Healing

[Crepuscular]

If you are level 60 then you will only heal dungeons and for this reason I would go Holy for the versatility. Disc Priests are amazing, but not in 5-mans.

[Jonisawsom]

The frustrating side of Disc is when you pre-shield someone and they don't bother moving until the shield breaks and they get down to 25% hp. Now you have to give them more heals, whereas if you were Holy they would hopefully still move at 25% hp, but at least you didn't waste the mana on a wasted shield. Since Disc doesn't have the throughput of other healers you can wind up double healing them (shield plus heals) and wasting more mana. So basically I find Disc more frustrating with stupid/bad players than I do with other healers. Just makes me mad to see people be doubly stupid (waste the shield and still need the same amount of healing). Sometimes I just think it would be easier to be holy when I'm doing my random heroic or pugging the weekly or w/e.

On the totally opposite side though it can be fantastic with people that know how to move out of bad stuff. It's fun on a fight like say Ignis where you can negate most of the damage from his AoE (flame jets?), and if you time it right get all that mana back from rapture procs. Just something to think about while you're leveling with lots of bad randoms in the LFG tool.

[Murkuri]

The frustrating side of Disc is when you pre-shield someone and they don't bother moving until the shield breaks and they get down to 25% hp. Now you have to give them more heals, whereas if you were Holy they would hopefully still move at 25% hp, but at least you didn't waste the mana on a wasted shield. Since Disc doesn't have the throughput of other healers you can wind up double healing them (shield plus heals) and wasting more mana. So basically I find Disc more frustrating with stupid/bad players than I do with other healers. Just makes me mad to see people be doubly stupid (waste the shield and still need the same amount of healing). Sometimes I just think it would be easier to be holy when I'm doing my random heroic or pugging the weekly or w/e.

On the totally opposite side though it can be fantastic with people that know how to move out of bad stuff. It's fun on a fight like say Ignis where you can negate most of the damage from his AoE (flame jets?), and if you time it right get all that mana back from rapture procs. Just something to think about while you're leveling with lots of bad randoms in the LFG tool.

Just try doing a random as holy. It's annoying and you spend far more time drinking. You heal just as effictively, maybe slightly better if you need a burst of AOE heals, but it's not worth all the time you spend sitting. As disc (even when I was in all 232 gear) I could get through an entire instance without dropping below 50% mana (assuming the DPS got out of the fire).

[Serenityx]

When shit goes wrong, and i mean terribly wrong Holy has so much potential to heal up a group quick. If you have empowered renew, keep that on everyone, pom when you need to and those two will proc enough SOLs to keep up serendipity for when you need a POH. GS the tank, IF if you have it and POH or if your really screwed Divine IWIN. I have lots of fun as holy. Disc was cool to see how long i could go without putting up a single heal and just shielding.

[cruxxy]

I heal as Disc predominantly because I like its uniqueness and I like being special in a raid That being said, I take nothing away from Holy. The Holy tree is an incredibly powerful healing tree. I do think (again, as a Disc priest) that Holy is a MUCH more complicated spec to play WELL.

Honestly, every single heal (ok, not lesser heal) has a place on a holy priest's castbar and should be hotkeyed or macroed in. FH, GH, BH, PoM, PoH, CoH, Renew, PWS in addition to Dispel, abolish disease, GS, HoH, DH, DespPrayer - there's a place for each of them. If you use all your tools, it's difficult to find a better healing spec: you can mitigate damage, you can spam hots, you can burst single target heal, you can throw out a ton of raid heals all at the same time.

But I think the versatility and large tool box make it less appealing to many.

That being said, I use all those same spells (penance instead of CoH and PS instead of GS) as Disc also, but Disc can definitely get away with PWS spam and still be incredibly effective and useful.

[Verzerrung]

Holy 4 Life

[Selerious]

Holy is a lot of fun. I started healing as a Holy priest in Karazan at the start of BC. Never cared for Disc, even today and the only other healing I have exp with is a resto shaman (I heal on both priest and shaman in Icc).

I think that most the problem with people hating Holy is that there are not enough people that learn it well. I've been complimented at the end of heroics by people that said they didn't think a Holy priest could keep people alive :/ And I rarely have mana issues (unless i'm bored and healing a heroic with HolyNova). Never did through any phases of LK except on hardmodes and then I expected it.

Seems to me that there is so much hype for Disc, and as it's an easier spec to play people just don't give Holy enough of a chance to learn it.

[Shrié]

Holy 4 Life

says the disk...

[Azyoulike]

Holy is weaker for levelling than disc, and I say that as somebody who levelled as holy, but that was back in early wrath when disc was a very different (and somewhat weaker) beast.

Holy is weaker in 5 mans than disc. Raid damage really isn't a big deal in heroics, tank healing and spot healing can be - especially when you're gearing up.

Holy and disc become roughly equal in 10 man, though most disc/holy priests I know run as disc for the majority of the fights. BQ, Sindragosa & Valithria are the only ones I would always respec to holy on. Toc-10 I might respec for twins, but generally I don't bother.

25 man disc is starting to fall behind in ICC. That's not to say our raids don't bring a disco priest, we do, but afterwards he bitches to me about how increasingly weak he feels. 25-man toc was much more disc friendly by comparison.