Disc ok?

[Hroc]

I will not engage in the apparent holy war (pardon the pun) being waged in your thread, OP, but, rather, will regale you briefly with my experience leveling 70+ and playing at 80 as Disc.

I found leveling was easy, with minimal downtime. Pennance has been buffed/fixed since then, so it may go even better for you. I couldn't speak to pre-70, it's been years and many patches. It was not fast to level, but it was easy.

At 80, I found that heroic dungeons were full of challenges, but I'm not sure if these impacted me any more or less than if I'd specced Holy... Perhaps only differently.

In raids, I've had quite good success in groups with tree druids and holy priests. My shields, buffs, and Pennance burst seem to compliment their healing abilities. I've had less spectacular results with shaman and paladin co-healers, but we're not ill-suited, exactly. The most awkward to try to work with is another disc priest. You'll almost surely want to respec one or the other of you.

It seems like success with disc hinges on your ability to foresee where the damage will come from and where it will land, then putting the bubble in the way. It varies a lot from fight to fight, and can be very easy or completely impossible, depending. I wouldn't recommend it to a novice, generally, but if you're interested in pushing yourself as a raider, it surely feels rewarding when you do it right.

[bigjenk]

if you wanna raid and check effectiveness of disc use a parser that counts absorbs on shields like world of logs.
that being said every 25 man should have 1 disc preist and not necessarily as tank heals. as my guilds disc we have seen that my performance is by far the highest when i can float. by that i mean shield all the tanks and help if needed since our holy pallies are better single/duo target healers. if that is done and pom is on cd i start sheilding raid. on raid intensive dmg like kolgram, hodir frozen blows, mimi p2 etc i try and let the pallies keep up the tank alone and then spam nonstop. but like i said earlier there is room for only one disc in a raid to maintain this effectiveness due to da and rh not stacking as well as weakened soul.
in 10 mans they are op above all healers.

[Simbert]

The answer is pretty simple. Priests rock at healing.

If oyu just reach 80, and are low at gear, you should definitely play diszi. If you try to play holy with extremely low manareg, you tend to go oom insanely fast. Note: I do not say that disziplin is JUST for low gear, just that with low gear, you should play diszi.

As soon as you grab some good epic gear, both specs are viable. I myself prefer to play holy. But that is me. Subjective preference. I have played with insanely good disziplin priests, and the spec is good, too. So, in the end, there is only one conclusion: Do what you like more. Both are viable. Both are fun. It is that simple.

In some situations Holy is superior, in others disziplin. But both are still not BAD in the situations the other excels in, just not as good as the other alternative.

If you play with stupid people, you should play holy, since then, you can say that you are extremely high in healing meters, and therefore very good, or stupid things like that. If you play with intelligent people, both specs are good.

[Greid]

i was shortsighted at first and thought of holy as the true healing spec, scoffing at disc players as lazy, undergeared or niche healers.

I was very wrong. I switched my specs to shadow/ disc pvp and have found that I do more effective healing in my disc pvp spec than my previous holy spec. By this i mean that Mana is infinite, shields are amazing, and heroics as savable with quick burst. In progression raids I would have to respec to heal, but that is only the specific case where They need the extra power on the heals. Other than that, try out disc, it is fun and manageable.

[Nesco]

There are basic principles about priests. Like the shadow priest is good at AoE damage, but does less damage to a single target than some other classes when both players are evenly skilled in their class.

Same hold for disc and holy priests.

The holy priest can heal AoE damage way better than any disc priest can. But the disc priest can AoE heal too but has more problems with that.

The disc priest can MT heal way better than any holy priest can. The many fast heals and DA procs will make sure that the tank stays alive especially when teamed up with a slow-but-big-heals-healer. Holy can heal the MT too, but no DA procs and might not even be specced into Inspiration.

Now it's harsh to say "disc is MT healing spec and holy is AoE healing spec" because both can do the job of the other, just like it's harsh to say "you suck" since obviously everyone sucks at something.