Alternative Medicine pt. 4 – Discipline Priests
This is the final post in a series I began last week to explore the capabilities and healing approaches of non-Druid healing classes in order to learn more about them and how their healing styles compliment those of Restoration Druids. Today’s focus is on Discipline Priests.
This post will be a little bit different from the other 3, in that I will not be going over all of the capabilities of this healing spec. The reason for this is that Discipline Priests share a great deal with Holy Priests in terms of their utility, spells, armor, and so forth. Instead, this post will explore how Discipline Priests differ from their Holy counterparts, and how Discipline Priests approach healing. Therefore, anyone wanting to learn about Discipline Priests should start by reading the Holy Priest post, then finish reading this post. =)
The healing spells which Discipline Priests do not have that Holy Priests can use are Lightwell, Circle of Healing, and Guardian Spirit. Instead, Disc Priests bring to the table Pain Suppression and Penance. Pain Suppression is a shielding buff that lasts for 8 seconds, reducing the target’s threat by 5%, reducing damage taken by 40%, and increasing resistance to dispel mechanics by 65%. The spell has a 3 minute cooldown. This spell strikes me as being most useful in a PVP scenario, and this conjecture of mine is echoed in other places where I have read about the spell. It does have a threat reduction component, however, and in a PVE situation it seems that this would be most useful on shielding someone who inadvertantly has drawn aggro onto themselves while the tank picks up the mob. Penance applies a very short HoT (3 ticks over 2 seconds) to a target, delivering a respectable amount of healing (up to 1676 per tick at level 80). The spell is mana efficient, channeled, and has a 10 second cooldown. Because of its efficiency and immediacy, this is a strong direct heal for Discipline Priests, despite the short HoT component. If the Priest picks up the Divine Aegis talent, a critical Penance (or other critical heal) cast will produce a protective shield on the target which absorbs damage up to 30% of the amount healed by Penance over a 12 seconds.
The buff spells which are specific to Discipline Priests are Inner Focus, Divine Spirit, and Power infusion. Inner Focus, when cast, reduces the mana cost of the next spell cast by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25%. Divine Spirit increases a target’s spirit by a percentage over 30 minutes, and can also increase the target’s spell power over the same period of the Priest takes the Improved Divine Spirit talent. Power Infusion increases the target’s casting speed by 20%, while reducing the mana cost for spells cast by 20% for 15 seconds.
The Discipline Priest gives up two of the group heals available to Holy Priests, as well as the Divine Spirit, which turns a dead Holy Priest into a healing machine unburdened by concerns of mana for a short time. In return, they gain a different approach to healing which has some similarities to the healing approach of Druids. Discipline Priests, like Druids, are at their best when they are proactive, rather than reactive. Although Druids take this proactive approach by stacking up HoTs on their healing targets, Priests are masters of shielding targets from damage. Many of the talents in the discipline tree fortify existing shielding mechanics or create different damage shields on the priest’s target. Because of their shielding capabilities, Discipline Priests are strong single-target healers. They are also able to produce very high healing in bursts with certain spell combinations, which further improve their performance as tank healers. They have many talents that increase their mana efficiency, as well, so are not a class that needs to focus as much on mana conservation as other healing classes might. They currently are not as strong at raid healing as they are at single-target, although upcoming changes in patch 3.1 will offer them a group shield and increase Prayer of Healing to cover the target’s party. They do not have the full versatility of their Holy counterparts in terms of healing spells, but offer a very different and currently viable alternative aimed at preventing damage from happening.
Other Posts in this series:
Alternative Medicine pt. 1 – Shamans
Alternative Medicine pt. 2 – Paladins
Alternative Medicine pt. 3 – Holy Priests
There are 13 Comments to "Alternative Medicine pt. 4 – Discipline Priests"
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[...] Other posts in this series: Alternative Medicine pt. 1 – Shamans Alternative Medicine pt. 3 – Holy Priests Alternative Medicine pt. 4 – Discipline Priests [...]
[...] Other posts in this series: Alternative Medicine pt. 2 – Paladins Alternative Medicine pt. 3 – Holy Priests Alternative Medicine pt. 4 – Discipline Priests [...]
I have to disagree with the statement they are poor raid healers. My guild has three priests and all are disc and all heal extremely well in OS 10/25 and Naxx 10/25. Our disc priests are completely on par with my old guild’s holy priests who were awesome.My ally alt priest went from holy to a disc/holy build. I think that it really comes down to play style though. I prefer the mechanics and heal style of a disc priest.
I also want to point out that disc priests stack crit out the wazoo over spirit. Typically our second stat will be haste because who likes slow heals
I think right now with me tree healing, I prefer to run with a disc priest over a holy. Our disc priests never run out of mana. I’ve never had to innervate one. We complement each other really well. I dare say with the improvements in 3.1, disc priests will be ideal raid healers.
This is great info, Mooriah! I got the whole “disc priests aren’t the best at raid healing” thing from Elitist Jerks, but am totally open to hearing that this isn’t the case! I really appreciate you setting me straight. This whole project was an attempt to educate myself and others, so the more info that comes in, the better! I softened the language about their raid healing. =)
p.s. I’ve been thinking about you and making some notes for that Naxx raid healing tips post. Look for it soon =)
PS. Neat artwork for the class. Where is it from?
Ah. Did a bit of searching to find something I liked for the artwork. If you do a google image search for priest, you find a lot of Catholics. LOL. Nothing wrong with that, but not exactly what I was going for. I ended up doing a google image search for “cleric” instead and found a lot more fantasy-esque imagery to choose from. This particular image is cropped down a bit from a desktop wallpaper that can be found at http://bestgamewallpapers.com/rappelz/cleric
p.s. I only noticed AFTER I found all the images for the healing classes that every image I chose was a female. lulz!
Well I didn’t mean to sound like I was correcting you about disc priests. I just think general convention like at wowwiki or EJ is that they are PvP or leveling only types of builds. I just have to give props to the people that rock it out on them in raids and buck conventional wisdom
I’ve got a new wallpaper now! Thank you!
LOL right on. I’m glad you gave me some insight. I really started this series of posts with a really shameful amount of understanding of these classes. On every single one of them I’ve had people who play the classes add wonderful insight and information. I appreciate the input! Rock on with your new wallpaper!
Good stuff. I’ll have to agree with Mooriah about Raid healing. While I’d prefer to heal 5-mans or a specific group of people in a raid, doing over-all healing for a raid doesn’t come as anything difficult for me. That being said, my spec isn’t quite the same as what you described above. I think that’s just because you discussed the tree on it’s own, not what I think Discipline priests truly are, which is a combination of both Holy and Discipline. In my spec I have CoH and Guardian Spirit from Holy, while I don’t have Pain Suppression and Penance. I try to take the best from both trees (the majority in Holy) and have come out quite well.
While one could possibly put all points into Discipline, I think most everyone uses the tree as a modifier to Holy. Depending on their healing style they may go to the bottom of the Holy tree and use the rest in Disc. to make themselves more efficient. Blah blah blah.
I keep hearing about Priest stacking crit, which makes sense considering how many spells can crit. But I’ve always always stacked spirit and SP (and since hitting 80 haste as well) over crit, which I’ve viewed as more necessary for DPS. Because of that I have a huge amount of SP (SP being derived from how much Spirit I have) and a stupid regen rate. While Holy priests have some of the biggest heals I’ve seen (I know one who regularly crits for 24k, while my largest is just over 17k), with my spirit and efficiency talents out of Disc. I, well, last forever.
That being said, I do sometimes hear myself being referred to as a “Spirit Priest,” which makes sense. As you can tell it’s a totally separate method to spec and healing and is something of a hybrid. It may be the third type of Priest. I inspect other priests often though, and I have yet to see one with points so deep into Disc and still have the majority in Holy. I’m an oddball that way.
I was looking into the new 3.1 talent trees and I must say the opportunity for completely viable but completely different specs is enormous. There’s so much to be taken from the new Disc. tree that makes finding the ‘perfect’ spec difficult.
Oh, and I’m drunk, so sorry if anything didn’t make sense. Or if I rambled.
lol thanks for the drunken imput, Hummy! I was aware when writing these up that there was a great deal of opportunity to spec into both trees, but as I was trying to wrap my head around each tree from the ground up, I thought it was a good plan to just look at them separately. No other healing class has the opportunity that priests seem to to pick and choose from two viable healing trees and build their gear around them both. Thanks for the insight into how you’ve combined them =)
[...] a series of posts within the past couple of months detailing the healing styles of holy priests, discipline priests, shaman and holy paladins in order to educate myself and other druids as to how these classes get [...]