Disc vs Holy

[angelx7x]

"Disc healing for tanks, holy for raid" is old school. That was true up until Cata. As 50% of this thread says, both are perfectly viable at whichever.

Holy priest have the same secondary stats no matter what they are doing (maybe crit being a little more valueable for tanking, but not by much), basically they just change their Chakra to dictate what role they are doing. Holy priests really, really depend on a lot of spirit, which is why a lot of people prefer disc over holy in FL, since there is not a whole lot of spirit gear in FL compared to caster gear that has no spirit and just secondary stats. Holy priests are a lot less mana effecient, but if you have spirit and know what heal to use when, you can make up for it and do a great job in either role.

Disc priests only require about 2200-2400 spirit to remain effecient, mostly because of the Rapture, which gives mana back on intellect, which means int (and essentially ilvl) is most important. You can get 2200 spirit in 253 gear and be an effecient healer, unlike Holy. Disc is good at either role, and anyone who tells you differently either hasn't played Disc in Cata, or is very terrible at it. Your secondary stats change though, and I'll share what those are below this. If you want to be be able to switch to either tank or raid healing, keep them balanced. You won't be gimmicked in 10man, and is actually probably recommended. In 25s tough you'll want to figure out your role and base it on that:

Mastary - Tank stat. Makes your PW:S & DA absorb more damage. Still beneficial for raid AoE mitigation.
Haste - Raid stat. Makes you able to spam PoH faster = more AoE heals, more DA procs. Can still be beneficial for tank healing, as faster GH = more reliable, and more inner focus casts.
Crit - Definitly a tanking stat. Compared to Mastary & Haste, less beneficial in both cases.

it was true until ICC you mean. i remember raid healing in ICC on my priest as disc by casting nothing but PW:S and penance

[gokuaiba]

Hopefully some of the fixes in 4.3 will change this.

[Danner]

Actually, hpm for flash heal spam favors Holy more due to Serendipity giving you the better option of doing Fhealx2/Gheal instead
The mana reduction on Gheal counters the increased mana expenditures of Fheal if you compare equivalent HPS.

No grounds for disagreement, but I cannot confirm or deny this claim. The HPM is only good because the healing increases, not because the manacost decreases. The mana usage actually increases by 45% * when compared to pure GHeal casting. If I am to trust your HPM claim (and I am!), then the healing just happens to increase even more. Your wordings imply that Serendipity is the solution for Holypriests running oom. This is simply not the case.

And since I know you enough to require a proof of that 45% number, here: 
 GHeal cost = FHeal cost = X
 Gheal cast time (unhasted) = 2.5 sec
 FHeal cast time (unhasted) = 1.5 sec
 Ignoring haste since this scales linearly with haste. 
 GHeal spam mana / second = X / 2.5s = 0.4X
 Serendipity spam mana / second = (X + X + 0.9X) / (1.5s + 1.5s + (2.5s * 0.8)) = 0.58X
 0.58X / 0.4X = 1.45 => 45% more

At FL level, we don't have gear options. Only one spirit piece in each slot and a belt with no spirit. There is no regearing, it's just a quick trip to the reforger.

That reforging is our gearing option. We either go with the set as it is, or we reforge it to favor haste or mastery. When you tell me to go for mastery, this is what I would have to be doing. And what I don't really think I should be doing.

GS *twitch* use is basically the same as PS, I don't follow why it's harder to use.

It isn't. And that was not my point. My point is that I don't have twitch reflexes anymore. I need the haste to compensate the fact that I am losing 0.2 seconds when doing spot healing due to being slower than I used to be. This is an issue regardless of my spec, but haste is redeeming it.

And you made a huge deal out of mana issues when you were trying to heal the MT. Some of it if I recall was overuse of Fheal as well?

Which is it. Am I to use Fheal or not?
I am not really keen on carrying on this argument ad infinitum, but if I am to use Flash heal, I will run oom very fast. This is by design. I realize this, and try very hard to avoid abusing this spell. But if it is a choice between a death and a flash heal, mana be damned.
I try to stick to Greater Heal for spot healing. It's healing for more per second and has a much more pleasant rate of draining my manabar. But it is still running me oom at a rate which is uncomfortable and not compatible with estimated fight lengths. Serenity allows me to pad this and delay the inevitable, as does falling back to Heal in lulls. But ultimately, I need to simply stop casting every now and then to avoid OOMing, and leave the healing to the other healers. In a 25man, this is acceptable. In a 10man, it is not.

Irregardless, Disc suiting your playstyle is your prerogative. I've never said anyting about all priests should be Holy. Do what you want.

It is not, by far. I love Body and Soul, it's the best ability in the game. I get a pure moment of bliss when I see a Prayer of Healing followed up by a circle of healing. I love the holy playstyle to death; juggling all kinds of useful spells and taking split second decisions. I've been playing holy since TBC, and I have generally been very happy about the experience, despite all the stupidities (*cough* lightwell *cough*). I really want to be holy, and love it when I can pull all stops and do the impossible through unimaginable burst healing when the situation really need it. Only Holy allows me to do this. I live for those moments. This is why I am holy. This is why I love holy.

But I know Holy is not helping in the firelands. My guilds knows Holy is not helping in the firelands. It's not so much the cooldown, though that was a major issue pre-nerf. It's about the mana for me. The only reason why I haven't respecced my main to disc is because I am stubborn. In comparison, Disc feels really bland. It's proactive, so the adrenaline rush is not really there, and the reward for saving someone is more of a "oh well, guess my pws popped on the tank" instead of a "whoa, that was close - I did good for saving that!" moment. And the disc playstyle feels like I'm just rotating the same three spells over and over while watching cooldown timers. I want to be holy.

And as long as I can pull all stops, holy is working very well, and a thrilling experience. But then two minutes later, I run oom.
As long as I have to hold back, things die. And that is my major complaint against the firelands.
You can tell me as much as you like that I am "doing it wrong". I'm certainly not playing Holy 100% optimal. I mean, I happen to do some overhealing, sometimes I heal a target that another healing is healing, and sometimes I am overreacting in terms of which heal to use. Noone is healing optimally. I'm certainly not healing optimally as disc.

But it's working very well. Except I am missing my favourite specc like crazy.

I'm antagonizing your insistence that Holy itself is to blame and the spec not being viable. The fault was clearly yours and saying it's a bad spec is FUD.

I am not a perfect healer. Is that a requirement for being Holy?
Call me bad if you get off on that idea. But I'm doing pretty decent with my disc specc, despite having virtually no idea what I am doing.

You have very little actual experience with Holy in Firelands, you're not in a good position to say what works and what doesn't with the spec this tier.

I'm not paragon, thus I have no saying. Then there is nothing more to discuss.

[Deleted]

'Disc feels really bland. It's proactive, so the adrenaline rush is not really there, and the reward for saving someone is more of a "oh well, guess my pws popped on the tank" instead of a "whoa, that was close - I did good for saving that!" moment. And the disc playstyle feels like I'm just rotating the same three spells over and over while watching cooldown timers. I want to be holy. '

Good for you, but the pleasure with disc relates to knowing that no-one went whoa that was close because you mitigated a lot of the incoming spike with pws/da/pwb. The really good feeling is when you know everyone feels comfortable because they don't seem to be taking heavy damage because of your actions.

And which three spells are you rotating as Disc? At the very least you should be using gheal/pws/pennace/pom/poh possibly with HF/smite and the odd renew as well as Rapture/PI/PS/PWB/DH/Fiend/HoH/AA as cooldowns to watch. Whereas you could argue that raiding with holy means CoH/PoH/PoM spam with renew as filler and very little else aside from having a few less CD's to mamage

[babylon]

And the disc playstyle feels like I'm just rotating the same three spells over and over while watching cooldown timers.

that sounds so wrong

[Danner]

Good for you, but the pleasure with disc relates to knowing that no-one went whoa that was close because you mitigated a lot of the incoming spike with pws/da/pwb. The really good feeling is when you know everyone feels comfortable because they don't seem to be taking heavy damage because of your actions.

Yep. It's a safe and ... a in my subjective opinion a very dull existence. By nature, Holy is more bumpy. That's part of the charm, and part of the risk which currently have no reward other than the adrenaline. But as long as those bumps aren't spanning full HP bars (Baleroc, I am looking at you!), the bumps are not a major deal. The major deal for me is when countering those bumps eat my mana faster than it can be restored, and the drain rate means I run oom faster than the boss dies; effectively stopping my ability to deal with those bumps. Then it is a problem.

As for spells, I was thinking about PWS, Penance and Gheal - all excellent spells. PoH certainly has a place as well, but it's not a spell that sees major use in the firelands, outside of some very defined stackup situations. The firelands is all about spot healing. Being a priest, I hardly even think about using Prayer of Mending anymore, as it happens very automatically - but you are quite right, I should have counted this too as I am using it quite a lot in both specs. But beyond these four spells, there is really only cooldowns as disc. Lots and lots of cooldowns.

Which can be fun, if you are into accounting :P

[zakaluka]

odd, PoH/aegis or PoH/echo are still my top heals in every encounter. Was like this in 10 man, still is in 25 man.

edit: thinking this over, there's three exceptions (majordomo/bale/shannox). so I can only call PoH top for 4 encounters.

[tomehere]

I'd like go out on a limb and add that the drops in firelands seem like they cater to Disc, with the lack of spirit on many of the items and Disc not really needing that much spirit.

The way it is now, Disc can supply the burst and still have the mana to keep going. The way it is now, at least for me it seemed like, Holy could not keep up the amount of burst as disc without suffering from mana issues.

That said - 4.3 may bring the specs closer together. We'll just have to see.

[Themos]

I'd like go out on a limb and add that the drops in firelands seem like they cater to Disc, with the lack of spirit on many of the items and Disc not really needing that much spirit.

And you'd be wrong.
You can get spirit on every slot save the belt. I currently have no spirit on 5 of my slots and haven't had any mana issues as Holy.

The way it is now, Disc can supply the burst and still have the mana to keep going. The way it is now, at least for me it seemed like, Holy could not keep up the amount of burst as disc without suffering from mana issues.

That said - 4.3 may bring the specs closer together. We'll just have to see.

Holy is fine, it's just poorly played quite often from what I can see.

[Ynna]

Holy is fine, it's just poorly played quite often from what I can see.

Holy is fine, but Discipline is generally easier in the current content.

[Gamerbrett241]

After Cata, I've switched through Holy and Disc a lot.
Like, I want to love the Idea of Attonement Disc, but everytime I try Disc everyone's HP drops lower then I could be doing as Holy.
Holy I can keep everyone up atleast like 85-90% with all the improved renew, CoH and PoH.

[lenvik]

The other buff (fix rather) in 4.3 for holy is the fix for holy word: serenity actually giving a working 25% crit buff which hasn't been the case for the entire expansion. You can do Serenity Flash Flash Greater in the duration of the crit buff assuming you have enough haste (~15% is enough) and that puts quite a lot of HPS onto a single target with >50% spell crit.

Once you pick up the 4 set tier 13 bonus the serenity buff lasts 8 seconds so you'll be able to keep the buff up permanently on a single tank given the new shorter 7 second CD (instead of 10.5) with tome of light, which is pretty nice. Tank healing is definitely a lot easier to control on the PTR with the ability to guarantee at least one or two big crits in a relatively small time span consistently.

And yeah - the reduced mana cost on sanctuary also helps to offset the increased cost on CoH (assuming you still take the glyph for CoH). Then you press Divine Hymn and your jaw drops. :P

[Ozziee]

Try out both and see what you think. I prefer Holy more than Disc but I play both in raids. Mostly disc now since I need to shape up my rustyness on that spec for rag hc. I would recommend going holy if you have enough mana regen otherwise you could stick with disc and use all the useful cds it has, Inner focus, power infusion pain suppresion and all that, also it doesnt really drain your mana as much as holy although holy has more regen overall than disc. Try and see what you think. You'll love at least one thing about both specs if you give it a try.

[Squishyheals]

I have been a holy priest since TBC and not interested in learning disc. My guild is not a hardcore raiding guild so we raid when we can. We are only on rag at this point when we have enough logged in to go. That said, I am holy and I tank heal and raid heal and don't have oom issues so much. Our raiding team is compromised of 3 healers holy priest , shaman and druid. The shaman and I are the "tank" heals and druid raid for most fights but on occasion I help with raid heals. I am normally 2nd or sometimes even on top for hps and it's nice to see with all the bickering that disc is better. I had a disc priest in my guild and when we ran together i always outhealed to the point they stopped bringing her along. Not one spec is better it's the player that makes the spec look good or bad.

I have much more to comment on but in a rush this morning. Hope everyone has a great day.