The new Disc - sound offFollow

I've been thinking about using that. I would have liked to combine it with a TargetNextEnemy macro, but I don't believe that macro ability works anymore.

I’m still planning to be PVP Holy, and yeah, no Archangel for me. Standing there smiting sounds like a great way to get locked out of Holy. I’m going to take Darkness, Veiled Shadows and one point in Twisted Faith so that all the Spirit I have to stack does double duty as hit rating--I hate to miss a Chastise, Psychic Scream or Mind Control. That leaves me enough points to still get Twin Disciplines and 4% mana reduction on instants.

Lightwell is still the most underestimated heal in the game. Its mana efficiency is great, it ticks hard, and nobody but a raid tank is going to get hit hard enough in one blow to cancel it. And it works through stun, through silence! One of my favorite things in a BG is when two or three players have been beating on me and suddenly realize the LOLwell has been saving my keister, so they peel off to kill it...now that it’s down to a couple of charges. My brave little UFO provides one final service of sucking up their DPS while I get some distance.

Keep me posted on Discipline, but I really think the baton has passed. My only concern is mana efficiency at 85; Rapture might be Discipline’s salvation.

Is that enough to save you having to get hit gear for your PVP set?

Right now I have Archangel in my PVP spec but not my PVE one. I may change that because, frankly, having to find a place for the Archangel button is really inconvenient.

I will try Disc again at some point but I'm having too much fun with Holy right now.

Lightwell rules.

So I've done more fiddling - I am now heroic ready and have already succesfully beaten 3/4 bosses in heroic Stonecore. Latest findings:

Levelingwise, disc beats holy. After three full zones I think I can quite safely say that the most effective rotation is Holy Fire > 5X Smite without using Archangel (with the Holy Fire glyph, obviously), then continueing to Smite the next mobs with 5X Evangelism up and only using Archangel if Evangelism is going to drop anyway. Holy has more readily accessible burst because Smite Chakra basically equals 5X Evangelism, but doesn't have such a huge ramp up time - the problem with the spec really is that you just run ouf of mana after literally three or four mobs; as disc you tend to get lowish (20%) after a mob or 12, which is just enough for the average killing quest.

Dungeonwise, I've realized the following: get items with intellect and spirit on them. Cata made the line a lot thinner (to the point of invisible, frankly), but stuff with no spirit (AKA: gear with only int and a combination of haste, mastery or crit on it) simply is caster DPS gear. You need that spirit to function properly, unless you're a really high calibre player - and even then the slightest mistake in any 5-man means a wipe.

Specwise, I've got some interesting news. I'm glad to say that I've found that pretty much every spec is viable enough to do stuff with, but it would seem as if Archangel is the weakest link for disc specs. On some fights you'll be able to get 5X Evangelism up, but even without using Holy Fire, in *real* fights that are actually hard, Smiting is so un-viable that it by far does not warrant the five points it takes up. You can easily drop all those talents and not notice that you've lost something. If Atonement doesn't receive some kind of huge buff, we'll see very few Smiting priests.

Specwise 2, what I've been playing around with as this is this. Yes, there's one open point - I'm attempting to see if I can get by with 2/3 Rapture now that the talent has been nerfed to hell and back, at it definitely seems I can - which means my last point can probably fill up Empowered Healing. For holy, I've been running with this, which I suspect will end up being the main raiding build. There's no shame in picking up Veiled Shadows with that spec, just as you're virtually completely free to drop Spirit of Redemption - there's just a lot of personal customization possible, and something like this would probably work quite well too. The only thing to note here is that PvE'ers will want to drop Desperate Prayer. At 85, with around 5K spellpower, it heals for about 10K health - which is a meager 10% of your health pool, if that. It's cool that it's free, but since it uses a GCD, you're generally better off throwing a Renew on yourself instead. If doing so means you die, then Desperate Prayer likely wouldn't have saved you anyway.

Last but not least, I need to share this awesome trinket that I got with you guys. Epic in all senses of the word, aside from it being uncommon. It actually works so well I should be using that until well into tier 11. On a little footnote, 'is cancelled' in this case also means 'runs out'.


Sorry for the huge wall of text, but I just had to put down my findings somewhere - am getting more and more eager to start on that sticky, but I will need to do more exploring and would definitely like some discussion with the findings you guys have made.

Thank you. I'll give that a try.

I have a guildie who has been leveling a Disc priest. He is now 84 and has been getting in on 5 man guild runs. I primary heal and he's smiting. The interesting thing to watch is that when both of us are smiting, our HPS is doubled, and both our smite output together amounts to respectable dps. If the second priest went shadow, we would get a bit more dps, but probably wouldn't get as big a backup heal output. It's just kind of neat that having 2 disc priests in a group doesn't seem to be the negative it was back in the bubble spam days.

Edited, Dec 27th 2010 2:23pm by dadanox

Seeing as our Cata discussion really is all over the place; I got a chance to do some raiding today. Found that disc still works better in some situations, so don't fret disc lovers. Holy is simply good at everything, and its huge regeneration buff means you will simply need it for longer/endurance fights. It's also more efficient at healing up the raid than disc if there's actually raid-wide damage. What it isn't as good as, is pure tank healing. That, and healing fights where 'raid damage' means there's 1-3 people getting hit with abilities at random intervals rather than some AoE hitting the entire raid.

I finally got around to trying Disc again, put it in my 2nd spec for battlegrounds. And I'm forced to conclude that... there is no new Disc. It's the old Disc. I don't know if they adjusted shield again, or more likely it's just because I have real mastery on my gear now, but my absorbs feel a lot stronger again. It was like coming home. :)

I wouldn't say it's better than Holy, certainly it lacks Holy's raw healing power and I miss having so many buttons to push to suit the situation. Also Penance sucks now. But there are good trade-offs for that (mana, survivability) and I've always loved the whole mitigation style. Plus holy crap how much easier it was to do my dailies. Didn't go under 80% mana once.

I'm giving myself until the end of the weekend to choose. It'll affect some of my gear choices so I kind of need to pick one per season to be my primary spec.

I don't use Heal nearly as much as Holy as they expected me to (this is for PVP, still using it plenty in 5-mans), and I'm finding with Penance added to the mix I'm using it even less as Disc. If I'm going to have that long a cast I find I just need it to be better to justify that time and go to Greater Heal instead.

Your point about using Smite instead is going to be the really hard thing for me to learn. Naturally my instinct when someone's health drops is to, yanno, heal them, but if I can back off on the panic and Smite their target for a bit it seems to be more efficient all around, unless it's a serious damage spike.

I'm having very few mana problems even when I don't pop Archangel. That alone is very refreshing, as is not juggling Chakra states. But I miss my Lightwell and my Chastise a lot. Funny though, after playing Disc for so long in Wrath it really didn't take long for me to just fall back into the groove again. I think I'm generally more comfortable with Disc.

Still don't know which to pick for main spec. >:-[

I almost never cast Heal as Disc. I either Smite, PW:S or wait until GH or PoH is the right tool for the job. I use Renew sometimes for ranged DPS to get them up unless GH wont over heal and Penance is off CD, as Grace+Atonement is sexy and I don't like Grace not moving from the tank.

I almost wish Grace was a castable buff we could put on one target. That would rock.

Well, I'll try a holy off-spec for a bit. That will be a fun diversion...

edit:
I ran a normal instance as holy last night and I'm working out my keybindings. I'm trying to utilize all my spells. Peoples health was high enough that I actually utilized heal quite a bit as my normal direct heal spell on the tank, in between rotating my other abilities on him and AOE a bit for the whole group.

I'm getting the hang of Chakra. We will see how it goes. I'd like to stay holy for a bit and give it a good try. The group will just have to do without my couple of k worth of smite dps.

Edited, Jan 5th 2011 4:41pm by dadanox

I made the switch to holy from smite disc for dungeon healing a few weeks ago. I really can't make up my mind which I prefer. I like that you're always casting with smite and it seemed easier on the mana - the mana pool is larger and bosses go down just a little bit quicker, but healing via smite doesn't always work so well. For holy, I like the chakras, making more use of renew and is better on group healing.

I love the archangel wings, while chakra needs wings! The chakra auras are stupid as there is all too often other stuff to look out for under your feet.

What Blizz needs to do is make Grace a targetable buff and make Atonement prefer to heal a Graced target if there is one.