Disc or Holy? Can't decide...

[Vook]

So I'm in a 10man group, and we've gotten 12/12 Normal so far with no big issues. I played with Disc a bit before 4.0.6 and it was fine, it's even better now with buffed shields and fixed Grace. However, I'm still kinda iffy as to whether I should be Holy or Disc most of the time.

The other two healers are Druid and Paladin.

For each fight I use:

Magmaw: Either works, Holy preferred
Omnotron: Either works
Maloriak: Either works
Chimaeron: Holy
Atramedes: Either works, Holy preferred (aoe heals, speed bubble)
Nefarian: Either works, Disc preferred (PW:B for crackles, yummy)

Halfus: Disc, atonement obv.
Twins: Either works
Ascendant Council: Either works, Holy preferred (lots of aoe healing)
Cho'Gall: Disc, healing MT most of the time.

Conclave: Either works
Al'Akir: Holy, because of P2's big AoE healing requirements (Tried it twice as Disc, ran oom very fast...)

So...yeah. The reason I ask this is because I'm kinda half-geared toward Holy, and half-geared toward Disc, in terms of gems and reforging. I need some advice on which I should pick and stay with, so that I can better gem/reforge toward it. Armory is in sig. I've got quite a bit of trinket choice, so feel free to suggest there, as well.

[Deleted]

Something to consider is that disc got a huge raid heal buff this patch as you can, to an extent, blanket shield people. This pushes disc up to a par if not better than holy for large AoE fights, especially given that you don't need to be grouped at all for shields to work.

Also disc is situationally nice on a couple of the fights you mention, specifically:

Chim - barrier is awesome on feud, and pain supp and shields work after 20% so can be an effective way of staving off tank death.
Twins - Atonement double dips on the engulfing buff (so you get 400%). I've hit 80k+ atonement procs post-nerf which top the tank and melee off incredibly fast.

[Vook]

Chim - barrier is awesome on feud, and pain supp and shields work after 20% so can be an effective way of staving off tank death.
Twins - Atonement double dips on the engulfing buff (so you get 400%). I've hit 80k+ atonement procs post-nerf which top the tank and melee off incredibly fast.

Chimaeron - Healing this as Disc is a bitch because you really only have Flash Heal to work with as your fast heal, whereas Holy has Serenity. Bubbles aren't disc-specific either, and GS works fine.

Twins - I haven't gotten Engulfing Magic for three weeks in a row now.

[tsokin]

When I've healed chim as disc while the flash heal was a bit over kill i found that the aegis spam coming from PoH was quite nice for feud, however with the CoH buff i think holy is much better for that fight. If you sit in your AOE chakra for the entire fight well placed CoH can easily help cover for a dead healer during slime phase.

[scarryterry25]

Chimaeron - Healing this as Disc is a bitch because you really only have Flash Heal to work with as your fast heal, whereas Holy has Serenity. Bubbles aren't disc-specific either, and GS works fine.

I think you answered our own question right here. BTW shadow can bubble also maybe you should try that for healing. /snicker
Honestly it sounds like you don't know how to play Disc very well so you should stick with holy.

Please do not flame other users as it violates the forum rules. - Simca

[Deleted]

Just take one as offspec and use both. Even PvP builds work, cause the difference is not that big.

I did all bosses as holy on normal, both 10 and 25 man except was asked to spec disc for nef. Since than I've been trying disc more, but I still haven't found any fights where it would be better. Yeah, if I'm asked to watch over tank alone, than disc is better, or if we generally have problems with tanks dropping, simply shielding them both and keeping grace up for emergency heals solves all problems.

Also smite heal is useless on Halfus now. Or at least I can do a lot more healing with normal heals compared to smite. Regarding Cho'gall, I'm usually healing adds tank and raid on 10 man or mostly raid on 25 and never had problems with tank healing there as holy.

[Deleted]

Chimaeron - Healing this as Disc is a bitch because you really only have Flash Heal to work with as your fast heal, whereas Holy has Serenity. Bubbles aren't disc-specific either, and GS works fine.

Disc gets penance which I consider to offset the lack of serenity. If you have a shadow priest or shaman you can get by with heal mostly as the VE/HS ticks will top off anyone you don't get to 10k. Otherwise you're left mostly flash healing in either spec as serenity and penance can't cover most of the slimes.

The bonus of bubbles on disc below 20% is that you can spec SoS and get a bubble off every ~5s. Holy can't do that.

[Juber]

This is how I do it, we also have a Paladin and a Druid in our 10-mans.

Magmaw: Smite
Omitron: Smite
Maloriak: Smite
Atremedes: None-Smite
Chimaeron: Smite
Nefarian: None-Smite

Halfus: Smite
Valiona: Smite
Council: Smite
Cho'gall: Smite

Conclave: Smite
Al'Akir: Smite


Smite on Al'akir, Chimaeron ?! Yes, but to get the 5x Archangel healing buff. 15% is 15% when you need AoE healing.
On Chimaeron I just smite, each Smite heals up over 10.000 and takes care of the Low Health. Just have your people sand "close" to Chimaeron. There is something called spreading too far. On 10-man you can position yourselves around him. If I get Toxic? BH, 2tick Penance & FH. And when feud phase is incoming you have a hasted 25% increase to PoH for 10 seconds (Archangel+PW:B Glyph+PI), then 15% increase for 8 seconds (Archangel).

Same style goes for Al'Akir, in phase 1 I Smite for Archangel Buff, then Gheal/PoH like normal and pop Archangel mid-phase 2 for increased PoH healing. You're basiclly only using PoH, PoM, Penance and Gheal for that fight, and Smite purely for Archangel's 15% increased healing. Omitron is the same, among Maloriak etc. You get the basic idea.

So far we've only done 2/12 HC's. Halfus & Alibaba council. On council I also smite. I'm on Rohash with a Rogue and a Shadowpriest (WTB FROST MAGE). Smite healing us on pulll and 5-6 seconds before his shield, I PW:S myself & the SP and cast 2-3 Binding Heals when the shield is up. Back to smite, wait until 10 seconds to full power, jump over to frost, PW:S 3-4 players, pop Archangel, Barrier and 2-3 PoH. Then back & repeat.

Halfus dosn't require any explanation.

This seems to work good for us.

I'm close to 10.000 spellpower buffed & consumabled and I'm at 18 mastery so my shields absorb approximately 29.000 + 6.000 - 13.000 instant heals (Depending on Graces and Crit).
I'm thinking of keep going like this, or go Holy-Archangel. We're in the same boat I think.

[Deleted]

But serenity will bring a person above 10k instantly, while penance takes 2 ticks to do so. Also shields at the last phase are not that good, especially since boss hits around 150k on tank unmitigated. But spamming heals on tank to get SoS procs is definitely wasted, since you are better off spending that mana DPSing the boss. And finally PS will sometimes save tank, but guardian will allow anyone survive at least 1 more hit.

[Deleted]

But serenity will bring a person above 10k instantly, while penance takes 2 ticks to do so. Also shields at the last phase are not that good, especially since boss hits around 150k on tank unmitigated. But spamming heals on tank to get SoS procs is definitely wasted, since you are better off spending that mana DPSing the boss. And finally PS will sometimes save tank, but guardian will allow anyone survive at least 1 more hit.

Hm... Are you saying Holy priest is better than disc priest at tank healing?

[Deleted]

Hm... Are you saying Holy priest is better than disc priest at tank healing?

What? Where did you pulled that line from?

[Spawnxxx]

I also run a Disc priest with a Pali / Druid healing combo. I use Disc Healing Exclusively except for 1 fight Chimerion. The quik PoH / CoH can get anyone back up above 10k hp with the new CoH range buff. Bot other then that I have dominated the HPS meters as Disc. I casually do around
18khps per boss fight with little to no mana issues.

Also Disc healers can go from raid to tank healing instantly infact my pali / druid combo we sync so well together I can actaully do both with ease. most of the time ill heal offtank aswell as raid heal of course thats not recommended for everyone I just get bored very easly so taking on more then I need to do keeps me interested in what im doing lol.

As far as that [myhv] guy trying to make it appear that holy is better for tank healing really needs to L2P his class better. As a Disc priest stacked with Mastery / Crit when I PW:S I get 14% Haste so that covers the stacking Mastery and losing base haste. Secondly Spam Healing the Tank with Greater Heal is OP atm. When i get a 50k crit on the Tank it also puts a 30k Bubble from Divine Aegis on them aswell Thats 80k worth of Heals / Absorbs in 1 Spell cast. Combine that with Inner Focus and Strength and Soul you get your 14% haste buff every 2 GH casts and 1 of every 6 GH is free with 25% Crit to it cause of inner focus. Case and point you are way off if you think Holy is even close to Disc for Tank healing infact I havent met a Pali healer who can out heal me yet as Disc on tanks.

[LimeSudz]

lightwell, chakra, CoH, GS

all great spells, maybe I'm biased cause I love holy so much.

[tsokin]

j think the whole disc being better then holy for some groups on chim comes from his heroic mode where you can shield to prolong the amount of time you have in p3

[Vook]

lightwell, chakra, CoH, GS

all great spells, maybe I'm biased cause I love holy so much.

PW:B, Penance, PI, PS

All great spells as well. ;p

I think I'm going to go main spec Disc. I just like it a lot more than Holy right now, especially after being Holy for 90% of WOTLK :P

[tsokin]

i've been playing disc and really enjoying it the more involved form of mana return(rapture) over holy's passive spirit buff makes disc feel a little more challenging however i will say i find my self missing some of the real recover power that holy can bring to the raid

[Bigslick]

Something to consider is that disc got a huge raid heal buff this patch as you can, to an extent, blanket shield people. This pushes disc up to a par if not better than holy for large AoE fights, especially given that you don't need to be grouped at all for shields to work.

This changes again now that PW:S spam is being nerfed in viability by 33% increase in mana cost. At crit levels provided by current gearing, our main raid healing tool -- PoH -- is weak, 'healing' for a good bit less than it did in 4.0.3 due to DA decay and RNG not providing the consistancy of throughput that is preferable. Hoping to see some sort of aoe healing buff for disc, otherwise I'm seeing it nudged heavily back towards a tank healing/raid support role without a competitive functionality for raid healing.

[Deleted]

as long as the raid takes constant damage (Al Akir P2, Magmaw, Twins P2, Council P3) and DA absorbes incoming raid damage (before wearing off) discs are pretty strong raid healers. Stay disc if you like the spec more than holy, it's viable for every encounter

[Kloeba]

Well, play whatever you like the most. I personally enjoy Holy more, as it is (according to me) extremely balanced around itself atm(was great pre 4.0.6, is even better post 4.0.6). If you play it right, it is probably one of the funniest specs ingame, whichever healing class you play. On top of that, you will be even more viable than disc, especially on heavy AoE-encounters (lightwell pew pew). WELL...now you guys might say that DA would beat Holy's AoE-healing, but I would still disagree. I heal for up to 25k per second during heavy damage spikes.

Off course that has effects on the manapool, but which class doesnt have to think about mana usage nowadays? I love it!
Blizzard made WoW interesting again.

[Apellosine]

Chimaeron - Healing this as Disc is a bitch because you really only have Flash Heal to work with as your fast heal, whereas Holy has Serenity. Bubbles aren't disc-specific either, and GS works fine.

Twins - I haven't gotten Engulfing Magic for three weeks in a row now.

oh and of course disc also has penance as a fast heal...