New version of the priest spreadsheet with an important fix for Divine Aegis interaction with crit -- it wasn't properly counting the double dip in DA.

Cataclysm Healing Priest Theorycrafting Spreadsheet v 1.9.xls

I normally do all my 10m fights as Holy, but found myself switching to Disc for Shannox Heroic 10m. Face Rage, the subsequent Rage, and then his random attacks all buffed by the Frenzy did lots of damage to the raid, and we found having the ability to Shield/Penannce really helped with that burst.

I'd start off by Shielding his immediate Face Rage target, then immediately switching over to the designated DPS who was breaking Face Rage and preShielding them. Usually the Face Rage would be broken quick enough that the ~40k shield on that person was enough to handle its entirety, allowing me to focus completely on Preshielding and healing the Rage target. I'd stay on the Rage target bombing them with Penance/Gheal until Rageface switched to his random target, which I'd do the same for. Rise and repeat.

Note when healing Rageface's target its ESSENTIAL you have both Face Rage and Rage shown on your Grid/Vudoh, and Rage Face focused with Target of Target on to see who he is randomly switching to throughout the fight.

On the other hand, Rhyolith Heroic 10m I could see either Holy or Disc working. I ended up getting the kill at Holy but could definitely see the advantages of Barrier and Shielding in the P2 burn. In P1 Pre-Shielding bad Stomps and quick Shields could help keep people alive who eat Lava Waves at bad times. As Holy I tried to keep Renews rolling on the melee driving Rhyolith in case they got knocked back into Lava due to the Stomp, used CoH on CD pretty much, and pre-PoH'd stomps.

Beth on the other hand seems like a fight where you absolutely want to be Holy in 10m Heroic. Massive amounts of raid damage.

My apologies if this has been said elsewhere, I couldn't find anything. Why was the holy priest discussion removed? Despite it becoming less favorable there are still many people using a Holy spec simply because that is what they prefer.

The forum defaults to only showing threads in which there have been posts in the past month. Nobody's posted in the Holy thread for a month, so it's been bumped from the default view. Change the "from the last" option from 30 days to more than that and you'll see it again.


(EDIT: Coincidentally, I found out something worth posting there. See, now it's back!)

Deleted.

obviously, 3% crit effects will increase your HPS, since 2% total mana doesn't affect the effectiveness of healing spells at all. But still, increased mana pool is not bad thing either, if you have troubles with mana in intensive healing fights. I myself still prefer [Ember Shadowspirit Diamond], since we have quite a number of mana regen abilities dependent on mana pool (me as blood elf even one more ^^ )

Regarding Shannox, I have found holy to work quite well on 10 man with Serenity Chakra. If you're using holy word liberally, your single target crit rate should be consistently above 35% and upwards of 40%, and this is with haste gear. I've two healed this fight twice, once with a holy pally that was on the MT (and me on the OT) and this last time with a resto druid on the OT and myself on the MT, and we've been fine both times. In both kills, both healers covered raid and face rage target when they could. I've found holy word + Gheal spam with Fheal as needed (SoL procs are always welcome but never expected) and be fine with it. Renew is rolled on my tank and the rageface tanker, who in my raid tends to be a destro lock or our boomer.

If you're relying on a single healer, and specifically something like PWS to save the target, it sounds like either the raid isn't topped off or your DPS isn't saving their big hit spells for that event and it's lasting more than it should.

Downed Shannox hc as Holy and as Disc. Both specs are very viable in this fight. If your raid is very good at kiting rageface, avoiding fire traps and is able to put him into crystal traps everytime wary falls off then holy is very nice to support this and helps to minimize raiddmg even more through body and soul. But if he sometimes gets an extra wary through fire traps disc can in my experience handle the extra frenzy stacks better, which makes disc the choice for me, as i don't really care about that little bit of extra raiddmg in best case but about getting a kill out of a worst case situation.

Every other fight i prefer disc, too (5/7 hc currently)
Except for Ryolith, here i don't have a preference. PW:B can't really be used in phase 2, because the raid has to spread out, so it comes down to PoH spam, where holy is nice, but if i have to run away from a beam being able to switch to Shield-spam is nice, too. So both specs on par imho

Beth phase 2, PW:B helps a lot and a 5 stack AA + PoH spam wields some nice HPS towards the end when every AoE-pulse is close to killing people.

Alysrazor, PW:B after the burnphase and keeping one tank alive with atonement alone. we have 3 healers even though the fight doesn't really have enough dmg in it. but we just want to play it save because it isn't a dps-race.

Baleroc, nothing beats 3 Vital Spark stacks through penance. esp. on a torment target with 24 stacks, 24 spark stacks in one cast is just supernice.

A suggested modification to your macro for using Inner Focus that I have found very beneficial. I am speced Discipline and I have Inner Focus macroed into three heals... Greater Heal, Prayer of Healing, and Binding Heal. The only change is that we sometimes need to use the spells to get people back to full health before the next pull. We dont want to burn Inner Focus for these casts so I just changed the line as follows...

/cast Inner Focus [combat]

Hope this helps others who are macro junkies like me!

I was posting in the Forum of Paragon last day.

Asking why they used Holy for Shannox,Beth,Rhyolith, Baleroc and Staghelm. But Alysrazor with Disc.

The answer i got was something like that: Its obvious the better Spec Nooooob.

My qustion now is: Jhazrun doesn´t want to reply normally.

Can you explain me, why Holy performs sooooo much better than Disc that there isn´t even Room for discussion?

This is a fight I do Holy, in serenity chakra with a high haste set, usually with spirit food and flask.
I use a focus assist macro to flash heal Rageface target, just make sure to put your focus on Rageface:

#showtooltip Flash Heal
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","0")
/assist [target=focus]
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","1")
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Flash Heal

I use POM to show me where the Rageface's target is when I am confused. I try to speed boost shield the kiter when I can. Lifegrip can be nice if used right, but it can also be disastrous if used wrong (stacks immolation traps on dog).
You will not be doing big numbers as a holy priest on that fight, but the utility and the speed of that spec are remarkable for this heroic boss.