2 Disc priests in 25 ICC.

[Blades2004]

I'm an avid lover of the holy spec. I enjoy it much more than disc, and while I've argued with the guild before that having 2 holy 1 disc is the way to go, we've never done much of anything by the book and still succeeded. Maybe we just have really incredible priests, i dont know, but i do know that weakened soul with 2 disc priests is not a serious issue.

Ok. But wouldnt 1Holy priest and 1 Disc be more raid viable? It can be done with 2+ discs as you pointed out. However it would seem to me to be easier having 1holy and 1 disc?

[Astrii]

Ok. But wouldnt 1Holy priest and 1 Disc be more raid viable? It can be done with 2+ discs as you pointed out. However it would seem to me to be easier having 1holy and 1 disc?

It really depends on your raid setup. In this specific situation, yes I agree a holy priest instead of two disc priests is optimal. This, however, is only because of the two holy paladins and resto shaman present. We only run with one paladin, and throwing disc priests at something really does work.

I guess what I was trying to get at before going on a tangent about disc-ing boss encounters to death is that weakened soul is not an issue for multiple disc priests in a single raid.

[jonish]

No, theyre current heal set up is 2 Discs, 2Hpallies, 1 Resto Druid(me), 1 Rsham.

yah , one of the priests should be holy , accept for LK , that is if you can get to him.

[Lucky_]

Yes, in 20 seconds.

Fast raid healing/damage prevention is fast.

The reference is clearly for infest, CD of which is longer then that and completely predictable. Stop making a bad name for priests.

One holy one disc is significantly better then 2 disc in any situation really. Two disc priests will have significant issues with weakened soul collision. Hell, if you do not believe us, belive people who designed the class:

I think Holy and Disc work together okay. Disc and Disc definitely collide.

(search for exact quote on google for source, there are a dosen of sites quoting it + you can find the original on wow US forums).

[Izenhart]

Hell, if you do not believe us, belive people who designed the class:
(search for exact quote on google for source, there are a dosen of sites quoting it + you can find the original on wow US forums).

GC also said we're the healing class that has the biggest "stare at Grid syndrome" than any other healing class.
Should I believe this too, just because HE said it?

The reference is clearly for infest, CD of which is longer then that and completely predictable. Stop making a bad name for priests.

No, the reference was "to every ICC boss", since he quoted it.

One holy one disc is significantly better then 2 disc in any situation really. Two disc priests will have significant issues with weakened soul collision.

1 disc shields 2 groups
1 disc shields 2 groups
3rd is random.

Or do you actually think that a Disc priest'll be able to shield the whole raid before any kind of damage?
Not even counting the fact that, once a single Disc priest is about to finish his PWS spam on all the raid, half of the shields will be broken already by minor irrilevant damage because he took too much time to heal everyone.

[Lucky_]

GC also said we're the healing class that has the biggest "stare at Grid syndrome" than any other healing class.
Should I believe this too, just because HE said it?

You should believe it because he's right. We are the only class in the game with no clear specialization, and a biggest toolbox. We HAVE to eyeball raidframes more then anyone else because we need to know more then other healers, who can safely focus on "chain heal x", "hot the x,y,z and wild growth raid" or "spam holy light on tanks".
We don't have that kind of specialization, our "tree defining" skills are on cooldown and we need to use other skills to fill the gaps, typically assisting other healers. We also have a "save life" CD in both trees on meaningfully short cooldown forcing even more raid frame staring.

All above results us in needing more information from raid frames then other classes. This is really not arguable.

No, the reference was "to every ICC boss", since he quoted it.

1 disc shields 2 groups
1 disc shields 2 groups
3rd is random.

Or do you actually think that a Disc priest'll be able to shield the whole raid before any kind of damage?
Not even counting the fact that, once a single Disc priest is about to finish his PWS spam on all the raid, half of the shields will be broken already by minor irrilevant damage because he took too much time to heal everyone.

You got me there. Allow me to correct my earlier statement:
"The situation that actually exists in the game".

Scenario above does not and will likely never exist because designers just aren't that clueless anymore. Every time we need to do global shielding where it would count, there is no heavy AoE damage to rip shields off early (LK, old prenerf koralon, toravon). Trying to shield spam on bosses with heavy AoE causes "one person heavy lifting, others sleeping nearby" effect where your shields being spammed actually harm rather then help raid, by diminishing other healers input (as well as your own via PoM) while running you OOM (example: BQ, Sindra).

[Bigslick]

No, the reference was "to every ICC boss", since he quoted it.

1 disc shields 2 groups
1 disc shields 2 groups
3rd is random.

Or do you actually think that a Disc priest'll be able to shield the whole raid before any kind of damage?
Not even counting the fact that, once a single Disc priest is about to finish his PWS spam on all the raid, half of the shields will be broken already by minor irrilevant damage because he took too much time to heal everyone.

Original comment...

Having two Discipline Priests is worth it on Lich King. For every other fight in ICC there is not enough focus on raid shielding.

My response...

One disc priest should be able to PWS 4 groups and PoH the 5th.

So the response was to a statement that mentioned two things: the lich king fight first, and every other ICC fight second. Perhaps I shouldn't have assumed that people would understand that I was making a comment towards Harky's former statement, rather than my randomly offering what would be horrible playstyle advice if generalized in play for every other ICC fight.

Can a disc priest actually shield the raid before there is any kind of damage? Any damage whatsoever? No, but if they could it would be a pretty fail encounter design on blizzard's part. Can one disc pre-shield 4 groups and time a PoH for the 5th between every scheduled cast of Infest? Yes, with time to keep PoM on CD and penance where necessary (tbh could probably just PWS the full raid, but my latency makes that a slightly more difficult challenge).

As to 1/2 the raid's shields being broken by the time the disc priest has finished his shield rotation. are your dps / tanks managing their threat poorly leading to incidental damage? In the course of our runs, seldom were more than a few (and often no) shields broken in advance of infest. If incidental damage during times where he's casting infest were an issue to a degree that 1/2 the shields were completely broke at time of the cast, having 2 disc priests would make no difference as you'd still have a number of the shields broken and a majority of them at well below half strength remaining.

Fast raid healing/damage prevention is fast.

Agreed. But for LK, fast damage prevention as regards infest only has to be fast enough to be up in time to mitigate infest. One disc priest can do that. While two disc priests can preshield faster, the only way they'll see fewer of the shields being removed in advance of infest than 1 disc priest (which again should not be an issue for more than a couple of people) is if they are both starting their shield spam timed to end right before infest is cast.

But what does that mean to overall raid damage management? It means that you have 2 of your healers swinging in a cycle where they are both only doing shield spam for a period, and then both available for other tank/raid direct healing for a period, which makes it more difficult for the other healers to manage. I'm not suggesting that running multiple disc priests is a bad way to do it, but rather that it does not present a net advantage over one disc / one holy, where the holy priest can spend all of their time focusing on effective healing rather than splitting it into a scheduled "I'm absorbing now, then healing for 15 seconds, then absorbing for 15 seconds..." as a second disc.

I will concede that one distinct advantage of running two disc priests would be a level of redundancy should one of them be removed from the fight, but including a 2nd disc for that is planning around avoidable death or short-term removal (valk) that should easily be managed by the other healers with proper communication.

[Astrii]

You should believe it because he's right. We are the only class in the game with no clear specialization, and a biggest toolbox. We HAVE to eyeball raidframes more then anyone else because we need to know more then other healers, who can safely focus on "chain heal x", "hot the x,y,z and wild growth raid" or "spam holy light on tanks".
We don't have that kind of specialization, our "tree defining" skills are on cooldown and we need to use other skills to fill the gaps, typically assisting other healers. We also have a "save life" CD in both trees on meaningfully short cooldown forcing even more raid frame staring.

All above results us in needing more information from raid frames then other classes. This is really not arguable.


You got me there. Allow me to correct my earlier statement:
"The situation that actually exists in the game".

Scenario above does not and will likely never exist because designers just aren't that clueless anymore. Every time we need to do global shielding where it would count, there is no heavy AoE damage to rip shields off early (LK, old prenerf koralon, toravon). Trying to shield spam on bosses with heavy AoE causes "one person heavy lifting, others sleeping nearby" effect where your shields being spammed actually harm rather then help raid, by diminishing other healers input (as well as your own via PoM) while running you OOM (example: BQ, Sindra).

There is no heavy AoE dmg to rip off shields but they fall off on their own while you're making the way through the raid. Trust me, coming from someone with experience in a top world guild who doesn't play it by the books and takes a couple of discs to a raid...it's not as bad as it seems on paper. It's also the most effective form of healing, seeing that shields don't overheal and it frees up your druids to help heal tanks or take a longer period of time to get through each group, enabling them to heal more groups and increasing their impact in a raid.

Also, real disc priests don't run out of mana. (edit)

[Asgard]

We were the first guild in the world to kill Algalon using 3 disc priests and NO resto druid (holy nova and serendipity PoH spam ftw).

1. That's an original world first. I've been the world first feral druid to tank algalon with a frostwyrm flask.
2. Serendipity ? Really ? 38 points into holy and you call yourself "disc priest" ? I think you meant 3 priest, which does NOT make you world anything. Don't even want to explain *sigh*

[Lucky_]

Also, real disc priests don't run out of mana. (edit)

You have NEVER seen LK. Thank you for sharing your wisdom about the boss you have never seen. It is truly enlightening to see that there are "top guilds" in the game that have never caught a glimpse of the end-game boss.

P.S. As for your comment on the shields falling off, you're either in really bad gear AND bad spec, or you have never tried shielding the entire raid alone. It is perfectly doable, and if you don't want to take my word for it, go to youtube and watch LK videos from disc priest perspective. There is a reason why we have 31% haste from talents alone.