leveling disc?

[phatpat]

brand new to the priest forums, interested in leveling one! read the stickies and am very interested in disc leveling. love the style of healing, but im wondering if they can hold their own solo questing?
id prefer disc/a healing spec because i will be in and out of dungeons all the way up to 85..and also some bg's, which i enjoy healing. saying this, is disc all around good enough to allow me to be successful in bg's, dungeons as well as questing? if not, is there a more ideal spec?
thanks

[Abstieg]

You'll do fine. I leveled 1 - 85 at discipline, and while later questing in Uldum and TH is annoying, it's doable, and healing is never a problem.

[Deleted]

i really like my disc priest.
healing is fun, but u have to know that u are not as powerful as a paladin or a shaman or a druid.
if u want to heal in a raid i would suggest to spec holy.
of course u can heal as disc in a raid, but since there is no real tank only heal anymore, holy is stronger.
and u should get dual spec. questing is possible but it is "a pain in the ass", spec shadow.

[partizan]

I asked this same question the other day, and after some hours of Google-fu, found that the answer was the same: yes, leveling as disc is entirely acceptable and doable. Will Shadow go faster? Sure. But at lower levels you will find yourself going OOM fairly often. I've leveled through 35 as disc and can solo-quest without a problem. Plus you can heal/dps low-level dungeons quite easily, using improved PW:S + smite spam.

[Khallynos]

i really like my disc priest.
healing is fun, but u have to know that u are not as powerful as a paladin or a shaman or a druid.
if u want to heal in a raid i would suggest to spec holy.
of course u can heal as disc in a raid, but since there is no real tank only heal anymore, holy is stronger.
and u should get dual spec. questing is possible but it is "a pain in the ass", spec shadow.

I have to disagree. Since the patch, I respec'd disc because I heard legends of its new-found power. IMO, Smite healing is fine for low levels, regs, and maybe heroics, but I don't think it cuts it in a raid environment. As far as a non-AA disc spec, I have seen great results because of the buffs to PW:S and Surge of Light. If you pick up Strength of Soul and Inspiration, you can usually keep a shield up on a tank pretty well. As far as raid healing, you can probably get away with it in a 10m group, but the mana cost is just too high in 25m. The changes they made to Chakra, specifically State of Mind made me a bit annoyed having another thing to track and refresh every minute. I'm not saying it's terribly hard to do, but I think both specs are equally viable if played the right way.

As for leveling, people previously mentioned pretty accurate accounts. Shadow is annoying at low levels but gains strength, and vice versa with an AA-disc spec.

I don't PvP much, but from what I hear, the buffs to disc have helped a lot when it comes to PvP. In the little PvP I did, PW:S was pretty laughable before 4.0.6, but now I think you're pretty set in BGs.

[Krimson]

Stay Disc to about 40-50, less mana issues and damage isn't really a problem.

Damage slowly starts falling off from there though, and not taking advantage of dual-spec to quest shadow and bg/dungeon as disc is just silly. The further you approach 85 the worse the difference between Disc and Shadow gets. Now at 85, I would never even bother trying to do dailies as Disc. Takes forever to kill anything and OOM stupidly fast because you have to spam your spells like mad.

[bobo333]

smite-smite-PENANCE!!-loot-repeat

keep bubble up and you're laughing. discipline is suited to small groups too, bubble the tank, renew while waiting for weaked soul to drop off then bubble+penance to full and get back to smiting

[Vook]

You can easily quest with an Archangel build, but I'd recommend going Shadow once you hit WOTLK content (maybe), and definitely going Shadow for questing Cata content, unless you want to spend 80-85 taking 20 seconds to kill each mob, only one at a time.

[Gootgot]

rerolling has started..... ^^

[Softandsquishy]

I speak from having tried leveling with all the specs recently in Cataclysm (new goblin) and having leveled multiple priests in the past.

It is possible to level as Discipline, but Shadow priests are pretty overpowered to level with due to the Masochism talent. It gives you mana back whenever you are hit for 10%+ of your life. With this talent, you can solo every monster that doesn't kill you in one hit, because you have unlimited mana.

You can priest tank Sarathstra, a 5-player quest in Dragonblight, because it takes two hits for her to kill you.

If you want to heal in dungeons, just pick up Dual Specialization at level 30 for 10 gold. That's what it's there for!

[partizan]

Well, I went from 40 to 61 this weekend, and I can say that the switch to Shadow whilst I was in Felwood was a *GREAT* decision on my part. You really do just melt mobs, and you avoid the OOM problem by glyping Spirit Tap. Using that and the dual-spec'ing disc, I don't wait more than 2-3 minutes for dungeons to heal. Makes for a good mix, so that you can keep your healing chops ready but also be able to solo in shadow. For anyone still wondering, I'd say once you're at 41+, swap to Shadow and don't look back.

[Swol]

Leveling as anything besides shadow in the cataclysm content would be painful, imo.