Matticus

Matticus is the founder of World of Matticus, a World of Warcraft blog.

Astounded at Discipline

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Some quick thoughts for Wednesday morning…

My mind is just blown right now at the state of Discipline. Power Word: Shield can easily command the most healing done (for a disc priest, not compared to other healers). From a raid healing standpoint, you’re going to want to use that when you’re Rapture’s ready to rock.

Even if your Rapture isn’t ready, be liberal with it if you’re expecting big hits. You can’t be stingy with it. At the same time, this isn’t Wrath levels where you can simply unload it on 10 players.

Each time I cast the shield, my mana pool drops by about 4%. Follow it up with a hasted Prayer of Healing, and you’ll see your numbers climb.

In single target healing mode, you’re still cycling Inner Focus and then chain casting Greater Heal (with shields and Penance sprinkled in between).

This is a great time to be a priest. I need some more practice. I think Disc might be easier of the two priest specs to pick up if you’ve decided to try out healing at the end game. I can’t say for heroic raids, but any raid leader who says right now that discipline priests aren’t worth their salt needs to get checked out. I’m almost considering switching from holy back to discipline.

Maloriak

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The Return of the Renew Priest?

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Morning everyone, hope your Monday’s starting out well.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about an emerging style for Holy Priests who did little more than cast Renew on their raid.

Basically, they functioned like tree Druids (without the leafiness).

After speaking with Dawn and Kinasthesia about it on the Circle of Healing podcast at Learn to Raid, the consensus appeared to be that this style of play might be making a come back.

Why?

Partly due to the upcoming cost reduction of Renew by 24%.

Costs of Renew

  • On live right now: 4020 mana
  • On the PTR: 3150 mana

Note that both of those costs include talents in Mental Agility. When looked at from that perspective, that’s a fairly decent sized reduction. I never did like working with percentages. I prefer looking at the absolute values because you just never truly appreciate the magnitude of a number when it’s in a percentage form.

Now start looking at the other talents and glyphs that influence it.

All of these talents at the new, low mana cost warrant a second and closer look. I don’t think we’ll be blanket healing the whole raid with Renews during on the scale of tier 9 and 10 raids. At the same time, I think we’ll see a shift towards increased Renew usage as a whole on multi-target healing.

There’s better interaction with Chakra: Serenity. Using Holy Word: Serenity and Binding Heal will refresh the duration of Renew on top of the other direct healing spells.

So my question to you guys is, are you going to make a conscious effort to Renew more now that it doesn’t cost as much mana?

7 + 1 Simple Ways to Pull Trash

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Trash pulling can be a bane to players new to the game or new to the raiding scene. Its a basic coordination skill to learn which is employed from the 5 man level to the 25 man level. The act of pulling bosses are generally easy. There’s typically one boss to worry about.

But trash?

There’s a ton of trash. At this level, they can’t exactly be taken lightly! If your group isn’t properly focused or directed, trash packs can easily overwhelm your group.

Assuming you’re not taking on trash mobs with really specific mechanics, here’s a few general strategies your group can use to handle them.

Crowd Control Pull

This is the standard and textbook method that most groups use when grabbing trash. Let the players with crowd control skills open up. Remaining mobs which are either immune or designated as kill targets will automatically chase the raid allowing the tank to grab them.

Misdirect Pull

Have any Hunters around? Good as this is where they’ll come in handy! While a tank is building threat on one mob, a Hunter can send another mob their way. Just remember that the Misdirect mechanics have changed slightly. Best used against trash pulls with many mobs.

Misdirect
The current party or raid member targeted will receive the threat caused by your next damaging attack and all actions taken for 4 sec afterwards.  Transferred threat is not permanent, and will fade after 30 sec.

Charge Pull

No crowd control. The tank literally charges straight in and generates as much aggro as possible on all targets. Heavy reliance on the healer to keep them alive. DPS players are typically called upon to focus fire targets or to AoE mobs down. The side pulls in the first chamber of Bastion of Twilight are excellent examples of using a charge pull. The tanks jump in and it turns into a race between DPS and healer mana.

Line of Sight Pull

I would imagine Protection Paladins would be used to using this (for historical reasons). The line of sight pull involves the tank aggroing mobs and then running behind a pillar or a rock or some other object. This forces the mobs to chase after that player because they can’t actually see said player. Just make sure the rest of the group doesn’t start opening up on them until the mobs get into position. Use this if you’re worried about patrols.

Use the LOS pull if you’re up against ranged mobs or if you’re worried about patrols.

Distance Pull

Usually executed on trash packs consisting of all casters, your tank will want to run in and then back out as quick as possible. As the casters begin attempting to cast and chase you, they’ll eventually reach a point where they’ll stack up. This is when the tank then re-engages them in order to generate threat on all of the trash allowing group to open up. (Thanks Hi Ya).

Interrupt Pull

Reserved for any trash packs involving casters, this pull involves the use of an interrupt. I had to practice this one a few times on my Elemental Shaman. I’d manually break the Hex on the target with a few Lightning Bolts. Once the mob started casting, I’d hit it with a Wind Shear to get it to start running towards me thereby allowing the tank to snatch it up in place. This is especially useful if there are no immediate landscape features for the group to hide behind but you still need trash to move due to patrols.

Mind Control Pull

If you can’t line of sight pull, this is the next best thing. Naturally it requires a Priest. Your Priest Mind Controls a mob while the rest of the group stays back. The trash should then gang up and utterly destroy the Mind Controlled mob.* Just keep in mind that you may not get reputation or any loot from the death of the Mind Controlled mob.

Exception: If your Priest is named Matt, he will fat finger Mind Blast instead of Mind Control. Do not assign him to any Mind Control duties.

Bonus: The pet pull.

Yeah.

You know what the pet pull is. Everyone’s experienced the pet pull before. If you haven’t, well that can be easily arranged.

3 Different Raiding Roster Setups

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Since raid groups can’t do the same raid twice in a week on both 10 and 25, raid leaders have to try to get creative when it comes to roster setups in a bid to ensure players stay warm and can see all the encounters. Players need to sit out (or can’t show up) from time to time and it helps to have others who can step in. Preferably, raid leaders want players with the experience. In order to get the experience, they need to get pulled into the raid.

How can a raid pull that off while maximizing their gains?

Baradin Hold

Baradin Hold is the Vault of Archavon style raid where there is a chance for players to receive their tier leg or glove pieces. Traditionally, I would try to get at least one player of each class and spec in the raid so that no matter what would drop, we wouldn’t have to shard it. Alas, it seems that we’ve been striking out with pure PvP pieces.

Priest loot drops when I’m not there either.

Farm content

I define farm content as anything that we’ve been able to consistently take down under 3 shots. For example, on a fight like Halfus which changes every week due to the different drake configurations is an encounter I would consider on farm. The raid leaders would bring in new recruits to assess their performance while the new players would see if the raid environment was a good fit for them. If things go sour and we’re not able to get a farm boss down, then we immediately make substitutions and transform into progression content mode. It’s also a great way to give veteran players a night off if they’re not feeling well or if they need to tackle a last minute paper (Guilty).

Progression content

This is where we activate the A-Team. We bring in the veteran players who have shown consistently high performance. In addition, we’ve started looking at the demands of the encounter and what is the best setup. If it’s extremely melee unfriendly, we’ll add a few extra ranged players. If we need a little extra healing, I’ll add an extra healer as necessary. We tailor the roster accordingly. The leadership is on the same page here. We want to get that initial kill as quick as possible. As our kills get smoother, we’ll start tuning the roster so that eventually everyone will get a crack at it.

Looking at it on a weekly basis

Right now, I’m debating the idea of combining both farm content and progression content bosses. For example, on day one of a raid week, I’d like to enter an instance and take out the farm bosses and then pushing straight for a progression boss. If necessary, I’ll make a substitution mid-raid to get the experienced players in. On day 2, I’ll do the same thing. I would want to enter a different instance and knock out the farm bosses there before making attempts on a progression boss. On the last raid day, I’d try to get down another farm boss before finishing off the week by working on a progression boss.

No matter what the case, no day is really wasted because there’s at least a boss that gets taken down. By spreading out the time in this manner, we have the capacity to get attempts in and then take a day to reflect or analyze an encounter.

I am curious. How do you determine which bosses to go after and what raid roster to bring?

How to Discipline Heal

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This post is intended for post 4.0.6 and is meant as a bunch of guidelines to help keep players alive as discipline.

Several notable changes are arriving with the patch which will slightly alter the play of Discipline Priests. The two biggest changes revolve around the boost to the strength of Power Word: Shield and the ability for Grace to affect multiple targets. In my playing Holy at 85 post, I mentioned about how to handle something I called “the hit”.

As a refresher, “the hit” is an ability or spell by a boss which deals enough damage which might kill players if they’re not healed up in the next few seconds. For example, Dragon Breaths are “the hit”. Any really massive explosion can be considered “the hit”. Fusion Punch is an example of a tank about to be the victim of “the hit”. It must be a severe enough blow to almost cause you to crap your pants.

Before you do anything else, I strongly advise downloading an addon called Ingela’s Rapture. It allows you to time your shields to get the best possible mana return from Rapture. In a game where mana management is important, this addon will help you.

*Sorry Ingela, meant to write about this sooner

For an alternative style of Disc healing revolving around Atonement, see this page instead.

On the tank

Stick to Power Word: Shield, Penance and the usual spells of Heal, Flash Heal or Greater Heal. Prayer of Mending is another spell you’ll want to keep activating on cooldown on the tank. Keep in mind that a Discipline Priest has two cooldowns for saving tanks: Power Word: Barrier and Pain Suppression. Unless the encounter has specific tank one-shotting mechanics that it needs to be saved for, you’ll be using those two spells on demand. With Power Word: Shield though, use Ingela’s Rapture to properly time it on the tank.

The basic play you want to make here at a raid level environment is to keep using Inner Focus on cooldown and continue dropping Greater Heals while using Power Word: Shield every time Rapture is available. Weave in Penance as necessary. The buffs to Power Word: Shield (208% effect increase) and Penance (20% increase to healing) has strengthened the position of Discipline.

2-3 players

Theoretically, the 2-3 players you’re healing would be a tanks. Since Grace can affect multiple targets, those would be the two players you want to maintain Grace stacks on. As an aside, if you were healing the 2-3 players that were in the raid itself, Grace wouldn’t mean much at all because you’d be hard pressed to heal them after the initial heal (usually the initial heal is all that’s need to keep them up). Don’t stress too much about Rapture procs here because you’re going to be balancing heals and shields on all of your tanks anyway (That does take a little more focus). Refresh the shields as necessary.

What works for me in a party environment is casting a shield on each target. Cycle through them with fast heals to keep them alive and out of imminent danger.

  1. Target A: Shielded –> Penance
  2. Target B: Shielded –> Flash Heal
  3. Target C: Shielded –> Flash Heal

Then follow it up with a quick blast of Prayer of Healing in the event another player in the group has taken damage.

4-5 players

You’ll wish to rely on Prayer of Healing for your group healing needs. Doesn’t get any easier than that and since Divine Aegis automatically activates when Prayer of Healing lands, there’s nothing else to add. You can try to get fancy and load up a few grace ticks on a few players in that group, but it might be unnecessary.

For 5+ players

I don’t foresee much of this happening, but in the event a raid healer or two goes down, you’ll need to stand on your head and try to hold it together. If health pools are dropping, get a Barrier up immediately. You know that Prayer of Healing heals a player and their group. Naturally there will be a few players left out. Let’s say there’s 3 players who are at 35% health in group 4 and all of group 5 is around the same range. Assuming everyone is in the same general location, drop 2-3 shields on players outside of group 5 and then hit a hasted Prayer of Healing on group 5 to try to account for everyone.

One last thing I want to add here is glyph selection. With Power Word Shield being buffed, the value of the glyph will rise. With shields absorbing amounts of about 35000, it might be a worthwhile glyph to consider if you’re not using it already.