Disc priest questions

Classes Priest
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Rolling a disc priest and have a few questions :3

How do we deal with roots? Is it a problem in pve? Does the void elf rift teleport work with roots? ( can it move me if I am rooted? ) I see no one running ultimate penitence? It sounds SUPER epic. Can I still run it? Apparently it clears roots?

Are we still extremely squish? Would Oracle’s beefier PWS make that a non problem? I remember playing holy in Legion and it was painful mobility and personal defensive wise, I think things have changed since though.

Any specific race good/best, or do any races have neat tools that interract with the disc toolkit? I rolled Dracthyr for the slight boost to movement and knockback but now I am kinda regretting it. Void elf is pretty cool too and both of the taurens sound beefy on paper, each also having a way to stun things, with the highmountain tauren charge being of particular interest to me due to it being a stun and movement ability rolled into one. Do these extra defensives make much of a difference? Not as good as the dwarves correct?

How is Oracle now a days? I am kinda adamant about running oracle because the light disc vibes give me some nostalgia for back in the day/cata. I imagine I can still get my 8’s spam for gilded and possibly 10’s done with it, right? Wondering if it’s even worth it though because the void tree kinda is offputting for me and Id rather not feel forced into it.

The beefy priest shields sound good and I am coming from MW monk so I have some knowledge of ramping and pre shielding people, and I did play disc/holy a ton in original cata/some mop. I am pretty confident i can pull it off even if it’s not meta or super strong but the idea of no root clear really irks me, though it might not be a problem? I just know not having a root clear on certain bosses with mechanic overlap between a root clear and another mechanic that you need to move for can be really bad. Are we kinda just SoL in those situations? How do you guys deal with them? ( city of threads, queen, last boss of ara, large pulls with overlap mechanics…etc )

Any other general tips for a new person looking at disc priest and races? I havent played disc since Cata way back in the day but oracle and just the neat tools in the disc tree intrigue me.

Is Sheer Terror any good with Petrifying Scream? Looks like PS breaks almost instantly but is this talent any good to pick up or is it like .005 of a second difference between it breaking?

How is mana management? Will I need Throes of Pain/Shield Discipline? Are these talents any good if I do have issues at first, or are they like mana spring levels of useless ?

How is holy nova with the second talent that stacks it? Worth it? Does it interact with Atonement?

Any info/reassurance would be much appreciated.

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Off the top of my head there’s 2 places where u get rooted: CoT last and queen ansurek. So, not a problem. In arakara u just fear the slime. I don’t think void elf blink frees u from roots. Ultimate penitence is trash cause it doesn’t protect u from ground effects damage. Talent points are too limited to pick it and you’ll often find yourself in situations when you’d have to interrapt UP cast to save ur аss.

Oracle isn’t good in PvE. At all. If you want beefier shields i suggest running Voidveawer with Aegis of wrath instead of Weal and Woe. This way you retain frequent mind blast burst healing windows without having to rely on underpefroming Oracle, as well as get access to fatter shields. Though it’s still not as good as blaze of light and weal and woe. As for raids, you don’t really care how fat your shields are. Oracle is also trash in raids, probably many times worse than Voidveawer. No damage = no healing.

You can probably clear 10s with Oracle but you will suffer. Most of the time your won’t have the resources to counter long party-burst mechnics on bosses, unless you’re running Voidwrath pet from Voidveawer tree.

It’s trash. Fear is mainly used to interrupr casts and it will be removed instantly even if you pick that talent. You just wanna run Psychic Voice.

I haven’t had problems with mana this season. As long as you ramp correctly in raids, mana regeneration from the pet will be more than enough to make your mana basically never end. In dungeons you might need to drink 2-3 times per run. However, if you find yourself running out of mana, the Shield Discipline talent might work as a temporary solution, Just replace Painful Punishment with it until you learn how to manage your pet uptime.

I’m running Goblin as the go-to race. That instant racial jump is really good, considering you don’t have access to instant movement otherwisr. I suppose dragons and void elfs also work. If you want to raid, make sure to check lorrgs. io website. And overall don’t expect to be good in the first month of playing. You will likely fail a lot as disc, but the spec has a steep learning curve and only becomes rewarding once u grasp it well.

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Yes. It’s required for Mythic Ansurek for instance. But it resurfaces frequently enough, not just mythic fights.

The same way Priests deal with every problem. You pay Blizzard 20$ or whatever it is to race change to the race you need to deal with the thing your class can’t deal with because this class is stuck back in 2004 from a design perspective. In this case, you race change to Gnome.

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/cast Purify.

When was disc extremely squishy? No. They aren’t squishy.

For PvP: Night Elf, Undead, Void Elf, Dwarf, and Dark Iron. Maybe Tauren and Caribou

Most of the time it is really good. At higher MMR it’s not as great because the big shields can be easily purged.

Void weaver is better with mana management simply because they cast smite/void blast far more often. If you aren’t overlapping your shields, you’ll be fine as Oracle.

In my opinion, no.

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From a PvE perspective:

We don’t unless they’re dispellable.

In mythic raid it can be (though you’ll usually have a pally to help you out), as well as very high M+ sometimes depending on dungeon - right now it can be a problem in City of Threads’ last boss, for example. You can’t easily break those webs on your own and need someone to help you before orbs.

Nope.

It’s probably one of the strongest cooldowns in the game for AoE healing, however, there’s no heal check in the game that needs that HPS. Current voidweaver + mindbender with atonements out is also only a bit weaker, but ultimate penitence (uppies) is limited by a much, much longer cooldown. It also locks you in place and a lot of effects that spawn below you will hit you (some won’t, too, but good luck learning that inconsistency).

If you’re playing Oracle, you probably should run it, but it’s wasted points in the voidweaver tree (which everyone is playing outside PvP because it’s easier and more consistent with much higher damage).

Yes/no. We’re still squishy, but fade and flash heal give us pretty much constant 20% DR whenever we want it. You WILL have to use something on yourself through a few mechanics though. If you get a crit shield on yourself it can be like 3-4mil extra health. But as you get to high key, you’ll probably want to rip pain supp on yourself for a couple targeted things (Necrotic Wake first boss cone, for example).

Night Elf gives shadowmeld which is always good. Dwarf for bleed cleanse. Goblin for rocket boots. Gnome for escape artist (to cover the root issue). Dracthyr if you want slight movespeed/control.

Nobody else gives anything much stronger than a passive bonus. If you just want a passive bonus, Mechagnome’s is the most powerful still. That might change with the .0.7 patch where racials are getting buffed though.

It’s good enough to do 10s. I’ve done an 11 on it.

Is it GOOD? Well, it’s decent but it very much lacks damage right now. The HPS is OK if you’re comfortable with the preventative playstyle. Rapture is very strong, Uppies is good, its direct healing capabilities are a OK now. But you’re taking a ~35% damage nerf for playing it.

People will say it struggles a ton at healing, but I never really saw that. It’s more just very, very low damage in comparison, and it’s just a harder to play spec. Voidweaver is very much plop out bender/blast and go brr, but you’re rewarded with extremely high HPS for it.

City of Threads - Have a paladin or stand near the group and let them cleave - Barrier can be good there.

Queen - Have a paladin/get broken out.

AraKara - Use psychic scream - you only need to CC the slime.

Large pulls with overlaps - Paladin/be careful of swirlies.

If you’re playing Oracle, I’ll save you a bit of trouble: your two best uses of Insight are to pre-shield 4x as a mini-rapture, or alternatively if you need the 5 man coverage Radiance>Penance>Radiance>Mindblast>Penance and another radiance if needed. You can experiment with this talent a lot (like getting 2x dispel out of it on Siege), but this is what you’ll do most the time. Don’t fall into the trap of 4x penance cast - it’s not great without the Harsh Discipline bolts.

You also have a long time to use Rapture - It’s a full minute buff now, so its extremely flexible. You’ll often use it for AoE moments, but this DOES make it very strong against single target damage, too. IE: The dawnbreaker DoTs from the minibosses - rapture can just cover it on its own if you continually lay rapture shields once the last one is chewed through.

In PvE no, these are mostly wasted points. Think of psychic scream as your leg sweep.

Mana economy is fairly good on Disc. If you’re on voidweaver you’ll honestly have trouble running out no matter what talents you take. If you’re on oracle, Throes and Shield Discipline are fairly strong - but remember to use shadowfiend/bender (it’s actually decent healing too when you’re under medium pressure).

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Thanks guys!

Appreciate you taking the time to type all that info out for me.

Oh I forgot about stats. I am getting the vibe that haste and mastery might be good for oracle? Or should I focus more crit? Divine aegis or Aegis of Wrath any good? If I take Aegis I guess crit is more of a prio?

Also Renew, is it any good or should I just try to use PWS preemptively and flash heal as my applicators when needed mostly? Use Radiance when aoe happens/etcetc?

Prayer of mending any good? If I take the Focused Mending talent does it interact with the oracle tree talent that puts ProM on someone? I guess I probably dont even need to pick up ProM though with Assured Safety?

Power Infusion/High Haste should help me get Ultimate Penitence out with less issues? Should I just pre supression myself or pre PW:Shield before using it incase some bad happens underneath me? I guess I will have to learn the best times to use this talent if I pick it up too.

Caps, do you run holy nova/the second talent that stacks it? Any comments on it?

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It’s haste, then mastery for spot healing, crit, then verse. You don’t need ultimate penance, it develops bad habits, and gets you killed a lot. None of the top disc in raid or m+ use it.

Renew is good for getting out long attonmements. Or extra healing on Mists last boss’s big AOE. It’s also how you get out most attonments in raids

Really just run void weaver, it’s so easy, it’s a lot stronger, just give attonement, and either full or half rotation based on incoming damage.

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I don’t think anyone’s super hard mathed out Oracle. Mastery’s probably decent, but Disc can be pretty miserable to play if you don’t have at least somewhere in the ballpark of 20% haste - even as oracle IMO. After that, it’s most likely ilvl for oracle over all. Crit’ll get you more damage and crit PW:S is very strong, but mastery is just a flat healing bonus that’s multiplicative.

Personally when I played Oracle I took AoW and Weal and Woe lines, then Uppies + the cooldown talent below it and 2 points in harsh discipline. Divine Aegis isn’t really that great for its own healing though - the PW:S crit portion of it is better IMO.

Renew is OK when moving pack to pack, but it’s expensive and the healing isn’t great. Generally should stick to PW:S. Flash heal with binding heals in the priest tree applies atonement to you, as well (protective light, too).

As Oracle the vast majority of the time you can just use Radiance as your applicator. Oracle has an extra 4 seconds on atonements they apply so Radiance barely has a weakness there. Normally radiance puts a 9 second Atonement on targets (60% of 15) but Oracle gets it for 13. If you take Bright Pupil you’ve got a 15 second recharge. So you have nearly no downtime even if you cast nothing else to apply (though you should be casting PW:S and flash heal when needed obviously). You also reset it quickly when you have premonition of insight rolling.

Generally your AoE healing tool is atonement/Radiance. Oracle has much less damage than the Voidweaver stacking Mindbender + Rift. However, you still can do some chunky penance casts with Radiance → Mind Blast → Penance since MB gives you a free power of the dark side proc + schism on the enemy. You have to be a lot more intentional about saving mind blast if you know a big AoE is coming. You should still be using it often to get POTDS and Schism on a target - but if something is about to AoE everyone, having those up is good healing. Outside of that, your AoE cooldowns are gonna be rapture pre-shields, barrier and uppies.

Not really. It’s just not worth the global, its healing is rather low in comparison to Holy who can take like 10 PoM talents, and it’s still not fantastic for them. If you can find success stacking it then more power to you, but I think it’s very weak. Focused Mending does work with Assured Safety last I checked, though.

It’s a learning curve, tbh. Uppies does also shield you on its own, but there’s a lot of mechanics that are just lethal anyway. If something scares you you can hit ESC to cancel channel and move. Also worth noting that how this works is if you’re targeting an enemy it will be all offensive bolts, and if you’re targeting an ally when casting uppies it will prioritize hitting allies with bolts. If it runs out of that kind of target it will swap to the other. 99% of the time you’ll want to use it on an enemy. But the choice does exist if you need like really rapid ST heals.

Yep, Rhapsody is sick on Holy priest and Oracle. At full stacks it’s a good damage tool and a decent AoE heal, actually. Worth tracking that buff and using it.

I ran something like this: https://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/priest/discipline/oracle/DAQAEEVFUBBEFQqVEkVCBANVUVVRVGBFBmBQCRAEFVVUCEQ

There’s a lot of points that you can move around though. Tithe Evasion/Words of the Pious/Angelic Bulwark are totally unnecessary if you need disease dispel or you want to work towards San’layn.

You can also remove Uppies and work towards Void summoner - dropping painful punishment/pain and suffering. This was just the ‘light side disc’ that I liked playing.

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Thanks again!

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This has changed, it has gotten significantly worse and you very likely will need Evoker rescues and warlock gateways to survive mechanics.

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Feather’s and the PW:shield movement speed talents seem to be helping some, dracthyr can move slightly faster with the special jump thingy too. I think there is a talent in the Oracle tree that makes feathers slightly better, which I will deff be picking up too.

I imagine it will be a learning curve till I know where to stand though.

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Those things seem nice until the warrior tank charges x2+heroic leaps, or the Demon Hunter dashesx2+Meta leaps, or monk chi torpedoes 100 yards away and around LoS to the nearest pull.

This wouldn’t be the worst thing if disc had upfront burst healing but much of it is gatekept behind atonement set up so its rather often that you will catch up to a near dead tank/group then have to cast Radience to apply atonement and then go into your DPS rotation to heal it.

Its definitely a healer you will want to have a set team who understands your limitations otherwise it will be a major pain. I’ve said it before but disc, and priest in general, is the spec/class that scales the most with the quality of people you play with. If people understand your spec, how it works, and they play around its limitations you will feel like a god in all content. If they don’t you will feel like a wheelchair bound crosseyed hobbit facing people armed with the BFG 9000.

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it’s just so funny to me that this class is so dated and missing key abilities that people who are new to it think Priests have to have a root break and they’re just doing it wrong.

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Does Phantasm not break roots? I swear I’ve used it for that.

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Phantasm removes one application of a slow and does nothing for roots.

Priest has no method for breaking roots other than being shadow and using Dispersion to break a root instead of using it as a defensive.

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I’m probably remembering some niche ability that applies both and Phantasm happened to remove it based on the snare, then.

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The only type of root we can remove is the type you can dispel via dispel magic or mass dispel. Other than that if its a melee channeled root in which we can fear/stun/silence the caster, depending on spec, than we can remove those that way.

Dispersion is the only tool in the entire priest class that specifically removes roots.

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You’re probably thinking of entangling affix from previous season.

That’s because it was a snare (slow) that turned into a root if not broken. Fade could clear it if you used it before it became a root. But if entangling went off, fade wouldn’t break it.

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Priests only root break is dispersion, only shadow has it.

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First off Id like to say thanks for inspiring me to pick up disc again.

I have some more questions if you have time.

After some messing around this week I managed to get to 612 on my disc alt. Did most of Palace on heroic, 6’s across the board and did 2 10’s that we didnt time ( but didnt have too many death’s ) but ultimately felt like everything went well with the tips you suggested. We tried BRD but I swapped back to my monk because it felt like I couldnt move health bars as much as I wanted. Could have been my Ilvl.

I managed to get to 26% haste ( buffed ), 12% crit, and 35% mastery, 3% vers. Should I keep dropping vers/crit for more mastery? I feel like atonement is slowly getting beffier and is moving health bars.

I feel like dungeons were going well, when I rapture/PWS the group before big bursts of damage things feel good, I can prevent big hits. I also have been using premonition of insight to do the same thing ( put a few PW shields out before mechanics ). Been using both of these to “spam” shields too on a tank or someone who is taking massive single target damage ( corrupt at the end of GB ). Been using Premonition PW radiance-MBlast-Penance for some aoe healing through atonement. PWR before uppies. Premonition of solace I try to put on myself or the tank when needed. Premonition of Piety I try to combine with uppies, or PW radiances for more healing.

Do you have any other suggestions for m+ healing outside of pre shielding and mitigating? I feel like it’s a bit hard to sometimes push out on demand healing asap when PWR and Premonition is just down. Do I spam smite when MB/Penance are down to try to get more atonement healing? How much should I be using Flash Heal in m+?Though I might just need to be timing my cooldowns better, this was the first time I played disc in like 10+ years.

Raid healing, can you suggest an oracle build? I tried out the talents below and I dont think I did too bad for my Ilvl but I think I need some pointers on how to ramp better with oracle, or how to move health bars. We did BRD tonight and it felt like I couldn’t move health bars as much as I hoped/wanted but I was still able to maintain like 900k-1.2 mil, slightly more when I had uppies. I probably needed to ramp better and spread more atonements before premonitioning PWRx2 MB/Penance.

With Overloaded With Light should I still dump my PWRadiances before, or should I just target the enemy and fire off, and save the PWR for their own mini ramp. I Mind Blast before Uppies too right?

There arent any major guides to oracle so appreciate the help, I think I might just need some more practice but any tips you have for moving health bars in m+ and raids as oracle would help, I think I have the mitigation part down :3

Raid build I was running:
CAQAJSbRac/22NxZbHdYKOQzcAAWYmxMzsNGzAz2MbzMzYmZAAAAAAAAAAAwsYZ2w2MzgZhZbGzMGmtFohmZZAYmFsQxY2GgxGWA

M+ build I was running:
CAQAJSbRac/22NxZbHdYKOQzcAAWGzwYmtBzAz2MbzMzMjZGAAAAAAAAAAAsMLzGjZGgxwYmxYmNDampZWmBwMLYhixsNAjNsA

Thanks!