This line is exactly why this whole discussion is a moot point. I can never seem to drop 5/5 DF because my priest is an alt who sees ToGC10 as highest content atm, usually in a setup with another (holy) priest or druid. This means virtually every time I will be the tank healer and I won't drop DF just because of that.

For every 25 ToGC running priest in here, the same counts. Are you blanketing the raid with renew, pom, coh? Then you and your raidgroup probably already settled for your raid healer role and you probably don't have 5/5 DF. Are you often assigned to tank healing because your raid doesn't have paladins, or they suck? I'm fairly sure that, given the fact you're spending 70+% of your time tankhealing, you'll grab 5/5 DF.
Although it's a very debatable talent at best, I feel I just can't justify dropping it just because I will still cast one, two, or maybe a few more every fight. In a case where I cast a Gheal, the tank is either in bad shape and I need to top him asap, or I know he'll get alot of damage and a flash might not be enough. Yes other healers may help out, but are you willing to take gambles about tanks living or dying every heavy tank damage fight? I don't.

Different setups, different styles, as far as I see it there's no definite answer.

If you are tank healing 70̀̀% of the time as you say, why not just spec disc?

Maybe just use GS on him in those cases?

Ayreons comment regarding speccing disc is a good one. Still, I am interested as to why you choose to run as holy in that setup. I have been only running 10 mans for some time now, and beginning with Ulduar hard modes, I have moved - reluctantly - from switching between holy and disc to disc only.

My impression still is, that in most places healing as disc helps a 10 man raid more than healing as holy - except if the other healer already is a holy priest.

This includes places like Freya+3, where 2-healing as disc in a 10 man equipped T8 raid in combination with a holy paladin sounded insane at the time, but ultimately turned out to be much safer than holy. Sure, overall throughput is lower, but death prevention seemed to be worth more.

That said, it is a long time since I have tried sustained tank healing as holy. Is your opinion/experience that this is now sustainable with mana pools in T9 content?

I am 90% of the time already, still prefer holy at some fights (e.g. Twins where shields are near useless).


Because it has 1 minute cooldown at best and we often use it as part of our strat.


Well as I said it's all about your role and the setups you run with. My role is *very* versatile (usually compensating crap healers in ToC10 normal, or ToGC10 with 2), but I'm never a pure raid healer since we almost always have a druid or other holy priest. I also do mainly 10 mans as it is an alt. Doing the compensation job I'm more holy than usual because, frankly, sometimes the throughput of disc is simply lacking (I'm thinking Jaraxxus e.g. where the debuff isn't healed through fast enough, or Twins). Granted, we could take less crap geared people, or I could smack the dps everytime they stand in fire too long, but it just doesn't work like that and especially not with alts.

Maybe I'm a control freak but I cannot justify a tank dying now and then - even if I'm not tank healing! - all because I couldn't deliver enough throughput with FH (and/or PoM). I just like to be that versatile. As said I can perfectly accept raid healers dropping it, however, if you'll be (support) healing a tank even 5% of the time, I can't miss it. In 25 man raids it's much easier to rely on some palading sniping some heals doing your job. Which was kind of my point, do you run 10 or 25 mans mostly, only normals or hardmodes, how are the other healers, how's the setup, etc., this talent's value is imo very dependant on that.

As for holy's viability as a tank healer, it's not that bad really, I feel it's just as stable as Disc if you know the fights (being Disc it's a little easier to just heal reactively because Penance just is that good ) albeit a little less mana efficient.

As Nid is currently pretty busy and unable to keep track of a new thread, I'm going to do some editing and repost a compendium thread for 3.3 - Icecrown. If there is anything specific you'd like to be discussed or included in the threads main post please PM me.

Power Word: Shield does not absorb the Leeching Swarm ticks.

That's possibly a little confusing.

Leeching Swarm damage / healing is calculated based on your current health; it does not take any damage mitigation effects (including absorbs) into account when determining the damage for the next tick.

PWS and other aborb effects will prevent the damage (so if you land an 8k shield with no glyph at <1000 health, it will last for ~32 ticks of 250 per hit, or more than the PWS duration), but the leech still heals Anub'arak.

Unless you've come up with some bizarre healing strategy, it's a bad idea to use PWS for Swarm healing. Leeching Swarm healing is trivial in all versions of the encounter (from 10N to 25H); PC is the dangerous ability in p3, and that means you need PWS ready to save people, and that means no Weakened Soul.

Sorry, just wanted to clear this up for myself.

I'm pretty certain PW:S spam on Twins works, and works well. It just isn't displayed on World of Logs maybe due to the specific fight mechanic. But myself and the other healers can tell the difference when I'm not Disc on this specific fight (twins heroic).

I can see the shield's get absorbed via my grid, or by just simply looking at the shield fall off of my fellow raiders, shortly after applying it. I'm not sure if there's something else at play here, but i felt like i had to post because i wanted it clarified for myself.

We currently run 2xdruids/1xshaman/2xpaladins/1xpriest, and it's worked every week for us so far. But would i be much better of as Holy for this fight?

PW:S spam works exactly as you'd expect for Twins, but because of Weakened Soul and the way the damage occurs, Holy has stronger tools (empowered Renew, better ProM, CoH) for healing the damage.

PW:S spam is strongest against infrequent spike damage like Kologarn's Overhead Smash or Freya's Ground Tremor; it is comparatively less powerful against persistent periodic damage like the Twins aura ticks.

PW:S spam also works on Faction Champs. You can do it full time, as well as have a quicker Mass Dispel for the Bloodlust/Heroism they do, all the while be able to run around (and away from hostiles) without batting an eyelash.

You need to understand the mechanism of haste :
Hasted spells have the following cast time (with haste between 0 and 1, as a percentage).

Hasted_Cast_Time = Base_Cast_Time / (1 + haste)

This means that your first computation is wrong : with 20% haste, you get a gh at 2.5 / 1.2 ~ 2.08. You need 25% haste, as your second formula tells you.

OK, Thanks;
I can calculate that a correct value of haste for a holy priest to decrease GCD from 1,5 to 1,3 is 505 haste.