TrueWoW

Hey I just want other peoples opinion of the advantages and disadvantages as healing as holy or disc as a priest in PvE

What do people recommend for 5-mans?
What do people recommend for raids?

Ive used both specs a 80 before but im still not quite sure which I feel at ease with more with so im hoping other peoples points of views and opinions will help sway my decision.

Thanks

Moved to Priest subforum.

I barely know anything about priests, so don't take what I say as fact, but I believe disc specializes in tank healing while holy is more general (but still pretty good tank) healing. Still won't beat a druid in raid healing, but I think holy has better AoE.

Discipline specializes in shields and rely on Penance and Fash Heal I believe, while Holy has a broader range of spells (I mean talents that speciallise them), like renew, Greater Heal, Aoe Spells (Circle and Prayer, Lightwell (altough I don't use it) and also Flash Heal, also Guardian Spirit saves lives, altough it has to be thrown out on the proper time.

I'm one of the few Holy Priests I believe. Like Kraith said, altough, in the opinion of alot of ppl, Disc Priests are Tank Healers (cause of their "shortcoming" in healing aoe, etc) Holy doesn't get too far behind, with Serenedipity, 3 Flash Heals, transform that monster caster Greater Heal in a very quick spell ( I believe I get to 1.3 seconds cast) and when it crits is almost above 17K atm, and it's normal (minimum, inside randoms) is 10K which is very good imo.

Dunno if there's any other heal that can top Greater Heal in healing (don't say LoH, that's unfair to
compare -_- lol)

I forgot Holy Nova, but since that also damages I don't tend to use much, don't wanna aggro anything lol

And directly answering ur question for 5-man, it's both, both specs are good for it, for raids, is like we say, If u wanna be a tank healer or a raid healer, altough u can also be a tank healer in Holy imo

Ok thanks for moving

Thanks for all your information and helping me out. I seem to prefer using Holy more anyway but i didnt want to jump on one spec without understanding the other alternative

kinda late on responce but still... may come in handy for someone.

The bigest change in your role imho is:

As Disci - you may be healing slightly less but it is YOUR job to keep players up and running when they meet near death situations >_> Penance them and they still go.

when i go into raid as disci i do not really thing about maxing up players that other heals easly do. dont get me wrong here. i max my heal output in holy as well as disci. no holding back or whatever. someone needs heals you heal. Thing is that in disci when someone is near death you can easly give them at least 3/4 of theyre hp. atm my penance gives around 13/14k hp unbuffed. + additional effect reducing dmg. If tank gets spike dmg you have hard time healing >_> you can allways penance + pain suppresion him. Disci is mainly about buble =D keep up the bubles while you can ! absorb is healing to. Lets say ie. tank get spike dmg that is hard to heal bobule + penance + pain suppersion combo makes life more easy as bouble will take away some of the incomming dmg you have time to penance him + pain suppres him while he's in weakened soul state. If you do it good. tank will definitly not fall. to max him out you got other heals to help if needed. ( from raid wide perspective ).

So summing up. Disci is more about keeping others alive than max them out imho. To max them out you got dudus, holy priests and so on.

Tho the Disci spec is little undrated by other players it is awsome if you do it right.

By all means it is my personal point of view on disci spec. Not all may agree with me. oh forgot to add forget about aoe heals ;d well you can while you have your Power Infusion up running but it wont be holy or dudus aoe xD

From alliance side i think i'm one of few disci priests that are made for pve. Saw some but for pvp. I can be wrong tho.

peacelover wrote:g dmg. If tank gets spike dmg you have hard time healing >_> you can allways penance + pain suppresion him.

Pain suppresion decrease his threat by 5%, I never used it, so I dunno, won't that make the tank loose aggro? or those 5% are meaningless?

imho it doesnt really matter what matters is you dont cast it at start of the fight. tank need to have good agrro grip when you cast it, just to be sure nothing bad happens. Tho its my own understanding it happened that few times i casted it at start as a mistake :p nothing bad happened.

thing is thode 5% tank can get back asap as the spell was casted. its just a 5% >_>. but thats imho.

Personaly as i was saying nothing bad happened while i was doing it. ( tho i rarely have to >_> )

If the tank is only ahead of the dps by 5% then you have more problems to worry about then pain suppression.

I get bored of holy healing in 5-mans tho cause its just renew or flash of heal for 10 minutes then dungeon over

eh thats why i pointed out to be sure of your tank :p

and for the record there are addons to see aggro percentage in game =]

err... kinda off topic. what addon would that be?

As i mentioned in another post, Omen is pretty good for aggro on your current target

well, penance on ICC, 3crits in a row for 9k each... 27k heal ;D

at lv 53 specced holy w/5 points in shadow, i am finding that my surge of light pops off quite a lot (2/2) and the other abilities are pretty nasty.

The holy nova...doesn't cause threat. if it does...I'd guess it's from the heal it provides.

with how I got my gear laid out (SP baby...SP!, little int/spirit thrown in too) I'm hitting 875-1400 on a holy nova crit, and surge of light pops off every 4th smite roughly.
Having that extra smite without the wait or mana being used is quite deadly.

eg HolyNova : crits, activates surge of light. instant smite available and used. smite applied again, then mindblast...in about 5 seconds I've dumped easily 2-4k of damage on a single target.

Holy = win.

The disc priest is not about keeping people alive in near death situations (as was said above) but about damage mitigation trough absorb effects. Disc priests are often looked down by other players because of their little heal output, but a good disc priest can take advantage of PW:shield and Divine Aegis to reduce the overall damage the raid takes. This is useful for preventing said near death situations from happening and creating more room from error for the other healers.

disc priests are gods of the arena, i speak of experience, ofc im not talkign about all those resi stacking morons but about people like gumber or scotchtape that can keep you alive in near death situations and make you sweat sometimes yet they still make miracles with their shields, heals and theirm mb, mc and burst damage