I know, I know…before you all have a cow that I’m not a Shadow priest anymore, hold off on that for a bit. With all due respect to Vorenis and the other priests that say I should stay Shadow until I max out my leveling or become a healbot, I want to make my reasoning clear.
I cannot find anywhere actuall numbers or examples of what someone can do specced one way or another when it comes to everyday playing. I have found some good resources of examples for doing damage and healing for Holy vs. Shadow specs, but never Discipline. Add to that, I don’t really care how much one spell or one heal will do. It’s gameplay that matters to me. What will get me to my end goal fastest or safest?
With this as my issue, I only had one option: doggone it, I’ve got to try it. This morning I went to Silithus to kill some Tormented Druids and Tormented Sentinels for the The Spirits of Southwind [55] quest. I was able to kill a single druid and his rescuing bug from the hive. The elves were 55-56 and the bugs were 57-58. By the time they were both down, I was at or below 46% mana and about 75% health because I battled it out instead of bubbling again.
I went back to Orgrimmar and respecced as I’ve shown below.
The result? I flew back to Silthus (I didn’t get much grinding done this morning) and went back to Southwind. I have to say right off that I’m really puzzed by my Power Word: Fortitude. The spell says it will increase stamina by 55, but it refuses to do so. I can even go to my spell book and click the maximum spell, to no avail. I started in to battling dead guys with these stats:
I was able to take down a druid, his bug, and then both either another druid or sentinel and his bug before drinking. I was usually around 65% mana after the first mob and his backup. Honestly, though, the playstyle is completely different, so I can see how many a Shadow priest swears by using Shadow. I really miss Mind Flay, but with my Spirit regen being better, a bigger mana pool, and some damage abilities, I will keep this spec for a level or two for research and publication purposes.
At one point I got into a sticky situation when I decided to Fear the bugs instead of fighting them. I aggroed a Sentinel and a scorpid. My mana regen was fast enough to bubble and heal and fear until I was safely away. I’m not sure that was a real good test because I wasn’t webbed or dazed, so meh, I’ll have to keep playing to see if I like it.
I’d really like to hear from any of you Discipline priests out there to see what your play style is now that the expansion came out. Did you go back to Shadow?
I just realized that if I bubble and Greater Heal, say when I’m leveling my weapon skills, I will completely recoup that mana cost by the time it is time to repeat. 600 mana should take about 12 seconds after I cast the last spell.
Sweet. Bubble and bandage: even better.
I tried Disc (with PI, Eye of the Beast, ZHC, and about +400 damage on gear, and was able to 2 shot something every 3 minutes)
The larger mana pool and more regeneration is nice but…I missed the passive healing from VE, it took much longer to kill most mobs. I found that pulling 1 mob every 9 sec with VT, VE, SW:P, wand keeps spirit tap up almost constantly, maximizes time in the 5 sec rule without hampering damage output, and is the most mana (and time) efficient method for grinding/questing. It doesnt require shielding, or healing (other than VE)
The ability to heal with a disc spec wasnt improved much over a shadow spec. I simply had more mana, which in most cases doesn’t cut it.
So being well geared for disc spec, I found it lacking. There is no such thing as sruvivability when you cant kill the things that are pounding on you. The improvement to healing wasn’t worth the loss of damage and soloability.
Shadow Spec will be fine until you want to run the Slave Pens instance (second boss requires some SERIOUS healing and damage mitigation by tank)
The best use of the discipline tree is to provide sustainability to either the Holy or Shadow trees.
At level 58 I would advise going to outlands and questing there. The rewards are MUCH better than anywhere else for that level (and you get more exp too)
Hope this was helpful ๐
Welcome, Doug. It’s always nice to see a new name around. I hope you are enjoying yourself here.
Thank you so much for the very clear write-up on Disc. That was exactly what I need. I had pretty much come to the conclusion to repec again tonight because this spec is only good for staying alive long enough to get back out of trouble.
I found myself needing to get too close to mobs to stay out of range of others, and really do miss MF. I’m not sure how you fight without a bubble, though, because every time I get hit with VE on and I’m MF’ing, the hit interrupts my channel cast. Do you just wand the whole time, because my wand is only 5o-something dps?