Is a Disc priest needed for 10man Lich King normal?

[Zeuq]

Ok - while I would agree that disc priests aren't required for LK-10 normal I can't really agree with this. There are good reasons to be disc in LK-10 if you have the spec.

• Easier Infests - even if only a bit easier than pre-Hotting & a PoH
• Easier Mana management - LK is a long fight, discs longevity helps it
• Stronger single target heals - important in quite a few phases

The big advantage of going holy in LK-10 is B&S. So it comes down to this - if your dps are failing on defile - go holy, otherwise disc has the edge. If you're holy and don't have B&S specced - then respec or go disc

I don't think Mana or Single Target heals are really meaningful. I did 10-man normal this last weekend without even having a replenishment in the raid and didn't have mana problems as Holy; granted, I'm fully ICC25 geared, but with Replenishment, mana really isn't an issue at all unless you just can't manage your cooldowns. Single Target Heals really don't mean much either because, whether your Holy or Disc, your primary concern is the raid. Sure, Disc can pop a Penance or Pain Suppression on the tank, but Holy can also drop a Serendipity Hasted Greater Heal or, more importantly, a Guardian Spirit. The only time I think tank heals matter is when a healer gets picked up by a Val'kyr, gets sucked into Frostmourne, or dies, and a 1-min CD on GS is plenty for managing that.

That's why I say, I think basically Holy is at least as good as Disc, because while it's not as good at Infest, B&S helps a lot on Defile. So, sure, if Infest is a problem, then respeccing Discipline makes sense, but if it's not, or you were handling it exceptionally poorly as Holy (ie, not precasting PoH when spread out) then I don't think Disc helps. In fact, I think that especially on 10-man, Defile is the harder mechanic to manage because half the time the raid will be grouped up anyway, and CoH/WG/CH/HL-Splash will make PWS spam moot.

[Malania]

yea i think disc is handy but not essential, and with this icc buff a whole 10 man raid (apart from tanks sometimes) shielded for infest uses a bit of mana and infest doesnt break it so no raptures hardly (but even on lich mana is not an issue for me), i alternate between top rank shield and rank 12 shield i use when mana goes down a bit for infest, they break off it but im not using 4 set for disc as itd be too much dmg absorb.. just make sure you get infest healed up quickly or its a bitch to heal off and bubbles help immensely for defile too, can save a raid if defile target shielded quick enough

I use rank 10 with 4set for it. Breaks it, rarely get anyone hit with infest. But no not needed, handy for healers to be able to concentrate on tanks and ignore infest for the most part. But the draw back is that theres so much more damage going on in the later phases with Soul Reaper and Harvest Soul/Ghosts exploding that a Disc Priest could be a liability with his low heals. Not crippling damage but some spikes.

[invader]

shields, divine aegis n what not make up for that tho with some flash heal spamming and penance and as long as tanks are good with there own cooldowns n such its kinda good fun being on the edge

[jonish]

you dont technically NEED anything to be capable of doing LK on normal in 10 or 25 at this point. You could do 10 man with just about any mix of two healers.

The only time things are required at this point is for the hard mode encounters.

[Vook]

A precast PoH on ranged and CoH on melee can easily allow Holy to cover the Infest single-handedly.

This. I did LK10 Norm back with 5% buff, as Holy. PoH ranged, CoH melee, other two healers focused on tank.

[Azyoulike]

I don't think Mana or Single Target heals are really meaningful. I did 10-man normal this last weekend without even having a replenishment in the raid and didn't have mana problems as Holy; granted, I'm fully ICC25 geared, but with Replenishment, mana really isn't an issue at all unless you just can't manage your cooldowns. Single Target Heals really don't mean much either because, whether your Holy or Disc, your primary concern is the raid. Sure, Disc can pop a Penance or Pain Suppression on the tank, but Holy can also drop a Serendipity Hasted Greater Heal or, more importantly, a Guardian Spirit. The only time I think tank heals matter is when a healer gets picked up by a Val'kyr, gets sucked into Frostmourne, or dies, and a 1-min CD on GS is plenty for managing that.

You're looking at this from the point of view of somebody who has LK-10 normal on farm. At that point you can run it with any non-retarded setup and be fine. This guy is running it as progress - the situation is completely different. Dps & tanks will be taking much more damage in the transitions due to bad placement. Tanks will take more of a hammering in P1 from adds because of bad enrage management. Healers will spend longer being carried off by valks while the dps get their shit together so you'll spend more time worrying about tanks.

For a progress run these things matter.

[Hayro1]

You don't need one with the 15% buff, you didn't even need one with no buff, but it did make it easier.

[Kelesti]

For a progress run these things matter.

But if you're a bubble-bot, you're spending 1/3 of your time doing nothing apart from managing Infest, so Phase 1 isn't any easier. Transitions are easier as Holy because of the way the damage patterns work out: hard, repeated, and then nothing.

Bad enrage management and placement are not magically fixed by spec'ing Discipline. They aren't even made remotely easier. Losing a healer to a Valk is easier to handle with a 1 minute cooldown than Pain Suppression's 2.4. Holy is better for Normal, people just need to get out of the thinking that "1st Priest should be Disc or ur a waste of spot".

[axxey]

Glyphed holy nova is also great in 10mans, often overlooked.

[Deleted]

Using a disc priest makes it easy to change the third healer to a dps, valkyrs go down faster, phases are shorter, You keep less adds from the transitions into phase 2 / 3.

phase 1 : Shield raid every other infest (get insane amount of mana back from rapture every 2 infest if needed), heal tanks the rest of the time.
phase 2 : Shield raid for every infest : helps keeping Defile at a minimum size, if 2nd Healer gets taken by a Valkyr the raid is safe from shield, you can switch to tank healing. There is no need for pain suppression / gardian spirit here, penance is a very powerful heal, and if you time your shield on the tank right you can manage the Soul Reaper damage just fine.
phase 3 : Shields are nice if for any reason too many spirits come down exploding in the raid, there are no other real damage during this phase so 2nd healer can go into Frostmourn without much risk. Keep pain suppression in case someone dies inside frostmourn and Arthas enrages.

Succesfully 2healed this fight with a Resto druid, it's probably possible as Holy too but shields are great here because damage isn't constant in time and you can basically shield everyone whenever you have nothing more urgent to do and focus on tank healing whithout worrying about the raid when it's needed.

(My main spec is shadow btw, so I'm no super skilled healer)

[schlz]

10ppl normal done with 2 warrior tank 1 lock 1 S priest 1 rogue 1 retradin 1 R shammy 1 R druid 1 H pally
so no

[Zeuq]

You're looking at this from the point of view of somebody who has LK-10 normal on farm. At that point you can run it with any non-retarded setup and be fine. This guy is running it as progress - the situation is completely different. Dps & tanks will be taking much more damage in the transitions due to bad placement. Tanks will take more of a hammering in P1 from adds because of bad enrage management. Healers will spend longer being carried off by valks while the dps get their shit together so you'll spend more time worrying about tanks.

For a progress run these things matter.

FTR, I've never run LK-10 with as or with a Disc Priest, even as progression. And, frankly, I don't think P1 should be a problem for any semi-competent healer after an attempt or two. Even if you do handle the enrages poorly or a healer is picked up by Val'kyrs, it's nothing a GS and a few direct heals can't cover just as well as a Disc PS and a Penance. IMO, if you're having consistent problems in P1, your problems are much bigger than trying to decide if you should go Holy or Disc because it means either your strat is wrong or people aren't executing even close to correctly.

Again, I think the major advantage of Disc is managing Infest, and if that's a problem, it makes sense to switch, even if you're not appropriately geared or experienced. If, however, you don't have problems managing it as Holy, especially if Holy is your main spec and is how you're geared (as with the OP), then I really don't see any compelling reason to suggest speccing Disc for the fight.

[Azyoulike]

if you're having consistent problems in P1, your problems are much bigger than trying to decide if you should go Holy or Disc because it means either your strat is wrong or people aren't executing even close to correctly.

Zeuq - they're just getting to LK-10 now. You kinda have to figure that execution will be an issue.

[Nardog]

Not Necessary.

We don't even have a priest.

Heals: Druid, Pally, Shaman.
Tanks: Warrior, Paladin.
Dps: Hunter, Lock, Mage, Rogue, Druid.

Fort scrolls are nice though

[celinamuna]

I know its easy, the problem i had been having is that the infest dmg wasn't enough to break the shield and give me my mana back.

try to use something like lvl 13 shield (not sure about the rank, it's either 12 or 13)

[Bigslick]

try to use something like lvl 13 shield (not sure about the rank, it's either 12 or 13)

When I was downranking in 25-man rank 12 would only break on those who didn't resist, so I'd imagine that that you'd probably want to drop even lower in 10-man where the damage is considerably less.

[harky]

If you're just getting used to the encounter, then it might help, but once you're used to the encounter it will actually make the fight harder than it needs to be due to the addition investment of time dedicated to nothing except Infest making you useless for roughly a quarter of the fight.

If you decide to go Discipline it's very dull and unproductive for the majority of the fight as your primary goal is to shield eight people 6-7 seconds before every other Infest cast then to shield a tank and to heal normally otherwise. The first Infest will not break your shield at all, but the second Infest will. You shield a tank because you won't have any Rapture clash. It's extremely boring and borderline nauseating. It trivializes Infest, but Infest is already trivial in normal modes, so all you're really doing is spending eight second on two Infest casts instead of spending two seconds on each Infest as Holy. It was superior without the five percent buff and perhaps with it, but with the ten and fifteen percent buffs it's simple extra time spent covering for a minor source of incoming damage. Lich King normal modes do not and have never been fights that requires a lot of raid healing as evidenced by it being the fight in Icecrown with the lowest healing output across the board.

Even hard mode Lich King ranks well beneath the other fights in Icecrown and actually has lower healing requirements than some normal modes. Holy is good because it can deal with the mechanics with very little execution time. Discipline is passable on it because they're better tank healers than Holy and either will be spending the vast majority of their time tank healing.

Put some paragraphs in there, thanks for the brick harky. /sarcasm -- Kel <3

Hey! Eight sentences is hardly grounds for having my beautiful paragraph chopped up. Removed the orphaning you created by splitting 'paragraph 2'. :P

Removing the user that removed the editing the beautiful moderator went through. -- <3 Kel

[Samurai]

But if you're a bubble-bot, you're spending 1/3 of your time doing nothing apart from managing Infest, so Phase 1 isn't any easier. Transitions are easier as Holy because of the way the damage patterns work out: hard, repeated, and then nothing.

Bad enrage management and placement are not magically fixed by spec'ing Discipline. They aren't even made remotely easier. Losing a healer to a Valk is easier to handle with a 1 minute cooldown than Pain Suppression's 2.4. Holy is better for Normal, people just need to get out of the thinking that "1st Priest should be Disc or ur a waste of spot".

Disc is bad
Holy is great
: seriously you hate of Disc is getting old ;D


Other then tank damage there is very little other raid damage if you get a disc priest to manage the infest.
And if you can time the transitions properly its easy to preshield the raid with full strength shields before moving out to the edge and the spiky damage starting.

[Auraye]

Holy pally was complaining in LK10 last weekend of being bored, not having much to heal. Add one more point to the score for disc priests everywhere! 8)