Inner Fire: Shields, Penance & Weakened Souls
WoW Blogs - Inner Fire Priest Blog
Welcome, fellow Priests, to the 4th edition of Inner Fire – your Local WoW Priest Blog. After a gruelling end to a disappointing August, the kids are back to school and everything’s back in routine. Anyways, to explain the obscure title of this week’s Inner Fire, it’s a very poor attempt to implement some Discipline Priest terminology into the well used phrase “Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll”. Sorry to be the one who ruined that whole extravaganza. Mirroring what we’ve done the past few weeks on Shadow and Holy, this week will dedicate it’s words to the Discipline Priest (And since I will be saying ‘Discipline Priest a lot this article, I’ll just use “Disc Priest” to shorten it up). Let’s get cracking!
So firstly, what exactly is Discipline? Similar to Holy, this spec focuses on the healing elements of a Priest, but in a very different and unique way. Holy tends to excel in AoE Healing, but Disc tends to excel in Single target burst healing and absorbing a lot of the raids damage, reducing the need to heal. Here is a small table to compare the pros and cons of being a Discipline Priest:|
Pros |
Cons |
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- Despite what you might hear, Discipline Priests are very versatile. Although they can’t effectively compete with a Holy Priest or Resto Druid on AoE healing, they can still perform this role perfectly well. - Discipline Priests improved absorbsion effects can act as a pre-emptive barrier to damaging effects, giving the Priest the much needed time to act accordingly to control the situation - Discipline Priests have a wide range of cooldowns and unique abilities (which we’ll go into further later), providing the raid with added utility and bonuses |
- Discipline Priests incredible absorbsion empowerment can dampen the effect of their actual heals, in comparison to healer’s with similar gear, a Disc Priest’s heals will be slightly weaker - Many people misunderstand the in’s and out’s of Discipline and you can often be stereotyped within groups, because of this - Gear Choice – Discipline Priests don’t effectively use Spirit as well as Holy Priests, so they tend to have more beneficial stats from Caster DPS gear. Prepare to fight your corner against that angry Warlock, Mage & Shadow Priest (in a non-bias way, let the Shadow Priest have it ;))! |
Similar to Holy Priests, Disc Priests also tend to benefit from most caster stats around, however not so much in Spirit (Although this is still useful). Do what you can to grab as much Caster-related stats as you can, so; no Spell Pen, Hit etc!
Moving on to talents, this image shows the general outline of the Disc raiding spec you should take. You’ll notice in the Holy Tree there are some talents highlighted in blue. These are down to personal preference, so choose these as to which fit your playstyle the best. Just make sure you grab Inspiration while you’re there.
Yours gems and enchants will generally be down to common sense. Anything that will increase your beneficial stats is the way to go!
Moving back onto the Disc Priest’s unique abilities, we seem to have an answer for almost every situation. The abilities that stand out in the Disc tree are:
Soul Warding – Reducing the mana cost of one of your main abilities by a nice chunk, but perhaps the main power of this talent lies in reducing the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 seconds. Granting you access to cast PW:S one after another after another on your allies (assuming the Weakened Soul debuff is not on the target). A great talent to help Disc Priests give the entire raid protection from incoming damage.
Pain Suppression – Used correctly, this talent can be a lifesaver. Whether you use it for the threat reduction, or the damage reduction; choose wisely. A huge 40% damage reduction can save your tank from imminent death whereas the 5% threat reduction can save that trigger happy Warlock from becoming a bloodstained mess all over the newly dry cleaned upholstery and carpets of Icecrown Citadel.
Power Infusion – Pretty much an Icy Veins for anyone, this spell grants 20% spell haste and 20% reduced mana cost on spells for 15 seconds, with a 2 minute cooldown. Unless your top caster DPS bugs you about this one, save it for those dire moments or throw it in with your Bloodlust nukefest.
Penance – Perhaps the defining spell of the Discipline tree, this awesome channelled spell not only provides a pretty graphic of a holy barrage towards the target, but also brilliant healing. A quickfire, short cooldown, low mana, high-healing spell is a gift from whatever way you look at it.
Moving onto Glyphs, they are always a hard choice in many cases. However, luckily for Discipline Priests, it’s pretty cookie cutter, and only 3 Major glyphs really cut the mustard:
Glyph of Penance – Reducing the cooldown on your Penance spell by 2 seconds, this is a mandatory Disc Priest glyph, allowing you to cast your most effective heal spell more often.
Glyph of Power Word: Shield – Every time you cast your PW:S, instantly healing the target for 20% of the total absorbsion effect is another mandatory choice for Disc Priests, as you’ll be casting PW;S a hell of a lot, so this works brilliantly.
Glyph of Flash Heal – Not the most appealing glyph to those who love to spam their shields, but always a nice glyph to have for back-up, especially if you find yourself reaching for Flash Heal often.
Use your initiative for your Minor Glyph choices, and suit them to you. If you’re unsure of which is right for you, check out last week’s Inner Fire for a short list of Minor Glyphs and their uses.
(http://www.crusaderscoliseum.com/inner-fire-priest-blog/2888-inner-fire-holy-moly)
Before I leave you this week, here are a few useful tips to take into account while healing as a Disc Priest:
- Always use Prayer of Mending when it’s not on cooldown
- Make use of Penance, Flash Heal, Renew and PW:S when tank healing
- Don’t spam the raid with Renew – it’s a waste of mana and your PW:S is much more effective and efficient
- Always work around your Penance cooldowns. If your tank is taking unpredictable amounts of damage, save your Penance for those damage spikes, and use Flash Heal and PW:S to manage with the smaller spikes.
- If you’re Shield Spamming, be smart. Use your PW:S in the order of which groups of people are most likely to take damage.
Finally, if you think you’re worthy to call yourself a Disco Priest, you need to be able to become acquainted with the art and variations of disco, electronica, techno and general funky music. Let’s start with something light…
Anyway, that does it for this week! Tune in next Thursday for a PvP dedicated article! Hope to see you there! Note: if 90% of next week's article is made up of images of Mind Controlling gnomes of the edge of Eye of the Storm, Inner Fire cannot claim any responsibility. Whatsoever.
Last Updated on Friday, 03 September 2010 22:58 Written by Thaesha Friday, 03 September 2010 00:53