2010 - Page 45 of 45 - World of Matticus

As Priests, we exist in two healing realms: Holy and Discipline. Discipline and Holy. I say that because one is not superior or inferior to its counterpart. Each specialization has its own tree. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.

We were told way back before Wrath of the Lich King that these two trees were going to serve different fundamental purposes: Tank-Healing or Raid-Healing. Seems simple enough, right? Once Discipline Priests got past the backlash of “Disc is PvP lol” malarkey, people started learning that Discipline Priests can actually function as Tank healers. If all of our tools are used in concert with each other, we can be a damn good single-target healer.

Is Discipline, though, viable as a Raid-Healing spec? That’s debatable.

As with most aspects of this game, everything is going to be viable as something other than it was intended, depending on the situation. For Discipline, Loatheb is an awesome example. Although our talents are angled towards single-target healing, a combination of PW:S, Prayer of Healing, Penance, and quick Flash Heals (all powered by Fungal Creep) make us a formidable Raid Healer in a short amount of time.

Another example is Deathbringer Saurfang, the last boss in the first wing of Icecrown Citadel. It seems widely accepted now that a Discipline Priest shielding the raid helps reduce the amount of Blood Power that Saurfang gets via Blood Link. The sooner Saurfang’s energy reaches 100, the sooner a Mark of the Fallen Champion gets put on a random raid member. Absorbs from PW:S, as well as Divine Aegis, reduce the amount of Blood Power he receives. Thus, fewer Marks on the raid, which means you can obtain I’ve Gone and Made a Mess with ease. Not to mention, you get the boss down faster and easier.

Beyond the Situational Awesomeness

I’ve seen a trend of Discipline Priests insisting that they only raid heal. They seem to hate the idea of being locked onto one or two tanks and will choose to “bubble spam” the raid. An occasional spell other than PW:S might be used, but it tends to be a one-button spam from players like this.

I have no problem with people trying something different or off the beaten path, just so long as they’re smart about it and demonstrate a mastery of their choice. I’m sorry to say, but playing Whack-a-Mole with Weakened Soul hardly shows mastery. In cases like Saurfang, it’s a conscious and strategic choice. In other cases, it’s a waste of mana.

Power Word: Shield / Rapture – Through Borrowed Time, we’ve received a nice scaling talent as a Discipline Priest. It’s a valuable spell to the Discipline Priest, but it’s not the only spell we have available. Since Rapture returns mana to you (ideally equal to or greater than the cost of PW:S), it increases your longevity as a healer, making PW:S one of the front-runners in our arsenal. Notice, though, that Rapture only triggers when a shield is “completely absorbed or dispelled.” Yes, partial absorbs are better than no absorbs at all. However, in quite a few cases, the raid won’t take damage for a while. Any shields that are put up on raid members that aren’t even touched is a total sacrifice of that mana. Let’s say your PW:S costs 666 mana (yes, mine does). If you cast it consistently, and 10 of them don’t even get touched, you just threw away 6,660 mana. How much damage did you prevent? Zero. If you’re casting PW:S consistently, Renewed Hope will be up the whole time. Since it doesn’t stack, those 10 shields mitigated no extra damage.

Grace – This fun talent, at the start of WotLK, used to be allowed on more than one target at a time. Once Blizzard thought that was a little bit overpowered and was steering Discipline away from it’s original intent, they restricted Grace to one target at a time. As a single-target healer, Grace is a great tool to have (though I wish it could be on up to three targets for fights like Marrowgar and Goremaw). As a raid healer, it’s a wasted three talent points. I find it particularly hard to assist with raid healing without using either Flash Heal or Penance (or the occasional hasted Greater Heal – all three of which activate Grace). In most cases, you’ll be snipe-healing multiple targets. If not, you’ll use a couple heals to top someone off, then off to the next target. Grace isn’t given the chance to shine.

Where To Go From Here

Spec – I currently rock out a 57/14/0 spec. I’ve tried various versions of it, but this spec just seems to work really well with the way I play. I like to use Renew to help pad the tanks, or throw some on the raid to help out.

Given what I wrote above about Grace, I would choose to sacrifice those points and put them elsewhere. I threw together a 52/19/0 spec if I were to try to re-work myself into a raid-healing Discipline mode. I also took the points out of Focused Will (sacrifice some crit) and switched Spell Warding to Divine Fury. I topped out Divine Fury (taking one point from Inspiration), and grabbed all three points of Improved Healing. The goal is to hopefully rotate Greater Heal more into your rotation and make it (and Penance) cheaper to cast. You still get powerful shields and good utility, but it’s not the end of the world trying to keep Grace up.

Spells – As I pointed out above, I’m not a big fan of the “bubble spam”. Sure it may look good on World of Logs or the estimated “absorption meter”, but I think it’s impractical. I’m not in a raid to top a meter, I’m there to keep the whole raid alive. With the alternate spec I suggested above, sniping Flash Heals and Penances is a great way to keep the raid up, as long as you’re also utilizing Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Prayer of Healing as well.

If you choose to keep a variation of the first spec, then keep in mind the benefit of keeping Grace on your primary target. You’re not going to be the most amazing raid healer, but you can certainly help out:

Prayer of Mending – I always keep this bouncing. There are addons available to let you know when your charges have run out. I tend to cast mine whenever it’s up.

Renew – If you put the points into Improved Renew, you can help out the other raid healers with this one.

Prayer of Healing – Although a bit of a mana drain, it’s amazing when it crits and each member gets his/her own Divine Aegis shield.

Binding Heal – ?!?!?! you say? I use this spell when I just need to single target someone. Yes, it heals me at the same time. Higher mana cost, the self-heal may be worth it, and I can keep the Grace stack on the tank. I’ve tried both ways, and using Binding Heal has seemed worth it to me.

So there you have it! I’ve always felt that Priests are incredibly versatile healers. I don’t enjoy one-button spams or anything proved to be “easy-mode casting”. We have an amazing arsenal of spells available, and using all of them can make us unstoppable. There’s no reason you can’t take the intricacies of our class and harness them to do what you need them to.

My point is that if you’re going to go off the beaten path, think about what you’re doing before you take that step.

How do you feel about Discipline raid healing? What other tricks have you figured out over time?

**Image credited to the Elitist Jerks forums**

Email: Elder.Thespius@gmail.com | Twitter: @Thespius

Every night at 3am server time I log back into game and queue up for my daily random heroic. Normally it’s amusing when people inspect me as the healer and see that I have Val’anyr equipped. They normally make comments about feeling more at ease especially when the random is heroic Halls of Reflection.

But recently two events have occurred and seem to be reoccurring since. I’m referring to it as the Val’anyr curse.

About two weeks ago I was doing a PUG heroic on a Monday in the early afternoon. A decent chunk of my guildies were on, and it was a rather enjoyable day. I queue up to do my random of the day and like any healer will tell you 20 seconds went by before there was a group ready and waiting. The random instance it selected was Halls of Lightning. Not a bad instance, all things considered it’s fairly easy. I look at the people in my group, Full i245 lock, hunter mage and paladin. We all inspect each other which seems to be the custom of the pug tool when the paladin exclaims;

“HOLY SHIT! Wet got ourselves a [Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings] !!!! That means I can do this!”

and then he takes off running. He hits the first group, tags them both, and keeps going down the ramp for the second group. Ok, that’s pretty normal, I’ve had a lot of tanks do that no big deal. After a couple seconds of Consecrate being down he moves on to the group on the right, dragging everything with him. Ok healing gets a little more difficult but still bearable, dudes got some good gear and can take the abuse. Again though after a couple seconds he drags EVERYTHING with him to the next set of adds. Oh, and the boss was there fully lightning charged too. At this point healing is ridiculous. To the tanks credit he manages to hold aggro on it all and the mage and lock are happily AEing to their hearts content, meanwhile I’m playing Yo-Yo with the tanks health as he’s taking a ton of hits all at once. We get through it somehow and he goes

“That was awesome! Lets do that again!”

and before I can even sit to drink he’s off pulling mobs leading up to the gauntlet room and through. At this point I sit down and drink. The dps is smart enough to stay with me and when the tank does die I see in chat from the tank

“too much huh?…. sorry =( I’ll be good now”

the rest of the run was smooth but I’ve seen this behavior become more and more common in the last couple weeks. I’ve had 9 out of 14 tanks see the hammer and just go careening off. I know it’s the hammer because they ALL said something about the hammer before trying to pull half the instance. I asked in guild chat and none of the other healers had seen this behavior either.

The second event was just a few nights ago. I was in a pug Forge of Souls rolling heroic, we were going to do FoS, PoS and finish with HoR, after the first boss is down the tank gives me a compliment on heals, one of the DPS in the group, a Feral Druid, says

“He’s only good because of the hammer, Shaman can’t heal this shit otherwise”

I laughed at first but then the following statement was uttered

“I’m not kidding, I have a Resto Shaman, I know you can’t heal this shit without that mace”

obviously I’m using better grammar than he did but you get the point. So I relay this to guild, I get a tell from one of the newbies

“So… un-equip the hammer, do it without it you got another caster weapon right? Maybe just do it without a weapon I know you can do it and that will stick in his craw for sure.”

I thought it over for a second, and then off came the mace. Second boss went down, the druid made another comment about

“you must be really thankful for that mace”

I casually reply,

“Oh, that. I haven’t had it equipped since you made the first comment. Don’t plan on putting it back on either, matter of fact bet I can do all the rest of the two without a weapon at all.”

Druid tried to call bullshit, but kept inspecting me. A successful (and flawless) PoS and HoR run later the Druid apologizes and leaves the group. So I asked around to some of my friends on the server that have the mace, and sure enough they all said they had similar experiences. The mace is a fantastic healing weapon, it really is. It’s a great lore piece and a sign that a guild is willing to put in the work necessary to construct it, but the general mentality of non healers that it is a godly healing weapon seems to be rather prevalent. So my New Years resolution in wow has been born as a result of this. When using the LFG tool I will no longer equip the mace. I’ve dubbed this the Val’anyr curse, it gives some people false expectations of your abilities.

So how about you out there? Have you noticed people being treated different in PUGs when they have the mace? Do you have the mace and noticed it as well?

well, that’s it for today, Until next time, Happy Healing

Image courtesy of MMO-Champion

The Issue with Discipline Raid Healing

It Came From The P.U.G. : The Val’anyr Curse!