Disc - Raid or tank healer?

[Kelesti]

Discipline is a shitty tank healer, we know. Holy is even worse, we know. Of these two facts, we can agree.

My posts for both specs are like yours, in that we both view people trying to use a spanner to punch down a nail (yours are for Discipline trying to fill the tank healing role, mine are for Priests of both specs ignoring Prayer of Healing).

For a lot of those situations, a shield doesn't help as much as people think it does. Mass Shielding on aura fights (hi Lana'thel, or even better with Sindragosa) watch them fall off before those exact "oh shit" moments could really put them to use (hence where Prayer comes in before the shield, in my eyes). Using Shields to prevent some of that damage, or hold them off after it's been dealt with so they don't die is fantastic!

There is quite a large following on these forums that think Discipline should be doing nothing save for Power Word: Shield, its Glyph, and Mending. That is just as much a nail with a spanner as any other, I've seen.

[Deleted]

Raid healer of course, they simply don't have the healing power of a paladin or shaman. Shield on a tank doesn't do much and is gone in seconds and penance has too long CD now. However shielding the raid and tossing pain suppression on a tank when needed is much more useful

[Kelesti]

Shield on a raid doesn't do much and is gone in seconds and penance has too long CD now. However healing the raid and tossing shields when needed is much more useful

I believe this is more accurate.

Edit: Where the hell is everyone getting that Shaman can be put on Tank Healers, but Druids can't? Seriously, LOOK at Nourish!

[Deleted]

Lich King without Disc priest, anyone?

my first LK 10man kill with 5% buff was with holy paladin and 2resto druids.

[Deleted]

you would see that Druids can hold their own and in the tank healing department, Nourish hits like a truck (output of a fully talented Greater Heal, cast time of a Flash Heal, and that's while you have your own HoTs rolling support).

You sound quite experienced so I will just note for everyone else that while correctly specced druids are probably second only to paladins (with their fancy shmancy Beacon atm) for raw single target healing output, this isn't everything. In fact, there are at least these specific issues:

1) Nourish is the least used and least important spell in effective tank healing. Sure with full hots applied its very powerful, but the important part is to actually get all hots applied and managing to apply the hots with correct timing and HPM efficiency ("clipping" or overwriting your Lifebloom stacks before they bloom most of the time is a Bad Thing TM, for example).

2) Druids lack almost any kind of mitigation spells or "oh-shit-buttons". The best we can do is Swiftmend (which admittedly is awesome). However, these days in heroic modes ICC it would probably be on cooldown so good luck having it always available for spikes. Then there's Tranquility. Everyone already knows the crappiness of Tranquility (careful group assignments, proximity, channeled meaning having to start from scratch with your spells once its over etc). Wild Growth is ok as a possible tide-over due to the front-loaded part. But it does nowhere near enough to be a single-target oh-shit-button. Mitigation is the real weak link in druid healing. It is the one thing that makes shamans better for tank healing in at least some fights for sure.

3) Without going out of your way to stack mana regen and intellect gear, the strain of tank healing on a druid will be felt keenly on many/most heroic boss fights. Our heals may be the most efficient in the game (almost no overhealing if you do it right), but they do come at a hefty price when spammed continually on a single target. This is one of the reasons why I would be nervous going into Cata as a druid. They will be simultaneously reducing the efficiency of druid heals by shifting the heal away from the HoT to the direct heal portions AND greatly increasing the mana cost of all healing spells.

4) Healing Touch (our Greater Heal) even glyphed and talented is a hopeless spell for tank healing. There is nothing it can do that cannot be done faster, for higher output or more efficiently than any other single-target spell.

Given the above, these are some of the druid-side reasons why resto shamans are often taken over resto druids as fallback tank healers. The shaman side is more interesting tbh (one word: Earth Shield!). But since I have never played one before, I cannot really comment.

Oh, by the way, I'm talking about 25-mans since for 10-mans any healer can almost do any other healer's job.

Back to topic: yes, disc priests rule for mitigation and have very nice synergy with druids who are raw efficient healing output. But then again they have excellent synergies with holy priests and paladins. Synergy with shamans (without causing overhealing) is best for high damage "bursty movement" localised fights.