Disc healing?

[Karshda]

I've been recently asked to switch from DPS to tank heal (when we actually start raiding) with another priest on the raid. I have just started to heal 5-mans (have the ilvl for heroics but that's for shadow) and have been having trouble on fights that require me to heal multiple people. Even when all the damage is on the tank, with me using PW:S, heal, and penance (with he occasional GH)my mana still just drops after 2 min or so. By the end of the fight im usually at about 5k mana.

I have been trying to keep haste/crit/mastery all at about the same (From what i read on EJ you don't just stack one secondary stat). I am worried about tank healing in raids and even heroics from the trouble im having in normal 5-mans.

Was wondering if anybody had any advice for me or tips to heal as disc.

[Dodrin]

Crit and mastery are better than haste for Disc. I personally reforge all my haste to mastery.

[Powerwurdhug]

Ok heres what I have to say. Last night I ran Blackwing Decent, with both full raid geared wartanks and hpallys. These Hpallys were spamming their big heals for 5 min straight (surprisingly didn't go oom) and BARELY kept the tanks up (each tank with 160k hp and at least 75% avoidance). That being said (and I tried) a disc priest CAN NOT tank heal in cataclysm. Our absorbs arent enough (my PW;S absorbs 13k aka 3/4 of a trash mob hit) and our heals are no fast enough nor big enough to sustain a tank even on trash. As holy in the right chakra state yuo would have to be a MONSTER of a healer and have had to use EVERY DROP of mana during a trash pull to keep A tank up. I'm thouroughly pissed of at Blizzard for nerfing heals in general (all healers) and a priest (which should be the epitamy of heals due to TWO healing specs) should be able to efficiently TANK and raid heal. Right now we raid heal fine thats not why my panties are in a knot and im QQ'ing we just can not sustain a tank and as a disc/holy priest im quite upset. Priest have never been the top dog healer thats not our niche, thats a palls job to PWN at, but I also think that we should at LEAST be able to the job.

[Preacherman]

With the right gear set and stat balancing you will notice an improvement in healing as a Disc priest. There have been multiple discussions on these forums about how to handle different healing scenarios so I won't go into it all over again.

A few things to keep in mind...a healer can only be as good as the group he is running with. If your tank is shy to use his defensive CD's, under-geared,taking a crap load of damage and not holding threat well then of course you will go OOM quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson".

As it stands, Disc priests are quite capable of effective tank healing and also helping out with raid heals. The are not what the used to be nor can the be compared to some of the classes out there, but they can get the job done well enough.

[Deleted]

I had been disc since the first day I created my priest, but when I reached 85 I had huge problems healing hc 5man. As you describe my mana was droping way too fast and I couldn't keep up even in short fights. Not to mention that during high aoe fights things were getting much worse.

For me, things got a lot better when I stoped using my heal (only occasionaly, to drop the bubble debuff from the tank) and started abusing my Greater Heal. Yes it is expensive but if you use your Inner Focus on cd (reducing it a lot because of the talent Train of Thought) it's much more effective in the long run. Bubbles are weak for aoe, prefer your PoH and don't focus on topping off the group constantly.

I don't think I can help much more, I switched to holy and I feel much more comfortable now, but while I was disc I found the above very helpful.

[[-Spiritus-]]

I can personally attest to Disc being both an effective and efficient tank healer, having done so on most fights available in T11.

Remember that PW:S has been nerfed to the ground and penance isn't the powerhouse it once was. With 2/2 ToT, your GH nearly has the same HPM as Heal. GH does not need to be occasional to be efficient.

As far as your OOMing, I have had very little trouble with going OOM and tank healing as disc. Without an armory link, it would be difficult to point you in a direction for maximizing your regen/throughput potential.

As far as gearing, most of the disc crafting community has identified crit as a top stat for tank healing disc priests, with some disagreement over haste v. mastery.

Personally, I try to get my single target, raid buffed crit to around 30%, then bump my mastery to about 30% increased abosrbs, then push the rest of my item budget into haste [For T11]. I do believe that having a healthy balance of stats is a good thing for a tank healing disc priest, however, there isn't enough ilvl budget at this time to have all three stats at an effective threshold.

Also, a parse could be useful to help you with spell selection and to see what the damage-in was on your assigned target.

[Alaska]

Ok heres what I have to say. Last night I ran Blackwing Decent, with both full raid geared wartanks and hpallys. These Hpallys were spamming their big heals for 5 min straight (surprisingly didn't go oom) and BARELY kept the tanks up (each tank with 160k hp and at least 75% avoidance). That being said (and I tried) a disc priest CAN NOT tank heal in cataclysm. Our absorbs arent enough (my PW;S absorbs 13k aka 3/4 of a trash mob hit) and our heals are no fast enough nor big enough to sustain a tank even on trash. As holy in the right chakra state yuo would have to be a MONSTER of a healer and have had to use EVERY DROP of mana during a trash pull to keep A tank up. I'm thouroughly pissed of at Blizzard for nerfing heals in general (all healers) and a priest (which should be the epitamy of heals due to TWO healing specs) should be able to efficiently TANK and raid heal. Right now we raid heal fine thats not why my panties are in a knot and im QQ'ing we just can not sustain a tank and as a disc/holy priest im quite upset. Priest have never been the top dog healer thats not our niche, thats a palls job to PWN at, but I also think that we should at LEAST be able to the job.

Holy priest is just fine. I don't run out of mana keeping a tank up. Your doing it wrong, maybe? :\

Also, disc is ok with gear I found. Certain fights are still harder as disc though in heroics. Specially fights with a lot of AOE as that is not Disc's specialty. I think disc is fine for tank healing....

At OP: Make sure you keep your bubble up on people who are taking damage all the time...gives you mana back!