Post by turkey
My goal here is to give my perspective on discipline, and clear up a few misconceptions I've come across repeatedly in these forums. My opinions are based on the content I've cleared thus far, and I know I might have to make some adjustments for future boss encounters.
I have a pretty well geared disc priest, and my primary responsibility on most fights is main tank healing, very often without a single holy pally in the raid (my guild is recruiting a holy pally, message me if interested lol). I do quite a bit of raid support as well by tossing out pw:s and flashes as necessary.
My armory:
TurkeybubbleMy mt healing rotations are the standard one's reported on the stickies here and elsewhere:
pw:s > penance > flash > flash > flash > penance etc.
Renew is cast on the rarest of occasions. PoM is normally kept bouncing, but I will forget to keep it up too often I admit.
My healing UI is Grid, and I use keybound mouseover macros for my spellcasting. I also use Powa Auras to display a 10 second countdown for my trinkets so I can keep my spell power procs up at all times.
Before I start discussing my stat priorities, let me first say that
balance is the name of the game for disc. I try to get my hands on a lot of gear, primarily gear with either haste and/or crit, so I can maintain the levels of each that I prefer. I find myself switching older pieces in and out constantly whenever I add a new piece that throws off that balance.
My stat priority starts first and foremost with spell power. It's the most difficult stat to stack, since disc has no talents that increase it beyond the meager amount we get from
Focused Power. I gem it heavily, and both my trinkets provide 325 sp that stay up constantly through the fights. I have almost 2600 sp with inner fire up and trinkets procced, 2800 with my 4pc bonus procced, and over 3k when my cloak embroidery procs.
I generally try to avoid random sp procs, but
Lightweave Embroidery seems so vastly superior to any other option that I couldn't pass it up.
The advantage of stacking sp is that my primary source of healing output is pw:s, and the only stat that benefits it is sp. It obviously provides a great deal of benefit to my other spells as well.
Second on my priority list is intellect, of course for the benefit it provides to my mana pool, crit, and regen. I found the magic number to be around 27k mana raid buffed. At this amount, I can pop shadowfiend and hymn and restore all of my mana during a battle in roughly 5-7 seconds. If my fiend dies, or I have to interrupt regen to heal, I still have more than enough mana to finish a fight comfortably. I rarely ever pot. I never call for any regen from another class. One of my alts is elixir master herb/alch, and I've been using a cheap combination of elixirs:
Guru's Elixir and
Elixir of Mighty Thoughts. I intend to switch back to
Flask if the Frost Wyrm this week.
I do still use
Insightful Earthsiege Diamonds as my meta. While the regen may not be totally necessary, the amount of mana it restores makes it a bit more attractive than the meager stats provided by the alternatives. As my mana pool grows, I'm sure I'll experiment with some alternatives.
Haste and crit are about equal in priority, except that I
will sacrifice some crit to maintain my haste at between 10-11%. Without Borrowed Time, my flashes cast at 1.2 secs, a level I've become extremely comfortable with. My holy crit fluctuates between 25-30%, and my goal is to add crit without losing my current level of haste.
If Blizzard nerfs the Penance cd by two secs as they've said they will, I do anticipate haste gaining more value. I might actually add a Borrwed Time-hasted Greater Heal to my rotation after Penance. I've run into some hard mode situations where flash spams might not do the trick while i wait for Penance to become available again.
Finally, the regen stats. This is where I find myself in strong disagreement with many posters on these boards. In my experience, the regen from mp5 and spirit is fairly inconsequential overall. Rapture, replenishment, fiend, and hymn provide more than enough to get through a fight. The number crunchers on Elitistjerks state that mp5 provides more regen, but they concede that it is not by a large amount. Furthermore, as intellect levels increase, the difference between mp5 and spirit shrinks, and at around 1800 intellect evens out entirely.
So, if mp5 is slightly better than spirit, why does all my gear have spirit?
Because I dual spec holy. The vast majority of the time I raid as disc, but here and there I will go holy, and having to only change out a trinket is a major convenience.
As I said before, I never have mana issues, so worrying over finding mp5, or worse taking it from shaman and pallys that cannot use spirit at all, is something I just will not do. Even the substantial buff mp5 is getting in 3.2 won't convince me that mp5 is worth chasing.
Post by turkey
Oh, I've also starting looking at combat logs using
Wowmeteronline. Its reports take into account all of disc's mitigation, and the numbers it reports are nowhere near as bloated as RecountGuessedAbsorbs.
Post by Aldones
I'd strongly recommend throwing Renew into your rotation, it adds a huge amount of healing for the 1.5s (less haste) GCD it provides. Especially w/ and upcoming Penance nerf, this is one spell you'll find very handy.
Everything else seems to be right on par; while it's not applicable to most priests due to lack of gear, it gives a good goal.
If the replenishment nerf comes into play in 3.2, you may want to consider changing to
Darkglow Embroidery (getting buffed to 400 mana). However, I believe Lightweave is getting buffed to either 300 or 325 sp.
Edit: the new raid will also affect how your geared. I think the replenishment nerf is happening for that very reason...everyone will have more int.