Hey guys, I just started playing disc on my priest and I’d love if you guys could share with me some tips during heavy AoE damage in dungeons, my reaction right now is to panic and and freeze in place. When I played holy it was pretty simple but as disc I feel like I can’t heal through heavy damage with atonements and that my only option is Shadow mend.
Important: my priest is 59 and undergeared but I still wanna know how you guys handle heavy AoE damage.
Respec holy lol
I’ll respec holy the day you put a shirt on
There really isnt anything you can do… Right now Disc becomes a Shadow mend spam in heavy heavy AOE instances. Some places just require it. Best thing you can do is keep at it. You will learn where and when you can use PW Radiance and laydown the AOE healing you need and where you just need to buckle down and start slapping that Shadow mend button.
Glad to hear I wasn’t crazy, I was spamming shadow mend and using PW: Radiance with schism and the venthyr ability.
I love being shirtless - but atm holy is just better for mythic + unless you’re in an organized group and then disc CAN work but I still feel holy is better atm.
I have an organized group for mythic +, I’m just not the main healer, my priest is an alt but I’m really liking it so he might become a main, who knows.
Don’t forget your cooldowns: Rapture, Barrier, and Shadowmend. Unlike a lot of other specs, for Disc it’s expected to regularly fit these into your rotation. Rapture especially is up more often.
Of course, I’m used to play a cooldown heavy class, I main UH dk so I got the hang of disc fairly quickly.
Whew, don’t listen to these guys.
In dungeons, you should generally run shining radiance potency conduit. Your AoE heal is Radiance -> Schism -> Damage
What you cast in Schism window depends. If you feel like there’s high healing to do that only really happens once (boughbreakers in Mists), Schism -> Mindgames will heal it. If you know that there’s going to be MORE burst coming (Your DPS are slow, and the Shards in halls are going to thrash again), you might hold Mindgames and instead Schism->Mind Blast->Penance And use Mindgames outside the Schism window for the next burst.
You should also try and use rapture in more predictable AoE damage, or when you know something’s about to go wrong. Again, let’s say you know that loyal beasts is going to go off in Halls of Atonement. You can rapture the tank and apply the shield to them multiple times.
I think you are failing to read that the OP said the toon was 59 and under geared. At that level you are not going to heal well through attonment and Shadow mend spam is in fact all that is left… I am almost 170 and am just now seeing the actual meters move when I throw down the gauntlet to get out what I need to… I still get stuck in a shadow mend spam because anything other than that takes too long to garner up and could kill everyone.
I did all my M0s starting at 138 ilvl and did fine. You’ll shadowmend more, but I generally didn’t have to resort to spamming unless we failed interrupts, or several people didn’t move out of something properly.
Disc is far more about knowing the content you’re going into and having a plan for when people screw up than it is about doing the same damage rotation every pull, falling behind when something goes wrong and spamming. Knowing most dungeons from beta made that far easier on me since I knew when to throw something down, or when a pull was about to become dangerous.
Sounds like you had a competent group as well… Most people that do not and are at lvl 59 are using LFD and going in blind to new content… We all understand you prolly know more than most average players but you have to come back to understanding the average player… especially someone who doesnt main a Disc Priest.
Thank you very much for sharing that knowledge of yours my good sir.
Anyone can play on my level. I’m not a paragon of Disc priest play. And I am trying to help someone who doesn’t play a lot of disc priest get into the right mindset. It’s far better than “just play holy” or “Your AoE is shadowmend spam.” One is flat unhelpful, and one can lead to someone not using their kit well.
At level 59 you’re in normals. Things get rougher around 59 for most healers simply because your gear is finally getting to the point where your secondary stats are sub 10%. If your tank is going to wild pull in those dungeons, you’ll be rotating cooldowns constantly, sure. Ironically, I found while leveling my druid that often Necrotic Wake was the hardest dungeon to do around 58-60, despite being the easiest dungeon in the roster by far just because its mechanics are not forgiving for a group that screws up.
But if you’re at the point where you’re shadowmend spamming and it’s your only option and you can’t keep up, either the group did something wrong, you did something wrong, or you’re severely undergeared. The best thing to do in that situation is to try and figure out how the group ended up in that situation and if you could have prevented it. Did someone stand in a very dangerous pool? Could you have wings’d them? Were wings even on a hotkey? If not, maybe it should be? Were the tank’s defensives down, and you could have Pain supped? Did the loyal beasts cast go off and double buff the gargons? Could you have popped shining force to prevent that? Did thrash drop everyone extremely low, and you could have put up a barrier or pre-atoned the cast? etc.
There will be times where you could not have fixed it. The tank just didn’t use anything they could have used, the DPS just literally never touched the add that puts a massive DoT on everyone, etc. But the majority of those times are learning situations.
I’m not saying you never Shadowmend. It becomes a staple of extremely high level disc priest play because generally the keys they’re doing at that point outpace any gear rewards in the game. But if your gear is near the level of the content you’re doing, normally you should be fine in minimizing hardcasted mends.
Agree’d… But by this point I was assuming the OP had already at least goggled the rotation and in using it was still finding themselves at a Shadow mend spam.
Yes, there are other things in our toolkit that help out tremendously. Also knowing the content is key. When you do get a hang of the content it becomes much easier to know when to throw a Pain Suppression, Barrier or even know when a mass disspell is needed.
There are so many things we have in our tool kit it is really astonishing when you figure out where each thing can be used. Halo works well in some cases, spamming holy nova in low level trash is fun. Knowing when to use Penance to heal or to damage. Dotting your people up and hitting mind sear. Using Power Infusion on yourself or the unexpected DPS…
I agree that the key is knowing but when you dont and find yourself in those uh oh moments… It comes down to shadow mend spam… LOL
I mean…but dungeons during leveling is where you should learn this stuff though, right? You only ever die unless someone really messed up a mechanic on a fight or pulls like 3 extra packs of trash.
I can’t speak for CapslockFury at all, but I would imagine his point is if you quickly fall back on Shadowmend spam, you will never catch up on AOE damage simply due to cast times. A single Radiants then pumping out DPS with Schism will heal the group for way more than Shadowmend spam ever will. If it’s one person taking a crapload of damage, that’s when you spam it and hope to keep them alive…but this topic was specifically AoE damage.
EDIT: Oh, I missed his response were he basically says this.
I mean… If you want to get down to it, yes this is where you learn it, however everything you are doing at this point is below your gear level and you are behind from the word go IMO. Not everyone is doing everything perfect and you as Disc are already at a disadvantage. Once you fall back on AOE damage, its almost impossible to recover. Casting Radiance, Casting anything afterward is almost for sure NOT going to catch you up because of literally the cast times. I guess you missed the whole conversation after that too…
I don’t mean to pile on, but the entire purpose of playing Disc over Holy is precisely to prevent these situations from occurring in the first place. Rapture and Barrier exist specifically to mitigate the predictable big damage waves, and both the Kyrian and Venthyr skills are amazing bar fillers on their own. If you seriously need more AoE healing than what Radiance + Atonement offers, I feel like your DPS or tank is just failing the content – and that just isn’t on you.
Using Shadow Mend is a natural part of playing Disc in 5-man content, and if you feel like you’re undergeared for the content and relying on it a lot, I recommend shifting your talents toward Twist of Fate and Shadow Covenant. But even at the most extreme, Shadow Mend spam-spirals aren’t something you should be regularly facing in normals, heroics, or m0 dungeons.
the idea you guys have behind competent groups through random queue is astounding…Running with friends/guildies or people in higher keys where you are required to pay closer attention to mechanics because if you dont its death regardless of the healer is not the same as casual play during gear up with pugs.
More often than not pug groups i’ve come across in regular normal/heroics are far from paying attention in dungeons. Most dps are tunneling and aiming for solely highest dmg vs utility or positioning and mechanics. Tanks tend to do a little better but still you come across the guy that can tank the whole dungeon in 1 pull or figured your rage bar will fill back up on the next pull to heal with, cause mana regens with based on how fast they can pull pack to pack.
I agree ‘switch to holy’ isn’t the answer we’re looking for when it comes to how to effectively heal aoe on disc. I’m crap at disc, but im learning. What works best for me has been timing the use of radiance with schism-mindgames-mindblast-penance combo’s tends to do pretty well. Still i’m learning and there’s been some tough moments especially in group wide rot damage that i’ve come across in necrotic wake.
I still have lots to learn for sure, but its getting better. Still though, the biggest Issue I come across with Disc is the group more than anything.