It’s very important (and sometimes the most important) when evaluating logs to look at different things for different classes. Not every class has the same toolkit or heal the same.

Here’s what I look for when evaluating a disc priest in a 10 man raiding environment.  As an example, I’ll use my own logs from Monday night’s Dragon Soul raid + a fellow random disc priest for comparison.

Active Time Spent Healing

First, open the Healing Done screen by choosing your fight > Healing Done.

See that Active Time column on the right?  This should be as near 100% as possible, no less than 90%. You should never stop casting! Especially for disc priests, they have a ton of tools and instants that they can heal on the move.  I compared this log to the same fight on a similar geared disc priest and see this:

Same fight, same asignments… look at the Active time spent healing difference. HPS difference is less than 1k hps but in the below example, the HPS could have been a ton higher.

Don’t forget every heal has a chance of procing Divine Aegis, this is very beneficial in a 10man raiding environment when you spent a lot of time single target / tank healing.  If your Active Time is low remember to use your “filler” spell. In this Atonement spec case on periods of low damage, spam Holy Fire > Smite and use instants when off cooldown like Penance, Power Word: Shield .

(One thing to note, if the healer dies during the encounter, you’ll see the Active Time % drop).

 

Spell usage and over-healing

If you look at Healing by Spell for a player, these should be the top heals from an Atonment spec’d disc priest:

Divine Aegis – should always be in the top, it’s a passive bubble on all heal crits (typically will show a higher overheal %)

Greater Heal - higher on tank-focused or single target healing fights (like Spine of Deathwing)

Prayer of Healing - will be in the top of the list on AOE fights likely instead of greater heal (aoe heal so you’ll see a higher overheal % with this one by nature)

Prayer of Mending – a spell that should be cast on every time it’s off cooldown, usually will show as 100% uptime. Very efficient with near zero overheal

Power Word: Shield  - should be near the top but shouldn’t be at the TOP. If so, the priest is better off going non-atonment and becoming a bubblebot again.  Also a high overheal of this suggests it’s over zealously being casted and wasted

Penance  -  one of disc’s signature heals, on a 10second cooldown so you should see about 5 per minute of the fight. I casted 31 here, close to on cooldown so thats good!

Atonement – for an atonement spec’d priest this is a key ability, it acts as the “filler” smart heal when doing damage by Smite or Holy Fire, plus provides a stacking buff to the priest called Evangelism, in the next section we’ll check how often it is being cast.

Binding Heal - this is an awesome heal, what’s better than healing 1 person?  healing yourself too. You should use this on any raid member taking damage if you need a heal also, it’s very efficient when used properly. It’s like getting 2 flash heals cheaper. It should show up on all disc logs even if a small amount. A good priest will use it.

Please note: You should be seeing 2 glyphs on the healing list for most encounters, Glyph of Prayer of Healing and Glyph of Power Word: Shield  - combined they will do between 5-10% extra healing just by doing what you are normally doing. If your priest doesnt have these, ask why and suggest trying them (encounter dependent).

Things that should NOT be present

Overhealing

Overhealing is a strange beast, some fights make it easier to have a lot of overheal – spamming the raid with Prayer of Healing without much damage incoming. In general you should see very lower overheal from disc priests.

Of note: if a disc priest is running oom constantly, check that he/she isn’t casting bubble too much before the internal cooldown of Rapture for mana return. I suggest an addon called Ingela’s Rapture to all discos since it will track your icd and is super lightweight.

Comparing Spell Usage

Comparing the above priest with a second disc priest, can spot the following:

Comparing to my priest, I see the following with regard to Priest A:

• A had a lot less DA proc’s I would probably check his reforging to be sure he’s not taking haste or something silly.
• Most spells were simply casted less, but that’s understandable as the activity time is a ton lower (see first section).
• Cast 1/3 of the penances this should have been closer to 40 casts (8 minute fight)
• No glyph of PWS
• No Binding heals
• Atonement was also half

Cooldowns and Buffs Cast

There’s a few possible things that this priest could do to work on his performance, the first is REALLY obvious when I took a look at the mana gained in the buffs cast tab but more on that in a minute. First let’s get to that tab:

First let’s look at mana gains as I suspect that’s one of the biggest issues that priest A is having.

Rapture is the return from my bubble being absorbed.

Archangel is the return you get from “poping wings” and using the evangelism proc I discussed above in healing spells. This should be used often whenever damage is increasing as a healing cooldown. But as a side effect look how much mana I got back from it.

Divine Fire is the 2 piece of Tier12 healing priest set. If you aren’t in Dragon Soul tier sets, you should still be using this 2 piece look how much it added up to in regen.

The last one, Detonate Mana is the on-use of my Doll archaeology trinket. I should have used it much more than I did.

We immediately see the lack of mana gains. No 2 set bonus. Much less return with Rapture and half of Archangel. Interesting to see no Detonate Mana, but he was using the trinket. Tsk Tsk!

On logs you should also see Divine Hymn for mana casted once per priest, likely not on farm content though when mana is least stressful.

You should also see Shadowfiend being used and returning mana!

These things combine for a massive amount of mana loss, and in the end, healing that could have been done. I’m a firm believer in mana, spirit, and regen balace to equal highest possible throughput.

 

Use Those Cooldowns Young Priestess

Now let’s talk Cooldowns. A good priest will make use of all of their cooldowns, and they have tons!

Here you should look for a near 100% uptime of Prayer of Mending and Grace.

Atonement spec priests should also be using Archangel for high damage phases, and also keep Evangelism up often, a high uptime is good for this.

Pain Suppression should be used multiple times during a fight to save a tank, it has a 3 minute cooldown.

Power Infusion should also be casted on the priest (or dps if mana isn’t needed). It has less than a 2 minute cooldown. To help ensure I’m casting it, I macro it to Smite (also use this target target macro so I stick to my tank), here’s my macro:

#showtooltip smite
/cast [target=eternalsake] Power Infusion
/cast [@targettarget, harm] [ ] Smite

Inner Focus should also appear often. To help, I use it in a Greater Heal macro to make sure I keep using it the second it’s up, here it is:

#showtooltip Greater Heal
/cast inner focus
/cast [@mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal

Power Word: Barrier is also one of the most important and potent raid cooldown spells in a disc priests arsenal, so it should be used often at the proper times. It has a 3 minute cooldown. To see it’s usage in a particulate fight, open the Expression Editor and plug in:

sourceName = "Eternalsake"
and (Spell ="Power Word: Barrier")

You’ll see how many times it was cast. It’s important to see it on the logs

I casted it twice here, yay me!

Well that’s about all I look for in a disc priests log, especially when I evaluate my self. Hope it helps you and your healing teams out there! Happy healing healbots!