Disc versus Holy for PvE healing (heroics and Naxx)

[thoukaia]

i dont know if the matter has been discussed in other threads, but i'd like some opinions on which spec is better for PvE healing. Right now i use http://thottbot.com/priest/t#ELMFQq9kL8/uxOc and my stats are 1970 spellpower (buffed with Inner fire and Divine Spirit), 18120 mana, 283 mp5 amd 16% holy crit.
I know that the whole WoW community still views the Disc priest as the PVP/tank priest, but after having played both specs, i can say that Discipline is slightly better overall, and that is because of the Rapture-Penance combo that makes Penance restore 120 mana per tick and effectively making Penance's mana cost ~180 mana (provided you have Improved Healing in the Holy tree) which is way too low for a spell that heals for 9000 average and applies 3/3 Grace on the target as well as having a good chance to crit and thus not only heal for more but also shielding for 30% of the tick that critted. (whew i'm out of breath)
please contribute your opinion on the matter.

thanks

[Dentoid]

i've alwas shyly loved discipline and since the 3.0 patch that love have burst out in wedding (kinda)

personally, this is what i would use
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbdhxtMxoVfMtbLtcc
the sad part is is that i haven't been able to test it at 80 (haven't been able to play since release) but mostly i think it's a matter of playstyle and the group setup

[Laeh]

I'm planning to go Disc aswell at 80, I tried it at lvl 77 in a few normal dungeons and I liked it way more then the normal Coh spec.
I have no idea how it will be in raiding but from what I have seen now I really like it and I'll most likely stick to it

[Leprodigy]

I have leveled from 70-78 as disc, and have LOVED every second of it. Now I want to stay disc at 80, but figure that it will only really be useful as MT healer, on in 10 mans.

Are there many other disc priests healing raids out there? any 25 mans, can I see your stats please!

I think that the biggest advantage of holy is more spell power on heals, more threat reduction, and of course CoH.

I hope there is a spot in my raid for a disc healer.

[Skurp]

disc healing is decent for 5 mans (heroics) but as far as raiding goes, holy is the way to go... CoH (circle of hax) is still overpowered for healing... you might be able to get by doing a 10 man as disc but not 25 man raids... only way i could see a disc priest being useful in 25 man is if you are short on paly healers to tank heal and to already have other ae healers in the raid

[meowmeow]

discipline is very easy spec, if you can;t manage holy. go discipline, you won't contribute much to the raid healing, even if you elieve sheilds etc help. you will need help when it comes to harder encounter (like yesturday disci roiest had to get help on malgyos 25m with 3 up, he didn't manage, heals weren't good enough, same with sheilds).

basically discipline is to easy to play, requires minor mana attention and allows you to spam often especially when ppl are low. i have a discipline priest in raid, and i doubt he'll survive as holy. holy is much "harder" to play now.

i hope blizz will do something about it, at the same time, as in a raid we went to malygos 25m with 3 dragons up, the raid healer holy priest (not me i was on druid) did 58% of total incoming heals on the tank, while the discipline was standing on a steady 17%, not capable of providing enough protection to the tank forcing the raid healer to pay alot more attention to the main tank. aventually my thoughts are simpley: even the resto druid contributed more then the discipline spec to the raid. the grace isn't something that you really need on the tank when he has the gear, and tbh i still don't understand why to bring em.

discipline feels stupid. yet if you don't manage to play holy and go oom all the time. go discipline, i start to believe thats what the spec was made for.

[Befaro]

I am 45/26/0...and it ROCKS!!!

I raid 10 man and doing heal with a Shaman, so I doubt it would be better beeing holy, because I do not group heal ^^

[meowmeow]

I am 45/26/0...and it ROCKS!!!

I raid 10 man and doing heal with a Shaman, so I doubt it would be better beeing holy, because I do not group heal ^^

you won't do better as holy, cause as holy you actually need to notice your mana, while as discipline its really doesn't matter. that was the point. holy became a mana managment spec, while disipline you can forget about looking at mana bar. i myself went as discipline, i spent less points in holy, and had penance. didn't say it wasn't cool: penance grafics are cool, also the devine ageis procs are cool. yet, as holy you actually do better HPS. 10m nax is not really a measure. i just now (raid finished now this moment) healed a run of nax, me and a resto druid. i was in shadow spec, but healed - just got a inervate from the druid when mana sucked. we didn't even add another healer. when less heals were required the druid solo'd and i dpsed (ofc with VE helping with 1 groups heal). 10m nax is cake. on the other hand 10m obsidian with 2-3 drakes, a disipline is a waste of raid spot when you can have a holy paladin/holy priest doing it, and much better. try it and see. at the same time go obsidian 25m with 3 drakes up - we managed last night after "making" the discipline go holy and heal MT as holy, suddently tank stoped randomly "dying" from different reasons (or my words for it: can we stop fiddling around with discipline?). if we had a holy paladin it would never have happened. my self was on resto druid. yet tomorrow i'm going to come on my priest as holy, and again i am sure i'll do better then discipline on MT. when the damage is increase discipline's HPS becomes a problem. 10m nax is no challenge what so ever, in any spec.

[Despaire]

I agree with the OP, disc is amazing and fun. It sure as hell beats spamming one button for 90% of a raid encounter.

Don't worry Meow, Blizz will solve your holy OOM problem when they add the 6 second CD to COH.

[Skurp]

why do i keep hearing about everybody have mana problems as holy? i rarely ever have mana issues and i usually top the healing charts... any holy priest that just simply spams CoH is a fail priest... http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...Akama&n=Skurpz im not even that well geared and yet i have no mana problems... disc is only good for single target healing and staying alive... i do agree tho that disc is really fun and i do enjoy it more than holy but it just doesn't do as good as job as holy does when in raids

[Torture]

Disc is just misunderstood.

In my mind, there is a solid spot for 1 regular disc priest in any raid. Any more than one and you're not gaining any quantifiable benefit sadly.

However, a disc priest does make an excellent difference once people forget HPS and start thinking about 'effective mitigation'.

Talented PWS from a disc priest raises the effective HP of a tank, as does Aegis. This makes tanks less susceptible to large spike damage. Maybe we're not seeing that in Naxx 10, but as bosses get harder and PWS and Aegis get larger from better gear then it will become more noticeable.

I don't mention Grace on purpose as it won't stack with BoSanct but in cases where no Pally tank is present then add that too.

Remember, if a Disc priest does 0 healing, but absorbs 40k of damage through shield and Aegis, and a Holy Priest does 40k healing, the effective damage mitigation / recovery is the same. It's not all about HPS.

[Neeklus]

Remember, heal metre's don't usually show how much damage has been mitigated via Disc priest's shield.

Still I find them weaker for raids. They lack the versatility of the full Holy priest, though do benefit more from gear such as crit and int. Holy is all about spirit, power, mp5, haste, crit, int...

[Leprodigy]

HPS, healing meters, PFT.

I have never used healing meters, not trying to start a fight, but I dont believe there is any point. If people stay alive, and your job is done(dispell etc) then you have done your job well.

Different classes heal differently anyway, so its incredibly inaccurate to base skill on healing meters!

[Skurp]

yes i agree that there is a lot of error in the effectiveness of healing meters but they do show when certain people just plain suck at the game... for example, if you have two holy priest in the raid and one is towards the top and the other is at the bottom, then they are doing something wrong... they also show over healing done and what spells each healer is using so if somebody is just spamming stupid shit you can tell

edit: fixed typo

[Ponza]

Yes there is a lot of debates between if discipline or holy is the proper spec to use... So forth so forth blah blah yada yata yoda. Either way... When it comes down to it. It doesn't really matter until you hit raids (as mentioned before by others). The best way to go about it is to find out which one you enjoy doing more. Personally I can't stand the discipline specs. Having DPS ranged, DPS melee, a tank, and a healer I understand the difference between each role. Or at least I hope I do. Before I went further into discipline then I do now as I cared more about the 25 mp5 for being a human and having a massive amount of spirit. Though now it doesn't seem to matter as much, and holy has become much more doable for mana consumption. Either way this is my holy spec. It's very basic, and probably cookie cutter to the extreme. Personally I dislike CoH, and the main reason why I have it is 'cause I have a job to do. This also lets my friend who plays a discipline priest the ability to stay discipline as they hate being holy... Besides it's fun to tell the person that I am holier then though. ;P

<a href="http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000">View Build Here</a>

Either way the I never seem to run out of mana, and never really worry about anything. The glyphs I use are Glyph of Renew, Glyph of Flash Heal, and Glyph of Dispel.

Though I would like to know if a discipline priest's shield with the damage that gets redirected back to the mob. If that goes to the tank for threat or if it goes to the priest. It'd be nice to know at least. The down side is that I haven't been able to do anything with both in the same instance. As it appears that a discipline priest, and a holy priest would be insane for an instance when combined with each other.

Well I hope that gives some sort of info at least.

^^
Ponza

Edit: Screwed up the link

[Torture]

Though I would like to know if a discipline priest's shield with the damage that gets redirected back to the mob. If that goes to the tank for threat or if it goes to the priest. It'd be nice to know at least.

Reflective Shield generates no threat, none whatsoever.

However, I don't think you'll see any raiding Disc priests take the talent, it's far more PvP / grinding orientated. (Bring on Duel spec!!).

[thoukaia]

...The glyphs I use are Glyph of Renew...

worst glyph ever imo unless you're assigned to heal raid in 25's. when MT healing, most ticks of renew go wasted as they should be overhealing the MT. tho it's a good thing to keep renew on tank, the glyph just makes you cast it every 12 seconds instead of 15, which would be the same as increasing its mana cost by 20% and that's pretty much a waste of 3 talent points on imp renew.

back to the topic
yesterday did naxx 10 with a holy priest (i was disc) who had somewhat worse gear than me, slight difference tho so i supposed we'd be about equals in healing meters since holy's got more HPS. healing meter at the end of spider wing had me on 47% (which means more like 55% counting PWS and div aegis) and holy on 41%. he still had 3/3 swp t6 so i think it's safe to assume he knew how to play the spec. never saw him run oom too, even tho i had some slight problems at maexxna from spamming PoH's (only because they dont trigger Rapture like penance and flash do). just mentioned.

finally, to the guy who said disc shouldnt have a spot in 25-man raids: 3% damage reduction on the tank 100% of the time is ALMOST good enough by itself to justify 1 healer spot. not to mention the endless mana, the ability to heal for 9k-15k for 130 mana and throwing around power infusions every 100 seconds to boost up some lucky mage's DPS.

[Kelesti]

worst glyph ever imo unless you're assigned to heal raid in 25's. when MT healing, most ticks of renew go wasted as they should be overhealing the MT. tho it's a good thing to keep renew on tank, the glyph just makes you cast it every 12 seconds instead of 15, which would be the same as increasing its mana cost by 20% and that's pretty much a waste of 3 talent points on imp renew.

back to the topic
yesterday did naxx 10 with a holy priest (i was disc) who had somewhat worse gear than me, slight difference tho so i supposed we'd be about equals in healing meters since holy's got more HPS. healing meter at the end of spider wing had me on 47% (which means more like 55% counting PWS and div aegis) and holy on 41%. he still had 3/3 swp t6 so i think it's safe to assume he knew how to play the spec. never saw him run oom too, even tho i had some slight problems at maexxna from spamming PoH's (only because they dont trigger Rapture like penance and flash do). just mentioned.

finally, to the guy who said disc shouldnt have a spot in 25-man raids: 3% damage reduction on the tank 100% of the time is ALMOST good enough by itself to justify 1 healer spot. not to mention the endless mana, the ability to heal for 9k-15k for 130 mana and throwing around power infusions every 100 seconds to boost up some lucky mage's DPS.

Glyph of Renew and Improved Renew stack, so giving your renew some added "oomph" at the cost of more mana per tick, sure. Priests' HoT versatility is HIGHLY lacking, so if it's every 12 instead of every 15, I'd go for it.

Also: The 3% damage reduction from Grace is also applied by Blessing of Sanctuary, which does not stack. Rapture's mana returns diminishes when you start to bring more healers so your "endless mana" will fall (when others snipe your heals and you overheal, it's not all that grand anymore getting 6 mana, tops).

[Skurp]

There is one spot for discipline in any raid.

Its nearly a waste of a spot, but its decent.

Holy has no mana problems, if you're spamming CoH you're bad.

I can spam CoH and top meters and drink after every trash pull, but it doesn't mean Im contributing to the progression, you won't do as well on a boss fight.

CoH is an emergency move, its not meant to be spamming, you should never have 90% of CoH.

Tank healing is always having renew on, using ProM every CD, and casting /stopcasting gheals until you need to actually let it go off.

Raid healing is keeping a renew on tank and using ProM every CD, flash healing when someone gets low, then using a CoH in an emergency, sometimes you can use it more than once, but you usually don't need to especially not in WOTLK raids with a lack of raid damage except for certain fights like malygos.

very well said... this is the difference between fail priest who have mana problems as holy and good priest

[Jossol]

@meow : LOL

that being said I guess I should explain.
Most of discipline mana efficiency comes from the mana back you get from healing

FROM HEALING
not overhealing

if you think there's a HUGE difference in mana efficiency between both spec it's because you're doing something wrong as holy, like CoH spam and renew at half duration


Cant wait for CoH cooldown.