OMG I'm so confused! Holy vs. Disc

[Squidwerd]

Seriously...I wonder if I'm better off not reading anything here or on MMO-champ. Am I supposed to be a holy roller bubble spammer? A discotheque smite machine? Self-hating "nerf priest" masochist?

Can we at least get free daily respecs to keep up with the random hotfix of the day? Honestly, the phrase "10 drunk monkeys trying to *ahem* a football" comes to mind with these whiplash hot "fixes". Did they hire a new intern?

My kind of serious joking aside, I'm really not sure what to spec right now, but it's looking like I'll give the bubblicious holy spec a shot, and as well as adding smite/attonment back to my disc spec.

Holy:
...too new to post the link

Disc:
...ditto...but both on the bliz priest boards

(cross-post from the WoW forums, and my first post here...if that is frowned upon, please say so and I can refrain in the future. Trying to share some humor as well as opinion)

[Death Dealer]

i just decided im gonna dps for now. the hotfixes are getting ridiculous.

[Maldread]

lemme break this down for you nice and quick: holy is over powered, takes less than moderate skill to play effectively, and allows you to faceroll all content without much stress. disc was terrible when cata dropped (terrible) (effing atrocious), and bliz felt bad. they buffed disc, but disc still sucked. then they buffed disc by making it a viable spec, allowing you to cast your bubbles and heals and just about going oom at the end of fights (much like every other class/spec). then they decided that disc priests using dmg mit spells too often was just like ANY other class, casting their heals with little downtime, so they nerfed disc priests again back to ooming all over the place.

first thing i did when cata dropped was level my priest to 85. didnt take too long. then i played my priest at 85 for a day. and said TIME FOR A NEW TOON! holy is too easy and boring to present enough challenge to be FUN, and discipline has been completely reworked (OVERworked) by bliz to the point that theyre not fun to play any more. who cares that you dont want disc priests spamming bubble. WE want disc priests spamming bubble, because its fun keeping bubbles on people and adjusting to whose bubble breaks and THEN prioritizing heals (AFTER every1 is bubbled). its not fun bubbling one person, and then having another one take dmg and cast 3 FoL and being oom. stop ruining disc, blizzerd, just leave it alone. (id like to point out i wrote this, and then had to go back and edit out the curses because you (yes you blizz) are that frustrating.)

my advice: level a druid. i did, and then i didnt hate the fact that my priest was terrible. bc i had my awesomer druid. but yeah, with priests you choose between no challenge and no viability. hmmm. sounds like a pally except all theyre specs are just no challenge. and idk shams, only healing class i havent maxed. so maybe do one of those, (but after purge gets nerfed/fixed/w.e) theyll really be ______ the bed. =)


on a side note i like your sense of humor.

[LimeSudz]

seems there is a lot of anger in this thread, Holy is not a 'faceroll' easy spec (not easier than any other spec for any other class at least).

the nerf to disc is because Blizz doesn't look at disc like a lot of people do. Blizz does NOT want you to be spamming shields. Period. they aren't ruining the ability for a shield to be useful, they are just tweaking it so you can't spam it all over the place.

Priests are the most dynamic healer in this game, you have a wide variety of spells to choose from so why any priest would want to sit there and spam a shield while occasionally throwing a penance or a PoH just blows my mind.

[Squidwerd]

My 3 85s are a DK I shelved because I didn't like tanking pugs and couldn't stand 45 minute wait times for a group that would break up 5 minutes in. Second was the priest and 3rd was my druid. I'm trying to focus on _one_ main as much as possible since I had 10 80s, one of every class, and none of them was really a main in cata.

I like healing on both the priest and the druid, and at this point the priest is my better geared toon until I can get into a good alt run or two.

To my original post, it's really the "whiplash hotfixes" that are hard to bear.

[Neurodilation]

Yeah, I'm a little perturbed by all these disc changes. Tried holy for a while and don't like the style. Disc is and always will be the way I like to heal. But all these hotfixes are getting aggravating, and my enthusiasm for caring about my priest keeps dropping. Thank god I have my rogue I can focus on.

[Maldread]

dood. shields are 20k. for a brief, 1 week period, this 20k cost an ample amount of mana. for the rest of cata, its stupid. the healing spells are too expensive too. 3 LoHs = oom. try it. it happens. and i gather that bliz does not want us spamming shields. im submitting a complaint that states WE pay YOU 15 dollars a month. WE want to spam SHIELDS. if by we, i clearly mean i. and holy is faceroll ez. if you cant faceroll content as holy you probably dont know your class well enough. dont tell me that claptrap for disc, i know my disc priest. it was my main. yes, cata changed classes. i adapted. the class didnt.

---------- Post added 2011-02-17 at 04:25 PM ----------

@ ^ you said it man. except i focused on my druid, and stopped playing my priest.

[Shakalager]

WE want disc priests spamming bubble

Speak for yourself. I hate easy mode spam bubbles. Reacting to a bubble breaking by using Penance or another bubble isn't reacting. That's Alt+Tabbing and seeing a bubble is gone then re-bubble and go back to watching tv on Hulu.

I don't want bubble spam to be back. If you really want it back then you probably aren't too good of a healer. Either that or you are just a lazy healer.

[Maldread]

i find it more fun to watch the red square (debuff) tic off and see if the yellow square (shield) is still on. other than that priests have been ruined and i dont like mine any more. why would you not want bubble spam? its skill, timing the 15 seconds of no 20k absorb, fitting it all into a healing rotation, keeping every1 bubbled. its fun, when you can challenge yourself to do that. youre saying using bubble means im lazy? by saying i want to cast more often and do more things on my priest, you say im lazy? or bad? i can heal a heroic, if i want to, on my priest, but its not worth the hassle. straight up. my drood rolls content while watching hulu, keyboard turning and rubbing one out... disc just sucks to play man. argue THAT point playa.

[LimeSudz]

holy is faceroll ez. if you cant faceroll content as holy you probably dont know your class well enough. dont tell me that claptrap for disc, i know my disc priest. it was my main.

Pot calling the kettle black here. you don't like people telling you disc is a one button wonder just like us holy priests don't like being told our form of healing is the easiest thing to do in this game outside of actually logging into your account.

[Shinshiva]

Blizzard: "Tell us what you like!"

Disc Priests: "WE LIEK BUBBLEZ"

Blizzard: "NO. Play how we thing disc should play or gtfo. By the way, here: have less mana."

[MoanaLisa]

Play the role you like the best given the current conditions. Chasing the flavor of the month is not a viable way to spend your game time.

[Lilariel]

Play the role you like the best given the current conditions. Chasing the flavor of the month is not a viable way to spend your game time.

Precisely this. Been holy since I started levelling my priest again at 80 and enjoy being holy, so they can buff or nerf both disc and holy to theire hearts content, I'll keep on playing it anyway. Not because it may or may not be better at any given time, but because I enjoy it, and because it works good enough.

I'm not squeezing out minmax to compete for worldfirsts - or even serverfirsts. I'm enjoying my game!

[ContentsMayVary]

Play the role you like the best given the current conditions. Chasing the flavor of the month is not a viable way to spend your game time.

And current conditions have changed, so Holy is now much more fun than Disc.

---------- Post added 2011-02-18 at 08:42 AM ----------

seems there is a lot of anger in this thread, Holy is not a 'faceroll' easy spec (not easier than any other spec for any other class at least).

the nerf to disc is because Blizz doesn't look at disc like a lot of people do. Blizz does NOT want you to be spamming shields. Period. they aren't ruining the ability for a shield to be useful, they are just tweaking it so you can't spam it all over the place.

Priests are the most dynamic healer in this game, you have a wide variety of spells to choose from so why any priest would want to sit there and spam a shield while occasionally throwing a penance or a PoH just blows my mind.

Why anyone would actually think that is what people actually want to do just blows my mind...

I think what a lot of Disc priest actually want is for their defining spell (yes, their defining spell!) to be useable more than once every 10 seconds without running out of mana... To be able to react to burst damage without running out of mana. For their mastery to mean something.

[Danner]

HOLY priests are pretty well fleshed out by now, being a healer with a well-rounded toolbox and a tool for every situation. Since 4.0.6, all heals have a use-case and you want to use them all. A good holypriest is able to map the right heal to the right situation quickly. Mental and physical reaction quickness is a requirement to playing a holypriest well.

PVE: Holy's strength is as always the massive AoE burst healing potential, which serves the specc well in PVE, but since cataclysm emerged holypriests are also no longer useless at tankhealing. The mana situation for a holypriest is pretty taxing when you start out healing, but becomes rather trivial once decked in epic gear.

PVP: The PVP situation is even worse lopsided against beginners; it should be a criminal offense to take a priest into PVP with less than 3k resilience. But once you have this amount, battlegrounds are actually quite fun as holy. I would not recommend going into arenas as a holypriest, you tend to be bursted down extremely fast.

OVERALL: The holypriest is very well rounded, good at most things, excellent at aoe healing, and carries few blatant weaknesses.

MINDSET: The best way to turn a group of holypriests into rabid killers is to start discussing Chakra. Holypriests are also very easily upset over matters related to Lightwell.

DISC is a spec focusing heavily of absorbtion. As such, is has a different identity than the holy counterpart. As disc, you're not really supposed to focus so much on reactive healing, you're primarily interested in proactive healing. This makes the specc quite different. In theory.

PVE: In practice, not so much different. The major proactive healing spell, Power Word: Shield, has been woefully inept at making any difference whatsoever. Blizzard buffed this in 4.0.6, but also increased the cost to the point where using it much is not feasible. Adding insult to injury, the other spell that is supposed to separate disc from holy, Penance, is still not really worth casting. Combined, this means that discpriests are mostly left to using a limited subset of the same heals that holypriests use, but at lower efficiency, or spamming one useful spell until out of mana and beg for innervates. The only spell that is on-par is Prayer of Healing, which admittedly is pretty great. Discpriests are not too trilled about this situation.

Discpriests have one gimmick that no holypriest have, and that is Atonement. This allows the discpriest to smitespam and heal at the same time. Fun, and sometimes enough to keep people alive in heroics, but just as often not. It's pretty useless in raids except for on Halfus.

PVP: Discpriests used to be called unkillable in WoTLK, being an effective PVP tank. In early cataclysm, this idea broke down as discpriests died just as easy as other healers. With the more powerful shields in 4.0.6, discpriests are subject to much hate from DPSers no longer able to burn a healer down in 3 seconds. Said dpsers are often told to learn to CC; which still shut down a discpriest as easy as any other healer. For battlegrounds, Holy is the betetr chocie due to mobility. For arenas, disc is still the better healing chocie, but i'm not convinced you want anything but a shaman or paladin for PVP arenas.

OVERALL: The discpriest still need a bit more work. it has some gimmicks, but it don't have a full replacement arnament matching the well-rounded holypriest. At times, discpriests are very powerful, and just as often they simply fall short.

MINDSET: Discpriests just want to be loved. Give them a hug.

[Deleted]

seriously ? confused ? why ? Discipline is basically not viable at all.. what can confuse u ?

[Squidwerd]

Play the role you like the best given the current conditions. Chasing the flavor of the month is not a viable way to spend your game time.

Yeah I basically took this advice, dropped my disc for shadow and kept holy as my primary healing spec. =) Still, I have a druid in our raid who admittedly outgears me by a bit, but also blows my boat out of the water in heals...need to figure that out.

[Aliahna]

Yeah I basically took this advice, dropped my disc for shadow and kept holy as my primary healing spec. =) Still, I have a druid in our raid who admittedly outgears me by a bit, but also blows my boat out of the water in heals...need to figure that out.

Druids got a number of buffs recently (lower Rejuv costs, increased Wild Growth healing and a lower cooldown), so did shaman. Expect them to compete very well with a holy priest in high damage encounters now.

[Juber]

* Just get the 4pct bonus (540), Tsunami (400), Jar (515), Flowing (300), Food (90) with a whopping 1845 passive spirit.
* 100% gem/reforge haste.
* Replace "Heal" with "Prayer of Healing"
* Enter Naruto multi-PoH jutsu and blow yourself away with 5200+ combat regen & 1500 haste rating.

Because 15.000 HPS on Al'akir & 14.000 on Nefarian with 80% mana left is probably more fun than PW:S spamming. There ya go little one, get high on Holy!

Edit: Makes Chimaeron really fun too! Just to spam-heal when not needed just because you CAN!
Edit: And that's the entire purpose to gear up, to be able to pull stunts like these off just because of _because_.

[kaanu]

Speak for yourself. I hate easy mode spam bubbles. Reacting to a bubble breaking by using Penance or another bubble isn't reacting. That's Alt+Tabbing and seeing a bubble is gone then re-bubble and go back to watching tv on Hulu.

I don't want bubble spam to be back. If you really want it back then you probably aren't too good of a healer. Either that or you are just a lazy healer.

^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^

Also on the note that people are going omm as disc. sadly I have to say L2P. If you watch your mana regen abilitys there no real reson you should oom.

I top my healing charts for almost eveyfight and I still end 80% of the fights this teir with out even needing to pop SF. Playing disc just meens you need to play smarter and use active regen not pasive regen.

Also to add to the hole Disc vs. Holy part of the post, one is not realy better then the other. Disc may take a tad bit more skill then holy but depending on the fight one may be better suted for fight X then fight C. For the most part tho its about on par for the amount of fights where holy can shine or disc. Its moslty the player.

(btw when i say most fights i meen 11/12 normal and starting on Heroic fights)

I think what a lot of Disc priest actually want is for their defining spell (yes, their defining spell!) to be useable more than once every 10 seconds without running out of mana... To be able to react to burst damage without running out of mana. For their mastery to mean something.

I dont think so. I LOVE that we cant spam one or 2 abilitys. Out of all the tipe of heals on my priest the only one I dont use alot is "Heal" moslty beause I dont have mana problems so I can use a faster heal if I so please. Disc is in the best place it has been in a long time in my mind, and alot of others.Iif you dont like where it is go play holy. If you dont like that play a new toon. There are 3 other resto tipe specs out there. Go try it.

Also, are so called "defining spell" is about 25+% of my heals and i dont spam it so i think its fine. Just saying.