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Raid Healing as Disco
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Post by
179389
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Post by
OscarDivine
Disco is generally used as a single target healing spec for these two big reasons:
Penance
Grace
Penance is a channeled spell that does healing to a single target. Excellent for stacking Grace. In a raid healing situation, you will end up making yourself dizzy trying to heal everyone with penance.
Grace is probably the single biggest reason that a disco priest should not raid heal. As one of the biggest talent assets that a disco priest has in his/her arsenal, it will jump around to every target you heal and never be fully effective.
I would say that I'm definitely a supporter of the idea that Disco is for single target healing and Holy is for Raid Healing.
Post by
387103
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Post by
Paolo
Disc is excellent at
supportive
raid healing, not primary raid healing. I will do it occasionally, but it's frankly a weak spec for the job. You have these tools:
PW:Shield
- spammable. Use it on key targets (Napalm Shell, Kolo grip, Slag pot, etc) and when damage is about to hit the raid. Or just about any time at all.
PoH
- hopefully
hasted
and even glyphed. I'll shield someone (anyone) while Flame Jets is casting so that when it's over I've got a haste buff ready for PoH. That said, PoH is a mana-eater, so if that's your main job, you will go OOM right quick.
PoM
- nothing special, just the regular.
And as Oscar said, Penance and FH are both useful but sub-optimal when used for raid heals.
In practice, I'm focused on the tank but do all of the above when I can. It gives the raid healers some breathing room in damage phases.
I imagine that when raid damage spikes you:
Pre-shield as much as possible then ProM > PoH > Shield > PoH > Shield > PoH Basically, yes. However I'll try to put up PoM in advance of a damage phase so that its cooldown is up quicker.
Keeping up stacks of Grace is a key Disco thingie, it seems to me. Keeping up stacks on more than 1 tank is probably possible, but it seems harder than, say, keeping up stacks of Lifebloom on a group of tanks.
The tooltip indicates that Grace can only be applied to one target at a time. As soon as you FH someone, they become your Graced target.
Post by
OscarDivine
The tooltip indicates that Grace can only be applied to one target at a time. As soon as you FH someone, they become your Graced target.
Now this brings up an interesting point about the Grace talent and how players use it.
Some players actually only place 1/2 Grace instead of 2/2 so that in the event that they have to heal themselves or another player, there's a 50% chance the Grace won't be transferred. This is (of course) regarding tank healing Disco Priests.
If you decide for whatever reason that you want to use the current Disco spec for Raid Healing, you may want to consider this or even eliminate the talent all together. After all, Grace is MEANT to be used as a Single Target healing buff.
Post by
179389
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Post by
OscarDivine
Holy is still significantly better for raid-wide burst recovery. Borrowed Time cannot hold a candle to Serendipity + Test of Faith for amount healed and casts performed. This is not to mention CoH. If you're going to raid heal... why would you drop these talents to just try and raid heal a different way that's less efficient (as you admit yourself) and has lower output?
I will admit that it's an interesting idea, it's just not feasible in a raid setting to heal as disciplines.
This is similar to the idea of Frost Mages trying to do single target damage over a fire or frostfire mage or a Warrior trying to Multi target tank over a paladin or a DK.
While it can certainly be done (and might even be a whole lot of fun), it isn't nearly as effective as a different way, which in this case, is Holy. Interesting idea though.
Post by
Paolo
So this is just a genesis of the original holy build concept of allowing other's effective healing to rise, and focus on gib protection and raid wide-burst recovery. I'm just now seeing that disco may prove to be the better spec for this role.
Again this is why I'm curious to see if there are any priests that primarily raid heal when they're disco and how they fit into the healing philosophy of their group.
Most raid-wide burst recovery is non-threatening. I.e., after flame jets, everyone goes down to 40% or so, but there is little imminent danger to anyone other than the tank. So there isn't any great value to speed-recovery more than what holy priests & resto druids can already provide. Frozen blows is different, and Mim P2 is threatening as well. In those cases, disc had better be bringing its A-game to the raid-heals department.
Just to restate the well-known: a disc priest's strengh is
mitigation
. Shield.
Renewed Hope
.
Aegis
. Pain Suppression. These can be multi-target as well as single target (except PS, of course). But putting a disc priest on raid-wide healing (not mitigation) is like using an elemental shaman to throw out heals: it can be a great stop-gap, but is far from playing to strength.
I recommend that you spec disc and do MT healing for a time. While you're there, do raid-heal support, by shielding key targets (see my first post) and using hasted PoH for recovery support (after flame jets, etc). I think that will be a better reference point from which you can evaluate the viability of using disc for raid heals.
Post by
179389
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
179389
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
56987
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Paolo
I'd like to hear the experience of priests out there that do the majority of your raid healing as Disco?
. . .
I'm talking about the situation I'm in. Disco's strength as a MT healer isn't needed for our raid, but it's burst healing could be used to great effect in another way. Because we already have another holy priest and two resto druids. I'm looking to play to OUR strengths, to fill a gap that we've just been healing through up until now.
Fair enough. I just wouldn't expect to find many people with experience in the department you're wanting to work in. Disc isn't designed to be viable in the role you're shooting for, at least not without crafty choices in gear & talents, or significantly overgearing the content you're playing (if it's possible at all).
For reference -- and hoping not to hijaak your thread too much -- our regular healing team consists of:
1 disc priest
2 holy priests
2 trees (one spec'd for tank heals)
1 resto shaman
(and sometimes another tree or shaman)
This is not by design, nor is it optimal; however, the setup has proven flexible enough and strong enough that healing throughput is almost never the main pressure point in our progression. In other words: I'd be curious to see the setup you're trying to work within, to see if it does indeed need some creative or non-traditional role definition.
Post by
OscarDivine
Agreed, however I'm talking about the situation I'm in. Disco's strength as a MT healer isn't needed for our raid, but it's burst healing could be used to great effect in another way. Because we already have another holy priest and two resto druids. I'm looking to play to OUR strengths, to fill a gap that we've just been healing through up until now.
Just out of curiosity, what is wrong with dual specing Holy and having 2 Holy Priests + 2 Trees?
Based on your numbers, I'm convinced that Disco can raid heal, but the question would then be, for how long? The mana efficiency of a holy spec'd priest using Healing Prayers and Divine Providence will be significantly better. As well, the haste shown on your example does not reflect the haste that a Holy Priest properly geared may have but only with Serendipity. I suspect this may push the numbers over the edge toward Holy Priests.
edit: I am noticing that your numbers have Disco at 26% haste? vs 19% for Holy? Absolutely not... Where the heck did you pull those numbers out of?
Post by
179389
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
179389
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
OscarDivine
Ig I have a huge problem with your numbers and that is that you've somehow stacked 26% haste onto your disco priest? that's not even possible to stack with as much crit as you have without Heroism or continuous Power Infusion.
I think more appropriate and realistic base numbers would be 14% haste and 20% Crit for Holy Priest while Disco priest has 25% crit and 5-6% haste.
Calculate those numbers and Ignore Power Infusion or include Guardian Spirit onto the tank for 40% increased healing, with a one minute CD.
edit: the 14% Haste + 20% Crit Holy vs 25% Crit + 6% Haste Disco were derived from my own gear sets.
Post by
179389
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
OscarDivine
In this example you're equating Holy gear and Disco gear. Since we know that this isn't true... I think your example has to be different.
where's that 6% haste for Disco from anyway?
Post by
OscarDivine
If you compare identically geared Holy priest and Disco priest it doesn't surprise me that the difference between the two isn't very big. There should be more weight on Haste for Holy and Crit for Disco.
Either way, I do still expect to see Holy last the length of a raid fight where Disco would probably go OOM after 2 or 3 iterations of raid healing.
Similarly, I would expect Holy to OOM more quickly than Disco while single target healing.
Post by
56987
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