Quick disci priest question

[harky]

You're wrong.

With my current haste raid buffed, without BT, BL, or PI my Flash heal cast time is 1.02 seconds. My Greater Heal is 1.67 seconds. Take your FH/GH crit numbers and apply it to those cast times. That's 9,000/1.02 = 8823, or 17,000/1.67 = 10,179.

With BT? That's a 1 second FH due to GCD cap, or a 1.35 second GH. With BL? 1 second FH due to GCD cap, 1.28 second GH. With BT you're looking at just under 12,600 HPS and comparing it to 9,000 HPS and claiming that FH is higher throughput.

Why are you talking about sniping? You're not a Holy Priest. Heck, you're making fun of Greater Heal's coefficient? It's 161.35%, Flash Heal is 80.68%. If you quantify that by cast time you'll find that Flash Heal scales about 10% worse than Greater Heal.

You have no idea what you're talking about and have no clue why this is working for people.

Here's the issue: Disc lacks throughput, but has a massive advantage for mana gains.
Your answer: Spam low throughput, low cost heals.
The actual solution: Use higher cost, higher throughput spells.

You also don't seem to understand the haste levels involved. Priests in high end gear are now approaching the GCD cap without BT. With BT Flash Heal is just about .8 seconds. Not that I can cast it that fast, I'm well beyong the GCD cap with BT. Know what spell that doesn't matter for? Greater Heal. Side effect? 1.6 second Prayer of Healing. Secondary side effect? Gives a great third option for Glyphs. Tertiary side effect? My maximum output is 30-40% higher.

[fabian]

You're wrong.

With my current haste raid buffed, without BT, BL, or PI my Flash heal cast time is 1.02 seconds. My Greater Heal is 1.67 seconds. Take your FH/GH crit numbers and apply it to those cast times. That's 9,000/1.02 = 8823, or 17,000/1.67 = 10,179.

With BT? That's a 1 second FH due to GCD cap, or a 1.35 second GH. With BL? 1 second FH due to GCD cap, 1.28 second GH. With BT you're looking at just under 12,600 HPS and comparing it to 9,000 HPS and claiming that FH is higher throughput.

Why are you talking about sniping? You're not a Holy Priest. Heck, you're making fun of Greater Heal's coefficient? It's 161.35%, Flash Heal is 80.68%. If you quantify that by cast time you'll find that Flash Heal scales about 10% worse than Greater Heal.

You have no idea what you're talking about and have no clue why this is working for people.

Here's the issue: Disc lacks throughput, but has a massive advantage for mana gains.
Your answer: Spam low throughput, low cost heals.
The actual solution: Use higher cost, higher throughput spells.

You also don't seem to understand the haste levels involved. Priests in high end gear are now approaching the GCD cap without BT. With BT Flash Heal is just about .8 seconds. Not that I can cast it that fast, I'm well beyong the GCD cap with BT. Know what spell that doesn't matter for? Greater Heal. Side effect? 1.6 second Prayer of Healing. Secondary side effect? Gives a great third option for Glyphs. Tertiary side effect? My maximum output is 30-40% higher.

About the glyph situation, what is the most common third glyph for a GH build? None of the rest are really good.

[harky]

Prayer of Healing.

[Contrivez]

You're wrong.

With my current haste raid buffed, without BT, BL, or PI my Flash heal cast time is 1.02 seconds. My Greater Heal is 1.67 seconds. Take your FH/GH crit numbers and apply it to those cast times. That's 9,000/1.02 = 8823, or 17,000/1.67 = 10,179.

With BT? That's a 1 second FH due to GCD cap, or a 1.35 second GH. With BL? 1 second FH due to GCD cap, 1.28 second GH. With BT you're looking at just under 12,600 HPS and comparing it to 9,000 HPS and claiming that FH is higher throughput.

Why are you talking about sniping? You're not a Holy Priest. Heck, you're making fun of Greater Heal's coefficient? It's 161.35%, Flash Heal is 80.68%. If you quantify that by cast time you'll find that Flash Heal scales about 10% worse than Greater Heal.

You have no idea what you're talking about and have no clue why this is working for people.

Here's the issue: Disc lacks throughput, but has a massive advantage for mana gains.
Your answer: Spam low throughput, low cost heals.
The actual solution: Use higher cost, higher throughput spells.

You also don't seem to understand the haste levels involved. Priests in high end gear are now approaching the GCD cap without BT. With BT Flash Heal is just about .8 seconds. Not that I can cast it that fast, I'm well beyong the GCD cap with BT. Know what spell that doesn't matter for? Greater Heal. Side effect? 1.6 second Prayer of Healing. Secondary side effect? Gives a great third option for Glyphs. Tertiary side effect? My maximum output is 30-40% higher.

This entire argument is about single target healing that can compete with a paladin.

Which I am seriously sorry you just cannot compete with 30K, 1.4 second casted holy lights. You just can't.

If you're trying to heal a target that isn't a tank, would you honestly consider greater healing?

I'm not calling you wrong, I'm just saying this is stupid and not effective in terms of effective healing. 1.6 seconds is SLOW. With 2 piece, shamans healing wave is 1.1, every single raid healer is going to snipe your heal before your greater can get off. It is NOT effective healing. It will almost always overheal.

Show me some WOL of this stuff and I'll really believe it.

Also, I am one of those priests who is geared out the ass and can get 1000+ haste in disc gear EASILY. But it's simply not effective in my eyes.

[TheRabidDeer]

You're wrong.

With my current haste raid buffed, without BT, BL, or PI my Flash heal cast time is 1.02 seconds. My Greater Heal is 1.67 seconds. Take your FH/GH crit numbers and apply it to those cast times. That's 9,000/1.02 = 8823, or 17,000/1.67 = 10,179.

With BT? That's a 1 second FH due to GCD cap, or a 1.35 second GH. With BL? 1 second FH due to GCD cap, 1.28 second GH. With BT you're looking at just under 12,600 HPS and comparing it to 9,000 HPS and claiming that FH is higher throughput.

Why are you talking about sniping? You're not a Holy Priest. Heck, you're making fun of Greater Heal's coefficient? It's 161.35%, Flash Heal is 80.68%. If you quantify that by cast time you'll find that Flash Heal scales about 10% worse than Greater Heal.

You have no idea what you're talking about and have no clue why this is working for people.

Here's the issue: Disc lacks throughput, but has a massive advantage for mana gains.
Your answer: Spam low throughput, low cost heals.
The actual solution: Use higher cost, higher throughput spells.

You also don't seem to understand the haste levels involved. Priests in high end gear are now approaching the GCD cap without BT. With BT Flash Heal is just about .8 seconds. Not that I can cast it that fast, I'm well beyong the GCD cap with BT. Know what spell that doesn't matter for? Greater Heal. Side effect? 1.6 second Prayer of Healing. Secondary side effect? Gives a great third option for Glyphs. Tertiary side effect? My maximum output is 30-40% higher.

HPM (healing per mana):
Flash: 521 = 9000 heal = 17.275 HPM
Greater: 1236 = 17000 heal = 13.754 HPM

Also, 2 heals on 2 different targets in 2.04 seconds vs 1 big heal on 1 target in 1.67 seconds

Which seems more effective now?

[Kelesti]

HPM (healing per mana):
Flash: 521 = 9000 heal = 17.275 HPM
Greater: 1236 = 17000 heal = 13.754 HPM

If mana's not a concern (when was the last time a Flash spammer went OoM as Discipline?), then you should be upping the HPS despite the drop in HPM.

Also, 2 heals on 2 different targets in 2.04 seconds vs 1 big heal on 1 target in 1.67 seconds

If you're shielding, you're getting 2 targets in 1.28 seconds, counting reaction time, considering the first one's instant.

[Contrivez]

For that to work you would have to.

Get BT up,

Cast G Heal

Cast a non-BT'ed Shield (1.1-1.3 sec GCD based on your personal haste)

Cast another G Heal.

[Weena2]

Incase some people that read arn't too bright, ill break it down:

1. Disc priest's best roll in a raid is bubbling to absorb incoming damage. Can they tank heal? Yes. Should they? No Can they raid heal? Yes. Should they? No.
2. Holy priest's best roll in a raid is as a raid healer, they should be using most there arsenal to do so. Can they tank heal? Yes. Should they? No
3. Gheal shouldn't be used unless you have a 3 stack Serendipity and there will be no raid damage for a period of time or it will fall off shortly.
4. Did i mention don't Gheal?

EDIT: just for clarity, in point 1 where i say disc priests shouldnt raid heal i mean they shouldn't be constantly using renew + POH, they should be using PW:S on the raid, ofcourse they can raid heal when the see fit, just know your place.

[harky]

1. Disc priest's best roll in a raid is bubbling to absorb incoming damage. Can they tank heal? Yes. Should they? No Can they raid heal? Yes. Should they? No.

Disc Priest's best roll is absolutely not full time raid shielding. It is adaptive healing mixing quick pre-shields, helping on tanks and other raid support. They should raid heal and tank heal.

2. Holy priest's best roll in a raid is as a raid healer, they should be using most there arsenal to do so. Can they tank heal? Yes. Should they? No

Holy Priests can and should help with tank heals. Tanks are part of the raid and as a raid healer your priority is to heal the most critical part of the raid. Often times that is the tank.

3. Gheal shouldn't be used unless you have a 3 stack Serendipity and there will be no raid damage for a period of time or it will fall off shortly.

Absolutely no relevance to a thread about Disc and also completely wrong. Stacking Serendipity is a HPS loss if healing tanks.

In regards to not using Greater Heal? Again, the few people arguing against it are off-base. Flash Heal spam is directly inferior to Greater Heal spam in terms of HPS. It has nothing to do with 'sniping' any heals and everything to do with helping out at critical times on a tank. Have fun with the tank damage on a fight like Festergut with Flash Heal spam at 3 stacks. There's basically zero raid damage to shield and the tank will need as much healing as you can give him. Flash Heal does not cut it anymore.

Here's a real breakdown:
1. Disc Priests midway through ToC and entering ToGC were having large problems with throughput, but absolutely no issues with mana.
2. Disc Priests found they could do well on meters by raid shielding.
3. Raid leaders started to study absorbs and raid shielding and found the effective worth of raid shield spamming was actually very low on most fights.
4. Disc started being tapered back by serious guilds and used for niche roles.
5. Disc Priests realized that if they pushed well beyond the supposed 'cap' of 154 haste they could have less reliance on BT and expand their healing arsenal to include a higher use of PoH and GH.

A lot of Priests still don't get it. You need to jump well beyond the 'cap' to notice the gap in power. You can't sit at 6-11% and think you have a lot of haste; you don't. You need to be breaking 20% haste. The issue is there is little to no gain between 154 and 600 haste. There's a very large plateau there where you will not have enough haste to support the new playstyle. When you reach 600 you can start to see it. When you break 800 you can start to really see the payoff. BT is no longer great for raid shielding, or just hasting Penance, or little gimmicks. BT is now used for very, very fast GH and PoH. GH spam becomes excellent. It's a way for Disc to use its infinite mana pool and really shine again.

It is not about being a Holy Paladin. You are bringing something very different to the raid than a Holy Paladin. You are a good raid healer now due to PoH's now 2s cast time without BT in addition to PoM, raid shielding, etc. The whole point is adaptability. Do you blanket the raid with Renew? No. Do you spam FH around the raid? Not usually. You're not Holy. The advantage is the ability to switch very quickly between raid and tank support. Midway through T9 Disc was pushed to pure raid support and detached from tanks entirely. The gear shift towards much, much more haste and GH is what's saving the class from mediocrity. If you don't understand that you don't understand the real meaning of meters, or the real effect of Disc's supposed 'raid shielding' niche.

[Weena2]

Disc Priest's best roll is absolutely not full time raid shielding. It is adaptive healing mixing quick pre-shields, helping on tanks and other raid support. They should raid heal and tank heal.

@ Harky incase you didn't read that far

EDIT: just for clarity, in point 1 where i say disc priests shouldnt raid heal i mean they shouldn't be constantly using renew + POH, they should be using PW:S on the raid, ofcourse they can raid heal when the see fit, just know your place.

[Izenhart]

Sp+Crit+Haste items.

All of them.

[Crazhr]

Its very simple there is no point arguing about hps or hpm

Flash heal is by far higher hpm then gh

Gh is by far higher hps then flash heal

This are simple facts and we cant argue about this but accept it. Now the question arise what needs to happen before you can cast gh instead of flash and as I see it there is only 2 conditions that need to be filled:

1. Unlimited mana, you need to have enugh mana/regen to not care about the lower hpm. This is pretty much right for most decently geared priest.
2. You need to have enugh haste so that your tanks do not die in the cast time and build up devine agies procs before the next big hit. This is also pretty much true in togc and icc gear.

Btw note im not saying that you should not shield either the tanks or the raid. Im not saying you should become wannabe paladins. Im not saying that you NEED to do anything or you should stop doing what is working for you.

My basic point is that we know that gh heals for more but is bad because it cost a shit ton but if that is nolonger a problem. If you dont have problems with mana and you have so fast gheals that they are close to fh then there is no valid reason not to use them to do some more hps. Condition no 2 is ofc very based on personal feeling and what you are used to but I can see no valid reason to claim that gh is "wrong" at very high gear lvls.

[tatienne]

I have to agree with harky on this one.

for the first part, he seems to have aknowledged that healing isn't a recount-game. you should only keep things alive. wether it's the things you're assigned to or not doesn't matter. and what if you're the disc healer working alongside a shaman, who is so focused on his CH role that he has totally neglected tankhealing, in a tenman. why should one care about the chances of competing to a pallys tankhealing then? what if it's like in my guild, we haven't seen a retlol apply to us since ulduar and thus have none in the guild? and consider that being a holy pally instead of ret? to assume the role you have in your guild is the only one that exists is just pure wrong, sorry. some guilds had dpsers dispel iron councils fusion punch others had healers do it. is either of them wrong?

sorry, but imho adaptation is the key to healing. if you can't adapt to the fact that ghealbuilds have a better hps on gheal than on falsh heal you're not adapting to the current loot. sure, noone has told you to get the gheal build, but to blatantly tell someone he is wrong for doing it when he obviously is well versed in the mechanics of that build is imo wrong. there are other ways to heal things than your and your guilds ways.

[Contrivez]

3. Raid leaders started to study absorbs and raid shielding and found the effective worth of raid shield spamming was actually very low on most fights.
4. Disc started being tapered back by serious guilds and used for niche roles.

Hahaha.
No.
My guild tag isn't fake Harky.
And I am in pretty much every raid encounter and every part of progression that <vodka> has.

Do you have basis or backings for such an outlandish statement? Have you looked into end game guilds and found out the healing strategies they use?

And you further my point by about a million when you make this argument about "raid leaders not seeing the value of shield spam". Are you trying to tell me some group of disc priests adapted to this "shortcoming" and began to stack haste and spam greater heal / poh and suddenly every end game raider wants one?

This is by far one of the most ludicrous concepts I've heard, especially in terms of assuming it applies to end game raiding guilds.

Like I said in a previous post, link me some WOL of any top 25 guild that uses a disc priest like this.

I can link you about 8-10 guilds that still use and will forever use shield spamming disc priests.

[fabian]

Hahaha.
No.
My guild tag isn't fake Harky.
And I am in pretty much every raid encounter and every part of progression that <vodka> has.

Do you have basis or backings for such an outlandish statement? Have you looked into end game guilds and found out the healing strategies they use?

And you further my point by about a million when you make this argument about "raid leaders not seeing the value of shield spam". Are you trying to tell me some group of disc priests adapted to this "shortcoming" and began to stack haste and spam greater heal / poh and suddenly every end game raider wants one?

This is by far one of the most ludicrous concepts I've heard, especially in terms of assuming it applies to end game raiding guilds.

Like I said in a previous post, link me some WOL of any top 25 guild that uses a disc priest like this.

I can link you about 8-10 guilds that still use and will forever use shield spamming disc priests.

Lol, because a top 25 guild is using a spec means that it is the only viable spec? You're oblivious to the fact that the GH build is very viable(in the end game) and puts out more HPS than a FH for more mana. How it is geared for too(regen+haste) will also make it (slightly) better at raid shielding than a FH build.

You can not voice the opinion for the other top guilds(if you say who you are)/for top 25 guilds(if you're an impostor) since you've not been in them.


If you are indeed who you say who you are, then I am sorry vodka for having such an arrogant person in their guild.

[harky]

@ Harky incase you didn't read that far

Rather than the notation at the bottom you should have altered your first argument to reflect your position. You directly implied that you shouldn't be raid healing much, but just spamming shields as much as you can. That's extremely bad advice.

Hahaha.
No.
My guild tag isn't fake Harky.
And I am in pretty much every raid encounter and every part of progression that <vodka> has.

So, then we're to take anyone from a famous guild and take everything they say as scripture when there's no proof that what they're saying is correct beyond that they're one of 25 people in a raid? Your armory shows you as using Trauma, sitting at 450 haste, the majority of your gear being spirit pieces, etc? Shall we pretend that any of that is optimal?

You don't need to be any any high end raiding guild to understand that raid shielding is only great on about 5 fights (Twins, Fester, Putricide, Blood Queen) and has mostly limited use on other fights. You don't need to do anything but stand and spam heal yourself to realize why Flash Heal is doing so poorly either. The point is that the reasoning Disc uses to show that they're competitive and good are a bit flawed. Low haste FH spamming Disc is much worse off than people would like to admit.

Anyway, that's not the point. Come up with any number showing that Greater Heal with high haste will output less healing per second than Flash Heal. I can save you some time if you'd like though. If you're in 245+ gear Greater Heal will win. The difference? You can Flash Heal spam without using any cooldowns and end with a healthy mana pool, while you can translate more mana to healing with Greater Heal. You're about 200 haste short of where this becomes evident because you can't fit as many Greater Heals into your Penance CD as you'd be able to at ~650 haste. So tell me, have you actually tried it? Have you dropped the crappy Holy-centric gear you're using to stack enough Haste to compete this way? Or are you just going to hide behind your guild tag and pretend that's an excuse for not being able to argue your position?

Want to know a little secret? You can't shield spam any better than someone stacking haste. In fact, you can't shield spam, or FH spam as well as someone stacking more haste. It's not just about Greater Heal and PoH, those are excellent perks when you do need to help support a tank, but it isn't as if stacking haste somehow makes you incapable of doing your old job. The difference? Instead of a ton of wasted spirit, you have a ton of haste in reserve.

[Taxidermy]

Best gear itemization for disc is by far pieces with high SP. Spell power should always be your #1 stat as disc. Second is a mix of Crit/Haste gear or high crit valued gear or high haste valued gear should mana not be an issue (LOLrapture=win). If you are bad at proccing your rapture for known incoming damage than respec holy.

On fights like festergut i like to play with a crit set to sustain the tank and get more aegis procs on the tank. But on fights like putricide where tank damage is minimal and our holy paladin is able to sustain him i switch to a more haste oriented setup so i can get more PW:S absorb on oozes/players.

The best way to gear your disc priest is to look at the other healers around you in your guild. Look at what they are healing and come to a realization that you are a "Support" healer. You are there to provide a large cushion to players health pools and to negate a large amount of damage taken to boss mechanics with a PW:S. Should your tanks be dying use more crit and focus healing them more. Should your tanks rarely be dying and raid members get gibbed rather quickly look towards a more haste oriented set allowing you to support more with faster GCDS.

Spirit is still a decent stat for disc. It is also very dependent on the other stats on the piece. Don't optimize for spirit but also do not shun it as a stat that will do you no good.

Hit on a piece also isn't a bad thing provided the other stats are stronger than your previous piece. Try to aim to be somwhere around 30% holy crit as a minimum once you reach that range aim for a blend of Haste/Crit. DPS will not like this very much but it is by far the best itemization for you. #1 SP/haste/Crit #2 SP/Haste/mp5 Sp/Crit/Mp5 SP/Haste/Spirit SP/Crit/Spirit should all rely based on your current gear selection and spirit and mp5 should not vary much at all regen is regen and as disc you do not need an aweful lot unless you are sheild spamming the entire raid on Patchwerk

#1 thing to take into consideration by far is your healing core and where you would fit in best as a support healer. We currently run 2 resto druids 1 holy priest 1 resto shaman 1 holy paladin 1 disc priest. Making my best option being a mix of haste/crit to be able to sustain a tank as well as sustain raid damage.

Also the comment about Gheal as disc. Hardly ever should you Gheal. If you read your talents Disc is all about buffing your Flash heal to a point where it is a lot better to cast it. Should a player be above 50% and not much raid damage out. Assume Swift mend/CoH/Instant flash to follow on that player. Should they be below 50% assume Flash and improved flash heal to have more crit and be a large heal almost topping this player. That in combination with a PW:S allows hots time to tick that player to 100% or another healer to be bored and top that player. Should the player be extremely low on health PW:S if you can follow with penance and borrowed time and then flash heal should it be needed (also gains borrowed time). If i know a tank will be taking a lot of damage and my penance is on CD i might time a Gheal to land based on the boss swing timer to counter the big hit but it is very situational

[Azyoulike]

On fights like festergut i like to play with a crit set to sustain the tank and get more aegis procs on the tank.

So we should stack crit for sustained tank healing. That makes no sense, given even with DA it's still more budget for less throughput than haste, and given that since we're spamming on the tank we'll have a low uptime of BT. I'd love to see some maths behind this.

But on fights like putricide where tank damage is minimal and our holy paladin is able to sustain him i switch to a more haste oriented setup so i can get more PW:S absorb on oozes/players.

Because more haste will let you cast more shields? How exactly given one comfortably hits the haste cap for shield spam wearing naxx gear? No, more haste just lets you cast more flashes.

Also the comment about Gheal as disc. Hardly ever should you Gheal. If you read your talents Disc is all about buffing your Flash heal to a point where it is a lot better to cast it.

If you go back and look at your talents you'll find that far from being 'all about buffing FH' there is in fact precisely one talent buffing FH and not GH. Improved FH, 3 points. This gives FH better HPM and situational increased throughput. Assuming a 30% holy crit rate, even if you only cast FH on targets below 50% this would be worth approx 9% extra throughput. In practice it will of course be a lot lower, especially when tank healing.

Moreover, once past some stupidly small amount of haste BT essentially becomes a buff to GH which does not benefit FH. Thus in fact we have one 3pt talent that supports FH, and one 5pt talent that supports GH. If you actually go and examine your talents as you advised us to do you will see it quite clearly. Indeed for 45 seconds of the fight Enlightenment is also not buffing FH, but is buffing GH. You can't possibly not be geared past the Bloodlust cap.

The talent tree doesn't explicitly buff GH, however it does explicitly provide us with haste, and the environment is such that the haste can only benefit a few spells in our repertoire. GH is one of them.

[Taxidermy]

It's not about more healing on the tank there will be a holy paladin healing with you for the most part. You keeping PW:S and DA on the tank will allow a huge buffer for large incoming melee swings and the paladin will top the tank with a HUGE holy light. AKA you are supporting the paladin by healing the tank. Borrowed time does in fact effect your FH and it also effects your PW:S and other global cooldowns by reducing the cast time on your global cooldown.

Relying on blood lust to increase your haste is not relevant IMO . I refuse to gear myself based on the fact blood lust will be up for 40 seconds of an 8 minute fight. If your guild is assigning you as disc to heal the tank by yourself what is your paladin doing? who is your shaman chain healing? And in fact borrowed time does effect your flash heal. on my character it reduces my flash heal cast time to 1.0 seconds with Wrath of air down. It effects my flash heal by reducing it's cast time very close to a global cooldown.

Are you implying i should spec 5/5 Divine fury and spam Gheal on the tank when penance is on cooldown with full haste gear so i get massive amounts of overhealing or my paladin gets massive amounts of overhealing? Or are you implying that i cast very fast flash heals and stack Divine Aegis on the tank so he does not die and my paladin is effectively healing with Holy Light.

Also if i spam a gheal and my paladin spams a holy light based on the fact we are both casting BIG heals and we do not have the same cast times we will in fact both end up casting Gheal/Holy light at the same time on the tank and there will be a period of time where the tank is receiving minimal healing. Me flash healing in between his holy lights and stacking a DA on the tank for incoming melee swings is far more efficient in my opinion than me spamming Gheal.

If my guild wanted a Gheal spamming priest they would bring another Holy Paladin with beacon of light to Holy Light the tank. The only times i find myself Ghealing the tank are when my paladin has to move/he loses control of his character, He is out of range, I cannot sustain the tank with Flash heal/penance alone, He has plea popped and We cannot sustain the tank, or I have popped PI on myself along with Engineering gloves to significantly reduce my cast time on my Gheal while being at 50% haste (I do this during healing intensive parts of an encounter) permitted Gheal might be needed and flash will not sustain the tank.

Unfortunately I find Spell warding to be a lot more viable and I choose to spec this instead of Divine fury (though my smite dps lacks horribly for it) because my tanks do not get absolutely shit on with damage and we have no problems keeping them alive

[harky]

I'm not sure you understand why Greater Heal is being encouraged. It is not so that you can spam GH the whole fight non-stop. It's so that you can at critical times switch to higher throughput. Best example in ICC thus far is for Festergut. At none, or one stacks you can raid shield, toss out some PoH, help a little here and there on a tank (mostly unneeded). At two stacks you can start helping more on the tank than the raid. At three stacks? The raid is taking no critical damage. The tank on the other hand is now dealing with a very hard hitting, very fast hitting boss angrily trying to pop him open and eat the squishy insides. Your flash heals and the related DA at this time in the fight is nothing. You may be able to keep Fester from bunny-hopping the heal and instead of being one-shot the tank will have 15% health for a moment. Greater Heal is a much better heal for that situation. Greater Heal allows you to watch for times when your Paladin has to plea and help cover him temporarily.

People arguing against Greater Heal are basically saying that they prefer a one dimensional low output strategy to a flexible one. You can still do that with high haste regardless of having GH talents. The difference is the ability to switch to substantially more throughput when needed. You can sit back and spam FH in non-hardmodes with a few extra healers if you want. The only difference is that you can now handle high burst situations in a more efficient manner.