Transition from Disc 10man to Holy 25man (heroic)

[Klive]

Hey everyone,

My guild will be soon transitioning from 10m heroic to 25m heroic, and I will be switching from Disc to Holy as per RL's request.

I am very worried because I know Holy gets sniped a lot, and has no real smart heals to compensate; not to mention Mastery goes to waste 90% of the time. I am also concerned because I will be healing with other healers who are beasts; that is to say, they are no idiots whom I can just outsmart, so this is a case of "equal skill, class will determine who is better".

I was looking for tips on playstyle (assuming it's Sanctuary + PoH spam + PoM on DI proc), Haste breakpoints (is 13k worth it?), comfortable Spirit levels, etc.

My ilvl is about 573, and everyone else's is between 575 and 579.

Thanks in advance!

[Sylviane]

I don't have quite your ilevel, and I only have anecdotal evidence to go on, but our RL (who is 13/14H on his priest) has told me that Disc is beastly in 25H and that he'd basically never go Holy in its current form. Granted, he insists on having a shadow spec that he doesn't really raid on, but he's certainly not limited by being Disc. I'd love to show you logs, but they keep them private.

[Shaetan]

What is your healing team going to look like? Unless you would be the 3rd disc you should be disc. Hell with how powerful disc is atm, 3 discs wouldn't even be awful.

One of our discs tried holy one week (had 2 disc 1 holy and then the other healers), he hated it.

[kenn9530]

unless your 4 healing just about everyfight bar juggs then its best staying disc, 2 discs should be fine for a 25 man raid but if your overhealing any fights at all then holy will perform the worst so may be best to reroll a decent geared alt rather than play holy due to everyones smart heals being better than most of holys healing.

Holy is theory should preform the best but due to how the fights work and holys main heal not being smart then it falls far short, if your RLs understand the weakness and don't mind holy being bottom on many fight's then it shouldn't matter especially on farm content.

[Sillychan]

Stay Disc if you prefer to play disc. Electric Sheep has been running with 3 disc priests the past few weeks, even on Siegecrafter progression and it hasn't been a problem for us. I think we have one of the other priests switch to Holy for Thok mostly because there wouldn't be enough for the 3rd priest to PW: S, since 1 priest takes groups 1, 2 and half of 3, and another takes half of 3, 4 and 5. So the 3rd disc wouldn't be able to PW: S anyone -- thus making Holy better.

___________

13k Haste is most certainly not worth it in 25. With the 2pc and FDCL --> Serenity chaining you can easily forgo a lot of haste. I personally prefer 4721 just in case, plus I sneak an extra Lightspring tick in there which is basically the main reason I stay that high as Holy because I'm not often in Serenity refreshing renews.

Really mastering the use of the 2pc and 4pc will make you competitive in burst with the other throughput healers (expect the disc to be on top for most fights) IF you're not grossly overhealing. Int, Int+ Mastery is pretty much the way to go.

[Klive]

Thanks for the answers. I do know Disc is superior, and so does my RL. However, the idea is to start with the roster we have planned for WoD, and that includes me as Holy Priest.

I will be healing with a Disc, a Paladin, a Shaman and a Druid. I can safely assume I'm gonna be 5th in healing done on every fight; however, I'm looking for ways to maximize my performance so as to have arguments to justify my foreseeable low healing done.

[Shandas]

I'm a 8/14 heroic holy/disc priest, but disc on most fights since it really does better.

Most of your healing is going to come from mastery procs, you are going to have insane overhealing to compete, get 2 set bonus, use flash heal to pump up your prayer of healing, use Pom on cd(take divine insight) use CoH on cd. Place lightwell up to 1min before fight. Remember divine hymn can do insane healing if used right. Use CoH glyph, lightwell charges glyph. I'm currently at 16k spirit unbuffed, haste and mastery > crit

[Warstar]

Thanks for the answers. I do know Disc is superior, and so does my RL. However, the idea is to start with the roster we have planned for WoD, and that includes me as Holy Priest.

I will be healing with a Disc, a Paladin, a Shaman and a Druid. I can safely assume I'm gonna be 5th in healing done on every fight; however, I'm looking for ways to maximize my performance so as to have arguments to justify my foreseeable low healing done.

Stay disc. Even 2 disc works wonderfully especially in a 25m raid since over all there are enough people that you won't be stepping on each other's toes. Holy's main strength is its tremendous output which in a situation that you're in with 4 other strong heals most of holy's potential will be wasted.

As for raiding now for how you'll be set up in WoD is 100% pointless. Who knows how the specs will get changed up with the expansion so any "practice" you get now really won't have any sort of meaning for what it'll be like in WoD. As with every expansion new spells and talents and reworks of specs will cause any game play you get comfortable with now to really not make a difference since you'll have to relearn it anyways with the new expansion. Trying to raid like you will in WoD is about as pointless as trying to theorycraft beta talents that aren't even in beta yet.

Best thing to do as a healing priest is stay disc for 90% of the fights and swap to holy for stuff like Malkorok. There's really no point in forcing you to play a sub-par spec that will pull lower numbers and not be as fun for you. Just ride out the rest of MoP doing what will make you happy and then make whatever switches you need to in the pre-WoD patch when all the new stuff comes out when you know what the actual game play is going to be like. You'll have plenty of time to test what your raid will be like then. Who knows, maybe they'll completely ruin Holy for WoD and make Disc stronger than 3 other healers combined? Prolly not just saying you don't know what the future holds so there's no point in trying to prepare for it right now.

[KaPe]

Assuming you still want to play Holy :

- Sanctuary is crap without 4pc bonus. Even when you do have it, it becomes merely "so-so", instead of actually good. It's no Healing Rain or Efflo, even in 25s.

- Renew blanketing/high haste renew is not worth it. In 10 man, you could keep it on quite a few people and keep refreshing, which actually mattered. Here, it would be much smaller part of raid, and it's something Resto Druids are better at anyway.

- if you relied on PoH a lot, make sure your Raid Leader sets the groups correctly. Also, with 5 different groups, it's far more likely that hurt people will be spread across different ones, thus reducing its effectivness.

- if you have too much mana, glyph that binding heal and use it to feed 2pc bonus. It's rather expensive to do but offers better healing than SoL procs... Course, 2pc PoH will probably overheal by a ton anyway, so... meh.

Honestly, I dropped Holy entirely at this point and we simply run with 2-3 (hell, sometimes 4, we're priest heavy atm) Discs. About the only fight I miss it on is Immerseus. Malkorok? Nah, extra layer of shields is superior to pure hps. Nice buffer for those "oops, ate an orb" moments. Druids/Monks provide hps - and even Shadow firing off Halo every once in a while is a big shield filler.

No one really knows what will change in WoD, so "practicing" for it is rather pointless. It's not like Holy is very complicated anyway, there isn't really that much to learn.

[Darkener]

Holy works fine for me so far in 25man heroics. Renew in Serenity Chakra with Cascade works very well with FDCL on certain fights. I like lots of Spirit, 20% crit buffed, 4721 Haste, and the rest Mastery. You will never beat Shaman or possibly Druid on stack fights, but you won't be far behind. It's not about being highest on meters it's about healing damage and winning the fight. You should be ranking as Holy on every fight at least in the top 250, there just isn't much competition (particularly with your iLvl).

I have basically two healing approaches to fights: Sanctuary Chakra with lots of PoH, CoH, DS and PoM with Divine Insight procs. Serenity Chakra with lots of Renew, Binding Heal, Cascade, HW: Serenity and FH procs from FDCL. Use DH as often and strategically as possible. Stack fights I use the Sanctuary approach, spread fights I use Serenity. Don't be afraid to experiment. So far Protectors is the only fight I chakra dance.

[Deleted]

There's honestly nothing wrong with holy - for 25m.. you can easily compete with other healers.. but yeah holy is getting sniped alot(it's much worse in 10m from my experience though) - Besides it's not about the healing meters.. Healers seriously needs to stop talking about smart heals and healing meters.. both should be killed with fire.