Priest heal spec? 10 man.

[Jake5467]

Ok we have a holy pally, resto druid and priest healer. The priest is disc atm from personal preference but doesn't mind changing for the raids sake. He went disc thinking the crit healing buff would make disc viable. What spec would be more suited to our raid for firelands progression for 10 man.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/thaurissan/Z%C3%A2rroc/advanced

That is his gear.

[Aldur]

I found Disc quite useful in the Firelands and using it myself for a lot of fights (Shannox, Lord Rhyolith, Baleroc, Ragnaros), compared to the previous tier. Furthermore you have a very descent tank healer with a paladin and a good group healer with your druid. I think a Disc Priest is a nice supplement to this healing team.

But i think he should reconsider his gemming and reforging. For Disc Mastery is the strongest secondary stat, not crit, because it improves all our absorbs not only Divine Aegis.

P.S. We're at 1/7 Heroic so far, so maybe the spec preference may change during further progression but i don't think so.

[hikamiro]

I heal in the same comp, and although i prefer Holy more, i've found disc more useful on the majority of the firelands encounters. We're also 1/7 on heroic.
As primarily a raid healer, Prayer of healing feels stronger as discipline with current content. The 'Healing' portion of PoH feels only slightly weaker then as Holy, and you get a ton of Divine Aegis absorbs on top of it.

I suggest stacking haste over mastery or crit for most of the fights. It's just extra pure throughput where as Mastery doesn't scale well with our DA.

Crit is a pretty strong heal for tank healing, but in a 10 man with a Resto druids Blooms, plus a full time Holy paladin. another 'tank' healer is unnecessary

[Arlee]

In that comp Holy would probably be more useful because Druids and Holy pallies are really strong tank healers but not so optimal for raid healing; while Holy is pretty darned awesome at raid healing.

[zakaluka]

Very interesting that you say that, Arlee. The first resto druid I raided with in cata, she was an amazing tank healer but not very good at raid healing. More recently I've been raiding with 2 resto druids who have amazing performance when we assign them to raid healing, but both struggle with tank healing.

Side by side with a druid that's raid healing, I have to work hard to keep up (on the charts not recount) simply because their #1 aoe heal is a smart heal. Wild growth has a shorter CD than CoH and does more healing. I guess this offsets the fact that they don't get any other blanket heals. Effloresence sure.

Maybe druid is just the only healer that can fill either role extremely well?

[Arlee]

That's interesting Zak. I mean I have come across druids that can raid heal fairly well, but they also seem to do much better at tank healing. Though they also have great synergy for assisting with raid healing as well. I wonder if maybe there is some different spec'ing/glyph choices they could make which would make them better at raid healing? Also Holy Priests can actually tank heal or raid heal, it's just other classes can do it more efficiently (not sure if that is the right word there) than a Holy Priest.

[Dorfie]

I honestly don't see why you take a Holy instead of a Disc these days. Disc can raid heal just as good, tank heal better, and has barrier. In my 10 man we have Disc, Holy (Priest) and Shaman. Just get your Disc to go a raid heal oriented spec. Your pally will ofc be your main tank healer, the druid is boss raid heals, then the disc is just good all around.

[Peppercat]

Disc. Disc. Disc. Disc. Disc.

[Bluepoet]

Since Cata, I've pretty much gone Shadow priest, because Disc felt pretty weak, to me, at release.
I've been trying it out, on Firelands trash runs, and I feel pretty good about it, again!
DA is much improved, and Greater Heal is, too.
I've been tank healing, while helping on raid, and mana seems manageable...
I just may be volunteering more, to heal, again, even though Shadow is in a good place, too...

I'm not dissing Holy at all, here...I don't think one could go wrong, either way...it's just that I haven't any experience with Holy, myself (loves me that lightwell!).

[Apostolic]

Disc brings much more to a 10 man raid then Holy does.
Stat priorities should be Int>Spi>Haste>Crit>Mastery.

[Table]

I heal in the same comp, and although i prefer Holy more, i've found disc more useful on the majority of the firelands encounters. We're also 1/7 on heroic.
As primarily a raid healer, Prayer of healing feels stronger as discipline with current content. The 'Healing' portion of PoH feels only slightly weaker then as Holy, and you get a ton of Divine Aegis absorbs on top of it.

I suggest stacking haste over mastery or crit for most of the fights. It's just extra pure throughput where as Mastery doesn't scale well with our DA.

Crit is a pretty strong heal for tank healing, but in a 10 man with a Resto druids Blooms, plus a full time Holy paladin. another 'tank' healer is unnecessary

I am going to have to agree with Hikamiro on this one. Haste stack. Don't need crit. Etc.

[Herrenos]

My priest is an alt, but I have both specs and swap back and forth depending on the fight. This isn't ideal since I don't carry two sets of gear around, but haste does well with both specs.

[Arlee]

Disc brings much more to a 10 man raid then Holy does.
Stat priorities should be Int>Spi>Haste>Crit>Mastery.

I was under the impression that Disc didn't care about spirit too much because of Rapture (and something else i can't remember the name of) they get more regen from int. Is that not correct? Also, wasn't mastery really important to disc?

[Deleted]

I was under the impression that Disc didn't care about spirit too much because of Rapture (and something else i can't remember the name of) they get more regen from int. Is that not correct? Also, wasn't mastery really important to disc?

As long as you have over 2400 combat regen then its more then enough for me anyways, as the the stat prio mine are int > spi ( to 2400 cr ish ) > haste ( to 13% raid buffed ) > crit > mastery.

After 13% haste you need a lot of haste to make your spells any faster so for me 2.2 sec on greater heals is fine raid buffed, as for crit I stack it the higher the better and I tend to crit a lot so I use heal mostly tanks tent to stay topped off without much issue, though I can only speak for normal modes our guild hasn't progressed very far due to summer.

As for the op's question having a disc priest in the raid is a benefit it's even better if there is already a good raid and tank healer as disc shines when it's able to float and predict damage and do assist where ever, let the guy play as is but remind him to assist the entire raid and you will have it good.

btw I'm a main tank healer in our guild with a druid and holy pally, the reason I am the main tank healer is because the pally just couldn't keep the main tank alive on chogal ( before patch ) and sharnox in FL without either running out of mana or the tank just plain dying so now I heal the main tank assist with the off tank and raid heal if needed, of all healers I have the least mana issues and I tend to out heal both the druid and pally on some fights so imo disc is very strong atm.

[Deleted]

btw I'm a main tank healer in our guild with a druid and holy pally, the reason I am the main tank healer is because the pally just couldn't keep the main tank alive on chogal ( before patch ) and sharnox in FL without either running out of mana or the tank just plain dying so now I heal the main tank assist with the off tank and raid heal if needed, of all healers I have the least mana issues and I tend to out heal both the druid and pally on some fights so imo disc is very strong atm.

Holy Palas and Resto Druids can easily top the meters, if you want to judge by them, also if your Paladin isn't able to keep the Tank alive and your druid is running out of mana, the other two healers seem to be just not very good.

[Deleted]

I prefer mastery over haste.

[Arlee]

Lol what? Druids are great raid healers.

I meant as compared to holy priests and that druids really shine on tank healing. I did not mean that druids can't raid heal -_-

[Deleted]

I would go disc here. And in 10 man I would prefer haste over mastery simply because you won't be shielding much except for Rapture, at least that is not what I do.

[Peppercat]

Disc brings much more to a 10 man raid then Holy does.
Stat priorities should be Int>Spi>Haste>Crit>Mastery.

Nooooooo

The stat weights of disc are entirely dependent on healing style and what healing 'niche' your doing, and can also depend on encounter.

Lets take Beth for example

Raid healing downstairs using the PW:S to proc BT>PoM>PoH method. Here we see Mastery>Crit>Haste

Healing the tank upstairs we find that Haste>Crit>Mastery

If you have the gear to maintain 4-6 shields as apposed to 3-4 we find Mastery trumps all

Haste has it's value if you are good a clutching and spot healing, crit has it's value if you are good or have the ability on a certain encounter to roll heals on the tank in between raid healing

Spirit loses it's value after 2300 CR due to rapture and AA (Which you SHOULD have in your spec unless you are ONLY tank healing on every encounter.)

Again this is just my ideology on Disc and stat weights for this expac, take it with a grain of salt. Right now there may be more effective ways of doing something but there is no one correct answer. That shouldn't leave you to believe there aren't wrong answers.

Play around with stats, find what works best for you; but in the end I would HIGHLY recommend going disc over holy as Disc is so much infinitely better in most situations in a 10 man this tier.

[Tavin]

I meant as compared to holy priests and that druids really shine on tank healing. I did not mean that druids can't raid heal -_-

Druids tank healing got nerfed by a lot and druids were already the best raid healers (at least in 25 man, still quite superior in hardmode fights when it comes to 10 man. No ones remotely clsoe to me in any fight in bwd/bot or firelands hardmodes), got their raid healing buffed.

And for priest spec, get whatever you want. Both are great atm and the stat prio what you decide to go for. Some say max crit, others say max haste while I go for 2.4k mastery and 200 haste rating.