Heroic Lich King 10 down, with an 11th place spot on the World of Logs rankings is somewhere around that ballpark for me.

Not on Runcible, of course – he’s a permanent fixture at the Undercity Auction House, running an occasionally thriving glyph business.

No, it’s Wormskull the Warlock doing all the exciting stuff. If you like, you can read about it at…

http://soulfired.wordpress.com

It’s updated a little bit more often than this one.

Now off to try and do it again for the 25 version, here’s hoping there’s enough resets left before Cata!

The change to regen with us wanting Spirit is easy enough to understand. I’d personally like to keep Rapture as some kind of regen mechanic, proccing a mini Spirit Tap, for example.

What I’m much more concerned about is the proposed changes to health pools and the pace of healing. Things will supposedly get less “twitchy”, with more chance of seeing health bars at 50% and more time to plan heals.

Isn’t this what we do for the other healers in ICC already? Get shields in place that add 8 or 9k to someone’s “health” before they take damage, or shield to keep a bar at 50% long enough for another healer to take time to respond?

The faster the pace of incoming damage, and the smaller the health pool in relation to that incoming damage, the greater the benefit from PW:S as opposed to, say, Renew.

ICC is the golden age of Disc shielding as we currently understand it. Once the pace slows down, and health pools get big enough to withstand a couple of hits, the niche we currently occupy will lose it’s relevance.

In the same way that shields benefit from fast pace and small healthpools, big healthpools and slower pace make HoTs increase in value. At a certain (possibly extreme) point, Renew will always be a better choice than PW:S. The announced Cataclysm changes must be making Trees tremble to their roots in anticipation. Or tremble in fear of lumberjacks with nerfbats.

And on the subject of nerfs, Paladins, eh? The guys with the unassailable (or as Ghostcrawler described it, “outlier”) position at the top of the raw healing output meters… and that’s with 50% or more overhealing still looking for a bigger healthpool to fill. When will anyone ever see a healthpool at 50% while there’s a Paladin with current, comparative levels of throughput around?

Now I’m not suggesting that “more of the same” is what we’ll actually see happen. Cataclysm looks to be set to reconstruct everything in the game, and a rebalancing of the healing specs is certain to be part of that. What I am pondering is the niches:

Druids hold the niche of “masters of HoTs”, and as I’ve said the proposed paradigm for Cataclysm will serve to make HoTs more attractive and powerful, compared to other types of heal.

Paladins hold the niche of “masters of single target (over)healing”, and the larger the healthpool, the more attractive this becomes.

Disc Priests hold the niche of “masters of shielding”, which, unlike the others, sees a reduction in desirability.

If Disc is to remain relevant in Cataclysm it will need more than a rebalancing… it will need a whole new niche. Especially as Holy stands to benefit a lot from the new setup, having not only a powerful HoT in Renew, but likely the most efficient big heal in the game in GH.

So what kind of niche might we see? I’m expecting something that plays to our strengths other than shielding.

One is tank healing. Disc is as competitive to Pallies as any spec can get right now, though typically with less overhealing (which any rebalancing must take into account). Once the dust settles I think it’s likely that we will be very competitive.

Another is the niche of most efficient healer. Even with nobody suffering from mana issues at the moment, Disc is “not suffering” better than anyone else (well, any other animal – those of a more vegetable nature are efficient too). With efficiency and the risk of running OOM resurfacing, “masters of mana conservation” is pretty attractive.

A final one I’ll mention is our ability to heal on the move. We have an effective and complementary set of instant casts, as well as ways of hasting spells with a cast time. The new paradigm of healing is not going to be solely about mana management, and with the increasing sophistication of raiders we’re likely to see ever more complex dances with bosses. Being free of the “turret” status of Shamans and Paladins could become a very valuable benefit.

That’s enough spurious conjecture for the moment. I’ll finish with an expression of faith that a lot of thought and effort is going into Cataclysm and while there will be some bumps in the road, someone somewhere has plans for us. The fact that it’s unlikely to be a continuation of shieldbotting is, in my opinion, a good thing whatever it may turn out to be.

Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set

Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

This replaces the FH procced timer reset for Penance and CoH, which had the problems of only being good for specific roles and playstyles within each spec as well as being excessively RNG based. When it procced a lot, it added a ton of healing, but when it didn’t proc it was worthless.

Additionally the playstyles it benefitted are ones that the encounter design of ICC is encouraging priests to moved away from. Holy priests are generally pushed to use renew over FH for raid healing, and with the current popularity of Holy Paladins (them being so far ahead of the pack regarding tank healing) Disc priests are generally taking the raid shieldbot role. The old 4 piece bonus was just not enough (or not reliable enough) to make casting FH preferable to Renew for Holy, or make Disc competitive with Paladins for tank healing.

With this info coming the day after I laid out another 60 emblems on the off-set gloves, completing my off-set emblem purchases, I’m obviously thrilled at the awesome timing. Now I need to work out whether it’s worth buying the healing tier or stick to my plan of picking up some shadow tier for the off-spec.

The 5% bonus to PW:S is certainly tempting. We’ve got no other scaling for that except spellpower, and 5% will make a significant difference.

The other thing that might swing it for me is the news about cataclysm stat changes.

Healers, and I have to spuriously assume that this includes Disc, will be getting their regen from Spirit. DPS will regen via unspecified other mechanisms. Currently Disc has little use for Spirit, which could lead to a situation where priests who have shunned it in favour of haste + crit items find their regen suddenly gutted when the stat changes are rolled out live. The T10 set though is dripping in spirit with lots on each piece.

I certainly don’t want to find myself gimped for the release of Cataclysm. For now I’ll be banking the tokens until the regen situation for Disc priests is clarified.

EDIT:

Cataclysm stats recap
DPS cloth: Int, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (mage, warlock, Shadow priest)
Healing cloth: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Holy and Disc priest)

Seems like Disc will definitely be needing spirit for regen. Looks like I’ll be buying some healing T10 after all.

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Runcible, Priest, Discipline
• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) Casual raiding – 10 and 25 man, focus on the 10 man which I find more fun. For as long as end-game emblems are available in 5 mans, I’ll grudgingly Holy Nova spam my way through one of those a day too.
• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Divine Hymn (even more so if it times with Inner Focus and Power Infusion!). Disc priests excel at “saves” – reacting fast to prevent a death that few other healers could pull off (at least with the same frequency as disc can manage). DH can do this for a whole raid – it’s like a reset button for when it all gets too overwhelming and it’s so much fun watching all the healing it does. My most used spell is PW:S, which is also utterly wonderful. Meh, I’ll have two favourites.
• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Divine Hymn. 8 minutes is an eternity! Actually its probably Desperate Prayer, as that only gets used on the move with an already weakened soul.
• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? For the Priest class in general its our lack of weaknesses and multitude of options that make us very versatile. Having two distinct specs to choose from adds to this. For Disc spec in particular its our powerful combination of passive mitigation, pre-emptive shields and instantly responsive burst healing that combine with this priestly versatility to make the spec feel very vital, responsive and just plain awesome.
• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? For Priests? No real weaknesses that worry me. For Disc, its the problems that can occur with more than one disc priest in a raid. We don’t stack well together.
• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? As a disc priest I try and get an exemption from fixed assignments. The footballing term “libero” is apt. We’re at our best switching between whatever task is needed, whether thats getting shields up before incoming raid damage, joining the tank healers during big boss damage phases, and generally keeping a sharp eye out for trouble of all kinds. I’m a firm believer that Disc can and should use every GCD for a worthwhile cast, but we need some freedom to be able to do that. The raid will generally understand it as primarily a shielder, with hair-trigger healing bursts.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Shamans, Druids, Paladins. I think disc is the only spec that can happily let any other healer play to their own strengths at the same time as we play to our own. I most commonly heal with a shaman in 10 mans, and mostly shammies and pallies in 25s.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? Priests, specially other Disc Priests. Disc and Holy priest isn’t a bad combination, but certainly doesn’t have the same cool synergies that we get when partnered with another class. More than one disc priest is horrid though, it just imposes limitations.
• What is your worst habit as a healer? Ignoring any assignments that I’m given and playing disc the way I think it should be played. Not that I let people die or anything – if they need heals they get heals, but I do tend to step outside my assignments a lot.
• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? I’m a bit of a peeve collector, particularly in 5 mans. The new Looking For Peeve tool has greatly helped this. In contrast my raids are mostly peeve free. I guess in raids it would be unannounced pulls.
• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Yes. I think all the healing specs are strong right now (can’t say for PvP, but certainly in PvE) with better balance than ever.
• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? My favourite tool is World of Logs. It allows for such a depth of analysis that I often come away from reviewing a raid with good ideas about how to approach things next time. It also gives detailed insight into how the very best players of my spec approach the same fights, which is a wonderful resource to plunder.
• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? I think Disc priests have spent so long suffering so many misconceptions that right now seems like a golden age of understanding! More people than ever “get” disc, more or less, though there are still plenty manning the bastions of ignorance; disc is for PvP, shields stop rage generation, disc is for tank healing, judging disc performance by the “healing done” tab on recount, etc.
• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? My take on it is there are three aspects to being an effective healer: Proficiency with your spells and abilities, awareness of what’s happening, and developing your judgement. New healers will naturally tend to focus on the first of these, and the third develops from the first two. I think this makes the second one the most difficult for new healers. “Awareness” is notoriously difficult to teach and learn, the tools to help (addons, etc) can be technical, and it’s all too easy for each step to better awareness to bring with it issues of tunnel-vision as learning it demands concentration.
• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)? They’d need to check both “healing done” and “guessed absorbs” to get any realistic evaluation. The ratio of each to each will vary by fight (some fights invite shieldspam, others need lots of heals), but the combination will always be competitive with any other healer. I’d also expect to be lowest in terms of overhealing (as unused shields don’t factor in this – might look different if they did).
• Haste or Crit and why? A mix of both, with a preference for haste. Admittedly haste is wasted for shieldspamming, but in this circumstance crit operates at just 20% of its usual value too (assuming the PW:S glyph). When spamming heals on a tank I much prefer the guaranteed throughput boost of haste than the RNG boost of crit. More of both is always good though.
• What healing class do you feel you understand least? Holy priests, oddly enough. I still think of Holy as /stopcasting GH and juggling the 5 second rule (never looked back after switching to Disc). I know things must have moved on, but am not really sure how. I keep meaning to respec to see (but then again I keep meaning to do the Benediction questline and never get around to that either).
• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? Grid, with mouseover macros for all healing, decursing, visibility of buffs/debuffs etc. TellMeWhen + OmniCC for cooldown notification, DBM for boss warnings. I’m very particular (and quite minimalist) about what I want to see in my raid frames, and also hate click-casting, so Grid is perfect for me. I use other addons and macros, but nothing else is crucial to my way of playing.
• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? I’d go spellpower crazy if I could, but those amounts seem to be fixed. I found that I needed to supplement my Int with some gems in T9, but T10 has enough that I no longer need to. I have little interest in Spirit/MP5 as I prefer Int as a regen stat anyway, so my preferred gear would be combined haste/crit. I’d sacrifice both for more Spellpower though, as it is the only stat that scales PW:S.

Right, heres an example macro, followed by an explanation from the wonderful Fitzcairn’s Macro Explain-o-matic…

/cast [@mouseover,help,dead,nocombat][help,dead,nocombat]Resurrection;
[@mouseover,help][help][@targettarget,help][@player]Greater Heal

So that’s the macro. Even with all the buttons the n52te gives me, I still need to double up where I can so in this case I want to cast Greater Heal if the target is alive, and Resurrection if they’re dead. Here’s Fitzcairn’s explain-o-matic explaination:

If the unit your mouse is currently over is a friend and is dead and you are not in combat then:
Cast Resurrection on the unit your mouse is currently over

Else, if the currently targeted unit is a friend and is dead and you are not in combat then:
Cast Resurrection on the currently targeted unit

Else, if the unit your mouse is currently over is a friend then:
Cast Greater Heal on the unit your mouse is currently over

Else, if the currently targeted unit is a friend then:
Cast Greater Heal on the currently targeted unit

Else, if the currently targeted unit’s currently targeted unit is a friend then:
Cast Greater Heal on the currently targeted unit’s currently targeted unit

Otherwise:
Cast Greater Heal on you

I love the way this breaks the macro down into its logical steps, as it helps me clarify how I want to order the conditionals. In the example above, I always want mouseovers of unit frames to take priority, after that I want the option of selecting a target. Most of the time my target is set to the boss, and whoever the boss is beating on could probably appreciate a heal. Lastly, if its a “save my bacon” kind of moment, then I can deselect a target and all my heals will land on me, leaving me free to run around like a headless but healthy chicken (a.k.a. Rotface mode). The whole thing comes in at 135 characters so far.

I’m currently working on adding more conditionals for shift and alt modifiers. It’ll be a tight squeeze to get everything into the 255 limit. I’ll post a finished macro, plus details of the setup once I’m done.

EDIT: Here’s an example of the kind of unwieldy nonsense I’m aiming for. If you want an explanation paste it into the explain-o-matic.

/cast [mod:alt,harm]Shadow Word: Death;[@mouseover,mod:ctrl,help]
[mod:ctrl,help][@player,mod:ctrl]Fear Ward;[@mouseover,help,dead,
nocombat][help,dead,nocombat]Resurrection;[@mouseover,help][help]
[@targettarget,help][@player]Greater Heal

So now the big question is… what can I do with my remaining 18 characters?

Then I spotted who priests share their tokens with…  Paladins and Warlocks.

My ICC25 raid is heaving with both.  There’s usually between 4 and 6 of each in the raid, as well as a shadow, and sometimes a holy priest.

For any token drop, I’ll likely be competing with at least 10 other players, all of whom have their eye on gear that is actually itemised to suit them.

So any plan that involves winning one of these rolls is starting to look a bit pie-in-the-sky.  On top of that, if I was to win one, I’d probably feel guilty buying shadow gear with it when so many of my companions are gasping for more useful tier sets.

(spellpower * 1.5155) + 2800

This gives a linear scale. Each 10 points of spellpower we add gives a further c. 15 points of absorbtion to each shield.

For disc priests playing the Shieldbot role in ICC25, Spellpower is pretty much the only scaling stat. Haste is likely to be at the 1 second GCD cap so more haste does nothing further for shieldspamming. PW:S is not affected by crit, but its glyph is, so more crit will still give about a fifth of its usual scaling. Given the damage patterns in ICC and the effect on Rapture when several shields are consumed at the same time, its unlikely that a shieldbot will run out of mana either.

The more spells other than PW:S that you cast, the greater the mileage you’ll get from haste, crit etc.  If your raid is blessed with an abundance of Paladins, as mine is, then don’t worry about anything but Spellpower for ICC25 progression.  You should choose your other stats according to your off-spec requirements.

I think its because of the simplicity.  Every action or spell can have its own full-time, dedicated finger.  Just fill up the number keys until no-more-fingers time, then scrap the character.

I enjoy bear tanking for the same reason; I can map and macro everything I’ll need and that’s still a single digit button total.

That’s a world away from playing a priest… 

At the last count I have 35 keys bound to spells and macros*.  This excludes stuff that I only tend to cast out of combat, like buffs, ress etc.  That’s 34 in-combat casts of which half are commonly used, and half are situational (and “mount” which I like to have keybound too).

I have a habit of putting the primary keybinds for the role on my keyboard’s numeric keypad, with situational or long cooldown abilities on the six “insert” to “page down” keys, and off-role keys on the top row number keys.  Both WASD and the four cursor keys are set to movement.  For Discipline spec, the numeric keypad is all heals while the top row keys do damage.  For Shadow spec this is reversed.

It took ages to get used to this setup, but now that the muscle memory has become ingrained I find it quick and easy to use, and can keep my attention on the screen at all times.

Which makes me wonder if I’m mad for abandoning it all…

But then I see the shiny new Nostromo n52te speedpad my in-laws gave me for my birthday (/cheer) and a week or two of being utterly useless seems a small price to pay.

If you’re not familiar with this type of device, it’s a combined input device – a 14 key keyboard, directional thumbpad, clickable scroll wheel and two thumb buttons.  It’s designed to fit your left hand while your right hand is on your mouse.  It plugs into a USB port, and though you need software loaded on your computer to configure it, once done your config is saved to on-board flash and it will work on any machine without the need for software installs.

There’s a palmrest which has two possible positions (for little or big hands) and it can toggle between 3 keybinding maps with blue, green and red lights showing you which map you’re currently using.  Each of the 23 possible “buttons” (including scrollwheel movements and d-pad cardinal points) can be mapped in the provided software to emulate a standard keyboard key (the supplied default more-or-less copies the left hand side of a keyboard).

So all I need to do now is work out a plan for setting up my keybinds on the new toy, retrain my muscle memory and after a (hopefully short) spell of being completely unable to find the right button I’ll be back even faster than before.

* Here’s the full list;

(Numeric keys) Power Word: Shield, Penance, Flash Heal, Binding Heal, Prayer of Mending, Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova, Renew, Divine Hymn, Pain Suppression, Power Infusion, Shackle, Fade, Desperate Prayer, Mass Dispel, (insert-page down) Shadowfiend, Divine Hymn, Dispel, Greater Heal, Abolish Disease, Endless Mana Potion, (top row number keys) Mind Sear, Shadow Word: Death, Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, Mana Blast, Fear Ward, Levitate, Inner Fire, Hymn of Hope, Psychic Scream, Smite, Holy Fire, (elsewhere) Jump, Tab target, Mount

I also suggested that the easiest way to compensate for this removal was simply to make the gear cost fewer emblems.

Well, easiest isn’t necessarily best.  I had another idea, or bit of wishful thinking rather, but didn’t want to make the last post any longer.

Judging by the forums, there’s a renewed interest in world bosses.  These have been out of fashion since Burning Crusade, which surprises me as this current expansion is the first to use the phasing technology that could make all the previous issues regarding griefing disappear.

Why not have a world boss in a phased area?

Defeating such a boss could be the object of a daily quest that gives Emblems of Frost.   The phasing could be triggered on becoming friendly with the Ashen Verdict, which would make sure that everyone in the area is suitably badass.

To stop cross faction griefing, perhaps there could be different phases for Alliance and Horde?  Or if that isn’t possible, how about a sanctuary zone?  What about twin bosses of each faction, that can only be taken down by the opposing faction players who will need to cooperate to get the job done? (Yeah, this last one is asking for trouble, but I just enjoyed imagining the possibilities).

Whatever the exact mechanisms used, I’m pretty sure that there’s a very workable solution somewhere.  Even if its got nothing to do with Emblems of Frost in the end, I’m sure that somehow phasing technology offers the answer to the problems associated with world bosses, and hope it won’t be too long before we see another one.

But… if we could see one in the environs of Icecrown Citadel, what would you want to see?