It's true. A very smart priest once told me that casting Holy Fire on the main target is the best way to tell your tank that you're bored. A giant sky laser made of divine wrath should catch a tank's attention. Now, however, that role is filled by Penance. If your tank sees you fling your best healing spell into the face of the Big Nasty, then they need to alleviate your boredom.

On the topic of the thread, I like it a lot. I have two pieces of advice, however.

1) The Flash Heal or Greater Heal question seems odd to me. I think you ought to explicitly spell out that the debate you're addressing is whether to take the time to cast 1 GHeal or 2 FHeals. Otherwise, it sounds like you're debating the worth of the two spells in the abstract, when they are both tools for their own situations.

2) I suggest adding a Simple Question or perhaps an entire section on healing multiple targets as Discipline. There are plenty of times when Discipline priests are asked to heal more than one target, and though we're not as efficient about it as a bona fide raid healer, we shouldn't shirk from the thought either.

Specifically, discussions about PoH and HN are going to be useful, although you have a good talk about the glyphs already. Perhaps a link to Zusterke's theorycrafting on those raid heals? Also, a talk about pre-shielding the DPS who are likely to take some damage in order to make use of BT when you have extra GCDs would be useful.

Oh my god I love you. I laughed so hard that it hurts, and I showed to my GM (playing mage) and she laughed even harder

Ontopic: My thanks to Vigil, This topic made the last days of my raidweek pretty nice. Ended up entering naxx10, about 3 hours after I dinged 80... healed with this guides help and got really good responses from my guild ^^ Also todays VoA10 and VoA25 where really nice, with almost my T7.5 leggings >< Had to roll against a male dwarf without a beard (female dwarf? no they dont exsist) wich rolled 100 -.- Got really nice responses from everyone wokring with ^^ and that with the information from this treath /dance ^^ yay Thank you! look forward seeing more of this work, and hope I can contribute my part aswell

Excellent point!



OMIGOSH... OH NO YOU DIDN'T! my dwarf priestess is schmecksy by gosh!

Post has been updated with several new sections. Please provide feedback where appropriate and I'll attempt to integrate it into the FAQ.

Not everyone uses or knows how to use Lootrank. I don't think the pre-raid gear section needs indepth analysis of all possible items, since you have the lootrank information included. But I think adding a few key places to pick up quality loot will be helpful as well.

For example:
Trinkets: Pre-raid trinkets are somewhat hard to come by. Obviously, profession trinkets are high quality stuff, so JCs and Alchemists should get their respective trinkets. However, everyone else will need to scrounge.

[Quest "The Last Line of Defense" not found] is a quick quest in the middle of the Argent Dawn chain in southern Icecrown. It rewards either the [Cannoneer's Morale] or the [Cannoneer's Fuselighter]. These are easy to get and will last you until you can pick up an epic replacement.

[Badge of the Infiltrator] is the only cheap non-JC trinket with +Int in the game, secretly making it a decent Disc priest trinket. It'll get replaced quick, but don't be embarrassed if this is all you can get before Naxx-10.

[Je'Tze's Bell] and [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] (the Int version) are probably the two most expensive trinkets in the game. But if you have the cash, they're also two of the best you can get.

[Spark of Life], [Forge Ember], [Talisman of Troll Divinity], and [Winged Talisman] all drop in certain heroic dungeons. All of them are acceptable pieces, but [Spark of Life] is probably the best. 73 Haste and 45ish MP5 (estimated proc value) is really good for a pre-raid piece.

You can find more trinket analysis in a post at Shadow Weaving and at Snarkcraft.

Regarding the whole "using the CDs vs keeping them" debate, I find that
- when I'm healing the MT, Keeping Pain Suppression available is enough for emergencies. The -5% threat is not an issue.
- Same thing when healing the raid or an OT. I Keep Pain Supp available in case a tank needs it, for the rest, anything goes.

NOT spamming Shield nor Penance, on the other hand, would deprive me of my two best spells ?

It depends, honestly. I do try to use Penance. I start shielding people that are regularly taking damage, and always keep Weakened Soul on the tank(s).

Kel'Thuzad, however, I heal with GH/FH exclusively and only shield the tank, saving penance and shield and POM for possibly saving three simultaneous iceblocks.

i absolutly use penance every time its off its cooldown. 3 grace stacks in 2 seconds, three casts that can proc an aegis in 2 seconds and the healoutput of a greater heal in 2 seconds. that spell deserves to be used mindlesly
in combination with pw:s, its effectiveness becomes even clearer: 3 grace stacks, 3 possible aegis and the output of a greater heal in 1.5 seconds. (0, 0.75 and 1.5 second ticks provided no haste rating)

the best thing is, atm, penance is not consuming the borrowed time-buff (a feature, yes). So you can use the spellhaste buff for a follow-up greater heal or flash heal, which is double-nice.

with 3.1 the optimal rotation (yes a disc rotation in theory exists) should be pw:s -> gh -> penance in times of hefty incoming tankdamage, with the penance-da no longer overwriting the gh-da and stacking both up to 10.000 absorb. with this combination, you migitate a hell of incoming damage in a castperiod of ~5 seconds. (~6.000 shild + ~10.000 penance with one crit + ~14.000 gh-crit + 4.200 gh-da + 3.000 penance-da, which is a total of ~37.000 migitated/healed damage in 5 seconds, provided the gh and at least one penancetick crits.)(not to mention, that absorbed damage, or damage that does not need to be healed is always better than damage that needs to be healed retroactively)

I use Penance as often as I can. I consider Pain suppresion my true emergency spell (considering tank below 50% an emergency for a disc priest).
I also try to keep Shield OR Penance ready for emergency, but not one or the other, just any of them. I will try to explain better: If I cast shield, I wait its cooldown to cast pennance (if it is not an emergency), but then I cast it. That way, you always have one or the other for emergencies.

Excellent post, and I'm not just saying that because I agree with nearly all of it.

I have been discipline since WotLK began. I was thrilled when I saw what Blizzard was doing with the spec in WotLK and although I keep meaning to try out the new Holy talents sometime, I'm having too much fun right now. I've had a very positive response from my guild generally and a number of them are now fans of discipline and want to try it on their priests. I think the "pretty lights" effect is definitely a factor here - everyone loves the swirly penance laser and one of my tanks calls the divine aegis bubble his "hamster wheel."

Some comments on points raised:

Keep Penance/shield on cooldown vs. save them: This is a fairly simple question - penance is our best emergency save, and it's also our most mana efficient heal. Which do you need more in a given fight? If you really want that emergency option, then keep it in reserve; if you don't, or if mana efficiency is more important to you, then use it every time you can. In a timed CoS run where the tank takes high constant but predictable damage, I will use it a lot. On Kel'thuzad, I will save it so I have it available for frost blasts (shield+penance will easily save two people from this if needed, even if you have latency problems like I do). Note that penance gives 3 chances to crit and proc inspiration, which makes it even better in endurance fights.

Raid healing: we are better at this than people might think, we just have to approach it differently. Our raid healing is proactive rather than reactive. In fights where mana isn't an issue, which is most of them since rapture is such a great talent, I will generally pre-shield raid members if I know AoE damage is coming or might be coming. The 3.1 talent reducing PW:S cooldown and mana cost will make this much more viable and effective. Not only does this allow you to preemptively mitigate a lot of AoE damage, but it also supercharges prayer of mending due to the crit bonus from weakened soul proccing divine aegis, which adds even more raid damage mitigation. Also renew, being instant, doesn't consume the 25% haste buff from casting PW:S so you can cast a lot of them in a short time for more group healing. I like to glyph renew for this reason (AoE healing situations) even though I hardly ever use it at other times. PoH and holy nova are of course situationally useful as well.

Other notes:

Avoid overheals where possible, because rapture only returns mana on the actual amount healed. With enough spellpower and intellect, rapture can reduce the effective cost of a penance to almost zero, but if it's all overheal then you're paying full price for it. This is in contrast to holy priests, who get mana back on overheals - the same amount whether it's 1% or 100%, so a holy priest will always be trying to heal the target a fraction above full for regen purposes. If you are in a situation where heal sniping is a possibility (almost always the case in 25 man Naxx especially) this really favors flash heal over greater heal - if someone heals your target to 100% right before your greater heal lands, you've just lost a huge chunk of mana. Never pay full (mana) price for your heals as discipline if you can avoid it.

For gear, I highly recommend the Greatness card in its +90 intellect form. If it procs on intellect (as it should if you're following the gear advice in this thread) it will add around 5000 to your mana pool for the duration, meaning much more mana back on rapture, and replenishment if you have a source of that. Greatness card and spirit world glass is my regen combo and gets me through mana-intensive fights quite nicely even without replenishment. To be honest though, discipline is so mana efficient that I tend to gear for crit/int/spellpower and just keep a few swap pieces around for fights and groups where I need a regen boost. This is another factor that offsets the higher raw healing power of holy, since we don't have to gear regen as much as they do and can stack spellpower more.

Just a quick update that this thread WILL be updated at 3.1, I know I have been posting less but I still am active on the forums. I simply feel that I'd like to let 3.1 be on live for at least 1 raid window to experience the changes personally before I attempt to write about them. Clearly much has changed for us, and I'll likely simply strike out the sections that are no longer relevant until I feel comfortable with the new mechanics to include them (rapture and self-castable penance being two of the biggest.) I'd imagine the thread to be up to date within about 2 weeks of 3.1 going live.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I have been holy spec basically from
level 10... (I had a pally to level with) I have been very uncomfortable with the idea of switching to disc because of this. Now with dual spec, I can try it it and not worry about it! And thanks to all the great info here I have a good idea of how to heal as disc! So to everyone that has contributed their thoughts, preferences, etc THANK YOU!!!!

I used this guide pre3.1 to help me heal for Sarth3D, and this guide gave me everything I needed to know about Disc. (And yes we did down it!) Huge thank you for all the hard work you put into this, its really appreciated. Looking forward to the 3.1 updates when they come

So I sat down to update this and realised that I've done 3 nights of Ulduar 25 man content with the new spec, I have not done Sartharion 3d, Naxx or Malygos and the Ulduar I did do was so lagged and buggy that I really don't have enough experience to create a useful update yet. I'm going to do a few 25/10 mans this weekend and wait one more raid week for my guild (Tue-Thurs is our schedule, yes I know only 3 nights a week) before I update this as I just don't want to give bad, incorrect, or not thoroughly tested advice.

Here is some minor things I have noticed:

PW:S with no cooldown except GCD makes haste incredibly important. Mana is nearly a non issue if you continue to simply shield during periods of raid damage. (Tantrum on XT-002, or shockwave on Kologarn are excellent examples, Loatheb should be a joke since you just shield everyone and by the time your done shielding raider #25 raider#1's weakened soul has worn off.)

Things I'm a tad weary of:

The desire to ONLY SHIELD AND PENANCE is huge...I can't tell you how many times I caught myself reaching for my pw:s button instead of flash healing or relying on my penance even when other heals maybe more appropriate.

Self-Penance is great however I still find Desperate Prayer/Healthstone/Health Potion/Charged Crystal Focus to be mainstay self emergency spells/items. Binding heal when hasted is unbelievable as an emergency self top up, so I find myself binding heal quite a lot. I have yet to determine if these are good or bad practices.

I did about 890,000 healing from my Glyph of Power Word Shield during my last 4 hours in ulduar (Iron Council, Kologarn, and Aurelya (spelling?) attempts). (I mostly use the glyph so I can do some quick math and see my total absorption (albeit it doesn't show absorption actually consumed), I find the actual healing portion of the glyph fairly paltry, especially compared to empowered renew as an instant heal.) This means I casted out roughly 4.4 million of power word shield. Now if you are familiar with those fights there is a significant amount of raid damage from chain lightening, eye beams, shockwave, sentinel blast, etc. I find it hard to believe that a majority of the shields could stay on a target for 30 seconds without being even somewhat used. Simply put I saw too much raid damage even after absorbs to believe that a significant portion of the shields were falling off unused.

Things I'm deriving from this personally, after having roughly 25-30% crit, 2.2k Spellpower, HASTE is an incredibly useful stat being able to recast pw:s faster (due to lower gcd) seems incredibly useful.

Yes I know this post is a bit scattered, I was formulating my own opinions while writing it I guess...if it turns out to be unintelligible then uh ignore it.

TL;DR version:

I'm not comfortable writing the faq yet and want more raid time as 3.1 disc.
I love PW:S
I think I love PW:S too much.
Haste is sexier, much more sexier.
Stackable Divine Aegis are nice but I see so much raid damage that I don't see them staying up enough too be stacked.

I have the same feelings. Love being Disc. spec and love them shields

Thanks for the useful info.

Thank you for this wonderful thread. I have leveled my Priest Holy spec all the way from 10 to 80. I am a raid healer, I love healing the raid and get bored when on MT duty. I have always had mana issues, so out of the blue I decided to change to Disc and found this thread. (been a long time lurker).

Last raid (10man OS) not only did I not have OOM issues but I had more fun with the healing. There is so much talk about CoH being a great emergency heal, but the HPM of it just does not justify it being more than that. And for the QQ on 6sec CD, the old style of spamming CoH was another way to OOM in the first half of any boss fight. Sorry got off topic.

I really enjoyed the pw:s with flash heals and renews on the raid to keep everybody but a pesky aggro magnet Lock up and running. I used pennance quite a bit, and mostly to support the MT healer. OMG, Disc is definately a great healer spec.

So once again, Thank you all for supporting this thread, please continue because the insights are awesome and I have so much more to learn.

Thank you for this mmmmmmmarvellous thread!!
it helped me alot to understand the mechanics of DiscHealing
...
Thanks ALOT!!

New Version going up on sunday, it's a total rewrite, so bear with me.

Well that deadline came and went, apparently we did not kill Yogg-Saron yet...I want to hold off till he's dead just incase there is any insight from that fight I can lend, although I'm sure 99% of the rewrite will remain.

This is a marvelous sticky ... if people would read through it before posting I think it would cut down on several of the "spec ?" or "stat ?" threads. Looking forward to that update - GL on Yogg.