1. #1
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    Spec pros and cons for various DS fights

    I don't know what your thoughts are, but I found myself thinking about what spec would be optimal for each new fight in DS yesterday. We got up to Spine of DW and most of the time I ran as A/AA Disc, which is nowadays my "default" for starting out. I heal alongside a hpaladin and a resto druid in ten man.

    However, it felt like on quite a few fights, Holy would be a really good choice, although how does it hold up on the regen front? The AoE nuke healing fights like YorSahj and Zonozz seem really good for Holy, although Disc was simple enough to handle there and with 3 healers in ten man, the non absorb healers will do a lot of overhealing. Hagara I can't even remember much of, except for thinking that Body and Soul could be nice and apparently DH heals the targets inside the ice tombs.

    On Ultraxion, I ended up taking Blue as Disc, with paladin on green and druid on red. It worked well enough, but are there other/better combinations? Smiting to keep Evangelism up towards the end can be a bit tricky as A/AA when things are going south with people's health.

    In the end I went SoS Disc for Warmaster as there just wasn't much time to smite and a lot of movement made it hard to micro manage evangelism stacks. Found myself thinking Holy would quite good there as well with increased mobility for soaking and Lightwell for more healing on the move. On the other hand SoS Disc was neat for the tank healing in P2.

    Not sure I have any thoughts of spec on Spine yet, although it seems anything will do. Finding a good target to smite in the mess adds another element on confusion in the beginning.

    EDIT: Not trying to create a "spec war" or anything, just interested to see what people's thoughts were so far and what sort of tips and tricks were out there.

  2. #2
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    What most people will say if they replied to this is disc would be better because you already have a Hpally and Rdruid purely because disc works great with those two classes. Disc does 50% healing 50% absorbs and those absorbs essentially add extra HP on top of your raids max health the same as pally absorbs but his are usually focused on the tanks and then the druid mainly restores HP over time so healer viability is very strong with those 3 classes

    I would agree that AA spec is good when in your position between those two healers but lose the mind set that the AA buff is required to heal correctly I mean sure it would be nice but as you said on Ultraxion by the time the blue buff shows up you need to be casting chain PoH non stop so you should maybe hold on to Evangelism by casting a single holy fire until you need to pop it which is around the last 5 to 10%, treat it as a cooldown that makes you better not something that makes Disc equal to other raid healers.

    As for Holy or Disc on certain fights I suppose if the healing is really required holy would be better but remember by being holy raiders will be taking direct health damage due to lack of absorbs and sure holy can heal faster through aoe but the raid as a whole will be taking more spikier health damage and both you and the resto Druid will be competing directly for heals which imo is counter productive unless the raid requires constant healing.

    An analogy of it would be a conveyor belt sending a deck of cards non stacked and a box to be packed and at the end is a Resto Druid and a Holy Priest they each take the cards stack them up and a box and pack them away just before the next set arrives, but if you switch the H-Priest with a Disc and he handles just the stacking of the cards and the Druid packs them away the work load for each is reduced while getting the same job done.

  3. #3
    against my disc counterpart I've found myself mostly equal on hps for most fights this last week. Ultraxion seems unfavorable for holy, zon'ozz is unfavorable for disc, probably the only two I can comment on. Spine is just wierd and HPS actually means nothing as long as all the debuffs get cleared in a timely manner, so that fight is difficult to judge. Disc has the benefit of being the only healer that can actually keep debuffed players from dying, holy has some tools to clear the debuff very quickly. On madness, I felt pinched for mana, but at about the same time as everyone else - I just find myself idle a lot during the first two assaults since too much poh would overheal
    Last edited by zakaluka; 2011-12-03 at 01:14 AM.

  4. #4
    We are a 10 man guild and we have just finished DS yesterday, our healing setup is: R.Druid/R.Shaman/Me(Disc). Disc is well suited for most of the fights. The only one i had the trouble with healing and switched to holy was Spine of the Deathwing, i just didn't feel the power of bubbles there, and Lightwell was very helpful(blessed with a party that knows how to click it).

    For the first 4 fights it was a faceroll.

    On Ultraxion we assigned our druid to red, shaman to green, and i took blue after which i had just to cross spam both groups. remeber to leave some raid CD for last few seconds of fight and roll them as damage is getting higher.

    Warmaster Blackhorn is a funny guy, it makes it easier for healers if you keep raid wide CD's for big attacks from dragons, be fast to top ppl, last phase is cake easy.

    Spine is the only fight i switched to holy, i felt that serenity + LW+improved renew are great tools for that fight. Just keep renew on ppl with debuff cast serenity on cd's and get rdy to spam CoH/PoH when that add is exploading.

    Last fight is easy on mana till forth tentacle you need to save all raid cds for that time and be a very conservative in means of mana, head phase is all about keeping tanks during adds. (In 10 man the only viable spec for my guild on this fight is disc)
    Last edited by Yazwa; 2011-12-03 at 03:07 PM.

  5. #5
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    I'm surprised people are saying they went from disc to holy on Spine because when I did it as holy, I thought I could have saved a few people as Disc. It's true holy is good on the debuffed players but problem in my group wasn't getting people topped off when aoe was pulsing, but having so low-health debuffed players dying from low-incoming damage.
    I'll definetly try it as disc next week.

    I think both disc and holy have their strenghts of ultraxion.

    The lootship is another one I will try as disc next week.

  6. #6
    @sinn, yes, correct. like I said, holy can clear debuffs very quickly but disc is the only healer that can actually prevent debuffed players from dying.

    disc: chains gheals and penance at debuffed players, shields them when they get low. It's actually quite important to have a disc priest here, I think.
    holy: since we already have a disc priest, I just go into chakra serenity until we're about to roll. I keep between 4 and 5 renews active on debuffed players and use Heal to keep them rolling. Every time HW:Serenity is up I make time to serenity-gheal-gheal a player who gained the debuff most recently.

    It's really hard to compare hps on this fight, since I haven't found a parser that knows how to account for absorbed heals

  7. #7
    In 10-man on Spine I had trouble getting the maximum amount of raptures. A lot of times tank wasn't taking enough damage and there wasn't someone getting stunned+damaged.

    It's pretty clear that holy is better to break the healing shields. As discipline, you can save people if healers messed up and let someone go too low, but otherwise it's pretty taxing on mana.

  8. #8
    Wait, your PW:S actually works on people with searing plasma? I did the fight as holy, but when I tried to shield someone with the debuff, the shield just immediately went away, absorbing 0 damage.

  9. #9
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    Can someone confirm if it works or not? Would be surprised if it doesn't.

  10. #10
    I was told it's fixed now. I can imagine it being difficult to proc Rapture on cd though...except for when the add starts exploding, during a barrel roll, or a tentacle stun there's not enough incoming damage to break shields.

  11. #11
    When doing spine this week the plasma 10kdmg/sec did not seem to be absorbed by shields, but other incidental dmg (running in a hole for the barrel role) did seem to work with the sheild

  12. #12

    Holy Benefits on spine

    Quote Originally Posted by Sinn View Post
    I'm surprised people are saying they went from disc to holy on Spine because when I did it as holy, I thought I could have saved a few people as Disc. It's true holy is good on the debuffed players but problem in my group wasn't getting people topped off when aoe was pulsing, but having so low-health debuffed players dying from low-incoming damage.
    I'll definetly try it as disc next week.

    I think both disc and holy have their strenghts of ultraxion.

    The lootship is another one I will try as disc next week.
    Disclaimer* 4/8 Heroic DS holy priest here with 401 ilvl

    On spine holy is amazing imo. I hit 33k-35k hps with only 10-14% of my spells overhealing (normal mode 2 healing with resto sham)

    My strat is to be in serenity chakra. I put renew on everyone with debuff, i use serenity (basically a free heal that crits for 35-40k-it refreshes renew and adds crit %), I use lightwell and we call out who needs to click it depending on who gets debuffs, I spam greater heal on targets that are debuffed. If it gets to be too much (too many debuffs or too much aoe) I pop divine hymn and it clears all of the debuffs. last resort is flash healx2 followed by greater heal via serendipity. use desperate prayer on yourself. What you have here is a recipe for great mana efficiency, great throughput, and very low overheals. I never use aoe spells (COH or POM) unless it is the aoe pulse phase. But with good coordination it shouldnt be too much of a problem.

  13. #13
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    That was more than a month ago, and in HC...

    I don't know why you wouldn't want to use COH or POM. You should consider it.

    I think both specs can be good on this fight, depending on your comp. But I can see holy being more effective in 25-man and disc more life-saving in 10.

    Anyway, we now do this fight with 2 heals and I play SP on this one.

  14. #14
    I play both holy and disc in heroic 10m DS. We generally two heal most fights with a Pally and our balance druid switching to resto for 3 heal fights (warlord, hagara, spine, and madness)

    I must admit i am biased toward holy at the moment largely due to the nice synergy between a holy priest and a holy pally. I do switch to disc, and have healed all the fights as disc and holy successfully. I find both holy and disc have their pluses and minuses, for instance i find disc absolutely godly on Warmaster since damage prevention when absorbing barrages is very handy. Holy is incredible for H Morchoc (easily solo healing a side pre-nerf), warlord is also a breeze as holy, and i find the the throughput holy has very handy for spine and madness. I also find body and soul handy for hagara and even kiting adds on spine

    Really i think both specs are viable depending on raid comp and personal preference. IN short use what you are comfortable with and I highly recommend priests to use both!

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