Holy or Disc

[Svettmormor]

Well.. Not sure if this is helping, but take a look at these if you decide to go holy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3FdvRmNtpE (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5zOg...eature=related (Part 2)

[harky]

@ Spiritus - I'm not sure you understand what synergy means.

Take two healers who can keep a set number of targets up through a net total of 4,500 incoming DPS. So their worth individually is basically 4,500 HPS. Now, put them both into the same group. If there is no synergy then the groups assigned should be able to take a net total of 9,000 DPS. Each healer is pulling their own weight. Now, if there is a synergy it would mean that those same two healers when combined would be able to support 'over 9,000' DPS. Bad joke aside, that's how it works. If there's a negative synergy it means that when put together those two healers would not be able to keep up with 9,000 incoming DPS.

That's what synergy implies: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

You also imply that only if mass raid bubbling is going on would Disc and Resto have a synergy. This is again poor logic. Disc would be prioritizing which targets may be in danger of dying from incoming DPS, protect via bubbles, then rely on the Druid to top them off. It can be as simple as who has the lowest health, or as complicated as prioritizing and predicting incoming damage. Regardless of the situation the two together are allowed to both play to a strength. Disc doesn't need to waste time with Flash Heals and Renews and can rely on PW:S. Meanwhile the Druid doesn't need to switch to inefficient heals and can play to their strength as well with efficient rolling HoTs. Since neither has to perform their less favorable abilities as often their potential output is increased.

That's not something that's possible with Holy and Resto. The perfect healing 'burst' as you put it would cover 3/4 of the raid with quick and light healing. That kind of burst might work nicely for something like Loatheb, but the number of fights where that type of strategy is useful are pretty slim. I actually can't think of another fight outside Loatheb where a huge spike of unsustainable healing like that is feasible. Really where Holy shines isn't on 'bursty' AOE fights, but ones with constant small ticks. Twins and Sapph are by far the easiest fights for Holy to completely dominate with healing. That's almost entirely because you can use PoM and CoH on anyone at any time and get a ton of healing, then roll Renews. That's where Holy pulls ahead. It's also the biggest cause of Holy being seen as sniping heals.

That's the thing, you think of maximizing your Druids HPS as a bad thing. Why is that a bad thing if the net total healing on the raid is increased, or the incoming damage is reduce by a comparable amount? Again, that's what synergy is all about. Find me a fight outside Loatheb that what you've described is the preferred way to heal and I'll show you a fight that Druids aren't viable healers on. Oh and sorry to Druids who don't like that, but we all know you suck on Loatheb. :P

[Samurai]

A good Holy Priest, who knows the fight, and can manage their mana will top heals meters by a mile. Just like an Arcane mage, Holy priets can blow all their mana really really fast and get massive HPS, or conserve it.

And for those saying Greater Heals are bad for disc. You're wrong!
With Borrowed Time, GH is down to 1.5ish with raid buffed haste (or less) and with a high crit chance its amazing, getting a 12,000+ crit greater heal puts a massive Devine Aegis on the target.

Disc healing is way more then spamming shields, and using flash heal between penance CDs. If you are ignoring Renew, PoM, and Greater heal you are just being stupid. Renew and PoM are still amazing spells, even for Disc, sure they arent cast every second, but they are still great in certain situations.

[harky]

And for those saying Greater Heals are bad for disc. You're wrong!
With Borrowed Time, GH is down to 1.5ish with raid buffed haste (or less) and with a high crit chance its amazing, getting a 12,000+ crit greater heal puts a massive Devine Aegis on the target.

A 12,000 crit will provide no more of a DA shield than 2 FH crits for 6k each. Though with 12k GH crits, you'd be getting 8-9k FH crits. To get a 1.5s GH, even if you take Divine Fury you'd need a raid buffed total of 66.67% haste. With BT up and normal raid buffs (no BL), you would need 761 Haste Rating for that to be possible. That's also .11 seconds past the GCD cap with BT up and .14 past the GCD cap during BL. So, it begs the question, why on earth would you have that much haste? Also, considering that the best use of BT on a tank is to cast Penance first this means you're even more likely to over-cap Divine Aegis, wasting part of the shield.

Actually wait... are you not aware that Divine Aegis has a cap on how much it can shield, or that channeled abilities use, but do not consume BT? Those could easily explain why you're using Greater Heal.

[Danner]

If your only metric is HPS, then you are correct, harky, but by that metric you would only ever bring paladins and druids to heal a raid. If your only metric is the number of lives lost, I would however put my money with Spiritus on this matter.

Sure, a larger HPS usually means a larger number of lives saved. But the vast majority of deaths are not happening due to a lack of HPS. If they are, you are simply running with too few healers. The majority of deaths happen when a spike damage happen at a wrong time on the wrong person.

The single target example is the easiest to understand. A discpriest plus a paladin has less HPS than two paladins. But also a significant lower amount of tank deaths. And that's the synergy bonus in action. I think you will agree to this example, it's slowly turning into the classic argument to why you should use a diverse posse of healers.

But your counterexample was druids/holypriests on raidhealing. I will have to give you that druids and (non-renew'ing) holypriests often play against eachother. The druid carpet of HoTs is often rendered useless by the holy burst, and the holy burst is often pointless if the hots are just allowed to tick. But either way, it's one or the other that will do the heal, the other class will be "useless" for the given situation. But that's the thing you want, really. A holypriest has a fantastic burst. Consider the holypriest the big artillery cannon of healing. Slow rate of fire, but a massive impact. Consider the druid a machine gun battery of healing. Massive amounts of support fire (er.. healing?) that buys the artillery cannon time to fire again.

Without the druid, the holypriest risk losing patients between the PoH casts. Without the priest, the druid risk losing groups dipping low - he can only swiftmend one of them, and the remainders risk dying to the next damage spike. There is a synergy there. It's notable, mostly because the druids and the priests simply have different healing styles. While they work against eachother somewhat, you also get the best from both worlds and thus counter more damage types at the most efficient possible manner. And while it means more overhealing and pushing eachother into overhealing... the bottom line shouldn't be the healing meters. It should be the number of deaths.

[harky]

The HPS post was to explain synergies, not proclaim that's how healers should be rated. I strongly disagree that a Holy Priest + Resto Druid has any better live saving capability than Disc + Resto and again would argue the opposite. This is again because it allows both to use their optimal abilities, while Holy + Resto would both be forced in some situations to use sub-optimal abilities. What you're describing isn't synergy, it's just throwing more power at a situation. It implies that Disc, or any other healer would be unable to help a Druid keep 'at risk' targets safe. This argument can also be applied to 2 Holy Priests versus 1 Disc and 1 Holy, or 1 Shaman/Paladin and 1 Resto Druid. My argument is based on playing to strengths and maximizing the output of each individual by allowing each to do what they do best for as much time as possible.

[Samurai]

A 12,000 crit will provide no more of a DA shield than 2 FH crits for 6k each. Though with 12k GH crits, you'd be getting 8-9k FH crits. To get a 1.5s GH, even if you take Divine Fury you'd need a raid buffed total of 66.67% haste. With BT up and normal raid buffs (no BL), you would need 761 Haste Rating for that to be possible. That's also .11 seconds past the GCD cap with BT up and .14 past the GCD cap during BL. So, it begs the question, why on earth would you have that much haste? Also, considering that the best use of BT on a tank is to cast Penance first this means you're even more likely to over-cap Divine Aegis, wasting part of the shield.

Actually wait... are you not aware that Divine Aegis has a cap on how much it can shield, or that channeled abilities use, but do not consume BT? Those could easily explain why you're using Greater Heal.

Shaman totems give 5% Haste and i have about 450ish haste on my gear.
Divine Aegis doesn't stack, it just resets the timer btw

[harky]

Divine Aegis stacks up to a maximum of level * 125. At 80 that means DA stacks up to 10k.

Oh and there was an error in my numbers, you don't need 761, you need 564. You're still 10% haste away from a 1.5 second GH.

[Danner]

The HPS post was to explain synergies, not proclaim that's how healers should be rated. I strongly disagree that a Holy Priest + Resto Druid has any better live saving capability than Disc + Resto and again would argue the opposite. This is again because it allows both to use their optimal abilities, while Holy + Resto would both be forced in some situations to use sub-optimal abilities. What you're describing isn't synergy, it's just throwing more power at a situation. It implies that Disc, or any other healer would be unable to help a Druid keep 'at risk' targets safe. This argument can also be applied to 2 Holy Priests versus 1 Disc and 1 Holy, or 1 Shaman/Paladin and 1 Resto Druid. My argument is based on playing to strengths and maximizing the output of each individual by allowing each to do what they do best for as much time as possible.

I see your point now, harky. The main synergy I argued for was basically that the healers covered different strengths, but as you point out, they don't actually empowered eachother beyond that. Bringing a holypriest don't make the druid do his job better, as in "don't increase his output". The holypriest - or shaman, or discpriest, or paladin for that matter - just cover areas he is weak at, and that a second druid also would be bad at due to how the class works. The druid output is likely to go down as a result of adding more healers.

But that's a form of synergy as well, the number of deaths will definitively not go down. You should not disregard the power of versatility, because it is a cornerstone of how healing in wow is designed.

For your kind of synergy; there is only the following:
Guardian Spirit makes the other healers' healing output explode.

[harky]

That's another subject entirely. Obviously you need enough healers to cover incoming damage and the only solution is often times to add another healer. I also would argue in favor of Holy Priest + Disc Priest as a good synergy. Or Holy Paladin + Holy Priest.

It's probably easier to think about a realistic situation than an abstract one for that. If you need three healers for a 10 man what would be better, Holy Paladin + Holy Priest + Resto Druid, or Holy Paladin + Disc Priest + Resto Druid? That's probably too easy. How about a raid has the following healers: 2 Resto Druids, 2 Holy Paladins and 1 Shaman. You need another healer, would you prefer Holy, or Disc? Probably too easy again for 99% of fights. That's the case with most realistic setups of healers though. You need to get to things like 1 Disc, 3 Paladins, 1 Druid, 2 Shaman and need 1 more. Considering that composition though what does a Holy Priest bring that Resto couldn't do just as well? The 'bursts' will be handled easily by the Holy Lights and Chain Heals anyway. Any setup that you'd want Holy over Disc, Holy is interchangeable with Resto and in most you already need to have a Disc Priest.

You can apply the same though process to having multiple Disc Priests. Having more than 1 in a 10 man is painful. Having more than 2 in a 25 man is equally painful.

[nikkita]

hey i know theres plent of post about this topic but im wanting a specific responce.

i am going to be running almost everything with a bear tank, mostly heroics to start with then progress into raid content. what spec is best for early progression and for healing a bear tank please also post advised talent specs.

I really can't see how people end up starting to thread on and on about holy's HPS VS discipline tank or not healing. Most of what i read was not true and totally irrelevent.

To the OP:
For 5m's heroics with a feral druid i would advise you to start as discipline, you are probably with greens or level 70 sunwell gear, and being holy will cause you to sit and drink almost every heroic pack this way. Discipline makes your life alot easier in heroics simpley because of the mitigation it provides, even if small at the start due to lack of gear. Your tank will probably also be abit undergeared, so the extra damage he'll take won't be noticed with the shield. The shield does not prevent rage generation - so it shouldn't cause your tank any problems (just make sure you don't shield on pull, but abit before). The talent spec you should pick is the regular cookie cutter discipline spec: you don't have to pick up Imp. healing since i don't see the healing as that intense in heroics. 57/14 would do you justice and will even get you ready for 10m's.

When it gets to 10m's, with a bear tank this really depends on which healer or healers come with you. Ofc you could rock it out in any spec. But if you have say 2 holy paladins joining you, i'll recomend you joining as holy, simpley because they don't have aoe heals at all (i don't count JoL or beacon as AoE heals). If you go with a shaman, or a resto druid or another holy priest you should go for discipline - since discipline mashes well with other healers that have strong aoe heals. If you go with another discipline priest i would recomend you going holy, there is no rule saying "discipline priest x2 = bad" but in 10m they usually "step on each others feet" (with the weakened soul debuff).

In any ways, both specs are good for healing a druid tank in heroics, and for healing raids. this really ends up in your favorite taste. Discipline in 5m heroics is alot more fun to my veiw, since you won't have to sit and drink every pack (for me, its not fun as holy to need ever pack 30 secs to fill mana, and i remember this when i just got to level 80 with sunwell gear still on me, as holy - every pack got me very low on mana). Though holy is totaly capable, and if you play abit more conservative you won't have to drink as often. Holy gets alot more fun, and less "mana break needing" with gear.

I suggest you try both cookie cutter specs in the same heroic (one day as discipline, next day as holy), and see what you liked more. The easiest way is just to get duel spec and change spec's acroding to your mood in that 5m heroic or acording to the healer/healers that join you to the 10m raid.

[dahighpriest]

I'm sorry, but to all of the people that are saying disc is not really a good tank healer, you're just plain wrong. All the progression guilds are taking them. Why? Oh wait, because a shield that absorbs more damage, they can throw these shields out onto the raid in seconds thanks to borrowed time, Pain suppression for incoming large hits. And PI. Even if you PI the guy topping the healing meters, you are benefitting the raid more. Don't get me started with Penance. Penance, at the least can heal 15k in 1.76 seconds in Ilvl 200 gear. Whereas a 2.5 second Greater heal can only do maybe 13k-16k at most in that gear. On top of that, rapture has to be one of the greatest talents a priest has. I mean, 32 runic power for Rune strike spamming? More rage, or more mana in basically a second? If you're shielding the raid for incoming massive damage, not only will you not only mitigate 2564 damage, but give each of those people a resource that keeps them going. Not to mention you get back like 650 mana, when it only costs 800 mana in the first place. I found it more fun to raid as disc, simply because we have more utility. Don't get me wrong, holy is the way to go for raid damage, but Disc priests can do it almost as well. Also, divine aegis is pretty sweet, especially with the t9 bonus. Oh, and healing meters are a joke. If It counted absorbed damage as potential damage healed, disc priests would mop the floor with any other class. Maybe not holy pallies, because of that damned judgement of light+beacon crap.

[Ironfoot]

No-one is saying that Disc is bad at Tank healing, because frankly that's stupid. Disc is good at Tank healing, however just assigning a Disc Priest to heal the Tank and only the Tank is a waste of their talents. Let the Holy Pala do that.

Disc is better used as a Tank/Raid healer. PW:S on the Tank, PoM and Renew as well, then let the Holy Pala spam heal. After that the Disc Priest is "free" to spam PW:S and FH onto the raid to help with Raid damage.

Of course you have to keep an eye on the MT/OT, and use Penance to mop up the spike damage. If you Holy Pala is spam healing, like any good Holy Pala should, then the spike damage should be all you have to worry about. Of course you can help out and chuck in lots of FH if needed, but simply saying you only Tank heal is a waste.

Also to the person before who said that Disc should use GHeal more, which situations exactly? A Disc Priest should primarily focus on spike damage and mitigation, through Penance/FH and PW:S.

You can get your GH down to 1.5 seconds? Good job. In that time I've already cast FH and Penance is just ticking now. So in the 1.5 seconds where you haven't healed your target at all, excluding and Renew or PoM on the target, then they've already had a guaranteed 6k FH and at least 12k from Penance is on them now from me. Where as you hit them with a 12k crit after 1.5 seconds. It just doesn't add up.

And that of course is if you spec for a reduced cast time, which is a waste of 5 points imo.

Even if I could get GHeal down to 1.5, I would still rather chuck out 2xFH or a FH and Penance, more chances for DA to proc.

[Coronetta]

In 25man no healer can do what a disc priest does every hardmode raiding guild needs one, period.

In 10man, it is invaluable to have for fights so intense that need 3 healers.

My guild leaders need to see this! I just lost my raid spot to a holy pally cause 'Disc isnt viable in 25 ToGC'

[Izenhart]

Ehh I REALLY DISLIKE this mentality. I understand where you're coming from but it's really putting Discipline in a pigeon hole that it doesn't need to be stuck in even though it IS good at that.

I think Discipline's tools are so fast and versatile that they shine when doing a bit of both, tank and raid healing. This REALLY depends on your raid make up of course. Watching the tank closely with PoM+Shield+Penance while sprinkling PW:S and Flash Heals around the raid, along with some PoH's, is the real Discipline niche.

Now, that might still be considered mainly "tank healing" but I feel like that term might "scare" away some new Discipline Priests that feel like it's too narrow of a niche.

To be honest, I find myself helping out the entire raid usually due to my speed and versatility/buffering/utility power. Not sure exactly what to call that haha.

Discipline is a good tool for raid healing just like Holy is with GS, renew, FH and PoM on the tanks.

Neither of them completely suck at the opposite role, but it's clear that Holy is *usually* refered to the AoE Healing spell and Discipline to tank healing.

[harky]

Discipline is a good tool for raid healing just like Holy is with GS, renew, FH and PoM on the tanks.

No. Holy is bad at tank healing. Disc is good at raid support. GS is part of cooldown rotations. PoM is only cast on tanks because they're the most likely to get it to bounce. Renew can be used, similar to Rejuv to help 'level out' tank healing. Flash Heal being cast on tanks by a Holy Priest means your tank healers are doing a crappy job, or you don't have enough healers, or the encounter doesn't have enough raid damage to warrant a pure raid healer. Holy is straight up crap for tank healing. Even if you go with a build to maximize FH and GH, Holy tank healing is both mana inefficient and worse than every other healer. GS is cool, sure, but something you can cast at most once per minute compared to Disc which is actually a very good raid healer? While we're at it let's ask our Druids to heal like they did in vanilla. I heard HT spam is awesome.

[Revitalize]

I'm sorry, but to all of the people that are saying disc is not really a good tank healer, you're just plain wrong. All the progression guilds are taking them. Why? Oh wait, because a shield that absorbs more damage, they can throw these shields out onto the raid in seconds thanks to borrowed time, Pain suppression for incoming large hits. And PI. Even if you PI the guy topping the healing meters, you are benefitting the raid more. Don't get me started with Penance. Penance, at the least can heal 15k in 1.76 seconds in Ilvl 200 gear. Whereas a 2.5 second Greater heal can only do maybe 13k-16k at most in that gear. On top of that, rapture has to be one of the greatest talents a priest has. I mean, 32 runic power for Rune strike spamming? More rage, or more mana in basically a second? If you're shielding the raid for incoming massive damage, not only will you not only mitigate 2564 damage, but give each of those people a resource that keeps them going. Not to mention you get back like 650 mana, when it only costs 800 mana in the first place. I found it more fun to raid as disc, simply because we have more utility. Don't get me wrong, holy is the way to go for raid damage, but Disc priests can do it almost as well. Also, divine aegis is pretty sweet, especially with the t9 bonus. Oh, and healing meters are a joke. If It counted absorbed damage as potential damage healed, disc priests would mop the floor with any other class. Maybe not holy pallies, because of that damned judgement of light+beacon crap.

No.

[Kzilla]

To the OP:

Coming from a long time Holy Priest, I always do Heroics and non-hardmodes as Disc because of the tools and it's very quick play style. I feel that it's easier as Disc in heroics and Naxx/Ulduar because of the light to moderate amount of raid damage going out.

I heal a Bear and a Warrior in 10ToGC as Disc teamed up with a Tree Druid full time. I love the tools available for overall mitigation, but I usually have to go 2/2 in Grace for that. In 25ToGC I use Holy as we usually have 2-3 Holy Paladins. Good old fashion AoE healing never gets old in the 25 environment.

I recommend starting out as Disc until you can buy Dual-Specialization. Once you can, put a Holy raid healing spec that doesn't include Divine Fury or Empowered Healing, as those talents will not benefit you as much as others you can obtain.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...P,-OHORq,10596
This is a top powerhouse AoE healing spec and is the one that I currently use for everything from Ulduar hardmodes to 25ToGC.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...V,pOaORq,10596
I use this for powerful tank healing as Discipline on bosses that can dish out moderate to heavy damage, including ToGC bosses. However, for everything up to and including Ulduar, you can use the following spec due to possibly not having the mana pool for utilizing Borrowed Time procs for 6-7 minute fights.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...1,pOaORq,10596

Best of luck out there brother.

Edit: added my glyph choices to the links

[harky]

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...P,-OHORq,10596
This is a top powerhouse AoE healing spec and is the one that I currently use for everything from Ulduar hardmodes to 25ToGC.

My only problem with this is that I don't think it's worth taking a Holy Priest without Body and Soul over one that does have it. Pull a point out of SoL and either Spell Warding, or Test of Faith, or Blessed Resil for 2/2 Body and Soul. With T10 it might be worth keeping 2/2 SoL and dropping 2 points total from the others as it brings the SoL proc per CoH up to 90% or so with 30% crit. Either way Body and Soul isn't something you can really pass up. It saves lives on 4/5 ToC fights and the only ICC fight shown would benefit as well (running from WW similar to Leo in SSC).

[G l o w y r m]

Discipline is a good tool for raid healing just like Holy is with GS, renew, FH and PoM on the tanks.

Neither of them completely suck at the opposite role, but it's clear that Holy is *usually* refered to the AoE Healing spell and Discipline to tank healing.

Oh definitely, I'm just trying to broaden the minds of people who think a Discipline priest is ONLY good to heal ONLY the tank, when in reality they are WAY more versatile than that, kinda jack of all trades mitigation/healer.