Disc Priest worth it in Cataclysm?

[Myah]

It's still good, can't spam Shield like before, but just need to be more careful and pay more attention

[Mikayo]

When cata was first released there were definitely, without a doubt, more holy priests than disc priests. Then they buffed PW:S and disc priests made a comeback. I haven't seen a single end-game guild that doesn't have at least one (not to say there isn't, just that I haven't seen one). I was a holy priest that told my GM I was going to try disc and have been doing it full-time since. I still have my holy offspec but without getting too offtopic...

it was the shield buff that brought disc priests back into the game.

[Arlee]

Greater's useful, when it's not overheal.

A lot of people lean too heavily on it though, which despite its effective HPM (only active when you have Train of Thought), it burns through your mana too fast. Casting Heal twice might be slower, but your tank does have avoidance and a bigger health pool to take advantage of.

Yea I worded that badly... I meant when a disc priest tries to use those a lot then he/she will quickly be out of mana

[Lecktor]

If you tank heal as a Disc priest and primarily use Heal (vs GHeal) on pretty much any heroic T11 fight, you're going to have a very dead tank. I don't even have Heal on my bars. Worthless spell imo. I've used GHeal since 4.0.3 and have never really had serious mana problems.

Back to the OP, I personally think Disc priests are the most powerful healers this tier. Like others have said, they bring utility to every fight that NO other healing class can. PW:Barrier, Pain Sup, etc., are the obvious ones. More importantly, Disc priests can increase the effective health of every member of the raid with Divine Aegis/PW:S, which is huge. I'm big on the PoH/Aegis raid healing style, and if you spread some Aegises across the raid before an incoming damage spike, you're getting very efficient 100% effective absorbs. Add to this the Aegis buff that is coming in 4.1.

Plus Holy Priests are for girls.

[Kelesti]

Plus Holy Priests are for girls.

Someone's boobscore is lacking.

U JELLY?

[Lysah]

Why you trollin, Kelesti?

[Deleted]

I've been disc since Cata release (and before) and I still much prefer it to holy. I just can't get on with cata holy, feels all wrong. In terms of spell selection, I don't use Heal, except on Chim. I pretty much lean on my penance and atonement, with GH and BH for more throughput. Oh and shields, gotta love those shields.

A quick breakdown of last raid night gives me:
27.5% shield
14% atonement
12.5% penance
12% PoH
11% BH
9% DA
7% GH

[Mahagony]

I find Discipline absolutely superior to Holy right now, especially in 10 man.

My Guild is at 10/13 and in almost every single encounter i kinda crush my healing mates (Druid/Pala). Thing is, the flexibility of Disc is just overwhelming. You can do anything! The power of defusing a really dangerous Situation by spamming a few shields is incredible. No class has anything alike.
Mana? No Issue. Whenever i play Holy i find myself ooming way faster. Rapture > increased Spirit-Reg from Holy plus you get more mana from replenish, Shadowfiend and Hymn due to more int. Oh and there is Inner focus. And Archangel. Which will be HUGE as gear scales on (the whole replenish-by-max-mana-thing of disc will be nerfed, mark my words!). Plus have fun healing your tank without penance...
And about Aoe-Healing: when you are able to pump out the prayers when they are necessary, disc does some very nice aoe-heal. When the damage keeps coming (and in most heroic encounters it does), aegis is just so huge with stacked mastery.

I can recommend Disc to ANYONE, found it to be WAAAAY more reliable AND flexible than holy with its Chakra-Crap.

Oh and btw i still got ~45% healing done by shield in most encounters.

[Deleted]

Hello,

Well... I think it's been covered pretty much, but I've been a Disc priest for ages and I love it. No mana problems, great cooldowns, fun playstyle which means mixing big heals and quick heals and bubbles and even pretty decent AOE healing whenever needed. I was Holy at the very start of Cata for about a month and found it too slow and awkward... Disc seems more responsive and preemptive, but I guess that comes down to personal preference. I've raided through 12/12 normal and 2/12 heroic and the value of things like pain suppression, the Big Bubble, etc. can't be underestimated! I think my raid mates appreciate having a Disc in the group... so that's good fun for me! Hum, yeh... I don't really know why more people don't play Disc in Cata... maybe they do? I know at the start of Cata Disc was a bit wonky but now it's feeling more and more solid... despite some incoming "nerf"s (depending on who you ask).

Totally worth it!

xo

[Kiea]

Disc is good, its mana regen is far better than holy just because of Rapture, if you do it properly its good. And yes, if all you do is spam shields, you're gonna run OOM without being fed innervates and tides, but if your holy and all you do is spam flash heals, its the same thing really, except flash heal costs slightly more mana and have a cast time.

Disc isn't supposed to work with just bubble spamming, useally in the 10mans i do shields equal about 25% of my total healing, simply because its not mana efficient (and the fact I only have a tide to regen, and i still run with a lot of blues on my priest ye) But i still beat a full epic holy pala on a lot of fights, and my mana is always good. On a lot of the normal mode fights i find myself just being at a 100% mana at the end of the fight, just because my mana regen is good.

Disc priests have so many mana cooldowns, Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Hymm of Hope, Shadowfiend. Archangel is not a mana regen cooldown, its a throughput cooldown, atlest not yet, later it will be both.

[Evelyn]

disc i think is best for pvp for sure. i stick to shadow though because i like the difficulty. disc is kinda like godmode again like in wotlk. for pve i'd stick with holy. can't go wrong.

[Faint Of Heart]

The only time I use flash heal is near the end of a fight where there's high amounts of damage (mainly to save people; PW:S and a quick FHeal) and I have almost full mana bar. Otherwise, it's GHeal, Heal, Penance, PoM, PoH (for predictable incoming raid damage usually) and Binding Heal (this is about as expensive as flash heal but heals a ton more between the two targets total). I think Gheal is far superior than Heal as well. The only time I use Heal is during down-times. As soon as I started seeing 45K crits with Gheal, it became my best friend.

Mana shouldn't be an issue if you're stacking int. I like a good mix of spirit and int, but that's just me. Fully raid buffed I think I'm sitting at 124K mana with the Seafood Feast or Deepsea Sagefish food. Always use Inner Focus (I bound it to GHeal or PoH) and utilize Power Infusion as often as possible. Another good trick to learn is using your Shadowfiend and immediately popping HoH.

Also, we bring tons of utility like others have mentioned: Pain Suppression, PW:B, and DA procs from PoH are extremely valuable, especially in a 25 man raid setting.

[Dharmabhum]

Another good trick to learn is using HoH before using your Shadowfiend.

All good advice however I'd suggest Shadowfiend -> HoH so your fiend is actually attacking while you've got the HoH max mana buff up. You'll net a greater return that way.

[Pieterman]

I play disc and I absolutely love it. Took me a few months to get the spec and glyphs the way I want them, but it's by far my favorite spec. Offensive caster/healer in one, on a dwarf? Fuck yeah!

---------- Post added 2011-04-14 at 05:44 PM ----------

All good advice however I'd suggest Shadowfiend -> HoH so your fiend is actually attacking while you've got the HoH max mana buff up. You'll net a greater return that way.

I tend to HoH and after one tick press shadowfiend. A full HoH isn't really worth it unless we have a arcane mage with us, or we're pushing progression content.

[Faint Of Heart]

All good advice however I'd suggest Shadowfiend -> HoH so your fiend is actually attacking while you've got the HoH max mana buff up. You'll net a greater return that way.

I stand corrected! Terrible typo on my part. Thank you.

[crazyb]

Is a Disc Priest as good as a Pally at Tank healing? I am a Holy Priest (with a Prot/Holy Pally alt) and I'm wondering if I would be better off bringing the Holy Pally vs. making a Disc offspec? My holy priest gear is 355'ish, while my pally is 350'ish, but not sure how much of the holy set would be perfect itemization for Disc swapping. The other heals are typically a Resto Shammy and Resto Druid.

When I get tapped for tank heals (as Holy Priest) it really feels like I'm struggling. It almost feels like a square peg / round hole problem. I would have to get rid of my shadow offspec, but that seems pretty much never used, so that's not a problem. And if I'm not on my priest we do not have a priest, so we use scrolls for Fort. And this is just for regular modes (6/12 right now), though maybe someday we'll get to heroics, but it wouldn't surprise me if we do not.

[Deleted]

True, it's not always the best choice, casting an expensive heal you don't really need because it will let you use your "make my spell mana efficent" talent really defeats the point, but you shouldn't actively try and avoid casting them if they are the right heal for the job and Train of Thought is a little bonus.

That being said, I always feel a little disappointed with myself when I need to cast Flash Heal, I feel like if I need to use it I have made a mistake somewhere. Of course I just heal when needed in normal modes in our little casual guild and am usually Shadow, I am certain in hardmodes it is much more of a workhorse.

Or you could, you know, stack evangelism which costs less mana, does the same healing and does DPS also. As a disc priest currently 12/13 hc I think I can count the amount of times I have healed with heal on one hand. GH is better for getting someone up, but again if they are in melee range and no immediate damage is incoming then actually atonement is the better option. GH is a waste of mana, keeping your Evangelism stacked is essential for burst healing phases (chogall is a perfect example). Heal as a disc priest is a pointless option to be quite honest. Also what you will find is that raid healers usually get anyone low up very quickly, as doing so as a disc outside of regular heals can actually set you back quite a bit of mana which can make the difference.

[Kelesti]

Holy itemisation is kinda bad for Discipline, when it comes to tank healing.

A properly geared Discipline Priest can keep pace with a Holy Paladin when it comes to Tank Healing (on a single target). The Paladin just doesn't have anywhere else to go.

[Seahippo]

After I finish off leveling my boomkin, Im gunna level a disc priest

[harky]

Holy itemisation is kinda bad for Discipline, when it comes to tank healing.

A properly geared Discipline Priest can keep pace with a Holy Paladin when it comes to Tank Healing (on a single target). The Paladin just doesn't have anywhere else to go.

The issue is always going to be that the Holy Paladin is doing as much effective healing on the tank while also supplementing the raid better than Discipline. That is unless Beacon is made completely useless. Until that point in time... always. So like 60% of the time it will be better... all the time!

As far as Holy vs Disc itemization goes that depends. As we know Holy has at least three ways to gear. One of these is bad for Disc tank healing (Mastery stacking), one of them is quite good (Haste stacking) and one of them is marginal (hybrid). So you need to be careful when comparing the two. I greatly favor hybrid itemization for Holy now, so on the one hand it's barely passable as Disc tank healing gear, but on the other hand it's a fun medium. When tank healing you want Haste > Crit in general as Disc, but as a raid healer you do want Haste/Mastery in fairly similar amounts. So what Haste+Mastery stacking allows you to do is freely switch between Holy and Discipline as a raid healer, then pick up off-set Crit items for tank healing.

And to anyone going to argue that you should go Crit + Mastery for tank healing: No. The effective healing per point of Mastery when single target healing is pathetic. There is no realistic gearing point where Mastery will become a good tank healing stat. That would require you to have both excessive Crit and Haste, or so much Int that all content would be trivial. Haste > Crit works very well. Consider yourself a Paladin from mid-Wrath. Not early Wrath... Crit was OP. Not late Wrath... Crit was useless. Haste is a massive priority up to a certain point, then is just good. Crit remains good, but not great throughout.

Either way remember that you are Discipline not because you're a better tank healer than a Paladin (you aren't) and not because you're a better raid healer than Holy (you aren't), but because you supply a major tank CD (PS) and a major raid cooldown (PW:B). You should be ready to do either tank, or raid healing as Disicpline. Even in 10 mans.