I’m looking for advice on what to do when I need emergency spot healing on someone as a disc priest.
It feels like a waste to use penance to just heal, although I do in emergencies, but it never seems to heal for enough.
Flash heal feels weak for spot heals too.
I’ve gotten pretty good at the damage patterns of dungeons, but every once in a while someone just stands in fire and I need healing on the fly and feel like I either have to spot heal with weak direct heals, or hope they can survive while I Mind Blast/Penance/voidblast to heal them up.
So what’s the best way to deal with emergency spot healing as disc?
If it’s spot healing, make sure ur PW:S is on cooldown (also in general it’s good to be using it on CD) and being used on them.
Oracle has an easier time with spot healing because of Twinsight and if u manage to be able to get penance into someone while they have atone and PW:S, that can be huge in recovering if they’re getting hit with burst. Especially if Orac, don’t Penance someone directly unless they have atone unless it’s a case of not having 2 globals before they die.
That being said, if it’s ticking damage that’s getting them down or if they’re about to get hit again, Pain Supp is ur friend.
Usually we only just have PW:S, defensive Penance and wishes 
Depends on the situation. Did they just got bolted then just dps’ing and let atonement do it’s thing.
Yeah sometimes I just accept it’s out of my hands and send them thoughts and prayers 
lmao
I just started messing with Disc tonight (was Holy) and ran into this issue testing a Mythic +10. We were doing the…giant boss? In Pit? Where you hide behind rocks? And there would be periodic burst damage that hit the group while we were forced to scramble/reposition. And I felt like 1) I had next to NOTHING compelling I could do when my LOS was broken, 2) Pushing healthbars up took FOREVER and couldn’t really happen if I could stand still and pew pew, and 3) I didn’t know what my “oh sh*t” button was supposed to be for when everything went bad all at once. Basically when I wasn’t Penancing, I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing much. Conceptually I know my PW:S and Void Shields were doing SOMETHING constructive but they don’t make bar go up so they almost feel like a global that did nothing in my head.
Probably just something I need to adjust to, mentally.
Just as a note, starting tomorrow penance applies atonement so you won’t have to ever worry about pre applying atonement before you penance an ally.
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Void Shield/PW shield boosted via Weal and Woe and/or Harsh Discipline+Power of the Darkside defensive penance should be able to keep them out of the bad zone until you can get them back up. Dont be shy to use your penance defensively, esp as Oracle. ( oracle gets the second charge )
With 2 charges of radiance and Penance you can kinda use one stack of each to manage or increase your stacks of harsh discipline, which will make your PW shield/Void shields stronger, then you just mind blast→penance when needed. You really have to min max and micro those buffs though and having one up when someone takes unexpected damage is really beneficial. There should be enough time to PW-shield→radiance→Beefy Penance too if the person is using defensives ( PW shield will proc haste and buy time, quick radiance will give you harsh discipline stacks, penance will go BRR and piety will redistribute the overhealing as needed )
If you can see the dps person doing silly stuff you can Pain Supp them, or after an unexpected hit PS them if they are bound to take extra//further damage. ( say if they have a dot and ate a circle )
Inner Focus/Flash heal spam wont be as bad with a decent amt of crit hopefully but it feels weaker than it should be ( personally I felt Shadowmend was too weak to be worth it and didn’t synergize at all with Inner Focus on beta when I tested ). I found if people are sitting in bad often I needed to PI for myself just for the extra haste to keep them alive. FH and SM prob need a slight buff. Iunno.
Evang+Piety has the effect of distributing a lot of the burst healing to the person who needs it most and gives you the free Harsh Discipline right away+Evang’s healing buff but I wouldnt recommend popping it for just one person’s mistakes tbh, chances are you will need it to make an aoe healing check or catch up somewhere more scripted/optimal.
Agree here. It feels like all of our power is just in penance and Void shield now. Atonement/Smite need numbers tuning hard in a way that wont affect raid tuning imo.
Really isnt much room for player error it feels like with midnight’s m+ disc. Once someone messed up too many times it’s very hard to catch back up unless you blow Uppies and that has a 4 min CD.
Is Uppies even worth it? Everything I keep reading says Barrier is the way to go. I really wanted a beefy healing cooldown but 4 minutes is atrocious and if Barrier is clearly better in 99% of circumstances I want to just do what I’m supposed to do and take the talent that’s actually good (this is for M+ btw).
Depends if people will stack in barrier or not tbh. If you are pugging and/or people are all over the place I would just go uppies, if you are in comms and can tell people to stack in it for X mechanic, or they just know when/were you will put it down it will be better. Once you swap to higher keys with better players you can coordinate better and barrier will be more beneficial.
The healing it puts out is pretty good in m+, it will fill health bars and keep people alive in an emergency or give you some more breathing room and let you catch up if lots of people are missing mechanics. Should be a 3 min CD though forsure - or Ultimate penitence’s CDR from penance be re added to the game. I was using it when Id fall behind on mechanics on the beta, it still feels useful to press. ( and gives you the beefy shield/cheeses some mechanics )
I should also add that uppies is prob better for Oracle than VW too, because of Prophet’s Insight’s 20% more holy atonement dmg. You most likely want to go barrier always for VW if you stick with that and just force people to stack in your bubble.
Uppies also stacks searing light pretty high if you have it talented.
Here is a recent Oracle disc doing an 18 using uppies ( not me ): Midnight Beta 18 Magister’s Terrace (Oracle 289 ilvl) l Disc Priest (12.0.1)
They posted a log too, if you open it you can match the timestamps of when they used Uppies to the video and kinda see how it looks. ( there is another priest who is doing 18’s too on the beta that uses barrier instead, seems both work up to that level at the very least.
Uhh on more final thing. If you have PW shield up and harsh discipline talented you can cast Uppies and right as the channel finishes before you go up you can get off one global, using PW shield in that split second will buy someone time and give you haste for uppies.
This is really helpful, thank you.
I play in a set group of 4-5 usually, at most we rotate 1-2 people depending on who is available on any given night. So I could pretty easily just tell everyone Barrier was going down once I learned fights since we’re on voice together. I guess the question becomes if I’m Oracle (I would be) and only doing Disc for M+ content (don’t wanna fiddle with atonement tracking in raid) is there a good argument for Uppies over Barrier? I like penance and doing a little float up and pewing everything is good fun in a way damage reduction is not. And we top out around 12-14 in terms of keys anyway, we’re casual and I’m bad, that’s plenty challenging for me. Would you say I could take Uppies and not have it be sort of a “mathematically inferior choice” given this? I’m going to be behind the curve with Disc because I haven’t touched it since Legion and all my muscle memory is Holy, so I want to make things as painless as possible/make as many good choices as possible.
My guess is that a properly timed/executed Barrier with 5 people in it would still be “mathematically” better almost always - but I will let the math people determine that. Im not entirely sure too because it depends on the encounter/fight and how much damage you could potentially be mitigating every 3 mins. Uppies is a bit harder to time too imo but you can use it when you notice you are falling behind on healing, mistakes are made, or for a really big damaging event. ( hence why I suggested the PW:shield/Borrowed time trick to get bolts flying a bit faster )
Sounds like you have consistent players to hang with so you could go into midnight with Barrier and tell them to watch for it, or you can call it out - this way you guys commit and know when/where the Barrier placements will be most beneficial - after a some runs it would be muscle memory for the most part. You will also have Barrier more often which is nice.
Could always decide later if you need the extra throughput cooldown or not ( uppies ). Like if you find yourself thinking , “dang I wish I had a bit more throughput/burst at this specific location/mechanic”, or maybe your group cant stack due to specific mechanics ( looking at you volleyball boss ), maybe it would be a good idea to check Uppies out and see if it makes a difference in those situations.
Likewise Uppies could be a bit better while you are learning the dungeons just to have the extra burst healing and huge personal shield.
That said I dont think uppies is bad mathematically in any way outside of the 4 min CD that feels bad. If you have your atonements out and use Ultimate Penitence on an enemy it should easily top the group up and then some. Piety will kick in and spread some needed healing around to more damaged people too. It’s kinda neat.
Nah you guys are fine. 12-14 is a good range and as long as you are having fun that is what matters. It is good you are willing to learn and put the effort in and practice makes perfect. Do your best and don’t sweat the small stuff. Eventually it will come naturally.