While I was playing blog reader catch up the other day, I stumbled across a post that touched upon disc priest gemming. I don’t remember which post it was, unfortunatley, but I did save the link to the PlusHeals forum thread on the matter, here.
I’m a little late to the party, here, but I felt like touching upon it regardless.
Rather than saying “if you don’t have mana problems gem SP” instead we should be advising people that “if you don’t have mana problems you need to cast more spells until you do have mana problems”… pushing people towards a state of OOMness will increase their throughput much faster than advising them to socket an extra 100-150 SP.
The INT that people socket won’t even make much of a difference in terms of regen, again gems are only going to provide 150-200 stat points. However advising people to socket SP if they don’t have mana problems tells people that their current level of casting is acceptable/optimal, when in reality 99% of priests aren’t casting using every gcd.
Emphasis mine.
I gem nearly straight SP, the exception being whatever gems I need for my meta and maybe one or two other WTF gems because I…just seem to do that, sometimes.
I spam cast, because I’m I’m a spaz who can’t stand the thought of twiddling my thumbs. Oh, and being a FoL Pally spammer for years has something to do with it, too.
And, with the exception of a few fights (Fester, Twilight Sparkle Party), I very seldom go OOM. Oh, and gunship, because I do laps around the melee group casting Holy Nova, but that’s not a valid strategy by any means. That’s just me being bored.
Am I really that special? Do that many priests really sit around with a thumb up their ass? As a tank healer, how can you even do that? The tank is always taking damage! Even if he’s at full health I’m often casting, because crits = soap bubbles, and soap bubbles = free health for my tank. If it’s not a fight where I’m worried about dips in the tanks health, then I’m bubbling the raid. If you’re raid bubbling, well, there’s always something to be done.
Taking haste out of the equation, since I’m over the soft haste cap, I’m left with two choices: cast bigger heals but go OOM faster, or cast smaller heals and go OOM more slowly.
But I already said I don’t tend to go OOM. Even when I was trailing into ICC as one of the most undergeared healers we had, I never drained myself dry down to the last trick except on Fester. So taking THAT out of the equation…gee, bigger heals or smaller heals?
I think I’ll take bigger heals!
If you’re tank healing, you don’t always have the luxery of getting in a few more casts. You need a heal as quick and as big as you can manage, and no you cant’ always squeeze in a GHeal. So what do you want? A big fat FH or some big fat penance ticks! How do you get bigger, fatter heals? Spell power!
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me that if you want to gem int, you’ve got an paladin infection in your brain…
I’m so button happy that I snipe bubbles on the raid from our second disc priest ALL THE TIME. I’M SORRY SHIMMER. >.>
I Like Bubbles 
#1 by wantedpriest on April 29, 2010 - 11:54 am
Amber – I agree, at your haste rating you can’t push any bigger heals unless you stack spellpower.
Disc Priests who do stack more haste can cast GHeals and PoHs instead of FH without risking the life of their tanks. Those two spells will ramp up your hps in a hurry, and burn through your mana pool.
I tend to agree with Matron’s general philosophy that you need to keep pushing yourself to do more as a Disc Priest. Your stat and gearing choices, however, will effect how much further you can go.
Vess
#2 by Krikket on April 29, 2010 - 12:40 pm
If I have a brand new level 80 healer? I’m going to stack int to make getting through the endless grind of heroics less painful. Because PuG tanks love when you want a mana break every other pull, amirite?
I looked up my disc priest just to see what I was doing, and in a mix of ICC-5 man & t9 badge gear, I was still gemming int. I don’t think I really needed to at that point, and probably should have started switching to a more overall beneficial stat for the kind of content I wanted to do on her.
At the early stages of gearing, mana management always seems to be a far more pressing issue than it is as you get more gear, so your priorities change.
#3 by Juzaba on April 29, 2010 - 12:45 pm
I think Matron’s argument in this case is also meant specifically for bubblebot raid-healing Disc priests. Shieldspamming will cause mana problems in a lot of situations, and the difference that ~150 sp makes when shieldspamming isn’t that significant (when it comes to saving lives, at least).
Even tank healers, though, could probably benefit from more mana. Imagine a PW:S a raid member > Gheal the tank rotation.
#4 by Sarlalian on April 29, 2010 - 1:40 pm
The post you are referencing is from Penance Priest http://penancepriest.blogspot.com/2010/04/abc-of-discipline-priesting.html who I believe is quoting Matron from the PlusHeal forum, and both of their perspectives are coming from Raid Bubbling a 25 man raid, where particularly when bubbling against infest on LK 25, you need to have just enough spellpower to stop the damage, but not enough that your bubbles don’t pop. Just a thought.
#5 by Robbie on April 29, 2010 - 7:27 pm
I have a question/comment.
When I am gemming and I get any socket that isn’t red (so blue or yellow), I always socket with a 2-color with Spellpower/something. Why? Because the socket bonuses, no matter how small, are free stats. How do you all feel about this? Should I just be gemming straight spellpower and ignore tiny socket bonuses?
#6 by Andy on April 30, 2010 - 2:38 am
@Robbie – the stat isn’t “free” – you have to give up something to get the bonus. If it’s a blue socket with a +4 spellpower bonus, you can put in a purple +12SP, +10MP5, but then you’re only getting 16SP total instead of the 24 you’d get from just sticking a red gem in, for the dubious benefit of 10 MP5.
#7 by jedimax on April 30, 2010 - 7:41 am
@Robbie & @Andy:
Thats what mostly named “opportunity cost”
#8 by Paolo on April 30, 2010 - 9:56 am
@Sarlarian: Sizing your bubbles properly for infest is a Good Thing ™, but wasn’t really the thrust of the article. (The best way to size your bubbles is by downranking PWS, not changing your gems!)
In fact, gemming was a foil, a trick used to make the point that Amber highlighted above. Which is that the best way to increase your output is by casting more. Gemming is a very distant second.
The article was definitely aimed at bubble-botting 25-man priests. But really, the context was more broad: playing hard content. ANY hard content. If you’re two-healing a 10-man hard-mode encounter in 10-man gear? Chyeah. You’re not idling, no way. And if you’re already casting on every GCD, then you know whether you should be gemming INT or not.
Most 25-man disc priests I’ve seen (and I absolutely include myself here) very rarely operate in ABC (always be casting) mode. I’m trying to do it now, and it’s not natural.
#9 by Robbie on April 30, 2010 - 1:13 pm
@Andy: I’m not silly enough to gem mp5. Blue gems for me mean +12 Spell Power/+10 Spirit. And I convert a chunk of that Spirit into spellpower with talents, ANYWAY…
#10 by Puah on April 30, 2010 - 1:30 pm
@Amber: I took that post and subsequent articles that were spawned from that post to mean that you need to cast more spell too. However, it made me think in terms of how many spells I can cast in a specific amount of time… not neccessarily over an entire fight. I dumped most of my Crit gear for Haste gear. I totally regemmed with combo haste/sp gems and adjusted a few enchants. I ended up with just over 800 Haste unbuffed and have been thrilled with the results. I find it pushes my mana closer to OOM and I can rip of some bigger heals when I need to. Hasted Penance rocks.
@Paolo: I completely agree that with your ABC comment. I guess because I didn’t ever heal as a Pally (Danny is Prot/Ret), I never learned to be spam happy. Disc healing for me at least is so situational and unique. Unique in the sense that you try to anticipate and mitigate damage but at the same time have the tools to quickly react to changing situations.
#11 by BobTurkey on April 30, 2010 - 5:00 pm
Depends on the fight.
As a 25 man bubble spammer any fight that includes raid-wide damage (which is many) I am in ABC mode always. I’m thinking fights like Marrowgar, Festerface, Rotface (second half of the fight at least), Blood Queen, VD, Sindragosa, LK.
Gobble gobble.
#12 by Xeppe on May 3, 2010 - 9:34 pm
Well the one I was really struggling to do meaningful ABC on was easy mode Gunship. But I’m set now. Holy Nova FTW! Thanks. Why didn’t I think of that? I just have to get more creative. Or start trying hard modes.
#13 by lol on May 7, 2010 - 3:17 am
tank healer hahahahaha. so much bad bad bad bad info in this blog. please stop giving disc priests advice, you’re terrible.
#14 by Andy on May 7, 2010 - 6:05 am
blog troller hahahahaha. so much bad bad bad bad attitude in your comments. please stop trolling blogs, you’re terrible.
#15 by Dorthy Jamison on May 27, 2010 - 10:31 pm
If only more than 13 people would read this!