If nothing’s exploded and I’ve scheduled this correctly, I’m currently at BlizzCon, eating pizza with a bunch of my guildmates! Since I had a little bit of time after I closed my con badge commissions but before I actually left for Anaheim, I decided to get the list of who was RSVP’d for the guild dinner and draw all of them, minus myself (because I already have like, six badges of my own). My printer is woefully inadequate (which is why I wasn’t offering physical copies of my digital badges this year—I’d like to fix that in the future) so some of them don’t look as good as I’d like in person, but I ran out of time to mess with color correction, so they’ll have to suffice.
I couldn’t decide between making mini badges or making stickers, so I sort of did both—they’re printed on sticker paper, but laminated so they’re pretty useless as stickers. To be fair, that was largely because my sticker paper is the only good quality printer paper I have at the moment lol :x Each one is ~4″ on the largest side, which makes them a little smaller than my other badges, but it seemed like a good size for chibi badges.
Bonus last minute addition (I leave in like four hours oh my goddd):
it seems like a lot of guilds are 3-4 bosses into mythic at this point and there’s been some confusion about how to disc on Zek’voz. And for good reason - people seem to be doing vastly different things on this fight and getting vastly different results: 3 vs 4 vs 5 healing, saccing the disc on p2 (or not), Sins vs Scov, and Halo vs PtW. There are also several avoidable sources of non-lethal damage that can mess with the amount and timing of damage taken by your raid. Although looking at top logs is usually a good starting point for figuring out a new fight, Zek in particular would benefit from considering the healing strategy independently of parsing.
Talents
Shadow Covenant - this fight is a textbook example of scov value. You spend a decent amount of time moving on this fight, whether it’s during Surging Darkness rings, running Roiling Deceit out of the raid, or pre-positioning for Halo (if you take that talent). Scov gives you one more useful mobile spell, as well as being a natural counter for Titan Spark damage when you don’t have spare PW:R. It has further use as a quick instant heal to save players that are targeted by Eye while low hp/debuffed with Roiling.
PtW or Halo - this comes down to personal preference and raid coordination. Halo has a major drawback in that it will break CC if you don’t position yourself wisely. PtW is the lazy option that allows you to react more fluidly throughout the pull and doesn’t restrict your movement. I personally take PtW because I don’t consider Halo to be worth the trouble. During rings half the raid might be out of your 40yd range, and you’re likely to have a full atonement ramp anyways which makes Halo rather redundant/snipey overkill. Disc excels at throughput on this fight and keeping your beans in order is much more important than having a slightly stronger burst.
Raid Comp
At the beginning of Mythic progression some guilds were 5 healing. However, that is wholly unnecessary with a competent disc. Disc can quite literally double the healing of other healers on Zek if played correctly. We can also nearly solo each Surging Darkness, allowing your co healers to move their cds elsewhere. Major causes of wipes on progression are people dying to rings, not being spread out during Eye, and spawning Roiling adds -- not an issue of healer power.
Commentary
The following video is from farm this week and represents my current thinking. Below are timestamps and comments on what I was doing at that point in the pull.
0:07 - on progression, I held Shadowfiend as a healing CD during rings. However I’ve since come to the conclusion that it’s overkill and choose to use on pull for dps instead. This technically depends on the healing throughput of your raid, but as most of that power should be coming from the disc priest, it should be firmly in your control.
0:21 - conveniently enough, the first wave of TItan Spark damage starts happening right after your dps opener. It’s fine to pop schism on pull for dps because it’ll be up for your first major ramp during Surging Darkness.
0:27 - I time my Rapture/pws ramp so that it happens during the first ring, as opposed to being complete and evangelism’d in time for the first ring pulse. I do this for efficiency reasons so that I haven’t wasted literally 10 seconds of atonement without major damage going out by ramping early. Similarly, I weave my radiances instead of frontloading them before the burst. This smooths out your healing output and ensures that you can do cleanup healing after the rings are over.
0:49 - Yes, I know you’re “supposed” to cast schism before solace. I sometimes treat them as independent cooldowns since solace can be cast while moving. This is also a way to stagger my healing for smoother output over the course of the rings. (Note that even if you solace before schism, solace will come off cd in time for you to fit one at the end of your schism anyways.)
1:20 - a major difference in how I play on this fight that’s changed since the progression kill is my use of non-Surging ramp. The small adds apply a meaningful albeit short dot that is worth covering if you have the mana to spare. I do get lowkey sniped by revival at the end there, but we had no raid cd plan in place anyways.
2:00 - when Eye coincides with rings, it’s doubly beneficial to have a delayed Rapture because you have full mobility to dodge away from Eye targets and can spot shield them as well.
2:26 - due to the short CD, Evangelism (and Rapture) are ‘use or lose.’ Even if you mess up or don’t get as many atonements out as you’d like, it’s still worth using since your next usage won’t be for another minute anyways.
6:05 - I have neither Rapture nor Evangelism up for that set of rings. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t do a mini ramp: mana is your resource and you can still apply atonements via non-Rapture pws. We are nearing the end of the pull at that point and I haven’t been aggressive enough with my mana, so I can afford to spam pws.
