1. #1

    Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    after hitting 80 and starting some heroics im wondering what is easier to heal as when you are undergeared, holy or discipline? I really like disc and played it a ton in BC and was stoked to hear that it was now a legit raid healing spec. but ya as an undergeared player at the moment, what will be the smoothest way through heroics?

  2. #2

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    i'd say go disc
    first up u played the spec and know the gamestyle, thats pretty important
    Holy needs a lot more mana management.Your best option is to GO DO IT that way u'll know for yourself.
    We can speculate about which spec is better but that doesnt mean u'll do good with it.It's all about playstyle.

    Good luck

  3. #3

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    I'd say holy. Its much more versatile, and will get you further in healing heroics due to the additional AOE healing power.

    Also, Guardian Spirit makes a truly awesome "oh crap" button for when bad stuff happens and your tank has tons of mobs on it, or has taken a ton of spike and is on the verge of dying on a boss. Also great for when the boss gets an enrage effect of some kind and the tank has already hit his shield wall and other "I don't want to die" buttons. Pain Supression is ok, but won't eat a killing blow and restore a huge chunk of the tanks HP when it does so.

  4. #4

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Holy, 1600spell power, 300mp5 casting

  5. #5

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    I went disc to lvl. Once I tried to run a few heroics with it and it was hard to keep people up with it. Most of the heroics have a lot of aoe damage and require you to heal on the move. The last boss in Nexus is a prime example of where CoH will rein supreme over disc. Guardian spirit is a wipe saver any many situations where you can't get a heal off before a tank dies.

  6. #6

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Quote Originally Posted by Lumindria
    The last boss in Nexus is a prime example of where CoH will rein supreme over disc.
    I disagree, that's one hell of an encounter where disc owns with Divine Aegis and PoM. If you are undergeared - go disc. If you have sufficient gear - both priest specs are viable but disc is the one that requires the least mana management and you literally spam heals all the time. It sounds like I'm making this up but disc really can't go oom easily due to Rapture while holy will be empty after only a few CoHs (if undergeared).

  7. #7

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    The other thing to consider is future direction.

    With Holy and Disc now itemising differently, you may want to consider where you're heading before you start working on gear sets. No point building an intel/crit set and then raiding as Holy for example.

    Disc certainly has fewer raid spots with only 1 required per raid optimally meaning guilds are recruiting far fewer disc priests than Holy priests. So have a think about what you might be doing after heroics as well

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  8. #8
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    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Quote Originally Posted by Torture
    The other thing to consider is future direction.

    With Holy and Disc now itemising differently, you may want to consider where you're heading before you start working on gear sets. No point building an intel/crit set and then raiding as Holy for example.

    Disc certainly has fewer raid spots with only 1 required per raid optimally meaning guilds are recruiting far fewer disc priests than Holy priests. So have a think about what you might be doing after heroics as well
    Agreed. As my guild's (so far) only discipline priest, in 10-man Naxx we've had to dust a good deal of cloth gear that is better suited for holy healing. Some people were kind of wierded out when I didn't take some pants off of Sapphiron because I said they "weren't really an upgrade, just different stats". I have the pants from Heroic (if I remember right) HoL, which have a TON of crit on them, and thus are better suited for me.

    Discipline healing in heroics for me has only proven difficult on two encounters thusfar. Loken is pretty tough, and the second boss of heroic Occulus proves extremely hard mostly because people don't seem to know how to get out of the path of an enormous frontal cone of damage (-_-). After a couple of wipes on Loken, I found out my best tool is to spam Holy Nova (don't laugh, it worked!). Since everyone is stacked up on each other, that and PoM do the job quite nicely.
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  9. #9

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Quote Originally Posted by Fenixdown
    Agreed. As my guild's (so far) only discipline priest, in 10-man Naxx we've had to dust a good deal of cloth gear that is better suited for holy healing. Some people were kind of wierded out when I didn't take some pants off of Sapphiron because I said they "weren't really an upgrade, just different stats". I have the pants from Heroic (if I remember right) HoL, which have a TON of crit on them, and thus are better suited for me.
    This where I'm gonna have to pull out the /rolledupnewspaper on ya.

    Very true, bad for a disc gearset, but if there isn't a holy around to take them you should take them for a holy set. That way if you end up light on AoE heals one night you can swap over. Or for particular instances where you really know it's going to be a pain. This is especially something to consider when/if the ability to dual-spec goes live

  10. #10

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Quote Originally Posted by Arduroc
    This where I'm gonna have to pull out the /rolledupnewspaper on ya.

    Very true, bad for a disc gearset, but if there isn't a holy around to take them you should take them for a holy set. That way if you end up light on AoE heals one night you can swap over. Or for particular instances where you really know it's going to be a pain. This is especially something to consider when/if the ability to dual-spec goes live
    Agreed, I'll actually be working on a second 'Holy' set of gear to stuff in the bank just in case, in the words of Bob Dylan 'Times they are a changin'.

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  11. #11
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    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    I thought about it except we have 5 holy priests. In fact, we end up with an average of 5 priests in each 25-man raid and at least 2 more sitting the bench each night. I don't think it will be an issue at present, I can use other ways to get reserve gear. For now I'm saving my dkp for the things I know I'll need.
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  12. #12
    greenmasheen
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    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    you only really need 2 or so holy priests per 25 man... a druid healer, a paly and maybe another priest or shaman.

    crit is nice for holy btw, it procs our talent... i have heard 20% crit raid buffed is about where you want to be.

    im getting closer to 300 mana per 5 seconds casting, hopefully a few more pieces of gear.

  13. #13

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Well as seein in some of the blue posts, it appears that there nerfing CoH, and i agree with the mana mangament as stated above, so id say go Disc

  14. #14

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Quote Originally Posted by shadeslayor
    Well as seein in some of the blue posts, it appears that there nerfing CoH, and i agree with the mana mangament as stated above, so id say go Disc
    CoH is not why priests go holy. I barely even use it anymore. The only fights it's worth anything are the fights designed for its use (i.e. any fight that includes a ticking aura damage, like Sapphiron or the Obsidian Sanctum. CoH is definitely strong, but its pitfalls are pretty glaring.

    Priests go holy because its the most versatile healing spec in the game. You have good HoTs, fast, some times free heals and great big main tank heals. The only barrier to priests healing heroics is mana regen, and any healing spec that doesn't take meditation is going to have bigger problems than normal.

    People are forgetting that holy priests have more than one healing spell. now that downranking is gone, you can safely use them all. The two heals I see people afraid of casting the most are flash heal and prayer of healing. We did Lothaeb last night, and I didn't even use CoH. we had 2 priests and a paladin for the 10 man. What did we do? Timed our Prayer of Healing. it only took 1.

  15. #15

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    For one:
    Why no stacking crit on Holy? I thought this was going to be the new hotness with the instant free FH and Holy Concentration. Now you say stack SPI before SP AND Int? Wow. What are the reasons behind this.

    For two:
    I agree that CoH is going to be alot less widely used once it gets nerfed. What ever happened to smart timing on Prayer of Healing? Sure its big.. sometimes too big. But it deffinetly gets the job done.

    Isn't it funny how CoH even after its original buff was still considered a worthless spell due to its mana to healing ratio? Then when 3.0 made it a smart heal that was powered up by a couple of big talents all of a sudden it goes from worst to first I've played holy since level I could first take talents and even I'm starting to be interested in the new Disc. People just keep having good things to say about it.

  16. #16

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    i liked disc better at first but after some experience i found out that holy is def far superior for 10 and 5 man pve. Disc brings some utility for 25 mans but there isnt as much pressure on you to pump out apeshit heals

  17. #17
    greenmasheen
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    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    Quote Originally Posted by Holyground
    CoH is not why priests go holy. I barely even use it anymore. The only fights it's worth anything are the fights designed for its use (i.e. any fight that includes a ticking aura damage, like Sapphiron or the Obsidian Sanctum. CoH is definitely strong, but its pitfalls are pretty glaring.

    Priests go holy because its the most versatile healing spec in the game. You have good HoTs, fast, some times free heals and great big main tank heals. The only barrier to priests healing heroics is mana regen, and any healing spec that doesn't take meditation is going to have bigger problems than normal.

    People are forgetting that holy priests have more than one healing spell. now that downranking is gone, you can safely use them all. The two heals I see people afraid of casting the most are flash heal and prayer of healing. We did Lothaeb last night, and I didn't even use CoH. we had 2 priests and a paladin for the 10 man. What did we do? Timed our Prayer of Healing. it only took 1.
    ya, wait about .5 sec when bossmods lets you know there is 3 sec to healing... and then follow up with a flash heal or a CoH.

  18. #18

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    I personally play a Holy priest and a good friend of mine plays a Disc priest, usually with me tanking on my warrior. From what I've seen with her:

    Discipline is very very capable as a healing spec, and after seeing it in action I cannot believe Disc's naysayers when they claim it isn't a competant healing spec. It's true that Holy is overall more flexible but when the going gets tough I've noticed that a Discipline priest is able to continue to pump out heals long after a Holy priest would be out of mana. In my experience that's the ultimate weakness of Holy: it has a lot of fancy tools and when it can use them it's efficient but if forced into brute-force healing situations it will go OOM easy. I'll always stay Holy because it's what I like, but I think too many people criticize Discipline without having tried it.

    Right now she runs with the glyphs of Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova, and Renew. The first two are simple: she recognizes that AoE healing isn't her forte and so she glyphs to shore up her weaknesses. A glyphed Holy Nova is a bit inferior to CoH in terms of efficiency but for 5-man content it covers the majority of situations CoH would. She choses the last one because Disc's biggest weakness is thoroughput, as people are fond of pointing out. This also links to her gem choices, which are often haste or haste/spirit gems (she'd go for haste/int or haste/crit but those doesn't exist). Disc has almost no problems with efficiency; in fact when all of the Divine Aegises are being consumed her mana bar hardly budges even while pouring heals into people. This leaves it free to gear and gem for raw thoroughput, which is what Haste gives very "cheaply" in terms of stats. Crit isn't bad by any stretch and she's happy to have some of it on her gear, but it is a very "expensive" stat pound for pound and until gear levels get higher it's just hard to stack effectively.

    Anyway, I'll probably be skewered for this post but I really want to back up that Discipline is a very capable 5-man healing spec, you just have to gem and glyph for your weaknesses rather than over-emphasize your strengths. This obviously changes in raid situations where there are other healers to make up for your shortcomings.

  19. #19

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    2 OP
    If you choose holy to heal 5 mans you should realy consider lolwell. It's kinda nice if you are the only healer in the group. Best example is last boss of Azjol-Nerub.

  20. #20

    Re: Starting 80 Heroics, holy or disc?

    ok to start in heroics. i recommend disc.. holy does good heals but if you want a fast and easy run go disc it heals just as good. my girl was Holy before and we had no trouble running heroics. but after 2 mob pulls she has to drink. for disc.. theres no downtime what so ever we can run through all pulls without her having to drink at all. the only time she drinks is after boss fight. now she just prefer's to stay disc it also helps me as a tank <3 the talent "Grace" her spec is 56/15/0 priest.. and im 0/18/53 warrior.

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