are priests not complicated? I felt that changing stances in warrior and forms in druid were too much for my tastes. i would consider rogue but i thought they aren't wanted after the first one in a raid/dungeon/whatever
Shadow priests are fairly straight forward. As far as small dungeons go, a rogue would be great. Some decent CC and survivability tools, whereas spriests are pretty limited. I wouldn't worry too much about class saturation - with the LFD tool you shouldn't have to deal with "sry full on rouge"
Shadow priests get a bit weird when it comes to opening DPS rotations, but that's not exactly something that'll affect your ability to play one unless you're trying to optimize your DPS in a raid environment.
Also, I tried out the suggestions from that disc post linked a few pages back. Generally, it seems to be a better option, though I haven't completely dumped Strength of Soul and Heal yet. There are more than a couple cases where I've been able to bullshit the system for more mana by shielding someone who will take some damage, then healing away a few seconds of weakened soul, then shielding them again before the last tick of damage. Works great for some of those 15s, 60k damage dots that get sent around in heroics.
Anyone else having mana problems as Shadow? I seem to burn through it super-fast, and have to pop all my mana-regen stuff (including Archangel) every time they're up.
I mean, I don't mind actually having to watch mana nowadays, but it gets kind of annoying going through a decent chunk of your mana with the opening DoT volley.
Also, I've been trying to heal as Holy a bit, and it's been rough. My direct heals don't seem to do dick to the big health pools people have now.
I was having serious, serious issues as Shadow up until yesterday. You really need to glyph Spirit Tap and use Shadow Word: Death to finish fights. It makes a huge, huge difference in your ability to grind.
For some reason, I never had the SW: D or Spirit Tap glyph. Fixed that. Also shuffled points around a bit so that I have a third point in Mental Agility, should help a bit by reducing the dots' mana cost. Also had forgotten about Masochism's mana generation.
Veiled shadow is also pretty useful. could drop paralysis for that, unless you pvp a lot or something
Shadow priests get a bit weird when it comes to opening DPS rotations, but that's not exactly something that'll affect your ability to play one unless you're trying to optimize your DPS in a raid environment.
Also, I tried out the suggestions from that disc post linked a few pages back. Generally, it seems to be a better option, though I haven't completely dumped Strength of Soul and Heal yet. There are more than a couple cases where I've been able to bullshit the system for more mana by shielding someone who will take some damage, then healing away a few seconds of weakened soul, then shielding them again before the last tick of damage. Works great for some of those 15s, 60k damage dots that get sent around in heroics.
I tried swapping around some points in my Disc build to try out Surge of Light to get more millage out of Heal besides Grace refreshing and faster shields, and I can't say I like it. It seems like whenever I cast another spell it consumes the surge buff when it procs before I can even use it on Flash Heal. I'm just going to swap those points back into Inspiration again, but I actually do like using Heal just for passive upkeep on the tank in situations you described. Keep 3x Grace up and Renew on him while chaining Heal inbetween bubbles/penance cooldowns is some decent healing in some heroics (not so much Stonecore, but Tol'vir and SFK it seemed to work pretty well on trash and some bosses).
As an aside, when did they change Renew tics to be able to proc Divine Aegis? Love it.
Protip of the day: When the MT disconnects and you run out to reset the boss, you can lifegrip him out of the room so he doesn't aggro when he reconnects, hooray!
Protip of the day: When the MT disconnects and you run out to reset the boss, you can lifegrip him out of the room so he doesn't aggro when he reconnects, hooray!
PvP Protip of the Day: In the Twin Peaks Battleground, having you flag carrier run up to the ledge on the left of your flag room for flag defense. The FC can jump off that ledge if he starts taking serious damage and Lifegrip'd back up once the melee follow him. Casters can be MC'd off that ledge and will have line of site issues if you and the FC run to the wall on that area. Myself and a Disc Priest protected a Paladin flag carrier from 5 attackers for more than 5 minutes (we both used several key cooldowns twice) while our team got the flag back. We must have looked coordinated as heck but really we were all from different servers and didn't even communicate with each other.
Yeah but HoTs did not crit before, so they wouldn't proc it. Now they do so it does.
Well, it COULD crit before if you had Empowered Renew...but I don't think it was possible to have ER and Divine Aegis at the same time, both were too deep in the tree.
Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.
WOOOOO!
You know, that may be enough to get me to switch to Holy.
Rapture got bumped from 2.5% to 6% for Disc.
So that's why my PW:S was returning 2x its mana cost.
korodullin on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
Disc is pretty sexy right now, I really don't see myself changing to Holy. It's sort of nice that both healing specs are good, so we can choose one based on the style we enjoy.
I'm still not a huge fan of using Heal with Disc though, which is annoying since our T11 2-piece bonus is for that single spell. It doesn't get all the goodies that Holy adds to it, and all it really accomplishes is reducing the duration of Weakened Soul; something you may not actually want since Rapture can only trigger every, what? 12 seconds?
Maybe later on when I have Mastery coming out of my ass and my PW:S is absorbing like 20k damage, but right now when I'm in mostly 333-340something gear? Not really worth it.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I'm still not a huge fan of using Heal with Disc though, which is annoying since our T11 2-piece bonus is for that single spell. It doesn't get all the goodies that Holy adds to it, and all it really accomplishes is reducing the duration of Weakened Soul; something you may not actually want since Rapture can only trigger every, what? 12 seconds?
Maybe later on when I have Mastery coming out of my ass and my PW:S is absorbing like 20k damage, but right now when I'm in mostly 333-340something gear? Not really worth it.
Why don't you ever cast Heal? Because you're using Smite as your chain cast heal?
I chain Heal all the time as Disc, because not everyone is in Smite range of the boss....plus sometimes I forget I'm supposed to Smite and I revert back to my pure healer ways.
e: In fact, I only use Smite as my chain heal when I am fighting bosses. Trash dies too fast to build Evangelism, and I'd rather target heal. On bosses I tend to use Smite only to keep 5 Evangelism up. In any case, I still use Heal a lot.
I never use Smite for healing Heroics. I use this spec. I have Greater Heal tied to Inner Focus alongside the talent that causes GH to reduce the IF cooldown by 5 seconds per cast. I then proceed to do like I did in Wrath, Shielding the tank, Penance, and Greater Heal instead of Flash Heal. It does absolutely wonderfully, and I never have trouble keeping people up while having plenty of mana left over just in case. Provided the tank and DPS do their jobs properly, that is.
Here's the thing with Heal vs. GH: it takes 3 casts of Heal to get you the same amount of healing done as a single GH, for 3x the overall casting time, and for the exact same mana. GH is only slightly less efficient compared to Heal, and with Train of Thought can actually become more mana-efficient than Heal. You just have to kind of pace yourself when throwing out GH compared to spamming Heal all the live long day.
korodullin on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
I GHeal the tank all the time (I have Power Infusion/Inner Focus macroed to Prayer of Healing), but I use Heal to chain spot heal the party. GHeal seems like a total waste when a hunter takes a 10% health hit, or whatever. It's nice that we use GHeal now, I like pressing that button...but it hasn't replaced Heal for me.
Poor Flash Heal though...I think I've cast Flash Heal like six times since Cata, and it's been on myself.
e: Also, your spec is the spec I will use when I start raiding. For 5-mans, even Heroics, I still like the Archangel build. Archangel is great on heroic boss fights.
I never use Smite for healing Heroics. I use this spec. I have Greater Heal tied to Inner Focus alongside the talent that causes GH to reduce the IF cooldown by 5 seconds per cast. I then proceed to do like I did in Wrath, Shielding the tank, Penance, and Greater Heal instead of Flash Heal. It does absolutely wonderfully, and I never have trouble keeping people up while having plenty of mana left over just in case. Provided the tank and DPS do their jobs properly, that is.
Here's the thing with Heal vs. GH: it takes 3 casts of Heal to get you the same amount of healing done as a single GH, for 3x the overall casting time, and for the exact same mana. GH is only slightly less efficient compared to Heal, and with Train of Thought can actually become more mana-efficient than Heal. You just have to kind of pace yourself when throwing out GH compared to spamming Heal all the live long day.
The spec you linked has Strength of Soul instead of Train of Thought, the talent that makes GHeal reduce IF's timer.
I never use Smite for healing Heroics. I use this spec. I have Greater Heal tied to Inner Focus alongside the talent that causes GH to reduce the IF cooldown by 5 seconds per cast. I then proceed to do like I did in Wrath, Shielding the tank, Penance, and Greater Heal instead of Flash Heal. It does absolutely wonderfully, and I never have trouble keeping people up while having plenty of mana left over just in case. Provided the tank and DPS do their jobs properly, that is.
Here's the thing with Heal vs. GH: it takes 3 casts of Heal to get you the same amount of healing done as a single GH, for 3x the overall casting time, and for the exact same mana. GH is only slightly less efficient compared to Heal, and with Train of Thought can actually become more mana-efficient than Heal. You just have to kind of pace yourself when throwing out GH compared to spamming Heal all the live long day.
The spec you linked has Strength of Soul instead of Train of Thought, the talent that makes GHeal reduce IF's timer.
Switch 'em around then. I didn't have it linked for personal reference so I had to quickly toss it back together. In fact, I believe I linked the wrong spec entirely. Fixed now.
korodullin on
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Sir Landsharkresting shark faceRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
No I don't think he is. Rapture has an ICD of 12s. Weakened Soul is 15s without any reduction from Strength of Soul. Absolutely best case means you shield, use 2xheal to bring Weakened Soul off in 11s, and then wait 1s for Rapture to come off ICD before you refresh shield. This gives a mana regen increase of 15/12 = 25% on rapture. Of course this is fairly unrealistic as you are likely to be in the middle of another Heal cast with the shoddy HPS output of the spell, so I would expect something more like 15/13.5 = 11% extra mana regen. Also, if you forget and refresh shield too early you won't be able to shield the tank again for another 9 to 11 seconds which is way worse than not using strength of soul at all.
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I mean, I believe Heal spam with Strength of Soul is a very valid way to play Disc, but I prefer to use GH instead. If I ever get the urge to spam a ton of Heals, I'll probably switch to Holy for the greatly improved Heal.
korodullin on
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I use Binding Heal in dire emergencies when both I and someone else are down quite low. Other than that, not really. I lack a lot of good multi-target healing options as Disc so I tend to use it some times.
korodullin on
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They've really buffed Prayer of Healing with the new glyph that adds a 20% HoT.
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
I don't know about that. As holy, I'm getting used to Heal, it has a solid place in my arsenal as my default heal if someone needs healing, but is not in danger of immediate death. Generally they already have a renew on them (since I seem to be in Heal Chakra 90% of the time, so Heal will refresh renew).
They have to be <50% before I'll start using Greater Heal. I like that GH is not a mana sink anymore, but if I'm not careful I'll overheal with it, especially while I'm leveling and tanks have wildly disparate health pools. I might start using it earlier once I'm 85 and tanks start having similar health pools.
And if I'm hurt, and someone else is hurt, I use Binding Heal, if for no other reason than to get a Serendipity stack in case I need a quick PoH or GH later.
I hate that Serendipity only works on Flash Heal and Binding Heal, since FH is expensive, and Binding Heal is situational.
Obviously if 3+ people are hurt, it's PoH time.
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"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Renew > Prayer of Mending > Circle of Healing > Prayer of Healing > Greater Heal > Flash Heal > Heal
It will probably always be like this. Does anyone even use Binding Heal?
For me as Disc, I find it's been Prayer of Mending > Heal/Penance* > Greater Heal > Flash Heal.
I didn't put Renew in there, because it's not part of my standard rotation. I keep it on the tank, and I'll use it to top off between pulls, but Heal is a stronger part of my build do to it's various talented side effects than Renew is. I put a star next to Penance because casting it actually requires some thought. I try and save it for the tank, but I'll use it as my "Save someone instantly" spell as well. I will always cast it over GHeal if it's up and the tank needs that kind of health.
I have Archangel, but I only use Smite to keep Evangelism up on bosses. I don't use it as a standard part of my healing rotation.
They've really buffed Prayer of Healing with the new glyph that adds a 20% HoT.
This combined with Divine Aegis always procing on PoH makes it a really amazing spell as Disc. I was running Glyph of Flash Heal for a while (same Glyph I ran in Wrath), but then I realized two things: I rarely cast FH, and it's not the same Glyph as it was in Wrath. I switched to the Glyph of PoH and haven't looked back.
You can basically shield, heal and HoT your party in one spell. Macro Power Infusion/Inner Focus to it for added fun.
I knew about Prayer of Healing's glyph and indeed do use it. I wasn't aware that it always procced the shield though. I figured I was just really lucky with crits.
korodullin on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I knew about Prayer of Healing's glyph and indeed do use it. I wasn't aware that it always procced the shield though. I figured I was just really lucky with crits.
Nope. If you read Divine Aegis, it always procs on PoH. It's pretty awesome.
It's a change they made pretty late in the beta, shortly before they gutted our regen (which they have just restored yayay).
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Sir Landsharkresting shark faceRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
Binding Heal is only slightly less mana efficient than Heal & GHeal for both Disc and Holy specs. As Disc I use it in place of Renew whenever I know it won't overheal, plus it doesn't move my grace stack off the tank. Does it still proc 2 stacks of Serendipity as Holy?
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
You mean 2 stacks from one cast? No. But you can use it to stack Serendipity, yes. Serendipity only stacks twice now, but considering flash heal isn't our primary spell anymore, I'm not to worried about it.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
Posts
Shadow priests are fairly straight forward. As far as small dungeons go, a rogue would be great. Some decent CC and survivability tools, whereas spriests are pretty limited. I wouldn't worry too much about class saturation - with the LFD tool you shouldn't have to deal with "sry full on rouge"
Also, I tried out the suggestions from that disc post linked a few pages back. Generally, it seems to be a better option, though I haven't completely dumped Strength of Soul and Heal yet. There are more than a couple cases where I've been able to bullshit the system for more mana by shielding someone who will take some damage, then healing away a few seconds of weakened soul, then shielding them again before the last tick of damage. Works great for some of those 15s, 60k damage dots that get sent around in heroics.
Veiled shadow is also pretty useful. could drop paralysis for that, unless you pvp a lot or something
even healing priests take veiled shadow now.
I tried swapping around some points in my Disc build to try out Surge of Light to get more millage out of Heal besides Grace refreshing and faster shields, and I can't say I like it. It seems like whenever I cast another spell it consumes the surge buff when it procs before I can even use it on Flash Heal. I'm just going to swap those points back into Inspiration again, but I actually do like using Heal just for passive upkeep on the tank in situations you described. Keep 3x Grace up and Renew on him while chaining Heal inbetween bubbles/penance cooldowns is some decent healing in some heroics (not so much Stonecore, but Tol'vir and SFK it seemed to work pretty well on trash and some bosses).
As an aside, when did they change Renew tics to be able to proc Divine Aegis? Love it.
Not sure, but the fact that Prayer of Healing auto-procs Divine Aegis on everyone it hits is also an amazing change.
I haven't actually healed at all since 3.3, so it probably was that change. I'm surprised its triggered from Renew ticks criting is all.
Everything procs Divine Aegis. I've had Divine Aegis proc off of a crit gotten from the heal off of a glyphed Power Word: Shield.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
PvP Protip of the Day: In the Twin Peaks Battleground, having you flag carrier run up to the ledge on the left of your flag room for flag defense. The FC can jump off that ledge if he starts taking serious damage and Lifegrip'd back up once the melee follow him. Casters can be MC'd off that ledge and will have line of site issues if you and the FC run to the wall on that area. Myself and a Disc Priest protected a Paladin flag carrier from 5 attackers for more than 5 minutes (we both used several key cooldowns twice) while our team got the flag back. We must have looked coordinated as heck but really we were all from different servers and didn't even communicate with each other.
Well, it COULD crit before if you had Empowered Renew...but I don't think it was possible to have ER and Divine Aegis at the same time, both were too deep in the tree.
WOOOOO!
You know, that may be enough to get me to switch to Holy.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Rapture got bumped from 2.5% to 6% for Disc.
So that's why my PW:S was returning 2x its mana cost.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Maybe later on when I have Mastery coming out of my ass and my PW:S is absorbing like 20k damage, but right now when I'm in mostly 333-340something gear? Not really worth it.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
Why don't you ever cast Heal? Because you're using Smite as your chain cast heal?
I chain Heal all the time as Disc, because not everyone is in Smite range of the boss....plus sometimes I forget I'm supposed to Smite and I revert back to my pure healer ways.
e: In fact, I only use Smite as my chain heal when I am fighting bosses. Trash dies too fast to build Evangelism, and I'd rather target heal. On bosses I tend to use Smite only to keep 5 Evangelism up. In any case, I still use Heal a lot.
Here's the thing with Heal vs. GH: it takes 3 casts of Heal to get you the same amount of healing done as a single GH, for 3x the overall casting time, and for the exact same mana. GH is only slightly less efficient compared to Heal, and with Train of Thought can actually become more mana-efficient than Heal. You just have to kind of pace yourself when throwing out GH compared to spamming Heal all the live long day.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Poor Flash Heal though...I think I've cast Flash Heal like six times since Cata, and it's been on myself.
e: Also, your spec is the spec I will use when I start raiding. For 5-mans, even Heroics, I still like the Archangel build. Archangel is great on heroic boss fights.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The spec you linked has Strength of Soul instead of Train of Thought, the talent that makes GHeal reduce IF's timer.
Switch 'em around then. I didn't have it linked for personal reference so I had to quickly toss it back together. In fact, I believe I linked the wrong spec entirely. Fixed now.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It will probably always be like this. Does anyone even use Binding Heal?
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
They have to be <50% before I'll start using Greater Heal. I like that GH is not a mana sink anymore, but if I'm not careful I'll overheal with it, especially while I'm leveling and tanks have wildly disparate health pools. I might start using it earlier once I'm 85 and tanks start having similar health pools.
And if I'm hurt, and someone else is hurt, I use Binding Heal, if for no other reason than to get a Serendipity stack in case I need a quick PoH or GH later.
I hate that Serendipity only works on Flash Heal and Binding Heal, since FH is expensive, and Binding Heal is situational.
Obviously if 3+ people are hurt, it's PoH time.
For me as Disc, I find it's been Prayer of Mending > Heal/Penance* > Greater Heal > Flash Heal.
I didn't put Renew in there, because it's not part of my standard rotation. I keep it on the tank, and I'll use it to top off between pulls, but Heal is a stronger part of my build do to it's various talented side effects than Renew is. I put a star next to Penance because casting it actually requires some thought. I try and save it for the tank, but I'll use it as my "Save someone instantly" spell as well. I will always cast it over GHeal if it's up and the tank needs that kind of health.
I have Archangel, but I only use Smite to keep Evangelism up on bosses. I don't use it as a standard part of my healing rotation.
This combined with Divine Aegis always procing on PoH makes it a really amazing spell as Disc. I was running Glyph of Flash Heal for a while (same Glyph I ran in Wrath), but then I realized two things: I rarely cast FH, and it's not the same Glyph as it was in Wrath. I switched to the Glyph of PoH and haven't looked back.
You can basically shield, heal and HoT your party in one spell. Macro Power Infusion/Inner Focus to it for added fun.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Nope. If you read Divine Aegis, it always procs on PoH. It's pretty awesome.