Thread: Disc or Holy?

  1. #1

    Disc or Holy?

    Hey guys,well i came back to my priest and decided to have 1 spec for pvp and 1 for pve.
    The problem is i cant decide which spec i should take Disc or holy.

    Thanks in advance

  2. #2
    Bloodsail Admiral Frmercury's Avatar
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    Re: Disc or Holy?

    PvP? Disc
    PvE? Both work, it's largely a playstyle difference. What do you plan on raiding and with whom?

  3. #3

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Do you want me to tell you what to eat tonight or what clothes to wear?

    Its your choice for a reason. Play both disc and Holy to see which play style suits you.

    Holy is in essence, AOE heals / raid healing
    Disc is Usually Tank / Shield spamming.


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  4. #4

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Hyuk
    Disc is Usually Tank / Shield spamming.
    Not anymore, they can tank heal in 10m, but not effectively. They lack the thoroughput needed to keep tanks up between the hits in 25m, so they're not usually tank healers.

    Disc is now more of a raid healer, and should only shield spam preemptively on massive raid wide AoE.

  5. #5

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    For PVP Disc. Disc is so much better than Holy for PVP that it's pretty ridiculous.

    For PVE? Depends what you're doing. I'd suggest Disc if you do mostly 5 mans, Holy if you do a lot of pugs/10 mans/etc. You'd need to look at your guilds needs otherwise. It's extremely rare that you'd want more than one Disc Priest, though if you have a small roster it's possible you'd want two just in case your LK strategy needs a Disc Priest (many don't anymore) and one can't make it 100%.

    The other options is to run Disc PVP + Holy PVE, then carry a few glyphs to switch out for the Disc spec. The fights that Disc is good on don't require your Disc spec to be a PVE spec. Just put on PVE gear in your PVP spec and that's that. Switch glyphs if needed.

  6. #6

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Disc is kind of iffy, your style in PvE has a lot of variables. Often times I find myself shielding people for borrowed time, or when they're almost about to die, and then popping prayer of healing or gheal, using flash heal in between. PvE disc to me is more about learning who is gonna get hurt when, then using shields on them to prevent damage. If you're going heroic 5ms you probably should stick with this. 10mans and 25ms it will pend on what the raid needs at the time, personally I switch my disc spec regularly for pve/pvp and keep my holy spec as pve.

    Holy is very much responsive, but at the same time the AoE healing potential is much higher by a large margin. You only need one disc priest for 10/25. So If someone is already gemmed strongly for it (pure sp). Then you shouldn't care for it. Thing is holy is much more mana heavy, and requires more gear at least to me.

    PvP disc is the only spec for pvp, especially in arena where you will get focused and die.

  7. #7

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    If you like go both. Equip and Gem for holy since its alot easier to play as a disc with holy items/gems than the other way around. You shoudnt have problems as a disc in most of the encounters.
    If youre going holy, try to find yourself oom and the end of the fight using all your abilities to restore mana. thatll be perfect. But yeah, take a look of what your guild needs.
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  8. #8
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    Re: Disc or Holy?

    If you go Disc for PvE, as dumb as this sounds, get a healing meter. I've seen a lot of Disc priests get discouraged when they are low on the meters. Some of them don't fully understand how shielding works. They know it prevents damage, but it's not actually healing done. Get a meter that shows your absorption amount added in with healing done, such as Skada. It's a decent way to know how effective you are as a Disc priest.

  9. #9

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Razia
    If you go Disc for PvE, as dumb as this sounds, get a healing meter. I've seen a lot of Disc priests get discouraged when they are low on the meters. Some of them don't fully understand how shielding works. They know it prevents damage, but it's not actually healing done. Get a meter that shows your absorption amount added in with healing done, such as Skada. It's a decent way to know how effective you are as a Disc priest.
    Good suggestion, for some stupid reason people still think disc isn't worth a raid spot, make sure if your playing disc to run a type of "Guessed absorbed" meter, usually it'll triumph the other healers (or be on par) and encourage you to stay that spec (if you find it more fun compared to holy)
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  10. #10

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Razia
    If you go Disc for PvE, as dumb as this sounds, get a healing meter. I've seen a lot of Disc priests get discouraged when they are low on the meters. Some of them don't fully understand how shielding works. They know it prevents damage, but it's not actually healing done. Get a meter that shows your absorption amount added in with healing done, such as Skada. It's a decent way to know how effective you are as a Disc priest.
    Absolutely do not use Skada. Most raid leaders are smart enough to completely discount Skada reports due to their inadequacies. Get a meter that keeps healing and absorbs separate such as Recount + Guessed Absorbs. If you don't you'll get a lot of the more experienced healers laughing at you for not understanding fight mechanics and absorbs.

  11. #11

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    meters work based on synchronizing, if you have 24 people using skada and 1 person using recount, recount will be shit and inaccurate as hell.

    vise versa.
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  12. #12

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    the only thing I can add is that disc is just different. And that's what kinda makes it fun. Where every other healer is more about healing damage, disc is above preventative maintenence ahead of time. Both work equally well.

    If you plan to raid, esp ICC, disc is pretty OP atm.

    But as others have said, your toon, play the way you like and enjoy.

    Side note, I never healed as a disc before and didn't use my priest much as it was my 3rd alt, but decided to get it some gear and guild needed a disc for LK, needless to say, LK is dead, and I didn't have much experience as disc previously. Though atm, it's growing on me.

  13. #13

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Quote Originally Posted by harky
    Absolutely do not use Skada. Most raid leaders are smart enough to completely discount Skada reports due to their inadequacies. Get a meter that keeps healing and absorbs separate such as Recount + Guessed Absorbs. If you don't you'll get a lot of the more experienced healers laughing at you for not understanding fight mechanics and absorbs.
    Skada has a Healing meter, Absorb meter, and a Healing + Absorb meter; that should be fine.

    Either way, healing meters still don't really tell you much without context. For instance, a Disc Priest can easily boost his absorbs by sniping HoTs and, thus, look good on the meter while decidedly doing a bad job (eg, shield spamming on Blood Queen or Twin Valks). So it's important to know what he should be doing and seeing if what he's doing reflects that. If you really need one to not feel discouraged or to prove you're doing your job, you're better off using a combat log parse like World of Logs.

  14. #14
    High Overlord Azyure's Avatar
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    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Healing meters are weak, and i generally dont pay to much attn to them. Go Holy PvE and Disc PvP...or be leet and shadow heal everything....

  15. #15

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Quote Originally Posted by Zeuq
    Skada has a Healing meter, Absorb meter, and a Healing + Absorb meter; that should be fine.
    The issue is the way it's used. Most people post the Absorb + Heals meter, which people will eyeroll at and then post the separate meters, which depending on the fight are much more telling. Meters that combine the two are junk.

  16. #16

    Re: Disc or Holy?

    Quote Originally Posted by OMGitsAzyure
    Healing meters are weak, and i generally dont pay to much attn to them. Go Holy PvE and Disc PvP...or be leet and shadow heal everything....
    This. Healing meters don't tell you as much as DPS meters. Healing is not about ONLY maximizing your throughput (like DPS), its about preventing and responding according to certain events. Meters cannot fully show this.

    For example a druid can spam HoTs the entire fight and get 6k HPS without trying, but let the tank die. A holy paladin who heals the tank from 3% to 100% at various points in the fight might end up with 3k HPS but actually performed much better than the druid.

    Holy can be good at raid heals but is also very versatile. In ICC disc is also good at raid shielding/healing.

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