Disc or Holy in 3.3?

[priestpowa]

Ive been playing as disc priest since 3.2 and im wondering whats next. Are they brining anything new for disc?
Is it worth stayin disc in 3.3 or go holy?

[Jeffx]

Be more specific.

[villsvinet]

get dualspec and go disc/holy! problem solved

[Dyra]

I think with the Icewell debuff the mitigation provided by Disc will be even more invaluable to the tanks, especially fights where multiple tanks are needed, where Disc can shield them all up and let rip. Not saying Holy won't be useful, but I think we'll see a slow shift towards Disc priests being favoured at least until the tanks start getting geared.

[harky]

Tanks taking consistent damage means EH becomes more important and Disc boosts EH at a fairly constant rate. Holy will have it's place, as it has in ToGC, but they're still interchangeable with Resto Druids.

[Eletharin]

Actually, lowered avoidance should lead to more consistent damage which is more of a strong suite for Holy. Sarth 3D back in the day, a disc shield before every flame breath was all but required, and on Iron Council it was pretty awesome before a fusion punch. With consistent damage, consistent higher throughput becomes more valuable.

Should every raid still have a disc priest where possible ... absolutely. Shields are still awesome, and grace is amazing. If you already have the disc spot covered would I consider respeccing ... probably.

[harky]

Actually, lowered avoidance should lead to more consistent damage which is more of a strong suite for Holy.

I think you're confused. Holy's strong point is either consistent small damage (Valks, Sapph), or quick medium-sized spikes on the raid (Hodir). Holy either can lay out a bunch of heals on everyone while bouncing PoM like mad on the first type, or deal with the spikes with quick AOE bursts. They're actually very, very poor at consistent and high tank damage. The healers that deal with that type of damage best are Disc and Resto Druids. The only 'pro' for Holy is it means a renew on the MT is less likely to be wasted.

[Eletharin]

Thinking again, Harky is actually right. I do holy now for raid healing, but when I do heal tanks the big numbers and the serendipity hasted GHeal crits were probably blinding me. When I actually think about the mechanics and try to factor in absorb mitigation disc are still better at healing consistent tank damage. Fast, big heal spam looks good on scrolling combat text, but still probably not as good.

[priestpowa]

So is there any new good stuff for disc in 3.3? Cuz i havent really seen anythin new yet

[Kelesti]

So is there any new good stuff for disc in 3.3? Cuz i havent really seen anythin new yet

The fact that both Holy and Discipline are in "a good place" says enough. They don't need new tricks to pull ahead. No changes means no nerfs, means it's a damn good patch.

And I don't know what kind of guild harky's in, but I've yet to actually be asked to sit out for Resto Druids to come in. Sure, in a hypothetical environment, they might do it "better" but we still have all the tools to handle the situations thrown at us raid-wise. Disc might be "mandatory" for hard modes, but Holy still is worth bringing, and always will be.

[harky]

Interchangeable means that they can be swapped freely. Holy and Resto fulfill the same role in roughly the same way with roughly the same results. Yes, a lot of guilds are taking preference of Resto to Holy because the current tier of content is showing preference to Resto's style of play. I never said Holy was in any way not worth bringing. All I said was that consistent damage favors Disc and Resto Druids the most. It would be followed by Shaman, then Paladin, then Holy Priests. That's what tank damage is being pushed towards in ICC. Holy is a piss-poor tank healing spec, but do great as raid healers. That doesn't change their interchangeability with Druids, or make them not worth bringing to raids.

[Leprodigy]

Im pretty sure that disc and holy will continue to separate further and further from each other while both will still be viable.

[[-Spiritus-]]

Clearly, shampoo is better. It goes on first and makes the hair clean.

[Danner]

A discpriest is awesome in any raid setting; their main downside is a very limited scaling - the second or third discpriest is going to be highly ineffectual. I'm lamenting the fact that my guild discpriest has jumped ship to Aion. It really impacted our tank survivability in a very negative way, and I think that is the major reason it took us so damned long to down the Northern Beasts in 25man hardmode. Our tanks got oneshot, we had to prioritize gearing them up first, and as a result, having attained ultimate gear, they no longer find any reason to play before ICC comes out.

As a result, in a guild with 6 great tanks, if we can muster two of them for a regular raidnight and fill the remaining spot with alts and offspecs, we're lucky. Which in turn makes hardmode hell.

Don't let this happen to your guild - bring a discpriest!

--

I think harky really hit the nail regarding holypriest vs restodruid.

A restodruid and a holypriest fills the same role. The major difference is that the restodruid will usually heal for more, won't ever face mana troubles, and they are also good tank healers and can switch between many roles quickly - all while maintaining the best mobility in the game. This makes them a very awesome healer, and awesome on the meters. While a holypriest certainly can outheal a druid under ideal conditions, maintaining the output it over a long fight is damned hard, and keeping a MT up as holy is just not something you want to do. There is no question than in a strength vs strength comparison, the druid will win.

But even if we are usually lower on an average fight, we holypriests have tricks up our sleeves! Many many tricks. The most important being a very sick burst healing capability. The second most important being Guardian Spirit. At a distinct third is a large toolbox, capable of matching any healing pattern (except efficient MT healing). If you can take advantage of your tricks, it doesn't really matter if your druid beat you on the meters. Let the druid do that. It's their forte. As a holypriest, your forte is to save lives.

If your raidleader is benching a holypriest in favor of a druid because of slightly better meter rankings, then that raidleader is silly; meters is not a measurement of healer skill. Saving lives is. And I would claim that the holypriest is better than a druid at it. But there is currently no good way of measuring just this.

[wadeol1]

Tanks taking consistent damage means EH becomes more important and Disc boosts EH at a fairly constant rate. Holy will have it's place, as it has in ToGC, but they're still interchangeable with Resto Druids.

agree with this

[angelest]

with the 1% dmg debuff spriests are now evil arty negators...ill negate the aura with my shadow pew pew...i would rather have a spriest there than having to top ppl off

[Zeuq]

I view the avoidance change as a good thing for Priests.

For Discipline, they're in a good spot now, but part of the problem that I'm starting to see is that Discipline is running into a lack of scaling and that would only get worse in ICC without some effective changes to roles. Right now, when I play Discipline, I'm seldom spamming on the tank and I am, instead, mostly watching for burst and throwing out a fair amount of PWS on the raid. This is where the scaling problems come in because the soft-cap for PWS spam is very low, Crit isn't worth much, and mana just plain isn't a problem. I think more consistent tank damage means that Discipline will find more of his time castingFlash Heals on the tank and less spamming PWS on the raid, which means more use of Haste and Crit.

For Holy, I think this is a good change because it will help to differentiate us from Druids. The more consistent tank damage will probably shift Druids up as one of the ideal tank healers as I'm not sure if Holy Light spam from Pallies will really make a whole lot of sense anymore. So I think this will ultimately open the door for more Holy Priests because we'll probably see a lot less of the Resto Druid vs. Holy Priest competition for raid slots.

Either way, it looks like both specs will be just fine come 3.3.

[Azyoulike]

The real risk isn't 3.3, it's what happens if Cata is delayed and we get a 3.4 - I think GC sort of hinted obliquely at this possibility when discussing the reasons behind the tanking radiance.

It's an item level problem. If we added another raid tier to Lich King, we couldn't just keep avoiding avoidance and avoid it for every tier going forward ..

Possibly that's a pure hypothetical, but I can't help feeling it's not, because why would blizz avoid doing something to avoid a hypothetical situation that they know won't occur? I can't see a reason - but I can see them avoiding a hypothetical situation which they know might well become reality.

Anyway if it happens then by that point the scaling really will have bitten Disc on the arse, but for as long as our representation in high end arena is sky-high they'll be very circumspect in buffing.

[Gestalt]

In discussing Holy vs Resto (which is reflects on Holy vs Disc) remember that Resto Druids are getting some pretty substantial nerfs, particularly in the Rejuv department. Right now the numbers we're seeing on Live are from a Tree that can toss out Rejuvs almost as fast as they can hit the button (haste-capped by default). Both the "free haste cap" and Rejuv itself are getting nerfed, putting Holy in a better relative position in the Hierarchy of Heals.

As far as how the new content plays out for Disc, there's a bit on both sides of the scale. On one hand, it's new content, i.e. mitigation effects can make up the difference on tanks that aren't already tripping over t10 loot. A lot of the fights we've seen thus far seem to favor Disc's reliable, low-cost throughput (and relative mobility). On the other hand, one of the main features of Disc healers is their ability to smooth out damage spikes via said mitigation effects. ICC damage is supposed to be less spiky than we've seen so far, thus potentially reducing the benefit of counter-spike healing (i.e. shields and hots) versus direct heals.

We'll have to see how it plays out. Across the board, though:
-Holy's direct competitor is getting nerfed.
-Disc is exactly as awesome as it is now.
-Shadow is getting CRAZY buffed.

3.3 is a good time to be a priest.

[Azyoulike]

In discussing Holy vs Resto (which is reflects on Holy vs Disc) remember that Resto Druids are getting some pretty substantial nerfs, particularly in the Rejuv department. Right now the numbers we're seeing on Live are from a Tree that can toss out Rejuvs almost as fast as they can hit the button (haste-capped by default). Both the "free haste cap" and Rejuv itself are getting nerfed, putting Holy in a better relative position in the Hierarchy of Heals.

I'm not at all convinced that this will end up being a nerf, I suspect it will instead just be a scaling fix. Before Druids had a situation where their haste cap for instants was very different from their haste-cap for non instants. As I understand the change it brings the two into closer alignment. If this was the huge nerf that you seem to think then there would be a ton of threads on the druid forums complaining about it, but instead people are fairly calm.

What did have them worried was the switch to a 12 second rejuv, but that's now back to being a 15 second rejuv.

the TL/DR is that resto druids may even be stronger in 3.3 than they are now, once they've switch some gear around and gotten used to the new playstyle.