How to AA Disc ... future CC developers please read

[ArmyDr]

How to ArchAngel Disc ... future CC developers please read

I have noticed that although there is some decent CC's here for priests, it seems that in general the majority of developers do not typically play ArchAngel spec. That being said, I would like to give the community a brief 101 on how to play AA in parties and raids.

For a basic guide in discipline priests you should take the time to understand most of the EJ Compendium on Disc Priests.

Talent & Glyphs: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

• 
  [*=1]This leaves you with 2 points - either for Train of Thought (ToT) or Strength of Soul (SoS), this can affect your rotation somewhat but is mostly preference
  [*=1]For glyphs the Prime/Major are pretty much set in stone. You can replace PW:S (Power Word: Shield) glyph for PW:B (Power Word: Barrier) glyph if you find you are not using PW:S much in your fights.
  [*=1]Minor glyphs are your choice mostly, though fiend helps if ever your fiend dies to boss mechanics and fort helps if people are battle rezzed and you need to rebuff mid fight.

​

Stats/Gearing/Reforging/Gemming/Enchanting: Don't make this complicated!!!

• 
  [*=1]Maximize intellect
  [*=1]Maximize spirit until you no longer have mana issues in the most mana intensive fight you do
  [*=1]Balance secondary stats with reforging/gemming/enchanting to your preference... here are a few thoughts...
  • 
    [*=1]Haste - if you are having mana issues will run you oom even faster (for AA you should not be using heal, in general). For AA stacking 5 Evangalism is nice
    [*=1]Mastery - decent secondary stat as Divine Aegis and PW:S are still a huge part of your healing in AA
    [*=1]Crit - I prefer this stat as my secondary stat for many reasons
    • 
      [*=1]1) Increases Divine Aegis procs
      [*=1]2) Stacks well with Renewed Hope for healing in key moments
      [*=1]3) Increases Inspiration procs
      [*=1]4) Increases overall Holy Fire (HF) and Smite damage
      [*=1]5) Increases power of all healing spells

​

Spell Rotation: Of course this is dependent on whether you are in a 5 man or Tank/Raid healer in a raid. This will therefore be broke down into Dungeons vs Raids.

*** On Cooldown - this means every time the cool down is up, you use this ability
​

In General:​

• 
  [*=1]Start with PW:S for Borrowed Time preferrable on Tank (hopefully CC allows setting/finding a tank)
  [*=1]Stack Evangalism as soon as the fight starts... Start with Holy Fire (HF), followed by 4 smites (should assist tank)
  • 
    [*=1]Healing with Atonement consists of using Holy Fire as soon as cooldown is up followed Smites
    [*=1]Use HF/Smite at minimum every 15 seconds to keep Evangalism stacks rolling
    [*=1]Stack Evangalism to 5 and use ArchAngel as soon as it's off cooldown if you need to cast a PoH/PoM/Flash Heal (see below)
  [*=1]If 2-3 people in a group are less than 75% than you should cast Prayer of Healing (PoH) (I prefer 2)
  [*=1]Heals not used in this rotation: Heal, Renew, Greater Heal, Binding Heal and Holy Nova

Dungeons:​

• 
  [*=1]Heal with Atonement until someone is at 50% (but as above, if 2+ people are < 75% PoH)
  [*=1]Heal rotation: PW:S, Penance and Flash Heal (if someone is still < 50%)
  [*=1]In general, would not cast Prayer of Mending (PoM)
  [*=1]Use ArchAngel if Evangalism is stacked to 5 AND needing to cast PoH / Flash Heal

Raids:​

• 
  [*=1]Heal with Atonement until someone is at 50% (but as above, if 2+ people are < 75% PoH/PoM)
  [*=1]Use PoM if 3+ players < 75%, should be cast on the player with the lowest health
  [*=1]Heal rotation: PW:S (tank if possible/needed), PoH, PoM, Penance and Flash Heal (if someone is still < 50%)
  [*=1]Use ArchAngel if Evangalism is stacked to 5 AND needing to cast PoH / Flash Heal / PoM

***Replace Flash Heal above with HF/Smite when ArchAngel is down​

Cooldowns:

• Use Power Infusion on Cooldown (for botting purposes), should not be cast during lust/heroism as they dont stack
• Use Inner Focus with a Greater Heal on Cooldown when someone drops below 50%
• Pain Suppression at 30% (selectively on tank if possible)
• Divine Hymn if 5+ people are below 50%
• Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend at your preference, but I recommend early (~ 50% and 75% respectively)
• Cast a PW:S before either Hymn for Borrowed Time

Misc:

• Use Inner Fire ALWAYS - This may be obvious to some, but I have seen one CC that uses Inner Will

Credentials: I am a Vanilla raiding priest from back in the day of down-ranking Gheals! I have raided every content to date with applicable hard modes (up to Firelands). I was Discipline for all of WoTLK and have been Atonement since Day 1 of Cataclysm. I am always #1 or #2 in my raids on Healing done. I have been consistently 2400+ rated in PvP getting glad S8 and barely missing it S4/6. I have taught many great priest including Roslin who is the Author of the EJ post. Feel free to ask me any priest question you'd like.


Most current CCs either HF/Smite too much or too little, with poor use of AA. The difficulty I see in creating a great AA CC is keeping the balance of stacking Evangelism and Healing appropriately. The rotation above should help you in developing the prioritizing scheme.


I greatly appreciate those of you that know how to code these CCs and hope this will help in the development of a truly great atonement CC.

 

[Ama]

Cool. I would like to know more. I don't feel like elitist jerks explains enough. All I know about A/A is "Pew Pew Pew, Wings".

I was having a hard time getting "Me.Auras["Evangelism"].StackCount >= 5" to work... but when I tried just now it worked perfectly. I have a few things I want to fix about my CC, this being one of them, but I need to understand them all a little more before i can fix. My motivation to do things that don't involve family or eggnog is a little low right now, but i'm going to get back to disc cc soon.

 

[ArmyDr]

Cool. I would like to know more. I don't feel like elitist jerks explains enough.

All I know about A/A is "Pew Pew Pew, Wings"

LOL... I taught Roslin how to play healing priest... Her guide on EJ is a decent all-a-round beginner's guide. It does lack a certain bit of depth especially in how to play AA spec.

 

[Ama]

Do you know much about C# and HB? Would be nice to have someone that knows about AA on the project.

 

[Kickazz006]

AA you don't use evang unless you need to heal; as you keep the dmg buff from having a 5 stack

I use holy fire, then smite until holy fire is gone; penance as needed or pom and bubble tank

rinse / repeat until shit goes down and i actually have to heal

i also went from mastery to haste and have noticed my smite heals are now up there with the sham / druid that I also run with (maybe 1-2k below - just pure atonement / pom / bubble, occasional penance)

 

[ArmyDr]

Do you know much about C# and HB? Would be nice to have someone that knows about AA on the project.

I don't at the moment, but I plan on learning ASAP when I catch up with my IRL work.

AA you don't use evang unless you need to heal; as you keep the dmg buff from having a 5 stack

This is indeed the the concept of AA healing at it's most simple level. The issues are WHEN/WHO do you "need to heal", which heal(s) to use, and when/how to restack evangelism. Hopefully the post explains this in enough detail for a functional CC.

i also went from mastery to haste and have noticed my smite heals are now up there with the sham / druid that I also run with (maybe 1-2k below - just pure atonement / pom / bubble, occasional penance)

In a raid, you will not keep up with ANY other healers with just atonement/PoM/bubble... you will need PoH. When I am raiding I am always #1 on heals and PoH is my #1 Heal (followed by Divine Aegis).

 

[imdasandman]

I don't at the moment, but I plan on learning ASAP when I catch up with my IRL work.


This is indeed the the concept of AA healing at it's most simple level. The issues are WHEN/WHO do you "need to heal", which heal(s) to use, and when/how to restack evangelism. Hopefully the post explains this in enough detail for a functional CC.


In a raid, you will not keep up with ANY other healers with just atonement/PoM/bubble... you will need PoH. When I am raiding I am always #1 on heals and PoH is my #1 Heal (followed by Divine Aegis).

Guess your holy pally sucks because a priest should never ever be on top of metters after the buff to holy radiance.

But honestly each fight has a special way of healing but if you are not doing hard modes/ only doing normal, lfr, 5 mans go with the poh setup.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using Tapatalk

 

[ArmyDr]

Guess your holy pally sucks because a priest should never ever be on top of metters after the buff to holy radiance.

* True... HPally's are giving me a go for my money atm, but I am still usually #1... been doing this a long time.

 

[Ama]

So lame that holy radiance got turned into the only button a paladin ever needs to press and PoH is still party only healing.

 

[LiquidAtoR]

If you want to weave this in your CC I do suggest to make it check your talents before selecting a rotation.
Based on talentpoints taken you can activate one or the other CC (a bit like shamwow does for spec, glyphs etc to enable or disable certain things).
This to prevent a CC to gimp one or the other spec.

Further I'm always interested in more different options for CC's to use.

 

[ArmyDr]

If you want to weave this in your CC I do suggest to make it check your talents before selecting a rotation.
Based on talentpoints taken you can activate one or the other CC (a bit like shamwow does for spec, glyphs etc to enable or disable certain things).
This to prevent a CC to gimp one or the other spec.

Further I'm always interested in more different options for CC's to use.

Exactly... at the moment all of the disc priest CCs are gimped in atonement spec. This is again because of too much HF/smite spam, or not enough (in addition to poor usage of PoH). I am hoping this helps all-inclusive priest CCs, disc CCs and AA CC's a like.

 

[wulf]

Exactly... at the moment all of the disc priest CCs are gimped in atonement spec. This is again because of too much HF/smite spam, or not enough (in addition to poor usage of PoH). I am hoping this helps all-inclusive priest CCs, disc CCs and AA CC's a like.

Probably an Old post But check out CLU for Healing AA/DISC/Holy it is doing exactly everything this thread describes...funny thing is I researched the WEB for all this information before Ama pasted this in my CLU thread...could have done with this info earlier haha.

Within CLU'S Disc rotation I am checking for atonement spec and weaving in HF/smite spam with selective HF/smite healing...I simply replace HF with GH and smite with heal..The reason why I do this is because When you deal damage with Smite or Holy Fire, you instantly heal a nearby low health friendly target within 15 yards from the enemy target so I check for enemy units in the area of the target to heal and select the appropriate heal provided I have 5 stacks of evang

Link to CLU in my sig (or just check the all in one section)