[KidArctica]

"We started using discipline priests in Ulduar. The discipline fight was Freya hard mode where Power Word: Shield would provide an effective health increase versus Ground Tremor. Before that, I can't even remember a discipline priest in a raid that wasn't someone who was too lazy to change from their PvP spec," says Nokaru, guild master of the US guild Deus Vox.

Discipline used to be the PvP spec for priests, a spec with no real place in PvE. That has changed. Somewhere in between tough Ulduar encounters, a Circle of Healing cooldown and the Soul Warding talent, discipline priests have become a staple of 25-man end game raiding, even threatening the holy hegemony.

Insane coefficient

Deus Vox has one full-time discipline priest, and one priest that alternates between disc and holy depending on the fight. So does the US guild Premonition. "We have two players who can swing holy or disc, and basically use both in almost every encounter. I think Vezax is when we started using discipline priests. Now, the hardest encounter in the game requires them," says Xav, officer and warrior in the guild.

The strength and niche of the discipline priest is their damage prevention. Power Word: Shield is spammable and scales extremely well. By shielding the raid, discipline priests increase the effective health of each player. A well-geared disc priest is able to pump out shields that absorb 9000 damage or more. Needless to say, this is particularly strong in fights with heavy, predictable burst damage.

"Power Word: Shield has an insane coefficient," says Lawliepop of the US guild Blood Legion. Playing a holy priest with a shadow offspec, the guild officer has two additional priests in her ranks, one full time discipline and one holy/discipline. About a month ago, they tested the Power Word: Shield coefficient. Their result was that the effective coefficient was 1,512803004. For those not into theorycrafting, this means that for every point of spellpower a discipline priest has, Power Word: Shield will gain 1,51 damage absorption.

WoW's best kept secret

Blood Legion has been using discipline priests for quite some time. While doing Sartharion with three drakes up, they had a discipline priest as tank healer. At the beginning of Ulduar, they got a full time disc priest. "I think having only one holy paladin sparked it. Honestly, I kind of had a something of a negative view on them. My previous experience with disc was mostly in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta at very low gear levels," Lawliepop explains.

Even as a holy priest, she recognises discipline as a very strong spec. "The priests in Blood Legion like to constantly joke about how disc is WoW's best kept secret, and we are scared that they are going to be nerfed. What they do is to stabilise the raid in a way no other class can. In 95 percent of the fights, you want at least one dedicated disc."

Because of the strength of discipline priests, it is fairly common for main spec holy priests to have a discipline offspec. Ensidia priest Poptisse used to play holy more or less exclusively. That has changed. She now has a discipline dual spec that she has to use quite frequently. "You are a fool if you don't use a disc priest. In fights where we only use one priest, it is a disc one rather than a holy. The burst damage in Icecrown Citadel can be so insane that people having 9000 more hit points is more important than getting a 4000 heal from Circle of Healing. It sucks, because holy is by far the most fun spec to play. But a disc priest brings something no one else can, and I think that is why they are the 'Flavour of the Instance'," she says.

Ensidia currently has two priests that can play both disc and holy. They started using discipline in Ulduar on encounters like Freya, but with Icecrown Citadel, it became a staple in their raids. "I like their utility, but whenever we use a disc priest it is for the sole purpose of spamming shields or getting the crit buff on tanks. It gets really boring to play. I only need one keybind and it makes me want to fall asleep rather than keep me awake. I hated having to play it, and I still do!" she reveals.

Required for Lich King

Right now, a lot of top guilds are working towards the last fight in the game that hasn't been done yet: The 25-man Lich King hard mode. Interestingly enough, this fight apparently requires multiple discipline priests in the raid. With Infest hitting for around 15 000 damage, shields seem to be the way most guilds choose to handle it. "I don't like the fact that this completely negates the 'Bring the player, not the class.' No one can do LK 25 hard mode without shields," Poptisse says.

With the strength of discipline discovered by more and more players, holy priests seem to be less desirable in raids. Until now, it is holy that has been nerfed, first with the cooldown added to Circle of Healing, then the effectiveness of Prayer of Healing took a hit. The question is if discipline will suffer the same fate. Poptisse doesn't think so.

"I don't think disc needs a nerf, I think holy needs a little boost - something that is not Lightwell or a 3 minute Guardian Spirit that never procs anyway. We need some kind of powerful tool to boost burst HPS a bit more, or maybe they could remove the cooldown on Circle of Healing! But really, Prayer of Healing is way too annoying. Circle of Healing has a cooldown. Renew can't even compare to Rejuvenation, and haste stacking shamans are laughing at holy priests at the moment. Even paladins do."

[komorie]

when i changed realm to play with friends the second character i leveled was a priest.
i started raiding when only naxx was there i tried holy and because i was undergeared i was going oom really fast,
so i thought ill try out disc and really enjoyed it. at that time people looked at me as if i was an idiot that didnt know how priests worked and was lazy etc. and there were those people linking healing meter ><.
all in all i must say i like that disc is being more accepted but like some people said i dont like their spec relies on spamming PWS and thats something blizzard needs to look at.

[katuka]

My brother plays a priest as his main, and he says that he enyoys disc over holy anytime.. Never tried it myself though (:

[Vorsgald]

Disc is great as a third+ healer, but I find that in 10mans on 2heal fights, disc wanes tremendously with respect to holy. Absorbing a bunch of damage is pretty cool, but if you lack the strength to continually output healing, your other healer will want to strangle you. As a third healer in a ten man (or any healer in a 25man) it's worth having a disc priest.

The other detriment of a disc priest is that it does not scale well if you have more than one. You're at no particular penalty for having more than one resto druid, for example, as they can both just rejuv everyone, but disc priests suffer from vanilla resto druid syndrome - only one of them can throw bubbles up, thanks to the debuff granted on cast.

My analysis is that disc priests are a powerful class, but only in certain situations, and only if they know what they're doing. It took a long time for me to get to that analysis too, as there are so many bad disc priests who do nothing and then explain "I did no healing on the meters because I'm disc!"
--Vorsgald

[aribeth]

Disc is fun, but there is still a lot of problems. The Lichking fight makes Disc more shining than other healing spec, but in a danger direction.

Blz defines disc as a MT-healing spec, but now disc is used as raid-healer, that is, spamming shield to the raid, which could be a good plus if disc does well in MT-healing but it's not.

Both disc and holy are suffering low single HPS problem, (even count shield absorb amount) and this is severer for disc. Any priest try to heal green dragon? or trying to solo heal heroic mark of champion? The required HPS is simply not possible for priest.

The reason is that disc cannot make use of haste and crit well in ICC, which are already too high for disc with full raid buf. The only scalable stat for disc priest is spellpower.
Another reason is the flashheal HPS is too low for single target, the normal rotation for disc is like: shield-penance-fh-fh-fh-penance-fh-fh-fh-...You cannot get rid of fh as a disc priest because gh is as bad as fh. But compare disc fh to holy light, nourish, healing wave? Too low output to keep tank alive. It's okay for a dps rotation having high output part and low output part, but it's not workable for a tank healer.

And about the coming ICC zone-wide buf, how does it affect priest shield? this could be quite a big problem.

This post has been edited by aribeth: 10 March 2010 - 10:02 PM

[Delena]

I'm an holy priest, I've been disci for 1 year, and I'm very good as shadow too. I'm a specialist of my class.

No discipline isn't good as they say, I did the LK encounter as holy works better, you just need a single Circle of Healing when "Infest" comes.
Yes probably with the ICC hard mode we need a disci for the tank, but it's the only fight where the tank gets so damage to need mitigation.

Shields on predictable damage? Put an other druid in place of the Disci priest, it's a lot better.
Shields are spammable?
Not really: Any shield debuffs you with Weakened Soul, you cannot be shielded for a long while. Nowdays the raid fights get constant damage aoe, and those shields are nothing.

Discipline is funny, because Penance gives you an extra spell that makes the gameplay more various, but compared to the other healers sucks.
Was powerful at the start of WotLK, and guild started to use it in Ulduar, but after it has been nerfed to the ground:
Talents are Grace now are useless, even Penance has been nerfed increasing its CD by 2 seconds ( PvP reasons ).
And when the Discipline tree has been nerfed to the ground, the Holy was gaining Improved Renew (to mix with the glyph is very powerful ), still the Holy tree has the only physical damage mitigation "inspiration".

The only thing good of the discipline priest aren't the shields, but Divine Aegis, that's a spell for tanks, but since there aren't hard fights to heal the tank... oh well, .. ICC Hard mode, but only for the very last fight.

[Arkham]

Hmm... Raiding in a "Disc World"... har har har

[Cameron]

Arkham, on 11 March 2010 - 09:12 AM, said:

Hmm... Raiding in a "Disc World"... har har har

Ye, I remember when I woke up and saw that in my list of unread threads. Not being 100% aware of my surroundings, who I am or what I am doing when I wake up my initial thought was "Ehhhhhhhhhhhh?"

[Sathothan]

Delena, on 10 March 2010 - 09:47 PM, said:

I'm an holy priest, I've been disci for 1 year, and I'm very good as shadow too. I'm a specialist of my class.

No discipline isn't good as they say, I did the LK encounter as holy works better, you just need a single Circle of Healing when "Infest" comes.
Yes probably with the ICC hard mode we need a disci for the tank, but it's the only fight where the tank gets so damage to need mitigation.

Shields on predictable damage? Put an other druid in place of the Disci priest, it's a lot better.
Shields are spammable?
Not really: Any shield debuffs you with Weakened Soul, you cannot be shielded for a long while. Nowdays the raid fights get constant damage aoe, and those shields are nothing.

...

The only thing good of the discipline priest aren't the shields, but Divine Aegis, that's a spell for tanks, but since there aren't hard fights to heal the tank... oh well, .. ICC Hard mode, but only for the very last fight.

You insult some of the strongest guilds being clueless about Discipline, but have not even read/understood their comments completely.
Maybe you have successfully healed Lich King on 10man in Normalmode as Holy (it sounds like that), but Poptisse talked about 25man Heroic, where Infest hits significantly harder, so a single CoH won't be enough.

Those guilds use disc priests as raid mitigators (look at logs of the top guilds in ICC..."shield IS spammable"), but you see discipline still as tank healers.
The example Freya+3 is suggested...no other healing class can provide this health boost in this encounter.
There are some more encounters in ICC, where discipline priests are viable, especially in Heroic Mode...

[darkprideofdoom]

Sathothan, on 11 March 2010 - 07:15 AM, said:

You insult some of the strongest guilds being clueless about Discipline, but have not even read/understood their comments completely.
Maybe you have successfully healed Lich King on 10man in Normalmode as Holy (it sounds like that), but Poptisse talked about 25man Heroic, where Infest hits significantly harder, so a single CoH won't be enough.

Those guilds use disc priests as raid mitigators (look at logs of the top guilds in ICC..."shield IS spammable"), but you see discipline still as tank healers.
The example Freya+3 is suggested...no other healing class can provide this health boost in this encounter.
There are some more encounters in ICC, where discipline priests are viable, especially in Heroic Mode...

Was thinking the same,but had to recover password *fg* so you were faster :-)

practically i started playing the same encounters/strategies like in the article for disc (although our raid was quite reculant in the beginning), nowadays we are without tankadin so i even switched for queen hardmode to disc.

To sortout the statement of u with a bit more facts besides "top guilds do it):

1. Spammable ? yes
If u do 25 man u get 15 seconds of weakened soul,having 25 targets and a global cooldown...do the rest of the thinking by yourself (and btw... bitchduty!)

2. Infest?
Well of course if u do normalmode (even 25 man) holy seems pretty cool ..i mean 1 botton 6 targets infest free...sounds great eh? if u are really really *sarcasm* good u use a prayer in before on infest cast (making u stand a little time) so u get about 11 people that stand together. A disc priest..well ...weeeeelll... u can shield about 10 people at least before an infest,full movebility no shit like 2 man standing and only taking coh etc. .
In addition if Infest (yeah i am not trying 25 man heroic lk u got it) hits for 15k in hardmode...u pretty much are fucked with ur nice little 4k coh . In addition,a druid is also bullshit against this,his hots will NEVER tick up 15k in time.

3. Where to use?
Myself i find rarely a point of going into icc with disc+holy speccs , i pretty much keep my shadowspec for 10 mans with me and disc. Morrowgar holy not really worth it, Lady shielding ghosttargets/the aoe volley,gunboat doing dmg wie penance, saurfang marktargets/tankswitch, festergut aegis on tank,rotface pws on plague/vomit-victims,putrice *shrugs*,council rangetank,queen masspws,dreamwalker outsideheal (i also note that both priestspeccs suck ass for healing her),sindra masspws... u see in hardmode its rarely a fight u dont have a job for the disc.. its more worth a thought if u need a holy.

4. Fun?
Im my point of view disc was always more fun to play than holy,u are not tied to your core 40 point ability coh,u dont have to play like a rota,u are more flexible. But what i can understand ...when it comes to massabsorb fights,playing disc is really pain, just going through grid...putting out your pws , on cd your pom and then repeat really makes ur brain melt.

[Delena]

I'm not insulting anyone, I explained what I say, why the Discipline doesn't hold the progressive difficulty step of the new raid dungeons.

Ulduar was a good moment for the discipline, those guilds didn't notice the changes of this tree, that has always involved to nerfs after Ulduar (sadly due to the PvP).
Or better those who play it in those guilds let the others ignore the fact that they are weaking the raid.

Powerful coefficient? Again, no because as tank healing, it cannot be casted again for many seconds on the tank.
Used to "top" the raid in spells as "Infest" no, because the other healers: 2 wild growth + 2 circle of healing, top the raid in a faster and better way, considering also that those guilds have Val'anyr, they also shield the raid faster and better (mana efficient).

Consider that after Ulduar "Grace" no longer provides -3% damage to all the raid, that was the major reason why the discipline priests have been accepted to the raids at the WotLK beginning (together with the easier content), not the PW:Shield with only global CD but still... weakened soul.

[Delena]

darkprideofdoom, on 11 March 2010 - 07:36 AM, said:

3. Where to use?
Myself i find rarely a point of going into icc with disc+holy speccs , i pretty much keep my shadowspec for 10 mans with me and disc. Morrowgar holy not really worth it, Lady shielding ghosttargets/the aoe volley,gunboat doing dmg wie penance, saurfang marktargets/tankswitch, festergut aegis on tank,rotface pws on plague/vomit-victims,putrice *shrugs*,council rangetank,queen masspws,dreamwalker outsideheal (i also note that both priestspeccs suck ass for healing her),sindra masspws... u see in hardmode its rarely a fight u dont have a job for the disc.. its more worth a thought if u need a holy.

The problem is that the other classes offer more where needed. At festergut is very easy heal... I'd say "top" the vomit-victims: a shield (as holy) on 1, a flash heal on the second, a prayer of mending to the third. But still with the other advantages of the holy priest.
Lady DW ghost targets can be shielded by an holy, why not? You have 1 ghost each 10 seconds. Enough.
Morrowgar doesn't even need 4 healers in a 25 men raid, it's a "top" healing work very very easy.

At sindragosa the discipline has the best fail ever, constant damage, too much time lost in shielding target by target when aoe heals "datas on hands" offer the best healing, and there is nothing to stack there since it's a "topping" work, not a damage who kill on a single cast.
Those who fail at Sindragosa, with Blistering Cold for example, will die anyway with your shield, or those who fail at moving with the "frost orb mark" will wipe the raid anyway tombing everyone, isn't the discipline who can make the difference, but subtract the place to an stronger healer.

[KidArctica]

Delena, on 11 March 2010 - 04:33 PM, said:

Powerful coefficient? Again, no because as tank healing, it cannot be casted again for many seconds on the tank.
Used to "top" the raid in spells as "Infest" no, because the other healers: 2 wild growth + 2 circle of healing, top the raid in a faster and better way, considering also that those guilds have Val'anyr, they also shield the raid faster and better (mana efficient).

I would like to see the Wild Growths and Circles of Healing that can top up every player in the raid after having taken 15 000 damage from Infest. Normal mode cannot compare to hard mode at all. Generally, top guilds can faceroll normal modes no matter which healing setup they use. However, in the LK 25-man hard mode, I have yet to find a guild who doesn't say they use discipline priests to handle Infest.

[darkprideofdoom]

Delena...now are u listening?

No one,absolutly NO ONE is talking about normalmodes,and no one is talking about 10 mans.

Its about 25 man hardmodes,more or less the only thing with serious scaling,and again ur argumentation is simply wrong, no wg/no coh tops 15k dmg,it simply isnt that way,no matter how cool it looks on 10 man normal. The scaling of pws is insane,for raidspamming it is the most powerful non cd spell ingame at hand, nothing can put out 9k per gcd,exspecially not as absorb (absorb is for a good reason by blizz rated higher than pure heal).

I wont go into to much details for tankhealing for you (cause u are an expert *chuckles*),when it comes to intervalls and buffs like inspirition...just a litte numberwork for you.. with aegis /pws a disc can shield a target for about 19k health in the best case every 15 seconds...thats near a last stand of a warrior , a mid term cd. NO class can do that,no other specc,thats what the people are talking about,not that u can top beacon hol on 2 tanks .

[aribeth]

darkprideofdoom, on 11 March 2010 - 06:52 PM, said:

Delena...now are u listening?

No one,absolutly NO ONE is talking about normalmodes,and no one is talking about 10 mans.

Its about 25 man hardmodes,more or less the only thing with serious scaling,and again ur argumentation is simply wrong, no wg/no coh tops 15k dmg,it simply isnt that way,no matter how cool it looks on 10 man normal. The scaling of pws is insane,for raidspamming it is the most powerful non cd spell ingame at hand, nothing can put out 9k per gcd,exspecially not as absorb (absorb is for a good reason by blizz rated higher than pure heal).

I wont go into to much details for tankhealing for you (cause u are an expert *chuckles*),when it comes to intervalls and buffs like inspirition...just a litte numberwork for you.. with aegis /pws a disc can shield a target for about 19k health in the best case every 15 seconds...thats near a last stand of a warrior , a mid term cd. NO class can do that,no other specc,thats what the people are talking about,not that u can top beacon hol on 2 tanks .

Check out wowprogress and see how many guild killed 10H LK. And actually sometimes 10H is more healing intensive than 25H because blizzard failed to tune the encounter.

Shield/Absorption is another problem besides low HPS.
Shield/absorption is good, blizzard designer is clever to design some boss abilities that absorption is better than direct heal:
1). Penetrating Cold & leech swarm.
Shield isn't affected by life leech.
2). Infest.
Lost health is heavily penalized, so that absorption is too good than direct heal.

But shield is unique ability to disc priest, see the problem? It means that only small amount bosses are shield-favorite, otherwise other healers are gimped.

Talk about tank healing, the myth is that there is no accurate absorption data thanks to blizzard. (recount, WOL/WMO has only guessed data) And 15K absorption is fine? I'd rather bring another pal spam 20K HL in 1.5second, not to mention how many fh casted to achieve 5K divine aegis.
Wait a min, are you still worrying about boss one-shoot or two-shoot your MT?


Edit: correct grammar.

This post has been edited by aribeth: 12 March 2010 - 02:18 AM

[Cameron]

KidArctica gets +1000 DKP for getting their first World of Raids article linked to by someone on the official WoW US healing forums.

[Kody]

aribeth, on 11 March 2010 - 07:26 PM, said:

Check out wowprogress and see how many guild killed 10H LK. And actually sometimes 10H is more healing intensive than 25H because blizzard failed to tune the encounter.

Shield/Absorption is another problem besides low HPS.
Shield/absorption is good, blizzard designer is clever to design some boss abilities that absorption is better than direct heal:
1). Penetrating Cold & leech swarm.
Shield isn't affected by life leech.
2). Infest.
Lost health is heavily penalized, so that absorption is too good than direct heal.

But shield is unique ability to disc priest, see the problem? It means that only small amount bosses are shield-favorite, otherwise other healers are gimped.

Talk about tank healing, the myth is that there is no accurate absorption data thanks to blizzard. (recount, WOL/WMO has only guessed data) And 15K absorption is fine? I'd rather bring another pal spam 20K HL in 1.5second, not to mention how many fh casted to achieve 5K divine aegis.
Wait a min, are you still worrying about boss one-shoot or two-shoot your MT?


Edit: correct grammar.

While sometimes it's true that 10 can be more intensive than 25, I think in this case it isn't true at all. No one has even come close to beating 25 heroic. Sure, the guilds that have beaten 10 heroic are 25-player guilds, but in the end the fact remains that 25 heroic is vastly more challenging than 10. There's a reason absorbs were added to the zonewide buff in 3.3.3, and it isn't as a "nicety" for disc priests. It's because shields are an integral part of progression for ICC, and 25 heroic will more than likely require a disc priest until the buff is greater than 15% or so.