So, you’ve picked Discipline. Congratulations! Welcome to a enjoyable and rewarding spec that will bring more to your guild’s raids than they realise. First question – what do we do? What are our greatest strengths? Well, let’s start off by summarising what we’re actually useful for;
- Shields! With Soul Warding, Improved Shields and Borrowed Time, suddenly our Shields become our greatest strength. We’ll use them for everything – I’ll explain later.
- Absorption! Where some tanks would die in two quick hits, a Discipline Priest can turn that into three. We may not show up top of the healing meters, (the basis for many complaints by misinformed raid leaders,) but we offer some of the best pre-emptive tank “healing” around – and while we’re at it, we can provide some of the fastest reactive healing too with Penance and hasted Greater Heals. Oh, and did I forget to mention Divine Aegis?
- Unique buffs and utility spells. We actually have some of these! Renewed Hope should always be up on the raid – we also buff Grace on people (almost always the tank) and have both Power Infusion and Pain Suppression, all of which are unique to the spec. Finally, how could I forget Rapture? These are all things which other people benefit from!
How do all these tie in to us healing in raids? Well the first and second points combine very nicely. Put it this way – if you shield 7 or 8 raid members in advance of a Flame Jets from Ignis, that’s 42-48k damage that you prevented. Does it show up on the healing meters? No. Will it win the heart of your number-crazy raid leader? No. But you just prevented a crapload of damage, and that’s something that nobody else can do – not even a Protection Paladin with super-fast hands. It’ll also give you a nice warm feeling inside.
As for the third point, well all of the mentioned talents are Discipline-specific and they’re quite deep into the tree, so they aren’t really obtainable by Holy Priests. And they’re awesome.
But just cast your mind back to that Flame Jets paragraph. That’s what Discipline is all about – pre-emptive healing. At heart, we’re just a different kind of healer. Other healers heal people. Discipline healers can do that, but more importantly they can prevent damage from happening in the first place. We provide strong, fast tank healing while dishing out excellent support onto the raid with our shields.
I’ll finish off this piece with the golden rule of Discipline, and if there’s one thing you learn from this article, this should be it.
THE GOLDEN RULE FOR DISCIPLINE PRIESTS: If you’re not thinking 20 seconds ahead, you’re not playing it right!
The golden rule: is this 20s because of some talent/ability or just 20s, just good to think ahead?
It’s more like thinking about what’ll be happening in 10-20 seconds’ time, mainly with regard to when (and how much) damage will be put onto the raid. You can shield more people – and therefore prevent more damage – if you’re thinking 15 or 20 seconds ahead than if you’re thinking 0 or 5 seconds ahead.
i liked the article over all, can I pick your brain Roble?
is there a shield value cap on Divine Aegis? ( maximum stacked size in terms of HP) also Recount has updated a plugin to show “recount guessed absorbed” as a seperate stat just for discs
how much while casting mp5 do you have or suggest to be the threshold from keeping you from going oom while you correctly roll shields on your raid? Currently i have some mana issues, not a ton, we run 10 mans in my guild – by choice – so there is a larger burden of need on me as a healer. i can’t just be a shell shield.
i’m finding that 2 flash heals for me, out weighs 1 gheal currently with my haste, crit, and functionality when i actually have to stop doing shields and start healing. I’m often splashing flash heals/renew thru the whole raid.
on Hodir i switch to my holy spec cuz the disc burden seems to great, ( we don’t run with a shaman or a druid healing usually, just don’t have a dedicated player for that atm) its usually a holypriest, me, and a pally. ignis isnt usually an issue cuz the damage is burst like and fixed/stacked up.
we’re not “stuck” on hodir but he’s definently a shank in my side do you have any suggestions? all i do for switching to holy is change my trinkets to more spirit based for more mana.
my toon is Leelou and I play on Stonemaul if you want to see what i’m working with, hopefully i’m in my pvE gear when you look.
i rambled quite a bit, recap:
- Divine aegis mitigation cap?
- how much ifs mp5 did you have when you stopped noticing any mana issues?
- 2+flash heal> or < gheal?
- wtfHodirPwnsMehHalp!?
First off, thanks very much.
– Divine Aegis cap
Yep, DA stacks until 10k on a Level 80 target. For any non-80 target, it stacks until 125 multiplied by their level.
– IFSR mp5
The stats page – Part 3 of the guide – is coming out soon and will discuss this in more detail. I haven’t paid any attention to my mp5 for a long time, intellect makes a really really big difference to your longevity. Some tips;
1. VERY IMPORTANT! Get an Insightful Earthsiege Diamond as your metagem. It’s got a chance to restore 600 mana on spellcast – even with the 15 second ICD, you should be getting SEVENTY-FIVE mp5 (that’s a lot) and the lovely 21 intellect bonus. That should go a long way to solving your mana problems.
2. Intellect’s a lot more important than mp5 for longevity, thanks to the lovely percentage based buffs/spells like Replenishment, Shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope etc. I think I caught you in your PvP gear, but you’ve got about 90 less intellect than me, and 4 INT = 3 mp5. Try and cut out the mp5 on your gear for more intellect/other stats.
3. If you’re still having trouble, swap out some gems for +16 intellect gems. If you’re STILL having trouble (even after potion usage) then consider re-enchanting for intellect and the spirit enchant on the legs. But you shouldn’t be having much trouble after points 1 and 2.
– Flash Healing the Raid
Sorry to burst the bubble, but since 3.1, Flash Heals on the raid aren’t what they used to be! As Grace only applies to one target at a time, Flash Heals on the raid can take valuable +healing buff time away from the tank.
Basically, because the two Flash Heals or one GH would be on the same target, (the tank,) the GH becomes a better option. Your raid support tools are Shields and PoH/PoM.
– AmgdzHodirPwnsU?
Yeah, Frozen Blows is a real bitch. If your healing comp is Holy Paladin/Disc Priest/Other Healer and you can respec for Holy on Hodir, I’d advise you to do so, because the Holy Paladin will have serious trouble raid healing. With an FR tank, we found we only needed one tank healer on Hodir.
If you want to dualspec Shadow, then what immediately comes to mind is just advance shielding well, making sure PoM stays up and spamming hasted PoHs.
Hope all this helps!
-Will it win the heart of your number-crazy raid leader?
There is a plugin for Recount named : Guessed Absorbs for it :p
(sorry for my bad english) and good job for the blog man
!
World of Logs is also fantastic in including your absorbed damage. As a disc priest i’m usually up there with the druid and the holy priests….sometimes (don’t tell anyone) I even top the heals!