World of Warcraft

[Mack Kilimaro]

Attendance boss got us last night, which is ridiculous. Ended up getting Rag o 22% but brain farts and silly mistakes cost us. I forgot - on like our 8th attempt - to collapse when seeds spawn, the OT got a meteor and ran himself into a corner - just dumb things. gonna go back in on Sunday and hopefully get him down

It's really hard to stay focused on one boss over that many attempts. You have your perfect attempts where you're firing on all cylinders personally and somebody else does something dumb. Then eventually you slip up on one attempt, because it's easy to loose focus for just a second and suddenly you've been blown into a lava wave or whatever. I find this to be the hardest part of getting Rag down. I really hope we can do it this week.

Just the news that the transmogrifier stuff would be added into the game at some future point was enough to send a bunch of my guildies on a BC raiding spree for T5 and T6 tokens and random assorted gear. I signed on yesterday and one guy was in Serpentshrine Cavern trying to solo Hydross the Unstable. I was bored and he asked me to help, so I was like, what the hell? We two-manned Hydross, Lurker and Morogrim. Those bosses still drop 250g apiece so that was like 400g for relatively trivial stuff. Later in the evening we had a train of guildies along for BT, TK, and Hyjal. All in all I made about 1200g. Not a bad deal.

All of that slowly but surely getting me towards the Loot 100,000 Gold achievement, which I only care about because my status as reigning guild achievement whore is currently being threatened. Now I'm scrambling to get everything that I can. Today I rolled a draenei alt to get a cooking recipe from a quest, which I will have to transfer through the neutral AH and have somebody send to me. That will be the 200th recipe for the Iron Chef achievement. The things I'll do for ten points, I swear.

[Nukelavee]

Greywolf - yeah, I'm the best thing left, lol, usually. I intended a certain amount of humour in that ranting, but, really, the issue is i prefer my lock. Seriously - I take being Gm seriously, so, if the guild needs me healing, I'm there. Saforza, teh priest, is fairly well geared, if a bit sloppy on the total build, but it's a disc build for bg's, and, more importantly, I don't spend enough time on her to get really good.

We have more healers coming up, I'm just in a role I'm not ideal for, and I'm edgy about being the weak link.

Lyanna, yeah, the build is likely riddled with mistakes, i don't think i've gone over it since i leveled.

[DragonAge93]

Wow, 4.3 is gonna be epic. The tranmorgra-thingy sounds like an awesome idea, I can finally use the Imperial Plate armor and look like a Stormwind guard. And a raid finder? Awesome. I, sadly, can never get in a raid group, so this suits me well. I know the problems lying with it, what with a PUG that might not be well suited for a raid, but I like the concept and can't wait to try it out. And finally we get to fight DEATHWING.

[Kalbear]

I'm a bit disappointed that 4.3 is going to be the last patch for raiding. That means we got BWD/BoT/4W, then Firelands, then Deathwing. By comparison to WotLK that's not a lot of content, even if WotLK had a lot of reused bosses. Even compared to BC that's not a lot; while Sunwell only had 6 bosses they were hard as nails and the content prior to it was quite strong.

Even with heroic modes, it still doesn't feel like a lot. And getting ZA/ZG ad infinitum as the 5-mans isn't helping much either.

Just feels...less. While I didn't like ToC, it certainly had a couple of good fights and bridged between two great instances. Firelands just hasn't grabbed me like either Ulduar or ICC did.

[Lyanna Stark]

Just feels...less. While I didn't like ToC, it certainly had a couple of good fights and bridged between two great instances. Firelands just hasn't grabbed me like either Ulduar or ICC did.

Yes, I agree with this. I was really surprised to see that the next raid tier is Deathwing, especially since Firelands have been underwhelming so far. It's supposed to be the Ulduar - TK/SSC Tier of this expansion, without any of the interesting content of the former two expansions. Both in TBC and Wrath, the mid tier held some of the best encounters of the whole expansion, while Cata has Firelands where I guess Baleroc and Ryolith so far feels different and new?

Lyanna, yeah, the build is likely riddled with mistakes, i don't think i've gone over it since i leveled.

Just run a Disc PvE and a Disc PvP, sorted :) Dual spec makes it fairly simple to do so. I prefer SoS disc myself for PvE, but atonement isn't bad either. Just grab a spec like this: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfhzrosbfRMochMZb:cmqqzd , a Rapture proc counter (I use Ingelas Rapture counter) and go to town. Easy peasy and it's the build you need the least spirit for, basically. Meaning you can run some DPS or PvP pieces in there without suffering too badly. For AoE healing swap PW:S glyph to PoH.

Train of Through makes your Gheal almost as mana efficient as your standard Heal, too, so you can bomb heal the tank til the cows come home and then some. Reforge for haste > mastery = crit if you are mainly tank healing, haste = mastery > crit if you are AoE healing (or if you do a bit of both).

[TerraPrime]

So Disco is the place to be for priests now? I leveled up my baby priest now and gotten her to mostly in purples. First time stepping into a raid last night and my healing output as holy was low, like 6.5k HPS, while the disco priest there was pulling 12k (yeah he has better gear, too, but still). I did smite/evangelism healing from 81 to early 85, but then my mana couldn't keep up even in dungeons so I switched to Holy. So is Disco a stronger spec nowadays? Or is it gear dependent?

[Inigima]

I tried PvE disc again a few months ago and thought it was shitty and I didn't have adequate tools available. I don't know if things have changed since then.

[Kalbear]

Both are great specs. Disc is one of the best tank healing specs and is great in a 10-man raid; it's all about shields again. Holy is great for raid healing and throughput. Atonement isn't that great due to the lack of true burst fights; the best it's on is Beth, where you do have consistent burst healing that you want evangelism/PoH on.

Atonement isn't really as good due to the talent point investment; having bigger shields more often really is that good.

[Nukelavee]

holy shit. i forgot all about the rapture mechanic.

I refuse to give up my shadowspec. So, time to tweak the Disco for the raiding. And, yeah, the bubbles are pretty unreal right now, which is why my main has the felhunter trained to eat that damned thing ASAP.

OH! My guild hit 4 years old yesterday! That makes it one of the oldest "same roster" guilds on the server - not too shabby for a social/leveling guild formed as a fuck-you to the monkey-shit dicksmacks who were too leet to do anything else but fill the former guild's chat with fighting over Kara and gkick anybody who, god forbid, asked a leveling question.

So, yeah - anybody bored enough to check out horde on Fenris - Vual, The Deceivers.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Got Ragnaros down! Finally. Now everybody wants to go back and do T11 heroics instead of dive right into T12 heroics. I can't complain too much since that means filling in achievements for me... although my competitor is in the raid group and will be getting the same achievements. Heh!

[Lyanna Stark]

Grats Mack! :) Well done! GL with the achievements in T11.

We've had lots of attendance issues the last two weeks, so we can muscle through up to Majordomo, but then it's not that easy carrying socials anymore. Was hoping we'd start working on Raggy this week, but instead we are wiping on farm content and are cockblocked on Majordomo due to bads. *sigh*

Re Disc priests:

Disc priests are in a very strong spot at the moment, with Holy being the weird one out, who can only really heal well in 25 man raids atm. Being Holy in any other role than a 25 man raid healer is a bit pointless as Disc is always better, in every single scenario I can think of (posibly barring Heroic Al'akir but that is a gimmick fight anyway).

Disc can spec either for straight out tank healing or as a tank/raid hybrid, the first being a Strength of Soul/Train of Thought build, the second Atonement.

Due to Rapture and how it's managed, you either suck as a disco priest or you have an almost endless supply of mana. So far, I have not oomed on a single fight as SoS Disc unless I fucked up rapture management and my mana CDs, whether as straight up tank healer or as tank/raid support (possible, altho atonement is slightly stronger for that).

Ini

I tried PvE disc again a few months ago and thought it was shitty and I didn't have adequate tools available. I don't know if things have changed since then.

If it was just at the beginning of Cata, then yes, Disc was really shit and spriests and DKs outhealed discos regularly. This is not the case anymore however.

It can take a bit of practise to work a disc spec as it is not as reactive as other healers. You need to plan your strategy far more. Only fights I don't like to do as disc are first boss in ZA (bird boss) and Roylith. Rest are almost without exception easier as disco, incl panther boss in ZG, once you get the hang of your CDs and to play it cool and wait for Rapture procs as much as possible before re-shielding

Kal,

Both are great specs. Disc is one of the best tank healing specs and is great in a 10-man raid; it's all about shields again. Holy is great for raid healing and throughput. Atonement isn't that great due to the lack of true burst fights; the best it's on is Beth, where you do have consistent burst healing that you want evangelism/PoH on.

Atonement isn't really as good due to the talent point investment; having bigger shields more often really is that good.

I agree with you that Atonement is really...situational. And only really for burst raid healing as Atonement itself is often kinda rubbish and you don't really have the time for it. But yeah, for Disc raid/stop gap healer, it is needed. I think the spec is a bit assbackwards myself, but depending on our future raid setup, I am considering dropping Holy and just gearing around two disc specs with atonement as my raid healing spec. Barrier is just too good and Holy doesn't have any useful raid or tank CDs (Gs being so bloody bugged as it is).

However, for SoS disc, the main thing is not bigger shields, it's that you can shield more often and reap all the benefits of that, like Borrowed time, more crit on the target with weakened soul, etc. You also have an Inner focus that comes up very often due to the Train of Thought talent, so that basically means you can cast almost only Gheal, Penance and sheild for 10 min straight without ooming. No paladin can cast Divine Light for 10 min, but a disco priest can do the equivalent, with properly managed CDs and Rapture procs.

Disc is not only a 10 man spec either, it shines in a number of fights in 25 man, especially as tank healer. Discos are the only ones that can beat palas on Baleroc, for instance. I normally beat our paladins comfortably on Shannox too, another straight up tank healing fight. I believe world first Baleroc 25 was done with 2 x pala and 2 x disc priest healing.

Granted, if you are running a pala heavy roster it may seem a bit over the top to bring a disc priest, but I think together with druids, disc priests have the best raid CDs as well, plus a strong tank CD. Discos are also extremely mana efficient compared to palas and scale very well with gear. Only drawback is Divine Aegis capping as a percentage of the priest's own HP (40%) as a limiting factor, plus also a lack of mobility, but then paladins suffer the same really.

This should be proof enough that discos can rock even in 25 man. :)

[Inigima]

Okay thanks. Yeah, it was shortly after Cata launched. Maybe I'll try again. Do you have a spec I can swipe? I'm curious about a couple talents.

[Lyanna Stark]

Try this one for raids: SoS Disc It's more tank oriented but unless you have utter shite gear, it can perform well enough as raid healer as well, especially if you glyph PoH. For raiding glyph Barrier, Penance and for tank healing PW:S, for raid healing make the last one PoH. It's also a bit easier to get your head around than smiting with Atonement, but both are perfectly viable.

Get a rapture counter as well and you'll be sorted. I run Ingela's rapture to know when the internal CD for rapture is up. You can shield more often than what procs Rapture, but it costs 6.3k mana, so too much of it can be a real mana sink. However once you reach 90k mana or so, just casting PW:shield for rapture, then weaving Penance, Gheal with Inner focus and Heal makes you break even on mana for ever and ever, basically.

For simple usage, you can macro Inner focus to Gheal and PoH so that it auto uses it every CD. Quite handy. I tended to forget to use it to its maximum potential before setting it up in this way.

[TerraPrime]

Trying to wrap my head around the disc mechanism here.

So you Shield, which triggers 2 effects: Weakened Soul and Borrowed Time.

Weakened Soul is 15s long, but can be reduced by 4 sec when you cast Heal, Gheal, or Flash Heal, through Strength of Soul. That means the cd is now 11s (or can be reduced further on each cast?). During Weakened Soul, the crit chance of the heal spells on the target is increased by 10% through the Renewed Hope talent. Also, when the Shield is either absorbed or dispelled (timed out counts?), you get 7% mana back (base mana? or current max?) through Rapture. Rapture has a 12s internal cd.

Borrowed Time lasts for 6 sec after your Shield cast, and gives 14% spell haste. If you Inner Focus to cast Gheal, you can lower the cd on Inner Focus by 5 sec through Train of Thought (it reads like each Gheal will reduce it by 5s?).

So you get mana from the 7% from Rapture and free mana from Inner Focus-Gheal. You want to tick down the cd on IF, using 2xGheal so that you are looking at about 30s per IF? There's also the Grace stacks, which will increase healing from the priest by 24% (8% pers tack for 3).

So that sounds about in the ballpark?

[Inigima]

Okay, that looks about like what I'd come up with. Train of Thought seems crappy, but I couldn't find a better place for those two points to get to Power Word: Barrier.

Is the last point in Divine Fury worth it vs the last point in Darkness?

I might give this a try, but it doesn't look like the playstyle has changed much since I did it last, so the shields would have to be double plus awesome compared to how they were... I used to love Disc, but in Cata, once my shields were popped, I felt like I didn't have any tools except spamming GHeal and praying the fight would end before I ran out of mana, and my AOE healing felt shitty -- PoH takes a long time and a lot of mana and never felt very effective. And my stock-in-trade for incidental damage -- PW: Shield on the members who were taking it or were about to -- is too expensive to use any longer.

[Kalbear]

The thing is, with the model of healing now shields are great. The reason is that all the other healers have these odd 'heal everyone' effects that will heal your person up while the shield's been going on. So yes, you can only shield one target every 11 seconds - but during that time your healing on that target is higher and they're getting all the healing rain/HoTs/random bits of healing from everyone else.

Really, shields as a way to heal people is downright broken.

Barrier and PoH + evangelism are the real keys for disc raid healing. Both are great and very easy.

[Inigima]

But Lyanna's spec doesn't include Evangelism. I guess you guys disagree on this score? Would you talent differently?

What's your opinion on Disc in 5-mans? I haven't raided on a priest since Wrath, my Cata disc experience was all dungeons and heroics. Raids where you have other healers filling the gaps might be different, but I felt my toolbox was awfully constrained when it was just me.

[Kalbear]

Lyanna's spec is the tank healing one. If you know you're going to have to do major raid healing atonement is a lot better. That being said, disc really should be tank healing.

[Inigima]

What would you drop to free up points for Atonement/Evangelism/Archangel? What would you choose for 5-mans?

[Lyanna Stark]

SoS Disc is the tank healing Disc spec yes, although you can hybrid by glyphing PoH instead of PW:S if there are phases with high tank damage and then phases with raid damage (this is a lot of fights these days, and as I can raid heal efficiently even as SoS Disc, I am better placed to assist there than the palas).

Atonement Disc is the raid healing spec, where you need to smite in order to build stacks of evangelism. Then you consume your stacks (max is 5, which you should aim for )when you trigger Archangel which will grant you a +15% healing buff for the duration of Archangel (note the spelling btw, it's Blizzard's).

Spec like this, and note you need glyph of Divine Accuracy and Smite.

Both are fine for dungeons, although Atonment is probably more fun if you like to pewpew. The key to both is to get the hang of Rapture procs really, although Atonement you also need to build stacks with, which can be a bit backwards occasionally. Other times it's really easy and works like a charm. It's a matter of taste and what suits your playstyle.

A lot of people think Train of Thought is a Bad Talent, when it actually is the key to SoS Disc's super efficiency as tank healer. Yes, Rapture is awesome, but ToT makes your Gheal almost as cheap, on average, as Heal due to Inner Focus's CD being lowered continuously. Unless you shield spam more than your target, it is almost impossible to oom as a Sos Disc tank healer. I have about 5 times the longevity of our paladin tank healers while putting out the same numbers. My HoH is only used when the paladins or druids need it, I can sustain myself as a tank healer with only using Fiend on CD. Granted, this is pre-heroic 25 mans, where I imagine paladins will have larger burst. SoS disc is one tough little bugger though, and ToT is one of the reasons why this is so.

Before I tried it, I thought it was a meh talent as well. Now I love it to bits. Remember that Inner Focus also works on PoH if you need to assist your raid healers.

Trying to wrap my head around the disc mechanism here.

So you Shield, which triggers 2 effects: Weakened Soul and Borrowed Time.

Weakened Soul is 15s long, but can be reduced by 4 sec when you cast Heal, Gheal, or Flash Heal, through Strength of Soul. That means the cd is now 11s (or can be reduced further on each cast?). During Weakened Soul, the crit chance of the heal spells on the target is increased by 10% through the Renewed Hope talent. Also, when the Shield is either absorbed or dispelled (timed out counts?), you get 7% mana back (base mana? or current max?) through Rapture. Rapture has a 12s internal cd.

Borrowed Time lasts for 6 sec after your Shield cast, and gives 14% spell haste. If you Inner Focus to cast Gheal, you can lower the cd on Inner Focus by 5 sec through Train of Thought (it reads like each Gheal will reduce it by 5s?).

So you get mana from the 7% from Rapture and free mana from Inner Focus-Gheal. You want to tick down the cd on IF, using 2xGheal so that you are looking at about 30s per IF? There's also the Grace stacks, which will increase healing from the priest by 24% (8% pers tack for 3).

So that sounds about in the ballpark?

The CD on PW:shield gets reduced by every cast, which basically means in a high HPS Scenario, you can cast PW:Shield - Gheal - Gheal - Gheal - PW:Shield again, more or less. From what I remember from mmo champion's SoS Disc guide, it is possible to squeeze down the Weakened soul CD to 9 sec or thereabouts. If you also use Gheal as your staple tank heal, you will trigger the lowered CD on Inner Focus constantly, meaning a free Gheal or PoH (or FH). So say you cast 3 Gheal inbetween your shields, that's a 45 CD on Inner focus turned into a 30 sec CD, and this is a high HPS rotation. If you emphasise Heal and Penance when needed, you will be even more efficient and will actually be able to gain mana by only proccing rapture and not shielding more often than that.

If you need to burst, you can shield to gain Borrowed Time and then Penance + Gheal. Penance will utilise the haste buff from Borrowed Time, but not consume it, which means it is still there and available for the following Gheal too.

Then you have rapture procs possible every 12 seconds, where you can gain 7% of your mana back. As I run over 130k mana raid buffed now, that means over 9k mana per rapture proc, which is crazy mp5. Of course, this gets better and better with gear scaling. As a fresh lvl 85, disc priests have it a bit harder and holy priests are easier to break even with, while as gear scales, so does the disc priest with rapture. As a ballpark figure, try and reach 90k mana or so as Disc as this makes your Rapture procs basically keep your head above the water in instances and entry level raids. Before that, Holy is easier to get to a sustainable level and it's easier to struggle with balancing throughput and regen as disc.

So basically if you are still in blues healing 5 mans, Holy is the easier choice. If you are in some 359 and ZA/ZG pieces and enter ten man raiding and you need a tank or raid healer (or both) Disc is very viable. The more gear you have, the better disc gets, too.

Lyanna's spec is the tank healing one. If you know you're going to have to do major raid healing atonement is a lot better. That being said, disc really should be tank healing.

Unfortunately nowadays it's far more bring the raid CD than bring the HPS, so priests are starting to run duo disc specs (considering it myself) to bring Barrier to heavy raid healing scenarions. Holy is really lacking in the raid CD department and is basically an inefficient druid with no combat res. (Yes, I know Holys are brought for Raggy HC cos of Body and Soul, but that's gimmicky really.)