Holy priests?

[Deleted]

Im mainspecced Shadow but with offspecc as holy, and its just fine np at all. Most fights I've healed im doing the same HPS as our MS Holy pala. Healed lei shen yesterday was 1-2k under the hpala with disc priest topping meters.
My guild have told me several times that it would be nice if I went disc as OS but I just told them no, cuz I don't really like disc as pve healing.

[Deleted]

I play 10 normals (and lfr) as holy. In 10s I also play along side a disc priest: there's often not a lot between our healing output, but he contributes some dps that I don't! Since the patch I out heal the holy pala (they got nerfed too much imo).

The difficulty in 10m holy priest healing is learning when to switch chakras, some fights it's obvious, others not at all. Holy is fine at single target healing, when in serenity chakra, the main spells I cast are renew, HW serenity, PoM, greater heal, binding heal. The problem in 10s comes when you need to mix up the single target and AoE heals.

It's going to be different for everyone, and all comes down to your use of renew, but keep in mind that the advice to gear for mastery in most holy priest guides may not be optimal for 10s. Use renew enough, it becomes better to glyph it, gear haste to the 4721 breakpoint and prefer crit over mastery. I'm not saying do this, just keep it in mind, and experiment to find what works best for you.

[Outofmana]

Holy is more than fine after the Divine Hymn buff, having a really really strong raid cooldown in 25man was the only thing we still needed. On some fights Disc are always gonna top, but we usually have our holy priests (2/3 now) topping. Combined with a stronger version of Halo we are pretty strong atm.
We can't really get assigned to a tank in 25man though, our only job in which we're good at is raid blanketing imo. Since going single target Chakra in 25man will hurt the raid 10x more than just assigning another class to keep the tanks up. It's also a role I like, just FFA like I've always done with a holy except for vanilla/TBC.

[Tastyfish]

I Love to raid finder as holy

[Rorixis]

I find Holy alot more fun as well, although I mostly do LFR on my alt priest and if I do normals I'm mostly shadow. If your guild already has disc it should be even more open to having a holy priest. The main problem with competing as a Holy Priest is that you will get out "out-absorbed" - it's only on the hard fights that you can really show off what you got. I have similar problems whenever I heal on my monk but they 2 heal alot of the fights now so I don't have to look like a retard with my 100%+ overhealing because of the absorb spam.

[saintdiabloo]

Holy and Disc are both good healing spec. I spec into both as a priest. Some fights Holy healing is better and some Disc. The big buff to Divine Hymn made holy a very good spec to play now. I would agree that disc is better for tank healing just because of damage mitigation. It is so beneficial to prevent incoming damage to a tank so that their health isn't that spikey. Heroic Ji-Kun and Heroic Primordius are great examples of that. Holy has strong single target heals too(Chakra: Serenity), minus the damage mitigation. If you would like to see how I play them check out killak06 on twitch.

-Saintdiablo (on Cho'Gal) 10/12 Heroic TOT

[Grumpy Old Man]

So I did the early LFR's last night, MSV, HoT and ToEs. I've found my AoE heals are intense, like, really powerful and bursty. But, whenever there's a lull or spot-healing, my heals are nothing. I ran with a heroic-geared Discipline priest in one of the LFR's and all he did was spam Smite and instantly was top healing.

Is that really all you do in Discipline? Spam Smite and boom, super Atonement healing?

No. We shield people with Power Word: Shield, use Inner Focus to 'force' a crit to apply Divine Aegis to people, use Spirit Shell and Prayer of Healing to shield entire groups, spot heal with Penance, Greater Heal and sometimes Flash Heal, apply Prayer of Mending, and sometimes use Binding Heal to keep ourselves alive.
And in the periods of low damage, we spam smite. Or if we outgear content, we just spam smite too. Which is what you saw with a heroic-geared disc priest doing LFR.

[wrynil]

Holy is extremely fun , but i like it more on 25mans as you can really utilize your aoe heals.

Disc is also extremely fun and very different in the way it acts compared to other healers. In a 10 man on a boss that requires 2 healers, and you go 3 healers, the disc will still do the same healing, or close to, as he would with 2 healers, leaving the other two healers far behind as they have to share 1 healers healing. With this being seen over and over again people tend to call op. Disc are not really op but they are indeed very strong and got great utility.

In any case, if you run 3 healers on 2 healer fights, and your team is not lacking dps you can easily go holy. I do it some times just to have a bit of different fun from my disc'ing, which tends to be alot about atonement on fights where you have 3 healers, but only just need 2 :P ( i see this often as we go 2 and 3 healers about the same amount of time in my group)

Problem often comes in disc got something that no one else really got, while holy got something alot of other healers got. I played disc even before i know it would come out this great, and before the buff in 5.1, while the other priest told me to go holy over and over again. But can you follow and down bosses , go with what ever you want.. shouldnt play something you dont enjoy. Also you can pull some dps at start if its on a boss where you burn hero at start + prepotting. Smite chakra is ok burst dps, and you group should be able to survive it if not everyone does the same i gues :P

[abc123lol]

I think Holy Priest are awesome for raid healing and BG healing I use them all the time.

[hawkster]

Play what you want for now disc is a little far ahead but some fights and gear holy could be better

[Deleted]

Holy is great in 25man. In fact in 5.3 is the better spec overall, when all is considered. If you are going to play only one spec it is better to play holy in 25man. On 10man disc is the better spec overall, but that being said there are only a couple of encounters where holy is really bad.

[nobodysbaby]

Holy is great in 25man. In fact in 5.3 is the better spec overall, when all is considered. If you are going to play only one spec it is better to play holy in 25man. On 10man disc is the better spec overall, but that being said there are only a couple of encounters where holy is really bad.

"when all is considered", I just wonder exactly what you mean here?

If you consider high, sustainable dmg on the raid, then yes, in every other case no, and a big no for bosses with predictable big dmg on the raid and/or high dps requirements.

[Deleted]

"when all is considered", I just wonder exactly what you mean here?

If you consider high, sustainable dmg on the raid, then yes, in every other case no, and a big no for bosses with predictable big dmg on the raid and/or high dps requirements.

hc maegera, hc council, hc iron qon, hc twins all have predictable bursty damage and holy produces much more healing during that burst. It is just pointless to have disc smiting at all in 25man. Get DPS with raid CDs instead and use a holy priest for the higher output.

The only time that disc is definitely is if the boss has a hefty damage buff for atonement or if the encounter has mechanics with a high probability of one-shotting ppl.

[Noradin]

So I did the early LFR's last night, MSV, HoT and ToEs. I've found my AoE heals are intense, like, really powerful and bursty. But, whenever there's a lull or spot-healing, my heals are nothing. I ran with a heroic-geared Discipline priest in one of the LFR's and all he did was spam Smite and instantly was top healing.

Is that really all you do in Discipline? Spam Smite and boom, super Atonement healing?

Disc is the ultimative sniping spec.
It is not as overbearingly powerful as the numbers imply.
In fact due to the way disc healing interacts with other healers a healing style that appears stronger on the meters might even weaken the healing team as a whole as was discussed in a threat a while back.

[Deleted]

Disc is the ultimative sniping spec.
It is not as overbearingly powerful as the numbers imply.
In fact due to the way disc healing interacts with other healers a healing style that appears stronger on the meters might even weaken the healing team as a whole as was discussed in a threat a while back.

This is just not true in the context of a well organised healing team. Maybe if you have too many healers, who just look at the healthbars and don't plan CD usage as a team, but even then I doubt it.

[Noradin]

This is just not true in the context of a well organised healing team. Maybe if you have too many healers, who just look at the healthbars and don't plan CD usage as a team, but even then I doubt it.

Of course it would not be true in a well organised and knowledgeable healing team, but it can and does happen in reality.
Pushing all or a lot of the healing of the rest of the team into overheal by spamming excessive absorbs in the beginning of the fight and then being oom when the healing of the whole team would matter makes the disc look great while negating the stats of the others and thus weakening the team - which was exactly what happened in the example given in that thread.
And it made the raidleader seaching for the causes of the wipes think his other healers weren't up to par when it was the disc that sabotaged the mana regen of the healing team by spamming shields until he was oom and dropping out when hps started to matter. The other healing had almost no opportunity to heal anything up to that point and couldn't provide the hps needed even with all the mana he still had and the raid wiped shortly - the regen of the non-disc healers was never of any use.

As disc if the rest of the healing team is at full mana and no big damage is imminent, then casting absorbs so fast that your mana starts to drop is wasting healing team stats.
Unless you need the extra health buffer or you expect to get back to full mana shortly your mana should not drop significantly faster than that of the other healers.

(And yes I am aware that mana managing as a team is part of being a 'well organised healing team', and most healers don't need this pointed out like this, but some readers might find it informative nonetheless.)