Mitigation Healing

[Bostonian]

My guild is currently working on the end bosses in the 25 man raid content, particularly in BoT. Because the end bosses in each raid dungeon are very healing intensive, we were thinking of trying something different with our Discipline Priest.
He wants to be a mitigation healer and PwS the frequent targets taking a lot of damage (like normal), but additionally run around the raid and keep renew rolling on everyone and throw PoM out as much as possible (all instant casting spells). The intent is to help keep everyone above 50% so the other healers can then in return get people back up to almost full.

I was wondering if anyone knows if Disc priests would make good mitigation healers (when applicable), by doing all the instant PwS, Renew, and PoM spells, and leaving the bigger heals and aoe/group heals to the other classes?

ps... I know Disc priest make great healers, just wanted to know if they can be effective on straight mitigation healing on some fights...

[Deleted]

Ideally you dont wanna have ur Disc priest rolling renew on everyone - its not mana friendly - neither is PW:S spamage.

PoM should ALWAYS be used on cooldown anyway. Get a druid to roll HoTs or a Holy priest with no mana issues to roll out renews.

You want your disc priest PW:S the tank/s & other vulnerable raid members. Penance for spot healing and an Inner Focused PoH when applicable is good too.

Heavy raid damage = PW:Barrier> Power Infusion> PoH Spam.

[ruzhy6]

As far as I remember, Renew as disc is bad HPS and bad HPM. So definately remove that from any strategy.

[Archicortex]

I've raidleaded and done this fight in 10man, although i am aware you're trying this in 25man, i think some of the following points may apply to you aswell (We 2heal Cho'gall, Paladin on Cho'gall tank and me on the offtank and the raid).

1. Mitigation isn't necessary because the raid is taking predictable damage (UNLESS you want to have a Disc priest tank healing the cho'gall tank, altho it doesn't seem you're thinking of that). The predictable damage is;
a) Shadow Nova
b) Shadow crash and the Nova from the adds if not interrupted
c) fire patches
A holy priest, with more potent AoE healing can better top a raid off after Shadow novas than a discipline priest. Especially if the raid isn't taking any avoidable damage (firepatches, shadowcrashes, interrupting the add(s)). In fact, if you run with 1 healer more you could even have time to do a 5x smite and blow archangel on the shadow nova.

2. In phase 2 dropping shields on targets with the tentacle-beams on them is quite decent, but definetely not something overly good. In the AoE healing department a Holy priest is vastly superior, and you can still drop a shield on someone (giving them 60% speed from body&soul talent) to give them a boost getting to a tentacle or whatnot.


Question is: Do you need the Power Word: Barrier spell? Or can you do fine without? Pain Suppression is trumped by Guardian Spirit in my opinion because if a tank has the healing reduction debuff from the beam, he won't be getting healed up anyway no matter how much damage he's mitigating, but with GS you are certain that if he dies, he'll be back at 50%.

If I were to run a Disc priest, it'd be because we already have a Holy Priest in the raid group, OR because we need the Power Word: Barrier (which you really really don't in Normal mode, although it's nice on Nefarian).