Normal Dungeons: Disc or Holy?

[Deleted]

-Priest lvl 70
-Gonna be leveled by dungeons.
-I doubt between Disc or holy.
-I'm looking for an explanation of your answer :-)
-Thanks!

[Ferledon]

Been a while since I played my priest, hes still mid 70's, but when I started running dungeons, I found Disc to be more efficient. Also, now w/the talent to make smite a smart heal, it has potential to be more fun to play.

[Tychu]

To be honest I don't think it matters at lower levels, even from 80-85 in the normal dungeons the difference wasn't major. I personally did dungeons as disc but my priest did wrath dungeons when wrath was still out. I doubt the current changes would make any of those dungeons any harder or easier. If you want to move faster through them I suppose you could just help kill things with smite.

[Ynna]

Whichever you like best. Really. The two specs are pretty evenly matched, and when they're not, buffs and/or nerfs will ensure that they will be soon.

[Deleted]

Currently Levelling my priest via dungeons although I'm a lot lower level than you are (in the 40-50 area) but here's some of my thoughts:

- Dual spec both and try them out. Yes you'll miss out on a potential dps spec but if you are going to level via dungeons I'm guessing it is for the insta/near insta queues you get as a healer.
- At lower levels I feel I could never go oom as holy. The heals are fairly big and the regen in my range is really good. Disc is similar however instead of regen I save mana by being able to mitigate a fair amount of damag however it can get hairy with a bad pull (first room of scholomance gives me nightmares! Please learn to Los new tanks!).
- All that being said I really like disc as it gives the opportunity to deal damage and heal. If the tank and group aren't taking lots of damage I smite/archangel spam with some dotting now and then if I feel I can manage it. Holy in that respect seemed boring to me, but this may pick up when I get to play with the chakra mechanic.

Like I said try them both, I personally am really liking the mitigation of disc atm while I'm learning as it gives me time to think (tank dropping fast, bubble if he's without the debuff and fix him up from there else penance and others until he can be rebubbled).

[Bluey111]

disc is the prob the best since all you do is shield everyone and smite spam, your pretty much a dps that heals, since in lower level dungeons not much damage goes around so its probably best to go disc

[Deleted]

My personal opinion is that it depends on the group. Disc is a nice spec when people don't take damage since you can just keep the tank shielded and use shields + renew to keep others up and it's fast and decently effective, gives you a lot of time to cast smites etc. However if the group can't really be trusted, Holy becomes superior since it's so much stronger when it comes to AOE.

I find that when I'm with a guild group and using disc, I stand around doing nothing since everyone is topped and tank has shield up. When I'm pugging though, I find I go OOM really quick since shields are too expensive and I feel there are no good effective heals to use. As Holy, I can just pop into chakra: sanctuary and aoe heal the crap out of the group for ages without going OOM.

[Deleted]

Go disc, at least you can dps and speed it up as nothing is going to be challenging until you hit 85hcs, and then they become easy pretty quickly.

My, not so well geared, disc preist heals heroics and pulls around 8kdps when I can get a decent amount of smite healing going. It helps quite a bit.

Not knocking holy, its brilliant, and will do the job, but you'll be bored as you outgear content. And holy does have mases of utility, btu thats generally wasted in 5mans lfgs.

[Stacy]

Disc by far.

Prepatch I raided and did heroics as holy, as holy you spam heal with renew up with some PoH spamming and Gheal when needed, your HPS will rarely move above 7k in a HC. While as disc you just shield heal heal (to remove weakened soul) reshield and do that whole instance, shield and PoH group when needed. Always end with 11-12k hps with less buttons used.

Edit: Didn't see you were level 70, should be the same though.

[Deleted]

Disc by far.

Prepatch I raided and did heroics as holy, as holy you spam heal with renew up with some PoH spamming and Gheal when needed, your HPS will rarely move above 7k in a HC. While as disc you just shield heal heal (to remove weakened soul) reshield and do that whole instance, shield and PoH group when needed. Always end with 11-12k hps with less buttons used.

Edit: Didn't see you were level 70, should be the same though.

how can your hps change in a hc? If its a fair test its with the same incomming dps, so eiher you keep up and keep people alive or you wipe. If you keep people alive then your hps as disc or holy shoud be the same as there is no other healer competing with you for it.

[Deleted]

how can your hps change in a hc? If its a fair test its with the same incomming dps, so eiher you keep up and keep people alive or you wipe. If you keep people alive then your hps as disc or holy shoud be the same as there is no other healer competing with you for it.

Shields prevent them from ever taking damage so it negates passiv healing effects for warlocks or healingstream totem of ur ele shaman or heal by deathstrike of ur dk tank so it is possible do change hps in heroics

[Krimson]

60-79 dungeons are a yawn fest for healing, you will have lots of downtime. As such, I think Disc is a clear winner as you can smite-heal through the dungeon and have a much more enjoyable experience then just casting renew on tank and sitting and waitiing for something to happen.

As you get into cata dungeons and heroics, your role as a healer becomes more prevalent. I personally like Holy a bit better for it's party-healing strength, but really they are both perfectly viable and you should pick what you enjoy using the most.

[Stacy]

how can your hps change in a hc? If its a fair test its with the same incomming dps, so eiher you keep up and keep people alive or you wipe. If you keep people alive then your hps as disc or holy shoud be the same as there is no other healer competing with you for it.

Not sure why you believe that, since your mostly tank healing except for the occasional damage on party it's easy to see why HPS is higher. With holy you are constantly spamming heal in chakra, keeping the tank alive but your HPS will rarely rise above 7k (more as your gear progresses as your Heal will heal better) cause Heal doesn't heal that much and is a very slow cast. If you had infinite mana and did the same thing only spamming Flash Heal instead, your HPS would still be a couple thousand above even if if they both keep the tank up with same success.

With disc the increase in HPS comes from PWS, your HPS will increase the moment something hits the tank, that's why if you PWS someone and watch your HPS you will see it rising to 18k HPS (reset meters and watch) and stuff like that the moment something get's absorbed due to the way it is counted on meters.

[bobo333]

disc is the small group healer. holys massive heals are wasted in levelling 5's. swap and play both to learn what they both do but i'm sure you'll agree that disc is much more fun. and if it does go wrong you have the mighty penance on a very short cooldown as well as some other very powerful abilities to bring things in line. you wont suffer with the whole 'i cast a slow heal and the tank died before i could finish casting it' problem holy has

[Brodi]

Eh, I heal heroics fine as Holy. Just do whichever you think you'd enjoy more.

[zenkai]

If you don't think you AE heal in heroics obviously never ran with a bad pug lol. I personally like Holy better but TBH I haven't healed one as disc since the change. I do believe either one is viable so just go with what you want.

[Honen]

Holy feels like it has a much larger toolbox than disc to me. I've played both extensively (my priest was my only toon for 3 years.... and i play daily).

Disc has it's highs but i just feel like Holy has more tools to get your out of trouble faster.

[scandore8472]

I'd say disc as smite healing will help if the groups DPS is sub-par.

If you're going to level only through LFG, why not dual spec with holy/disc.

[eternalwhitemoon]

I've been leveling my priest as Disc in dungeons from the beginning. She's now 61, and of course that's not entirely relevant to your situation, Disc is REALLY FUN imo. Smite, Penance, Archangel, Power Infusion...sometimes I do more DPS than the legit DPS while still healing perfectly fine.

[Deleted]

Disc has it's highs but i just feel like Holy has more tools to get your out of trouble faster.

I'd say the opposite. Being able to throw down PW:B, bust out your PI, pop AA and spam heal everyone with 30% DR and no pushback is incredible for bad pulls. Disc is the cooldown king of the healer specs, it's the spec to play for bailing out bad pugs.

Also smite healing is much less tedious if you outgear the content.