Priest discussion

[Hanzi]

I've been looking into Holy priests as for Cataclysm myself now for a while since that's my mainspecc as of current and i do plan to continue being it in Cataclysm. What's worrying me as of our current state isn't really all about our own state, it's more about the other healers state if you get what i mean.

Basically i mean that: Fine, Holy priests could be tweaked a bit more when it comes down to Holy Word: Sanctuary, Heal and our throughput of those along with reducing the manacost a tiny bit of Renew (supposely when you're in Renew Chakra). As of currently on Beta it just seems to be something along with these lines:

Holy Paladins: Strong Single target healing along with strong AOE healing which doesn't really required you to to much, i.e you can be AOE healing like a god while you're still assigned to single target healing without really having to worry about your mana.

Resto Druids: Infinite mana basically, primary a raid healer and can do so well to minimize heavy raid-wide burst damage by keeping their hots up, if that's not required, then they can tank heal pretty good while still not having even a slight chance of going OOM.

Resto Shamans: Don't really know what to say here, about the same as always, no real issue about the mana, still got strong single target healing and raid healing.

Holy Priests: Our tank healing is mediocre, while we can heal tanks alot while remain mana efficient by having a renew rolling along with using "heal" in our Heal Chakra, it's still nowhere near the other healers efficient and throughput while doing so due to our mana-efficiency would get raped by using Flash Heals / Greater heals too much.

Our raid healing isn't really an issue as far as i can see, sure our glance isn't when constant raid-wide damage is going on but rather when there's raid-wide burst damage, that's when our glance comes into the picture, but at the cost of mana-efficiency if it's too much, forcing us to more or less really aware of how much mana we can spend on it and what's going to happend next, if we can afford to be in PoM Chakra or not. Renew Chakra isn't much of an option as far as i can see due to the mana cost of it, it would just drain our mana insanly fast not to mention that once we're in Renew Chakra, we can't really do anything else without losing the efficiency of it compared to other healers.

All in all, just seems like Holy Priests needs a little bit of tweaking, while other healing classes is overtuned at the moment and needs more tweaking in the other direction to even out the flaws and difference in the current healing state, no other class does really have to think that far further into the encounter as Holy priests does when it comes down to the usage of our Chakra state and we also got to keep an eye on our mana at all times to see if we really can afford it without having to slow down on the healing when it's needed the most.

Now i'm not in on the Cataclysm Beta sadly, so if you got any input on the above Jahzrun it would be well appreciated to get a wider picture of what is to expect as of the current state in the Beta, that way i could plan a bit more towards it, tweak the theorycrafting and such when it does hit.

(p.s, Wall-of-text, i know, you'll probably need coffee to be able to read it all.)

[Akolyth]

really really nice post, exactly what i am looking for.

and it is, like i thought and in my eyes the priests are again the badest healers.
You have to look at your mana, you are not the best tank and aoe healer... great...

perhaps i should change my mainchar.. my hope was that the priest will get better in cata, but again not.
that makes me sad.. damn blizz

and now a really difficult choice which char i will level in cata, first.

[Hanzi]

I think you missunderstood me a bit there, there's different kinds of Raid/Aoe healing, it all comes down to the encounters and mechanics of them, Resto druids can't really burst heal a raid which Holy priests is still excellent at, that's our speciality.

What i meant by the post is that overall on the other parts such as substained AOE healing and Tank healing we're either a bit undertuned compared to the other healers current, or they're overtuned and we're fine. Got to understand that just cause we're not doing that well on them doesn't mean that something is wrong about us, it can also be the other classes.

But as stated as well, it's just my observations as for Cataclysm, we're fine currently and we're not really having any mana issues while we're above most other healers. But waiting for some kind of input from Jhazrun regarding it, he's on beta and can confirm / go more into detail about it.

[Efesus]

hi there, bit new to the forum, must say i already readed a lot of interesting stuff from you guys

got a question for zhinn / jhazrun, you guys have 2/2 in body and soul
so i was wondering if its considered to be such a strong talent or did you guys just chose it cause there was nothing else interesting enough to spend points in

also i dont rly agree with priest being the worst healers of all, if u use every ability you have you can do as much healing as other classes and even outheal them in some fights, priest is very random in abilities, wich imo makes them very strong and usefull in every situation you are in (healing tanks - healing raids - ...)
but thats just my opinion based on me not having that much troubles keeping my mana up and "competing" with the other guildhealers

[Hanzi]

you're talking WoTLK tho i pressume where mana doesn't really matter and our AOE healing is insane atm due to the mana being close to infinite atm. I and most were talking about Cataclysm as WoTLK is soon over and there's nothing interesting about it.

As for Body and Soul, it's pretty much required to get further in the tree, there's no reason to leave it out anyways as it's used in some fights but foremost on RS25 HC, minimizes the time spent on healing him instead of the raid/tank.

[Efesus]

well if was indeed refering to wotlk but i also play beta and didnt find much troubles keeping every1 up in normal dungeons atm, but i know that is not rly comparable
still it doesnt change my feelings about a priest healer, we have so many different ways to heal that it probably is just matters of time to find a way that suits the players behind the priest to get the best out of your healing, once you get the hang of that i dont think we will have a hard time keeping up with other classes
i hope that i will get a shot to find out myself how things will work out

[Envied]

My humblest apologies for the less-than-timely attention to the posts of Slugsy, Thadu, bobbo101, Sikk, and Talorine,

We are currently working on LK 10man and sindragosa 25 man both normal. Anyways decided to try out disc for the obvious advantages it brings for lk fight etc but have never played disc before and every guide I find seems to be well outdated. Everyone keeps telling me spam shield if only it was that easy :).

I see you've recently found yourselves successful with the ten-man Lich King; 'Grats!

Discipline is quite unique in the way its complexity spirals to not much at all in the transition from ten-man to twenty-five-man content. I could imagine said sources having described the gameplay of the latter, which indeed involves little beyond Power Word: Shield blanketing. Note that Sindragosa is notoriously unfriendly to the spec, and prefers a swap to Holy.

While both types of encounters revolve around monitoring the statuses and timers of Shields and Weakened Soul, the insufficient number of targets in ten-man ones requires that you find something else to do while in the temporal dead zones. Most of the time this means either casting Penance and Flash Heal to support tank healing, or throwing a Prayer of Mending and/or a hasted Prayer of Healing if it's the raid your colleagues could use some help with.

What's absolutely golden for priests of both specs is sporting the proper tools to keep track of your three different buff-based heals.
My set-up of choice uses GridStatusHots, GridStatusPWShield, and GridIndicatorSideText to the following end (Grid display relevant):

With Power Word: Shield, Renew, Prayer of Mending.


Power Word: Shield cancelled.

I noticed you guys only bring you as disc to LK-25, and I was wondering how much of the raid can you keep infest off with shields as the only disc?
Also, would you guys consider it beneficial to specc the holy priest to disc for better infest coverage? If not, what benefits does the holy priest bring over another disc?

With low-to-moderate latency it is always possible to shield 20-21 individuals, courtesy of Infest's 20-second hard cooldown and two-second cast. This drops with each GCD one spends on Pain Suppression and emergency Penances, and increases for delayed Infests due to lower cast priority to Defile and the summons.

We don't believe the Infest-proofing of dual Discipline brings enough security to outweigh the dramatically lowered raid healing output during transitional and Frostmourne phases, for which Holy is a tremendous asset.

Our original lineup did include two priests as Discipline, but wound up with a Discipline-Holy pair (Was it DDH at the very earliest, or did Zhinn simply respec? Anyone remember?).

Is my intellect and gear enough to not go oom? (for example, my job on lich king 25 is to shield 15 members between infest)

What should I socket? What gems in what slots?

What do you think is the best pve trinkets for a discipline priest?

In theory Discipline can go on forever in phases one and two of the Lich King as long as one makes sure the multiple simultaneous triggers of Rapture aren't stifled by Shields on tanks or high enough Spell Power for Infest to fail to break a sufficient number of Shields on the raid to sustain the flow of mana.
In the latter scenario you need to rank down your Power Word: Shield so it falls just short of the average hit of an Infest.

My socketing recommendations can be found in Fabbin's quote, with the reminder that once HC LK-25 is all that stands in your way, the Rapture mechanics render non-SP gems pointless for Discipline.

Trinket-wise, even though I carry a vehement dislike for the cheating wretches Solace & Jr., the senior does land second-to-best-in-slot behind the Heroic Abacus.

The standings for high-level priest trinkets find themselves as follows, best-to-worst:

HC Althor's Abacus
HC Solace of the Fallen
Purified Lunar Dust
HC Sliver of Pure Ice
Althor's Abacus
Solace of the Fallen
Sliver of Pure Ice

I'm just wondering if everything looks good in terms of gemming, enchants, etc.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... ia&cn=Sikk

Your equipment appears to be in mighty fine condition for your level. My next move would be to rid myself of Talisman in favor of the above-mentioned Dust.

Your Holy build is quite at home in ten-man raids, which I see you focus on. Many of the talents and glyphs no longer have a place in 25-man encounters, however, should you opt to pursue those.

The Discipline of yours, however, is in dire state of disrepair when it comes to a couple of mandatory picks; Glyph of Penance is something one should never leave Dalaran without (substitute for Glyph of Prayer of Healing), and the worthless points in Improved Renew are better off spent on the relatively powerful Focused Will.

Im using 4 pieces and my guildmate is not, because he said that just 5% is ridiculous, so he is using t10 dps shoulders and head, those gives more haste them the healers one. Ok, this gives him about 200 sp more than me and about 4% more crit.

How in the world is trading SPI for Haste at 1:1 pulling him ahead in the slightest in the stats you describe, let alone by those numbers? The only thing he has over you is the Haste.

Opting out of the healer T10 in favor of the Shadow pieces does scrape him a whisker's width of an advantage in strictly-Discipline, explicitly-ten-man raiding, but the moment you step into Holy for flexibility (an invaluable feature in priest healing), or set your aim higher into 25-man encounters, your friend will find himself hopelessly hamstrung with neither the proper stat distribution or the four-piece bonuses that all contribute directly into one's performance outside the narrow window of ten-man Disc.

Jhazrun, I decided to quote you from an earlier post, seeing as how I have found the Grid addons to be most helpful, but since the patch, the sideindicators have not been working, have you found a working solution?


I used text for PW:Shield and the Weakened soul debuff, but for my PoM and Renw, I put those on a countdown timer, so I can see how many seconds till the both dropped off, but now those don't even work.



Please help me !

[Jhazrun]

The recent versions of both GridStatusHots and GridIndicatorSideText are compatible with the latest patch, the former now also tracking PW:S and Weakened Soul (rendering GridStatusPWShield obsolete). Are you finding them unresponsive despite updating?

PS: Please edit out the unrelated parts of your Great Wall of Quote.

[Pacco]

Hello !

I was just wondering what your thought are about inrolling smite to your "rotations" when playing disc?

-Pacco

[Jhazrun]

The time investment relies on specific encounter pacing for viability, but that's the only kind one'd want to run Discipline for to begin with. Note that any and all concrete trials in a raid environment have so far been impossible on the beta realm thanks to someone failing to tell a one from a three when tampering with Archangel.

EDIT: Nevermind the subject…
Cataclysm Beta - Build 13221
• Evangelism (Holy) has been removed.
• Archangel (Holy) has been removed.
• Atonement has been removed.