Need help w/ our second healer

[Tyrrandion]

I've read most of the replies and they offer advice, but unfortunately few answer your question in the sense of what you're really saying.

You are saying your offtank is a bit rubbish and your dps are horrid.

Why not actually try to fix the real problems instead of making your priest worry? Perhaps a better option would be this:

Have your paladin and druid heal and get the priest to go shadow. then they can spec shadow/disc and be very useful later on (if they prefer holy, that's fine).

It would do 2 things this way:

1) Better combination of healers
2) Extra healing from the shadowpriest's dps.

If this fails for any reason, such as your group has a shadowpriest already... consider the druid going boomkin.

Solve the raid issues and don't create problems for your priest just because other members of your raid are rubbish or can't handle it... or else the priest will just up and leave on you.

I'm not saying our DPS are rubish. I'm saying we may have a bit low DPS. We want to two heal ICC, one of our healers is switching to tank so we can be more effective and the old ot goes to dps. I'm not trying to create problems for my priest. We're just switching it up a bit, and switching her from raid to tank heals essentially. You make it sound as though everyone in our raid is garbage, which isn't the case. Our current group isn't working great so we're switching things up.

As for the good advice from everyone else, thank you. We'll try her disc tank healing and see how it goes.

[Lenea]

To answer your question (which I guess you already know) - having a disc priest will be much better support for your druid than a holy priest. Although grace sucks for healing two tanks, it will still work better than a holy priest, and bubbles can provide a good stopgap to allow your druid to catch up on raid healing. Get her to focus on gemming and gearing for throughput and using trinkets for regen where needed. Shield, penance, PoM and flash heal will be her bread and butter but don't be afraid to use a hasted gheal at spike damage.

However, I would reiterate what other people have said. 2 healing can be very stressful, particularly if your tanks and dps aren't entirely on the ball at all times. Stressing your healers when your main problems are actually elsewhere might not be the best idea. It might be worth looking to the rest of your raid group and seeing if there is anyone else who would be willing or able to start gearing up a healing offspec (or a tanking offspec to replace your dodgy OT and allow the paladin to heal) for fights where a third healer will be really useful - especially as you move onto the next wings.

You know your raid better than anyone else though, so its up to you to see how 2 healing goes.

[Jubite]

I thought we might change her up from disc to holy, as I've heard it is allot more mana efficient, and has allot more big heals for the tank,

Disc is far superior at tank healing. Holy is light AoE heals.

As everyone is saying, disc+rdruid would be the better way to go as the druid can focus on raid and the disc can keep the tanks all snug and warm in shields with the druid throwing in hots for heavy beatdowns.

Best of luck to ya

And it might be better to let your priest research her class and roles since she will need to learn it eventually.

[Guitarn]

She's use to a disc build in heroics where she can just bubble the tank and throw a renew here and there, but I'm thinking that's not the way to go for the heavy tank heals she's going to be doing.

...

We're just starting into ICC for the most part, but we've been stuck on saurfang for a few weeks, we should have him down this week and push into the plague quarter.

No one has addressed these two statements, so I'll add my two cents really quickly. (This is a lie; I just reread this and saw something I missed. Someone already mentioned disc tank healing!)

1) If this priest is going to be a tank healer, you want her to be disc. Holy will probably suffice if you're just doing normal modes, but disc is just built for tank healing.

2) Disc also makes Saurfang (and a few fights later, like Lich King) a ton easier. Bubbles are awesome.

Edit: also, if you have a holy pally, your tank healing should be pretty well covered. Most fights are tuned towards two-healing, and having one of those two be a pally makes it a lot easier.