I see a lot of Discipline priests stacking Intellect, spell power, and crit rating. I’ve been trying to figure out why this is; in my mind, the best stats for a Discipline priest to stack are MP5 and haste, which a lot of Disc priests categorize as secondary at best. Now, at last, I think I’ve figured it out: Discipline priests who stack Intellect, spell power, and crit rating are Discipline priests who really want to be Holy priests who happen to have Penance.
Therein lies the problem. All of these Disc priests have got it in their heads that “Holy is the healing spec”. They truly want to be able to say “Disc is also a good healing spec!”, but so many people believe that the Holy way to heal is the only way to heal that these poor, misguided Disc priests can only heal by mimicking Holy abilities as much as possible. So they stack Intellect (to make up for not getting as much from Spirit as Holy priests do), they stack spell power and crit (to try to reach the same numbers on single heals that Holy priests get), and then they get relegated to single-target healing because they’ve focused on big heals so much that they don’t have the flexibility to do anything else.
I have a different philosophy. I see Holy priests as being about power: strong heals, a smart-targeting AOE heal, and the ability to keep going after death are their defining characteristics. Discipline priests, on the other hand, should be about speed and flexibility. The name of the spec says it all: Disc priests are tightly controlled, with shields, smaller but faster heals, and tiny buffs that make a huge difference. In an ideal world, instead of concentrating on making our heals huge and lumbering, useful only for single-target healing, we should be whipping around 1-second Flash Heals and, with Penance, be able to get three stacks of Grace on a target in 1.3 seconds. (With the Glyph of Penance and the change to Grace coming in Patch 3.1, a 1.3-second stack of Grace will be worth casting Penance even on an undamaged tank.) Disc priests should be healing as fast as they can target (and if my experience is any indication, mouseover macros or one of the healing add-ons will make that even faster); we have more than enough ways to stay on top of our mana pool, especially when we stack MP5 and glyph properly.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world; it takes 1640 Haste Rating to get a 1.5-second spellcast down to 1 second (and Penance’s 2-second channel down to 1.3 seconds), and the best we can do with gear, enchants, gems, elixirs, and Well Fed buffs is around 1100 Haste Rating – 500 or so short. Fortunately, as of patch 3.1, we won’t actually need to get that high! In fact, if we play our cards right and we’re willing to change our healing style somewhat, we’ll only need to get up to about 820 Haste Rating on our own, because we’ll pretty much constantly be under the effects of Borrowed Time, which increases our Haste percentage – not Haste Rating – by 25%. In 3.1 we can put points into Soul Warding, which lowers the cooldown of Power Word: Shield by 4 seconds – and since PW:S only has a 4-second cooldown, that means we can effectively cast it whenever we want, assuming the target doesn’t have Weakened Soul up. Since we can cast PW:S at will, we can ensure that when we need to cast, we’ll be under the effects of Borrowed Time (assuming we’re in a raid), which gives us half of the 1640 Haste Rating we need. If you happen to have the Egg of Mortal Essence and Embrace of the Spider equipped – each of which has a chance on spellcast (the Egg only on healing casts) to increase your haste rating by 505 – meaning that you could, briefly, be running at around 2750 Haste Rating, which is closing in on 100% haste (reduces cast times by 50%).
Anyway, the point is, Discipline priests can – and should – get insanely fast and incredibly flexible. It requires a certain degree of reflex time, and a certain willingness to play whack-a-mole, but once you’re up to speed – so to speak – you should be rising back to the top of the healing meters and providing significant mitigation, simply because you can get the heals out faster than any other class/spec in the game.
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Comment by Schmigz — March 6, 2009 @ 1:08 PM
I am confused about why you think Mp5 is so valuable. I admit that I run both Disc and Holy specs so I might be one of these priests you are talking about. In either Spec, Intellect is my number 1 priority usually.
1 point in Int provides the following benefits assuming a proper Disc spec where 1 point of Intellect is actually 1.15 due to talents and then with Kings it becomes 1.265 Intellect for every point:
0.105417 Mp5 for a 6 minutes fight (12.65 mana from Int / 120 seconds)
0.158125 Mp5 from replenishment (12.65 mana * 0.25% mana reutned per sec * 5 seconds)
0.084333 Mp5 from shadowfiend assuming 6 min fight, two uses, 10 hits per use. (12.65 mana * .04% mana returned per hit * 10 hits * 2 uses / 120 seconds) (Can be higher with haste)
0.016867 Mp5 from hymn of hope for a 6 minute fight assuming 2 uses (12.65 mana * 0.08% mana returned * 2 uses / 120 seconds)
Total: 0.364742 Mp5 per 1 point of Intellect gained (not including rapture which is coming later)
Now you have a choice of a +16 intellect gem or +6 Mp5 gem.
16 Intellect * 0.364742 Mp5 = 5.835872 Mp5.
I am too lazy to do the theory crafting for Rapture currently but in 3.1 it is a bit easier:
2.5% total mana returned every PW:S which can only occur once every 12 seconds. Assume this occurs 10 times in a 120 second fight. This gives 12.65 mana * 2.5% per PW:S * 8 times / 120 seconds = 0.026354 Mp5 increasing the difference even further.
Your new total with the upcoming Rapture change:
Total: 0.391096 Mp5 per 1 point of Intellect gained
16 Intellect * 0.391096 Mp5 / Int = 6.257536 Mp5.
This does not even take into account Mana Tide Totems (restores 6% of total mana every 3 seconds) or other such buffs.
So if you have a choice between the two gems, you are going to choose Intellect. This is ignoring the fact that intellect also gives you +Crit which is another huge benefit. I know I made some assumptions such as a 6 minute fight. This seems like a good average fight time. Intellect becomes more valuable as fight time decreases, a bit less as it increases but not by much. Also assumed using CD’s twice. Most good priests and players in general know what fights are longer and where they can get 2 CD’s in.
Feel free to email me if you have questions or want to correct my math.
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Comment by Chris — March 6, 2009 @ 1:40 PM
@Schmigz, your point is well-taken, and your math is difficult to dispute. The fact of the matter is that I tend to favor MP5 on gear because I’m going to be getting Intellect anyway, and I’m not necessarily going to pick Spirit up. Whether or not I’d gem or enchant for MP5… well, that’s a different matter. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t. But then, I still haven’t fully worked out my preferred scale or done any testing, so there’s a large possibility that I’m totally wrong here. :)
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Comment by highlife — March 16, 2009 @ 5:00 PM
i like to see a list of items how u would reach max haste, 10 man items got haste, 25 items got crit.. so u would need to wear 10 man items in 25 mans if u want to reach that…?
i like haste, got alot of it, but if i want to improve stats i would need to take gear with crit on it, since mostly the best gear has crit
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Pingback by Duct Tape and a Prayer » Tier 8 set bonuses for healing priests — March 20, 2009 @ 6:10 PM
[...] Discipline rotation. Now I just have to figure out the optimal balance of Haste and other stats (Schmigz did a pretty good job of convincing me that Intellect was a better investment than MP5, but [...]
Comment by Alarric — March 30, 2009 @ 11:18 PM
Being a Disc priest myself, the reason that I stack int … is simply because I have a belief, and a generally strongly grounded one, that INT may just very well be better than other forms of regen (spi/mp5) … Now granted I am sure that most of your calculations in this scenario are based on current gear and content, which allows for the chain-casting of whatever heal you deem worthy, so stacking haste seems prudent. Even so, some of our most used Mana regen models, SF, Rapture (in pre- and post- 3.1 forms) and the Replenishment buff are all based on a “percentage of total mana”. That is why I stack INT, because on live …. I never run out of mana … ever. Crit, I think a good balance is needed to ensure uptime of DA.
It seems in most of your theories on these pages that you neglect the Disc priests' strength, damage mitigation. Shielding your target, whether it be w/ PW:S or by DA, is the only activity by a healer that gives a benefit to potential overheal. A holy priest crits and over heals, you get nothing. A Disc priest does, and you get to mitigate some of the next hit or hits. With DA stacking in 3.1, this will become even more valuable … can you imagine the effective healing done when Penance crits on each of its hits?
I just think a “stack mp5 and haste so you can spam FH uber fast” …. well, really just sounds more like a pally reminiscient of BT/MtH than a Disc Priest in Wrath.
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