Penance Priest

Discipline Priest Blog

I first met Matron on the Plusheal forums. I believe it was in a heated debate about the viability of Greater Heal for tank-healing discipline priests. I was only a provocateur, but he was debating with gusto against some staunchly anti-GH forces, and doing it calmly, articulately, and convincingly. I was impressed, and continued to pay attention to his posts on that site. After I posted my article on stats for tank healers, he PM’d me, asking if he could quote my blog in his rebuttal, to be posted in an undisclosed location, perhaps public and perhaps not. This made me both eager for dialogue and nervous as hell.  When he failed to make good, I took it upon myself to write the article I suspected he wanted to write himself, on intellect for disc priests.

So, the inaugural entry in this Q&A series belongs to Matron. He’s not only a world-class discipline priest, but he is the guild leader of Ladies of Destiny, an endgame progression guild on Scarlet Crusade. He is also one of the authors of the new LoDBlog, which offers an endgame perspective on current raid and class mechanics.

 

PP: How long have you been raiding?

Matron: I’ve been raiding with LoD since summer 2005. We started in ZG, which served as a great introductory raid. I’ve raided seriously as almost every spec imaginable, even holy dps in Vanilla WoW.

PP: What level of content are you at now? Do you normally raid at the edge of progression? How many hours per week do you raid?

Matron: We’ve cleared ToGC 25 man, so we’re focusing on clearing with 50 attempts left and waiting on ICC. LoD didn’t start as a progression, or even raiding, guild but over the course of time we’ve built ourselves into an endgame progression guild. We’re not competing for World Firsts or anything like that, but we’re consistently raiding the most difficult content that the game has to offer. We’re scheduled for 4 nights of raiding, 16 hours total, but with the new limits on attempts being introduced and the general lack of new content it becomes a challenge to fill those hours. One thing we've started to do is to run two regular ToC 25 runs each week, splitting mains between the two runs, for more chances at weapon/trinkets so that everyone can be in BiS for ICC.

PP: Do you lead raids? How does that affect your healing during a raid?

Matron: Yes I’m the raid and guild leader of LoD, leading our 25 man raids. I’d like to say that leading doesn’t hurt my personal healing, but it certainly does. Any time you have to concentrate on anything but your main role in an encounter it’s going to hurt your performance. Directing the action and pushing your personal performance will always be in conflict.

On the other hand leading a raid does force you to pay attention to everything, meaning that you know when and where everyone will be at all times. This greatly helps anticipatory healing, which is the major strength of the disc spec. Because I’m the person that tells people to go into the Yogg brain room I know exactly which ten people to make sure have PWS on them at those times. This raid awareness extends to runs that I’m not leading, such as some of our 10 man endeavors or even PuGs. In those runs, without having to lead, I’m able to really push my performance, in part because of my experience leading other raids.

It’s a mixed bag really.

PP: Name some of your favorite fights to heal. They don’t have to be from current content.

Matron: Chromaggus – The 2nd to last boss in BWL. I found healing in Vanilla WoW a lot more interesting because of down ranking. All of your spells were similar in effect, single target heals, but varied in mana cost and amount healed. I had 7 single target heals on my bar (2 ranks of Flash Heals, 2 Heals, 3 Greater Heals). Chromaggus was a looong encounter, on the verge of 10 minutes, and he had so many abilities that you couldn’t settle into simply spamming one size heal. There were enrages, frenzies, and breathes that forced you to ramp up your healing at various times. However you had to find a balance where you would be able to keep the tank alive, but also maintain mana over a long encounter. I really enjoyed a straight stand still fight where mana management, heal selection, heal canceling and oo5sr regen were the important components. Now most fights are one flavor or another of “don’t stand in fire” and all the heals are “one rank fits all.”

PP: Your favorite raid?

Matron: My favorite instance of all time was ZG. Back in the early days of WoW, guilds weren’t as organized with recruiting or set schedules. We’d just have people online each night and everyone was really excited to work together on this new instance. Because it was everyone’s first raid we all learned the game and our classes together. ZG had some interesting boss mechanics and an awesome jungle/troll atmosphere. I remember every first kill in ZG feeling like a holiday. I wonder if people have the same “first raid” feeling, now with Naxx or Ulduar completely changing the way they look at the game. ZG and the people I met when I first starting raiding, are probably most responsible for my love of WoW.

PP: Your meta gem. Have you tried others?

Matron: I’m currently using ESD, but, I actually think IED is a lot stronger choice for a meta gem. At the time I socketed +25 SP / +2% intellect I was using dual intellect trinkets and really wanted to see how high I could push my mana. When I upgrade to my next helm (the 258 T9) I’ll go back to 21 int and mana regen.

PP: Do you change glyphs for certain fights? Do you change gear?

Matron: I haven’t changed glyphs in a long while. Disc choices are very limited. I change gear more for HP reasons than any other. For heroic Twins + Faction Champions I sometimes equip some extra stamina gear to give myself wiggle room; when attempting to clear with 50 attempts left in ToGC any death is a bad death.

Swapping gear when speccing holy or disc works sometimes, but only if you have two pieces which are equal ilvl and very specific for each spec. In ToC there really isn’t a huge selection of gear, so often times your ToC gear is BiS for both specs. There are only a few slots where you can drop spirit to pick up a second throughput (crit/haste) or disc friendly stat, gloves off Anub > T9 gloves for example.

PP: Renew? Greater Heal?

Matron: Renew when I’m tank healing, though it’s hardly a priority.

Greater Heal, hell yes! People like to think that flash heal has destroyed GH’s viability. Nothing is further from the truth. GH, when specced for it (which I am), is more HPS and better HPM than FH. I think it’s a HUGE mistake for priests to ignore the GH talents if you’re attempting hard modes. Algalon, Anub, Thorim, Council, and I can only assume a few ICC encounters have very hard hitting tank damage. People like to say that FH is just so much faster and easier to use, but GH gets hasted down with borrowed time to a very reasonable cast time, sub 1.8s. A lot of spells make you choose between HPS and HPM, GH beats FH in both. I could do paragraphs on greater heal…

PP: Do you heal as holy, or full-time discipline?

Matron: I used to swap back and forth per encounter, back before I realized that disc was such a valuable raid healing/absorption spec. Now I’d only switch if another disc priest was in the raid and we were bumping WS debuffs too much.

Discipline is such a strong raid healing spec, every raid’s first priest should be disc.

PP: How do you evaluate a new discipline priest?

Matron: Healers are always tough to judge, because your output is dependent on your raid group. A DPSer will do the same dps in one raid as another, but a healer in a bad group is going to look a lot better than a healer in a good group. Until you’re healing against the people you’re trying out with, meters and logs don’t mean much (though you should be topping your guild's meters before you apply elsewhere).

Disc is especially difficult to evaluate, because the effectiveness of each disc priest is reduced when another disc priest is added to the raid. So having two disc priests joust for PWS applications doesn’t really show you the maximum output of either one. Basically, if I were recruiting a disc priest, I’d let them be the only disc priest and I’d check to see that they were beating the other healers in HPS (counting shields). I know that no meter shows shields exactly, but you can get a good idea from them. A disc priest SHOULD be competitive in combined HPS with other healers.

PP: Do you do all of your own theorycrafting? If so, where (if anywhere) do you share it? And where else do you look for good information or suggestions?

Matron: I suppose you could say I do most of my own theorycrafting, most of it is simple math that any high school student could do. Obviously I’m often helped when people share experiences or new findings. But a lot of experiments you can do on your own. EJ is the most valuable resource, and has been for some time, but that’s not really easy reading for most people. Since the summer I’ve been trying to right some misconceptions on the plusheal forums, having long arguments about the value of meters, HPS, and GH. Most of my recent theorycraft comes from those discussions.

PP: Overall, what is your experience of the discipline priest community?

Matron: Well, I think that you have all types within the community. I’ll say that I have been surprised by a few things, most notably how many people have limited experience or success with raiding yet still preach their methods as gospel. To me, that’s a dangerous situation. Someone asking a question might not know which person to listen to and if the “bad ideas” get repeated often enough people start to believe them.

Phrases such as “GH is too slow,” “The extra healing from GH compared to FH isn’t needed,” “Disc priests are for single target healing,” “If you never go oom then it’s time to stack SP” are all easy for starting players to latch on to and accept as “truths.” But they hurt their development as players and probably doom them to a certain level of raiding for the rest of their careers.

This isn’t the new player’s fault, it’s difficult to navigate the jungle of advice and pick out the pearls of wisdom.

Sometimes those pearls are a little too complex for a newer player and they need an easier to digest message, with accurate information. Even though a lot of the bloggers/posters in the community might not have the experience, I think many do a good job of finding that good advice and presenting it in a “noob-friendly” manner.

I’d think the ultimate goal would be a platform where smart, accurate information was presented in a way everyone could understand. I’m not sure we’re quite there yet, but I see people working towards that. That’s one of the main reasons we’ve launched LoDBlog.

My ultimate pet-peeve is the person that uses the excuse, “Well my way works fine for the content I’m doing.” That may be true, but I think the majority of people searching for this information want to be the best they can be and not just “good enough.” This person effectively wants to put an end to the discussion for no other reason than sheer laziness.

PP: And from left field…You’re stranded on a desert island with an undead rogue you’ve never met. Fight to the death, or partner up despite the communication barrier?

Matron: They’re a rogue! Screw the communication barrier, if you think that’d be my biggest problem with him then you’ve never pvped as a priest! I’d kill a human rogue too! Well… unless there was a desert island 2v2 bracket, then maybe we’d talk.

PP: Thank you very much for taking the time!

(18) Comments

  1. 11/24/2009 11:25 AM Robert

    Hey Matron mentions using a meter to gauge healing throughput even as a discipline priest. Peronsally i'd always assumed that shields couldn't be recorded by recount like addons and just did my best to ignore the fact that i was down the bottom of HPS (which, being a hunter in a previous life, was abit like pretending i could breath water).

    Could you let me in on owhat addon will allow me to see HPS inclusive of absorbtion? I guess recount might do it but I've no idea how to configure it as such. Also, will it show divine aegis absorbs or just pw:s?

    Any help would be appreciated as i'd like some more concrete idea of how i'm performing other than 'my target didnt die' :D

    Thanks :)

    Rob

     
    11/24/2009 1:03 PM Avalonna

    There is an actual plug in for Absorbs for recount, although it's more of an estimate. If you run WoL you can view that as well.

    Love Matron's posts...although I still subscribe to the FH over GH club for our makeup, I totally agree it's viable. I would love to nerd out and have a math discussion on this, if you have time...I've actually been working on a future blog post on this exact subject.

    avalonna
    www.talesofapriest.com
    twitter: That_ghoul_ava

     
    11/24/2009 6:33 PM Nymarie

    I absolutely love the defending Greater Heal. <3 I'm not the only one!

    However, I'd like to know what on earth meter Matron is using for absorbs. Even Blizz says that the meters aren't accurate...

     
    11/24/2009 6:35 PM Nymarie

    Actually I disagree with everything he said about meters. Topping your guild's meters? Somebody has to be at the bottom. HPS meters are absolutely worthless, even those that include absorbs. Assignments, different fights and different classes/specs are going to be ending up differently on the meters. For instance, for Anub 25 I'm usually on top. For Beasts 25, I'm somewhere near the bottom, above the paladins. (This is including my absorbs, of course.)

     
    11/26/2009 1:22 PM Unknown

    The meters are valuable if you understand how they're inaccurate. The inaccuracies stem from the combat log not distinguishing who was responsible for applying the shield when damage is absorbed. But if only one person is applying shields then the meters can be quite accurate. That's one reason, aside from bumping into each other's weakened soul debuffs, that I'd let someone try out as the only disc priest in a raid.

     
    11/27/2009 12:24 PM Nymarie

    I would never use a healing meter to compare healers. That's all I was saying.

     
    11/30/2009 11:30 AM Christian

    @ Nym - remember, though, that meters provide a lot more information than just the total HPS of each healer. Sure, trying to compare a tank-healing pally to a raid-healing Holy Priest on something like Auriyana is stupid. But meters are useful to compare similar healers in similar roles, or as a way to answer specific questions. You can't just disavow Recount cart blanche.

    @ Paolo & Matron -

    Thanks for posting this interview. I liked the question selection. Just found the blog, so let me apologize for the comment thread necromancy.

     
    11/30/2009 12:45 PM Nymarie

    Oh my goodness. I use meters all the time! /sigh
    I agree with you Christian. Did you not read my argument? You can't compare healers to each other using just an HPS meter. Ever. You have to use all the meters and then take into account which boss your own and what your healers' assignments are.

     
    11/30/2009 1:04 PM MelMelBabes

    Question for Matron.

    As a Disc Priest, why so much Hit? I looked at you gear, Drool! but you carry a lot of hit. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on this.

    Thanks to you and Paolo for keeping it real and keeping all of us informed.

     
    12/01/2009 12:05 AM Unknown

    Hit? I don't run any hit in pve gear.

    Was I logged out in pvp gear/spec?

    Back to the meter topic, the question/answer was about how I would judge another disc priest if they were trying out. In a raid healing role it's fair to compare raid healers against each other.

    If a disc priest is doing half the HPS that a druid is while raid healing, yes disc and resto are two different specs, wouldn't taking two resto druids make more sense in that situation? And if the disc priest continually loses over many fights to those same healers then it certainly isn't going to be worth taking a 'token' disc priest putting out half the HPS.

    If a raid healer isn't able to compete in terms of HPS with other raid healers then you probably have better options available.

     
    12/01/2009 2:09 PM Nymarie

    I'm shocked. Downright shocked. I'm sorry Paolo, but I highly disagree with your friend here. I deleted my blog because I didn't know what else to say. I just don't know how to respond. Unless you're the type of Disc priest who keeps every single raider bubbled, I don't see how you can top the meters on every single fight. I personally don't. Either I fail or my fellow healers also know what they're doing.

    I'm tired, I'm disgusted with this, and I'm sick of stupid meter readers and shield spammers. I'm done with this same argument that I've had since I started getting into raiding.

     
    12/01/2009 2:21 PM Nymarie

    I take my last statement back. I've NEVER heard this before. This is the basic argument I've had forever, that meters are crap. But Disc priests always topping meters? Never heard that before.

     
    12/01/2009 2:36 PM Nymarie

    Matron, on what healing meters are you seeing yourself on top of? You told me that a good Disc priest should be on top of the meters every single fight. I just looked up your guild on World of Logs and hun...you're fifth on Anub. So tell me, what meters are you looking at?

     
    12/01/2009 3:04 PM Paolo

    Lol ok ok!

    I'm not going to step in to stop this, or to peacemake or anything. But just to remind everyone, the question was "how do you evaluate a disc priest?" Many disc priests hate the notion of being evaluated. Like, *really* hate it. However, in my opinion, the best person to evaluate a disc priest is another disc priest. And when you're doing hard content that requires at least some degree of min/max-ing, and requires some minimum contribution from each raid member, then evaluation of some sort is absolutely necessary. There are a *thousand* caveats surrounding this of course (i.e., you can't just look for the highest HPS and call it a day), but that doesn't negate the need (or the ability) to evaluate disc priests.

    Also, and I claim no objectivity in the matter (or maybe I do) -- I thought there were quite a few more interesting things happening in the interview than the ever-controversial metering issue!

     
    12/01/2009 3:24 PM Nymarie

    I agree with you Paolo. I was just genuinely shocked by this priest saying over and over that no one should be a Disc priest on the meters, when every bit of data I've seen says otherwise.

    There are ways to judge healers. Hell, there are even ways to judge healers with meters. But pure HPS isn't one of them.

     
    12/01/2009 3:24 PM Nymarie

    beat* a Disc priest.
    Typos ftl.

     
    12/01/2009 11:37 PM Unknown

    I'm really disappointed.

    I saw your blog post, which I felt was a little unfair because you pulled a few sentences out of an interview which covered many topics and created a straw man to beat down. If you had contacted me first I could have clarified my points.

    I did clarify a number of my points in the comments of your blog, but you deleted that post and those comments! Which is fine and all, but then coming back here and starting the conversation over again after deleting everything I'd written on your blog (which was easily more words than this entire interview), is a little disingenuous.

    Anub is a special encounter with very specific healing requirements in P3, so comparing straight HPS in that fight certainly isn't practical. But there are many fights where Disc Priests should be HPS titans.

    In one of the comments that you erased I did a quick comparison between your guild's Twins kill and my guild's Twins kill, specifically how we each did as disc priests. That's the type of comparison which I'd do when judging a new disc priest in our raid.

    Shield spamming achieves the max HPS for a disc priest these days on many encounters, it should definitely be one tool in a priest's arsenal.

    Anyway, I'm not going to waste too many more words. Like I said, I wrote quite a bit on your blog which you chose to delete =)

     
    12/02/2009 1:31 PM Nymarie

    Okay Paolo, I get it.
    No more comments from me.

     

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