Disc healing issues for Chimaeron Boss BWDFollow

I don't have experience with this boss. However, remember that smite spec doesn't mean it fits every situation. Some PoH may be what you need. Smite is good at stretching your mana during an encounter, while doing respectable healing. Fitting the right spells at the proper time is where the challenge comes in.

I've dabbled with holy, but have always found myself and my playstyle more effective as discipline. Give it a try if you like, by making your second spec Holy and running some regular heroics. It doesn't hurt to give it a try, but switching specs may not be the solution.

The thing about this fight and Disc is that, witht he exception of Feud, the shields are useless. Random damage is going to hit for hard enough that the shield doesn't pop either way, and Divine Aegis isn't going to matter either.

As Holy, I found that it was easier to just Flash Heal whoever took damage. I tried PoH, but after some accidental deaths, I switched to FH. And I actually never ran out of mana. I had enough time between spikes to regen most of what I had used. It was pretty easy healing.

For Disc, I would really recommend the same thing. Also, make sure that your unit frames show the low health debuff. It makes things a lot easier when you have to know quickly if something will kill a person or not.

The issue with Binding Heal is that it actually heals for slightly less. It's not an issue if you're going to be over the 10k by a large margin, but it's something to consider if you're only just barely making it over the threshold.

Here is a bit more discussion about Grid Control Pipes for Chimaeron. Since the OP is using Vuhdo, he may be interested in making a custom indicator for the mentioned buff "Low Health".

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/815968-Grid-Addon-for-Chimaeron

The thing about an Atonement spec is that you also have Evangelism. So the Smite that costs 15% of base mana means that it will instead cost ~14%, 13%, 12%, and 11% on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th subsequent cast respectively. Heal costs 9%.

Base mana at level 85 is 20590.

Heal costs (20590 * .09) = 1853.1 mana.

Smite1 costs 3088.5 mana, dropping 185.31 mana each cast.
Smite2 costs 2903.19 mana
Smite3 costs 2717.88 mana,
Smite4 costs 2532.57 mana,
Smite5 costs 2347.26 mana.

Toss in Archangel for 5% of your total mana. Assuming 100k mana, this means 5000 mana back. This alone covers your two most recent Smites. Add in your natural regen and Rapture returns (a very, very gross estimate because of varying gear/timing/whatever) and you likely cover the 3rd and maybe part of the second Smite.

Smite costs 494.16 more mana, but the HpM (Heal per Mana, a unit of efficiency) has already likely surpassed Heal at this point. But for bonus points, toss in Glyph of Smite to make it 20% more efficient (not to mention Holy Fire proccing Evangelism, which just screws up the calculations something major in favor of Smitehealing). On top of that, they have changed it so that Atonement benefits from Archangel when you pop it, too. The only thing it doesn't really benefit from is Grace.

Basically, Smite is more efficient than Heal.

Edited, Jul 26th 2011 8:28pm by IDrownFish

I agree about the mana return on Archangel being pretty damn insignificant. But it's meant to be more of a healing cooldown. Think of it like popping a trinket. A useful bonus, but nothing major.

And if Shield/Healspam works for you, then by all means stick with that. There's a reason EJ lists two possible specs: Atonement and non-Atonement. That's the beauty of Disc, if you prefer non Smite, then stick with non Smite. It doesn't make you any less powerful of a healer.

Using Heal as Disc is silly. Use GH or Smite instead. If you don't like Smite use GH. With ToT and IF macro'd to GH it is just as efficient.

Also drop VS for ToT. Then you actually can switch to GH over Heal and Smite will drop the Penance CD further increasing the benefit of using Smite.

I agree totally that heal is even more mana efficient than smite. If I am completely out of mana and living on regen, I'm throwing heals.

Smite always seems more fun (I'm still casual enough to consider this), and contributes some to dps. Also, it's a smart heal. I can break into a holy fire / smite rotation on the tank's target when things are under control, by clicking on the focus target frame I've parked above my grid. By stretching mana, I mean that doing so saves mana over continuing to throw things other than heal. Of course heal could be used for the same purpose.

For my mouse leftclick, I have the following macro setup. I can simply click on the tank's target (or my target when questing) to smite. The nopet condition allows me to left click and target a party member for healing when mind controlling a healer.

/target mouseover
/cast [dead] Resurrection; [nopet,harm] smite; [nopet,nodead,help] Power Word: Shield

I also have my Holy Fire mouseclick as well as Devouring Plague / SW:Pain castsequence include the following focus line for questing (when focus isn't established on the tank). That way, when I dot up a hostile target, they become my focus, allowing me to heal myself and smite my focus without regard to whether my target changes when I do so.

/focus [target=focus,noexists][target=focus,dead]

With my emphasis on focus and focus target playing a major roll in clickcasting, I keep a focus / clearfocus macro on my actionbar to fix a problem like a non-dead enemy focus being out of range. A right click on the action bar quickly clears my focus, or left click sets it.

/clearfocus [button:2]
/stopmacro [button:2]
/focus


I guess what I am saying is that smite is an integral part of my playstyle. If I was to simply replace it with heal as my mana saver, I'd just go holy.