Is it normal to do the same dps in healing spec as in shadow?

[Deleted]

So I have by no means good gear, I've just started playing after being afk sice early dragon soul. I have disc main spec and shadow os for questing, and I find myself doing almost as much dps in dungeons by attoment healing, as I do in my shadow spec. Ok, it was just a little extragerrated, but I just wonder if it really is not possible to push more than 45k dps if you have really crappy gear? (plus its all reforged to mastery). It's like 1/3 of the dps that you guys do. Do we scale so well with gear or do I just do something so wrong?

[Deleted]

It's quite frankly impossible to say how much damage you should be doing without seeing your char, and dungeons are a very poor way to judge damage in general (what dungeon, buffs, how the tank pulls, etc. matters a lot). 45k in really crappy gear (just dinged) doesn't sound awful to me though, but idk why you'd reforge to mastery. If you want some real advice, hit a boss (or if your gear doesn't let you enter lfr, a dummy), upload the result to WoL and link this+your armory.

[Deleted]

From my experience shadow is awful without really good gear.

[Zergin8r]

I know at low level it takes a mind blast - shadow word: pain, and 2 mindflays + shadow word death to kill a mob. As holy it takes 2 smites...

[Brokopoco]

I've actually been raiding in holy spec instead of shadow lately. I do almost as good damage as when shadow + i have the ability to heal my ass off if needed. It's a bit ridiculous in fact. My gear is decent. Won't let me post a link to my armory, Brokopoco - Frostwolf - US if you wanna check it.

[Veyne]

I know at low level it takes a mind blast - shadow word: pain, and 2 mindflays + shadow word death to kill a mob. As holy it takes 2 smites...

Yeah, it's not quite that bad. At very low levels it's probably better to level as Holy or Disc, simply because enemies don't last long. Plus Penance hits pretty hard, to be honest.

On topic, though, I did notice I was doing pretty impressive damage on my still-85 priest as Holy compared to Shadow. Comparable. But with raiding gear, Shadow's actually doing respectably, and pretty well on multi-target fights, just by looking at parses. I haven't done any raiding in MoP, but it seems like you're either in really bad gear, not playing right, or Holy is incredibly overpowered at the moment as far as DPS goes. Recent blue posts seem to imply they're not TOO concerned with Holy damage, as long as Shadow's clearly ahead, and probably as long as it's below all dedicated DPS specs.

[Angelicat]

I thought leveling as shadow was a lot faster honestly after trying out holy for it. Dot as many mobs as you can and just run around gathering them.

[Deleted]

It works well (I recommend holy) but you cannot multiDoT with big pulls. I've even done some of the dailies as holy. Its doable. Better is to level together with someone. Also, as holy, you can do some great DPS in a dungeon (also quick queues) while there's barely any healing required, which speeds up the group process. I love doing this, and I also love it when I queue with a priest who does this. Holy Fire DoT, Mind Sear, SWD and SWP trigger ToF here (if you run with ToF), Glyph of Holy Fire and Glyph of Smite allow you to do more damage and movement. FDCL will proc on smite, and the free flash heals you just use if you got 2 procs and someone needs healing, can even refresh Renew when you decide you need to do less damage and more healing. Disc is also good but at the start of the expansion I found it rather cumbersome to do dungeons as disc. I don't know much about PvP at level 85-90.

[Deleted]

Holy needs an "Oh-Shit-Button" to be viable at PVP. You'll drop 100-0 if a warrior or rogue is on you.

[Yvaelle]

Holy's single target patchwerk DPS is actually about comparable or better to Shadow's in BiS 90 heroic raid gear I think - someone linked it a couple months ago. Their AOE (Mind Sear + 90 talents) are also stronger than Shadow's AoE, with the exception that if a 509 BiS Spriest gems and reforges to full mastery their Mind Sear I think ends up stronger. In practice, Shadow has better damage and survivability than Holy - so we're not recommending people go Holy DPS for raids just yet over Shadow, but who knows - maybe next tier ;p

The trick with Holy is really just that if you can avoid Mastery (totally useless for DPS), the +50% more Shadow/Holy damage Chakra is a way stronger multipler than Shadowform's 20% bonus Shadow damage. I'm tempted to sim up a Holy patchwerk now and see if it's actually scaling better than us as well - if it is, that would be interesting...

[Nzete]

The current 4-set for discipline (reduced cooldown on penance) is actually very good for dps numbers - if you are wanting to do the damage as atonement healing. It doesn't touch the dps you can do as holy, but you get equal healing back from it.