Topic
Disc as dps?
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I am posting on the healing forums as I would love another healers perspective on this.
I have been lvling up an alt healer. I only queue up as heals. and almost every priest I am getting in my groups has been disc & dps... I can completely understand really low lvls. But once you get duel spec why don't they just go shadow if they want to dps?? I mean I have seen disc dps still at like lvl 79 even. Healing groups is pretty easy right now that I can just roll through them. it might be silly to complain But when you have a disc priest dpsing I literally have nothing to do but stand there and spin in circles. Sure some may enjoy that, but I actually enjoy playing lol In one group when I said something I was told I could just dps instead of doing nothing but If I wanted to dps I would have joined as a dps! & my dps as heal spec sucks lol To me it feels as annoying as a plate dps taunting off a tank in runs. We all queue up to do our role and you are stepping on my toes lol I am curious what others think about this?? Is disc a dps spec now?? |
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i think, for the most part, the reason that so many disc priests are queing in as dps is because disc is crazy right now. with penance, i do about 3k damage per hit, which adds up to 9k in the few seconds it takes to channel it. the low CD added to that, it makes it very easy to get high numbers. whenever im in as heals, i can double as a dmg spec because of atonement now. but some dpriests just don't like healing, which is understandable. you just have to deal with it. its not exactly their fault, and atonement is a very good healing device.
regardless, they aren't healing geared and so they aren't going to do as good of heals as you. use your shields, and boss fights will make you actually healing the tank necessary. disc priests top the dps charts (if you use them right) up until at least level 79, and sometimes beyond that if they're really good. shadow priests just don't give out as much and its a difficult spec to play. |
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Edited by Heartsings on 9/12/12 11:24 PM (PDT)
Pretty sure it's still true. Even if shadow did better, disc is completely sufficient for 5-man dungeons, especially if you have heirlooms.
Reasons I am leveling my priest this way: a) Disc works better for questing b) I can queue for heals/dps and not bother swapping specs c) it's fun d) I want to practice the offensive Atonement/Archangel style |
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IIRC, before the patch (as in, 10 months ago), Disc was higher dps than Shadow until like 60-odd. Well, actually, a Shadow Priest played correctly should have been out dpsing Disc by 2/2 Masochism (level 43). Emphasis on correctly, of course. Currently, spell scaling is wonky and Penance is a beast. I haven't done any significant work on low level toons, but I wouldn't be surprised if Disc is outpacing Shadow until later levels. |
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From what I've heard, Shadow does better than in Cata while leveling once you get MB and DP. However, Penance still hits incredibly hard at low levels, and Smite/HF are decent damage compared to DoTs (and usually not as expensive). Before 5.0, Shadow was just plain AWFUL until you got Masochism and also used Spirit Tap glyph.
Personally, I'd still try to level a Priest as Disc until almost Outland content. |
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On a real boss fight, yes, but in a 5m low-level dungeon, dot specs just can't operate at their potential. Disc, being all fast-casting direct ranged damage with minimal ramp-up, tends to obliterate everyone but hunters until the scaling starts to catch up in the 60s. |
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Edited by Chic on 9/13/12 4:25 AM (PDT)
I've been leveling this priest though LFD. She's spec'd shadow and disc. She's my second priest, I have played shadow and disc since BC so I have some experience with it.
I queue as both DPS and heals so as to get the fastest queue time I can. For a while I was switching to shadow when the queue came up DPS. But while atonement healing I found that I was beating the dps easily and by a solid margin if I bothered to be at all aggressive about it. And besides an occasional bubble or PoH out of laziness I didn't really need to direct heal at all while doing it. I even ended up topping damage done in a run one time (beating the shadow priest in the run by about 100 dps and the others by much more). When I tried to DPS as shadow I could go all out, really trying to maximize my output and I could barely keep up. The tank usually always beat me by a big margin as they tend to do at these levels but other DPS could be a problem too. Stuff just doesn't live long enough to use DoTs (bosses are at 50% or less before I even have them all up, trash you can forget about even trying to use them. And it just wasn't fun since I couldn't play the spec right in this situation. So one time when the queue came up DPS and I thought about swapping specs, I just didn't. I mean, why cast Mind Spike/Mind Blast and heal for nothing when I could Penance/Holy Fire/Smite dishing out serious damage and healing for a ton at the same time? So I stuck it out as disc and hoped no one cared. Well, I topped damage again and also beat the healer (shaman) on healing done. The tank got mad at me and told me to just queue as heals if I was going to be disc. I told him that I did and that he could take it up with the dungeon finder if he didn't like it assigning me the dps role and that either way he should be ecstatic to have me as disc given the damage is better than shadow and does a ton of healing too. I mean we were pulling whole rooms and no one was every in jeopardy. He didn't seem to care for that explanation for some reason. Frankly I'll keep going as disc until this gets fixed, if I can stand to keep leveling this way. Instances are so easy and bosses die so fast at this point that I am quickly running out of patience for them. I mean I've healed runs completely naked or by just casting heal with no issue. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to make them remotely interesting at this point. It's just a grind which I don't find fun. But that's a separate issue. |
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Having leveled 5 or more (I lost count) Priests, Disc is THE WAY to level until Cata zones. In shadow, mana is an issue until you get certain spells that don't come until the higher levels. Disc can just keep going and going, grinding mobs. I've leveled several priests never having left SW.
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Kaels, you know me. Do you really think I'd give information that used some completely non-applicable situation? If a Shadow Priest was being played correctly pre-5.0, they were capable of doing more DPS than Smite by 43. I tested this in a ton of dungeons over a handful of my baby priests. As I also said in my post, since scaling is currently wonky, I wouldn't be surprised if Disc was outpacing Shadow beyond what it did before. |
Yeah, if the scaling of Penance weren't so insane at low levels, 5.0.4 Shadow would likely be ahead of Disc in DPS. It's just that Penance has similar DPET to Chaos Bolt at low levels, so they hit like trucks and it's completely front-loaded. |
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I remember back before LFD when dps Disc Priests were not uncommon. Weird, but not uncommon.
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I actually started testing this today as I was leveling my priest.
Indeed at level 40 currently my disc priest does an average of 20-40 more dps on the dummy then my spriest. Same gear was used on both, but yah. I'm rolling with disc for a while at least until I get more talents on the spriest side. Right now the only advantage an spriest (at least at my level) sorta has is dot farming. Although even that does not work very well at these low levels Disc: Average 400 dps Shadow: 350 dps (even with DP at 3 orbs) |
