Initial Thoughts on Pandaria

[cmlancas]

Halp!  Healing as a disc priest isn't going so swell!

I agree mana management is a big deal on a priest.  That being said, I've found a few things through my personal playstyle that seem to contradict theorycrafters (points one and two).  

The first is that I find haste to be the most overrated stat for pretty much everyone sans the so-called experts.  This is because I very rarely want to cast faster.  I want my heals to hit harder and my shields to be bigger.  So, I reforged out of haste and went mastery/crit.

The second is semi-linked to the first, but Renew is no longer optional.  I find myself using renew closer to how I used it as a holy priest in Vanilla.  The reason for this is the Borrowed Time haste buff is going to give you two extra ticks to renew.  I'm IL 466 in heal spec, I believe? and my Renew's HoT is comprable to a Greater Heal.

Third, try not pre-shielding so much.  Instead, let a tank get to 75% or 80% (whatever you're comfortable with) and  Power Word:  Shield, Renew, and Penance.  Then, if the tank is still getting melted, Borrowed Time is still available for you to bomb a Greater Heal at Flash Heal speed.

Fourth, make good use of Spirit Shell.  I find myself stacking big spirit shells on a tank when he or she is pulling giant rooms.  For example, rooms like the students in Scholomance, the butchers in Scholomance, and the hatred groups outside of the last boss in Shado-pan Monastery are good examples.  I find my tanks tend to spike like crazy here, so I pop Spirit Shell so I can stack a 250k shield on them above and beyond Power Word: Shield.  This essentially makes my tank's HP pool 600-700k, and gives me a much larger margin for error.

Next, don't forget about your most underrated oh shit buttons:  the combo of Void Shift and Desperate Prayer.  Things getting hairy and you want to start fresh?  Void Shift, Desperate Prayer, and Power Word:  Shield.  This will buy you a few seconds to calm things down.

Also, if you're macroing Power Infusion to your spells still, you really shouldn't.  Being able to drop a 150k Flash Heal, 240k Greater Heal, or 60kx5 Prayer of Healing on demand is amazing.

Finally, don't feel like you have to use Pain Suppresion and Power Word:  Barrier like you would in Cataclysm to negate big damage.  If you can use them that way, more power to you, but in the world of Looking for Dungeon, god knows how bad your tank might be.  So, if your tank is falling behind, be more aggressive with Pain Suppresion and Power Word:  Barrier.

I don't think the question in Mists is "How do I get more mana?" but rather, "How do I spend it optimally?"

[SurfD]

The first is that I find haste to be the most overrated stat for pretty much everyone sans the so-called experts.  This is because I very rarely want to cast faster.  I want my heals to hit harder and my shields to be bigger.  So, I reforged out of haste and went mastery/crit.

I thought that as far as Haste went for healers, it was never about "stack more haste" but more about "Get to X breakpoint then ignore it till you can safely get to the next one".    Ie: you grab haste up untill your Main HoT gains an extra tick, then try your best to maintain that exact amount of haste while reforging the extra into Mastery / Crit, untill you can safely go for the next breakpoint without having to reforge back into too much haste.

[craan]

Thanks for that.  I don't remember offhand but I believe I went overboard on 'reforge to haste' on my disc.  I'll try the mastery/crit route and see if the extra oomph on my spells and bubbles helps stabilize things for me a little bit.

[Rokal]

Other times the tank will take a huge spike of damage that makes me shout 'WTF??' at my desk and frantically spam my keys.  I get alarmed when this happens because I know I'm going to dump a shitload of mana to stabilize things and be out the remainder of the fight.  For example, I tried the heroic Mogu-Shan Vaults 5-man last night.  The first boss, about 10 seconds in the fight, hit the tank with Ravage and dropped him to 30% health the first tick.  So I used holy's shitty PW:S, PoM him quick, and start spamming flash heal to keep him alive but my mana was burned and I OOMed a bit after that.  After we wiped, I left group.  This time I didn't bother going back over the combat logs since I was too depressed.

It's possible your tank was doing something wrong or wearing completely inappropriate gear. I can't think of any situation where a heroic 5-man boss in MoP hit for 50%+ of a tank's life and it was normal. I did a really messy Brewery run with a DK tank who was spiking like crazy and kept losing threat, only for him to realize halfway through that he didn't turn blood presence on. There are big obvious mistakes like that, but every tank has more responsibility to keep themselves alive in MoP due to the active mitigation model.

The other thing I'd mention is that you're comparing intro expansion gearing to end-of-expansion Cata gearing. No healers in queue-required gear had mana problems in Dragon Soul or the 4.3 dungeons. It's not a great basis for comparison.

I'm not saying you aren't doing something wrong (I have no idea), but there are other causes to consider.

[MrHat]

Tanks standing in the fire are also hard to heal.

I'd blame your tank.

[Simond]

It's that time again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUcaH8eR3dY

[Paelos]

I'm gonna get me a sword for tanking!

[Sheepherder]

Or if I am not that good at priest healing and Cata spoiled me.

Cataclysm at launch was really rough for healers.  If you dig back through 4.0 talent specs you'll find that almost everyone was recommending DPS take survivability talents, because AoE would bleed healers dry.

[Selby]

Or if I am not that good at priest healing and Cata spoiled me.

Cataclysm at launch was really rough for healers.

Very much so.  Cata was completely un-fun for healers and tanks in almost all 5-mans, especially heroics.  It drove off a good number of people from the game as a result.

[Rendakor]

Very much so.  Cata was completely un-fun for healers and tanks in almost all 5-mans, especially heroics.  It drove off a good number of people from the game as a result.

FIFY. It was shitty for DPS too.

[Sjofn]

OK, pet battles are totally fun. 

[Rasix]

OK, pet battles are totally fun. 

Stop saying nice things!

[Sjofn]

FUCK PET BATTLES FOR EATING MY ENTIRE EVENING

[cmlancas]

The implementation of pet battles seems to be the one thing Mists did that has had little negative criticism because it's so damn fun.

[Lakov_Sanite]

One thing I really like are all the static rare spawns, they are challenging and fun to hunt and try to solo.  Also, enchanting mats ++

[Merusk]

FUCK PET BATTLES FOR EATING MY ENTIRE EVENING

Heh.. I figured this was the case when I saw you pop up on my friends list last night.

[cmlancas]

I thought that as far as Haste went for healers, it was never about "stack more haste" but more about "Get to X breakpoint then ignore it till you can safely get to the next one".    Ie: you grab haste up untill your Main HoT gains an extra tick, then try your best to maintain that exact amount of haste while reforging the extra into Mastery / Crit, untill you can safely go for the next breakpoint without having to reforge back into too much haste.

My post got lost in the Verizon internet shuffle yesterday, but in 4.3, I advocated a haste/crit strike build because you could build up essentially what was a spirit shell using Prayer of Healing spam before mechanics like Morchok's stomp or Hagara's lightning phase.  Also, spirit was so useless that I remember tooling around with something around 3000 spirit.

In 5.0, I find haste sub-optimal because Borrowed Time gets you to the two-extra-tick breakpoint of Renew without needing any points in haste.  So, I don't want to cast my heals faster, I want them to be bigger.  I diverge with Hamlet's spirit analysis with disc because disc mana is so rough right now.  Instead of limiting spirit stacking, I think we should be limiting haste stacking and focusing more on overhealing less.

[Paelos]

I like that so much flavor/holiday stuff happens right after release. It makes it fun to do the holiday events in the normal gameplay that you're already working on for gear/pets/mounts/etc

[Sjofn]

I will totally admit part of the reason I wandered back into WoW is because I heart Hallow's End.

[Simond]

The implementation of pet battles seems to be the one thing Mists did that has had little negative criticism because it's so damn fun.

Also Harvest Elune. 

[Sjofn]

The farming thing is basically my main reason to get to 90, I think. 

[SurfD]

The farming thing is basically my main reason to get to 90, I think. 

Just a tip: never throw away or vendor ANYTHING you make leveling the various cooking ways.  All the single serving dishes used to level it can be given to various tillers for rep bumps with them.  I made the mistake of vendoring the 10 jade witches brew i made leveling brewing, only to find out that the damn fish wants 10 of them later on down the road for a rep quest....

[Sjofn]

That's good to know, thank you! I just ... need to find bank space for it (my vault is stuffed with a lot of dress up/transmog clothes :P).

[SurfD]

That's good to know, thank you! I just ... need to find bank space for it (my vault is stuffed with a lot of dress up/transmog clothes :P).

Yeah, with the crazy amount of Cooking mats needed for mastering all the ways, I am happy to hear that they are discussing some kind of cooking mat storage system that may be independant of your bags / bank vault.

[Zetor]

Something like GW2's 'crafting material' bank tab perhaps, with options to send crafting materials there directly from your inventory? 'Coz that would be kind of 

[Sjofn]

That would be fantastic and I hope they steal the shit out of it.

[Ironwood]

The farming thing is basically my main reason to get to 90, I think. 

Just a tip: never throw away or vendor ANYTHING you make leveling the various cooking ways.  All the single serving dishes used to level it can be given to various tillers for rep bumps with them.  I made the mistake of vendoring the 10 jade witches brew i made leveling brewing, only to find out that the damn fish wants 10 of them later on down the road for a rep quest....

Oh, fucking WHAT ??!

 

[SurfD]

Yeah, each one of the Tillers that you can gain rep with actually have their own Daily quest, that ONLY pops up if you have a 5 stack of their Favourite Food dish in your inventory.  Each one of the Cooking Ways has 2 recepies to level before you hit feasts, and each of those recepies is a "favourite food" for one of the Tillers.  The exception being Way of the Brew, where as far as i could tell, the Jade Witches brew is only used in one specific quest by Jogu once you get your rep with him fairly high.

[Merusk]

You don't need a stack for the quest to show, just one of the item.   the "quick guide" was linked earlier in the thread.

[Hawkbit]

I am mostly having fun in this xpac so far.  Still in the first zone, maybe 2/3 of the quests finished.  Nearing 87. 

Frustration sets in; I try twice to do normal random dungeons.  Wait 25 minutes each time, only to be added to the last boss.  I've never been to the zones before, so I don't get to see the dungeon story.  Twice.  GW2 may have spoiled me a bit with regards to how much it wants everyone to work with each other.

[Ozzu]

I'm having fun with it. I started a new priest on an Aussie server since my play hours match up better with theirs than they do with US servers.

I'm currently nearing 30 and doing pet battles along the way. It's good times. 

[Merusk]

Hit revered with Golden Lotus over the weekend finally.

It added yet another node of dailies to the rep.  -╯□）╯︵-┻━┻

I'm done with them now. I'm not a tailor, I don't need exalted. On to Shado Pan and August Celestials.. which combined take less time than the GL dailies do now.

On the happy side, I've gotten 3 sigils of power from LFR.  I love that.

[luckton]

The problem with August and the Shadow-Pan is that'll take twice as long to hit Exalted.  You only get one group of quests for each faction at all levels of rep.

That said, some people are popping up with Pandarian Ambassador.  Apparently there's a rare elite hozen that has an off-chance of dropping a peace pipe that boots your rep by 1000 with all Pandaria factions per use.  That's pretty much the only bypass right now to the daily grind.  5.1 with the double rep at Revered needs to get here already.

[Merusk]

I care not a whit for hitting exalted. I'll run a bunch daily for cash anyway.  I'd have given-up on the GL dailies a while ago because they are horrible in implementation and concept.  Such a small area for each quest hub with a large amount of kills/ collects required.  If they weren't required to unlock SP and AC I'd have stopped them after the first few days.

Klaxxi have a similar problem for me.  The vehicle quest sucks because the bug kills slow and the kill quests require too goddamn much grinding of mobs.  My limit is about 8 kills before I think, "Man, this is bullshit."  Klaxxi with their "Kill 20" or 40 whatever the damn number is goes way too far.

[Paelos]

I don't mind any of the dailies except for the Lotus ones. I do think the Shadopan "Kill 4 elite bugs" quest is stupid because 1 - The spawns are too small/infrequent, and 2 - Half the bugs go into evade and can't be killed.