Can we list which fights are better for Disc / Holy?

[Feeline10]

I'd love to get peoples' opinions on what fights are better for Holy, and which fights are better as Disc. In addition, which is better.. Halo, Cascade, or Divine Star? Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

I'd love to get peoples' opinions on what fights are better for Holy, and which fights are better as Disc. In addition, which is better.. Halo, Cascade, or Divine Star? Thanks in advance.

If you don't have a Discipline Priest, go Discipline. If there is already a Discipline Priest, whether not you should go Discipline or Holy depends on the other healers present and what your particular group needs to overcome the challenge. Speak with them and see where they feel certain areas are lacking?

I can't think of a single encounter this tier where you would want to select anything other that Cascade.

[laalipop]

If you don't have a Discipline Priest, go Discipline. If there is already a Discipline Priest, whether not you should go Discipline or Holy depends on the other healers present and what your particular group needs to overcome the challenge. Speak with them and see where they feel certain areas are lacking?

I can't think of a single encounter this tier where you would want to select anything other that Cascade.

To Piggyback on this, my group has a holy priest and we killed butcher on heroic the first time by having him go disc. I took CoW and tank focused while he did PW:S spam. Other than that, more than 1 disc starts to become a waste without proper communication.

We were also put in opposite groups and were in melee for butcher, so we both took DS and cross healed with it. Dunno about Mythic, but heroic/normal Brackenspore and if you're in a soaker group on butcher would be okay for DS.

[Thirteen]

I'd love to get peoples' opinions on what fights are better for Holy, and which fights are better as Disc. In addition, which is better.. Halo, Cascade, or Divine Star? Thanks in advance.

Just go disc tbh. It's better in every situation, except when you already have 2-3 discs which is basically never gonna happen. And always take Cascade. Neither of the other two are worth using.

[Deleted]

Just go disc tbh. It's better in every situation, except when you already have 2-3 discs which is basically never gonna happen. And always take Cascade. Neither of the other two are worth using.

3 Discs in anything but a 30 man group with proper coordination must be a nightmare. :|
I've two disc'ed most of heroic and it was fine doing a CoW or WoM strict assignment. It was still less smooth than having a different type of healer and I would have preferred if one of us had gone Holy.

We were also put in opposite groups and were in melee for butcher, so we both took DS and cross healed with it. Dunno about Mythic, but heroic/normal Brackenspore and if you're in a soaker group on butcher would be okay for DS.

Was that effective? It sounds like a good solution but I would have thought the GCD might be better spent on PW:S / CoW unless you had mana issues?

[jason1975]

I'd love to get peoples' opinions on what fights are better for Holy, and which fights are better as Disc. In addition, which is better.. Halo, Cascade, or Divine Star? Thanks in advance.

I've found halo to be helpful on tectus, but otherwise it's pretty much cascade across the board. I'm Disc/Shadow co-healing with a Holy/Disc (who prefers Holy) and two Rdruids and a Hpaly.

Also, not sure why others having such a huge problem with 2 discs. A good healing addon goes a long way towards fixing this so you can easily see PWS and WS. Then just move your mouse a tiny bit and click on someone else. It might lower your HPS a little bit (because you're sharing the tanks where your PWS is about 0% overheal), but the versatility is incredible. Larger raid sizes also help if you're not doing mythic. (eg. 2 Discs in a 30 man is better than 2 in a 10).

Other things you could do if you've got two discs:

1) Stop using penance offensively. It's a waste as it only generates 1 stack of AA and puts penance on CD. HF/Smite instead and def penance someone with WS who needs the healing.
2) Have one of you take CoW and do more shielding on the tanks (unless tank damage isn't an issue).
3) Use AA on CD and immediately cast that crit PoH. Make sure you're tracking DA on your raid frames.
4) FH or PoH a little more liberally, especially during AA if you're not able to spam PWS as much.

Other thoughts?

[ceddya]

Also, not sure why others having such a huge problem with 2 discs. A good healing addon goes a long way towards fixing this so you can easily see PWS and WS. Then just move your mouse a tiny bit and click on someone else. It might lower your HPS a little bit (because you're sharing the tanks where your PWS is about 0% overheal), but the versatility is incredible. Larger raid sizes also help if you're not doing mythic. (eg. 2 Discs in a 30 man is better than 2 in a 10).

How does having two Disc's snipe each other's PW:S lead to more versatility? You may gain more absorbs that are largely unneeded, but lose a much stronger raid CD via DH. That trade-off hardly seems worth it.

[jason1975]

In a 25m raid with 2 discs, how are we sniping each others PWS?

The ability to AA> guaranteed crit PoH > dual Spirit Shell on a 1 min CD is pretty freaking awesome. Or just PWS blanket. You just need to coordinate it.

[laalipop]

Was that effective? It sounds like a good solution but I would have thought the GCD might be better spent on PW:S / CoW unless you had mana issues?

I don't have logs for it I can honestly say I haven't had a huge mana issue ever doing Highmaul. Take that for the anecdote it is, I wouldn't make an effort to keep DS on cooldown, lol with how wonderful our 90 talents are I think that should be a rule of thumb, but on butcher once the damage got rolling people were almost never at full so if the tanks were okay and you're stuck in melee I assume it is at least more effective than Cascade.


Thinking about it more, that is such a niche scenario I doubt it is good generic fight advice.

[ceddya]

In a 25m raid with 2 discs, how are we sniping each others PWS?

The ability to AA> guaranteed crit PoH > dual Spirit Shell on a 1 min CD is pretty freaking awesome. Or just PWS blanket. You just need to coordinate it.

I should have specified that I'm referring to 20-mans. You can co-ordinate it to a limited extent - because not all mechanics involve raid wide damage. You also run into issues with PW:S sniping on the tanks. Having 2 Discs isn't going to break your raid, but I doubt it would be terribly fun for either Disc.

[anon5123]

Just 7/7N and 6/7H experience here:

Kargath: Either

Butcher: Either, but Disc is nice for shielding

Brack: Disc, shielding the mushrooms while the other healer(s) heals them, works really well, and using PS/Barrier on the blue mushrooms helps keep them alive a lot longer, increasing raid DPS

Tectus: Either

Twins: Either, but Disc is nice if your raid members fail at moving out of fire

Ko'ragh: Holy definitely. Disc is nice for shielding tanks and shielding the soakers, but you really don't want more than 1 disc on this fight.

Imperator: Either

[ceddya]

Kargath: Either, fight has really low healing requirements. Although, Holy does seem better if you have to go up and vice versa if you stay down.

Butcher: Disc. Just compare the peak output provided by each spec, plus PW:S provides a great buffer for the third cleave sub-30%. Disc also contributes quite a bit more damage with Reflective Shield and Atonement.

Brackenspore: Disc for CoW.

Tectus: I've only done this as Disc, so my preference leans towards that.

Ogron: Disc. PW:S is simply too good at dealing with debuffs like Branded, Injured and Arcane Volatility for a raid to pass up on.

Ko'ragh: Either. You don't really need CoW for the soakers and both specs have their own strong points for different portions of the fight (Holy for Shadow which is arguably the hardest healing mechanic of the fight, and Disc for absorbs to deal with the burst mechanics).

Mar'gok. Disc. Again, PW:S is just too good at dealing with Branded and Fixate.

[Zabrinka]

Not exactly on topic but I got into an LFR last night at Ko'ragh and was one of four Discs in the raid. And I think only one of us had CoW. About half the raid died, and both tanks were dead for a good minute before anyone could be bothered to rez them, but it's LFR and we still beat him.

[Simulacrum]

To translate anon5123's post, "either" actually means "disc", and "nice for shielding" actually means "provides 15-20% more healing without even counting PW:B or Pain Suppression". I don't understand the motive behind these euphemisms, but assume it has something to do with not wanting to condemn people for playing the weaker spec.

And a 1200 word post isn't actually worth reading if its content is based on what somebody "feels", rather than what actually is true. Which is that disc is far superior on all fights in highmaul except maybe ko'ragh.

Probably the only reason not to be disc right now, if you care about your performance, is if you either already are drowning in disc priests in the raid somehow, or you simply don't know the fight well enough to effectively utilize the shields. Rest of the time, disc is better, at least outside of weird fights with lots of damage that's far too low to frequently break your shields, thus wasting your potential.

This being the case because PW:S is just really crazy right now.

[Thirteen]

To translate anon5123's post, "either" actually means "disc", and "nice for shielding" actually means "provides 15-20% more healing without even counting PW:B or Pain Suppression". I don't understand the motive behind these euphemisms, but assume it has something to do with not wanting to condemn people for playing the weaker spec.

And a 1200 word post isn't actually worth reading if its content is based on what somebody "feels", rather than what actually is true. Which is that disc is far superior on all fights in highmaul except maybe ko'ragh.

Probably the only reason not to be disc right now, if you care about your performance, is if you either already are drowning in disc priests in the raid somehow, or you simply don't know the fight well enough to effectively utilize the shields. Rest of the time, disc is better, at least outside of weird fights with lots of damage that's far too low to frequently break your shields, thus wasting your potential.

This being the case because PW:S is just really crazy right now.

Tell it like it is! Because let's face is, it is.

Not exactly on topic but I got into an LFR last night at Ko'ragh and was one of four Discs in the raid. And I think only one of us had CoW. About half the raid died, and both tanks were dead for a good minute before anyone could be bothered to rez them, but it's LFR and we still beat him.

How'd that even happen? 4 discs probably won't be very viable on a proper raid, but I did LFR a few hours back, and one of our healers was a shadow priest, the other one was AFK, and I was a mistweaver who forgot to swap his 590 windwalker gear, and yet we still 1shot all the bosses.

[anon5123]

I don't understand the motive behind these euphemisms, but assume it has something to do with not wanting to condemn people for playing the weaker spec.

The "motive" is...telling people that either spec works? I've healed every fight as Holy and healed every fight as Disc. Both work.

[Thirteen]

The "motive" is...telling people that either spec works? I've healed every fight as Holy and healed every fight as Disc. Both work.

The issue isn't that you can't do it is holy. The issue is that by being holy you're not being disc, and disc wins 10/10 times compared to holy (and every other healer? [citation needed]).

How does having two Disc's snipe each other's PW:S lead to more versatility? You may gain more absorbs that are largely unneeded, but lose a much stronger raid CD via DH. That trade-off hardly seems worth it.

Can we stop treating DH like a cooldown though? It heals for less than Vampiric Embrace. And if you want a cooldown you're just gonna take a druid anyway. Tranq lets all your healers sleep for 5 seconds.

[PosPosPos]

Can we stop treating DH like a cooldown though? It heals for less than Vampiric Embrace. And if you want a cooldown you're just gonna take a druid anyway. Tranq lets all your healers sleep for 5 seconds.

DH is the strongest 3 minute throughput CD in the game aside from *maybe* Revival. You don't know what you are talking about if you think DH is useless.

[Thirteen]

DH is the strongest 3 minute throughput CD in the game aside from *maybe* Revival. You don't know what you are talking about if you think DH is useless.

Divine Hymn heals for almost half as much as Tranquility/Revival, but at least Revival has a downside of being instant, which isn't even always a downside mind you, but in a general scenario it would be. DH is also almost half as mana-efficient, and tries to make up for being crap with a +10% healing buff, which isn't really worth much since you can get the same from a mage in any case.

Hymn was very good in SoO, but it's nowhere near that right now. In terms of healing, it's on par with healing tide totem, which is far more mana-efficient at least. It's also only slightly better than Vampiric Embrace, and in a multidot scenario (how many of those are there in Highmaul?), VE can potentially heal for more.

I am now, without a doubt, completely sure you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, and that anything you say can probably be disregarded as gibberish.

I'm glad it's finally mutual.

[ceddya]

Can we stop treating DH like a cooldown though? It heals for less than Vampiric Embrace. And if you want a cooldown you're just gonna take a druid anyway. Tranq lets all your healers sleep for 5 seconds.

Rofl, those two PW:B's are going to be super useful at clearing Expel Magic: Shadow, especially if your raid runs with a H-Pal too. Oh wait, no. Also, if you're sitting your H-Pal to run 2 Disc Priests, then that's a horrible healing comp.

DH may not be as strong as Tranq and Revival, but it's far from useless.