A question about disc vs Holy for my 10 man team

[Xylter]

My guild switched over to 10 man this tier much to my displeasure. Anyway, up until this past week we've had a solid disc priest but they had to quite and so I've had to make a roster change. We finally got to start working on heroics again since the 2nd week of Dragon Soul. It seemed that disc was the all around better spec for Yorashj heroic but he was having problems after switching to holy there were no issues and we downed it within a few attempts.


So my question is, why do I see disc priests as a 2nd healer on 2 healer fights more often complimenting holy paladins? Are absorbs just that much more useful or is there more? Is it just the better spec? Maybe it's just a personal preference? I just know our current priest believes the benefits of disc aren't that amazing. He could be right, I don't have a lot of priest knowledge.

I'm not a healer so all I'm able to say is, "I see logs and this is what other guilds are doing."


Thanks for any feedback

[zakaluka]

A holy paladin's Illuminated Healing and 3x HR are at odds with holy priest Echo of Light/Sanc. Whereas because 40-50% of a disc's total healing is absorb - actual heals are smaller giving HR room to work. IH and Aegis stack.

In terms of pure muscle, the specs are more even this tier. Even in 10, because of encounter design, gear scaling and a few tweaks. Looking at rankings in 10H, the rank 10 parse for the various bosses (I don't like going by rank 1):

Morchok: disc ~24k, holy ~21k (and there are a few ways holy can be on par with disc here, but generally hpriests are conditioned against precasting because of how the last few tiers tuned out)
Yor'sahj: disc ~18.5k, holy ~20k
Zon'ozz: disc ~29.5k, holy ~29k
Hagara: disc ~21k, holy ~21.5k
Ultraxion: disc 50k, holy 52k (but disc brings important utility to this fight, hps isn't the deciding factor. Atonement can give you another 7k - 11k dps here)

Now you can see that they're pretty dead even across the board. To be performing 'as well' as a disc priest, a holy priest has to outheal him slightly (because of barrier). It boils down to letting your priest do what he's good at / what works for your raid group. Disc + Hpally probably has better max performance than Holy + Hpally, but you have to see what YOUR people can do.

[PromiscuousPenguin]

My guild switched over to 10 man this tier much to my displeasure. Anyway, up until this past week we've had a solid disc priest but they had to quite and so I've had to make a roster change. We finally got to start working on heroics again since the 2nd week of Dragon Soul. It seemed that disc was the all around better spec for Yorashj heroic but he was having problems after switching to holy there were no issues and we downed it within a few attempts.


So my question is, why do I see disc priests as a 2nd healer on 2 healer fights more often complimenting holy paladins? Are absorbs just that much more useful or is there more? Is it just the better spec? Maybe it's just a personal preference? I just know our current priest believes the benefits of disc aren't that amazing. He could be right, I don't have a lot of priest knowledge.

I'm not a healer so all I'm able to say is, "I see logs and this is what other guilds are doing."


Thanks for any feedback

Well, with the new changes made in 4.3, hpala and disc have a great synergy as Zaka mentioned. I two heal in Ds with one and find we complement each other quite well. And up until 4.3 I had found that my favorite healing partners were resto druids.

Unless you are min/maxing I would agree that it is a question of finding what specc best suits the priest in question, and anyway if a certain fight ends up being better with disc for your raid group that is what dual specc is for. :-)

[Xylter]

I appreciate it. I assumed that is what it boiled down to as well. I wanted to check with the source though. I know certain specs will always perform well on certain fights but in the grand scheme of things I'm glad to know he can play the hell out of holy.

Thanks again,.

[Ruhnaycake]

In terms of heroic progression, my guild (10m temporarily until holidays are over) preferred atonement spec over holy to pass DPS checks. Plus Barrier is still such an amazing CD to a raid's disposal.