Disc problems in UlduarFollow

ive been Disc since i hit 80 and have enjoyed it for the most part, but now that ive spent time away from it on other toons, i come back, and maybe its just me not remembering that this is the way its always been, but im playing catch up with the other healers on keeping people alive

my armory
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&n=J%C3%AFnx


i did fine healing tank on xt, when we got to kologarn, after arm sweeps id have one of the other healers helping me get the tank back to full health while im spamming penance, flash heal and bubble trying to get him up, Auriaya just seemed like i wasnt needed (probly wasnt), trying thorim they wanted me healing in the colliseum area instead of the tunnel, needless to say i struggled there as well, keeping bubbles on people as much as possible but didnt seem much like i was making a difference, though that might have been the dps's fault since all 3 of them were pulling threat off tank left and right and me and the shammy healer struggled to keep them alive untill he went oom and i was stuck attempting to heal 5 people taking big damage, on ignis again seemed like i wasnt doing my part, extremely low healing (probably 1/3 of the other healers if not lower, saved the whipe several times from other healers slacking off though), and i know we arent LULZ BIG NUMBERS healers but the whole night just seemed like i was struggling to do my part, razorscale was ok, but again didnt seem like i was doing my part

i try to keep renew up when mana permits it, try to keep PoM up when im not spamming heals, penance when needed, flash heal for everything else, i have no lag, and im a great healer in heroics, able to heal friends that are no where near def cap through heroics with ease

now like i said, maybe its just because ive spent over 2 months away from my priest. but this kind of made me not want to do ulduar ever again on him...lol

any feedback would be appreciated, were they just putting me in a bad position on some bosses? am i expecting too much out of my healer? i was talking to someone in group that has a priest healer that suggested replacing my SP gems with INT but that was because he wanted me spamming group heals in the colliseum /facepalm

ty for your answer :)

and i wasnt assuming i wasnt doing good because of my healing, it just felt like i was struggling to keep the tank up

ill get my boots enchanted and maybe do the hodir dailies /facepalm

any input on wether it would be a good idea to regem int instead of spellpower?

Int is generally considered an efficiency stat. It does contribute to crit, but its general purpose is to increase your mana pool so Rapture and Replenishment type effects return more mana.
If you are having no trouble with mana, I would suggest focusing on SP, haste and crit for throughput.

I notice that you haven’t mentioned Prayer of Healing or Divine Hymn. Casting Shield (for Borrowed Time) then PoH on a party with four or more damaged members yields amazing healing. During one run I had the RL set up a group consisting of three hunters, one felguard lock and an unholy DK, and told the other healers that I’d handle AOE and splash damage on them and their pets. Glyphed PoH hitting as many as ten targets is just broken. (The developers apparently agree, they’re nerfing the spell.)

Divine Hymn’s cooldown limits it severely, but as an “oh crud!” button, it can’t be beat. I remember times on Thorim when I hit that button at the same time that a druid hit tranquility...it was startling how quickly the raid’s health bars shot from slivers to safety. Not only is it a powerful and smart multitarget heal, the way it boosts all healing effects on its targets gives it incredible synergy with other healers’ efforts. You should be using this spell on every boss.

One other note that has been posted on these boards before as well...

Especially if running in PuGs or what have you, too many groups / raid leaders look to the meters to determine effectiveness. If you are not hitting 2500 for Naxx 25 than you are not good enough.

My only statement, is that too many out there do not understand the greatness of Disc to learn what it really means to a raid. I finally dumped my shadow off spec and went to Disc / Holy as my specs after a solid Naxx run that netted me a ton of caster gear with lots of Spirit. To put it in perspective, our toons are not too far off if gear with mine being slightly better. (example is 2023 SP in Disc / 2130 SP in Holy) So to test through multiple runs and switching back and forth I noticed 2 main differences, Holy was averaging about 2600 HPS versus only about 1900 HPS based on normal meters (using recount here.) Secondly, I average about 15% more overhealing as Holy versus Disc.

However, as I was not on primary tank healing of the 3 raids that I have run over the past couple of weeks since making the change, I have found that those that have run with me want me in Disc for almost all encounters. We take a huge burden off of all the healers with our ability to Shield and burst heal. However, every PuG group was all about the big numbers and the big heals. So if you run in a constant group, you will be fine once you begin to get back in sync with Disc Healing... if you run lots of PuG's, then Holy may be better.

Last note - for 5 mans, I still go back to Disc, as it is just so much easier to heal with Penance as you are normally only majorly concerned with the MT in a 5 man.

Aye, there's only Ignis, XT-002, Auriaya, Hodir, Thorim, Freya, Mimiron, Vezax, Yogg-saron and possibly Iron Council in Ulduar, right?

You're underestimating disc 'raid healing' - disc is worse at tank healing than you think; we don't have the raw HPS numbers holy pala's have and a fight light Vezax 25 would be impossible to tank-heal with two disc priests. I'd focus on tanks over the raid as a disc healer, but depending on your other healers and the group set up, it's better to have a disc priest focusing on shielding the raid. On 10-man hardmodes, for instance, we usually stick a paladin to the tank because I will eventually get problems with it thanks to penances' cooldown. More specifically, on XT-002's hardmode I prefer being disc over holy as raid 'healer' due to the fact that the tantrum is fairly predictable and party heal does the job in 10-mans.

Yes, you can do it on ignis, hodir, xt, and mimiron p2/4 and be quite useful. But I defy you to make a decent case for the rest (especially vezax). Maybe hard mode Freya, but the others don't have the predictable damage to make a dedicated disc shielder worthwhile, sure it can help, but that doesn't mean you'd be helping out your raid more than a holy priest in those situations.



Ignis is the answer

Nah, it does trigger correctly at the moment.

Yeah I take your point about auriaya, and thorim maybe (that said having people that get oneshot by those adds is a liability in itself and I don't put up with them on our runs).
As for vezax, thats not really raid shielding, thats just something that any disc priest would be doing on that fight (also, you can do this fight as holy without going oom quite easily, probably not hardmode though, disc is amazing for that).
Iron council, again, not really raid healing, besides, you should be mass aoeing the adds before they leave the spawn site. If one of them reaches someone they're targeting then damage on that one person won't be your biggest concern, rather the 15 other people that just got battered.
As for yogg, we prefer a resto druid most of the time but we have done it with a disc priest, anything can do that one really.

But yeah, the preventative healing aspect is what makes the disc priest so valuable. Thats why our main tank healing team is almost always a disc priest and a holy paladin. Between them they have the big hitting heals and the shield mitigation to keep up anything basically. Using two holy paladins is fine too, but the damage gets noticably spikier on the tank due to the longer cast time (and sometimes unlucky heal synching) of holy light.

Yeah, the thorim adds are tricky at times like that, they appear to have either a proximity aggro, or a healing aggro table that builds up before they jump into the arena. Kind of odd. Basically, the way we get around it is having good aoe tanks in the arena, druids are great for a bit of quick aoe threat. In combination, get a raidframe that shows up aggro on players. As a general rule of thumb if I see that I have aggro when adds are spawning I run through the center circle to the opposite side of the tanks (usually mobs that are aggrod on you spawn from the edge you are nearest to). This short run ususally gives the tanks enough time to get the mobs back (even dk or pala ground aoe will do it). If it still looks like you're about to get clattered then fade wins the day, and its the reason why we put most of our priests in the arena. Shamans are also a good choice and well played druids don't seem to have much of an issue either.