Priest holy spec

[Kelesti]

@magicism:

Druids have the HoTs, sure. We shouldn't spec Body & Soul because we shouldn't have to cast Power Word: Shield, either. Discipline has the absorbs. Multi target heals? Those've been covered by Shaman since vanilla. Single target thoroughput has been the Paladin's forte since TBC (vanilla they were buff/cleanse bots). So basically, everything is already covered. We obviously shouldn't be casting anything magicism.

With your comment about talents affecting what, Survival talents still affect melee to some degree (as does Aspect of the Beast). Our Holy talents still have a heavy bias towards Greater Heal. What for?

And as to:

instead of binding Friendly Tab and 1 to the same macro key on your logitech keyboard, setting it to toggle on and off and then going and making a cup of tea.

You must be talking about the retarded red-headed step children that play Disc on these forums, spamming Shield.

Replacing Renew with Flash Heal does not equate to less skill, nor do you try to HoT up the entire raid. You focus where you can on a couple targets, with constant healing going out instead of sporadic bursts bouncing between one to three targets and nothing inbetween. Countering a DoT with a HoT is the most useful utility as any healer, set it and mitigate (or in some aspect neutralise it altogether) the need for additional incoming healing.

Instant heal + 1 tick = 80% of a noncrit Flash Heal, for the same mana cost. Plus you can apply while running. Then you bring into the fact that there's 3 additional ticks to buffer any additional damage from DoTs or other AoE raid damage effects. If someone needs more then you bring out Flash Heal or your other tools. It's powerful, and should be used to its strength. Spamming Flash Heal is a weak excuse pretending to be a Holy Paladin on raid healing, instead of the Jack of all Trades that we are.

[harky]

Renew specs still use Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Prayer of Healing. All these can proc Inspiration and now that Inspiration is now a damage reduction instead of an armor buff it's a good raid buff to have. The base takes all tier-1 talents, Spell Warding 4/5, Inspiration and DP, then Holy Reach. What you're speccing to do is to increase your raid healing, using Renew as your primary filler spell. Spell Warding at this point is a massive bonus, but the spec can be modified by dropping it and DP for Divine Fury so that you're not handicapped on certain fights where there is little to no raid damage.

See: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZfvzcbMqqhGcuAo

Spec takes every talent which improves Renew, while also taking every talent that increases AOE heals (unless you count Holy Nova, or a mana reduction on Hymn). Crit AOE heals give the raid a mitigation buff, crits on AOE heals and Emp. Renew are used to feed SoL in case of emergency, etc.

It mimics Druid in the way both specs utilize a low cost and powerful HoT as their primary spell. The spec turns the mediocre Renew into something comparable to Rejuv, which is then used to spot heal. CoH and PoH are used for larger bursts on groups, while Flash Heal is used for free when SoL is up (or saved until needed in many cases). Your healing will be 30%+ from Renew and often higher.

@Kelesti: Any spec without Body and Soul should be immediately respecced to take it, or shunned from raid groups. The lack of it shows a Priest who does not properly understand the support they can bring to a raid. Body and Soul is far too useful in far too many situations to ever remove from a build.

[Kelesti]

@Kelesti: Any spec without Body and Soul should be immediately respecced to take it, or shunned from raid groups. The lack of it shows a Priest who does not properly understand the support they can bring to a raid. Body and Soul is far too useful in far too many situations to ever remove from a build.

While I agree, that part that you mention in my post was complete and total sarcasm.

[magicism]

Renew specs still use Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Prayer of Healing. All these can proc Inspiration and now that Inspiration is now a damage reduction instead of an armor buff it's a good raid buff to have. The base takes all tier-1 talents, Spell Warding 4/5, Inspiration and DP, then Holy Reach. What you're speccing to do is to increase your raid healing, using Renew as your primary filler spell. Spell Warding at this point is a massive bonus, but the spec can be modified by dropping it and DP for Divine Fury so that you're not handicapped on certain fights where there is little to no raid damage.

See: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZfvzcbMqqhGcuAo

Spec takes every talent which improves Renew, while also taking every talent that increases AOE heals (unless you count Holy Nova, or a mana reduction on Hymn). Crit AOE heals give the raid a mitigation buff, crits on AOE heals and Emp. Renew are used to feed SoL in case of emergency, etc.

It mimics Druid in the way both specs utilize a low cost and powerful HoT as their primary spell. The spec turns the mediocre Renew into something comparable to Rejuv, which is then used to spot heal. CoH and PoH are used for larger bursts on groups, while Flash Heal is used for free when SoL is up (or saved until needed in many cases). Your healing will be 30%+ from Renew and often higher.

@Kelesti: Any spec without Body and Soul should be immediately respecced to take it, or shunned from raid groups. The lack of it shows a Priest who does not properly understand the support they can bring to a raid. Body and Soul is far too useful in far too many situations to ever remove from a build.

Right, everyone seems to have gone a bit off the rails here.
1. You need to learn the difference between a filler spell and a primary spell. Any holy spec is going to be based around CoH, PoH etc. I was talking about a COMPLETE Renew spec. you obviously are taking this way out of context. Both of you.
2. Since when are we talking about survival talents? Kelesti honestly, read a little better next time. He said "That means just over 40% of the talents taken in the spec directly improve Renew." Talents that proc off a spell are more indirect improvements to Renew. So you can't count SoL, Holy Conc etc.
3. And really, both of you are getting a little to het up with defending your own specs. You talk about Renew and Flash heal like gods when the majority of our healing is in the form of PoM, CoH and PoH.
While I was arguing the toss about something I really don't care about I realised, it doesn't matter.

Also it is ironic cose you linked my spec except for the whole 1 point in Emp renew and atm Lightwell for lols. Honestly, there are so little changes to priests at all that in this forum we have just started arguing the toss over anything and anything cose everyone has to be right about something.

[harky]

1.) The filler spell is what defines the spec.
2.) I didn't include procs; only talents that directly improve the amount healed by Renew. Survival talents are taken to get down the tree regardless of spec, you insinuated that you'd essentially need to waste talent points, which is untrue.
3.) If your PoM/PoH/CoH are all above Renew then you're doing something wrong in almost all fights.

I doesn't matter what spec you're using. What I posted is a cookie-cutter Renew spec. Renew will be your most often used spell and your top healing spell. In GH/FH builds the combined healing from FH and GH will fill the same role. There are very few fights where this isn't going to be the case for GH/FH, but is almost never the case for the Renew specs.

Oh and Kelesti, I totally skimmed and missed the sarcasm. I fail.

[Flogging Molly]

3.) If your PoM/PoH/CoH are all above Renew then you're doing something wrong in almost all fights.

No

People need to realize that the way they do things isn't "the right way", it's their way. If you're a renew spammer or a FH spammer for your filler spell it doesn't matter, it's all contingent on the roll you're filling. If you are in a 10 for example with a Pally you can roll renew on the raid between base spells and be fine. My 10 man runs Priest/Drood. I use renew approximately 0-15 times in a raid. The Drood and I both raid and tank heal however I tank heal more and he raid heals more. It works for us, and yes as a holy priest I can keep both tanks alive using FH CoH PoM and PoH with Shields (I spec into B&S, I highly suggest it).

The point behind that is you need to find out what you need in your group. People on a message board can't tell you how to heal properly. You need to consider your play style and your gear level. Are you raid healing all the time with little to no tank healing? Are you Tank healing or supporting the tank healer? Do you need to get that little extra run speed for DPS to get outta the bad stuff? Is it a constant movement fight/raid. Does your raid/class leader know how to fully take advantage of what you bring to the table and allow you to implement it. Those are the kind of things you need to think about when picking a spec.

[harky]

No. If you're running a Renew spec, which if you're casting Renew <15 times per raid I would hope not, then what I said is absolutely true. Given what you are doing, if you'd bother to read the rest of the post you'd quoted, would imply a FH/GH build. Are you FH and GH numbers combined lower than PoM/PoH/CoH in fights? That's the comparison you'd be making and the argument trying to be made by magicism. It's not going to happen in almost any fight.

Also, while I can appreciate varied styles in 10 mans, I do not consider 10 mans serious content. 10 man ICC can be healed as Shadow. No, that's not a joke. I two heal it on my Paladin with a Shadow Priest as the second healer. Holy can keep up with tanks in ICC10, or ToC10 and even TOGC10 if you're particularly well geared.

Here's the question though... if you're two healing with a Druid and that Druid prefers raid healing, why do you not have a Disc off-spec, which would benefit your raid much more than working as Holy? I say this because while Holy Priests and Resto Druids are roughly equivalent raid healers, Druids are highly superior tank healers. This is not a question of playstyle at all, mind you, but a measure of raw healing ability. Resto Druids have more powerful tank healing setups than Holy Priests while also being more mana efficient.

In any case, my arguments are based on 25 mans and the portion of my post that you quoted is absolutely correct. A properly played Renew-spec Holy Priest will have their top heal as Renew. PoM is typically second, with CoH third. Some fights are exceptions, but it's not the norm. The same can be said of a FH/GH Holy Priest exchanging Renew for FH and GH combined, since that is exactly what these specs are trading between.

[Flogging Molly]

I will say sorry for misunderstanding what you meant then.

I do have a Disc Spec, and it was my main spec up until about 2 weeks ago. My guild runs with another Disc priest in 25's so I've been only raiding as holy for them since about 2 weeks into reg 25 ToC. I find 2 Disc priests in a raid tend to step on each others toes therefor I switched to Holy full time. I still did Disc for 25 H Anoob but only for extra absorbs on OT's (we each took one with a Pally on the MT)

The reason I opt for Holy over Disc is because current content is a faceroll. For H-ToGC 10 I used holy for everything but Anoob which I healed as Disc. When H-ICC 10 comes out I may go back to Disc for 10's but for our 25's I'll still be holy. Our Drood died puking on rotface (lol@that btw) about 50% of the way through the fight this week and because I was Holy I still managed to keep the Tanks and the Raid up until about 500k left....sadly we did wipe in the end. If I was Disc it would have wiped a lot faster.

Holy in this content is just in every way better the Disc, I hate to admit it too cause I prefer Disc to Holy healing.

[harky]

Holy in this content is just in every way better the Disc, I hate to admit it too cause I prefer Disc to Holy healing.

Wow, that came out of left field. This is in no way true.

Disc is good on: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship, Saurfang, Rotface, Festergut, and Putricide.
Disc is poor on: No available ICC fights.

Compare to Holy, which is horribly inefficient on Marrowgar (except lolstorm), the Gunship Battle and Saurfang. Those fights just do not favor a healer who primarily spot heals. You're pigeon holed into doing exactly what you're bad at. ICC so far favors Disc, not Holy. Festergut, thus far, is the best fight for Disc that there has ever been. It shifts between periods where you can raid shield safely and periods where tunnel-vision on tanks is great. Rotface and Putricide both favor Disc due to the ability to prevent sudden fatal damage by extending a characters life by 6k+, preventing one-shot kills.

[jshidaka]

I will say sorry for misunderstanding what you meant then.

I do have a Disc Spec, and it was my main spec up until about 2 weeks ago. My guild runs with another Disc priest in 25's so I've been only raiding as holy for them since about 2 weeks into reg 25 ToC. I find 2 Disc priests in a raid tend to step on each others toes therefor I switched to Holy full time. I still did Disc for 25 H Anoob but only for extra absorbs on OT's (we each took one with a Pally on the MT)

The reason I opt for Holy over Disc is because current content is a faceroll. For H-ToGC 10 I used holy for everything but Anoob which I healed as Disc. When H-ICC 10 comes out I may go back to Disc for 10's but for our 25's I'll still be holy. Our Drood died puking on rotface (lol@that btw) about 50% of the way through the fight this week and because I was Holy I still managed to keep the Tanks and the Raid up until about 500k left....sadly we did wipe in the end. If I was Disc it would have wiped a lot faster.

Holy in this content is just in every way better the Disc, I hate to admit it too cause I prefer Disc to Holy healing.

Wipe faster as a Disc.. sadly to say.. but u should play more Disc if you say that... If you was able to keep the raid and tank healed by that time that means the raid wasnt taking lot of damage or any damage at all...

[Kelesti]

Wow, that came out of left field. This is in no way true.

Disc is good on: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Gunship, Saurfang, Rotface, Festergut, and Putricide.
Disc is poor on: No available ICC fights.

Compare to Holy, which is horribly inefficient on Marrowgar (except lolstorm), the Gunship Battle and Saurfang. Those fights just do not favor a healer who primarily spot heals. You're pigeon holed into doing exactly what you're bad at. ICC so far favors Disc, not Holy. Festergut, thus far, is the best fight for Disc that there has ever been. It shifts between periods where you can raid shield safely and periods where tunnel-vision on tanks is great. Rotface and Putricide both favor Disc due to the ability to prevent sudden fatal damage by extending a characters life by 6k+, preventing one-shot kills.

Okay, let me fix that for you.

Disc is good on: Marrowgar, Saurfang (exploit mechanic), and I have no comment for Putricide because my 25's doing him on Sunday.
Disc is poor on: Deathwhisper, soon-to-be patched Saurfang, Rotface, and Festergut.

Holy is good on: Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Rotface (especially Body & Soul), and Festergut. Again no comment on Putricide, but I have little doubts that Holy will pull its weight here too.
Holy is poor on: No available ICC fights.

Looking at these, Holy seems to stand on its own much easier on a larger number of fights.
Discipline does fine on Marrowgar. Spamming Shields on Deathwhisper does nothing, because random damage is random, and thus still needs to be healed. If you want to "tab-buffer" 25 people, roll a fucking resto druid already. No one cares about your "effective output". Same thing goes for Rotface. And Festergut for that matter. Saurfang is a confirmed bug in that Blood Power is not generated through Absorbs. Have fun with that, on the fight people use to justify forcing a spec swap, and the dominance of Discipline.

A Holy Priestess, using all her tools, can help sustain tanks along side another healer (which is just as required with Discipline, by the way) and has a faster reaction time to Bone Spikes, and the entire raid taking damage in lolstorm. They spot heal faster, and burst heal extremely nicely (last I heard, Penance still has a cooldown), which works nicely for Deathwhisper, and Saurfang.

Rotface, Body & Soul is completely unrivaled. As is a 7 second mending, and Guardian Spirit. You can't shield the explosion, people will still likely die. You can't shield your kiters if they're running Body & Soul. So for damage covering, that leaves the spew. Who are you going to shield? The people you know to stand there? If you're still bringing those, you might want to look at replacing them. Your "6k+" save from getting oneshot is replaced by the ability to not stand there in the first place. (It's closer to 8k for Disc, and 5.6-5.8k for Holy nowadays).

Festergut is another Twins. Sure, you can just tab-friendly and spam Power Word: Shield, and that looks really really great on a meter. But what are you doing to actually slow incoming damage on all targets? People in those groups are still going to need heals, and doing it one at a time you might as well be a Paladin spamming Flash of Light, at least then a HoT's left. And your single target thoroughput SUCKS. Your Penance, shield, and Mending all have cooldowns. So you spam Flash Heal, or maybe a Greater depending on your haste (and BT). Sure, people manipulate Borrowed Time, but for those who've done the fight, can you really justify a GCD on a seperate target to pretend to boost your single target HPS? Honestly, not really. Priest single target in general sucks, Discipline just likes to think they can do it better. Penance can do it better. But Penance has a cooldown, tank damage doesn't.

And Orgrim's Hammer vs Skybreaker? Really, you call that a fight? Healing Stream + Improved Vampiric Embrace, plus a single Rejuv or Renew will keep the tank on your ship up. The one on the other side would warrant a Resto Druid and a Holy Paladin. If your other healers are bored and not in guns, they can pretend to help, but unless your DPS suck, it really shouldn't matter (that's even counting time to take out the Mortars, which your cannons should be on at all times anyways). That's not a fight, that's a trial version for the next Pirates of the Carribean movie.

TL;DR: In this level of content, Holy is holding much stronger than Discipline. That isn't to say Discipline isn't worthy of a spot, but it's not the "OMG OP" beast that people think it is. People are just used to running with terrible Holy Priests, and think the only ones who stay that way must be meter whores.

[harky]

That's pretty off base.

Disc-
Saurfang: Shielding marked targets while handling spiky damage and tank healing. Disc does fine and will do fine.
Deathwhisper: Target-of-target shielding off Deathwhisper combined with tank healing. Disc does great here.
Rotface: Shielding the kiter. Shielding disease targets. Shielding the spray target. Tank healing. Disc is good here.
Festergut: Raid shielding while bouncing PoM and using Penance for spikes with 0-2 stacks. Heavy tank healing and tank cooldowns to use for 3 stacks. Shielding vomit victims. Disc is amazing in this fight.
Putricide: Shielding targets for slime explosions saves lives. Lots of lives. Disc is great in this fight.

Holy-
Marrowgar: Useless except during Bone Storm. Bounce PoM on tanks, drop the lowest single target throughput of any healing spec on tanks. Then have fun during the very light damage produced during Bone Storm. Holy is bad for 3/4 of this fight and only decent during the easiest part of the fight.
Saurfang: Same thing. Almost completely useless on this fight unless your tanks are completely undergeared. Very, very light raid damage along with spiky tank damage. Holy struggles a lot on this fight.

If you don't want to count Gunship? That's fine. DPS if healing is so light.

Otherwise you're very wrong. There is no bad fight for Disc yet in ICC. Also, you seem to be in the group of people who see Disc as having very little throughput then you need to get over the 'haste cap' as was often touted and accept that Disc scales very well with two stats; Spellpower and Haste. Look at throughput with 800+ haste using a 53/18 spec. You'll be very surprised.

Right now Disc is shining in ICC because of its ability to shift between raid shielding, spot healing and tank healing. Holy works well on most fights, but it has a pitfall when dealing with several fights that deal mostly tank damage, or other extremely predictable damage.

[Kelesti]

That's pretty off base.

Disc-
Saurfang: Shielding marked targets while handling spiky damage and tank healing. Disc does fine and will do fine.

The only reason Discipline does well here (or is even desired) is the exploit from Blood Power denial. Your Paladins can each handle a marked target without slowing tank damage whatsoever. Again, between shields, people still need to be healed. So you spent mana/time to gain mana/time, in order to spend more on the same target later. Improved/Empowered/Glyphed Renew is stronger, as is 7 second Mending.

Rotface: Shielding the kiter.

Body & Soul

Shielding disease targets.

Mending/Renew

Shielding the spray target.

He doesn't target someone when he sprays anymore. He just turns and sprays.

Tank healing.

Which Discipline is at best a support role? Right.

Festergut: Raid shielding

Slower and less substantial recovery output than a Holy Priest, you're imitating a Druid that's too stupid to spec Wild Growth, and doesn't use Regrowth/Lifebloom.

while bouncing PoM

Which Holy has faster, and stronger,

and using Penance for spikes with 0-2 stacks. Heavy tank healing

Your effective output hasn't grown all that much, Holy's has scaled. A Holy Priest assists heavily on tank healing just as much as you do, now. A Discipline Priest is balanced (nerfed) around their absorbs, not blessed because of them.

and tank cooldowns to use for 3 stacks.

By "cooldowns" you mean the 2.4 minute Pain Suppression? 70 second Guardian Spirit would like to say Hi.

Shielding vomit victims.

Shielded victims still need to be healed. Both during and after your cast. Renew wins.

Holy is amazing in this fight.

I fixed that for you.

Putricide: Shielding targets for slime explosions saves lives. Lots of lives. Disc is great in this fight.

Pretty sure when I can speak for this fight on 25 man from experience (Sunday), instead of from a video, I'll get back to you on that.

Holy-
Marrowgar: Useless except during Bone Storm.

Nope.

Bounce PoM on tanks, drop the lowest single target throughput of any healing spec on tanks.

On a single target, what do you do for Thoroughput? Shield, Penance, maybe a greater, then Flash Spam as you wait for Penance to come back up? When WS falls off, repeat? Hey look, I can Mending on 7 seconds, Renew is my ongoing buffer zone, and spam Flash to weave Greaters in as well. And each hits for more than yours does. Right. Holy's obviously the lowest thoroughput. Priest thoroughput is low, stop lying to yourself that Discipline is better.

Then have fun during the very light damage produced during Bone Storm.

Actually, my melee races around (sprints, and B&S) to keep damage uptime going (DoT refresh and all). Doing so increases damage on them (still laughable) but also the risk of blue fire, which decently hurts given its increased speed.

Holy is bad for 3/4 of this fight and only decent during the easiest part of the fight.

Holy's equal for tank healing, and better for a Bone Spike. Oh look, Holy's better for 4/4 of this fight.

Saurfang: Same thing. Almost completely useless on this fight unless your tanks are completely undergeared. Very, very light raid damage along with spiky tank damage. Holy struggles a lot on this fight.

Bad groups that need to abuse absorb mechanics struggle alot on this fight. I can multi-HoT which has both an instant and an ongoing component, with stronger output to your Power Word: Shield. My Mending will be bouncing constantly, faster, and for more. Tank damage isn't spiky, it's constant. You can thank Icewell Radiance for that. You can effectively Two-and-a-half heal 25 man, with a Paladin, a Resto Shaman that helps with both Earthbind, and Frost Shocking a beast to help with kiting, and a Holy Priest.

Otherwise you're very wrong. There is no bad fight for Disc yet in ICC. Also, you seem to be in the group of people who see Disc as having very little throughput then you need to get over the 'haste cap' as was often touted and accept that Disc scales very well with two stats; Spellpower and Haste. Look at throughput with 800+ haste using a 53/18 spec. You'll be very surprised.

I'm still one of the people who champion the fact that Discipline doesn't have a "haste cap". But when I drop Spell Warding, and pick up my Greater Heal button (there's a reason I kept it on my bars) my effective output is not limited by absorb mechanics, which Blizz seems intent on holding Discipline back because of. A Discipline Priest may regen cap sooner, and be able to gear nothing but thoroughput going out, but a Holy Priest that's regen capped will still push more. Single, and multi. The only difference is my buffer can be refreshed if I'm going to step out of range.

Right now Disc is shining in ICC because of its ability to shift between raid shielding, spot healing and tank healing.

Right now, Disc shines because it's an effective healing spec that plays support. If you were to drop any healer from your core, you would most certainly notice the Discipline Priest's support on any and all aspects of the fight. But it is just that, support. It's why you brought Shadow into TBC, to support your casters.

Holy works well on most fights, but it has a pitfall when dealing with several fights that deal mostly tank damage,

Mostly Tank Damage has Discipline falling behind on the outgoing HPS just as quickly as Holy. There is no real gain.

or other extremely predictable damage.

Which is just as predictably countered by proper Renew/Mending usage (or saving someone's life with GS if they missed an Innoculation).

[Bornams]

Got an off topic question ;D : What is the haste cap for disc and for holy?

[harky]

Okay, you're now arguing for Holy being superior to Disc on single target tank healing? Please actually do some research. This isn't even close to being true unless the Disc Priest is using improper gear. If you base your ideas on that, then sure, Disc is bad if you gear it poorly and play it poorly. I can agree to that.

Do yourself a favor and look at what a Disc Priest that's actually in Disc gear is capable of. In T9 gear you should be looking at 25% haste (without talents), 35% holy crit (with talents). Should have ~26k mana unbuffed and gemming SP, SP/Haste and SP/MP5 for SP/Haste bonuses. Using Darkglow and IED. You can raise those numbers without much problem with already obtainable T10 gear.

Edit: Haste 'caps' for Disc are at ~200 haste (GCD cap with BT) and ~1,000 haste (GCD cap without BT). For Holy the soft cap normally mentioned is 460, or 14% haste.

[Kelesti]

Not superior. Competitive. Near-equal level of output. Aegis is still torn through without even a second notice. You have a stronger Shield, I have a stronger Renew. Neither really effects the stream of incoming damage on a fight like Festergut-3, just each helps. Penance tips the balance in your favor, but Holy's Flash and Greater are still stronger than Discipline's, even though you may manage to gather more raw spell power on your gear. 25% spirit conversion helps (even after regen capped, and you start to move towards "Disc" type gear), stronger percentage modifiers, and the option of better Spell Power coefficients.

Discipline has Penance. It's badass. It's not enough to make it that much more of a competent single target healer than Holy is. It does make it so, but counting that, it's negligible. Would you want either Holy or Discipline to be your tank healers? Not particularily. Priest's suck at that, in general. If you had to pick one, sure you might pick Discipline, in the belief that the absorbs help (even though they're still shredded and countered). You'd be wrong, but you're welcome to believe that. Most of us realised by Ulduar a Discipline Priest wasn't going to cut it as a tank healer, and we knew Holy wasn't right from the start. Gear/Content shifts may have mitigated this, but both remain true.

If you picked Discipline because Penance is an easier/stronger catch up tool than Guardian Spirit+spam is, then you'd have made a wise choice, but only for that reason.

Nothing else really stands up at this stage of the game in the "Holy vs Disc" debate.

[magicism]

No. If you're running a Renew spec, which if you're casting Renew <15 times per raid I would hope not, then what I said is absolutely true. Given what you are doing, if you'd bother to read the rest of the post you'd quoted, would imply a FH/GH build. Are you FH and GH numbers combined lower than PoM/PoH/CoH in fights? That's the comparison you'd be making and the argument trying to be made by magicism. It's not going to happen in almost any fight.

Also, while I can appreciate varied styles in 10 mans, I do not consider 10 mans serious content. 10 man ICC can be healed as Shadow. No, that's not a joke. I two heal it on my Paladin with a Shadow Priest as the second healer. Holy can keep up with tanks in ICC10, or ToC10 and even TOGC10 if you're particularly well geared.

Here's the question though... if you're two healing with a Druid and that Druid prefers raid healing, why do you not have a Disc off-spec, which would benefit your raid much more than working as Holy? I say this because while Holy Priests and Resto Druids are roughly equivalent raid healers, Druids are highly superior tank healers. This is not a question of playstyle at all, mind you, but a measure of raw healing ability. Resto Druids have more powerful tank healing setups than Holy Priests while also being more mana efficient.

In any case, my arguments are based on 25 mans and the portion of my post that you quoted is absolutely correct. A properly played Renew-spec Holy Priest will have their top heal as Renew. PoM is typically second, with CoH third. Some fights are exceptions, but it's not the norm. The same can be said of a FH/GH Holy Priest exchanging Renew for FH and GH combined, since that is exactly what these specs are trading between.

Click here for my reply.
Just in general, not really to anything in that post.

[Azyoulike]

Otherwise you're very wrong. There is no bad fight for Disc yet in ICC. Also, you seem to be in the group of people who see Disc as having very little throughput then you need to get over the 'haste cap' as was often touted and accept that Disc scales very well with two stats; Spellpower and Haste. Look at throughput with 800+ haste using a 53/18 spec. You'll be very surprised.

Hmm, would you say that your single target throughput can beat that of say a tank healing Druid? I know you have both, and my tests would seem to indicate that with comparitive gear the druid will always be able to out single target heal a disco.

[Danner]

What's up with the flaming in this thread?
Please control the fingerpointing and namecalling.

Aaanyway.

If you ask me, disc is still better than holy for pure MT healing. Penance is just that awesome, and disc flash heals are not weaker than holy flash heals (more the other way around). Flash heal in general is weak though; no T10-2set is changing that fact. And GHeal is still useless as both specs as a general-purpose heal. But it's not possible to hide under the carpet that the cooldowns is hurting disciplines ability to pull single target HPS comparable to a druid, shaman or paladin; even while counting in absorbs.

And we all know that Holy has never been able to do single target healing unless the tank is ridiculously overgeared. A faster ProM and a stronger renew does not make up for the lack of Penance, holy single target HPS is lower if you account for absorbs.

Reliable HPS is all that really matter when tank healing. Disc will suffer from cooldown downtime, causing the reliable part to fail. Holy has its own problems, from mana issues, to lack of a decent throughput heal - and the single target rotation with serendipity isn't matching boss spike damage.

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I think the conclusion of this thread, apart from that priests can be very edgy, is that the MT healer / raid healer categorization isn't working out. Disc is not a MT healer, I think we all know that by now. Disc is not a raidhealer either; the whack-a-mole nature of raidhealing doesn't work well unless the entire raid is under protection. Holy is just bad at MT healing, and if you compare us to a druid, we're not that great raidhealers either. We can absolutely do the job, but if meters is all you care about, the druid wins.

Priests offer something else. Utility. Security. Support. It's hard to measure. It's hard to categorize, and it's even hard to take advantage of. I fear that priests will be treated as the smelly kid in the schoolyard if the trend continues; but - both disc and holy (and disc in particular) are support healers. A discpriest vastly improves the survivability of a tank (and raid), but mostly so if a paladin is already spamming the tank to death. It's the paladin that does the main job. The discpriest is just offering the safety net. In the real world, the person responsible for setting up the safety net would get a lot of credit when it does save someone. But with healing going at its current pace, noone notices or even cares.

The question is whether two paladins would do the job better to the point where the safety net is useless. As long as nothing is oneshot, the answer is yes. And that is a problem.

A holypriest is running the same deal with raidhealing. The druids are healing the raid up (and we may help out with renew too!), but when something happens, it's the holypriest that act as the safety net. Guardian Spirit is a very gratifying tool to use; a macro whispering a raider that you just saved his ass will make you immensely popular. That's the safety net working as intended. Body and Soul offers the same benefits, and I think guilds are reckognizing the value holypriests, despite being lower on meters than a druid. Disc is still struggling on this point.

But ultimately, if you need the safety net, you are often doing something wrong. Would replacing the holypriest with a druid lessen the risk of deaths - or at least help out enough so that a combatress more than makes up for it?

I don't know.

[harky]

Hmm, would you say that your single target throughput can beat that of say a tank healing Druid? I know you have both, and my tests would seem to indicate that with comparitive gear the druid will always be able to out single target heal a disco.

No, my Disc Priest can't keep up when doing 100% tank healing with either my Paladin, or my Druid. Paladin > Druid > Disc > Shaman > Holy. Not sure how you figured out that I have a Druid though, I rarely talk about it. :P

What I do find however is that my Priest is better able to switch off the tank sporadically and hop around between raid and tank very quickly. Disc used purely as a tank healer (outside of 10 mans) is a wasted Disc Priest, since the biggest benefit of Disc is flexibility. That's the fun side benefit of haste stacking right now is it allows a lot of options without shield spamming, while having the benefit of BT when you need it for longer casts.

But no, there's a reason my Priest is in retirement and a lot of that has to do with having two healers that do better tank heals as well as having a uh... I better not say the other part of that sentence, eh? Etterbay Aidray Ealerhay? Either way having 3 healers was getting to be a bit odd, especially when none of the three is my main anymore.