Disc priest help

Hey all… so I’ve been getting into disc healing recently. But on anything raid related (practicing on LFR) i go OOM fast. I’ve messed with the mindbender talent and the other mana regen talent (that holy spell for 1% mana) but honestly it doesn’t seem like a big difference in mana conservation.

I play on my monk, the mana regen is better and i play in my Druid and i don’t have any issues. I play on HPAL and it’s literally a non issue bc holy power exists.

Anyways. As a disc in raid/mythic plus…

  1. do you find yourself being idle if no damage is coming out to conserve mana?

  2. Are you just spamming heals/shield all the time?

3)How do YOU conserve mana

4)what does your rotation look like if not much damage is coming out at the time?

  1. specifically for mythic +, what tips do you have to get AOE healing out? Attonement doesn’t seem to do the job on high damage output to a group in mythic +

Generally as disc, if you’re going oom exceptionally quickly, one or more of the following conditions are occurring:

  • Allies are taking too much damage (lack of situational awareness)
  • Allies are not properly utilizing defensives or utility skills (self heals, shields, interrupts, etc)
  • Tank is overpulling/moving at too fast of a pace
  • DPS is pulling extra mobs
  • You are healing too much
  • The content is too difficult for the group’s average ilvl/coordination skills

For m+, be sure to have shining radiance and rabid shadows conduits socketed. Twist of Fate can help as well, particularly if party members are frequently at lower hp levels.

I never sit idle when playing disc. ABC = Always Be Casting. Smite is a cheap filler spell that contributes decent damage and Atonement healing. Otherwise, I’m using Radiance when everyone is damaged & the Atonement won’t overheal (and nobody is dropping hp like crazy), smend to spot heal, and PWS+Atonement to top people off. SFiend/Mindbender is treated as a healing cooldown and interwoven into gameplay along with Barrier, Pain Suppression, and Rapture.

If no or low damage is coming out, I’m refreshing PtW and Smite/Penance/Mind Blast on CD. Mind Sear gets used on AoE pulls with low incoming damage, and Holy Nova on AoE pulls with low-moderate incoming damage.

There are probably others with better advice out there, but this is what I’ve been doing and it has worked pretty decently for me.

Edit: It should be known that best covenant for disc is Kyrian. Boon of the Ascended is an incredibly powerful healing skill that nicely fills in some of the parts that are naturally lacking in discipline’s toolkit.

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In M+ be careful to not overheal. You have to learn when to heal and when not to, that is critical. You can also just do one heal and see if the atonement is enough–it will often do the trick in a lot of cases. I just bubble the tank regularly, myself. Also just casting one shadow mend to get atonement on one generally often is enough. Of course there are pulls and fights where you have to radiance, like some boss fights and some packs here and there. But dont overdo it. People say disc is pre-emptive, but if you play with that idea as central in M+ you will go oom a lot.

Also, in M+, your mana situation will largely depend on the skill level of the group. Low skill groups miss kicks a lot, stand in fire, etc. So you are forced to do a lot more to rescue those groups, so you will go oom a lot more in them.

Also, penance cast defensively vs shadow mend is a ton more mana efficient for the healing you get. Also, the mana cost of smite is way lower than offensive penance and does roughly the same damage. When mana is a factor, like on some boss fights, you may even want to not cast penance offensively except when on the move. I sit on it sometimes because it can save someone on the brink and is faster than something like bubble, then shadow mend, and way more mana efficient to do it that way. When the group needs healing after a radiance cast though, penance is a godsend. So cast offensively then, it is amazing.

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Never idle. At the minimum you can always be Smiting.

In M+ I’m always at least continuing to do damage (with atonement on the tank at a minimum). Don’t over-rely on Shield; it’s expensive. I keep it up on the tank, and often throw it on other group members that have a reasonably damaging DoT on them. Sometimes you do simply have to spam Shadow Mend. It’ll take a lot of mana, but you do what you have to. Generally use your CDs if you can before resorting to that, unless you know for sure you will need a particular one very soon.

Disc is pretty reliant on planning your CDs accordingly. A bad PuG that takes a lot of extra damage unpredictably (or a PuG tank that makes large pulls you weren’t expecting) can be a rough time. Big AoE healing usually needs to be countered by some form of CD. With the Kyrian/Spheres/Mikanikos setup you have Boon of the Ascended very frequently, and that’s usually your first go-to CD. Obviously Barrier if the group can stack, and Rapture, even though not AoE can help group members survive the AoE event where you will have time to recover after. And don’t sleep on Shadowfiend; its damage on top of your regular atonement is pretty decent- not “heal through Enraged Spirit on high Fortified keys” strong, but definitely worthwhile.

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Disc right now is like a healer version of Venthyr Boomkins. You save your big CDs / big ramps for specific mechanics and in between you’re just dps’ing while getting out a few shields and shadowmends(not too many though). So try to get comfortable with your downtime.

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I prefer solace over mindbender. If you have decent haste it’s a fast cooldown and also provides decent healing through atonement.

I’ll be honest with you, I had a lot of mana issues as disc until I got to 240+ ilvl. Even now at 250 in keys like PF if people don’t interrupt I can run oom fast spamming shadowmend.

The best tips I can give you are

  1. take solace and stack haste to like 27%

  2. take the fast drink anima power and the mana orbs power every run - until you don’t have mana issues. Some times now in keys 15-17 I’ll grab the increased crit buff instead of the mana orbs now since I don’t need the mana.

  3. always keep mana pots on you, and use them.

  4. monitor shadowfiend cooldown and save it if you know a tough fight is coming up. This is especially important on tyrannical. Don’t pop your shadowfiend on trash before a boss, for example

  5. relax… I found I was doing a lot of over healing when I first started out. I’d over sheild dps to give them atonement, or I’d radiance to give everyone atonement when really there was no group damage going out. This comes with experience since you need to know the mob abilities. It’s perfectly fine to keep attonement on your tank and yourself then focus on dps. If a dps takes damage, use a shadowmend to top them up and apply atonement, then go back to dpsing. Don’t waste mana keeping atonement on everyone if you don’t need it. This also empowers your damage through sins of many

  6. boon+shadowfiend+solace - some fights you might have to be a pretty aggressive start. The first boss in TOP comes to mind. This one especially sucks since you dont have any anima powers yet. For these fights you want to come in hot since they get easier as time goes on. I’ll go balls to the walls in the beginning then when I’m almost oom I’ll pop shadowfind, solace, boon of the ascended, then solace after. You’ll do giant hps for like 15 seconds, while gaining a ton of mana back. Boon rotations don’t cost mana. After I come out of these rotations I’m usually back up to 60% mana, or more if it’s a later fight and I’m collecting mana orbs.

  7. use mind blasts strategically. A lot of discipline priests sleep on this one. Mind blast is incredibly powerful on torments. For the dude who has reduced healing and that fear shout, shield everyone then before he casts fear use mindblast. It rarely breaks your sheild. Same goes for the dude who pulls everyone in then chains them for a slam. He does a crush on the tank then he hits the tank once before he does an aoe attack that hits everyone. Sheild people before the crush, shadowmend the tank after the crush, then after he does one melee attack use mindblast and you can basically cheese the aoe mechanics. Then he will pull everyone in, holy nova to break chains, everyone will be at 100%, resheild and repeat. It’s awesome for tyrannical bosses as well. Don’t just spam mindblast as a dps rotation, use it strategically to reduce damage.

  8. stop considering yourself a healer. You are a dps that is responsible for keeping the group up. You should have purge the wicked on every mon, use penance to spread. You should be smiting and using penance offensively as much much as possible. You will gain mana by just spamming smite so at the very least be doing that. Grevious is a little different, but for most weeks your atonement should be your number 1 for healing at at least 33%. Shadowmend is rarely over 15% of my heals. This is because I’m doing damage 100% of the time I’m not healing while in combat.

These are some tips I can think of off the top of my head. If I remember more I’ll update. Keep in mind though that no matter how you play if the group is bad you’ll be oom from having to spam heal them.

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You are probably going oom in raid because you are trying to spot heal instead of cycling ramps. That isn’t how we raid heal. Look on YouTube or Warcraft Priests or something to see how Discipline Priest raid healing works. It is not like other healers. You can’t raid heal as disc without doing prior research of mechanics and timings beforehand.

Your Mythic+ aoe rotation is simply Power Word: Radiance and then Boon of the Ascended or other DPS ability. You are Venthry which performs poorly in Mythic+ for disc priests this season in terms of both Damage and Healing. Atonement is only good when paired with high burst DPS abilities. Otherwise it is more like a HoT. If you don’t have any burst abilities available you should consider spamming shadowmend.