The Rogue has essentially finished his adventures in Draenor now, although he might have a run out occasionally, so it's time to turn my attention to another alt:
Discipline Priest.
The scourge of healers everywhere with crazy absorbs and smart heals sniping everything going.
Well... that's the theory anyway.
A few trips to LFR taught me basically zero about how to play as Disc so I went to my favourite resource, Preach Gaming.
Oh... so it's not just PW:S spam?
Ok, let's go!
The Preach guide backed up my initial thoughts on the Disc Priest, that it is at it's most effective when shielding proactively but it's even more important than I thought.
Knowledge of the fights and anticipation of the damage is vital to being a decent Disc. There is no get-out-of-jail card like Healing Tide or Tranquility for when the shit hits the fan, so you have to make sure it never gets there.
How do you do that?
Ok, maybe it is PW:S spam.
Kept up on the tanks and anyone who looks like they will take some damage, that's the base from which to build.
From there though, weave in PW:Solace on cooldown to regen some mana and stack up Evangelism.
Penance on cooldown too... used offensively as often as you can get away with it, for another Evangelism stack, but on whoever needs it really.
And there are a couple of other talent choices like Halo/Divine Star/Other one I can't remember which you throw out there as needed.
That is most of the Disc Priest sorted and nets you a fairly decent HPS, capable of handling most situations if used proactively.
To take it to the next level though, is Archangel!
An incredibly powerful spell on a super-short cooldown of 30 seconds. This is where the knowledge of the fight really bears fruit, timing Archangel correctly can absolutely trivialise some boss abilities.
My giant male Pandaren (Guild was going for the Stay Classy achievement back in MoP so needed a Pandaren Priest, one joined the guild when I had reached level 87 :-s ) may look stupid with those little wings on his back but they make him feel like a superhero!
We aren't a DPSer now, it doesn't have to be used exactly on cooldown, but you want to get as much out of it as possible and that is where knowing the fights comes in.
Balancing using Archangel as much as possible against having it available for exactly the right moments is where the skill of Disc Priest seems to be, certainly not how many times you can press your PW:S button.
I've just begun to venture into Normal mode HFC and I'm still working out the best timings but I can see the amazing potential of the spec.
Getting the Archangel right, using the guaranteed crit to put up some nice, juicy shields just before a big ability hits is a fantastic feeling.
And it's so different to the Resto Shaman, almost the opposite way to play. The Shaman has the tools to recover from any situation, cooldown after cooldown available to stabilise the raid and bring them back from the brink.
The Disc Priest doesn't have those tools but can make sure they are never needed. So far there hasn't been a lot of those moments in normal HFC but it was fantastic to challenge myself in the Mythic dungeons over the weekend.
I didn't get it right every time, and it's a struggle to catch up when you get it wrong, but it's worth it for those times that you get it absolutely spot on and sail through the encounter.
The only time I actually wiped the group was on Ner'zhul in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds. It wasn't poor healing or badly-timed cooldowns though, I accidentally ran into the purple stuff and died instantly :-(
Ah well, the pug group was nice enough that they just had a bit of a laugh at my expense as we ran back in.
The garrison has brought me up to speed with the Legendary Ring so now I am just collecting Tomes and doing the Shipyard missions.
Not much luck with gear drops in my Normal HFC attempts so far but I haven't done much to be honest so hoping that will improve.
I'm looking forward to seeing how far I can take this Priest, it's a lot of fun to play and challenging me in completely new ways.
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