Spiritual Guidance: Tools to evaluate a Discipline Priest
by Matt Low 
May 20th 2009 at 1:00PM
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. After a minor hiatus, Matticus examines the pain that many Discipline Priests experience: That they're just not good enough and how to even the odds.
Apologies for the lengthy delay. I needed to grab some field data which took way longer than it should have. Coincidentally enough, Amanda Dean wrote about this very same issue a few days ago concerning healing meters and Discipline Priests. It still makes me sad every time I read about this. A raid leader or heal leader asks a Discipline Priest to go back to Holy because they feel their performance isn't good enough. In most cases, I think it's just them not truly understanding how Discipline works. It has always been about prevention not healing.
"You're too low on the meters. Switch back to Holy."
How many times have you Discipline Priests heard this? Being forced to switch back to Holy because the powers that be didn't understand nor fully realize the true capabilities of Discipline Priests? It's a good thing my bench boss didn't tell me to switch to Holy. Then again, I am the bench boss.
My friends, there are tools that can help us. It's impossible to change people's minds on theory. But my CSI idol Grissom's always said that evidence cannot be denied. Let's stop using the same measuring stick that the majority has been using and look at something to help even the playing field.
Let's start with WoW Web Stats. It was one of the premiere tools that came out some time ago and helped raids really analyze specific details of their fights.
But it's not Disc Priest friendly, so we're going to stop using it.
Set your sights to WoW Meter Online.
Here's a side by side comparison. This is the same combat log uploaded to WWS and to WMO. Can you spot the difference? Yes, a Holy Priest is leading the charge. Yours truly here is Discipline and I'm the other Priest below. WWS shows 4.2 million effectively healed whereas WMO displays 5.8 million healed. That's a difference of 1.6. Something is seriously wrong here. What kind of weird discrepancy is this?
Let's take a closer look at my individual play via WWS.
Okay, things appear to be in order. This is a shot from a Freya kill, I believe. Flash Heal is leading the way followed by Prayer of Healing and Penance respectively. Yes, I'm aware I should fire of Prayer of Mending more often (I can hear it already) and yes I can also hear the "why aren't you casting more Renews?". Holy Nova was tossed in so I could help DPS the detonating lashers too.
Pro tip: Don't kill detonating lashers at the same time. Leads to very dire and unfortunate consequences.
The primary difference here is that WMO does display shield information. It shows Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis (at the bottom). Keep in mind that even though you may toss a shield up on a player, if the shield simply wears off instead of absorbing damage, it won't show up anywhere. It'll display that the player received the shield buff. But since no damage was absorbed, it won't add to the healing numbers. It will only add to the "Land" column or how many times this spell was used.
So to bottom line this, if you're going to diagnose a raid, stick with WoW Meter Online for the time being. It might not be accurate down to the hair, but at least it will still show what you're doing. If you're anything like me, you're a shield happy Priest with not a care in the world. I love to fire out more shields.
For addons, I have only found one meter addon that can help track shields. Recount will do it but you must have the Guessed Absorbs Recount plugin installed. Last updated in the days 3.1.0 came out, this addon displays an extra Recount panel with damage absorption. Yes, this includes both Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Note that it shows the overall damage absorbed and how many impacts or hits that your shield took.
Here's a glance at the combat log which shows the amount of damage the shield's eaten. I was having some fun in Scholomance with a guildy. If you were wondering how my shield was able to eat so many hits, that woudl be why. The area below it shows the minimum, average and maximum damage that your shield absorbed per hit. I was busy farming a few Dark Runes for use against General Vezax just in case I needed them in a pinch. The combat log does appear to show damage absorbed.
Remember that the combat log will track damage absorbed and shield casts. Your shielding powers may be uncanny. But if it wears off, it'll show up as a cast and not necessarily as having absorbed damage. Anyway, not only that but the healing done meter combines absorbs and healing done together to show the overall effectiveness of the Disc Priest in raids. Obviously if the Disc Priest gets outhealed by a Hunter, then something is wrong (in which case I don't think a simple respec back to Holy would work).
It's just education. Your leaders and healers have to learn more about the spec and its design before they can truly appreciate your abilities in the raid.
So start using these tools and I hope they'll help open the eyes of your leaders. In the future, if anyone tells you to switch to Holy, I hope you point them here so they can start using some of these tools to get a better idea of Discipline capabilities.
I'm also experimenting with World of Logs. I'll see if that's another alternative.
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Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries!Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Averna May 20th 2009 1:13PM
As the healing lead in my guild, and a discipline priest, thankfully I haven't had to deal with issues like that. When I was preparing to make the switch from holy to disc I had done a lot of homework though and was well prepared to argue against anyone who said disc wasn't for pve healing. Thankfully I play with a great bunch of guys who thought it was a good idea.
I've been loving disc since right before 3.1 and have to admit that your blog and the posts here on WI were why I made the switch. Thanks a billion and hope to see you at Blizzcon!
Robert M May 20th 2009 4:14PM
Averna and/or Matt,
Why do so many people not even discuss Sacred Shield? I know that it’s not nearly as much as part of a paladin’s arsenal as the shields that a disc priest uses, but it still is a mechanic that seems free of the scrutiny the way disc shields seem to get.
As a prot paladin who is block capped, and uses sacred shield on himself in a 5man, I can get (after the multiplier from my spellpower) an additional 1000 blocked (absorbed) every 6 seconds when it does proc. That kind of mitigation from a prot pally alone should show the strength of shields for a dedicated healer like a disc priest.
I have personally enjoyed disc priests healing. When you are block capped, every shield absorbed is free block. It doesn’t benefit from all my block multipliers since it’s not technically a block, but the mitigation is still nice. Given that what I have read about shield prioritization, it seems druids are able to also benefit from your shields and their own from savage defense at the same time.
If a tree falls in a forest and the druid is shielded and absorbs the damage, did the tree really fall?
http://fatchickstank.blogspot.com/
kinslayer.rising Jun 1st 2009 7:10PM
Another article about Discipline Priests...
You may want to reconsider the focus of this column, as there hasn't been any holy priests related articles that didn't have outdated information.
Daigeil May 20th 2009 1:24PM
Mkay... You've found something that tracks damaged absorbed. But I can't help noticing that you're -still- at about half his heals. How is this going to show the raidleader that you're just as effective as a holypriest? As a raidleader myself I know that Disc Priests are excellent, but this isn't showing it to someone who doesn't already know.
Manatank May 20th 2009 2:04PM
"How is this going to show the raidleader that you're just as effective as a holypriest?"
Why is everyone so sure that a discy priest would be as effective as a holy priest? I keep seeing people make outrageous claims about how OP discy is and how high their numbers would be if only we could see damage absorbed. It's completely situational. If you have a single target taking consistent damage, then a discy priest will shine. If you have raid wide damage, then holy should have higher output.
The real issue is that healing output isn't the best measure of a healer's worth. When you are choosing which classes/specs to staff in your raid you try to pair the strengths of the class to the role at hand. Discy just flat out beats holy for single target healing, but if you don't need that priest on a single target then it hardly makes sense for them to stay discy. Discy can tank heal, and discy can rescue/spot heal. While PoM/PoH give discy some measure of AoE ability, it is not competitive with holy for that same role.
Bob May 20th 2009 2:05PM
You're forgetting that those two players probably had very different healing assignments. The Holy priest was probably on raid damage and the Disc one was probably on a tank. Typically, people on raid duty will post higher numbers than someone on tank duty, simply because they can get bigger numbers from the AOE heals.
The tank may take more damage than any one individual, but when you add the damage taken by the 24 other people in the raid together, it typically comes out much higher. Speaking as a resto druid, I know that my numbers plummet when I go from raid healing to tank healing, even when I am spamming heals on the tank. It would be no different for a priest.
Bakor May 20th 2009 5:18PM
You completely missed the point.
dgcollins274 May 20th 2009 3:38PM
Hmmm, you cant Reply to a Reply... is that intended? ...anyways
@Manatank
You bring up a good point about "how should we measure a player's worth." This isn't a problem unique to healers. Meters help determine worth if you simply look at the extremes. such as a lv80 Mage doing 800dps, or a healer doing 10% heals in a 10 man. But what else should we look at?
Should a Boomkin's +5% spell crit. to raid be taken into concideration? In a 25 man, if we were able to measure how much more spell dmg, and heals the raid had due to that +5% crit I'm sure we'd value them a little more.
Or how about the Disc Priest's -3% dmg buff? Should we take x .03 and add it to the Disc. Priest's Heal meter?
How about the Kings? how much does that +10% stats add to all the dps/hps/tank's armor?
Meter's are really a mute point when compared to a person's ability to survive (move out of the F'ing fire)
It's a shame we've become so dependent on meter's. When they get to the point where you can count what a player truly brings to the raid, maybe then i'll look at them.
Angus May 20th 2009 6:48PM
Look at the meters again.
See those pink icons?
Yea, those are the Holy Paladins. You know, the tank healers.
Oh hey, he is sitting between them in WWS and above them in the WMO version.
It is almost like when he is doing the same job as them, he's in a position relative to them.
AMAZING! Who would ever have thought a tank healer would be doing healing comparable to another tank healer and not compared to a raid healer?!?!
Not if you will what was above them. 1 Holy priest, 2 shaman and a druid. Guess what they were doing? Healing the raid. Freya huh?
Let's see: Sunbeam is AE damage. Nature Bomb is AE damage. nature's Fury is AE damage. Lightning Lash is AE damage. Detonate is AE damage...
Okay, so the raid is eating damage like crazy on this fight. Yes a lot is avoidable, but some just plain won't be and will get through.
So you are comparing people healing guys designed to take a pounding and that have a ton of ways to mitigate that damage to people not designed to eat it. You know what, the comparison doesn't work.
Want to see a much better way of checking the ability? Do Pathwerk. All healers are working on tanks. No raid damage to deal with and just a few tanks should be eating damage. If the Holy Priest is far outstripping the DIsc here, something is wrong. They should be pretty close.
Bod May 21st 2009 8:24AM
Unfortunately Matt doesn't understand Recount Guessed Absorbs. To see the total contribution you need to add effective healing (healing done) numbers with Guessed Absorbs. When you do that with a disc priest you often get a scary high amount of total healing + absorption.
Typically, at least in my case, that combined number is large, larger than raid healers, even when i've been predominantly on the tank. So large, in fact, that I worry that Blizzard may notice it and hit us with the nerf bat.
I guess in summary, I'd prefer that disc population remains small, that most people think they are crap healers, then those of us who do know how to use disc can carry on without fear of the otherwise inevitable ghostcrawler nerf.
Anye Sep 9th 2010 3:45PM
Personally, the #1 meter I look at when assessing healers is "Deaths". Is the healer keeping himself/herself alive? Or dying really early on in some fights? If a healer can stay alive, and is not being absolutely humiliated on the total H+A meter (NOT heals per second), they get my vote of approval. I would take a healer with so-so numbers and good survivability over a healer with good numbers that doesn't reliably stay alive.
Not all fights can be measured that way--for example, healers without a lot of instant heals are going to be at the mercy of other healing in high-mobility situations--but IMO those fights are deep enough within raids that you should already have an idea of who your reliable healers are.
Oh, and Angus hit the nail squarely on the head, in terms of parsing the logs correctly. When there are assigned tank heals and raid heals, you can only fairly assess healers within those same categories.
brownjohn423 May 20th 2009 1:25PM
There is a Holy Priest in my guild that refuses to switch to Disc because he doesn't want to end up so low on the meters.
Arkkangel May 20th 2009 1:31PM
IMO that's egotistical and arrogant and does not belong in a successful raiding guild. IMO (again) you are part of a team and you do whatever it takes to progress your guild.
Hansbo May 21st 2009 3:26AM
Arkkangel:
While I agree the reasoning is flawed, not everyone wants to play disc healing. I play holy, and I've always played holy, and disc sparks no interest from me. You think that I should respec, and play in a manner which is not fun or interesting, to help progress?
How far should that go? Should I reroll to help progress as well?
If the guild doesn't need any more holy priests but more disc priests, they may reqruit a disc priest and the holies wont get as many raid spots. But to force someone to respec? That's taking the game too far.
Arkkangel May 20th 2009 1:28PM
A well-put article but as I think most competitive raiding guilds will already know, they understand the differences in Disc and Holy and what their strengths/weakness are. My guild's raiders run meters but it's not fair to compare healers that are spec'd different and have different healing assignments. Any guild that does, simply does not understand the mechanics of the game.
With dual specs now I run both Holy and Disc. Although my Disc is mainly for pvp and the majority of my raiding roles are raid healing holy, I do get the occasional tank healing assignment. For that I swap to Disc (even thought it's pvp disc) because I feel I can single target heal better as PVP Disc than raid holy. (and I can take the large shots of damage and not die if that should happen) The shielding and glyphs for Disc are just too good for single targets. As an added bonus a well-geared pvp Disc priest is VERY difficult to kill if you can't drain his mana.
Mister K May 20th 2009 3:57PM
The problem is there are things out there spreading a mixed message to people. I read somewhere today that "Ensidia" says a discipline priest is a waste of a raid spot or something like that. People will read that and take it as gospel. There needs to be a way accurately show your absorption. I am happy to be in a guild that is more about whether we actually succeeded in killing the boss instead of hawking over meters but not everyone has that luxury. Having a post about discipline here on WoW.com will hopefully get more people aware of the actual capabilites of the quality discipline priests out there
vern May 20th 2009 1:30PM
A few things to say here:
The 3 first heals of a discipline priest should be flash heal, power word shield, penance (in whichever order you want).
Prayer of healing is a mana sink if you don't have the holy talents that reduce its mana cost, so avoid it (-20% mana).
Very important, you should see a near 100% application time of weakened soul on the tank. Why ? because this is increase your crit by 4% on the tank.
In AOE damage fight (see Mimiron 10 and 25, as well as Deconstruct or 10-25) power word shield should be your main "healing" spell. Why ? because it basically get almost totally mana refunded to you and give mana/energy/rage/runic power to the shielded target.
Prayer of mending is not a discipline spell via talents and should be reserved to a holy priest.You don't want a holy priest to lock you from using the shield so why overwrite his POM that heals more than yours for less mana ??? shield for discipline and POM for holy, important rule here.
Finally, the tendency seems to be crit for discipline and haste for holy but I am still debating that with myself.
It is very unfortunate that damage reduction doesn't clearly appear in the logs.
AyaJulia May 20th 2009 3:29PM
In a 25-man raid, especially one with heavy AoE or constant ticking AoE, there is NO reason for any healing priest to not have a PoM bouncing around supplementing your regular healing. Disc or Holy, doesn't matter. Get a raid frame that lets you see other PoMs and put yours on someone who doesn't already have one on them. Tadaaaaaa. Now you aren't overwriting someone else's, and you still get great benefits from it.
As a holy priest, my average PoM hit was 4500. And I only have one talent that improves it: a whopping 10% healing bonus, and a 30% cooldown reduction. I don't take Healing Prayers for the 20% mana cost reduction, because I don't tend to have mana problems unless I ate a battle res or something. So 10% healing off that 4500--we'll call it 4k for simplicity's sake for a disc PoM.
Why wouldn't you spend 522 mana (Mental Agility) every ~10sec for 20k in fire-and-forget healing? PoM is badass regardless of spec. I don't understand why anyone would tell Disc not to use it.
Note: Not bashing you for not using it Matt, since you said as much in your post, just wtf'ing at anyone who'd recommend otherwise....
Eisengel May 20th 2009 4:21PM
While Disc may not have the best group healing options, I think it has some pretty good tools. I enjoy group healing with Holy Nova, and Inner Fire + Holy Nova will put everyone in little soap bubbles, a good thing for group damage. I love PoH too actaully, glyphed it is a great 'uh oh' group heal. It takes forever to cast, so I'll throw a Nova or two until shield comes off of CD, pop shield and use Grace to throw off PoH.
Fun fact... Renew ticks currently count as individual healing 'casts', so on-cast trinkets and effects have a chance to proc on each tick. I try to keep Renew rolling all the time on a few people to make sure my embroidery and trinkets proc as often as possible.
vern May 20th 2009 4:36PM
Its fine for discipline to use POM if you're the only priest on your tank.
Pretty pointless otherwise as holy priests will be renewing it faster than you at a lesser mana cost and most of the time overwriting yours.
I am totally fine with you wasting 522 mana and a GCD for nothing :)