Disc Healing - Heal or Greater Heal?

[MasterOfNone]

Disc healing is like sex. you can achieve the same result many ways, but it all depends on efficiency during the act.

[Gaffer]

Now yes, if the GH is going to majorly overheal then it's wasted. But if you cancel your cast when you notice the heal isn't needed, you can negate a lot of this. Plus, learning to cancel casts is a really good idea for tank healing. =p

Uhhh...what? You can probably reactively cancel casts healing through most normal modes, but once you start getting into heroics, cancelling and restarting a 2.1-2.3 second cast is just not acceptable. The damage spikes on tanks are just too large across most heroic encounters to do this. On top of that, landing a Greater Heal that is mostly over heal isn't a complete waste. There is still a chance of critting for Divine Aegis and it allows you to get to your next PW:S that much faster. Not any major benefit, but the cost of completing that Greater Heal is almost nothing since if you can spam Greater Heal, Penance, and Power Word: Shield on a tank for longer than any encounter.

Obviously, this is all assuming that you are the primary tank healer.

[Aleysia]

Uhhh...what? You can probably reactively cancel casts healing through most normal modes, but once you start getting into heroics, cancelling and restarting a 2.1-2.3 second cast is just not acceptable. The damage spikes on tanks are just too large across most heroic encounters to do this. On top of that, landing a Greater Heal that is mostly over heal isn't a complete waste. There is still a chance of critting for Divine Aegis and it allows you to get to your next PW:S that much faster. Not any major benefit, but the cost of completing that Greater Heal is almost nothing since if you can spam Greater Heal, Penance, and Power Word: Shield on a tank for longer than any encounter.

Obviously, this is all assuming that you are the primary tank healer.

Obviously if the mechanic is massive incoming single-target damage, cancelling heals is not the way to go. But there's plenty of times when this is both (a) not the case, and (b) mana matters. For example, healing 10H Beth'tilac, where I focus heal the add tank and the soaker in phase 1, if they are topped off before my cast finishes I will attempt to cancel. Why wouldn't I? I need my mana for phase 2, and they're not going to die within the next 2 seconds if they're at 100%.

Wherever mana is a non-issue and tanks take a lot of damage, I don't bother of course... H Shannox... H Alysrazor...

[Felade]

Are you guys using Heal or Greater Heal as your filler until you can use PW:S, Penance, and Prayer of Mending? I'm confused. I don't see anyone opting to use Greater Heal in raid videos I'm watching. I'm still only on 5 mans and GH is working just fine. Will this change when I hit raids?

I use Heal as Disc more than Holy, usually to take advantage of Strength of Soul on a tank that is topped off and I don't have anything else to do. However, once the damage starts coming in I use Greater Heal, or even Flash Heal when things get dicey.

[firex]

ugg healing lol just use death strike lol

[Foxtr0t]

After re reading this post after my inital - if your using heal as disc your doing something wrong. The people who are telling you to use it as a "filler" or tell you "dont listen to people on the internet" have no clue what they are talking about. Heal as disc is possibly the most inefficient thing you can do - if you find you have time to use "filler" spells then you need to spec AA/A. If your concerned about keeping inspiration/grace up - that is what penance is for.

The cast time is too long for the little output in produce's - fact. In that space of time you cast it there are too many other benefical things you could of done during that time.

[Deleted]

Well I find if you spam heal on a tank in early stages of a fight and in between the parts with large hits you can save a lot of mana, sitting on 90% mana with the tanks not dropping below 90% is inefficient?? now when I say spamming heals I don't mean only them you use your normal spells as well shield, penance, mending and so on, on the other hand if I was to never use heal mana would be an issue and I would be over healing a hell of a lot more then I am now with Greater heal.

Also as a tank healer it's generally not my job to heal raid members so why waste loads of mana assisting the raid healers when all you gota do is pop their health up slightly.

I think I am a very relaxed healer unlike some here I don't try to heal every single bit of damage incoming or absorb it and so far in normal modes at least healing is no biggy I can easily cast heals on the tank do a mending and bubble then spend the next 3 gcds assisting the raid then return to heal him up with a penance and few normal heals. Maybe it's also because the other healers in my group tend to assist the tanks meaning I don't need to use overkill spells all the time.

Btw in our 10 man group we 3 heal it most of the time which I will agree is overkill but it allows the healers more leeway meaning half the time there is an extra healer or two rolling hots and stuff on the tanks so again why waste all my mana casting bigger un-needed heals.

If your solo healing the tanks then fair enough heal doesn't cut it, ya all just need to chill out a little and stopped trying to make a big deal of little damage. it's like omg a clothie just got hit for 25k he only has 100k left better cast my biggest heal on him in case he dies within the next 30 seconds.

[Griffter]

I'm a noob at Disc healing, but in my experience with 5mans and T11 raids, Heal never seems be worth the time it takes to cast. I don't have any mana problems on most fights, so I just use Greater Heal to top people off. If GH would overheal them, I just wait until they either take more damage or another healer's HoT tops them off.