I will also be addressing inquiries regarding matters of CATACLYSM.

[meth]

A Priest that according to his avatar enjoys hentai with furr... sounds great. :)

[Jhazrun]

'Tis quite the world of weight you leave for few words to carry, would you not agree?

[Afua]

Hi, wise priests =)

I'm a young raiding disc/shadow priest who originally used a Holy spec, but switched to disc because we started progressing in 10 man and after a while 25 man hard modes ICC and our RL asked me to respec. He's is an excellent holy paladin (it is his twink actually, his main is a Moonkin on a different realm farming 25 HM ;). Obviously he's more experienced that I am (this is my first character and its like 5 months old) and he says they progressed in 10 HM with a disc and a holypal as well and did great.

Now that I've geared up and we are sitting at 11/12 in 10 man with no hope of downing Lich anytime soon (guilds focus has shifted to 25s) I was thinking of going back to the spec I enjoy more (Holy ;) ). We have like 2 disc priests anyway and only 1 with a holy offspec so it not like raid shielding isn't covered =)

Anyway, enough with the intros =)

1. How is Holy compared to Disc in 10 HM (excluding LK)? What about 25?
2. I was gearing for disc spec and I'm afraid my spirit and haste are a bit low while crit is rather high. Would this be a major issue or should I stick to disc until I get some spi/haste gear?

In 25s I'm always topping the healing+absorbing meters, but I'm afraid its just because shields make other healers overheal more (also due to the nature of absorbs being the first to meat incoming damage) and because I'm a bit better geared than our other healers. Our Disc/Holy priest usually switches to holy when I'm healing, but to be honest he is a lot better at disc. Making him stay disc and me going holy seems more efficient use of healing resources =)

Our setup is not set in stone, but usually its 2 holy paladins, 1 disc and 1 holy priest + either a tree, another disc or another holy pal.

My armory link [url]http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Галакронд&cn=Афуа[/url]

Thank you for your time I really appreciate it =)

P.S.: sorry for my english, I hope this wall of text makes sense ...

[Jhazrun]

Time to send off the season with Afua!

1. How is Holy compared to Disc in 10 HM (excluding LK)? What about 25?

While on paper Discipline makes for a highly potent healer in any group or raid size, there are only few things it can take care of completely by itself. Concerning healer compositions, it's quite certainly the one most reliant on its partner(s), and in two-healer setups only fully functions with a Paladin's Beacon of Light support. However, there's no doubt whatsoever of it being the healer to wrap up any trio with. A 25-man roster also never lacks a slot for a lone Discipline Priest thanks to its unique health buffer niche.

Despite a dramatically different initial setting, the state of Holy winds up surprisingly not much unlike. Theory would see its ten-man performance as rather wretched for its major small-scale tools having fallen so hopelessly behind since Ulduar, yet the encounter design of recent content has catered to Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Renew to such extent that it can hold its ground. While it shares Discipline's weakness of dependency, it happens to manifest when facing narrowly-focused raid damage, which barely exists in all of the last two raid instances, Deathbringer Saurfang being the only one to deviate from the trend. Like Discipline, ten-man Holy is fairly demanding in a Paladin to team up with, but more often than not works out with a Shaman as well.

In a nutshell, Discipline can perform adequately in a healing duo, but with Holy being only a spec-swap away there's little reason to stray from its flavor-of-the-year mechanics.
When forming a 25-man composition, the healer Priests should always first fill up the single Discipline slot, with the other 0-2 bringing Holy.

2. I was gearing for disc spec and I'm afraid my spirit and haste are a bit low while crit is rather high. Would this be a major issue or should I stick to disc until I get some spi/haste gear?

As Gearscore-generation as it sounds, a healing Priest of today's is the best off wearing the piece of the highest item level they can get their hands on without so much as a thought paid to anything beyond dodging Hit Rating and letting the casters have their Haste-Crit first.

[morxeu]

Hello to everyone.

I want to ask you something. As a disc priest, on LK 10 HC , which rank shield i should use so i will get mana back from rapture (talent) when infest is absorbed ? On LK 25 HC i dont have problem, cause the damage is higher than on 10man.

[Thasilian]

Hello to everyone.

I want to ask you something. As a disc priest, on LK 10 HC , which rank shield i should use so i will get mana back from rapture (talent) when infest is absorbed ? On LK 25 HC i dont have problem, cause the damage is higher than on 10man.

I never had manaproblems using max. rank shield during LK10 HC no matter how small or big the icc buff was. I guess issue is about your gear or lack of replenishment effect. It is also good to notice that the fight is still long enough to use your cooldowns like shadowfriend or hymn of hope several times if you use them first time early.

But if you really need to regen mana via that talent, I think two ranks lower shield will do fine (it would not take long for yourself to find out what rank fits well during encounter). Only reason why I would use lower ranked shields would be for to raise raid dps but never had any manaproblems.

I hope this helped you, tough you could have given more detailed information about your cituation like about your gear or setup so I would not have need to guess so much what is it about. =)

[Jhazrun]

As a disc priest, on LK 10 HC, which rank shield i should use so i will get mana back from rapture (talent) when infest is absorbed?

Thasilian has the most of it covered, morxeu.

As Discipline at the ten-man Lich King you should not even aim for Rapture multi-procs. With no more than eight total targets to blanket with Power Word: Shield for each 20-second cycle of Infest, you'll find yourself doing the majority of your work on supporting the tanks with the low mana-per-second Penance, Flash Heal and Inspiration. Power Word: Shield is also a powerful tool in itself for smoothing out tank damage (while guaranteeing Rapture), so holding it back in hopes of a multi-proc even becomes a true liability.

[bubat]

Q- In the beta what do you prefer, holy or disc ?


Q- From gemming in the beta would disc be mainly mastery gems ?


Q- Do you have any interesting talent builds in the beta ( I know its not live yet so prob wont stay the same)?

[Jhazrun]

In response to Kíria of the previous page, as well as the latest of bubat's,

I am playing a shadow priest normaly. Currently there is an absence of healer in my guild, so I have use my sec skill as dizi since some weeks....
After the last raid I had a discussion with the heal leader about my performance. It seems to be too low but I have no idea how to improve...
A Log of our last raid:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/xdrhjzvodcs6ec8z/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/iqf65ms1e3zepxjt/

Your logs suggest heavy exposure to the Heroic Professor Putricide and Sindragosa encounters, which are both among the most Discipline-unfriendly designs in the game (along with their friend Blood Queen Lana'thel to complete a curious pattern…).

Unless 'twas nothing but an additional warm body your healer composition was desperate for, I can assure you there was no way whatsoever for a Shadow-Discipline hybrid to meet expectations at these particular bosses, where a full-time Discipline-Holy would simply have brought in their optimal healing spec without so much as a questioning thought.

In the beta what do you prefer, holy or disc?
From gemming in the beta would disc be mainly mastery gems?
Do you have any interesting talent builds in the beta?

There's no doubt I'll eventually find myself comfortable with both, but for now I'm strongly in favor of Holy.
The Discipline experience on its own feels awkwardly unrewarding and chore-like compared to the defined and dynamic Holy whose tools evoke a sense of actual evolution.
My impressions with Holy could be equated to waking up into a host of whole-new toys under the tree and wondering how you ever really found your previous ones all that fun to begin with, whereas Discipline more closely resembles a scenario of "O…kay… So the storm blew down our house, but at least we have… some… lumber now? Maybe if we… rubbed some sticks together we could perhaps… make things… somewhat more… comfortable…ish…?".

Socketing I expect to become even more inbred with Rating efficiency plummeting even further, while this time around going against Spell Power that's now also the primary source of max mana; I can't for the life of me see how non-Red gems could turn out to be a competitive alternative.

At the time of writing Holy holds the questionable honor of containing the lowest number of available talents of any of the 30 new trees. I won't make judgments yet on whether compactness of that extent is negative enough a quality, but for now there certainly isn't so much as an inch of squiggle room in either of the specs' options.