Disc vs Holy in raids

[Daez]

otherwise that point would go in either unbreakable will, silent resolve, martyrdom or reflective shields.

If improved shields actually took spell power into consideration no discipline priest would see it as simply a filler talent. I'm ok with one point going into reflective shields and reflective shields being a filler talent. Something that buffs your major source of healing (if it actually worked properly) should not be a filler talent.

I dont know what will happen to the improved talent) or add the affect to it.

I would hope that Blizzard is smart enough to put the improved part into the baseline buff. As it is, if you are lacking a mage, the fel intellect buff is actually better than the divine spirit buff because it combines intellect and spirit, so I don't see why divine spirit can't be 80 spirit and 40 spell power at base line.

[Daez]

There is only small benefits by going GHeal instead of FHeal. But high risk, as your target always stand the risk of dying in the meantime.

It has been my experience that the healer that starts casting a greater heal on the tank when the tank is at 60% and tops them off with that greater heal is much better than a healer that cast flash heal on the tank while he slowly takes in more damage than the flash heal actually heals till he is at 20%. On a target that isn't taking a lot of damage then flash heal + renew is a better way to go.

In Addition, GHeals will be sniped. Because it is the slowest heal in the game. Unless there is a constant need for healing (patchwerk), it will be sniped.

Sniped heals ARE NOT a huge deal for a priest unless you are trying to top healing charts and stay at the bottom of over healing charts. The priest class has a talent built around all of their heals being sniped (thats what serendipity is for). Your goal as a priest should be to get one large heal sniped instead of having to cast 2 small heals to heal for what one large heal would heal for. You are counting on all other healers to be healing the same target that you are and arguing that if they do then you lose your place on the heal meters. Heal meters are pointless when someone dies because you decided to cast a small heal on them assuming someone else would heal them to then someone else decides to heal another person.

It can be a novice raidhealer without a good healing addon who don't see that you are already healing your target, effectively throwing in a fast heal on the target, pushing you into overhealing.

In my experience, it is the novice healers that actually use add ons and actually worry about over healing. You are a priest, you should be aiming for your heals to get sniped 100% of the time. There is a reason that serendipity gives back 80% of mana for the heal only when it was sniped.

Either case will mean you GHeal is doing more overhealing. And in either case, that's sniped healing that could've been used on a different target had you cast a flash heal instead. Effectively, using a GHeal will reduce the raidwide healing done in all three cases.

Its giving you back 80% mana. Sniping heals is a goal with serendipity. The chances of you healing all the targets to full with flash heal as compared to greater heal with 5 healers in the raid is pointless. There is a reason there are 5 healers in the raid. Its so that people can be topped off as soon as they take damage. All other healers have more powerful, faster cast heals than flash heal. The goal of a priest healer should be to pick the person that is lowest on health and top them off not to try to cast small heals on everyone in the raid at the same time. As I said, if you think that is your healing style then go roll a paladin.

First, it's blocking very low amounts of damage unless you are a discipline priest. Secondly, A holypriest PW:Shielding will usually get in the way of the discipline priest.

You are assuming there is a discipline priest in the raid. While the shield from holy asorbs less damage it is still enough to keep someone from dieing in the next hit that they take so it is far from pointless. The only time shield is truly wasted as a holy spec is if it wasn't needed at all and that would be because the target was already at 80% or above and a simple renew would have been enough. Instant cast heals and shields are NOT worthless.

Renew is also a horribly bad spell for holy. Unless it ticks four times (that's 12 seconds, if your raid isn't healed up in 12 seconds consider firing your raidhealers!) ... Renew is more expensive (assuming fheal glyphed), heals for less (unless 4 ticks apply), heals slower (1.5 sec vs 12/15 sec), and stands a much larger chance of getting overhealed. It also doesn't save the person in trouble. Renew can still be used pre-emptively, but that job is mostly what you have a druid for. Sure, help the druid out (works wonders on the malygos vortex), but if the damage already happened, flash heal is the better choice.

You underestimate the ability of instant cast hots. The raid does not need to be brought back up in under 12 seconds if there is no more instant damage going out. You don't need to fire your healers if the entire raid is not capped in less than 12 seconds. The only reason to use flash heal is to snipe off druids hots. Throw a shield on the lowest targets and cast renew on everyone else while the druids are casting hots on everyone else and let the hots actually work instead of trying to win the healing meters. Every single one of your posts is about winning the healing meters which means either you are a newb that always has to be on top of the healing meters (which makes you a damn bad healer) or you guild actually thinks healing meters matter (in which case your guild leadership is filled with idiots).

So I have to play the spammer, or the raid die. And that makes me a bit sad.

Do you actually realize how few fights are constant damage to everyone in the raid? Hots are more than enough to cap people back off. If you think damage is coming to the entire raid every 12 seconds then you are thinking of 1 or 2 fights. In saph there is a reason to keep people capped. In malygos there is a reason to keep people capped. In almost all other fights it is much better to let the hots actually work.

[Danner]

It has been my experience that the healer that starts casting a greater heal on the tank when the tank is at 60% and tops them off with that greater heal is much better than a healer that cast flash heal on the tank while he slowly takes in more damage than the flash heal actually heals till he is at 20%. On a target that isn't taking a lot of damage then flash heal + renew is a better way to go.

Not disagreeing. On tank healing, that is. Major difference I guess is that I don't really bother with the renew, but that's probably my loss.

Sniped heals ARE NOT a huge deal for a priest unless you are trying to top healing charts and stay at the bottom of over healing charts. The priest class has a talent built around all of their heals being sniped (thats what serendipity is for). Your goal as a priest should be to get one large heal sniped instead of having to cast 2 small heals to heal for what one large heal would heal for. You are counting on all other healers to be healing the same target that you are and arguing that if they do then you lose your place on the heal meters. Heal meters are pointless when someone dies because you decided to cast a small heal on them assuming someone else would heal them to then someone else decides to heal another person.

In my experience, it is the novice healers that actually use add ons and actually worry about over healing. You are a priest, you should be aiming for your heals to get sniped 100% of the time. There is a reason that serendipity gives back 80% of mana for the heal only when it was sniped.

Its giving you back 80% mana. Sniping heals is a goal with serendipity. The chances of you healing all the targets to full with flash heal as compared to greater heal with 5 healers in the raid is pointless. There is a reason there are 5 healers in the raid. Its so that people can be topped off as soon as they take damage. All other healers have more powerful, faster cast heals than flash heal. The goal of a priest healer should be to pick the person that is lowest on health and top them off not to try to cast small heals on everyone in the raid at the same time. As I said, if you think that is your healing style then go roll a paladin.

This one I will disagree on.

I see your point about getting sniped is good for your manapool. And yes, some degree of overhealing is good. But aiming for being sniped is aiming for being redundant. If fifteen raiders take damage, and you have 3 raidhealers, the sane thing is to use all of our abilities to get as many up to full health as fast as possible. If everyone were paladins, you'd have each of them heal five people each, and in 5 GCDs, the raid would be at full health.

We're not all paladins. The priest might use a Prayer of Healing, the druid might prioritizing swiftmend on the raider at 11 HP then hot up as many people as possible, the shaman would likely start off with a riptide on the tank, then chain heal. But ultimately, the optimal healing is always gotten if everyone heal different targets. You don't explicitly set yourself up to healing the same as someone else just to proc serendipity, that's silly. You want to heal as many people up as fast as possible to minimize the chance of death. That's all that really matters: Minimizing the risk of deaths. Manapools, efficiency, procs, healing meters (in particular!) etc are all unimportant in comparison. If noone died, the healers won.

You are assuming there is a discipline priest in the raid. While the shield from holy asorbs less damage it is still enough to keep someone from dieing in the next hit that they take so it is far from pointless. The only time shield is truly wasted as a holy spec is if it wasn't needed at all and that would be because the target was already at 80% or above and a simple renew would have been enough. Instant cast heals and shields are NOT worthless.

It's not that rare with disc priests is it? Guess my raid is weird then

If the shield is capable of preventing a death, then by all means. In my experience, it does not do that very often as the holy version of PW:Shield is very weak. A FHeal that heals for 4.5k in 1.5 seconds will in contrast very often save a life. Question is if you can wait the 1.5 seconds.

You underestimate the ability of instant cast hots. The raid does not need to be brought back up in under 12 seconds if there is no more instant damage going out. You don't need to fire your healers if the entire raid is not capped in less than 12 seconds. The only reason to use flash heal is to snipe off druids hots. Throw a shield on the lowest targets and cast renew on everyone else while the druids are casting hots on everyone else and let the hots actually work instead of trying to win the healing meters. Every single one of your posts is about winning the healing meters which means either you are a newb that always has to be on top of the healing meters (which makes you a damn bad healer) or you guild actually thinks healing meters matter (in which case your guild leadership is filled with idiots).

Do you actually realize how few fights are constant damage to everyone in the raid? Hots are more than enough to cap people back off. If you think damage is coming to the entire raid every 12 seconds then you are thinking of 1 or 2 fights. In saph there is a reason to keep people capped. In malygos there is a reason to keep people capped. In almost all other fights it is much better to let the hots actually work.

If the raid got a megahit once, they will do so again. Sure, there are fights like Thaddius where the damage is utterly predictable. Thaddius will cast his lightning every 10 seconds. It will hurt people for about 7-8k damage. Predictable. Easy to heal. I usually just go DPS on those figths; 2 other raidhealers can easily counter that damage alone.

But when the crap hits the fan, like on malygos phase 2, the malygos vortex, sartharion twilight debuff, someone failing to move on Grobbulus, slime pulls before patchwerk (aoe damage galore!), instructor razuvious' shout + knife combo (kills almost anyone unless the raid is quickly healed), maexxna web wrap (heal everyone up before the cocoons come), loatheb fights that drag out (you use that window to heal as many people as possible), sapphiron without frost resistance or pretty much anything in TBC endgame - raidhealing should happen fast, or people die. Sure, there are a lot of times where you can relax.

But mostly, you just cut down on the amount of healers instead of allowing priests to ly back and remain idle. Naxx with 5 healers is commonplace. When that becomes too easy, we might go down to 4. People have done it with 3 already, only 2 most of the time.

[Kalysa]

Most ppl are saying that disc are for MT heal and holy for raid heal. Let me share you my experience as a discipline raid healer.

Part of being a good healer is to know when the tank and the raid is going to take damage. When I know the next pull have mobs that cleave I PWS melees every GCD so that they don't take any damage when the mob cleaves. In fights like Loatheb, nothing is better than shield to prevent damage. Fights like KT, we all know there are going to be frostbolt volley every 15 seconds. This means you can again PWS every GCD and be fully efficient. Malygos: everyone takes Arcane Storm damage. I could keep going with examples but that's not the idea of the post.

Power Word: Shield last 30 seconds. This means you don't need to worry about casting it right before a burst. You can prevent incoming damage 30 seconds before it really happens! If you worry about wasting mana on unused PWS, you need to know the fights better to know who is going to take damage. Then, the odds that the shielded person will take damage in the next 30 seconds and return you a lot of mana back are very high. People often see PWS as a way to give time for other healers to top the target, but it's only one way of using that spell.

What do I do between PWS spam? I just go with PoM when there is AoE, Penance if I need to quick heal someone or flash heal spam if many ppl take damage.

Spec as a disc raid healer? you don't want to get divine aegis because the target you crit on isn't likely to take damage within 12 seconds. Same goes with grace.



I personally prefer holy playstyle with the 5SR, but I do believe I'm just as useful to my raid as disc as I am as holy for raid healing. The only thing is that you cannot have 2 disc priest in a raid because you're gonna lose shield efficiency compared to no loss with any other 2 healers.

[Izenhart]

flash of light (even glyphed) is the last thing you want to be spamming in any group or raid. Holy priests are built for large heals and greater heal will give you much better healing for mana usage if you realize when you need to use it.

It is, but oh dear, you are telling me in fights with small but constant damage (Heigan, Gothik, Sapph, Anub, Malygos, Loatheb, Razuvious) you are going to single GH everyone? To cast a greater heal on 10-15 members with 4-5k deficit? or just land a PoM, CoH, and Flash Heal them up?

Actually as far as I see it there are really a low number of fights were we priests need to cast/stopcast a greater heal. (Sarth, Patchwerk, 4H)

It has been my experience that the healer that starts casting a greater heal on the tank when the tank is at 60% and tops them off with that greater heal is much better than a healer that cast flash heal on the tank while he slowly takes in more damage than the flash heal actually heals till he is at 20%. On a target that isn't taking a lot of damage then flash heal + renew is a better way to go.

This is only for Tank healing. Renew and stopcasting the GH.

As said above, on (almost) all our other roles GH is a too big/slow spell to compare with Chain Heals/AoE druid dots/paladin's FH/Our FH, to even hope to full someone without going 100% OH. GH is for big heals and predicted damage, a.k.a tank healing, if you are (as it is normal to be as holy priest) assigned to RAID, you have no reason to use the GH except for some noob DPS fucking up something or random heavy damage (void zones, lava walls, non decursed drain life, razuvious's knife, KT's frost tombs) and still in here you risk to be overhealed by others while casting the GH.

[Trannysteve]

Healing meters dont matter that much, it does give an overview, but it shouldnt be the most important factor to prove someones usefullness.

I second that. If everyone is alive, no/few questions will be asked other than the usual ePeen fools. When people die, when a tank dies, then I get mad, and I get curious. Why was our holy pally so low on his healing assignment with almost no overheal? Did he D/C? Pain Suppression- W R U?

Keep green bars green, and be happy you were apart of it, people.

[Worshaka]

The actual healing value of CoH is increased in 3.1. The cool down is also not overly cumbersome. It is actually pretty easy to twist in with your other abilities now.

This where you totally lose me. CoH is on a 6 second cool down not a 10 second cool down. Also, flash of light (even glyphed) is the last thing you want to be spamming in any group or raid. Holy priests are built for large heals and greater heal will give you much better healing for mana usage if you realize when you need to use it. If you want to spam fast heals that don't heal for as much then go make a paladin. The best way to deal with a large amount of incoming group damage is to shield the targets that are really low and hot everyone. If your hot hasn't brought the person that was really low to full health by the time shield wears off then heal them, but not until it gets a chance to work.

PW:S is the last spell a Holy Priest should be casting, it's one of the worst DPM spells available and heals for very little in comparison to other spells you could cast.

Gheal is a great spell but if you just need to top off someone with 3K healing its hardly the spell to use. As such you will find that in a good raid group where there is little to do than top people up holy priests are goign to flash heal... that doesnt make it a great spell but in current content where mana pools are basically infinite its the thing to do.

When content gets harder, flash heal will be used less and less and you will find Renew the better spell to cast (assuming time isnt a factor)

Personally I find Gheal best used for MT healing which a Holy Priest can do just fine, they just don't have a niche for it and when it comes down to min maxing a holy pally and disc priest do it better... but if one of them should die or your raid group doesnt have a holy pally for a specific raid a holy priest can do the job without too many dramas.

[axxey]

1 disc priest in a raid is always great, beyond that the benefit's dont outweigh the throughput of holy.

[Deleted]

1) Grace - shitty as hell. 100% proc chance? Oh really... I know another '100% proc' that gives the same benefit. It's called Blessing of Sanctuary.

They both stack.

2) Pain Suppression - Even worse than grace. What's the point of this ability if a target still can die? Holy wings >>>>>> Pain Suppression

Guardian spirit works like a combat ress, on that I agree, but it should never come to that, and pain surpression just slows down the targets death giving an additional healer to jump in and assist.

These spells usually only get used preemptively when they know something will happen, and both of these talents perform well on that.

3) Divine Aegis - Useless for healing raid damage. Liked it better when it was called PRAYER OF MENDING. PoM is literally better than divine aegis in every single way. Heals raid dmg. Heals multiple people/counts. Can be used before target is taking large amounts of dmg.

As far as I can remember Discipline priests use prayer of mending, it can crit proccing divine aegis, note 'proc', a discipline priest doesnt have to push an additional button, its just something that happens and gives us back mana.

A paladin can spam 18k heals most of a fight and never come close to being OOM

Being a holy paladin does require skill. but a 6k shield + 13k greaterheal crit, + 4k divine aegis results in 23k 'healing'

Obvious troll

[palamina]

Disc is fucking terrible. You're literally gimping yourself and your raid by specing it and making everyone around you look terrible for having a player as bad as you around.

You really want to know why people don't realize their 'importance'?

1) Grace - shitty as hell. 100% proc chance? Oh really... I know another '100% proc' that gives the same benefit. It's called Blessing of Sanctuary.

2) Pain Suppression - Even worse than grace. What's the point of this ability if a target still can die? Holy wings >>>>>> Pain Suppression

3) Divine Aegis - Useless for healing raid damage. Liked it better when it was called PRAYER OF MENDING. PoM is literally better than divine aegis in every single way. Heals raid dmg. Heals multiple people/counts. Can be used before target is taking large amounts of dmg.

In a time when every single healer is complaining about their lack of, or nerfs to, AoE healing, why would you forcefully spec into being as useless as possible from an AoE healing perspective? To tank heal? Here's a BIG fyi on that: Paladins will still rape you on tank healing. There's nothing even close to anything resembling a mana efficiency argument there. A paladin can spam 18k heals most of a fight and never come close to being OOM

Realm first clears of all content, would never let this trash spec anywhere close to any of my raids

Dummm divine aegis and PoM are too entirely different things, one is a proc from any crit heal creating a shield for 30% of amount healed, and the other a disc priest can still cast which since it crits creates even more shields.

and yes grace is same 3% as BoS but if you have both pally can cast a different blessing..

tbh i think you were joking with your post and really you love the disc priest

[dabros]

Dummm divine aegis and PoM are too entirely different things, one is a proc from any crit heal creating a shield for 30% of amount healed, and the other a disc priest can still cast which since it crits creates even more shields.

and yes grace is same 3% as BoS but if you have both pally can cast a different blessing..

tbh i think you were joking with your post and really you love the disc priest

butbutbut he has realm firsts, he is obviously pro

[Ananan]

Very trollish indeed. Pain Suppression isn't very good though, I'll give him that.

Paladin mana is an interesting topic. First of, I'll be very surprised if a dev ever announces that Holy Light is supposed to be spammable without using FoL quite much in between. The really interesting question is whether nerfing paladin mana without touching the pure throughput on Holy Light will allow the best guilds to use fewer healers as long as the extra dps brings the encounter-time down enough that the paladins can spam Holy Light all the time even with nerfed mana (2 healers in ~97 second Patchwerk fights shows the tendencies).

You can counter paladin-stacking with increased raid-damage in the encounters, but then it sounds suspiciously like pre-cooldown Circle of Healing which was a spell that they didn't want to design encounters around and which was deemed unfixable by just using mana cost. Now, I don't think that Holy Light is as big a problem as CoH was, but it's definately the same kind of problem - a spell that if it is too spammable trivializes certain kinds of encounters.

[Izenhart]

Being a holy paladin does require skill. but a 6k shield + 13k greaterheal crit, + 4k divine aegis results in 23k 'healing'

It was a troll indeed, but about this statement you are wrong.
Paladins, or, almost all lvl213 geared paladins, have around 45%crit rating raidbuffed (even more than the cap limit) their HL is faster, and they can stack every single item on haste and crit, simply because they doesn't need any kind of regen almost at all.
Plus they ALWAYS have a 0.5 sec reduced cast on their next HL, plus Holy Shock crits= 1 second less cast on HL.

A disc priest, to compete with them, needs their same % of crit (wich is impossible) and even hope to crit as them, since paladins just crit and crit again, when the disc priest relies on the crit to pop the divine aegis, so every single non crit is a huge lost of HPM compared to the loss an holy paladin have in non critting (Are they even?)

[skitszo]

the pain supression apparently reduces the threat gain while supressed..not reduce it when casted. I have never reduced a tanks threat that got a dps killed(ever), and a site explained that it reduces the threat being generated during the time its up, with threat generation being easy as it is it really shouldn't be a problem. the extra shield wall has saved my tanks so many times its not even funny.

[Trannysteve]

Disc is fucking terrible. You're literally gimping yourself and your raid by specing it and making everyone around you look terrible for having a player as bad as you around.

You really want to know why people don't realize their 'importance'?

1) Grace - shitty as hell. 100% proc chance? Oh really... I know another '100% proc' that gives the same benefit. It's called Blessing of Sanctuary.

2) Pain Suppression - Even worse than grace. What's the point of this ability if a target still can die? Holy wings >>>>>> Pain Suppression

3) Divine Aegis - Useless for healing raid damage. Liked it better when it was called PRAYER OF MENDING. PoM is literally better than divine aegis in every single way. Heals raid dmg. Heals multiple people/counts. Can be used before target is taking large amounts of dmg.

In a time when every single healer is complaining about their lack of, or nerfs to, AoE healing, why would you forcefully spec into being as useless as possible from an AoE healing perspective? To tank heal? Here's a BIG fyi on that: Paladins will still rape you on tank healing. There's nothing even close to anything resembling a mana efficiency argument there. A paladin can spam 18k heals most of a fight and never come close to being OOM

Realm first clears of all content, would never let this trash spec anywhere close to any of my raids

lawlawlawlawlawlawlawlawl

Win.

[omniscience]

Well, with Pizzabaggles nice comments I think we've reached a conclusion.

Raids dont need priests anymore, since holy paladins will pwnwtf our ass in every content and shamans can /lolchainheal the aoe dmg which paladins cant heal up (wonder when that happends?) we will be brought to raid for buffing stamina and shadow resistance !

The good old times are back !
Hail to the paladins !

[Befaro]

1 Disc X Holy (if there are no other priests, i.e. 10 man raid, x = 0)
if you know how to specc

[Deleted]

A disc priest, to compete with them, needs their same % of crit (wich is impossible) and even hope to crit as them, since paladins just crit and crit again, when the disc priest relies on the crit to pop the divine aegis, so every single non crit is a huge lost of HPM compared to the loss an holy paladin have in non critting (Are they even?)

Paladins also have the luxury of overhealing, discipline priests do not, yet we have to keep grace up and possibly inspiration, the only thing overhealing doesnt hurt much is to have the same amount of crit as a paladin, and you are right that is impossible in current gearlvl, but every absorbed divine aegis will result in aproximatly 2.5% of mana returned, which makes overhealing more bareable.

[Mandible]

I tend to zone trolls like pizzabaggle out hence I haven't commented on it

But as others have said disc priests are fully viable - if you don't think so you suck at playing a priest yourself.

[Kelesti]

Although I agree with you, the problem is that the disc priest isn't needed because any well geared paladin can keep the tank up just fine on their own in 99% of the content (excluding 3 drakes) if they are played well. That makes the disc priest look lackluster. There is no way that any guild is going to chose a discipline priest over a holy paladin to be the main tank healer if they are actually given a choice.

Let me point out to you that instead of dropping the Discipline Priest, you drop the Paladin and let the Disc Priest hold their own. Guess what, results that they can stand on their own.