Worth coming back? [Holy]

[Tehterokkar]

Holy seems strong because Disc is shit, amiright? At least our main Disc switched to Holy for heroic dungeons/CM Dailies and he was saying Holy is so much better.

[Deleted]

Nonsense !
Disc is arguably still better than Holy and one of the top healer spec. In any case, it's not shit at all.
It's just that the gameplay is even more shield oriented. So, to be efficient at playing the spec, you have to know the fights by heart (in order to preshield all the incoming damage) and make sure your teammates are playing properly (i.e only taking inavoidable damage). The reward is very high when those conditions are met.

Holy just allows for more errors because you can always pop GA or another CD to top health bars when you or your teammates screw up. Can't do that while playing disc.
You can't (or don't want to) learn boss fights and timing by heart, then go holy. Same if your team just stand in fire like training dummies and then cry because 40k HPS is not enough. Else, disc is very good.

[sfeeney37]

In PVE,...I believe this tier will be something people will look back to as "that one time Holy was good".

I'm guessing that you never played in 1.x/TBC/WoTLK. Holy was exceptional for 6 years, and downright godly for 4 of those years. Not that it was always fun...no CD CoH combined with instacast/no CD PoM was pretty boring, but NOBODY ever died if you were even half paying attention...just like Disc in MoP. I'm not anti-Disc at all, it's awesome and I'm really hoping for a return to WoTLK balance when both were equally raid viable given equal gear and player ability. Sure makes it harder to burnout when you can essentially main two completely different healers.

[anon5123]

Holy seems strong because Disc is shit, amiright? At least our main Disc switched to Holy for heroic dungeons/CM Dailies and he was saying Holy is so much better.

Disc isn't *shit*, it's just rather boring compared to Holy. It's arguably the strongest tank healer in the game, and shields are still strong as well, being really high HPM and absorbing a fuckton (anywhere from 40k to 120k depending on crits/multistrikes) on a single cast.

I played both Disc and Holy through all these heroic 5mans, and both work fine. I find Holy more fun to play, because I like spamming Renew, keeping it up with Serenity and using CoH. :P

[tiporispit]

I'm guessing that you never played in 1.x/TBC/WoTLK. Holy was exceptional for 6 years, and downright godly for 4 of those years. Not that it was always fun...no CD CoH combined with instacast/no CD PoM was pretty boring, but NOBODY ever died if you were even half paying attention...just like Disc in MoP. I'm not anti-Disc at all, it's awesome and I'm really hoping for a return to WoTLK balance when both were equally raid viable given equal gear and player ability. Sure makes it harder to burnout when you can essentially main two completely different healers.

BC CoH, aka the most ridiculous thing ever put in the game... keybind.. command string... shot glass of quarters... pull boss... make sandwich

[Mazi]

I like how I've played Holy since Vanilla and I quit right when Holy becomes acceptable to be playing again -_-

[Deleted]

Nonsense !
Disc is arguably still better than Holy and one of the top healer spec. In any case, it's not shit at all.
It's just that the gameplay is even more shield oriented. So, to be efficient at playing the spec, you have to know the fights by heart (in order to preshield all the incoming damage) and make sure your teammates are playing properly (i.e only taking inavoidable damage). The reward is very high when those conditions are met.

Holy just allows for more errors because you can always pop GA or another CD to top health bars when you or your teammates screw up. Can't do that while playing disc.
You can't (or don't want to) learn boss fights and timing by heart, then go holy. Same if your team just stand in fire like training dummies and then cry because 40k HPS is not enough. Else, disc is very good.

Lol way to make holy look like the noob spec while disco priest is only for the super leet who are willing to learn.
Next thing you gonne say that MoP disc was fine and that other healers simply sucked.

[mrcodez]

Are you kidding me. Holy is awesome at the moment. and most likely will be the rest of this expansion. unless blizz decides to screw us over again.
In Mop holy had a bad start but got better and better with ridiculous gear scaling.

I'm really enjoying the healing actually and really enjoying the shadow spec as well. Granted, I'm level 100 and my item level is only 602 or something so I'm not in heroics yet. The healing feels much more challenging (in a good way) than anything I did in mists. I was pretty worried I was going to hate having so many instant cast spells changed to cast times but it hasn't been bad at all.

If you're interested in coming back I think it's worth it even for nothing else than the questing and level up experience. The cut scenes and storyline are really good and the game play is legitimately fun.

[Jueles]

The main PVE issue as holy I feel is that half of my heals feel incredibly weak. Renew ticks for < 1% of a tank HP bar. Binding Heal doesn't even move a pixel, and can really only be used to refresh renew. PWS is still useless. Prayer of Healing isn't really healing for a lot, and needs to be cast 6-7 times in a row, which costs half a manabar to do. Flash heal is our best heal, but spamming it isn't really enough to keep normal dungeon tanks alive (it's better in heroic dungeons). But on the upside - mana is readily available. You can (and have to) spam your big heals with minimum gear. I wonder how it will hold up in raids. I did very well in LFR MC40, but... LFR MC40 isn't really a good benchmark.

I feel like I'm struggling in heroic. My gear level was 625, I can manage a guild group but random pugs - not so much. On heroic and spamming flash on the tank - that health bar does not seem to move (meanwhile my mana bar goes down ) I also did okay in MC - not great - but okay.

[sfeeney37]

Holy just allows for more errors because you can always pop GA or another CD to top health bars when you or your teammates screw up. Can't do that while playing disc.
You can't (or don't want to) learn boss fights and timing by heart, then go holy.

I've never understood the Holy vs Disc segmentation of this class. Can't we just focus all of this strife on Druids and/or Pallys?!?

Anyway, Guardian Spirit (I'm assuming that's what GA is in your post, sorry if it's not) is on a CD, meaning you can't always pop it. You get it twice in an average raid encounter (usually scripted) and once in an average 5man. That's it as far as survival CDs go. Disc can PS, PW:B with the same frequency if things get ugly. A bad healer will wipe with either spec, a good healer will excel with either spec. Fight knowledge, by all players, will help both specs immensely.

[Deleted]

Not true at all.

Both specs are viable and have their strengths & weaknesses. Holy is one of the best raid healers (if not the best) right now.

Druid, then holy priest in terms of the best.

[emni]

Druid, then holy priest in terms of the best.

Druids lack longevity though. They have some amazing throughput on short fights, but at least on beta priests regularly outlasted them and came out on top.