Disc on H Spine (25)

[Lerrielin]

Hey everyone,

My guild is currently working on Heroic Spine of Deathwing (25-man), and I had a question for you guys about healy priests and this encounter. Specifically, the question boils down to is it a matter of if you're a healing priest for Spine, go holy or go home?

For this fight we've tried a variety of healer set-ups. Our most common one has been 2 holy pallies, 1 disc priest, 1 resto shammy, 1 holy priest and 1 resto druid. We've tried trading 1 of those holy pallies for a resto shammy. Honestly, the results have always been more or less the same. SLT is a better raid CD than AM but I digress. I'm thinking that maybe we should sit our disc priest for this fight.

Our disc priest's throughput is a lot lower than the other healers' on this fight, so we assigned him to dispelling in light of this. However, last night I played with having our resto druid dispel instead and observed that it didn't affect his HPS all that much. I saw that even for the top ranking disc priests on WoL, their HPS is 6k below the next closest healer, so it's looking like it's an unfortunate function of being disc on H Spine.

I realize that disc has a lot of good utility (big shields, good single-target heals, mitigation CDs), but the question that I have for you guys is that is there anything that I may be overlooking? As it stands right now for us, even with those great utility stuff that disc provides, I feel like we'd gain more from having a holy priest or another type of raid healer in that spot that's capable of churning out ~10k HPS more on that fight.

What do you guys think and/or have experienced?

Thanks.


Edit: Unfortunately, unable to provide logs, as our guild's logs are private.

[eErike]

As I've seen it in our 10man, you have four "phases" of damage:

1. The roll. Here you need raidwide CDs as spirit link etc. The disc bubble should be better than a holy priests devine hymn here.
2. The spot healing on the debuffs. Disc is far more superior than holy here.
3. Tank/raid healing when an add reaches 9 stacks. The AoE is rather small compared to other portions of this fight so it does not matter so much. Holy > disc.
4. Offtank healing on the 3rd tendron. Every tank, no matter of skill, will take some damage while kiting the adds. Pain Supress and strong single target heals here makes disc better.

I would go with two disc priests tbh seeing that your holypaladins and the druid should be able to cover the heaviest AoE healing pretty good.

Sorry, missunderstood the topic totally. I would keep atleast one disc priest for the CDs and rather replace the resto druid with the extra shaman for spirit link seeing that tranq isn't very strong on this fight. Perhaps even getting rid of the holy priest, but GS can be a make it or break it on such a fight.

[zakaluka]

Specifically, the question boils down to is it a matter of if you're a healing priest for Spine, go holy or go home?

Hi there, I did read your whole post. Not just isolating this one thing.

On 10man, disc ALMOST keeps up because the number of debuffs is lower. Holy's value improves directly related to how many debuffs are active at once. Disc's value is in prevention, we aren't so great at getting rid of those debuffs. We're really good at negating slow AoE with DA (bloods popping).

Trouble is disc can't even do the job they're good at in a 25. Specced renew is such a high HPCT single target cast, and so much more efficient than GHeal.... Sanc is so damn efficient and better at negating slow AoE than DA...

Yeah, sadly, I don't see a place for a disc priest on HM spine 25. Even with the nerfs in place. Maybe some will disagree with me but the data on WoL is pretty telling. Other bad news for your priest is that simply putting on a holy spec won't cut it at all, he'll need to conjure up 4400 spirit somehow. That can only happen if he's planned ahead and knew months ago that he'd need to be holy for spine. Something you can expect from a good player. If he didn't, well, now it becomes your decision to make for him instead.

[Whicker]

I think saying Disc doesnt have a place is wrong. Having more then 1 disc priest then yes. My job as disc for spine, and something we are fairly good at, was managing the gripped targets. A disc priest can do it alone, by shielding the first 2 targets and penance/pom the third obviously prioritizing the 2 shields on the grips with a debuff. Coming out of grips with the 3 targets at 90+% HP is great. You also can save a lot of lives on that fight with people getting the healing debuff during the 9stack explosions or people going into the rolls with low hp. I would go as far to say that at least 1 disc is required, and I kept up with our holy priest the entire time.

[Deleted]

Why don't you just experiment & see? I think holy is generally better than disc on 25M HC. If you want to know what's better for you then think about your problems & how each spec works in solving them. The major difference is this:

- Disc is very good at stabilizing raid HP, debuff targets will lose HP slower because aegis is absorbed first. However...
- Holy is much better at debuff healing, and they do pull off higher HPS because of this. You can see from WoL that the difference is pretty huge.

If you go into a roll with lots of debuffs, disc priests will help them from dropping too low HP. However, you have to question if your priest was holy, would you be in this situation to begin with? There would be less debuffs because holy throughput is higher, and they can shield anyone about to die just as disc priests can anyway.

Honestly, if this were 10M I would say the opposite, but for 25M HC I really do think holy has the edge. Especially the case considering you only have 1 druid, it's probably debuff healing that is your problem.

[Skygoneblue]

Ask him to go Atonement spec?

[Pengwinn]

I prefer holy highly over disc for this fight. Holy going Serenity is AMAZING for healing the debuffs, because of the +35% crit with serenity up.. divine hymn can be used once per plate, generally for one of the 9 stack aoes. Rolls are pretty much taken care of with SLT. Keeping the debuffs to a minimum is the top priority of healers on this fight.. and as someone said previously, if someone does need an emergency shield, you can still throw it out.

[Lerrielin]

Ask him to go Atonement spec?

He is atonement spec.

[Quela]

I'd say drop the Holy Priest and get a second R Shaman. Then have your Disc Priest Barrier every roll with an SLT and tranq/d hymn rotations and have your Paladins alternate between AM on the rolls and at 9 stacks on Amalg. Disc has poor throughput on this fight but their Shields can save someone that has the debuff and low HP. Doesn't matter who dispels as long as someone does it but a Disc priest would be best since they can't do a whole lot.

[Lerrielin]

Right now I'm getting mixed feedback from everyone. We'll try it both ways and see, but I'm interested in knowing what perspective folks are coming from. For those that did specify, I get the message that holy trumps disc on 25, but the equation changes on 10.

[Maleric]

Holy is way ahead of disc for clearing debuffs. Holy can easily get twice the output vs. debuffs as disc, as holy has access to Renew and disc's best tools against the debuff are Penance/Greater Heal. Add Divine Hymn to that, and disc just flat out cannot compete.

That said, disc does have a strength for this fight, that being the ability to save people who are low on health and have a debuff on them. Unfortunately, if your DPS are playing right - i.e. breaking grips and not letting Amalg's pulse four plus times - you wouldn't need to be able to save people.

As for PW:B, it doesn't do anything that Divine Hymn doesn't. Sure it's good for rolls, but so is DH.

My guild got its first kill without a disc priest - the comp was holy priest/2x holy paladin/resto druid/2x resto shaman. Since then we've dropped a resto shaman for a disc priest to reduce random deaths to sloppiness now that the encounter is on farm. But unless your DPS are incurably bad at controlling Amalg DPS and breaking grips, disc does not really have a place for progression attempts on this fight.

[Quela]

What I mentioned is how my guild does it currently and I play a Disc Priest. As Maleric stated, it really doesn't matter that much whether you get a holy or disc priest. They both can bubble and ultimately save someone that has the debuff. Though, I definitely suggest 2 shamans regardless as SLT makes the debuff a joke.

[Deleted]

I would go with a disc priest. You shouldn't put to much thought into healing logs on fights such as spine, all logs are very inflated based on who got to heal the residue burst (and sanctuary is very good at this, but so is healing rain and efflorence). Assign the disc to dispels, let him hf/smite and when required he pumps out big healing. Make sure he shields debuff targets on 9 stack amal and rolls to reduce dmg taken.

[Deleted]

Yesterdays raid was really something new for us! Our resto druid was gone for easter and we had 1 undergeared paladin, and 2 disc priests, me and my officer. The fight turned out alright, it was no problem at all really ;D Just some kiting errors with the bloods but nothing else really ^_^ So disc sure can do the trick but It's not very optimal for the Searing Plasma.

[zakaluka]

Remember guys the context is 25.

"I do this fight as disc and we get by fine" -- this is a very common answer in this thread so far, but most of these answers are coming from 10 man raiders. I also am in that category (main is aa disc, 10 man -- and my alt group runs with a strange comp: aa disc + 2 rshams). It's not relevant to the OP that these setups work in 10.

[h3lladvocate]

As I've seen it in our 10man, you have four "phases" of damage:

1. The roll. Here you need raidwide CDs as spirit link etc. The disc bubble should be better than a holy priests devine hymn here.
2. The spot healing on the debuffs. Disc is far more superior than holy here.
3. Tank/raid healing when an add reaches 9 stacks. The AoE is rather small compared to other portions of this fight so it does not matter so much. Holy > disc.
4. Offtank healing on the 3rd tendron. Every tank, no matter of skill, will take some damage while kiting the adds. Pain Supress and strong single target heals here makes disc better.

I would go with two disc priests tbh seeing that your holypaladins and the druid should be able to cover the heaviest AoE healing pretty good.

Sorry, missunderstood the topic totally. I would keep atleast one disc priest for the CDs and rather replace the resto druid with the extra shaman for spirit link seeing that tranq isn't very strong on this fight. Perhaps even getting rid of the holy priest, but GS can be a make it or break it on such a fight.

A little off topic, but relivant. I tried this fight as Disc 10 man, and I feel like disc is vastly inferior on healing debuffs compared to Holy. Compared to me being ahead of all the other healers by about 1mil on debuff healing as Holy, Disc was behind by almost 2 mil. I don't see how I can compete with that. Holy is just Renew + GH with tons of crit, and the debuffs melt away.

Sorry for the slight derail, but I'm really curious as were still failing on this boss after a month. I need to go go Disc for the rolls (PW:B > DH), but as Disc, I cannot heal debuffs worth a damn and we start to fall behind.

[Deleted]

I swear you made a thread in the past about this h3lladvocate? Are the other two healers concentrating on debuff healing? How is their HPS? If debuff healing is an issue you shouldn't really be disc, but generally it's not on 10man with two other healers concentrating on it.

[Deleted]

A little off topic, but relivant. I tried this fight as Disc 10 man, and I feel like disc is vastly inferior on healing debuffs compared to Holy. Compared to me being ahead of all the other healers by about 1mil on debuff healing as Holy, Disc was behind by almost 2 mil. I don't see how I can compete with that. Holy is just Renew + GH with tons of crit, and the debuffs melt away.

Sorry for the slight derail, but I'm really curious as were still failing on this boss after a month. I need to go go Disc for the rolls (PW:B > DH), but as Disc, I cannot heal debuffs worth a damn and we start to fall behind.

How do u meassure pure debuff healing?

[Deleted]

How do u meassure pure debuff healing?

Phoenixstyle addon

[h3lladvocate]

I swear you made a thread in the past about this h3lladvocate? Are the other two healers concentrating on debuff healing? How is their HPS? If debuff healing is an issue you shouldn't really be disc, but generally it's not on 10man with two other healers concentrating on it.

Yea I did, I was tempted to "necro" it the other day, but I saw this thread today and figured id through out my line and see if anyone bit. They are, one is a holy pally, who I assume is beacon cleaving the tank and healing debuffs, the other is a resto druid, soon to be resto shaman hopefully. Resto is new to the fight, he mains boomkin but weve needed a healer. What I notice however is as Holy, the most debuffs out at a time is 2, besides rolls, while as disc, sometime 4-5 start piling up, and I'm forced to heal them instead of PoH spaming or other things I should be doing. Pally's HPS is solid. Druid is an offspec, but he's good too.

Phoenix Style has them both fairly high on debuff heals, so I dunno. I'd like to be able to stay holy, but weve never survived the roll after the second tendon. DH just cant heal that, need damage reduction it seems.