Raegx on disc and holy healing in 4.0.1

I started out my conversation with Raegx by asking what his initial impressions were of the patch. How did he feel about it, what was he was doing, and how was it performing?

I love holy. It is so much fun to juggle Chakra stances and make effective use of Holy Word spells. Knowing fight timing mechanics is going to play a huge part of it of Cataclysm. Using the right stances and properly using Holy Word spells will separate the good priests from the bad. From the numbers so far, the extra complexity seems to pay off if you do the right thing, as opposed to what we saw in Wrath. This last expansion was mostly doing the right thing all the time, and really trying seemed to have little effect.

With the lack of Judgment of Light and the pounding AoE damage, Holy Word: Sanctuary on melee and Renew spam seems like a very viable high throughput combination. Sadly, I havent had the chance to tank heal as holy yet.

Discipline still feels the same. With so much AoE damage going out all the time, it feels like a better use of shields to mitigate the eventual incoming damage. You still spend most of your time shielding, using your cooldowns as they come up and using Penance to save people who dip low. Discipline also has no mana issues, whereas Holy seems to still drain mana quickly. (It is very easy to go OOM as holy with very little effort.) Disciplines mastery is fine, but it doesnt really add anything you can appreciate all the time. Stronger shields are always welcome, but the Echo of Light effect is pretty nice to see, especially when people are taking lots of damage.

Im on the fence about Power Word: Barrier. It seems like a great spell, but its so hard to tell if anything is actually going on with it. Logging mechanics currently arent showing it as far as I have seen.

‪Raegx provided me with the following rotation to give you guys. Ive written it up in my own words for clarity.
Renew Spam: Start your Renew Chakra. Use Holy Word: Aspire on one target. Cast Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, and Renew (in that order of priority) until you can use Holy Word: Aspire on a target different than the last. (You heal two targets because the duration of the HoT is longer than the cooldown of the Holy Word.) Repeat the last two steps. Prayer of Healing: Start Prayer of Healing Chakra. Use Holy Word: Sanctuary. Fill with Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, and Renew (again, in that order of priority) until you can use Holy Word: Sanctuary again. Next, if you have a reason to use Prayer of Healing two or three times in a row, do so, otherwise let Chakra drop off because you wont have enough time left on your Chakra to get another Holy Word: Sanctuary in. Peppered throughout our conversation, Raegx was gracious in offering very specific examples of things he witnessed this past week in dungeons. They arent necessarily going to help you play better, but I found them all rather interesting, so in no particular order, Ive provided them for you guys to take in.

Ive noticed tanks deaths were more prevalent. That could be caused by so many issues its hard to tell. People might be lazy due to stale content, working out how to use new abilities effectively, or it just might be balancing issues. Atonement was also broken for disc. I spent an entire Deathbringer Smiting and doing very little DPS and no healing. I didnt see any numbers, but I kept going just in case it would show in the log. Also, Sindragosa Holy Words dont trigger Unchained Magic. So you can keep your Holy Word: Sanctuary on the ground while you have the debuff. And since Holy Word: Sanctuary also triggers Echo of Light, you can stack off of it. Void zone would not show up. It was mostly, Surprise! Death! [Talking about Halion here.] Just as I did with Kina, I asked Raegx about his gems. This resulted talking a fair bit about haste and the additional Renew tick you can get by stacking up a lot of haste. I havent talked about this yet, so Ive included it for you guys to read.

Before the patch, disc was gemmed for pure spellpower and Holy was max haste. Right now, when I play disc, Im maxed for holy and haste. I have 1/3 Darkness as holy, and that gets Renew 6 ticking at 970ish haste. I dropped haste, though (with the thought that if I was Renew spamming Id use Chakra to mitigate the GCD), and replaced it with intellect. However, due to mana concerns, I still need to spreadsheet out and see how viable gemming spirit is now. Ive thought about trying to mitigate mana issues with Veiled Shadows and dropping Twin Disciplines, but again, I havent had time to see how useful it would be. I will probably move points from Twin Disciplines to Mental Agility if spirit gemming is too costly.

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If you cant tell, Raegx is quite the theorycrafter, so Ill keep you guys posted if and when he does some of his theorycrafting on the matter above or something else that becomes topical. Id like you guys to see what he works with and get a nice diversity of theorycraft, since the theory Zusterke and I juggle will probably take different angles than Raegxs. There are a lot of different things healers can choose to prioritize, so I think the comparison will be good for you guys to see. More on that later.

Anyway, I think that covers just about everything from them. Disc priests might notice they didnt get a new rotation to work with, and thats because (as Raegx said) the playstyle hasnt changed. If you choose to incorporate a Smite or five in, you can, but you shouldnt need to. If you do want to use Smite though, the following targeting macro should help you out. Before a pull, just set your focus (target and type /focus) on a reliable DPS who doesnt have a special job that involves kiting or rounding up adds and the macro will take care of the rest. It will even return your target to whoever you were healing just before you decided to use Smite.

/target focustarget
/cast Smite
/targetlasttarget
Another thing I wanted to note, which I touched on briefly already with Kina, is that Surge of Light is pretty terrible right now for two reasons. 1) The percentage chance to proc the effect is quite low. 2) Unless youre a disc priest, you probably dont have much reason to cast Smite or Heal. That means holy priests who are big on using Flash Heal through the use of Surge of Light are out of luck for now. So what alternative do you have? Well, there is Chakra Renew spam if youre not opposed to it, or you can experiment with the Prayer of Healing Chakra rotations that Kina and Raegx both described. You may also just opt to cast Flash Heal without the instant effect, in which case all that haste you have stacked should help out. You could also try replacing your usage of Flash Heal with Heal, in preparation for the healing style youll be using in a couple months, but if you do that you shouldnt expect your meter numbers to be competitive since youll be healing more slowly for smaller amounts. You will be more prepared to the pacing of healing in Cataclysm though.

If you guys want some more input from me, Ill be in the comments to answer questions. If you have a question for Kina or Raegx, just address it to them in the comments and Ill direct them to the question. And as always, if you have anything to share to your fellow priests, I encourage you to share it in the comments as well. See you guys next week! Hearts and heals!