Saturday, March 21, 2009

Does Discipline make more use of AddOns?

I recently respecced Discipline for healing, from Holy. I had been holy for some time and it's taken time to get into the Disc swing of things. I had to get used to cooldown-based healing, and I have since set up a few more mods to help with this.

It got me wondering, does healing as Disc encourage more extensive use of mods, or even require using more mods?

Here are some mod features I think any Priest would want:

  • Good raid frames (goes without saying)
  • Out-of-range indicator
  • Incoming heals indicator
  • Indicator for who has my Renew, and how long is remaining
  • Indicator for who has Power Word: Shield (and Weakened Soul)
  • Indicators for missing buffs
  • Indicators for dispellable debuffs
  • Cooldown timer on Prayer of Mending

There's other things you might like, but I feel these are all pretty important. Now, what else would a Holy Priest want?

  • Notice of Surge of Light procs
  • Notice of Holy Concentration procs
  • Notice of Improved Holy Concentration charges left

Those are all things I had when specced Holy. I also might recommend a Guardian Spirit cooldown monitor, especially with the new glyph of GS, which lowers the cooldown. Without the glyph though, it has a long enough cooldown where you're likely to keep it available until there's truly a panic-button moment.

So what would a Disc Priest like to see?

  • Weakend Soul indicator, now extra important!
  • Indicator for Grace stacks (and maybe time remaining)
  • Indicator for Divine Aegis?
  • Cooldown for Power Infusion
  • Cooldown for Pain Suppression
  • Cooldown for Penance
  • Cooldown for Power Word: Shield

Naturally a Disc Priest will be more cooldown-based, being centered around Penance and Shield. To maximize the benefit of these spells can lead to a kind of rotation-like healing, for which you need to be able to see your spell cooldowns. And with Aspiration, PI and PS come down to reasonable cooldowns too, which you may want reminders of.

So, does Disc require more mods? Maybe, maybe not. An attentive player could get by with the default UI's cooldown rings and a good sense of timing. ButI certainly find that having some help from AddOns, with good custom status indicators in Grid and a good cooldown mod, can be a real aid in using the right spells at the right time.

In any case, Blizzard has created a very interesting healing mechanic with Disc's cooldown- and shielding-based playstyle, and I am enjoying learning it, and trying to optimize my playstyle given the new tools I have.

1 comment:

  1. "Weakend Soul indicator" - Probably, especially after 3.1

    "Indicator for Grace stacks" + "Indicator for Divine Aegis?"- Not sure what value these add

    "Cooldown for Power Infusion" - Yes

    "Cooldown for Pain Suppression" - Maybe, although it is mainly just used during boss fights and therefore is always ready to use.

    "Cooldown for Penance" - No more than any other spell should be monitored.

    "Cooldown for Power Word: Shield" - Nope - it has none in 3.1

    Nice blog. I've just discovered you and added you to my reader.

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