Infraction for pocketmage: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.

Kaubel · 10/06/09, 6:58 PM

Post: Priest: Simple Questions/Simple Answers
User: pocketmage
Infraction: 2. All opinions should be stated as succinctly as possible.
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

Don't quote-split. You know, like it says it the forum rules.

Original Post:

Originally Posted by StormyParis

Regarding the Holy vs Disc question: Holy = Raid, Disc = Tank.

I personally have the two specs, and switch several times during a run. Comparing throughput is a bit pointless since the roles are quite distinct, and healing meters results will vary a lot fight-by-fight. Regen feels about the same, with Disc having more of an incentive to go OOM Shielding everyone, but Holy overhealing more.

I think there is most certainly a lot of room for grey than that sort of binary assessment. My take on it is that Disc definitely wins over holy for tank healing, but depending on the type of raid dmg, Disc can do well there too.

Holy, in my eyes is a Hulk style brute force attack to raid healing but requires more raid support to pull off. Based off of my experience, Holy can go OOM much quicker than Disc can when push comes to shove while providing unparalleled HPS.

There are other considerations, though:
- on fights where the tanks take little damage, but the raid a lot (Twins...), Holy can tank heal AND help very nicely on the raid. I spam Circle and PoM on the tank on CD, keep up Renew on him, and Flash to get 3 stacks of the talent that makes Greater Heal / PoH faster (name ?).

(It's called Serendipity)

And I agree with you here. Holy does very well on such fights.
I will add that, even on fights where tanks get hit hard, a holy priest assigned to raid can very easily incorporate some buffer healing across a couple tanks through the spells you mentioned.

- on fights with very bursty raid damage (Ignis, XT...), Disc's Shields can be more useful than Holy's group heals, even for raid healing: pre-Shield as many players as you can. On the other hand, on fights with very progressive, DOT-type raid damage (twins, Saphiron...) Holy's much better PoM shines.

Here is where I very much disagree with you. On such fights, I don't think any healing can compete with pre-Serendipity prepped PoM+CoH+PoHx2+CoH combo, or a variation of it. Especially when the dmg is predictable, and there are lulls inbetween the dmg spikes.

I've done Ignis and XT as both holy and disc, and while Disc can cheese it with shields to a degree, the HPS is lower than Holy's. Albeit and the expense that holy runs you oom quicker well going full steam. If you have the support of tide, an occasional Innervate, and well timed hymns and SF, it's very much the bread winner.

I've pulled off 7.5k HPS overall on both these fights as holy, and I've hit nearly 6k on Ignis as Disc once to my recollection, measured by WoL back when we did Ulduar, pre ToC gear.

- on very mobile fights, Disc suffers from lack of good instant heals: only Shield is really worth it, Renew is very lackluster, and PoM has a huge issue compared with Holy: Disc's PoM tends to land on a shielded target and sit there, instead of bouncing on quickly like Holy's. Compare that to Holy: Circle, PoM, Renew, and depending on your spec quite frequent instant Flashes are all good heals.

A lot of this will have to do with exact raid makeup, but I find that Disc purely spamming PWS in highly mobile raid dmg fights to perform more than adequately. In fact this is the only time I'll raid heal as Disc.

- You also have to adjust for the other healer(s), and try to complement them as much as possible. Go Holy if you're 2-healing with a Paladin or maybe Shaman, and focus on raid healing; go Disc if your partner is a Druid, and focus on the tank + pre-shielding the raid....

++

Though, I will mention that druids do fairly well as tank healers in high end gear. Nourish spam with full HoTs with the right glyph is some very sexy single target HPS.

In our 25 mans, I find it oddly hysterical that our resto shaman ends up tank healing and I'm exclusively assigned to raid as holy.