There is a lot of information out there regarding Disc Priest secondary stats and statweights… a lot of information. To make matters worse, all that information is often contradictory to each other. Mastery is king! No, wait! Haste! No, Crit!!! Add on top of all that contradiction is that a lot of the information is in that “well, it works for me!” category…  which unto itself is flawed. I’ve seen a number of these forum threads fighting over this question, and have seen some– frankly, horrible answers. I’ve also gotten a number of emails asking me what I think… so, lets take a look. In my usual fashion, I am going to dive into some of the numbers, but not so many that we drown in pages of formulas and …

“Smite spam” : Before Cataclysm’s introduction to Archangel and Atonement, that phrase was often followed by “LOLOLOL Smitepriest”. Since the launch of Cataclysm, we’ve had several tiers of content to get used to Atonement Healing and Archangel.  Atonement and Archangel are now, arguably, the cornerstone of Discipline in 4.3… and in my opinion, nearly mandatory for Dragon Soul Heroic Encounters. The trick is to leverage Archangel to your advantage and not just use it haphazardly. Fully stacked, Archangel provides you with an additional 15% throughput for 18 seconds with a mere 30 second cooldown.  Despite it having a short cooldown, making it readily available throughout most of the fight, the best way for a Disc Priest to use Archangel is to know when the raid/tank damage is going to increase and demand …

Well, Blizzard launched their official Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator today… just in time for Thanksgiving. The question is: will we have anything to be thankful for? Cursory looks suggest that we might be in for an interesting change, based solely upon the spells we get for specific specs. I will say they put in a good amount of effort into breaking down the core spells and abilities for each of the two healing specs we have. That probably was a difficult task, as they want and need to be able to keep each of the trees viable in a PVE and PVP setting, while having enough core differences to make them feel unique. Unfortunately, there does seem to be a number of (accidental?) omissions in the first round of Talent Previews. …

With 4.3 comes a substantial buff to Divine Hymn– baseline. With this improvement, we probably should spend some time to discuss how to work  both of our Hymns to our advantage. First let’s take a look at this Divine Hymn buff — In 4.2, DH was actually a HPS loss (For both Disc and Holy) when compared to YAWNPOH(POH/COH) spam. Once 4.3 drops, we’ll be turning that completely on its head. 4.2 Live Hymn: “Heals 3 nearby lowest health friendly party or raid targets within 40 yards for 4009 every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases healing done to them by 10% for 8 sec. ” 4.3 PTR Hymn (Build 14976 – Release): “Heals 5 nearby lowest health friendly party or raid targets within 40 yards for 4009 every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases …

Today, I really want to take a look at the history of Disc Tank Healing, why it works, how it works, and how to Disc Tank Heal. Ever since 4.2 dropped, Disc Tank Healing has become a very powerful tool for many guilds and as a result, they are using Disc as a primary tank healer. This isn’t the first time we have seen this… Discipline Tank Healing was something that had a good run (albeit brief) in Wrath of the Lich King. We saw this in Naxx 2.0 and Ulduar, it wasn’t until Trial of the Crusader and ICC that this started falling off. Why did Disc Tank Healing fall off towards the end of WOTLK? Scaling for one – Disc simply didn’t have the throughput that Holy Pallies …

One of the things that Avalonna and myself have always said is that we are not “Disc Priests” or “Holy Priests” we are “Healing Priests”. What this means is, of course, we both play both specs regularly. However, the biggest part of this is that we have the flexibility to play both at will, when the fight commands it. Certain fights have components that will ‘favor’ one spec over the other; lets discuss what you need to keep in mind when deciding when you’ll want one over the other. Many priests have both specs, and play both specs- what I aim to discuss here is the questions and considerations you should be making when you decide to play one spec over the other for certain encounters. Healing vs Mitigation Healing and Mitigation …

As Ava alluded to in her State of Disc post, Rapture isn’t the same as it was back in ICC. Even if your shields all break at the same time you are only going to get one tick of Rapture equal to 6% of your total mana and then trigger it’s 12 second internal cooldown.  Discipline Priests need to be certain they are getting the most out of this talent, and maximizing its restore. When compared to Holy Priests, Disc gets far less mana back from Spirit, and relies more heavily on Intellect Based Mana Restores– with Rapture being our largest source. Rapture is a game all Disc priests must play. Assuming Non-Heroic T11 Mana pools, Rapture should be restoring ~7,000 mana per Rapture. (+/- a few hundred varying by gear, gems, …

First off, I know what you’re going to say. Just stop right there and wipe that smug look off your face. I blame all of you for me being here. That’s right – YOU.  All your chitter chatter on twitter and facebook. The emails. The previews. That fiendish asshole Derevka singing how amazing I am, & bribing me with a baby boomkin pet. IT’S SO FUCKING CUTE HOW CAN I RESIST???!!! Add in the fact that once I left, he tried “classing” the site up by adding doilies & curtains everywhere, and now it looks like this – enough is enough. Don’t expect me to match him post for post -I’m simply back to bring the trash to his class, so get the “I told you so’s” out of your …