Sebalot

I removed Inner Focus too. I haven't run out of mana except for one Razorscale attempt where I as holy ended up having to bomb MT with Greater Heal for phase 2. Outside that, I haven't experienced any problems. I switch to discipline if I have to pay attention to tanks. Discipline is better for raid healing than holy is for tank healing.

If you run with two holy palas, it can become a bit crowded running with a discipline priest as a full time tank healer. But discipline seems excellent keeping an eye on tanks with shields and penance, while helping out with raidhealing (PoH for raidwide damage, shields to buy time for healers and PoM for general bouncing around). I never reflected how much time you have doing other stuff as tank healer once you familiarize yourself with the damage the boss deals out so I spend a lot of time throwing out shields on people.

On Kologarn we tried leading out the beams through the door. Speeding up people with PW:S as holy was not only very effective, it is also fun. It is slightly gimmicky but has some strategic value in some ulduar fights. It will be amazing for all kiting jobs also.

 

Lambi

It's completely insane on Yogg'Saron, Deconstructor and Mimiron too. And as you said, I've never had this much fun with a talent before

SNAKE!

 

Healixor

My main spec is disc, but offspec is holy. I skipped Body and Soul, I thought it was more PvPish, I don't know how often it's really usefull (I'm a dorf if I get a posion I use stoneform). It would be imba if abolish disease also would cleanse a posion of another player, but else I think I could use the 2 points somewhere else :P

 

Starfire

Speed boosts are an often overlooked and terribly underrated utility.

See how many of your rogues/melee use Run speed enchants, for example.

[e] I was actually hinting at using it as a dps increase. I remember some TBC era theorycraft showing it as up to a 7% dps increase for melee. Point was Body and Soul brings incredible raid utility, it's just bein underrated and overlooked. I promise your melee will openly thank you for 60% movement speed when they have to swap from say the Heart to Scrapbots.

I really am not going to highlight all it's uses, but I hope that example is good enough to see it's many applications in Ulduar.

 

Hegen

Yes, run speed effects and enchants are often discarded as not necessary once everyone knows exactly what to do and when.

This is certainly true, however, once everyone knows exactly what to do and when - it's already farm content, and then it's entirely irrelevant which exact spec or enchant is used. But as long as mistakes happen and reflexes and visual orientation in new encounters are not at a 100% level, the one most important thing is for people to stay alive, and this begins with the healers.

In progression content (whatever that may be for a player), this is a whole lot more important than gaining another 2% effectiveness on some spell.

B&S is amazing, and I am already missing it when playing discipline, for example when I need to get people out of the way of these whirlwinding mobs at Razorscale.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

tasha

They don't use the enchant to avoid fire and make the healers' life easier. :P
It's because as long as you spend some time running from one target to another, as a melee, a speed boost is a dps increase. And compared to a dps enchant, the running time cap is very very low for the speed to become better dps wise.

Anyway, BnS will probably be discussed more in depth in a theroycrafting place. ^^
To get back on Ulduar, I'm wondering in how many fights lightwell is useful? (assuming your raiders are really really lazy...)

 

Shawn

Vezax hardmode. Can't think of anything else really, but from my PTR-experience it really shines in that scenario. Then again you probably want to spec Disc for that fight anyway...

 

Synge

Our guild just got passed Kologarn on 25man and then we all went to bed due to being too late =)

Here's some information from my personal experience, though:

Razorscale - Very easy to heal. Holy or Discipline shouldn't matter much at all.

Ignis - This guy is rough. After I switched over to my Discipline off-spec, though, my sole job became ensuring that I kept PW:S up on everyone in the raid as much as possible. This helped tremendously and wasn't too bad on the mana as Flame Jets broke everyone's shield eventually.

XT-002 - I found Holy to be a much better approach on healing for this fight. Make sure to DPS the heart when it's exposed along side the actual DPS classes because the enrage timer is quite short on this guy. Every little bit helps

Iron Council - This can either be done as Holy or Discipline without much problem at all. I chose to go Discipline to PW:S the Steelbreaker tank as Fusion Punch was incoming. All in all, this fight is incredibly easy.

Kologarn - Absurd amount of raid damage on this fight. Make sure Grid or Healbot is setup to display the grip (as detailed earlier in this thread). We did our first few attempts on this guy as me being Holy, but I actually found Discipline to be more valuable (bought other healers time to heal up the gripped people thanks to PW:S).

 

jusion

CoH, PoM, and PoH rape this fight. The only way disc would make things easier is if you were tank healing.

 

HealthMonkey

There seems to be a lot of extra work put in to getting debuffs on Grid, why not just use the original solution:

Grid Status Raid Debuff

It seemed to have Slag Pot, Stone Grip, and the others encountered so far. See the comments for adding LightBomb in 25 man.

-HM

 

Shawn

To be honest I don't understand everybody's obsession with Disc. On our 25 man-clear I tried a 57/14/0 spec on every encounter at least once and I simply didn't feel useful with it at all. I see the point in shielding people on Razorscale to prevent deaths from 3 consecutive breaths on a single target. But even there I felt taking care of a tank with a Renew and a PoM on cooldown while playing Flash Heal whack-a-mole to be alright. Healing the Wing Buffet is a perfect job for CoH + Serendipity PoH.

Do you feel useful doing nothing but shielding people on Ignis? Because the whole fight screams "Holypriest ftw!" in my opinion. Renew + Flash Heal on tanks to build Serendipity-stacks, PoM + Flash Heal on Slag Pot-targets. Once he casts Flame Jets I PoM myself, CoH the melees and cast two hasted PoH on ranged/healers.

As long as the Serendipity clipping works the way it does right now I don't see any reason to spec Disc. We were running with two Holy Paladins most of the time so tank healing was almost completely taken care of by them. Most encounters have some kind of massive AoE or similar raid damage and Holy seems to be the perfect tool to take care of it.

All the buzz about Body and Soul makes me definitely reconsider it. I think I'll get a secondary Holy-spec with B&S for the encounters that could become easier with it (e.g. Deconstructor and Freya on bomb targets, Kologarn on eye beam targets, Vezax on tank).

 

Dorvan

If you're primarily a raid healer, Holy is overall stronger then Disc.....I don't think there's anything shocking there. Disc shines on tanking healing, and a Disc/HolyPal pairing on a tank is very powerful. Disc provides damage reduction, large effective health increases, and excellent emergency burst, while a Holy Paladin provides the massive thoughput via HL spam. I'd much rather have one of each of a tank than two of either class.

It sounds like you spec'ed Disc and then spent your whole time raid healing....given that your preference for Holy is unsurprising.

 

Sharajat

I was disc on Thorim, and thanks to a dps or two dead in the lead up (I forget how many) the blows were getting very, very hard by the time he was dead. I dropped a shield (for ~7k) on the tank every time, and by the last one the tank was at about 5k health through the shield. I had Pain suppression ready on the tank for the next blow (we killed him about 2 seconds before it landed).

I'm not saying that it's NECESSARY to raid with a disc priest, but they're damn helpful on certain fights. I'm disc/holy though, and I certainly have no intention of changing that formula up - Holy is just too useful on many fights.

 

Ziykuna

During our Raids i was not shure if dizi or holy was the better desicion. I decided to play holy for the next time, because I like the group heals very much and there are a lot of encounter with massive dmg on the whole raid. But I think 50/50 holy/dizi is really nice anyway.


Raid: My role was to heal the Raid
3x Flash Heal -> 1 Greater Healy or Prayer of Healing and CoH everytime its avalible and necessary.

There was simply no time to cast Renew on somebody because the dmg on random people is not constant but very high. With no doubt its a really good Spell for fights like Saphiron where everyone gets constant dmg - I think there is one with "Aura-dmg" but even than its doubful to spend 6 talents for one paticular fight and therefore I dropped "Improved Renew" an "Empowerd Renew"

 

Ezee

I'm loving Ulduar so far. And the new priest abilities. Divine hymn has become the new "Oh S*$@" button (which I still occasionally forget about).

I am, and always have been, a big fan of holy spec and raid healing. I'm not big on disc and tank healing. however, as stated here, both specs are awesome, equally, and situationally.

The new targetable PoH is a total lifesaver thus far. We got Mimiron down today, the last of the watchers and we're on to Vezax tomorrow. But PoH, in the Mimiron encounter, is absolute win in P2/P4.

As for thorim... yeah that gets pretty intense toward the end. 25 man on normal mode was fine, and as long as your DPS nuke him down fast enough (<3 my DPS peeps - they rock) the damage doesn't become unbearable.

Now... Thorim on 10 man hard mode... I was disc and tank healing, and that, my friends - is INTENSE!!

Good luck to all on your endeavours into Ulduar.

 

meddle

We are having a lot of trouble on General Vezax in 10man. Specifically looking for tips on how to manage mana. I mean, we're standing in vapors of course but it doesn't seem enough to get through the encounter.

We run a Disc Priest, Holy Priest (Me), and a Resto Shaman. Considering speccing into Lightwell w/Glyph of Lightwell. Already I am kind of stepping on the other priest's toes, so to speak, during the kiting phase when I am shielding the tank for Body & Soul and he still has Weakened Soul. That's more due to bad coordination than anything, though.

I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly as bad being Discipline, but as I mentioned we are running another Discipline Priest.

Edit: On a completely unrelated note, is anyone considering digging out their 2piece T6 for "PoH Spam"

 

Bottles

You explained why you felt useless: there were 2 other holy paladins. More than 2 tank healers in a 25man raid is overkill imo, and excess baggage. The third one will most likely just either overheal a lot or try to heal the raid in a very gimped way.

Also, am I the only one who prefered the old devine hymm :/ The new one, although not completely useless and more potent per target, feels like such a gimped version. The old one was perfect on aoe fights like after a Malygos vortex or while waiting for Sapphiron's frost bombs, and was even nice to have during pvp. It also had a much shorter cast time as opposed to being channeled.


As a Disc priest, it annoys me to no end when another priest shields the tank, especially on fights where I have something that looks like a rotation for big spikes, like for example, whenever our guild is doing Sartharion, there's a holy priest who keeps having his shield on the MT whenever he can for some reason, even though he's assigned to raid heal. When a breath is incoming, I try to PWS the MT and what do I see? He already has the weakened soul debuff, but no shield on him because the holy priest had put his tiny one up 10 seconds earlier >> Same thing for Malygos' breaths, makes me want to tear my hair out. The thing is, he's not just preventing me from making the tank take less actual damage, he's also screwing up my mana regen D:

 

EmeraldArcana

Hi all, just thought I'd let you know that I did some spec, gear, and healstyle adjustments, and I'm doing much better now healing on some of the bosses. Did a PUG Sarth-25 w/ 20 people and did well, healing people through glitched fire walls. Did a Hodir on 10 today as well and healed that without many problems (ran low on mana but never OOM). I decided to prioritize the AOE healing abilities over Renew boosting and now I feel like a real raid healer. Thanks for your help. Eagerly looking forward to some epic mafs on priests over the next few days.

 

Erzz

Doing Mimiron makes me want Inner Focus again. Seriously considering getting it lol. The time between phases is god for regenning the mana, and that fight is suck a fucking mana drain, 'specially phase 2. Sighh.

 

Starfire

The good news is, Phase 3 takes virtually no mana. But as I said earlier, using Inner Focus on Divine Hymn just seems like an obvious thing to do. It saves the 2100 mana on the cast and allows 8ish seconds of OFSR regeneration. That's mana well spent for 1 talent point, imo. (Not to mention some ridiculous healing, my Divine Hymn had something like 60k healing in 1 attempt).

 

Ashyllin

Inner Focus + Divine Hymn is full of win and ponies. On Ignis and XT, I've done 110K+ effective healing in one Divine Hymn cast, for no mana. 80-110K seem pretty typical for my guild's Holy Priests. It's a "get out of big raid raid damage for free" card.

 

Plitschplatsch

As an alternative to the Auriaya pull:
We pulled with a warlock pet, after that the tanks picked up/got misdirected to the adds with cooldowns up from healers and themselves, e.g. shieldwall , guardian spirit and all the other tricks we know from avoiding nasty sarth breaths.
It was my impression that divine hymn poped during the pull made it considerably easier, for one the healing output is insane for a few seconds and always goes to the person who really needs it and the healing from all the other healers gets increased at well.
We didn't set up a proper rotation for it since it was just something i did by myself when it was available, but i'd recommend to try to use it one or two seconds after the pull ( i tried casting it at the pull but draw aggro after 2 seconds).

 

brandyx

In Disc spec it is even better! I'm getting tons of crits and Divine Aegis is proccing all over. Just awesome! Half of the raid is in my bubbles!

 

Armida

After one disastrous attempt, we ended up trying the pull with 5 tanks... a little absurd, but it went smoothly.

Hunter misdirect to the MT who was LOS from boss pathing, DPS was extremely light for the first ~5 seconds or so to ensure the tanks could retain threat on their target.

2 Holy Paladins -> Warrior MT
Discipline Priest -> Prot Paladin
Restoration Druid -> Bear Druid
Restoration Druid -> DK
Holy Priest -> Warrior

All tanks blew their cooldowns on the pull, with myself (Disc for this fight) & our Holy Priest popping PS & GS where needed. There was some issues with spike damage on the Druid and DK tank, but tossing out a few shields was more than enough to help the other healers catch up.

We didn't wipe once on the initial pull after putting this setup in place. However, forgetting to move the healers into a Shaman group for Tremor Totem most definitely did =P

 

Khay_

I was raidhealing (13/58 holy priest) on The Assembly of Iron and I can't stress enough how great PoM was working during the phase all three mobs were up. PoM was 30-35% of my total heals and I had a HPS around 3,5k-4,5k. I were flashing x3, throwing away a fast PoH on groups that needed it the most. Using CoH and PoM as soon as I could. I went down max 50% on mana but had time to regen alot before I acctually needed to throw out any heals again. I was telling the other 2 priests (both disc) about my thoughts and on every other attempts the priests were high up on the meters. I know the meters isn't what counts, but it's nice sometimes to have data to analyse and hopefully helps you improve.

Anyone got any advices on phase 2 and 3 on the same fight?