Disc raid healing.Follow

For Precious and Stinky, get Renew rolling on one group and time your PoH on the other group to land behind the Decimate. (Holy Nova ftw!) I hated those guys for a while as disc in 10-man.

Raid Healing as disc is actually quite nice. You can actually be proactive and it lends itself to more planning and less "Oh Sheepdip" moments.

Shush woman, disc is horrible, roll holy.

Bubble+Penance is great burst healing.
Disc priests aren't that hot vs damage on the entire raid but spikey damage on random targets is where disc shines the most.

Even a 10 man it takes 10+ seconds to shield everyone and by then the first shield almost drops off again.
But for a large raidwide blow that you know is coming (like decimate) that works.

It's simply that with shield on them people might still be low on hp but you have more time to heal them up. (thinking speicifically stinky with the AoE here)

Oh, like shielding them after the Decimate?

That takes 10 GCDs.

I don't think it works very well.

I mean, I shield people after the Decimate, I just want to make sure everyone's at some 30% or so before I do so, so it's more of a secondary tool to help in that fight.

I thought Decimate destroyed my shields when I tried that.

Maybe it didn't. I don't know. Can anyone actually confirm this?

Speaking of VoA, a shaman there told me today to REPLACE EVERY SHIELD WITH A HEAL because I was below him on the healing meters.

He also suggested that I should use more Circle of Healing.



Thank you, random shaman, for understanding my spec.

This is a subject close to my heart as I love raiding as Disc and wouldnt raid as anything else.

Having said that over the past weeks my healing style has come into question by some, mostly people who dont know the class or its true dynamics, but yet seem to know everything about the game.

My healing style to me is pretty much what I consider to be a normal Disc healing dynamic, I wont say rotation as our spec is open to change depending on circumstance.

In 10 man ICC I'll shield everyone, cast PoM on the tank and use it everytime its up on either tank only, if its a boss fight the weaker tank will get Pain Suppression, top everyone up with Renew, only use Flash Heals on targets around 75-80%, Greater Heal on someone dropping a bit low, spam Penance when its up on tanks and anyone who needs a quick fix, PoH and Divine Hymn if things are going a bit downhill and if its all getting dire.
My shields, Renew and Penance are my friends.
On boss fights its similar but again depending on circumstance its open to change but I try to stay in my guidelines.

Comments from my now ex GM during an ICC10 run a few weeks ago mid fight on Saurfang.." gee your heals numbers are terrible tonight, whats wrong?".
I looked at Skada and I was a few hundred thousand clear of the next person in heals/absorbs and I was on top of the list.
So I message him back ???? and posted the Skada numbers up on raid chat.
He said thats heals and absorbs, not heals.
I replied I mitigate/prevent damage first and heal by topping up and where its needed second.
These are both forms of healing.

This reduces the amount to be healed by the other healers as well as myself by shielding everybody.

Say you get cleaved for 10000 damage with only 10000 health left, bang your dead.
I shield you first, absorb/mitigate 2000 damage, you stay alive, I use Penance on you and Renew and your back in the game.

He said Recount doesnt show this, no sh*t, I said you have to either get the guess-ta-mation absorbs addon for it or change to Skada which has more features.

So I then offered to group heal as Disc without shielding anyone for the rest of the raid and see how we go.
The rest of the raid crapped itself and said no keep doing what your doing lol.
This is a 6 year old guild and the GM had never seen this style of healing before.
So I /gquit, I didnt need to be told I was doing something wrong when I know I was right due to someone's lack of knowledge who thinks thier right.

If I ever lead the heals number table then theres a problem, the other healers arent doing thier job.
Its not like dps where everyone is out to get a better number than the rest, I try and work in with the healers doing what I do so its a team effort.

I was taught by a good friend here on the forums on how to heal in Disc. form.
I will never question his ability as he has been playing longer than me, he has experience and he is good at what he does.
To me that is good enough.

Then there was last night....ICC 10 first boss for the weekly.
I hadnt ran it yet as I've been busy and with the reset looming I thought why not.
So again I'am doing my normal job, we wipe because everyone is saved so thier playing alts on 4k gearscores and naturally its the healers fault.

"Some heals would be nice" was a common quote, hmm....I was in raid spec, almost 5700gs with 3k sp where the other healers were pushing 2500sp and its my fault...because I was third on the heal meters.
First on absorb/heals meant nothing....third on heals.

I asked do you know what a Disc healer does.....heal was the reply.
So I was told to stop shielding and just heal....just heal.....so I left the group.

My point here is simple, no one out there really understands what we do and how we do it apart from ourselves.
People ignorance is starting to make me enjoy playing Shadow spec a whole lot more.
I love healing and I wont change my style but god if I get one more comment I'am not doing my job and I'am low on the heals meter........



Edited, May 12th 2010 8:46am by RodStorm

Shield tank 1 > Borrowed Time PoH > Shield tank 2 > decimate > BT PoH > Shield whoever is low > PoH and AWESOME.

So no, shielding the entire raid is rarely useful, but Shield > PoH > repeat is pretty damn strong AoE healing as a disc priest, albeit mana intensive.
As I found out once again last night in VoA25 where we had 4 healers.
Well, a resto shaman, a healadin who only healed tanks (and not far above me in raw healing done) me and 2 resto druids both at barely over half my healing done.

Thank god for alchemy and the alchemist potions (and mine giving the wild magic buff on this occasion ) and shadowfiend as well.


Edit: as far as shielding goes, I've done a bit of calculating:
Assuming a priest with 3k spellpower and 40% holy crit raidbuffed.
PW shield absorbs 2230 damage + 80.68% bonus from spell power + 40% of spellpower from talents, improved PW: Shield adds 15% on top of that and according to wowwiki all +% healing from our talent trees also increases our shields which adds another 9%.

So it adds up to (2230 + 2420.4 + 1200) x 1.24 = 7254.496 absorbed + (7254.496 x 0.2) x 1.4 = 2031.25888 healing from the glyph = 9285.75488 combined healing and absorbing done by a PW:shield.
A well geared priest would probably get 10k or more combined healing and absorbing from an instant cast PW: Shield, not bad right?

Edited, May 12th 2010 2:16pm by Aethien

I'm pretty shocked that there are still people out there who don't know how Disc works. It's been kind of a long time since Lich King came out. But there are threads about this on the O-boards all the time. Some people still just don't get it.

Until the rest of the population and all the meter add-ons catch up, I think we just need to be ambassadors for our class. View every time someone questions you not as a personal attack, but as a chance to spread the word. Make a macro if you need to that yells "I am a Disc Priest. My job is to absorb most of the damage and heal the rest." Some people will act like asses and that is a good thing, because it's always handy to have the asses identify themselves so readily so you can begin ignoring them. But some people will get educated and pass that knowledge on.


Edited, May 12th 2010 9:57am by teacake

In my 25-man ICC run (mostly the same people, but a few pugs), I run about half the time as holy, the other half as disc. I still get an occasional comment about my healing numbers as disc, but no one that matters ever questions them. The same people that criticize my disc numbers will applaud my holy numbers.

If you ever need an uplifting moment as disc, check out Skada's healing and absorbs from Saurfang. I normally have around 35-40% of the total healing/absorbs for that fight in 25-man.

With Decimate and shields... I could have swore that the shield was busted when Decimate hits when we first started ICC, but I was running 25-man over the weekend as Holy with a Disc healing as well. It caught my eye that shields were up after the Decimate hit. I think they were pre-cast, but not sure.