Took a long break from wow. I don’t fully get my ramp up process. I try to get out a pw shield on tank, then spread out 3/4 renews and a pw radiance to get atonements out.
Then schism, weave mind blast/ smite until I have harsh discipline, and so far I kind of rinse and repeat that. I feel like this isn’t optimal.
Then I am talented into light’s wrath but I feel like this changes the flow of my ramp.
Any advice for me?
Welcome back. I left for several years, returned for DF season 1, and I am transitioning to Disc as main spec for season 2. I would also appreciate any playstyle tips others have, but I’ll go ahead and share the following:
The guide on wowhead has a rotation section which covers basics of ramping:
If shadowfiend isn’t up between radiances in your evang ramp, you can do something else like refresh PtW to give you time to determine an optimal target (without atonement) for your 2nd radiance cast. After Schism you may also adjust your DPS rotation a bit depending on how well you timed your ramp to line up with damage, or depending on the damage profile of the encounter. For example, Light’s Wrath is probably going to overheal a lot if the raid is just taking mild ticking damage.
Another thing I would mention is that the disc guide was written before recent changes that notably decreased mana consumption, so you can be more liberal with renews and flash heals as atonement applicators and when mini ramping.
Also you are going to want to stack a lot more haste than you presently have. 13% is more than enough for holy spec but is quite low for disc and will cause you to struggle.
This is the talent build you should be using for raiding, BAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABQSLRCpFRaREtUSSSCAAAAAAAAAAAAkkGplEiUISEEUaRikAA
You should be applying more atonements than that, your dps rotation is also way off, and you always want to have harsh discipline ready before you ramp. This image from the warcraft priests discord and icy veins guide shows you how you should be ramping and different types of ramps.
https:// i.imgur. com/ hQFhMAn.png (I’m not allowed to post links yet, copy paste it and get rid of the spaces)
It’s not included in the image but your DPS rotation also changes if your target is in execute range (below 20% HP) where your Shadow Word: Death will be doing insane amount of atonement burst healing.
Evangelism DPS rotation:
Halo, Schism, Lights Wrath, Shadow Covenant, Penance (with Harsh Discipline Buff), x2 casts of Shadow Word: Death, x2 casts of Mind Blasts, Power Word: Solace
Rapture DPS rotation:
Halo, Shadow Covenant, Schism, Penance (with Harsh Discipline Buff), x2 casts of Shadow Word: Death, x2 casts of Mind Blasts, Power Word: Solace
Mini Ramp with Shadow Covenant DPS rotation:
Shadow Covenant, Schism, Penance (with Harsh Discipline Buff), x2 casts of Shadow Word: Death, x2 casts of Mind Blasts, Power Word: Solace
Mini Ramp without Shadow Covenant DPS rotation:
Shadow Word: Death, Penance (with Harsh Discipline Buff), Shadow Word: Death, Power Word: Solace, Mind Blast, Purge the Wicked, Mind Blast
I would practice the DPS rotations on target dummies for a while since this is a lot to memorize.
Separating rapture from evangelism can give you have a wider atonement spread to cover more damage events or ticking damage. It can also help if your team won’t all be in range for a big ramp, or if you want to have rapture available for movement events. You can do much bigger ramps by combining the two though, and since evangelism was changed to a shorter CD, I think most people are regularly combining them now.
It is not recommended to combine rapture with evangelism. The only time you combined the two was in Shadowlands if you played the Kyrian covenant since Boon of the Ascended lasted 10 seconds and benefited from the legendary that increased atonement duration during rapture. Evangelism was always a 1.5 min CD, it was a 3 min CD for a week or two at one point in the dragonflight pre patch but it was such a terrible change that they reverted it back to 1.5 mins.
According to lorrgs io graphs, almost every top 50 disc parse for every fight is using them together in ramp right now with exception of broodkeeper and terros which have long periods of ticking damage so you naturally see more people splitting it up there. Perhaps all the top disc priests are currently doing it wrong and if so that would be interesting, but it seems more plausible that you might be referring to a dated recommendation to always separate rapture. I don’t think its just a raid difficulty difference either. The same holds true if you look at data on heroic difficulty instead of mythic. Anecdotal, but I also recently ran some LFRs to practice disc ramping, and using both together I quite easily either #1 ranked or at least top 10 ranked on every fight. I’m pretty well geared, but bear in mind I’m still relearning the spec, so at least seemed fine to me?
It was still a good point at least made that you can ramp in different ways, and we may very well be doing that again in future raid and patches.
I guess this late into the tier it’s okay to combine both, especially if bosses are dying fast with the exception of Terrors, Broodkeeper, and maybe Grimtotem (there’s constant damage going out in that fight). For progression I would not combine both rapture and evangelism.
The ability to split Rapture and evang is all dependent in my view on mana. If you have an innervate or 2 in the raid then maybe you can split them. But personally, i use them together because i don’t have a boomie.
Lights wrath is fight and raid dependent. Ive run raids where ive seen opportunities where players are low for a bit and i think ok i can talent into LW and fix that gap. But this late in the tier, healers are a bit op and those moments are few and far between so i wouldn’t take it.
As a disc priest you NEED to think on a fight by fight basis and what your raid team can and can do and adapt. Dont be a one talent set up fits all sort of healer. Terribly lazy
I’m assuming you’re referring to raid healing (in m+ you can pretty much just wing it without much issues)
One of the most difficult things about Disc is the timing of the atonement applications followed by the actual ramp (via dps), and it is extremely punishing if you messed up the timing, even if you miss it by ~1 second, your entire ramp is ruined. Depending on your Haste stat, atonement applications need to be done about 12-15 seconds before the raid wide damage. Something like:
(About 12 seconds before raid damage)
PW:Shield > Renew > Renew > PW:Shield > Renew > Renew > PW:Shield > Renew > Flash Heal (Flash heal will apply atonement to one target and yourself) > Radiance > Radiance
(Raid Wide damage) > then start your dps rotation
Disc healing is also very dependent on healing CD assignment, thus having a good raid lead who understand how Disc works is extremely important.
Disc is absolutely the worst in doing patch healing.
Disc is decent in doing burst healing.
But what Disc can shine the most is sustained healing - where the raid is receiving raid wide damage over a period of time instead of one big burst. (Example: Terros’s dots damage, Sennarth’s chilling blast, Rasz’s static phase etc.)
You’ve just got to play around with what kind of playstyle you like. ALL the “influencer” disc players swap around their builds because even they don’t know where disc plays best and they switch up their build to keep their content fresh.
General rule of thumb on ramps, save double radiance. Dots and cd management changes if on progression learning, spot heals/dps standing in fire or mismanaging timer with atonement extending. Smooth that out then hit cooldowns + mash face on keyboard. Target dummies are the best to learn the ramp on. Just get a general idea then expect it to be slightly different San time with an overall knowledge.
What build are you running? If you want a more well-rounded casual raid ramp build ditch lights wrath/bubble build and throw the points into full mindbender you’ll have more fun AND more ramp windows in 10.1 given you are not assigned a specific damage window. I had no problem running raid-mindbender build in 10.0.7 and have no plans to adjust unless a specific progression fight requires it.