28th October, 2010: Updated quite a bit, having spent a couple of weeks to play around and raid. The first iteration misjudged a few aspects, particularly just how much mana we’d have and the value of Heal and talents that work with it. I think I’ve fixed that now, so it should line up better with the reality of 4.0.1.
Patch 4.0.1 is here, bringing with it some pretty big changes.
In this guide I’ll cover talents and sample specs, spell changes, stat changes, gems, enchants, glyphs and some technique pointers.
There’s still a lot of room for you to make your own choices to suit your playstyle and raid role, so engage your critical thinking skills before reading this or any guide. Also remember that this is still changing. Finally, this is aimed at level 80, not 85.
Feel free to correct me in the comments and I’ll try and keep the post updated.
Talent Specs
Something to remember throughout the 4.0.1 experience is that the systems we’re using are intended for level 85 rather than level 80, so if it feels a bit odd, that’s probably why.
Nowhere is this more true than in the case of talents, where you’re effectively 5 points short of where you’d like to be.
Standard 4.0.1 spec
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfMkrRsbcRMo0hZb:qmVdomMz
I’ve skipped Mental Agility in Tier 1, because mana is currently not a problem at all.
I’ve also put a single point in Inner Sanctum purely as filler, because I don’t see a huge need for this talent in the Wrath environment. It might prove invaluable in Cataclysm, but it’s just not valuable in WotLK.
I also skipped Strength of Soul. It’s a nice idea for a talent, but it’s essentially useless in 4.0.1 since you’ll rarely, if ever, use Heal. It’s simply ill-suited to the damage profile of the encounters.
The more straightforward omissions are Focused Will and Reflective Shield, because they’re PvP or solo talents, not raiding talents. Reflective shield only reflects damage absorbed by shields on you, and Focused Will is only useful if you’re getting physically hit, and you really shouldn’t be.
Evangelism, Archangel and Atonement, work to form the core of the Smite healing setup.
Matticus wrote about this in more depth recently, but the idea is that you can put out a good amount of healing at low cost by Smiting the boss and letting Atonement heal the tank. Pop Archangel to restore 15% of max mana whenever it’s off cooldown and Evangelism is stacked to 5.
Train of Thought – When you Smite, you reduce the cooldown of Penance by 0.5s. Assuming Smite is a 2s cast, and Penance has a 10s cooldown when glyphed, if you do nothing but Smite you can bring that Penance CD down to 8s instead. It’s not a bad talent at all.
Power Word: Barrier
The iconic spell, although currently it’s a little underpowered, since it’s used up and disappears in a very short amount of time. Use it selectively on small ground of people or location-specific effects, rather than on large raid-wide damage spikes.
Non-Smite alternative build
I had included a non-Smite build in here, but since you won’t be using Heal (so Strength of Soul is no use) and you don’t need the mana (no need for Mental Agility), realistically there isn’t anywhere to put the points freed up by dropping Atonement, Evangelism and Archangel.
I’d suggest keeping the same spec, and just using Flash Heal instead of Smiting, if you really don’t want to use Smite.
Sub-spec choices
Once you’ve got your 31 points in Discipline, you have a few choices for your sub-spec. You’ll only have 5 points to play with, so you’ll really have to choose the talents that suit your playstyle and role in raids.
In roughly descending order of interest:
Divine Fury – Reduces the cast time of Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal by 0.15s/0.35s/0.5s. If you’re going with the Smite/Heal healing model, this is probably your top priority. If you’re on bubble-bot duty, skip it.
Darkness – 1%/2%/3% haste. Divine Fury is more powerful for the points if you’re Smiting, so if you take that then you’ll only have 2 points left. Darkness is a good place for them though.
Empowered Healing – 5%/10%/15% healing to Flash Heal, Binding Heal, Heal and Greater Heal. I’d favour Darkness at level 80 because we use these spells so little, especially with a Smite healing model.
This is probably a good staple at 85, though.
Improved Renew – 5%/10% to your Renew. Not a Discipline talent, really.
Veiled Shadows – Reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend by 30s/60s. Not a good choice at 80, yet again because we just don’t need the mana.
To Smite, or not to Smite?
At the moment Smite healing is fun, different and very mana-efficient, and since you’ll be taking the points to support it in your spec anyway, I’d say give it a go.
If you really can’t stand it, then you can swap Flash Heal for Smite in your rotation for now.
Spell Changes
I might not touch on all of the little changes, but I’ll try and hit on the big ones.
Heal has been revamped with the goal of making it a viable filler spell at max level. It’s got the same cast time as Greater Heal, but heals for slightly less than a Flash Heal, and costs 9% of base mana compared to 28% for Flash Heal and 27% for Greater Heal.
So the new theoretical single-target heal set looks like:
| Heal | Slow | Small | Cheap (9%) |
| Greater Heal | Slow | Large | Expensive (27%) |
| Flash Heal | Fast | Small | Expensive (28%) |
However, in 4.0.1 mana is so plentiful and damage so high that a small, slow Heal simply isn’t needed. If you’re Disc with an Atonement build, you’ll use Smite instead of Flash Heal, wherever possible, or just substitute Flash Heal if you need direct healing instead.
Inner Fire hasn’t been changed much, but has had its charges removed so it’s simply a 30-minute self-buff now.
Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Shadow Protection have been removed because Power Word: Fortitude and Shadow Protection have been made raid/party-wide by default. What’s more, the reagent costs have been removed.
Although mana is not a problem at level 80, you might consider taking the Glyph of Fortitude as one of your minors now to avoid having to spend quite a large chunk of your precious mana to rebuff that rogue who stood in the whirlwind. There really aren’t any compelling alternatives anyway.
Power Word: Fortitude is also now equivalent to the Blood Pact buff provided by Warlocks’ Imps, and won’t stack with it or overwrite it.
Inner Focus has been given something of a revamp. It’s more restricted so now it’ll only give you a free Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing (so your old Inner Focus + Divine Hymn macros are deprecated), but the cooldown has been slashed from 3 minutes to 45s.
I’m leaning towards treating this as a passive mana saving “proc” by macroing it to Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing to save a big chunk of mana when it fires.
If you want to do this, here’s an example macro you could try:
#showtooltip Greater Heal
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Inner Focus
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast Greater Heal
Borrowed Time is down to 7%/14% from 5%/10%/15%/20%/25%. This changes the haste cap for bubble-spam. Quoting Medmal on PlusHeal:
The exact number is 830.02, so you’ll need 831 haste to be at the soft GCD cap with BT and Wrath of Air. Without Wrath of Air, the number is 1036. Remember that if you can spare the points, you can always spec Darkness to reduce these. With 3/3 Darkness and Wrath of Air, for example, the cap is only 711 (or 910, without Wrath of Air).
Power Word: Shield has had its base cooldown reduced to 3s (from 4s). Soul Warding allows you to subtract 1s/2s from this cooldown. However, you’re still limited by the global cooldown of 1.5s before haste, so it’s essentially no different to the current situation if you take 2/2 points here.
HoTs no longer clip if you refresh them just before the final tick, which is a great change. What happens instead when you overwrite an existing HoT the game allows the next scheduled tick to happen, then adds the “new” HoT time onto the end. You only get to finish the one next tick though, so unfortunately you can’t cast it a few times in succession and stack it up.
Refreshing a HoT also doesn’t reset the tick timer, so if your last tick was going to happen in 0.2s, it will occur 0.2s after you refresh the HoT as you’d expect, and the next tick will follow one tick interval after that.
Binding Heal has been changed slightly to take it back to its original positioning. In 3.3.5, Binding Heal cost almost twice as much as Flash Heal, but healed each target for slightly more than a Flash Heal. In 4.0.1 though, both cost roughly the same (BH: 1120 mana, FH: 1081 mana) and Binding Heal heals for 2 x 5k (8.9 HPM) while FH heals a single target for 8k (7.4 HPM). So if you’ll get the use out of both heals then Binding Heal is the way to go since it has better HPS and HPM, but you’ll get better performance out of Flash Heal if you’re not injured.
Stats
Spellpower
Spellpower is all but gone from gear, except for caster weapons (because they have a very high spellpower budget compared to any other slot), and has been converted to Intellect. You now get your spellpower directly from your Intellect, also at a 1:1 ratio.
The regen value of intellect has changed because Replenishment has been halved in effectiveness, from 1% of max mana over 5s in the 3.3.5 version to 1% of max mana over 10s in the 4.0.1 version. You may notice your regen taking a bit of a hit if you’re very Int-heavy, but as I’ve said elsewhere, mana is so plentiful that you probably won’t.
Because Intellect is now a throughput stat, taking the place of spellpower, it has become a red gem instead of yellow.
MP5 and Spirit
MP5 is gone as a stat, and every healer is getting Meditation just for picking the Holy, Discipline or Restoration tree to spend 31 points in. As a result Spirit is our only pure regen stat.
However, I’d not recommend stacking it in 4.0.1 because you just don’t need the regen at the moment. Focus on the throughput stats instead.
Haste
Because of the change to Borrowed Time I talked about earlier, if you’re continuing in the bubble-bot role Disc Priests play in current content, you’ll want to get your hands on a bit more haste. Repeating from earlier, you’ll now need 831 haste with BT and Wrath of Air, or 1036 without WoA.
If you’re having trouble, you can take points in Darkness in the Shadow tree, which will take the haste rating requirement down to 790/750/711 with WoA or 993/951/910 without it. Although given the low value of spirit at the moment, reforging that into haste should get you there.
The big change to haste itself is the way it now affects HoTs, DoTs and channelled spells. I’ve gone into a lot more detail in another post (it’s focused on level 85, but the principles are the same), but the short version is that haste reduces the time between ticks so the spell can finish early, and if you reach the point where you would be able to fit an additional half a tick in, you get an extra full tick and the duration is extended accordingly
.
For Priests that means that you get an extra Penance tick at 25% total haste (from gear, buffs and Borrowed Time combined) [on 4.0.1 Live this appears not to be the case. I got to 54.6% total haste and still only got 3 ticks. This is not what was happening on the beta, so it might be a bug], and an extra Renew tick at 12.5% and 37.5%. The table below shows the haste rating you need from your gear to reach these breakpoints:
| Spell | Rating with no buffs | Rating with BT | Rating with WoA | Rating with BT and WoA |
| Penance | 820 | 317 | 625 | 146 |
| Renew (1 extra) | 410 | 0 | 235 | 0 |
| Renew (2 extra) | 1230 | 676 | 1015 | 488 |
Crit
Crit chance is now also applied to HoT ticks by default, so expect to see Renew crits popping up quite a bit along with Divine Aegis bubbles.
Divine Aegis remains unchanged.
Mastery
You won’t find Mastery on gear before Cataclysm lands, but the stat is available in 4.0.1 and is quite handy to have at the moment.
The Disc Priest Mastery is Shield Discipline, which increases the potency of all your damage absorption spells by 20%. Once you start getting Mastery Rating on gear it will convert to Mastery points, and each of these will add a further 2.5% absorption.
Priority
Our stat priority in 4.0.1 is roughly the same as in 3.3.5, namely:
Int > Haste (to cap) > Spirit (until you don’t have mana problems) > Crit (if you tank heal) or Mastery (if you bubble more).
If you’re raiding ICC in the right sort of gear you won’t have mana problems, so Spirit is not valuable right now.
Reforging
Reforging is new in 4.0.1. This allows you, by talking to an NPC found in Enchanting shops, to convert up to 40% of a secondary stat (Spirit, Haste, Hit, Crit, Mastery) on an item into another secondary stat not currently found on the item. The process is fully reversible.
At the moment the main target for Reforging is turning as much Spirit as you can spare into Haste to get to the soft cap and then Mastery to bring your bubbles back up to where they used to be.
If you want or need more, especially if you’re a raid-healing Disc Priest, you might also reforge some Crit into Haste or Mastery as well.
Gemming
Gems have been converted automagically into their new variants. The Disc staples are affected as follows:
- Runed Cardinal Ruby (Red, 23 SP) is now Brilliant Cardinal Ruby (Red, 20 Int)
- Purified Dreadstone (Purple, 12 SP + 10 Spirit) is now Purified Dreadstone (Purple, 10 Int + 10 Spirit)
- Luminous Ametrine (Orange, 12 SP + 10 Int) is now Purified Dreadstone (Purple, 10 Int + 10 Spirit)
As for meta gems, the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond hasn’t changed, but the Ember Skyflare Diamond has had its 25 SP converted into 21 Intellect, and the 2% intellect has become 2% maximum mana.
Because of these conversions, you might find that you’ve lost your yellow gems, so putting a Reckless Ametrine in will help you meet the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond requirement.
Enchanting
None of the standard enchants have changed, and since SP or Int are still our top stats I see no reason to change.
Glyphing
Glyphing has changed dramatically with 4.0.1. You now learn glyphs by using them, and from then on they’re added to your glyphs pane for use in the future. Swapping them around requires a Vanishing Powder at level 80, and a Dust of Disappearance from 81 onwards which you’ll need to carry around, but it’s a lot easier than carrying around several stacks of different glyphs.
There are also now three types of glyphs instead of two: Prime Glyphs are the spec-defining, high-impact ones; Major Glyphs are more utility-focused but still significant; and Minor Glyphs are as unexciting as ever.
At level 80, you’ll have access to all 9 slots, 3 for each type of glyph.
Here’s the 4.0.1 glyphs for a Disc Priest, in descending order of interest.
Prime
Glyph of Penance – Mandatory. Penance has huge HPS and HPM, and anything that lets you use it more often is a must-have.
Glyph of Power Word: Shield – Not changed since 3.3.5. Still a nice glyph, and definitely a strong contender still.
Glyph of Power Word: Barrier – Since PW:B will become your emergency cooldown, your version of Divine Sacrifice, the 10% healing boost you get from this glyph is nice, especially in a raid.
Glyph of Prayer of Healing – Leaving a lingering HoT is really useful if you use PoH from time to time.
Glyph of Flash Heal – Since Flash Heal’s niche is being shifted to emergency healing this glyph might prove useful at 85, but not in 4.0.1 where heals are still large relative to health pools and people aren’t under 50% health for long.
Glyph of Renew – Changed from 3.3.5 to be a flat 10% boost to your Renew. If you use Renew this is very powerful, if you don’t then it’s not.
My top pick would be Penance. Other than that, I’d recommend Power Word: Shield and then Prayer of Healing. I’d love to recommend Power Word: Barrier, but on Live PW:B isn’t lasting very long (a couple of seconds in most cases) so using the bonus healing is tricky.
Major
As I’ve already said, Major glyphs are generally situational. Keep as many available as you can, and swap them in and out as appropriate. I’ve put some usage notes in this section.
Glyph of Dispel Magic – If you’re dispelling a lot, the healing is a nice bonus.
Glyph of Divine Accuracy – Increases your Hit chance with Smite by 18%. Pretty much mandatory if you’re using the Smite healing style, not useful (obviously) if you’re not.
Glyph of Holy Nova – Holy Nova heals the raid now (it’s range-limited only) making it much more useful than before. This glyph is a very powerful boost to the spell. I’d recommend it.
Glyph of Mass Dispel – Replaces the old Focused Power talent, making a quick MD cast available to all Priest specs rather than just Disc. I like this for convenience, but it’s not really a performance boost and definitely optional.
Glyph of Fear Ward – On bosses that fear this could prove invaluable, especially in smaller group sizes when a rotation won’t be practical. Highly situational, but if you run 10s without a Tremor Totem available this could save your bacon.
Glyph of Inner Fire – Not one to bother with in PvE, but the armour bonus will probably be very useful for PvP.
Glyph of Pain Suppression – Another PvP glyph, since stuns in PvE aren’t usually fatal.
Glyph of Psychic Scream – This one’s very interesting, making feared targets stand still rather than running away. Nice in heroics as safer emergency CC, but definitely not a raid glyph.
Glyph of Smite – Because of the lowered duration of Holy Fire from 12s to 7s, this glyph is not an especially good choice, because the HPS gain from the glyph is approximately cancelled out by the HPS loss from casting HF. It’s a positive but small HPS boost if you Smite for the entire duration, and definitely a DPS gain, but not much of one.
I wrote a bit more about this elsewhere.
Minor
Glyph of Fortitude – As I mentioned earlier, since Power Word: Fortitude is now raid-wide and its cost is quite high, this one might be a good choice to save a ton of mana rebuffing someone who dies during a fight.
Glyph of Levitate – As with WotLK, it’s one of the more practical minor glyphs.
Glyph of Fading – You might find yourself fading more than in WotLK, and some reports say this is the case, although I’ve not found this personally. You shouldn’t need it in a raid, really.
Glyph of Shackle Undead – If you need the extra 5 yards to avoid body-pulling, then grab this glyph.
Glyph of Shadow Protection – Since Shadow Protection now lasts for an hour, I see zero value in this glyph. I imagine it’ll be changed at some stage, maybe to line up with the Fortitude glyph.
Glyph of Shadowfiend – Another less-than-useful glyph, since they changed the Shadowfiend to not take AoE damage. Probably not worth the cost.
From this selection I’d pick up Fortitude and Levitate as mandatory glyphs, and then I’m picking between Shackle Undead if I’m using Shackle, or Shadowfiend if I’m not.
Healing Tips
The first thing to say is that generally speaking, people’s experiences with the PTR suggest that you won’t need to change too much of your healing until Cataclysm itself.
Discipline Priests did not get changed anything like as significantly as other specs, and with mana not being constrained at al in 4.0.1 there’s no particular need to change.
There’s some mileage in thinking about how you’ll include Heal in you bindings and maybe trying to establish some muscle memory, but if you try and heal Cataclysm-style in 4.0.1 you’ll struggle a lot.
Tank Healing
If you’re going the Smiting route, your baseline healing on the tank comes from Smiting the boss and letting Atonement heal the lowest-health player with 8 yards of the boss, which ought to be the tank, and using Penance, PW:S and PoM on the tank whenever they’re available. Pop Archangel when it’s at 5 stacks to get 15% of your maximum mana returned and that 15% boost to healing.
If you decide not to use the Smite mechanics, just substitute Flash Heal into the above.
If you’ve taken Train of Thought and Inner Focus, remember to watch the IF cooldown or macro it to your two expensive heals to get the most benefit from it.
The thing to be careful of is checking that Atonement is actually working. Tanks have to stand very close to be within 8 yards of the boss, so they might be out of range, or melee might be taking damage and be soaking up the Atonement heals. In these cases if you’re needed on the tanks then you’ll have to switch to healing them directly.
Raid Healing
Bubbling is still fairly viable, although you’ll want to reforge a lot of Haste and Mastery onto your gear to match the performance you used to get in 3.3.5. I’d use Flash Heal or Penance for spot heals, since mana is not a problem.
The simultaneous Rapture proc trick still works, and the internal cooldown’s reduced to 6s now, so you’ll see a lot more Rapture returns.
Power Word: Barrier ought to be a really nice cooldown like Divine Sacrifice was, but unfortunately it’s just not lasting in raids at the moment so it’s only especially useful on the melee or tanks.
I am SUPER excited that you wrote this! Do you have any recommendations for a non-smite build (since you did mention that as a viable build)?
I am interested in a non-smite build as well… I am not really feeling the whole ‘dps while you heal’ thing. Great info though – love the blog 🙂
Take care,
Fiery
Thanks for the kind comments and for pointing out the slight(!) oversight!
I’ve added a non-Smite spec to the talents section. You don’t have as much choice there as I’d like, but you can avoid the Smite talents easily enough.
Personally I’m going both ways on the Smiting thing. I’m also find it tricky to let go and do anything but actually heal, and relying on Atonement feels distinctly uncomfortable, but at the same time I’m willing to give both ways a shot.
My lordie, that’s one thorough guide! Overall it looks alot like what I thought would be interesting to spec for 4.0. I’m especially excited about the whole Atonement+Archangel+Evangelism combo thingy. Pewpewpriest inc!
I just wanted to thank you for this; it’s amazing. I haven’t actually done any research yet at all and I’m kind of burned out on spectulative Cataclysm analysis but for some reason this caught my attention and held it. I actually feel prepared now and I’m secretly a little bit excited about smite … how weird is that?
Glad it was helpful to you 🙂
[…] Secondly Malevica at Type “H” for Heals, a blog I only just discovered has a nicely detailed 4.0.x guide […]
Thanks for this wonderful guide!
[…] Secondly Malevica at Type “H” for Heals, a blog I only just discovered has a nicely detailed 4.0.x guide […]
Thank you so much for this post – you’ve answered some lingering questions I had about how I was going to play in 4.0.1, and with this information in mind I’m better prepared and ready to tackle the final weeks of Wrath. (And I knew my haste stacking wasn’t a complete waste!)
On the PTR im currently using Renew a fair bit as Disc spec – the crits are nice and very regular. Id love to see DA procs from the crits though to make this spell a more viable filler – I dont know if its a bug that it isnt proccing DA but technically any crit heal should proc a DA bubble.
As the this guide you have written – well done 🙂 some gr8 info and all in 1 place. ty
[…] Type “H” for Heals: Discipline 4.0.1 Guide […]
Just recently stumbled onto your blog, I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. You’ve been linked! 🙂
Thanks for the compliment and the link.
I hadn’t found your blog either, but it’s in my Google Reader now. I liked your take on 10 vs 25, it’s interesting to get good arguments for 10s being equally valid and even harder.
[…] – Malevica at Type H For Heals has pretty much everything you need to know for going into the patch with a disciplined approach (see what I did there?) She covers […]
[…] Discipline 4.0.1 guide (Malevica) […]
[…] Type ‘H’ for Heals amazingly good rundown on 4.0.1 for Discos […]
You said “For Priests that means that you get an extra Penance tick at 25% total haste.” Is there a reference for this? I got my haste to 25% last night and I do not get an extra penance tick. Is this a bug, is the number higher or what?
Thanks
I based what I wrote on testing I did in the beta client, as well as confirmatory reports from Plusheal, so I can say it was working that way when I wrote these posts!
But I have just tested it now, and while I am getting 1 and 2 extra Renew ticks from changing my haste, I’m not getting extra ticks for Penance on 4.0.1 on live; but I definitely was getting an extra tick on the beta.
It’s possibly just a bug, but I’ll put a note in the two posts though, thanks for pointing it out!
I cranked my haste up to about 60% last night myself and still no extra tick, so it is either a bug or they removed it. 🙁
Yah, I tried for the extra Penance tick as well. Still none as of this writing. =(
I found your blog when I was trying to find some resources for my disco priest in the post 4.0.1 world. I am new-ish to disc priesting and am no theorycrafter, so I tend to look to others for inspiration and read why they took what talents and why. Honestly, I’m still completely torn about what direction I’m wanting to go on my priest. Smite vs non-smite spec. Like you said in another comment, I find it tricky to balance pewpew’ing with healing. You get into the DPS’ing and then next thing you know, people are dying and it’s cause you weren’t on the ball. I may try both out since I have dual spec, but I’m not sure yet.
I’m with you on having trouble deciding on Smite or not.I feel nudged towards it, and I think it has slight advantages, but it’s not for everyone. I’ve put a bit of commentary and numbers in the talents section above, but I think the best way of making the decision is to just try it and see if you can live with it or not. I’d probably recommend giving it a go, but remembering that it’s just a way of replacing Heal on a tank, it’s not going to be a huge component of your healing either way.
I’ll be putting up a post later about how I’ve tweaked my UI to help with Smiting, which might also help.
Smite Healing – Tips
posted this at plusheal too – but if you do decide to use the smite mechanic, glyph of fading might come in more use that you think, particularly for mobs that drop aggro/banish tanks/whatever mechanic they think of next!
I didn’t have too much trouble when I tested, but admittedly that was mostly above level 81 where tanks seem to get their rotation sorted. But I’ll add a note to the post above, based on yours and other reports.
Thanks for the tip!
[…] feel like I’m shooting in the dark in a bit. But I’ve found the guides over at Type H for Heals absolutely […]
Maybe a useful Smite macro would be this:
#showtooltip Smite/cast [target=targettarget, harm] Smite; Smite
This way you don’t need to target the boss to use Smite – it’ll just hit whatever your target is attacking, if that target is friendly. If you have an enemy selected it will just cast it on them.
At least, that’s the idea. It’s been a while since I did any macros.
I’ll add that to the other thread. It’s a good failsafe.
Thanks!
[…] Même chose du côté de chez Type « H » for heals, avec en plus le détail des statistiques/gemmes/enchantements à privilégier : http://typehforheals.com/2010/10/06/discipline-4-0-1-guide […]
Thank a lot for your information.
i see i must change my mastery into haste because i do have enough now (377..)
My comments are :
– i just hesitate with Train of T because you do not take Inner Focus (2 points for reducing Penance it is really costly)
I prefer only 1 point and 1 point in Inner Focus with a macro for these heal) or 2 points in mentality agility.
– I think now, Holy Nova is a must have (i do not like to spam but it is really powerfull because the GCD is reduce with the Glyph and it hell the raid instead of the group now.
– add a macro for Smite (sorry it is in French):
To use the 25% haste while doing smite. in this macro it is the Main Tank which is focus
/stop casting
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast [target=myname] Infusion de puissance
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast [target=focustarget] Smite
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
i have a lot of other thing to do but i must go to redo my template base on your recommandation (mainly to re enforce my haste)
bye
Merci pour faire partager votre expérience!
Au niveau 85, je pense qu’il faut prendre Sagacité, mais au niveau 80 on a beaucoup de mana. Donc je conseille prendre Fil de la pensée pour tester le talent avant le Cataclysme.
Pour ce qui est de la glyphe de Nova Sacrée, je suis entièrement d’accord. J’ai pris cette glyphe et j’ai eu beaucoup de plaisir dans les donjons et les raids!
Je m’excuse pour mon mauvais français!
———————————————–
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
At level 85, I think we’ll need to take Mental Agility, but at level 80 we have a lot of mana. So I suggest taking Train of Thought to test it before Cataclysm.
As regards the Glyph of Holy Nova, I completely agree. I took the glyph, and I’ve had a lot of fun in dungeons and raids!
Sorry for my bad French!
Thanks for this blog – it’s one of the few I can get to from work. 🙂
As a bubble/renew spammer , I felt really gimped in Disc spec when 4.0.1 landed due to the haste loss. I ended up reforging some of the crit and spirit on my T10 gear, and got the haste back to mostly workable. I also added a couple hundred points of mastery just to experiment.
Folks are saying smite spec is a lot of fun to play so maybe I’ll try it later. Meantime, for those who asked, DA procs all the time now on renews. 😀
Thanks for this blog – it’s one of the few I can get to from work. 🙂
As a bubble/renew spammer, I felt really gimped in Disc spec when 4.0.1 dropped due to the loss of haste. I ended up reforging some of the extra crit and spirit on my T10 gear for haste and a bit of mastery so now it’s mostly workable. Will take a bit to get to the haste numbers you posted, though.
For those who asked, DA procs all the time now on renew. 😀
Thank you for this guide, It’s been a while i haven’t played disc, as I’ve always been holy spec. but since guild is needed me to play disc for Heroic LK this helps a ton. Thanks again!
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I play a disc/holy priest, and I’m having an absolute blast with the smite spec in ICC 10. On LK in particular, the pacing of the spec (smite then burst heal, repeat) fits so well with the encounter. Smite seems mana neutral at 80, so it’s basically free healing, and the smart-heal element is great for add fights now that tanks struggle with aoe threat. After the fight the tank healer, a shaman, complained that I was doing his job! The key with smite spec is to know the fights, and be a few steps ahead. Know when to bubble spam, when to smite, and when to pop evangelism.
I reforged spirit to mastery on my entire set, but I think I’m going to pick up some more haste after reading this.
We are actually working on heroic LK for the moment, and so I wonder how this would change for our bubble bot healer. Presumably we don’t care about haste and it’s mastery mastery mastery all the way?
I’d be interested in hearing about haste for a smite spec build. For bubble botting though, the haste soft cap numbers mentioned above are on the money in my experience.
Thanks for posting this info as I am currently looking for some guidance. Before Patch 4.0.1 I felt comfortable healing as dis as I never had mana issues and was always able to raid heal as well as tank heal effectively. Since this last patch I seem to be having a lot of issues adjusting to Mana constraints as I find myself OOM A lot these days. I just feel that there is something seriously wrong with something somewhere and hoping that I could get some guidance from the pro’s here.
Specific Fights for example would be Festergut on Normal is where I noticed some issues first off. I am usually OOM by the end of the fight but ok the fight is over so we move on. But noticed on our Lk kill this week that I have usually used a Mana Pot, Shadow Fiend and had to ask for an innervate by Mid Phase 2. Last night we where working on trying to finish up our Ulduar Achives and we where just having a lot of issues with Firefighter and I just keep getting myself OOM before Phase three even started. Again not sure what I am doing wrong but I know there is something somewhere. My Main spells tend to be PoM on every cooldown, PWS basically everyone I can and Flasheal as a filler or to top off the raid. Penence if a big hit is expected to land
Not sure if this is the right place to ask for some advice on this issue but I could really use all the help I can get atm as I really enjoy playing Dis but these issues are really starting to make me second guess it.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormrage&cn=Vaarish
Thanks in advice for the help
Vaarish
You might get other responses here, but I’d strongly recommend heading over to PlusHeal and searching/asking over there if you haven’t already. There’s a lot of top bloggers and priests there as well as a large healing community in general.
I can’t speak to your specific case, but it’s always been possible to go OOM as a Disc when bubble-spamming, and especially now since the loss of spell ranks has hurt our ability to maximise Rapture returns. Plus nowadays Replenishment is half as effective as it used to be as well and Disc tends to be Int-heavy. (You do have Replenishment up, right? Check WoL if you’re not sure. If the answer’s “no”, then this answer can stop here 😉
One suggestion would be that if you’re not using Smite/Archangel to get mana back, try and get into the habit of working some in. Even bubble-spamming on LK-25 you should be able to spend 1-2 GCDs per cycle Smiting something, and a 5-stack Archangel is good for >6k mana.
Other than that, just throttle back a bit and let others take the strain. Maybe there’s too much raid damage being taken, so you might be able to tighten up your tanks and DPS and sort things out that way. Or try talking to your fellow healers: if you have paladins or druids, let them know you’ll cover the melee and let them focus on the ranged, so you can use Smite/Atonement/PoM to your advantage and not have to worry about Flashing the ranged so much because other people will have them covered.
Do remember as well that people on EJ or the big-name bloggers tend to be in a lot of Sanctified or other 277 gear, raiding with people similarly-geared, which can make a big difference to how many casts are needed.
If you come across other tips or a solution, do share them though. And good luck!
Vaarish, it bears mentioning also that Flash Heal is now a very expensive option. When raid healing in bubble spam mode, I generally use Renew to keep folks topped off or close to it. As long as I do that, I’m pretty comfortable mana-wise. I certainly use a lot more of it than I used to, but rarely go OOM once I’ve used my various tools for mana regen.
Malevica, I haven’t yet found a spec that allows me both smite spec and bubble spam. Once we are done with WotLK content I’ll probably switch to smite spec but until then, I don’t have enough points for hasted bubbles. If you found a workaround, please post it!
By “bubble spam” I just mean using bubbles as your primary spell for raid healing. You can still take Soul Warding and Borrowed Time along with Arch/Evangelism/Atonement, it just won’t be quite as good as it used to be in 25s.
I’m not haste capped though, it’s true. I’d need 750 haste rating and I only have 580 (GCD = 1.04s), but I don’t think it would be too difficult to get to if I reforged differently. That’s with 2/3 Darkness.
I should also admit that when I wrote the response I was thinking of Vaarish’s Armoury profile which shows that he’s healing 10s almost exclusively, and you can cover a raid in that mode without needing a 1s GCD.
Hullo!
I’m still levelling up – so maybe there’s something cluelessn00b about this – but I’ve been poking around disc priest material, and I haven’t seen anyone else say/do this.
One of my Major Glyphs is Spirit Tap, and it’s working really, really well for me with an Atonement build – granted, I also have SW:D macro’d to my focustarget – and my focustarget is 99% of the time, the tank. Same with smite.
I realise I’m only a puny 80 right now, and things will, of course, change as I go along – but right now, I’m finding Spirit Tap to be VERY VERY worthwhile.
Since I’m always keeping an eye on my tank’s target anyway – to know if I should smite as a heal or heal as a heal (because my tank’s target might not live long enough for me to smite as a heal) – I find that at least half the time, I can gank the tanktarget just before it dies, with SW:D… and get 12% of my mana back. Which is beauteous, even though it’s only a 50% chance for me – not because of the glyph but because I am not always able to land the killing blow with SW:D.
That being said, it does suffer from a few problems, some probably related to my focustarget thingie.
1) Most good tanks switch OFF a target before it dies – which means that sometimes I hit the wrong target because I hit SW:D just as the tank switches, and bite myself in the process.
2) SW:D is buggy – sometimes I get the spirit tap proc, but I still bite myself
3) Obviously, I’m not trying to grab every single SW:D I can – if people are dying, SW:D is not something I’m watching like a hawk – it’s more of for non AAGH WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE fights, where it helps immensely with mana regen
4) It’s a trash regen glyph – or if a boss has adds – obviously, it’s not a pure bossybossfite glyph
Even so, I find it really, really works for me, and am curious as to why I don’t see other priests using/talking about it? It’s not that it’s been considered and dismissed, it’s that the guides I’ve read don’t even mention it.
Any thoughts? Am I totally missing something/nubbing it up here?
And btw, your build above is my exact planned build – nice to have some confirmation there. =)
Hmm I don’t think I’ve ever even looked at a Glyph of Spirit Tap. I will definitely check into it though! Thanks for posting.
Gumdrops! Moar input is always good!