A Discipline Priest

Moving to Wordpress

2009-03-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Hey all, I'm moving to Wordpress because I like the layout and tools a bit better. Check me out at my new address http://terrasus.wordpress.com

Laters

PTRs Suck

2009-02-26T06:14:00.001-08:00

I've only seriously participated in 2 PTRs in my WoW career, and I really think I should stop. Everytime I help with PTRs I end up pissed off because "Blizzard's screwing us again!"

While I know that everything on the PTR is under scrutiny and will be removed if it's bad enough and nerfed if it's too good... I'm pissed that we're never one of the "too good."

Discipline Changes thus far... I'm not going to go through all of these... that's just too tedious.

They're nerfing Rapture. This talent alone made me a never-oom (with Replenishment). I rarely use shadowfiend or have to drink between trash pulls, and if shadowfiend becomes necessary, I pop him and go about my business. With a 25k mana pool raid-buffed I go from 30% mana to basically full in one shadow-fiend.

Now... the rapture nerf. They're basically giving us a self-only Replenishment which will only proc when our PW: Shield is 100% absorbed. Plus we have a % chance to restore mana, runic power, rage, etc... for whoever we're healing. Kinda cool, but all those calculations we did over the past few months can be deleted. They no longer apply. @^@%!

See. This is why I think I shouldn't participate in the PTR anymore. It pisses me off, yet I know it will change... or will it. My prediction is that they'll leave most if not all of these changes. Reason: all of this disc stuff is new. They really won't know what it's going to be like until they can test it thoroughly, which probably won't happen until 3.1 goes live and gets used for a few weeks.

Ok, we'll see, but I'm seriously considering going back to holy.

Spirit is getting nerfed... they touch Rapture and its on

2009-02-11T15:41:00.001-08:00

Blizzard has posted patch notes, and it looks like OOFSR regen is getting nerfed pretty hardcore. My guess is that Holy priests are going to be fighting for mana. Druids will be gasping for breath after their innervate is gone. However, Discipline Priests, Holy Paladins, and Restoration Shamans will be basically the same. We all concentrate on MP5 moreso than Spirit. However, if we as Disc Priests want to have our Tier 7.0, 7.5, and sets going forward, we have no choice but to pick up a lot of Spirit.

I forget where this was addressed, but I am sure it would not be difficult to find Discipline Priests griping about gear availability that focuses more toward our desired stats. If I have a choice between Spirit and MP5, I'm probably going to take the MP5. I rarely am OOFSR, a.k.a. not casting. You're better off throwing shields around to everyone since Blizzard seems to love AoE damage.

Back to the point... After Spirit regen, the only thing they have left is Intellect and all talents that use our "Maximum Mana" to calculate mana regeneration... Rapture. It is OP. It is our primary regeneration tool. When all other healers start going OOM while we sit back and flex, someone will start pointing fingers.

My hope is that we will remain transparent. Our rank on the healing meters may help us out with this. While shields not showing up on the meters is an ego-killer. It may save us from the Nerf Bat.

Priests are getting some cool stuff in 3.1

2009-02-07T20:55:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

I don't know if you've been over to mmo-champion lately, but check it out... priests are getting some pretty neato buffs.

Divine Spirit will be trainable, rather than talentable... nice. So that means 3 points Discipline Priests can put somewhere else.

Power Word: Barrier... AoE shield... Sounds A-W-E-S-O-M-E. mmm mmm mmm /drool

AOE heal changes include:

Prayer of Healing can be cast on ANY GROUP /yum

Holy Nova costs less mana... sweet

CoH heals more... cool

Shadow Priest pvp viability... yada yada grats

PENANCE! ...can now be targeted on the priest. About f'n time.

Serendipity reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing after Flash Heal or Binding Heal are cast.

...and more pvp viability for holy priests. /woopee

-------------------------------------

All sarcasm aside, these have potential to make 3.1 very interesting. I know there will be some holy priests very glad that they can keep 3 or their points out of the Discipline tree, and I for one will be glad to devote them to that new Power Word: Barrier. I can't wait until it's in PTR, so I can go test it. I only hope that it gets some benefit from Rapture because I'm sure that it won't be cheap mana-wise.

Rapture Fixed... ain't healin' great?

2009-01-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

If you all have not discovered it yet, although I am sure that you have, Rapture is fixed and is rocking the world. I just finished running 2 wings of Heroic Naxx, and I was 3rd on the meter for mana returns. #1 Prot Pally and #2 Frost/Fire Mage and me, #3 Discipline Priest.

I'm actually going to be gemming spell power in red slots now. With 25,000+ mana fully raid buffed, I'm returning a ton of mana. Not to mention that Replenishment is ticking like nuts.... Thanks to my fellow shadow priests.

I'm basically at the point where my mana is being restored constantly. I only popped shadow fiend one time tonight, and that was because our tanks got overzealous pulling trash.

Sidestory: I ended up going holy for about 2 hours the other night to kill 10 man Sapphiron. All that AOE damage was just too much for one Discipline Priest and one Holy Pally to handle. I respec'd, and after I had remembered my buttons, we downed him. I believe it took just 2 more tries after I respec'd.

The reason I bring that up is that I went back to Discipline tonight for our 25 man, and it was like a bottle of Gatorade after a long hot soccer practice.... it was such a relief. I simply do not care for the PoM,PoH,CoH,FH,FH,.... setup. It's just not much fun.

To be honest, we're basically Pallys in cloth with AoE heals and hots. We're OP... just don't tell anyone.

----------------------

Everyone, keep your shields up and your penance on cooldown. I'm off, laters.

-Terrai

Still Busted...

2009-01-22T16:07:00.000-08:00

Well, they promised us a fix for our Rapture returns from PW: Shields. It was, and it still is, supplying Rapture gains based on the maximum mana of the shieldee. Thus, any shields we have been putting on Warriors, Rogues, and other non-mana units have been returning nothing.

The blues say something did not make its way to the live realms and that they are working on a hotfix.

I was looking forward to this change a great deal, and was sorely disappointed to see no mana ticks from Rapture while healing one of my guild's warrior tanks through nexus on patch day.

Keep hoping everyone, they will make us right... eventually.

Rapture Returns Spreadsheet

2009-01-16T17:00:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Check out this spreadsheet if you're wondering how you calculate what intellect will do to your rapture gains. It's pretty neat.

More mana = more mana for less of a heal. This should be pretty useful, and it looks like anything over about 11.4k healing crosses your line of diminishing returns from Rapture.

We are Single Target Healers

2009-01-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

BOSS DOWN

Well that's another boss down in Heroic Naxxramas. As the sole Discpline Priest, I was asked to heal the understudies along with my 2 Holy Paladin Buddies. According to wow-heroes, one of the paladins is geared much much higher than I am... but we discipline priests know we have to work for our fame.

Discipline Priests RULE!

...and as we all know the healing #s do not include the mitigation of our shields.

If this doesn't make you finally drop Circle of Healing, nothing will, because this is what Discipline specced priest do best.

Your thoughts while main tank healing should be the following:

1. PW: Shield every time the cooldown is ready.

2. Penance every time the cooldown is ready.

3. Prayer of Mending every time the cooldown is ready.

4. A couple Greater Heals

5. Throw in a few renews if you think it will help.

- I rarely use this as it gives me no return on my mana from Rapture, it does not proc Divine Aegis, I don't have it talented, and the above cooldowns are generally up by this time in my rotation

- I sometimes throw this on a tank when he gets to the boss, but this is a bad idea on trash, aoe pulls

Overall Healing Breakdown

I'm not perfect, by any means. The Glyph of PW: Shield procs everytime, so as you can see I used 23 shields in my healing rotation. By my math, in 7 mins and 4 seconds, the 15 second Weakened Soul debuff would run out giving us 28 chances to cast PW: Shield. Therefore, I missed 5 out on 5 shielding opportunities. Although, that's not too shabby it's a must, so I'll work on it.

As this was my first attempt on Razvious in heroic mode, I was a bit nerve-wracked.

Gains, Buffs & Debuffs

620 - Our maximum return from Rapture, which supports the idea of 2.5% of our max mana.

My biggest heal being a ~14.5k crit Greater heal most likely yielded this huge Rapture proc, making our GH cost half of its normal cost from ~1230 to ~600.

Replenishment helps a lot, so thank you shadow priests :)

Power Infusion is a pretty big deal on this fight too. Due to the fact that the guy I was healing was almost 100% of the time down by about 50,000 heath, every heal was giving Rapture returns. So, it behooved me to use it every chance I got, and according to my math 4 was the max. Got'em all, yes!

One thing that's nice is that I macro both of my trinkets, but that's part of another post.

Fully Raid Buffed

If you read my earlier post, I said to stack Intellect first.

+mana

+crit

= yum

24.7k mana and 22% crit + another 4% crit from Renewed Hope

I can't recall my mana regen while casting, but I think it's around 400. I'll post that after my next 25 man run, sometime this week.

Please leave some feedback guys.

Laters!

Shields and Raid Healing

2009-01-09T05:50:00.001-08:00

During boss encounters and big trash AOE, spam your PW: Shield and Prayer of Mending. I figured out that my global cooldown (GCD) allows for a flash heal/PW: Shield rotation. Assuming you are raid healing, at least in as much as you can raid heal as a primarily single-target healer. I found yesterday that I was able to cast Flash Heal followed immediately by PW: Shield, and didn't have much trouble with the casting cooldown that PW: Shield has. I use X-Perl, so I click the person and then cast my spell. I've used healbot before, but I like the challenge that my setup creates.

Keeping the tank up is always my #1 concern. If he drops below 50%, I switch to him, no matter what's going on. You will be keeping Penance on cooldown 100% of the time ideally. Penance generally goes to the tank. If you have it talented, Grace will stack 3x and reduce damage taken by the tank by 3% and increase healing from you by 6%. Can you say "Suhweet!". My tank rotation goes kinda like this:

PW: Shield, Penance, Prayer of Mending

...but back to my original thought, ehem.

PW: Shielding and Flash Healing rotation for the DPS. This was incredibly effective for our 25 man Archavon. From what I can remember, it upped our mage DPS because they were not losing as much casting time to random damage, and it reduced our need to heal them. With my shield absorbing around 7500-8000 damage, and my flash heal doing 3500-4300, and my Glyph of PW: Shield doing around 1100. In less than 1.5 seconds. I was doing an effective 4600-5400 healing (FH + GPW:S) and a preventative 7500-8000, which comes to about 12100-13400 total. Granted that's assuming that shields is fully used before it dissipates after 30 seconds. If my FH crits, then you can add an additional 2500-3000 shielding from Divine Aegis. Oh, and the Glyph of PW: Shield crits for 1500-2500 sometimes, thought it doesn't proc any of things that proc from crit-heals. So a possible 15000-17800 healing/damage prevention in that 1.5 seconds for a single target.

In my experience yesterday, I was able to do this time and time again just switching from raid member to raid member, maybe dropping a flash heal or a penance on the tank in between.

I know I am probably beating this into the ground, but if you're doing this on your casters mages, warlocks, shadow priests, elemental shamans, then you're giving them time to get spells off without losing casting time. This is pretty huge, but don't foget about your melee, they already have a pretty tough time... give'em some love.

Give it a whirl and let me know if you disagree or think it works. I'm pretty stoked about it.

Mana Regen

2009-01-08T21:33:00.001-08:00

Rapture, Intellect, Spirit, MP5, and sometimes Replenishment

Currently, as it is in live World of Warcraft, 3.0.3, Rapture is using the mana pool of the shieldee instead of the shielder. Thus, that Death Knight and that Warrior you've been diligently healing are not giving you back mana when you PW: Shield (which my combat log says are absorbing around 7800 dmg) them or Divine Aegis procs on them. I see a lot of debate on this, but I think it can be fairly simplified. Discipline priests need Intellect, Spell Power, MP5, Crit, and haste. Terrai currently sits with around 20,000 mana unbuffed. So, mathematically I can receive a maximum amount of mana back from Rapture of 20,000 x .025 = 500.

Based on some math I've picked up, the biggest heal you can expect to get a full Rapture return on is around 12,000 at level 80. I crit Greater Heals for around 11-14k, so that would seem to be about right for blizzard to make it that way.

In My Opinion

1. More mana equals more returns from Rapture, so stack Intellect first. This also contributes to your critical strike chance. More crits = more Aegis which = more mana from Rapture... you get the picture.

2. Pick up MP5, not spirit... You'll rarely be out of the 5 sec rule. If you can't find MP5, sure take spirit... it doesn't hurt you, but don't be afraid to replace a lower amount of Spirit for MP5. I am constantly casting Shields on the tanks and other members of the raid because if they get hit while the shield is up, then I get some of that mana back. Additionally, if they get hit while shielded and the shield is not completely used up, then, if they are casters, they do not lose casting time, thus have higher dps.

3. Grab Spell Power and Crit, in that order.

4. Grab haste. Most Northrend gear has haste, at least for casters, so this won't be much trouble. I see a lot of haste and crit but I don't think I've ever seen them on the same piece of gear, which makes me think Blizzard wants you to choose. Personally I'm shooting for around 20% holy spell crit unbuffed. I also have 5/5 Holy Specialization.

Replenishment

Running with that and being one of the main healers for our main tank, a Protection Paladin on Patchwerk in Heroic Naxxramas, I finished the fight with 80% mana.

I spam healed most of this fight. I did not have to pop Shadowfiend, because replenishment just kept me going.

Conversely, on the regular run I did 2 days later, I was healing a Druid, popped Shadowfiend, and only finished the fight with 65% mana. We did have a shadow priest, but I'm unsure of the uptime for Replenishment. Maybe it was s

ome missing 25 man buffs, but this was much more mana intensive... but we were 2 healing it, so that could make a difference.

Yes, I love healing meters, and I have to get over this, because I don't see this much. Oh, and there's no mechanic to count my absorbs from PW: Sheild either.

Twins

2009-01-08T21:10:00.001-08:00

I'd mulled over the idea of character recustomization, and after my brother changed his main to a female avatar, I thought I'd try it out. I don't go to bars, so I spend my money on ridiculous WoW related ventures... it makes me happy. With that said, here is my first attempt at a meta story to accompany this change:

------------------------------------

Terrasus decided to take a well-deserved vacation and return home to the Exodar, while his younger twin, Terrai, had finally caught up to her barely-older brother. So, Terrasus convinced his guild that his sister would more than fill his shoes, so they accepted her into the fold. Terrai, a priest as well, did just as her brother predicted. The guild gave her the normal amount of grief as can be expected by a newly accepted member, but they soon returned to normal.

Terrai, having just recently achieved the highest level of priesthood, started off with a bang healing heroic after heroic dungeon accompanied by many fine warriors of the Alliance. Terrai loved the strength that her Discipline talents brought to her. She was resilient, and she had been for her entire life. Being raised as a foster child, with her three brothers, she had to be as strong as possible. Her shields and healing abilities are rarely matched, and she finally feels she has found her place, by fighting with her guild for the Alliance against the Scourge and its evil leader Arthas.

Laggramas

2009-01-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

...just a quick note. In our second attempt at heroic Naxx, we experienced 3-5 second per cast lag. After the first trash pull I said, "Guys, lets wrap it up and wait until tomorrow." I was soundly told to shut it. We managed to kill the big bug boss and make our way to the lady with the 4 cronies and 2 other adds.

We had quite a few deaths leading up to that fight due to lag, and by the time we got there I was pretty sick of it. It reminded me of all the times I went into AV and just stood there casting for 5 seconds for my Power Word: Shield (PW: S).

EVEN BETTER! I was the only priest, so I got Mind Control duty! Hooray! ...actually no. I was not thrilled, and due to my inexperience with that part of this fight, I messed up and we died. It wasn't 100% my fault, but I didn't help much. After that first attempt, I had the fight figured out, and was able to heal and MC correctly.

LAG again. It wiped us 2 more times, and everyone else figured out what I'd figured out within about 10 mins of being in the instance... the instance was laggy and that we should call it for tomorrow. Hmmm... that sounds familiar.

About Me, the evolution of a Discipline Priest

2009-01-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

Hi all, I started priesting just after the release of the Burning Crusade. I created an Draenei Priest, so I could join my two brothers and spent a lot of time learning about this game before finally reaching 70 after 5 or 6 months. At 60, I spent a fair bit of time PVPing, just to get a taste of Alterac Valley and the world of PVP. I reached exalted with the Stormpike Guard before making the jump from 60-70. After that, I jumped from guild to guild after 70 because I wasn't a fan of raiding, so I went back to PVP. After about 2 months I joined a PVP guild, which lasted a short 3 months. Our GM was banned for win trading (I didn't participate in those hacks) and the guild fell apart since Blizzard wouldn't give one of the officers the GM position. It was very annoying, to say the least.

One night soon after my cousin (prot pally) asked me to heal Karazhan. I healed it as Discipline (before 3.0) and did quite well, even in pvp gear. I was hooked, and I've been raiding ever since... this was my holy stint. I went holy until 3.0, and as soon as it became PVE viable, I quickly switched back to Discipline. We took down Kael and Vash before Wrath, and I fell in love with the new changes to the priest tree that used to be mostly a PVP tree.

I healed a little up to 75 through instances and quickly saw that all my buds were surpassing me because holy is quite a bit slower to level. I respec'd shadow until 80 and now I'm back at my true spec... Discipline. That brings us to the present.

Additionally.... I'm a respec-aholic. I've spent probably just as much time in shadow, discipline and holy... probably a little more in discipline, but after the changes, I know my favorite tree.