The Diffrence between Holy and Disc

[Nylass]

Hello
First I want to sa that I've never played a priest, so I know very little about them in general :P

But I've always wondered what the main difference between Holy and Disc specced priests?

Does one of the specc have higher survivabilty than the other?
Is one of them better at AoE healing?

Please keep the ansvers neat and short, 'cause i'm to lazy to keep reading for houers :P

Thanks in Advance

PS. I'm From Norway, so my spelling won't be perfect

-Nyplass @ Human Warrior @ Scarshield Legion EU

[Heca]

Both are strong healers. It depends on your play style. Disc: Bubble low people, PoH, can be a decent tank healer, and do good AoE healing. Holy: weak tank healers, very strong AoE healers. Use renew, CoH. Try both, see how you feel.

[Tihr]

Holy is more about burst AoE healing.
Disc is more about preventing damage.

[florestan]

disc is more about damage mitigation, holy is more about (predictive) healing.

traditionally disc is more commonly used for tank healing whereas holy is used for raid healing (but in most cases holy for tank healing works just fine).

holy used to suffer from the lack of a useful raid cooldown, this has been fixed in 4.3 and Divine Hymn is now very strong and on a short cd if you take the appropriate talents.

holy has 3 stances (chakra states) that it can switch between during the fight - aoe healing, single target healing and damage (which nobody uses). This gives the spec a lot of flexibility.

disc has the option to go for an "Atonement" spec which is a combination between damage dealing and healing. Whenever you deal damage you also heal a friendly player who is close to your target.

[Deleted]

Holy has option for archangel spec (holy is my offspec, disc main), sure smite/hf doesnt heal, but theres so much haste lately on gear that the 3 points in darkness isnt really needed. The fights i went holy to try out my spec worked great with each 30 sec 15% Heal buff, im using the Necromantic Focus trinket aswell (both on Disc and Holy).

Wasting mana to get 15% heal buff, nah u get the mana back by using ur wings and once every 8 sec u cast a fast Holy Fire. Using this 15% buff when AoE hits the fan is nice, for me its a good alternative build with the many haste piece that drops. Im also aiming to get the 2 Haste proc trinkets (one on healing one on damage (after the dps has it ofc))

[Nylass]

Thanks for all great ansvers

[Themos]

Holy's tank healing capabilities are very good, especially with the Serenity buff and bug fix and the spec has amazing mana dumping capabilities.