Which healer combo?

[Dole4011]

10 main raid. We're 1/13 heroic atm. We're losing our holy pally for ~3 mos and are picking up a dps dk.

Up to this point, we've been healing with healadin, disc, and a disc (sometimes holy). On 2 heal fights, we'll either have one go shadow (altho he's also the one who goes holy and no tri-spec yet) or the other hop on his mage (which he prefers playing, but which isn't good for gearing up our main group). That is, when we don't just go healadin/double disc since it's normal and doesn't matter and we have 2 atonement dps anyway.

We also have an elem shaman with a resto offspec. (There is also a WW monk but he doesn't pick up int leather.) The shaman has healed with us before and not performed that well strictly from a hps standpoint, though obv he has strong CDs and does considerably better on fights where we can stack more often (e.g. Iron Qon and Meg). He is lower ilvl (esp in healing gear) but not by that much.

The elem shaman does more damage than the shadow priest, though both are lower than most of our dps.

I was going to talk with them some to nail down our default healing set-ups, but I was hoping some people who are more acquainted with healing could give me some insights. Note, our raid buffs are covered regardless of which spec the three run as.

1) Strictly 2 heal fights. I'm thinking both priests, at least one disc. One holy if there is a lot of raid healing to do (more than two Spirit Shells can cover in turn).

2) Fights that you can go either way. RSham and both priests disc. Double atonement to keep heals option while minimizing damage lost by having only 5 dps.

Do you think that's overestimating disc? Do holy/disc have a nice synergy? Am I selling rsham's toolkit short? Are the impending atonement nerfs big enough that I should rethink this? Which do you think should be the 2 default healers and which should be the flex spec?

Also, should the flex spec prioritize his healing set or his dps set (i.e. where should he spend his tier tokens and valor upgrades)? Since I think we'll probably do a lot of resto/disc/disc, I'm leaning toward healing.

[Deleted]

If I am not mistaken Resto Shamans get a nice buff in 5.3, so keep him. Also good support via Heal Totem + Mana Tide. In 10m I'd go with 2 disc priests. Holy in 10m is not very good unless you can stack up a lot. Double Disc gives you good DPS while having 2 SS up can realy stabilize your raid.

[Zixten]

What i have seen resto shamans will not get a buff in 5.3. If you mean the 20% changes they are already on live.

Resto shamans have good cooldowns but have it hard to keep up the hps because of all absorbs from priest. If raid can be stacked Shamans are amazing but on fights where you cant stack they will be falling behind. Shamans mastery have to be the worst in the game because the target need to be low on HP to get any use of mastery.

Even that shaman isnt so good i would take a shaman and holy priest. On fights where you need more healers let the other priest go disc.

[Dole4011]

Thanks for the feedback.

[Deleted]

I think you biggest determining factor is player skill. In terms of kit you will always have 1 Disc, which is good. The 2nd spot can be Holy or Resto or even a 2nd Disc and either way it will be ok (not 100% ideal but ok) for a comp. However the big difference will really be made by who's a better healer.

I can perhaps help you there a little if you post logs but its hard to tell who heals better with just logs since HPS isn't always everything. With that said though it is something to look at. For the record its normal for the Shaman to be below a Disc/Pally on normal mode fights, in fact its expected. Absorbs of any kind really crap on a Shaman's HPS, the real test is if he steps it up properly when the shields break and his mastery kicks in... Also he should perform better on stuff like Megaera and he does, but how much better? Is he top HPS on Megaera?

Anyway, lets try to actually answer your question.

Definitely 100% take a Disc, its a damn powerful spec right now. The WW Monk if undergeared is pointless. I would prefer a Shaman over a Holy Priest since it provides a bigger diversity of heals and you can cover more situations. He might struggle to get a lot of HPS out but so long as he's ready to cover in between shields it'll be fine, besides on heroic mode he'll have a lot more use of his mastery than he did on normal. The 2nd Priest can go in for potential 3rd heal spots.

Which Priest goes DPS doesn't matter much, but if its a gearing issue with the mage thing then yeah don't do that.