[Accepted] Velcio, Holy/Discipline Priest

Personal
Name(optional): Juho
Age: 21

In-game name: Velcio
Class and spec: Priest – Holy ( http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZfEzcbMqqhhcuAo:0Ndz0V ) or Discipline ( http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuhhVRIsffRt0xtc:mAb0Vz ) (Note the glyphs)
Armory link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Draenor&n=Velcio

What framerate do you generally play at in 25 man raids? Is your PC and internet connection reliable? What's your average latency to the game servers during evenings?

My framerate depends widely on the encounter, but I'm getting 20'ish FPS at worst, and around 40 at best in WOTLK 25-man encounters. At any rate I'm running with Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, ATI Radeon 4870 512 MB coupled with 4 GB of ram, so my hardware performance shouldn't be crippling at all. If it gets there, I can always lower my graphical settings. My connection is fairly reliable – I don't remember getting a disconnection from the game servers within a month or so. My average latency is around 90 – 60 ms, with the common registry fix applied.

Why are you applying to Bloodpack?

I was browsing around 10 pages (10 pages because after that the posts tend to get so old they lose relevance) worth of recruitment posts on Worldofraids.com EN-Alliance and EN-Horde forums. Your schedule teamed with great progress seemed to fit my interests the best of all the recruitment posts I could find.

Have you played with anyone in Bloodpack before, who might vouch for you?

As you surely realize, I can't say I know any of you due to the answer on the previous question

What is your current guild and why are you planning to leave?

I cross-realmed away from my original realm Argent Dawn where I did fairly casual 10-mans with an all-Finnish guild ”Angry Moose” into Draenor where I applied to ”epeen” (Yes, horrible name, I know). At any rate, while we've been fairly succesful in 10-man hardmodes – Server second Algalon down, a week or two after 3.2 launch (There were no downs before 3.2, Draenor isn't exactly stellar). 25-man progress isn't what it should be. Lackluster performance in Ulduar hardmodes, Yogg-Saron down that took longer than it should have, not a single boss downed in heroic 25-man TOTC is something that gets to you in a longer run. While the explanation is that we lack a third geared tank – We have lacked one for around a month now, why has no work been done to gear a plate-wearer within this time? While the GM of epeen puts a lot of his time to the guild and I respect him for that, the guild is sadly not something it even used to be during the downing of normal-mode Ulduar fights in terms of the people in the active raiding roster and progress as well. At any rate I'm not a guild-hopper, I've stayed in epeen for a long while now, and I've given the guild chance after chance to improve. To be clear, I /gquit'd last evening, partly to get myself off my bottom and finally apply somewhere. I had been social for quite a while, so it wasn't a large step to take. Should you want more details why I'm leaving, I'm willing to privately discuss them – I'd rather not drag this part of the application futher


What previous guilds have you been in?

Worthwhile mentions:
Argent Dawn:
The Chosen with whom I did T5 and start of T6 content with
Bloodfire Legacy with whom I did T6 content apart from Archimonde with, clearing Black Temple up to The Council before the 3.0 nerfbat hit.
Angry Moose, a 10-man guild with whom I started WOTLK with, cleared all of the T7 content with apart from the OS 3 drakes.

Draenor:
epeen, my last guild.

If this is a cross-realm application, should you be accepted for trial, how soon can you transfer here?

I have no cooldown remaining at this time. I'm slightly low on gold at the moment. (I've been a social member of my current guild for a good while now, only attending raids that lack members) so I haven't had the drive to farm gold as of late. This shouldn't prove as a problem though, getting gold in the current expansion is cake.

Do you currently have any pending application with any other guild? If yes, who with?

No, dear God, no o_O

Do you have any high level alt characters? Have you raided with them before?

I have no raid experience with any of my ”high-level” alts.
My mage on Alliance side Argent Dawn, level 77.
A priest on horde side Draenor, 60...or 61, who cares?
A paladin on horde side Draenor, 60, on another account. I dual-boxed a priest and a paladin to 60 with the Reruit-A-Friend service.

What interests and hobbies do you have outside of the game?

At the moment I'm thinking what the heck to study in university – Keep trying to pass the admissions for law studies or attempt biology or English linguistics. I got into IT last year, but unfortunately it put me off pretty fast.

I keep myself in a working condition with running a couple of times a week and what-not. I love badminton, but due to lack of proper mates to play it with I haven't had the chance to play it as of late. I also have a strange interest towards internal and foreign politics. Oh, and while I tend not to read a lot, when I have the time, I'll pick up Terry Pratchett.

And probably like many others playing WoW, newest technology, games in general interest me greatly.


Raiding

What is your past raiding experience in the game to date? Please only include content that you cleared at the appropriate level cap - we're not interested if you cleared AQ 40 last week.

Classic:
Molten Core -
Onyxia -
Blackwing Lair -
Ahn'Qiraj -

The Burning Crusade:
Karazhan, Zul'Aman, Gruul's Lair & Magtheridon - Cleared
Serpentshrine Cavern & The Eye – Everything but Kael'thas cleared before 3.0 from what I can recall.
Mount Hyjal, Black Temple & Sunwell – Everything but Illidan, Archimonde & Sunwell cleared before 3.0. (Damn you Archimonde, you forced me into farming that stupid PvP trinket and get my first HK – This was before the current Human racial. I was proud for my 0 Hks!!). I didn't step into Sunwell because in all honesty, it felt almost like a sacrilege to step into that content with a guild that didn't manage to down Illidan before the 3.0 nerf. I felt the content wouldn't feel as it should with the 30% nerf.

Wrath of the Lich King (excluding commonly pugged content):

Naxxramas 25 - Cleared
Malygos 25 – Cleared, allbeit only in 3.1 because I wasn't in a 25-man guild before Ulduar.
Ulduar 10 – Cleared, all hardmodes but Yogg +2/+1 keepers down, Algalon down, got the drake as well.
Ulduar 25 – Cleared, FL, XT hardmodes before 3.2, Thorim, Hodir hardmodes after 3.2
ToC 10 normal - Cleared
ToGC 10 heroic - All but Anub'arak
ToC 25 normal – Cleared
ToGC 25 heroic -

Please list any achievements from a raid environment that you have and feel we should know about.
Glory of the Ulduar Raider before 3.2 hit
Observed just after 3.2 hit

Are you available to make our raid times? If there is a night when you can attend some times a month, but not always, please state so.
Thursday = 19:30-22:30 [Y]
Friday = 19:30-23:30 [Y]
Sunday = 19:30-22:30 [Y]
Monday = 19:30-22:30 [Y]
Tuesday = 19:30-22:30 [Y]

At the moment I should be able to attend every and each raid. Potential future studies might change it, but I imagine that no matter what happens, I should be able to attend every Friday and Sunday raids – apart from rare important real-life matters that might pop up at times. At any rate, guild's schedule is one of the most important factors when I'm choosing a guild, and your fairly surprisingly late start considering your early end should allow me to attend pretty much every raid. 23:00 is the absolute maximum for me on weekdays due to my late timezone. If I need to wake up early for uni or what-not, 23:00 which is midnight in my local time is pretty much the pain limit.

Do you use these following addons?
Deadly Boss Mods / Bigwigs - Yes
Omen – Yes. Allthough apart from casting Pain Suppression I don't see the point in clogging a healer's UI.
DoTimer or some other sort of spelltimers - Classtimer, mostly active for Shadow-priesting when I do it. I use Coolline for cooldown tracking.
Grid - Obviously.
Any other addons which you feel should be mentioned? Clique for click-casting, BindPad which I use to setup my other mouseover macros for keyboard keys.

If possible, please try to provide a screenshot of your UI in a raiding setting. If you aren't able to get one from inside a raid, a screenshot of it from a battleground will suffice.

https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img29/9851/currentuiraid.jpg

In all honesty, it's just an addon compilation (The only one I've ever used) customized for my own needs. I'm perfectly capable of setting up my addons how I want them to be, but when someone sets up their addons in a layout you follow yourself with better aesthetics with low memory usage... Yeah. The original one can be found here: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13968-BeneaUI.html

I use mouseover macros/Clique for all my healing spells, and I track their CD's via the cooldown tracker, so I don't have any visible on my bars. My second bar is hidden because I've memorized it and I appreciate a clean UI. I naturally track PW:S and Weakened Soul, my own renew and a number of other things like missing buffs with Grid.

With blizzard adding optional "hard-modes" to future encounters, we're intending to beat the more difficult version of each fight, not just the basic version. Are you prepared to spend the time re-learning encounters to beat them in their hardest incarnations?

Yes I am. Hardmodes is where the raiding is at these days. I love the challenge and the thrill of downing an actually difficult fight.

Are you prepared to sit out if an encounter requires a certain raid composition for which you are not ideal?

Naturally. I don't mind a break at times, and can use the time for dailies and what-not till' the raid ends to make sure I'm not needed till' the end.

How do you fill your playing time when not raiding?

Dailies, doing the heroic daily quest, doing the odd PUG'd raid that's not in my guild's active raiding content

Raiding's not cheap. Flasks, potions, buff food, and of course repairs all cost money and time, and so does keeping your gear gemmed and chanted properly. Are you able to support your raiding expenses? What consumables do you typically use?

I've always been able to support my consumable usage. Getting gold for a raid night's consumables and repairs, even if you only had 10 g to start with that day, isn't at all impossible with the amount of gold you can acquire via dailies within the course of a day. My consumable usage is:

- Flask of Distilled Wisdom (According to Rawr simulations and theorycrafting on EJ, it still trumps Flask of Pure Mojo for regeneration. The added crit isn't bad, either).
- Flask of The Frost Wyrm when mana is a non-issue.
- Your usual Stamina/SP food
- In the future, glyphs. Holy Nova might be useful for some fights. Might need Flash Heal to replace some other glyph, or switch back to it on discipline. Swapping something to renew glyph is possible as well. Others would include Guardian Spirit/PoH/PW:S glyphs, etc. There is no reason not to have a number of glyphs in your inventory for serious raiding if one glyph is more useful than another for a certain fight.


Why have you chosen your particular spec/class? How familiar are you with your class' other specs? Would you be willing to respec if the raid required it? Do you have dual-spec?

I chose a priest originally because I saw it as a class, that what no matter happened, should remain as a class that's worth bringing into a raid for the healing provided. Now with two viable PvE healing specializations available, I don't regret this decision the slightest. My both speccs are fairly cookie-cutter. Discipline more-so. (Small number of truly competitive specializations for raiding)

I'd say I'm equally knowledgeable with both Holy and Discipline. I keep a working knowledge of the Shadow specc – Allthough at this moment, I don't see it being worth it, apart from bringing the hit buff for the raid. Maximising shadow damage output on fights such as Anub'arak isn't an easy task – Keeping DOTs up on three targets, while keeping a proper priority with your spells to attain maximum DPS. That being said, all the hard work Shadow priest can put into his DPS is easily outmatched by pretty much every class and specc with similar or less work. At any rate, I keep both Holy and Discipline on dual-specc because the viability of both speccs depend a lot on the content you're doing and the raid composition that you have.

Many people simplify Holy and Discipline for AoE and single-target healing, while this is pretty far from the truth these days. Holy is usually better choice for AoE healing when you have an abundance of single-target healers available and could use one more AoE healer. Allthough even this isn't quite that clear-cut to be honest, sometimes the shields discipline provides may trump over the AoE healing holy can deliver for reasons like giving the other AoE healers breathing space and what-not on bursty moments or single targets taking more damage than others, or the fight having a number of mechanics that can burst down unlucky squishies (Freya hardmode for example). Tools such as Circle of Healing allow the topping of several targets in a short time from dangerously low HP to figures where druid HOTs and other healing can bring them back to their full HP. A holy priest these days usually relies on Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing where appropriate. Divine Hymn coupled with Inner Focus (+ Borrowed Time from PW:S if you're discipline) is a great tool for emergencies and situations where a lot of HPS needs to be done over the entire raid within a short time. Flash Heal and Greater Heal are losing their importance, and TOTC sees a great usage for Renew as well (Anub'arak, Twins). Generally speccing into Empowered Healing isn't worth these days due to the decreased use of Flash and Greater Heal, instead picking up talents like Blessed Resilience, Test of Faith play to the strengths of Holy.

What is the general gearing strategy you follow for your class? Please be as specific as possible.

I gem Intellect for regen. If a socket bonus on a blue socket is worth it, I'll gem spellpower/mp5, because the mp5 benefits decently both Discipline and Holy. For discipline spirit would see lower benefit due to the lack of talents that use the stat. I never gem full spirit or MP5 gems – It just doesn't bring as much bang for buck as the alternatives. For throughput, I gem full spellpower; It's simply the best stat for throughput both for Holy and Discipline. Depending on how I feel current content I may start switching gems into more throughput oriented setup. At the moment I should be fairly well balanced, but if/when I start getting more decent TOTC gear I might have to switch into more aggressive throughput gemming if I find myself running with a considerable amount of unused mana at an end of a fight. On the other side, if I notice myself OOM'ing in hardmodes, I might end up switching to more regen-oriented setup.

At any rate:
Blue sockets: SP/MP5 if the socket bonus is worth it, otherwise full SP
Red sockets: SP or SP/Int
Yellow Sockets SP/Int, otherwise full SP. Sometimes Intellect.

For the meta socket, Insightful is the best choice till' I'd gem and enchant full throughput. It's worth more regen gems/enchants than any throughput oriented meta gem is worth throughput gems. More bang for the buck, simply put.
I understand that my current armory might conflict with some of my principles slightly, but it's a good balance for the moment.

While Discipline and Holy aren't worlds apart in gearing, Discipline does have a haste soft-cap which is extremely low with raid buffs. The soft-cap is obviously the time it takes to reach 1 second Global Cooldown with Borrowed Time active. After this, shield spamming does not benefit from haste at all. That being said, with how the gear is, I end up trading spirit for haste. That, with the fact that I've been social in my guild and unable to construct an optimal set puts me to high haste even with my optimal discipline gear. Haste isn't easy to avoid. It's often a question of choosing between items like:
Merlin's Robe : http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47604 vs
Royal Moonshroud Robe: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47606
Similarly, if I were given the choice between the ”Holy” and ”Shadow” versions of the Priest headpiece from Onyxia 25-man, I'd choose the ”Shadow” one because you're trading spirit for haste.

And with both holy and discipline, unless you're having mana issues, the haste trumps over spirit, even with holy's talents that make spirit into a more worthwhile stat.

Earlier I mentioned the discipline soft haste cap. While it exists, haste isn't useless for Discipline for other scenarios than PW:S spamming. In tank healing it's definitely a worthwhile stat, not to mention even Borrowed Time hasted Penance, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Healing still benefit from haste. The soft haste cap just means that once you're OK mana-wise, the best way of gemming is to go for full spellpower.


Please give a brief description of how you go about doing your job in a raid. What's your DPS cycle/priority system if you're a DPS? What spells do you use in what situations as a healer? How do you go about maximising threat whilst minimising incoming damage, as a tank? What more is there to tanking than those two aspects? Use a particular boss fight as an example if it will make it easier to talk about.

For holy, Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending are the most important tools in the priest's arsenal. Prayer of Mending is simply crazy efficient spell in any fight where there's AoE damage thrown around, casting it on every cooldown is pretty much a no-brainer. Circle of Healing can be used on cooldown if the damage is large enough and consistent enough to warrant that, or to be used for situations where a sizable amount of the raid takes considerable AoE damage. (Gormok hardmode, Staggering Stomp on the melee for example) Allthough granted, a well-timed Prayer of Healing usually works for this as well if the melee is on the same group. While Flash Heal and Greater Heal are losing the frequency of their use, they're still important spells in the priest arsenal to top up single targets that are on low HP, and assist on tank healing when necessary. Renew is a great tool for Twins, where the usage of Prayer of Healing would usually result into massive overhealing. Depending how rigorous healing assignments are though, PoH could work in this situation as well. Holy can also provide a great amount of raid healing by using PoH consistently on certain fights, but it's rather taxing for mana.

Discipline is about preventing damage. Learning the damage pattern of the fight is great benefit for a discipline priest. Like on the Gormok example, you could pre-shield the melee in time, to prevent near instagibs if someone on the melee had a snobold on him, and there's always the chance of the fire debuff hitting/being on one of the melee. Just as Gormok would cast his melee AoE damage, it would be clever to pre-shield the tank to prevent him from going too low and thus having a lower chance of getting killed by following melee hits. Same applies for every single boss ability that puts considerable burst damage on a tank, like breaths and so forth. Hardmode Anub'Arak is something discipline should shine at as well; shielding fairly low HP targets works well in this fight due to the mechanics of the fight. Discipline can do a respectable amount of ”raid healing”, as the approximations of World of Logs and addon modules such as ”RecountGuessedAbsorps” ( http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/recountguessedabsorbs.aspx ) show. I use these tools to evaluate my performance when necessary as a discipline priest. That being said, discipline's strength isn't the amount of damage he can stop from happening. It's the fact you have a shield that absorps...What, 8k damage these days? Instantly castable on a raid member that's in danger of dying. It's how discipline can make some raid damage bursts more controllable by using pre-shielding wisely (And potentially ”abusing” the fact that if shields drop at the same time, they all will return mana by the talent Rapture that has a 12-second cooldown). Discipline can't bring the same nuking heals a paladin can however, and can only give considerable healing to one tank at a time, not least due to the fact how Grace works. If I had to watch the health of two tanks that keep taking damage and have other healers on them though, I'd keep the Weakened Soul debuff on one, constantly keeping him up with flash heals, and Penance when necessary, and keep the Weakened Soul debuff *off* the other tank so I could shield him should I see his HP reach dangerously low numbers. Discipline priests work best when paired with paladins, druids, or heck – even shamans on fights such as Algalon. Depending on the fight discipline might not be spamming flash heals on the tank to keep potential Divine Aegis on the tank, but instead pre-shielding the raid to help raid healers and have a hasted Penance and or shield waiting for that crucial time tank takes burst damage. Greater Heal is still of use to Discipline, and I still spec into Divine Fury to take time off its cast. Usually I use it on a tank when it's hasted by BT and the tank needs more healing and can can afford the slightly lower cast time of Greater Heal than Flash Heal. I may consider swapping it for Blessed Resilience if I deem it worthwhile and my Greater Heal usage is low.


Do you use external resources (such as 3rd party forums, spreadsheets, simulations) to research your class and spec? Give examples, links, and commentary if so.

Elitist Jerks. I check the Priest discussion on a daily basis.
I also take a look at shadowpriest.com when I need to check up something or update my knowledge on shadow. EJ's shadow discussion is unfortunately quite lacking compared to Holy/Disc discussion, so it's worthwhile to keep yourself updated on the discussion on shadowpriest.com as well.

I use Rawr to plan gear upgrades, and to see whether a certain kind of gems brings more to the table in certain situations (Spellpower + Spirit vs. Spellpower + MP5, for example).

At the moment I've noticed some discussion on the concern that discipline doesn't scale hugely well, and might have issues on tank healing (Especially considering the nukes paladin can put out). While Penance and PW:S are great tools and great burst healing, and tank healing is rarely about pure potential HPS you can put out in a long time, I understand this concern. Depending how ”bad” this might get, a holy priest with the right talents and glyphs might not be something to sneeze at for certain kind of damage in a tank healing (Thinking Anub'arak here). In Ulduar this wasn't viable due to how holy runs oom rather fast by spamming Flash Heal and Greater Heal, but with TOTC gear levels it might prove viable. This is the very reason I'm running a rather odd holy specc on my armoury at the moment – We already had one discipline priest in the raid, only one paladin, and couldn't really afford to lose AoE healing either for Beasts hardmode. So I thought I might as well give it a try and see how it works out. I've no idea what to think about it yet, but guaranteed large hitting flash heals and greater heals aren't too iffy at all. It's not something to replace a holy paladin at tank healing at all, though.

What professions have you chosen on your raiding character? How do they benefit you in raids?

Tailoring and Enchanting. Tailoring for the cloak embroideries. (One might claim the mana regen one would be more useful for a healer, but the proc with SP increase is nothing to sneeze at even as a healer). Enchanting for the ring enchants. I'm probably not changing professions seeing how Blizzard's policy is these days to minimize differences between them, and I enjoy both professions pretty much. I realize that my tailoring is 447 (not maxed out). This is because I don't have much interest in learning the newest patterns because they're BoE (can acquire the gear anyhow), and all the profession based benefits tailoring grants don't require fully leveled tailoring. Not to mention the costs associated with leveling it to the max. If they introduce a benefit that requires maximum level of tailoring, I'll start gathering gold/materials with...er... ape rage!

Please provide a recent combat log parse (e.g. WWS, WMO, WoL) of your character in a raid environment if you have access to one.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/s5sWzdA2WNImBplz/sum/healingDone/
Only decently new log that I participate in apart from the horrible attempts of Northrend Beasts yesterday. (You can access it as well if needed, the report should have links to all the guild's logs)
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/4IFy9VZKXl8oBDhc/
A bit older TOTC log, could be deleted by any moment though.

Please don't judge the performance of discipline priests by the one that's visible in the first log. Also, please don't judge my performance according to raw healing done solely, as role and assignment may vary wildly. Allthough I imagine you understand this. A good healer doesn't necessarily top the meters from my experience.

Any additional things you'd like to add?

If I get accepted, I'll most likely race change to a blood elf... female. Yes, I like pretty races, what can I say ;( I understand that some things I've wrote may overlap with another question, and I sincerely hope I won't cause any permanent eye damage with my walls of text. If you absolutely need me to make this application shorter, I can, but I feel a proper application is one of the most important things when applying.

While I'm saved to both TOTC and TOTGC, the last time I switched realms it reset the instances so I wasn't saved to anything yet. Not quite sure if it's still so. Also, please bare with me and my potential future questions of "Whether this guild/player is a known ninja/untrustworthy players" in case I need to PUG raids for this/next reset or in general.

If you need to contact me, I can attend Skype/Ventrilo/TS2/MSN discussion... whatever of your choosing. The level 1 called Velcio on Anachronos is my character.

I love this app. This is what all apps should be. Unfortunately we're really, really full on healers with a couple of trialists, so I can't give you an answer straight away.

Have to agree with Rhi - awesome app.

Thats gotta be one of if not the best application i have read to date!

Indeed one of the best applications i've read so far.
Good luck

o helo thar wall of text

I'm glad the application seems decent, thanks for the compliments - At any rate, don't worry about hurrying this application a lot (Especially if it means automatic decline due to the amount of healers you're trialing). It isn't easy finding a proper guild that ends its raids before the 23:00 mark, so I'm willing to sit tight for quite some while - As long as Icecrown doesn't get released during the wait

Hi Velcio,
I see that you are apply as a holy priest,but with a disc offspec. i have some questions about your disc spec,gear,enchants and gems.

Gems: on your setup you seem to have focused spell power which is an odd choice for a disc priest in my opinion, i would suggest for red and yellow gems to put: sp/int or int and for blues sp/spirit cos spirit is a strong stat for a priest regardless of spec (holy or disc)

Enchants: i see you haven't tuskarr's vitality that is an important enchant for boss fights,let me give you an example: Icehowl in Trial Of Grand Crusader,or you can take spirit enchant on boots too

Gear:i see you got 4 items: neck,bracers,robe and gloves with crit/haste that is again a bad idea as a disc, i know crit is important but you should focus on items that got crit and spirit on them. Haste isn't important for a disc priest,but spirit is,because you will really have mana issues with just 764 spirit unbuffed

Spec:you got 5/5 divine fury in your spec. i read you are using greater heal but to be honest isn't a great idea for main tank healing, u just have to spam flash heal and penance at every cooldown.i suggest you to take 2/2 healing focus and 3/3 improved renew.Renew is always a powerfull artillery of healing for priests even if you are holy or disc and should be kept on tanks always

This gear looks like shadow much more:) but anway i would also like to see your holy gear on so please do it:)

I think you are a nice guy and hope that i did not scare you

Wish you the best of luck with your application

/Razvann

Wow, very nice application.
If I'm honest I didn't read all of it, but of what I did read, seemed very thorough.
Best of luck with it!

/Sty

One final edit, GAWD!: I'm not applying with Discipline as "an off-spec". or Holy for an off-spec. I consider them to be as much needed, and I like both. I see myself switching between them fight-per-fight basis. (Unless you run with an active discipline priest already, and the fight can't fit two)

Gems: on your setup you seem to have focused spell power which is an odd choice for a disc priest in my opinion, i would suggest for red and yellow gems to put: sp/int or int and for blues sp/spirit cos spirit is a strong stat for a priest regardless of spec (holy or disc)

Discipline priests should not be running out of mana unless shield spamming. Spellpower is simply the stat to stack upon, as I mentioned previously, neither haste or crit is worth gemming for, because Spellpower gives most returns regardless of the role you're at; be it shield spamming, tank healing, or raid healing as holy.

Spirit has considerably lower returns for Discipline compared to Holy due to the lack of Holy Concentration and SP scaling talents. Loading up my character on Rawr with the usual raid buffs that affect either Spirit or Intellect (Arcane Intellect, GOTW, Kings, Distilled Wisdom, Divine Spirit) puts my raid buffed spirit to 999 and Intellect up to 1735. Now, taking the regen formula:
5 * 0.005575 * 0.6 * Spi * \sqrt {Intellect}
and applying the 10 spirit from a 12 SP 10 Spirit gem to it (factoring in Kings and Enlightenment, 10 spirit becomes 1,16*10 = 11,6 (Couldn't find anywhere whether enlightenment and BoK are multiplicative or additive in relation to each other)):
~ 0,194 * 41,65 = 8,08.. ~ 8 Out of five second rule regen. Now, taking into consideration the fact that you're spending a great majority of the time inside 5 second rule in the current content (Obviously, may vary from fight to fight), it's fair to say you're inside the 5 second rule 90% of the time. Let's say the fight lenght is 300 seconds. (Not a bad assumption looking at the figures of succesful 25 man heroic boss fights and their median lenght on World Of Logs).

300 divided by 5 is 60, so you have 60 "5 second intervals". With the 90% I5SR assumption, you get 6 5 second intervals O5SR, and 54 I5SR intervals.

8*5 + 0,3*8*54 = 40 + 129,6 = 169,6 mana regen over 300 seconds
The equivalent with a 12 SP 5 MP5 gem would naturally be 60*5 = 300 - So quite the difference. Obviously my math might be wrong, since I'm not a math genius. Rawr claims 1 mp5 benefit from each 12 SP + MP5/Spirit difference in favour of MP5 gems in Discipline. Granted, this only turns into 3 Mp5 loss if I were to change all my gems to Spirit according to Rawr. In the end, Holy *does* gain Spellpower from Spirit, and likely higher regen as well due to Holy Concentration.

For what it's worth, the EJ's Holy Compendium lists the following values:

Code:

Overall Regen Gains: Holy
Spirit: 0.362 Mp5 per point
Intellect: 0.792 Mp5 per point
(1 raw point; gearing, buff, etc; then scaled by other buffs and talents)

Overall Regen Gains: Disc
Spirit: 0.365 Mp5 per point
Intellect: 0.817 Mp5 per point

Which enforces my belief that Discipline gains more from MP5 rather than Spirit. All in all, to socket MP5 or Spirit on 12 SP + X gems is really talking of tiny numbers, and is mostly something you do out of your own preference. Hell, for what it's worth, Poptisse of Ensidia uses the SP+MP5 gems as well. ( http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tarren+Mill&n=Poptisse ). So in all honesty, I wouldn't call this a glaring issue in my gearing. I am not citing Ensidia players as theorycrafting sources though, mathematically she's probably doing a number of things "wrong". Only to give some perspective.


As for gemming SP/Int for Red and Blue sockets, I, quite frankly disagree. As I already said on the application, that unless I'm running OOM, I don't see a need for change my gearing at this point of time. I can always off-set the amount of Int and regen lost in my gearing my equipping Pandora's Plea with Spark of Hope if it becomes an issue, and flask for distilled wisdom. If it's an issue after that, I can always change my gemming. The only other benefit that I can see by your gemming is that you gain 1 SP more by gemming 12 SP + whatever instead of gemming pure spellpower and pure intellect on each slot.

Enchants: i see you haven't tuskarr's vitality that is an important enchant for boss fights,let me give you an example: Icehowl in Trial Of Grand Crusader,or you can take spirit enchant on boots too

I'd have Turkarr's Vitality, my current enchant is "a left-over" from shadow-priesting and my guild's lack of DPS sign-ups at some point, lacking better boots for it, and lacked the hit for the cap.

Gear:i see you got 4 items: neck,bracers,robe and gloves with crit/haste that is again a bad idea as a disc, i know crit is important but you should focus on items that got crit and spirit on them. Haste isn't important for a disc priest,but spirit is,because you will really have mana issues with just 764 spirit unbuffed

Again, my gearing isn't optimal, and I stated so on my application. I've been a social for quite a long time now, and I've had no choice but to pick up what I can. Yes, you could argue, why did I pick up the gloves then? At i-level 245 or above, there isn't a single glove with Spirit *and* Crit on it, and lacking haste. The Priest T9 has haste and spirit, which isn't really a better option than my current ones. My two chestpieces:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47604 Merlin's robe. Yes, it has Crit and Haste on it, but the other craftable isn't much better. It's simply trading the Haste for Spirit which isn't great regen stat for Discipline. Also, I crafted THIS robe in the mind that I'd probably eventually acquire the T9 ilevel 245 one which has Crit and Spirit on it. Doesn't hurt to have different gear choices. Merlin's robe equals considerably more throughput with aggressive gemming compared to the T9 i-level 245 robe.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=47264 (horde version of it, no stat difference, acquired in a PUG, I was still wearing my T8.5, so it was really a matter of just rolling for it instead of saving DKP or whatever). This is the robe I usually use with Holy.

My necklace is the best throughput neckpiece I had at my selection during Ulduar. I wasn't exactly running oom on the 10-man hardmodes there.

Spec:you got 5/5 divine fury in your spec. i read you are using greater heal but to be honest isn't a great idea for main tank healing, u just have to spam flash heal and penance at every cooldown.i suggest you to take 2/2 healing focus and 3/3 improved renew.Renew is always a powerfull artillery of healing for priests even if you are holy or disc and should be kept on tanks always

In which hardmode fights is casting knockback really an issue for discipline to take healing focus? I can't say I can think of any. Also, it's been widely discussed that Renew doesn't benefit from a single discipline talent, unlike almost any other spell you could be casting, be it Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or - Heck, Prayer of Mending. Really, in a tank healing situation, even when talented, I feel that renew ticks for pitiful numbers; with aggressive tank healing, it's likely that majority of the ticks won't even make it at all. In my honest opinion when there's a GCD free you're better off casting another flash heal, shield a raid member, really anything but cast renew. I only see renew worth casting if you're moving, and need to pump healing into a target that is affected by Weakened Soul, and Prayer of Mending is on cooldown. As for Greater Heal, it can be worth it with greater numbers of haste. It does equal for higher potential HPS than Flash Heal, and is definitely worth casting if you have Borrowed Time up. Again, as I mentioned on my application, this is a matter of consideration how much I'll be using Greater Heal. And even if I'd drop Divine Fury, I'd say Spell Warding is more worthwhile for hardmodes than any other choice you could make.

This gear looks like shadow much more:) but anway i would also like to see your holy gear on so please do it:)

Unfortunately, apart from swapping trinkets (Spark of Hope & Eye of the Brood Mother for Holy / Eye of the Brood Mother & Pandora's Plea OR Spark of Hope for Discipline) and the chest piece I simply haven't been able to acquire any seperate pieces for each specc.

For what it's worth, here's a wowhead item comparison for gear planning in the future; It assumes I can pick up loot from 10 man heroic and 25-man normal. So 245 maximum item-level.

http://www.wowhead.com/?compare=47604:47326:49234:49482:47931:47987:48054:47586:47328:47930:47733:47278:47041:45308:47922;48039:47138;47193:47138;48036;47733:47041:45308:48063:47487:49234:49483:47931:47987:48054:47586:47490:47930:47327:47922

The one on the left is geared slightly more haste in mind
The three things on the middle are weapon options. I'm not sure if you need "Tribute to Insanity" for the first weapon, thus the several options.
The last one on the right is geared with more mind on spirit/crit items.

With the following gemming, according to Rawr: 12 SP 10 Int yellow sockets, 23 SP on red sockets, and 12 SP 5 MP5 on blue sockets
the left setup with the left-most weapon options puts me at 25,5k mana, 578 spirit, 321 MP5 I5SR unbuffed with 357 haste rating
With the right-most setup with the left-most weapons with the same socketting it puts me at 25,4k mana, 815 spirit, 366 MP5 I5SR unbuffed with 141 haste rating.

In all honesty, the right-most setup isn't too favourable either with the extremely low haste. If mana ends up being an issue, I'm sure that gemming 20 Int on yellow sockets, 12 SP 10 Spirit/5 MP5 on blue sockets, and 12 SP 10 Int in red sockets while wearing Spark of Hope and another regen oriented trinket should be enough. I have to admit though, the spirit figures are slightly lower than I would have expected. I haven't considered picking up a lot of Tier 9 items as an option, and they should boost spirit by a considerable margin if they're more available than I thought.

All in all, if the source of loot is TOTC, you can go through the item lists yourself and realize there's really not much better way of gearing than how I'm planning it. If you want, I can come online for a discussion and justify each item choice by comparing them to items of similar i-level.

Changing the MP5 part of the gems into Spirit isn't something I won't do if you can't be convinced otherwise. Also, my apologies for being ranty, but I do have reasonings behind my gearing. Also, my apologies if my style of writing may seem slightly aggressive, I don't mean it as such.

To finish it all, if regen ends up being an issue with my planned gearing, it shouldn't prove to be a problem as long as I fix gemming and trinkets to suit it. (And potentially take T9 pieces instead of some of the currently equipped ones).

Awesome app tbh, more like this

Awesome application, wish we had more of these. Good luck, hope we can fit you in!

Don't apologise, you clearly know your stuff!

Very nice app, you clearly know your stuff. Just a few questions from me, when you are on raid healing how do you prioritise your healing between the raid members? How do you cope with fights where environmental awareness is needed and what do you do to prevent getting tunnel vision on purely healing bars? What boss fights from a healing perspective do you enjoy and which ones do you hate?

Myriad wrote:Very nice app, you clearly know your stuff. Just a few questions from me, when you are on raid healing how do you prioritise your healing between the raid members? How do you cope with fights where environmental awareness is needed and what do you do to prevent getting tunnel vision on purely healing bars? What boss fights from a healing perspective do you enjoy and which ones do you hate?

Prioritising healing between raid members? That's a difficult one, and I doubt there's one correct answer for it.
Obviously I look for targets that are under dangerously low HP, and if I'm holy flash them up. If the damage they're taking however is constant little ticks, but one tick is not enough to kill the person yet, I may use prayer of mending instead. If I'm rolling renew around the raid, and the target isn't *that* low I'll use renew and move on (Renew having instant tick part, and all). I may choose to pick Circle of Healing even if AoE healing isn't required near the target and the target needs healing *now*. Under rare circumstances I may even choose to shield the target, even as holy. I obviously utilize Grid's built-in HealComm which is pretty much a standard these days to see incoming heals and choose to ignore the target if there are other targets with enough damage dealt to them while there are incoming heals towards it. Yes, I know, intelligently targettted heals (Holy Light glyph, CoH (being instant and all..), Chain Heal , etc.) won't appear on it, but it's still a good tool every healer should and most are probably using.

EDIT: Keep remembering a few things. Usually melee up first, because they're usually close to some boss abilities that do damage near him. At any rate, any group of people (Be it ranged or melee) for that fight that have chance of getting a debuff/stomp/whatever over others in that fight.

I'd probably add "the more squishiest of classes first", but from what I can tell WOTLK has leveled the playfield in those terms, clothies and plate-wearing fury warriors are not that far from each other these days. Healers themselves are usually enough concerned of their own HP to not prioritize two low HP targets in favour of a healer. All in all; you can't really make *that* accurate decisions on which target to heal next. Sure, you can ponder about it on text, but the real situation is different. Being hesitant and not deciding to heal *that target that's close to your mouse right now and has fairly low HP* may cause your heals to land that much slower and end up with the next target getting killed. If we could have a turn-based game we'd probably perform better than we do, but the reality is that things keep happening on a constant basis and a healer has to make quick decisions, even if they aren't the most optimal ones.

Slightly off-topic but at least scrapes on the matter at hand: I'm at the moment considering to make GRID show Druid HOTs, perhaps even renew by other priests, but that *might* end up just be in information overload which is not good either. One task would be to add commonly used death-avoiding/damage reducing CD's such as iceblock, Guardian Spirit, Shield Wall, etc. (Man would I love a Grid module that would track such CD's by a coloured number (Colour by what ability it is), and a number that counts its remaining duration). If one put some effort to it, you could probably just modify GridStatusHots to do exactly that.

I'd consider myself to be on the better end of the population in terms of being aware of what's happening around me. Obviously, I do make mistakes, but void zones and what-not have never been a problem when I'm healing. One part of this is setting up a centralized UI that keeps eyes near on your character even when you're focusing on the health bars and minimizing obstructive UI elements. I've been doing this for a pretty long time, here's a screenshot from the time 3.0 just got released, pretty much the final iteration of the UI I built myself from ground up (Granted, there was a UI I used heavily for inspiration, but regardless): https://2img.net/r/ihimizer/img29/4769/wowoldui.jpg - I've always been a fan of this kind of raid frame setup.
I could *probably* use even more awareness, but who doesn't? Rolling renews, dodging balls, using prayer of mending on cooldown and so forth can prove pretty challenging. The only problem I've really had in a while was a large *group* of balls on Twins traveling towards me which I didn't see till' they were pretty close to me. Since it was a group, I should've seen it coming and dodge to the appropriate direction. I'm not perfect, but I sure as heck notice more than the average player. There's always room for improvement. That said, I always try to take a bit closer look on the 3d world around me to realize what's the situation when I wake up to do so.

What fights I hate and enjoy healing-wise? If I was cheesy I'd say I hate the ones where I tend to fall asleep... errr, no. If I had to pick up the kind of fight I hate I'd probably say it's a fight where you have to be constantly on your toes to stay in range of your tank because he's kiting something, while not sacrifising too much time to movement, and fights where there's a constant risk of getting gibbed because of running close to other players: "But my tank is there I have to heal him! That raid member needs healing! But that guy is so close that I might get gibbed the next time boss does an ability!" Northrend Beasts (Worms) + Thorim hardmode would into this category pretty well. On the other hand the challenge is nice as well, but that constant thought of balancing between two things can be annoying.

Favourite fights? Back in TBC, for some odd reason I liked Illidari Council a lot. Tank healing especially. Had a lot of stuff going around as well. If I could have a beefed version of the current 25-man KT fight I'd probably enjoy it a lot as well; periodic AOE damage, fairly easy to avoid damage/death components (Ye, I'd like to see them slightly more challenging), and bursts of raid damage where you can save the day (Allthough iceblocks basically require your raid to fail) There's just not much better feeling than saving 4 people encased in ice with a correct use of Shields, prayer of mending and being helped by proper comra... fellow healers.

At any rate, I have never claimed to be perfect, and never, ever, will. I can make mistakes, and so do the best of players, and it's human. I am not in the habit of screwing up constantly, and if I do a repeat a mistake (rare *cough*) - or do it even once - I feel annoyingly guilty :/

..Frack, that text was freakishy long considering the lenght of the questions asked. Geez.

My question is: do you have any time left for raiding besides typing applications on forums?

In 'my time', you would be accepted a few posts ago!

Found wrote:My question is: do you have any time left for raiding besides typing applications on forums?

lol thats a very good point actually, but then again it's always good to see someone so into their class that they go into such detail. I'm sure Rhia if deffo a fan of your application

When I feel strongly about something I tend to write in a lengthy fashion. It's not something I do daily, nor even weekly, though. I tend to be ranty when I post on any forum though, it's some ways a bad - and a good habit. I enjoy writing, what can I say Hopefully I haven't wasted the site's bandwith too much!

So, to answer the question promptly, Yes

Very impressive app, and I believe we are able to find a spot for you. We're going to offer you a trial, let me know when you've transferred to Anachronos horde.