I recently did a clean installation of WoW for a new account and rolled (of course) a Discipline Priest. But something was bugging me: Penance and other channelled spells not only turn your character to face your target but this also makes your camera turn to face them.

In a boss fight, for example, my camera is usually facing in a particular direction to watch something specific, and the last thing I want when I throw a Penance at an off-tank or aggro-monkey DPS is for my camera to swing violently around.

The Cause

The key to figuring out the cause is that this doesn’t happen to me on Malevica. That’s because the account is much older. (This might also be the case for many of you reading this and thinking I’ve gone mad!)

You see, it turns out this behaviour is controlled by an option that used to be exposed but now isn’t, so new installs default to the annoying ‘turret-mode’ and there’s no obvous way of fixing it.

Enter the non-obvious!

The Solution

Edit: Zhiva in the comments suggested a much simpler way of achieving the same result as my original instructions (which appear below). Simply type:

/console cameraSmoothTrackingStyle 0

into your chat window in game and you’re done. No messing with configuration files required, which is a plus.
Thanks for the tip!

All you need to do is add a single line to one of your WoW configuration files, as follows:

1. Make sure WoW isn’t running.
2. Navigate to your WoW directory .
            (e.g. C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\)
3. Head into the WTF folder, then Account, then the folder for the account you use.
            (e.g. C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\<ACCOUNTNAME>\
4. [Optional but highly recommended] Make a backup copy of config-cache.wtf somewhere safe, just in case something goes wrong.
5. Look for an entry containing:
            SET cameraSmoothTrackingStyle “1”
   If this line exists, change the “1” to “0”.
   If this line does not exist, add the line:
            SET cameraSmoothTrackingStyle “0”
   to the end of the config-cache.wtf file and save it.
6. Restart WoW and enjoy!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Atonement and Penance Bugs – Updated
• Smite Healing – Tips

From following the EJ Discipline Compendium discussion, and from occasionally painful experimentation, I’ve settled on some basic tricks for getting started with Discipline healing in Cataclysm.

Spec

I’ve settled on a 33/8/0 spec, although the two points in Inspiration probably ought to go in Veiled Shadows Darkness instead. I’ve taken Inspiration to help the raid out.

Those two points have come directly from dropping Strength of Soul, and I’ll explain why.

Power Word: Shield is either used on the raid to mitigate predictable damage spikes, or on the tanks to keep Weakened Soul up. In both cases, reducing the duration of Weakened Soul can actually be a disadvantage, which is why I’ve not taken any points in Strength of Soul at all.

What’s more, with Train of Thought and Inner Focus macro’d to Greater Heal, the HPM of GH and Heal are essentially the same. As long as it won’t be overhealing, GH is the heal of choice because you need fewer casts and less cast time to put out the same healing, leaving you more time to think, or to do other things.
Limited Heal casts also reduce the value of Strength of Soul.

Early theorycraft suggested putting one point in Strength of Soul and using one Heal in the rotation in order to make the best use of the Rapture internal cooldown, but all that achieves is making PW:S closer to mana-neutral. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s not a big win either, and that point can be used elsewhere.

Raid healing

As much as it pains me to say it, you’ll probably find it easier to just suck it up and go Holy. I succumbed last night and the difference when I’m dealing with multiple targets is night and day.

(Cue the best part of an hour resetting all my bars from Shadow, trying to figure out how to make Holy Word: Chastise work, and setting up VuhDo and PowerAuras again.)

If you’re stubborn like me and really want to stay Disc, or you need to fill in the raid healing role in a pinch, here’s some basic rules:

• Prayer of Healing heals for basically the same as Heal on each target, but costs just under 3 times as much. So if 3 or more people will benefit from the healing, use PoH. Remember that PoH can be used with Inner Focus to save you a chunk of mana, and you can use it with Power Infusion to speed up the cast and reduce the cost significantly.
• If only one or two people will benefit from the healing, stick to Heal/Penance. It’s slower, but more mana-efficient.
• If you can foresee damage PW:S isn’t a bad spell to use, especially if you can make use of the Rapture internal cooldown every 6 12 seconds. You certainly can’t spread this around the way you used to though, Rapture is what makes PW:S remotely practical.
  (Incidentally, I’m looking for a decent internal cooldown monitor, preferably without having to install ForteXorcist. Suggestions welcome.)
• Renew is quite situational. It’s not as mana-efficient as Heal/Greater Heal if you have time to cast them (for me, 2.4HPM for Renew with Inner Will vs 3.33HPM for Heal), but it’s good if you’re on the move a lot and especially if you glyph it and drop a couple of points into Improved Renew (if you’re focused on raid healing, there are points you can free up.) [Edited, thanks to Aventera for the experience].

The thing that makes Disc more difficult in a heroic dungeon, where you’re filling both the raid and tank healing roles, is that unless you’re very good at anticipating damage you’ll probably end up using much the same tools as Holy for raid healing, only they’ll all be weaker than their Holy equivalents.
Add to that the fact that you’ll have 20% less combat mana regen and probably won’t have Replenishment to make use of Disc’s bigger mana pool, and it’s not an easy ride at all.

Oredith on PlusHeal summed it up neatly:

[Disc is] definitely viable, but you’ll work harder to make it so. If you decide to go that route, no one will fault you, but just keep in mind that there’s a path of lesser resistance.

Tank healing

Tank healing is a little more straightforward for a Disc Priest. Here’s my simple decision rules:

• Start with Prayer of Mending and Power Word: Shield before combat, as always.
• Get Penance on cooldown as your opening heal.
• Keep Weakened Soul on the tank, and keep Penance and Prayer of Mending on cooldown.
• If you can use Smite/Atonement, use that as your filler with Greater Heal when you need a catch-up.
• If you can’t use Smite/Atonement (because the tank’s too far out or the melee are stealing your Atonement heals) use Greater Heal as your filler spell, waiting to cast it until it won’t be wasted. If the tank just isn’t dipping far enough to justify a Greater Heal, either just regen some mana or look for someone else to help out.

I intend to keep persisting with Discipline, feeling it out and refining my technique. It’s more work than Holy though, so I’ll be using both specs, following that path of lesser resistance, depending on what’s best for the fight. Ultimately, my guild comes before my attachment to a single spec.

Possibly Related Posts:

• The First Cataclysm Raid
• Cataclysm Class Previews – Priest
• Atonement, or Not Atonement?

I thought I’d break from the Cataclysm stuff with an old post I’ve finally got round to finishing.

A concept that crops up from time to time, particularly in raiding circles, is the idea of “constructive criticism”. A vast majority of guild charters and guild applications will mention a willingness to accept criticism somewhere within them, but what do we mean by “constructive criticism”? What does it look like? And how do we make sure we’re giving it?

A definition

First, let’s look at “criticism”.

Criticism is the judgement of the merits and faults of the work or actions of an individual or group by another (the critic). To criticize does not necessarily imply to find fault.

(Emphasis mine, Source)
Criticism is simply an analysis and judgement, it is not automatically negative or fault-finding only. That’s a key point to remember.

Now for the “constructive” part.

Constructive criticism is criticism kindly meant that has a goal of improving some area of another person’s life or work.

(Emphasis mine, Source)
What makes it constructive is that the criticism is meant to help the recipient improve. It does not say anything about the content of the criticism.

What does it look like?

I’ll illustrate this with a hypothetical example.

Your guild has recently taken on a new recruit of your class, who says in their application that they always welcome constructive criticism. It’s been noticed that they seem to be struggling with mana and going OOM a lot, calling for Innervates a lot more than the other healers.

Let’s say that you’re asked by an Officer for an appraisal of that player; they want to know about the new recruit to evaluate their trial. At this point you’re still probably in the realm of simple criticism. Your feedback to the Officer might be quite brief and factual, for example:

This player seems to be fitting in well, asking questions in the healing channel.
They stick to their assignment well.
They put out good healing on the meters but they do seem to have mana problems, calling for a lot more innervates than I usually do.

Recall the definitions above. From the definition of criticism, note that there’s both positives and negatives in there, and some judgement, but the feedback is pretty objective and factual. There’s no real attempt to help the person improve, which would be required to meet the definition of constructive.

Now, imagine that the Officer asks you to have a chat with the recruit to see if you can help them with any mana problems they might be having. Now the purpose for your feedback has changed: you’re interested in helping them improve, which is where the constructive part comes in. So your feedback to the recruit might look something like:

It’s really nice that you’re fitting in here so well during your trial.
I’ve noticed that you seem to be using a lot of Innervates though and I wondered if we can help you out. Do you find mana a problem in raids? Why you think why this might be? What do you think of this alternative spec?
It’s also really good to be able to rely on you to cover your assignment in raids.

I know that sounds a bit stilted, it would be much better as a conversation than a single message to the recruit, but it does illustrate a few points that I’ll look at later. The difference between the two examples is that in the constructive example the intention is clearly to help the person improve.

Giving constructive feedback

I can’t hope to offer a pro forma for giving feedback, and you need to use your judgement about the situation and the people involved, but there are a few general guidelines that might help.

1. Choose your moment – Criticism should be given close to the event so that it’s fresh in everyone’s mind, but doing it in the heat of the moment when emotions might be running high is unlikely to get the desired results. You also need to allow enough time for a decent conversation, including thinking time.
   Use your judgement: if someone’s standing in fire, mention it between pulls; if someone’s underhealing, that might be better saved for between raids.

 

2. Include praise – Some people talk about the “sandwich technique”, where you surround your criticism with praise before and after. I’ve done this in my hypothetical example above, and it looks a little bit odd written down like that, but in a real report or conversation it’s easy enough to end on a high note. The recipient’s attitude to the whole of the feedback is shaped by the tone of the first few exchanges or sentences, so you should start positive; the mood they’re left with is influenced by the last things that were said.

 

3. Address the area that needs improvement, but don’t criticise the person. – This can be a very tricky line to walk at times. It’s fine to observe that someone runs out of mana a lot, but you must not judge the person as a “bad player” or “fail” because of it. Think of those “How to raise your little horror” TV shows: you can, and should, tell your child that setting fire to the cat is unacceptable because animals have feelings too, but just labelling the child as “a naughty child” is not useful.

 

4. Ask questions – The best way to remain objective and avoid the recipient feeling like you’re picking on them is to let them do most of the talking. Sometimes the best way to help is to ask a really insightful question that gets right to the heart of the issue. For example, rather than saying “you should use this spec”, ask them for their thoughts on the spec or a blog post talking about it. By doing this, you get to make a suggestion, but you also give the recipient a route to refute that suggestion.
   The other advantage of asking questions is that you reduce the risk of simply telling people what they already know, which can come across as patronising.

 

5. Focus on solutions, not causes – While it’s important to understand what’s going on, your goal in giving the criticism is to help the person improve, so move on quickly from the problem to solutions. This also helps to keep the discussion positive and focused on the future.
   Where possible, the soltions should also be phrased positively: instead of “stop using spell X”, have the solution as “use more spell Y”. It sounds corny, but it does make a difference.

 

6. Be objective – Your only agenda should be to help the person improve, so you need to keep your own prejudices quiet. Don’t just push your solution on the person, but work with them to find the right solution for them.
   And make sure that the solution can be objectively assessed later, so that when you come to do follow-up (you do intend to follow up, right?) you can keep your future judgements objective as well.

Dealing with defensiveness

Sometimes, despite your best intentions, you might not get the response you’re looking for, and the most common response to feedback is defensiveness, where the recipient of the feedback refuses to listen or might even become angry.

In my experience, the first thing you should do is stop and step back; pressing on is likely only going to antagonise the person further. Wait a while, and you might find that point you were making might be taken anyway, once everyone’s emotions have faded and the recipient can consider your words more calmly. They may approach you again, or work out a solution on their own.

If you get no results from this though, you have two main options. The first is trying again, using a different medium. Changing the medium will also almost certainly alter the tone of the conversation: a whisper is less personal than Ventrilo, while a PM allows the recipient to take their time in dealing with it and can relieve a lot of pressure they might feel.

The second option is to have a different person try. Sometimes it can be a personality clash, or it could be your position in the guild, your gender, nationality, or one of many factors that causes the recipient to respond differently to you than to someone else.
Some people get very defensive if someone not of their class/role tries to offer criticism, while others might get defensive around someone who is the same class/role because of some percieved competition.

Your input

I’ll freely admit I’m not the best at people management, so I would really welcome comments from other people about how they deal with giving feedback, be it in the form of advice or anecdotes.

Have you had to give feedback? Did it go well? Did it go badly? How do you take feedback yourself?

Possibly Related Posts:

• Priest Class Feedback
• [Leadership] The Influence of Celebrities
• Knock, knock!

I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores in this post of using Smite and Atonement as part of your healing toolkit, but there are a couple of tricks that I wanted to share that might help the potential Smite user, based on some playing last night.

Macros

First up is a macro suggested by Andy in a comment on the 4.0.1 guide.

#showtooltip Smite
/cast [@targettarget, harm] Smite; Smite

It’s a more failsafe version of just having Smite on your bars. If you have a hostile target selected, it’ll just cast Smite. If you have a friendly targeted, e.g. a tank, this will cast Smite at their target instead.

If you want absolute control over your Smite target, you could use a focus macro. This one’s borrowed from our trusty CC macros:

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [modifier:alt]
/focus [@focus,noexists]; [@focus,dead]
/stopcasting
/cast [@focus,exists,harm] Smite;Smite

If you don’t have a focus already, this macro will set your target to your focus and then Smite it (assuming it’s an enemy). If you do have a focus, the macro will Smite it. And if you hold down Alt, the macro will change your focus to your current target, and then Smite it.

I’d assume you’d probably have the boss as your focus, and just hit this button whenever you want to cast Smite.

This next macro is good for when you want to Smite something, but don’t want to use your focus for it. This is probably a better choice for soloing because it’s not as controlled as the first.

#showtooltip
/targetenemy [noexists][dead][help]
/cast Smite

If you don’t have a target, this macro will act as if you’d hit Tab, and then cast Smite on that target. It’ll work up to 40 yards, exactly the same as Tab. While you have a target, this macro will continue to Smite it without any target switching.
If you have a dead target (or your target is friendly), the macro will then pick a new target and Smite that.

[This is a slight update on the one I posted on PlusHeal, with the conditionals linked more efficiently]

The three previous macros are really actionbar macros, just taking the targeting out of the equation to some extent. The following macro can help you integrate Smite with a click-healing setup:

/cast [@mouseovertarget] Smite

You can add this to your click-bindings, so you can click on a tank and the macro will cast Smite on their target (hopefully the boss). I chose not to go this route, because I ran out of mouse button bindings (I need a tidy-up!), so I’m using VuhDo directly, as I’ll explain below.

UI

Here’s how I have VuhDo set up (using the auto-generated test names, since I didn’t get any screenshots in last night’s ToC):

The raid is in the middle panel, pets in the right, and main tanks and my focus in the left panel. Next to the main tanks are small red squares, which are target-of-target frames showing what the tanks are targeting. Instead of using up a regular click binding for a dedicated macro, I used VuhDo’s facility to bind separate spells for hostile targets and I have Smite set up for a hostile target.
So I click on the target frame to Smite it, and move my mouse across a little to cast a direct healing spell on the tank himself when I need to.

I don’t know if you can do a similar trick with Grid or Healbot, but I would imagine it’s possible (Grid can do everything, after all!). Perhaps someone else knows of a suitable guide.

The other thing addons can help with is watching for a 5-stack of Evangelism so you know when to cast Archangel to get that mana back. I’m using PowerAuras for this:

The top icon will pop up when I have 5 stacks of Evangelism, I’m below 85% mana, and Archangel is castable, and the number over the icon is the time remaining, so I can refresh the stack up or consume it if it looks like falling off.

This PowerAura is a linked set of three, which I’ve included below in case you want to adapt something to your own needs:

Archangel Castable:

Version:3.0.0W; icon:ability_priest_archangel; buffname:Archangel; x:-244; bufftype:7; owntex:true; mine:true; combat:true; size:0.2; y:5; texmode:2; timer.h:1.56; timer.Texture:WhiteRabbit; timer.enabled:true; timer.cents:false; timer.y:5; timer.x:-247

Mana below 85%:

Version:3.0.0W; bufftype:9; threshold:85; off:true; combat:true; texmode:2

Evangelism at 5 stacks:

Version:3.0.0W; icon:Spell_Holy_DivineIllumination; buffname:Evangelism; x:-244; customname:Archangel; stacks:5; texture:54; mine:true; customtex:true; combat:true; size:0.2; y:62; timer.h:1.54; timer.Texture:WhiteRabbit; timer.enabled:true; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:CENTER

I use the Evangelism one as the main Aura, and require the previous two to be matched as well for it to be displayed.

 

Glyphs

Finally, this is a bit of a repeat, but if you want to use Smite much, make sure you’re using the Glyph of Divine Accuracy to make sure they land!

Also, if Smite is something you use a lot, the Glyph of Smite will be a big boost. If you Smite infrequently, then a 20% boost for 12s is probably a waste of the time you spend putting HF up, but if you’re tank healing it will probably be a good way to go.

Thanks to Sytax in the comments for his input. Glyph of Smite isn’t actually a dramatically good choice, as I’d first thought, primarily because of the newly reduced 7s duration of Holy Fire (which I hadn’t noticed when I wrote the post), meaning you can only get 4-5 improved Smites in that time, depending on your haste (assuming the last cast gets buffed by when you start casting rather than when you complete the cast). However, it’s not by any means useless either.

Below 22% total haste, even if all you do is Smite, you will see little difference between the two, with a tiny, tiny increase from the glyph. Between 22% and 50% haste, which is where we’ll all probably live, you’ll see a small increase in throughput from the glyph, and another small increase above 50% haste.

Here’s a graph, showing the effect of increasing total Haste %:

This assumes you Holy Fire, cast Smite until HF is off cooldown again, and the cycle starts over. I normalised the numbers it so that a “normal” Smite is worth 1 Healing point, and so a Smite improved by the glyph is worth 1.2, and I simulated over 300s, which is probably overkill, but at least averages things out nicely.

Good luck with the Smiting!

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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
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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.

Possibly Related Posts:

• 4.3 Quick Guide for Discipline Priests
• 4.0.1 Guide Updated
• [MoP Beta] Snapshot of the Disc Priest