Why is Discipline supposedly more fun than Holy?

[tehmark]

Disc is bad

everyone is like "disc is like a pally so its cool"

well, why not bring a pally instead then, they do a better job than a disc priest

Penance, 3 heals for maybe 2800 each, sounds like a flash heal with more fluff

8k flash heal spamming, cool, aight well I can do that with holy too, but then after 3 i get to cast a 18k greater heal in the same time

disc poh = not talented = less effective

no coh = less raid healing

Power infusion = nerfed to hell

Disc is great for arena but I just think holy is much better for raiding

[Serengir]

Its all up to You. If "fun" means:
- a fast paced play, getting to run around saving people with shields + flash heals - go disc
- a challenge of choosing the best spell out of a huge arsenal, and managing the ever decreasing mana pool - go holy
- standing like a dork spamming flash heal/penance - go pala, or better yet - go shoot Yourself.

[-Ethos-]

Disc is bad

everyone is like "disc is like a pally so its cool"

well, why not bring a pally instead then, they do a better job than a disc priest

Penance, 3 heals for maybe 2800 each, sounds like a flash heal with more fluff

8k flash heal spamming, cool, aight well I can do that with holy too, but then after 3 i get to cast a 18k greater heal in the same time

disc poh = not talented = less effective

no coh = less raid healing

Power infusion = nerfed to hell

Disc is great for arena but I just think holy is much better for raiding

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mitigation


Through BT and sunwell, all holy was there for was to snipe heals. As disc, i get to roll shields, and minimise raid damage whilst keeping the tanks alive, so i can stop holy priests from being able to snipe, whilst being an effective tank healer.

[Aileme]

Disc is bad

everyone is like "disc is like a pally so its cool"

well, why not bring a pally instead then, they do a better job than a disc priest

Penance, 3 heals for maybe 2800 each, sounds like a flash heal with more fluff

8k flash heal spamming, cool, aight well I can do that with holy too, but then after 3 i get to cast a 18k greater heal in the same time

disc poh = not talented = less effective

no coh = less raid healing

Power infusion = nerfed to hell

Disc is great for arena but I just think holy is much better for raiding

Pff=))) most silly opinion
1. Dics aint pally!! =) Pally cant make same damage mitigation - never...they just cant do that.
2. Penance - 3 casts by 5k minimum for geared priest. So 15k minimum and 1s cast - instant. Can compare with someone elses burst heal for tank?
3. PoH - well if disc uses it - that means that maih raid healers are slackers. Or its situation like Tantrum on XT-002 where you need to heal up 1 group fast. 1.9s cast after with BT that gives 35k heal for group (7k for each member) bad? dont think so
4. PI - ask dps do they like it or not? I usually hear only big thanks for using it.

I suppose you just never tryed it seriously an you dont know that class.

[Cris]

i am wondering a little why nobody mentioned another aspect which i find most "interesting".

as a disc priest it is more about shields and as some said preemptive healing.
within a 10 men raid often there is a need for aoe healing by the boss designs so as some said you can shield in advance or prevent somebody dieing with another shield but...

still the healthbar of that player is down low when the actual damage is done by boss. there is no ( at least to my knowledge) easy way to track how much damage the shield will take still and that is an issue especially to the other remaining healers in raid. they are forced to heal the lost healthpool.

i can see that the shielding thing is a plus in a 25 men environment where those shields are simply an extra form of safety and prevent some spike damage on players until the rest of the healing bunch controls the situation but i think in a 10 men run the healing counts. it sets the other healer(s) under preassure to get everybody to 100% while losing the focus on their mainduty maybe.

input?

[Belief]

Its just an matter of opinion, i played disc all through Vanilla ( if you think they are onder apriciated now, you dont have a clue..) played holy during all of TBC (was fun though). and changed back disc at 3.1 ( yes 2 times disc in my dual spec, 1 PvP and 1 PvE.

Like some others said already it has some great points:

Disc makes you feel "special" and really helping out in a raid whit its awsome damage metigation. It gives you that "godly" feeling like: "Boss should have hitted tank down to 50% bud he only took him down 2 80% because of ME!"

Disc mana regen > holy,.. this gives you the chance to be very very active.. even when all other healers start to say the are almost OOM you still are happy spamming .

Downside is:

You are a less effective raid healer than Holy (this doesnt say you can not "assist"raid heal)

You will never top the "Epeen" meters, and therefor will always be looked down on by "less competent" players.

Only 1 Disc priest is really needed in a raid.

@the "less competent" players talking about disc priest beeing wanne be paladins, and that they are less good MT healers as paladins... dont post anything about something you dont know, Disc priests are perfect MT healers, and no they dont wanne replace paladins,. they need to work together. a pala disc MT healer combo is awsome,. and better than 2 times pala ore 2 times disc.

My 2 cents

[bigjenk]

actually a geared disc preist pennance hits for 3500-4k each and at least one of them is likely to crit so 11k of healing plus another 1k+ of absorb on da proc. pw s absorbs around 6-7k on an instant and when rolling them with the right amount of haste on a 1 sec gcd which seems pretty good to me. plus once a disc preist approaches 22k mana they can heal every gcd if there mana regen talents are used appropriately. while holy often has higher hps when combined with absorbs disc is often higher as when tank is topped off plus sheild they are bouncing pom and rolling sheilds. not to mention a 3 percent less dmg taken to raid buff which is great in any aoe heavy encounter(see all of ulduar)
to me disc is more of a proactive thinking type of healing while holy is more reactive. i think in any good raid will have at least one of each.

[-Ethos-]

still the healthbar of that player is down low when the actual damage is done by boss. there is no ( at least to my knowledge) easy way to track how much damage the shield will take still and that is an issue especially to the other remaining healers in raid. they are forced to heal the lost healthpool.

i can see that the shielding thing is a plus in a 25 men environment where those shields are simply an extra form of safety and prevent some spike damage on players until the rest of the healing bunch controls the situation but i think in a 10 men run the healing counts. it sets the other healer(s) under preassure to get everybody to 100% while losing the focus on their mainduty maybe.

That's pretty much where you talk to the priest, and find out how much pure absorb they get. In my SP gear and with the wyrm flask on my PWS average absorb is 7-8k, thats generally enough to hold through most of the damage of any boss aoe in a 10 man. On our 10 man runs during phase 2 of mimiron, all i do is roll shields on the ranged and melee, our resto druid rolls hots for when the shields break, and our resto shaman chain heals through us ranged and the melee.

If something like frozen blows is coming up, and you know its about to happen, you should always be pre-emptively healing anyway, because the disc priest may not be able to always shield the entire raid

[Worshaka]

lol'ed
how can disc be easier then CoH/Renew mashing ?
okay dont anwser that dont want a flame war about somthing THAT stupid.
and disc do suck at low crit/haste levels

personaly im Disco main spec and holy off spec (bouth PvE) and i simply love the disc style whith BT and DA.
BT works for alot of healing types and shod have about 40-70% up time.
tanking taking loads of damage? throw a shield on random target (if tank got debuff) then lazor > GH

thing i dislikes about disc is that we as the only healer ingame gets hurt on MT healing throwing off heals (grace)
ohh and inner focus + Hymn = nice DA proc's

Spamming Flash Heal, Penance and PW:S without thought = hard...

using CoH on the right target for full effectiveness, casting renew instead of Flash Heal, knowing when Gheal is required, setting up PoH to be used effectively then managing your mana by jumping in and out of FSR without compromising your HPS = easy...

My bad.

[Resident]

Disc is bad

everyone is like "disc is like a pally so its cool"

well, why not bring a pally instead then, they do a better job than a disc priest

Penance, 3 heals for maybe 2800 each, sounds like a flash heal with more fluff

8k flash heal spamming, cool, aight well I can do that with holy too, but then after 3 i get to cast a 18k greater heal in the same time

disc poh = not talented = less effective

no coh = less raid healing

Power infusion = nerfed to hell

Disc is great for arena but I just think holy is much better for raiding

I think you don't really know anything about disc priests, sorry ???

- Each penanence hits >3.5k fully buffed like someone said already that makes this awesome and penanence mana cost is low.
- Disc specs PoH is effective heal.
- No coh is ofc downside on raid healing but popping power infusion and PoH is good replacement. Second your raid should have shamans/druids healing raid or even better like my raids we have 2-3 priest, 1-2 holy and 1 disc. Disc & holy priest work well with each other. I personally hardly heal raid i only shield them except certain phases on bosses where heavy raid healing is needed.
- Power infusion is good i use it always on myself.
- Flash heal heals really good, cheap mana cost.
- Divine aegis procs procs all the time when gear up to spot your sitting on 30% crit on heals.
- Disc tree talent to get 6% haste is good.
- Pain suppression can be thrown on tanks, nothing to worry about -5% threat this should never be any problem. This is awesome.

Minus sides are that its true only one disc priest really fits in same raid but when people setup grid correctly don't think having more would'nt be a problem.

But playing disc u really play better the more you anticipate the dmg income by shielding right people. Throwing PoM on right people. And after 3.1 when u can quite fast shield many people in raids PWS is just awesome.

After playing few months as disc after holy can say that its play style is different than holy.

Its just up to personal preferences what play style you like more, so asking why is it more fun is pointless... lets just argue which one is better :P

[Danner]

I think it comes down to discipline priests being relatively powerful.
Sure, the healing meter output isn't all that, but disc priests more than make up for it by mitigation. Frankly, any raid without our regular discpriest online feels like a gimped raid. And it's not just that our discpriest healer is that good (he is) - but it's all the stuff that the discpriest brings. Sure, the discpriest does bring a lot of goodies to the raid, but moreso, he also brings some really powerful tools that just are fun to use.

Insane single target healing burst.
Face it, penance is an awesome spell. Where a holy priest need 1.5 seconds to cast a flash heal to save a raider in trouble, a disc priest just unloads the same amount of healing virtually instantly. And then proceeds to repeat the same feat two more times in a very short timeframe. Things being healed by penance just don't die!

Yes, there is a downside to it; the cooldown. But a discpriest with quick reflexes saves lives every 6.4 seconds, there is no rule stating that penance HAS to go on the MT. Our discpriest tends to throw penance around the raid as well - and he saves a lot of lives that no other healer is capable of healing fast enough.

Compare that to a holy priest with GS. While GS is an awesome spell, I think it malfunctions on me 9 times out of 10, and comes with a cooldown of an eternity. Penance just don't have that problem.

Insane protection
A Discipline PW:Shield is quite frankly slightly overpowered in PVE. And the feeling of slight overpowerdness is very often equal to fun. Being capable of increasing anyones HP pool by 7k just before a massive damage burst is almost trivializing some parts of the harder fights. I did mention general Vezax in another thread - our discpriest is my primary survivability tool on the green goo on that fight. Just before I take that 7th tick, he heals me up to full with penance, and then times a shield. Instead of exiting the green goo with 3k HP and a lethal vulnerability to life drains, I now exit the green goo with 10k HP, and don't feel particularly at risk.

Or on a MT. Any time an MT is about to take insane damage, the shield will be there, mitigating - almost trivializing what would otherwise been very close call.

And then there is of course always the option of going on a shielding spree on the raid. Which is utterly effective in Ulduar.

Speed!
Being fast and furious is fun. And Borrowed time is also a good speed burst. For the same reason that Serendipity is one of the most fun talents for a holypriest (nothing beats pumping out a PoH in 1.5 sec), Borrowed Time is just made of win. Only it's way easier to trigger this one and its scope is broader, making discpriests feeling the surge of speed very very often. And if that isn't enough, there is always the built-in bloodlust - Power Infusion.

--

Compared to the holy priest, where every talent is all about +X% healing. That trend has slowly been changed in 3.1, which added Body and Soul (a bad PVP talent which is surprisingly useful and fun in PVE) and the new Serendipity (slight speed boost = slight feeling of power).

But apart from these two talents, Holy doesn't have a lot of fun going for it. GS is good, but utterly unreliable. As I said, it fails me 9 times out of 10, and at best is just increasing healing done. We usually use the GS cooldowns as a last resort for death-prevention these days, or at the very least coupled with a paladin cooldown.

Circle of Healing did get a whole lot more powerful, but I usually only use it if I have to cram out even more healing after popping a PoH, or if I feel like topping people up. It's no longer a staple spell, though it is healing for a lot.

If it wasn't for the new PoH, it'd rate holypriests as the least fun healer of the lot.

[AetherMcLoud]

While I too find the usualy disc spec more enjoyable than the usualy holy spec, now that I tried this holy spec I really enjoy it too. On stuff like Hodir I can just jump around all the time, raidhealing, givine instant flashheals to people, making them run 60% faster with my shield, and "fun" stuff like that. Plus, serendipity + PoH rocks.

What I enjoy about disc is the awesome shielding without CD, penance which is way better than greater heal, and that you are more of a preventive healer rather than reactive. The fun from holy comes from all the tools available to you.

[Highangel]

I have both specs and enjoy holy the most...

I really like hasted gheals/poh, big numbers, Guardian spirit is very awesome with the new glyph, renews, coh etc... i just feel like i have more options as holy.

I can't get used to the shield spamming as disc, but cudos to all the hard working discos out there.

[Resident]

Compared to the holy priest, where every talent is all about +X% healing. That trend has slowly been changed in 3.1, which added Body and Soul (a bad PVP talent which is surprisingly useful and fun in PVE) and the new Serendipity (slight speed boost = slight feeling of power).

My guild was a General Vezax (25) and our druid tank had trouble because he could not get away fast enough when general cast the Surge of Darkness and he got smashed down. After 2 try's one of our holy priests went got this talent and it was so cool to c bear running so fast ;D After that we got him down.

Maybe there are also other uses for Body and Soul in pve than this.

p.s. btw we did not have other class tanks available.

[Silkath]

I think a large part of why people say Disc is more fun than Holy comes down to the fact that many of us have been playing a priest for a long time now (two and a half years in my case) and a significant change in playstyle as well as the arsenal of spells we use was very very welcome. Holy also got a lot more fun in 3.1 with the CoH cd, SoL and Serendipity. That said there are some really fun things about disc you don't get in holy:

Situational awareness: Disc is about preventing damage on the raid. It requires more awareness of the fight to predict who will take damage next (look around and see who's standing in the fire/lightning/eyebeam etc.) than it does to notice their green bar is empty and fill it back up. As a Disc priest I have more opportunity to see the encounter than I felt I did as holy. This has always been one of the biggest complaints about healing compared to dpsing/tanking.

Penance: Penance is the most effective single-target healing spell in the game. Yes, it is both more efficient and more hps than Holy Light spam or Druids rolling all their HoTs. It just feels so powerful to have Penance off cd waiting to deal with that spike. And it's one of the best-looking spells in the game too.

Pre-emptive healing: When raid healing a Disc priest plays more like a Druid than anything else. To be most effective druids need to know when damage is incoming and get their HoTs up before the damage lands. With PW:S Disc plays the same way. If you're just reacting to empty green bars then you might as well go Holy. You need to be constantly thinking about the encounter, what the next big boss ability is, is your bomb tank on Mimiron about to take a big hit, is that idiot mage still AoEing all the swarm on Freya etc. Yes you get some of this in Holy with pre-casting PoHs and saving Serendipity stacks for big spikes but to a lesser extent in my opinion.

Cooldown management: As Holy your only real cds are CoH and PoM, which you just press every time it comes off cd. As Disc you have Penance, PW:S (via weakened soul) and PoM. Deciding whether to spam shields and penance for maximum hps or save them for spikes (either can be the right choice depending on situation) adds another element to the Disc experience. In fact, the same is true of the procs in Disc and Holy, to a certain extent. As Holy I have no control over when SoL will proc, and I'll just use it on something whenever it does. As Disc I can control when Borrowed Time is up as using BT effectively is vital for tank healing.

[syanid]

Penance: Penance is the most effective single-target healing spell in the game. Yes, it is both more efficient and more hps than Holy Light spam or Druids rolling all their HoTs. It just feels so powerful to have Penance off cd waiting to deal with that spike. And it's one of the best-looking spells in the game too.

This. And I like when it crits, especially with all 3 hits.

[darkie]

I totally agree that disc is way more fun than holy , i tried it for just 3 raids and loved it. Though since i'm the only holy priest in my guild so far i had to go back holy (try ignis25 with only a druid (+ a shammy) capable of raid healing (well sort of) ..... The only thing that's "fun" for me atm is seeing how many times and ow much will CoH crit everytime :| .

Now on the topic , disc is more fun than holy imo because u just NEED to use ur brain to make it count , itherwise u'll be a disc doing 500hps and healing only 1 target maybe 2 . That is cause disc has sooooo many skills u can cast at any given time , so u need to know when to except raid dmg / mt dmg spikes and stuff , holy might be fun in the beginning cause u see big numbers but even a brainless ogre can (click even :P) 1button and do about 2.5k hps..... on the contrary disc needs some thinking before u begin facerolling and blowing all ur cds (IMHO that is).

I feel like respeccing :P

[Izenhart]

1) There are a few things about Discipline that make it "stand above" Holy as far as "fun-level".

2) The first: Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. The focus is less "Whack-a-mole" style healing, and more pre-emptive, so you actually feel like you're working towards accomplishing something, rather than just fixing holes on a sinking ship that're about to re-open again.

3) Secondly: Penance. It's fast, it looks cool, there's no animation like it, and it's a very strong effect.

4) Finally, Borrowed Time. Speed. Oomph. While the "numbers" of Discipline are much lower, the completely different feel from Holy does tend to be an extremely welcome change of pace. Especially those of us that've been "preesting" for a few years.

I'm taking this quote as reference since 70% of Disc lovers wrote more or less the same. (Couldn't stand the color, though.)

I like both Holy and Discipline, personally I just prefer Raid healing, mass precasting of PoH, renews around, sniping with FH, getting the best player to pull out a CoH.
But I also enjoy Discipline, the Aegis proccing is both cool for the feeling of having an additional slighly barrier between the player and damage incoming, the PW:S absorbtion is awesome, and you can basically spam PW:S every single second since you're probably never going OOM.

Because of this, I'm not gonna make a "lolwtf holy/disc is better than disc/holy lolGGgtfo now noob lololol" post, just going to answer to the "Disc Benefits" posted here, just to give a counter-party to Discipline, since there seems to be few Holy priests explanations compared to the Disc priest wonderfulness here.

1) You play the game to have fun, there are no people able to settle rules of "what is fun and what is not".
Someone can play a 20/30/21 and still claim to be the funniest spec ever.
Someone likes Discipline, someone likes Holy, and noone can decide wich of the 2 is better, if not for themselves.

2) You can turn the things how you want it to be, I could say that Holy is more like saving Players with your skill of precasting and multi healing, timing and using combos with PoH/Serendipityx3 rather than lazily put an instant shield and GTFO what happens next.

3) Indeed, Circle of Healing looks is WAY too overused in wow spells.

4) Boorowed Time? Speed?...Oomph?
Instand 5K Flash Heals and Serendipityx3 anyone? You can't really state Discipline is a faster spec than Holy, given the fact that you probably won't stop casting 1 Flash Heal or PoH every single time you cast a PW:S, just take the PW:S spam before a predictable incoming damage as example, you'll probably take benefit of 2 or 3 BT out of 10 you cast.
Plus, even with 80% of BT used correctly, it's hardly getting close to SoL+Serendipity speed.

[Elween]

Its funny to see some guys that like disc and say they do aoe healing by spaming shields, PoM and renew or even a 3sec PoH lol, its no match to the hps of a holy priest or even a resto druid. A disc priest its a awsome MT healers, ofc you can try raid healing but if the shamans feel frustrating about raid healing these days, disc doesnt really have a chance there, even a good paly can do loads of aoe healing (nerf glyph).

If you really like aoe healing priest holy is the best the game can offer you and that's final. We are the new resto shamans from TBC

The only "issue" with holy now is to manage your mana, after the nerf was a bit hard to get used to, but im lucky to have a feral druid assigned to innervate me. Maybe here is the problem some guys dont like the mana game :|

[axxey]

Fun = Effective for most

Inspiration is the main thing that tips the table for me.
Holy priests and shaman will in most raid groups rarely be critting the tank for consistant uptime when they're raid healing. Disc priest will always keep it up on tank.

Fun = Easiest to do well for less skill
Not having any mana management issues as disc makes it much easier.

Raids have room for 1 disc priest.