Is there any reason one would use Disc for raid healing?
edit: I find it hard to justify even tank healing right now.
Is there any reason one would use Disc for raid healing?
edit: I find it hard to justify even tank healing right now.
the type of healer you use is determined by the type of dmg incoming.
there will always be tank dmg do a holy pally is always needed, disc priests are also great tank healers(though not 2 tanks at once)
spike raid dmg is best healed by the resto druid model(HoTs that slowly bring people up to avoid overhealing), holy priests share this model but only with more upfront healing and less HoT.
Disc raid healing is best suited for consistent pulse dmg, I.E. Heroic Beth P2. and to a lesser extent H Rhyo P2 but holy performs just as well there.
(pulling these numbers out of the air but its to make a point) lets say disc is 10% better at raid healing then holy, however 30% of disc's heals are in bubble form. that means on long gaps between dmg, I.E. H Rag traps, they are useless. so in those situations Holy is better(also note how paragons world first H Rag was healed by holy pally, resto druid, holy priest).
Originally Posted by tkjnz
while i have always been a huge fan of holy.... 4.3 will make disc AoE healing more attractive in the form of 100 yard atonement healing (more attractive than it is on live, not more attractive than holy... just to clear that up)
Oh yes, there is a method to my madness O.o
^winOriginally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Every other healing spec will continue to look better then holy for the simple fact we are so bound to straight spirit. That fact and the insane omission of heroic (and normal but not as bad) spirit gear in FL, made me chuck my vanilla Hpriest in the bin.
Their's some other lesser reasons but that one really pushed me past the, "I can adapt to that." mentality that got me thru every other nerf, if not adding gear for a spec can even be considered a nerf...
Was and still kind of is, the best rounded healer in WoW but like most other things plaguing this game lately, it's taken a poor direction.
Efficiency vs throughput. 25 man case:
In my gear when I switch on Holy, I can spike up raid heals to 70k raw HPS any time sanc is out and the raid is stacked. Actually though, these times are few and far between. When can the raid stack? It's very encounter dependent. Also, at these moments holy heals are VERY mana efficient, about 21 HPM in my gear. After overheal? Assume 40%, pretty typical because of the holy mastery mechanic. It comes out to about 45k, and I see this kind of spike pretty regularly in WoL. But at that kind of overheal, the best efficiency you REALLY get is about 13 hpm. That's pretty piss-poor when you consider the alternative, and also realize that Holy only has 70% of the mana disc gets to play with (passive regen vs rapture/aa).
Outside of this one special circumstance that gives holy good efficiency, all my other AoE heals get 16 hpm. Post-overheal, 10 HPM. Abysmal.
Disc? After popping short cooldowns spike potential is only about 55k, but overheal is lower. 25% overheal would put that at about 40k, and again these figures are based on experience. SoS disc's overall mana efficiency can get near 16 HPM depending on how much spot healing we're forced to do. AA disc with similar behavior gets better and better efficiency with AA uptime - up to 20 HPM overall (based on haste stacking), with no restriction requiring the raid to stack. Post-overheal, that's still 15 HPM. Compare that to the more common efficiency figure for Holy [10 HPM], then realize the disc priest has more than 150% of the mana available over the course of any encounter.
In a max-AoE situation, the disc priest is only 10% lower on spike but can do 200% the total healing that the holy priest can before going OOM.
As someone else said once, playing disc you're constantly faced with awkward decisions. It feels like making a lot of round pegs fit into square holes. Holy plays much better, but it has some underlying flaws. Holy is only good in a very specific niche right now, and the 4.3 patch fails to address our real underlying problems. While the DH buff is fairly nice, it doesn't add a whole hell of a lot of utility to our class other than making our big spike smart. Don't get me wrong, it'll come in handy. I just wish they'd fix the big efficiency disparity by tweaking how mastery works.
Last edited by zakaluka; 2011-10-10 at 11:22 AM.
Its all a matter of what kind of fight it is. I play a holy priest out of shear familiarity since i've played holy/shadow for a few years.
On a reactive fight, holy will outperform disc, on a fight with highly predictable incoming damage, disc can outperform holy.
holy Do really have big AoE numbers and shine when it comes to fast healing up the raid, where druids heal up slower, but can get more hps. What really hurts priests is the lack of raidwide CDs, wich will be somewhat fixed with the reduction to Hymns CD.
I manage to outheal most of my competition due to the fact that i try to push it in every way possible. If your constantly on the ball you can perform very well as holy, but if you would push it as much with some of the other specs / classes, you might get higher numbers.
Holy for life.
Hail Satan.
first of all, attonement will not have a 100 yard range!
it will have 15 yards, as it has now, but from measured from its hitbox, rather than from its center! this is not a buff, more a bugfix...
Holy is still a great AE healer, but so is disc. disc can spike higher I would say, due to PI+Archangel.
It more depends on whether your raid stacks up and is near enough for PoH spamm, otherwise I defenetly prefer Holy (Coh!)
but in generall i stayed disc fo this expansion, was just better suited for the fights, and has the pro, of being a great tankhealer (regardles of AE or Tankhealspecced Disc)
that means, during AE bursts, you can AE heal, during AE lulls, you can assist your tankhealer(s)
I personally find, that disc is a better singletarget healer nowadays. Pally is great, if you have 2 tanks that take dmg, because of beacon, but if theres only one tank to heal (rhyo, ragi, beth) i prefer Disc
Oh come on guys, those Stregth of Soul gains that give "150% more mana" are highly situational. If the fight has heavy raid damage that never breaks an individual shield that gain is nothing.
thats why i wrote multiple fights instead of all fights
still i wouldnt rely on certain priest (you) vs the other certain players.
majorodo 10man hc (according to 5 pages of world ranks which can bring general idea instead of very certain cases) shows higher numbers for discipline than for holy and the difference is quite noticeable.
majordomo 25man hc i see one holy priest very high and then second holy priest over 10k lower, while average disc priest seems to be generally pulling out more than average holy priest considering 200 top ranks from each build.
while i never would say it means anything against holy, i think it might be one of valid reasons to give discipline priests chance in raids
if the fight has heavy damage, then what does it do to shields? if you care about mana, you wont blanket the raid with shields, you will spam poh, while you can still have the shield on tank and observe timers.
tbf long time since i used sos for mana gain (i still use sos spec but not for mana now), dont always track raptures atm, at some level of gear/progress mana really stops being an issue. and since thread-maker mentions raids in which you care for setup, i assume this is the gear-situation we talk about :>
Last edited by babylon; 2011-10-10 at 02:16 PM.
It's quite the opposite. SoS isn't there for when the raid is taking heavy damage, it's for when only the tank is taking damage and you can't break a shield on another raider. The situation you describe is exactly when you want SoS, to maximise your Rapture uptime by shielding the tank who will almost always be taking >30k+ dmg in <12sec. If the raid was taking heavy damage that breaks shields you wouldn't get any use out of SoS.
"150% more mana" was relatively easy to get from Rapture with proper management. Shorter fights now (post-nerf) will obviously give less, but at the other end you still get 300k+ mana return from Rapture on Raggy HC.
Trust me, I come from the same background as you: liking holy and WANTING it to be on par. I'm also currently MS holy OS disc in raids, so on this topic I'm fairly unbiased.
Sadly, what I say is at best an understatement. I didn't say '150% more mana'. Don't misquote me. I said as disc you'll have at least 150% of the mana that a holy priest has available during a typical encounter. Wording is important. Worded the way you did - 50% more mana, 50% more effic. And that's a conservative guess. Hell, I've sacced so much spirit that if I'm playing well rapture beats spirit regen on my mana gains.
Rapture gains not reliable? I can get rapture to fire once every 15 seconds or better. Doesn't matter what bossfight.
Again, holy has a specific niche to fill. You get your HPS mostly from moments of intense raidwide damage, where other healers fall behind. It has value, and we can keep up in certain situations. The only situation that warrant being holy full time:
- Some spike aoe raid damage mechanic is challenging for your healing team to keep up with.
- You're 6/7 HM and have TONS of spirit, your healing team is overtuned so your raidleader cuts a healer. 2 heal 10 man hm or 4 heal 25 man hm. Because of the extra spiking you'll have to keep up with, it can favor holy if your spirit is very, very high. This is why paragon kept holy priests on their roster so long.
- Some fights are just easy, or friendly to holy in other ways. HC domo (for guardian spirit) alys (infinite mana, spiking for ignition) ragnaros (mobility for p2, p3, raid can always stack in p4)
Here I disagree with babylon. If you have so much regen that you never have to track your procs, you could be tuning your gear more optimally. Specifically I'd start sacrificing spirit for haste or mastery. If you're lazy with rapture and still coping just fine, couldn't you boost your throughput even more by cutting back on regen and executing better?
Last edited by zakaluka; 2011-10-10 at 02:41 PM.
i said i dont always track, not that i never track
the only fight when i see mana problems is rag hc (i do only 10man raids). on spider hc i heal upstairs, while progressing mana was problematic but now isnt really, i guess we all just perform better now on this fight.
i raid with round 2,1k spirit unbuffed, its not like im spirit stacked. as for the output, i usually assume that if i make wol then my output is okish, but yeah you are right that i could still work on it and push the numbers up.
btw, no mana problems doesnt mean i end on 50%. i use pet, hymn, abuse innervate if i can, try to minimize my overhealing. i use mana pots sometimes, if there was an emergency (ie other healer' frozen pc).
Atonement is NOT "100 yards", please read the update to it. It now calculates the 15 yards based on the boss' melee range, whereas before, it would calculate based on the center of the hitbox.
And just because you don't know how to use it properly doesn't make it "bad".
As for Disc Vs. Holy, Disc can do better than Holy....in certain parts of certain fights. Holy's got a lot more AoE tools than Disc, there's no reason it should be outplayed.
With raid healing, both perform fine. There is no better overall, b/c situations vary and one will outperform the other depending.
Factors:
10 vs 25
Stacking for AoE damage
Even distribution of dmg vs individual spikes
Predictability of dmg
Other healers
Preference
Disc was the popular spec prenerfs to FLs, mostly due to Barrier. That's irrelevant now in FLs, you can do all the fights with Holy. And in 4.3 Holy is getting a cooldown, so it comes down to the above again.