You can always try Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. PWS on a raid member, Greater Heal, Penance if you fall behind. Pretty powerful single target Tank heal spec.

I've seen that spec pop up before, The Not So Evil. I'm curious why you'd put 3 points in to Focused Will instead of Improved Flash Heal. Improved Flash Heal nets you 15% mana savings on Flash Heal as well as 12% crit on Flash Heal if your target is below 50% and all you have to give up is a flat 3% crit.

I guess it partially depends on how one would heal with that spec. If you're not casting Flash Heal a lot then Improved Flash Heal doesn't make sense.

Typically as Disc I tank heal by spamming Flash Heal, PoM on cooldown, using Penance on spikes, and a PW:S->Penance (if not on CD)->GHeal for spikes if Weakend Soul is down.

With the spec you propose would the healing style be more PoM on CD, cast cancel GHeal, PW:S->Penance->GHeal on spikes?

The main issue with the idea of burning a PWS on a raid member to get Borrowed Time to cast a quickened Greater Heal is that you end up spending more time on the PWS than you gain on the Greater Heal. If you're falling behind, wasting that part of a second is silly.

Not that I disagree with taking 5/5 Fury to get faster GHeals for when you are purely tank healing, at all. Just a comment. I also agree with the above statement about Improved Flash Heal. It's your bread & butter tank healing spell, so getting the additional healing on 50%- people is key. I do disagree with Improved Healing, as Penance is already ridiculously efficient, and you don't need the mana savings at the cost of throughput via +3% crit or Imp. FH.

The reason you use PWS on raid is not just for the Haste. With 4pc t8 you can also gain 250 spell power, and in phase 3 there is massive raid damage, so every shield is 100% consumed. This spec was originally the one I used for Algalon. You entirely replace Flash Heal with Greater Heal, and let others raid heal. The biggest benefit for this spec is that it gains a lot more from Haste as you don't hit the cap like you will with Flash Heal, at any time. 3 points in Focused Will is because it gives you a minor amount of improved healing, while you won't ever use Flash Heal if your task is to pump heals into the tank. Spec works great, but has horrid inefficiency for anything but the situations where both Raid and Tank is taking heavy damage.

I'd wager melee dps is better for Anub'arak. Also having a shield-wearing tank -really- helps for the adds. It will noticeably cut damage by a huge margin. I'd wager druid hots should be sufficient to keep a shield wearing tank up.

I don't want to spoil the fight since rules say it's still a bit forbidden, but if your healing can't keep up, maybe you should also look into lowering damage. Leeching Swarm does nature damage, Penetrating Cold does frost damage, both are resistable.

Also, your group is very melee heavy, your Moonkin would lose out on lack of caster synergy. Don't forget your Enhancement Shaman can toss heals faster than a Moonkin can (either via Maelstrom Chain Heals or just Healing Stream totem).

Absolutely. 25m Anub'arak Disc shields + Shield glyph heals are so so powerful and just what seems to be needed. 10m Anub'arak sees me Holy and HoT'ing and cursing.

Isn't the problem then the HoT, and not the PWS? Sure, you're right, Anub leeches off absorbs but since the spell effect is based on current health, that won't be any more than he does off a player's hitpoints.

Penetrating Cold doesn't tick immediately, so while I'm sure PWS on an afflicted target is effective, it's not as if there aren't other ways to keep a player from dying to the first tick.

Last night, the 10 man group I've been running with got to 30% on heroic Anub'arak twice. I was two healing it with a resto shaman partner. The first time I was holy; the second I was discipline. Both time's we were quickly overwhelmed by the healing required and ended up losing someone with around 20%, at which point everything went to hell. I have a few question for those that have done the fight.

First, is the problem the priest shaman combo, or should we be able to handle it? Would you recommend 3 healers, even if it means we need to use two burrow phases? What spec would you recommend I use? I'm equally comfortable with both.

How low can we let raid members get before they are in serious danger of dying? Can we neglect pretty much everyone besides the tanks and those with the debuff, except when we have spare cooldowns?

Any other tips for dealing with healing? I have a feeling we just need to make a few adjustments. We might have been able to figure this out with more practice, but so many of our attempts were screwed by stupid mistakes by the dps. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Priest/Shaman is probably one of the harder healing combos. I'm used to doing it with a Paladin. We "brute force" the 10-man hard mode, meaning we totally disregard trying to keep people low and just spam heals and burn him down. I go Disc. Shield someone (ideally someone with PC), PoH group 1. Shield someone else, PoH group 2, repeat.

The Swarm bottoms out at 250 health per tick (maybe less in 10-man?), I believe, so you need to keep them above that.

I really don't think the problem comes from your comp. Healing with a Shaman should work fine. I recommend trying Disc, because as Tsigo said, alternating Shield + PoH combos on the two groups really helps. I play Disc and heal it with a Resto Druid, but overall there shouldn't be anything wrong with a shaman.

Tanks are really your only concern during phase 3. PoH will keep people alive well enough, I wouldn't worry about healing them individually too much. Save your Divine Hymn for the end if things REALLY get scary, otherwise just burn him down.

On Normal I do the same as Disc. Last night i basically disregarded and kept groups at above 75% by combination of PWS/POH and Hymn. Add to that the wonders POM will do in the same situation.
Never been on heroic so cannot comment about it but POH seems a good idea as well as long as you are not the main tank healer.

Since ToC lacks the sudden explosion of damage style of fights that made Disc so good in Ulduar through pre-shielding, I find that a Holy second spec is required for some fights.

For 10 mans, when I am required to heal like a paladin i.e. my partner is a druid or another Disc Priest, I prefer to be specced Holy with all the MT talents (Inspiration, Empowered Healing, Divine Fury). With around 650 haste rating and some raid support, you are able to cast 1.3s GHeals every 5s that heals for 12-13k depending on gear/buffs. Test of Faith really shines in this role too, and you are able to support a little on raid with ProM and CoH and SoL Flash Heals - or even a 3/3 Serendipity PoH if the situation calls on it.

What IS worrying to me is that as a Ulduar/ToC25-N geared Disc priest, you are able to output 4k-6k single target HPS excluding crits and Divine Aegis. As an equivalently geared Resto shaman, your output could be around 50-60% more (I am assuming Tidal Waves). As a Holy paladin, your output could be 60-70% more (sustained) and you would also have Beacon.

Blizzard have already stated that they are happy with healing classes having niches but in making fights that will challenge shaman or paladin MT healers, are Blizzard setting the bar too high for MT Disc priests? I hope I am not soapboxing!

I tend to agree with you: I feel my main Disc spec is hitting a glass ceiling:

- our single-target throughput is not on a par with Paladins, especially since they can heal two tanks at once.
- our raid assist is getting weaker, especially with the conflict between our 2 best groups heals: Shields prevent PoM from bouncing

While I could run pretty much all of Ulduar 25H as Disc, i find I often have to switch to Holy in Coliseum:
- for mobile fights, better instant heals: Circle, PoM, Renew, and Flash (with talents), vs Shield, a not-bouncing PoM, and a very weak Renew. Even for Tank healing, Holy is better on Twins...
- raid damage in Coliseum is not bursty, but rather progressive, making PoM better, and hence Shield weaker as it stifles PoM.
- similarly, the 2xT9 PoM bonus hurts Shield... as does losing the 4xT8.

What I'm trying to do these day is NOT shield the lowest-HP player, so as not to hinder PoM. I shield "weak" targets (mages, priests...) that are at or near full life. It feels kinda contrary to the spirit of Shield, which is a very nice emergency heal for close-to-dying players, and I think Blizzard should fix this, ie by making PoM not bounce to shielded targets, or bounce, heal and move on.

Well PW:Barrier should still come somewhen. Though it's quite the question if only for 4.0 and cataclysm or before. I'm pretty certain it would be extremly desirable for those who are currently working at Anub'arak HM phase 3 right now.

The prayer of mending/power word shield problem is more of a playstyle issue than a mechanics issue. When I (and I suspect, most players) power word shield spam, the natural tendency is to hit the lowest health players first. On a fight like twin val'kyr, if your mending is on the lowest health person, you should let it bounce before shielding them (unless they'd die from the aura tick). You can put prayer of mending on your grid (or whatever healing mod you use) to facilitate this.

If I'm standing in a pile, I prefer holy for twins for the reasons you stated. However, if I'm blocking for a pile in heroic 25, I'll be discipline, since it's a lot easier to shield spam than it is to track the cooldowns and procs of your instant heals while dodging and weaving through the stream of ikargu bullets, and even with surge of light, holy can't spam instant heals constantly.

Disc is also great on faction champions, because that fight is about burst healing. Shielding everyone who gets aggro helps save a lot of lives, and penance is a great burst healing when someone gets caught by a melee class.

There's a real difference between the normal and heroic modes of the fights. Normal modes are basically sleepwalks and PWS is of minimal importance if everyone can be topped off anyway. We finally killed the first few heroic 25 man fights this week, and Jarax was an amazingly disc friendly fight, with a lot of the burst ae stuff that pre-shielding really really helps for.

Some of the posts about Anub seem to be about hardmode and others are about normal mode. In normal it is quite easy to just keep raid health high and to have everyone in a position where a Penetrating Cold tick is not going to kill them. Penetrating Cold does 3500 on normal (so max 3055 with a frost resist aura or totem and renewed hope/BoSanc) and the swarm leeches 10% (which should also get a 10% resist if you have enough shaman, but last I checked is unaffected by BoSanc/RH for some reason). That means if someone has 4055 health when they get Penetrating Cold, they will live through the next tick even without additional heals. Since everyone in the raid is losing 9% of their health every second, that means you need 365 healing per second to each person in the raid plus whatever tank healing you need and then reactive healing after people take the first tick. In a 10-man that means about 2.9k raid healing, in 25-man about 8k raid healing. Both are trivial numbers. This also means you are healing anub by the same amount, but that is a very small fraction of your dps.

On heroic the Cold ticks do 6000 (5238 through reduction effects) and the swarm leeches 20% on 10 or 30% on 25 (apologies if this is wrong, I used the datamined value from since I don't play 25s). That means that on the 10-person raid you need to have 9500 to live through the first tick, and in 25-man they need 13465 health. For 10-man that means you would need raid healing on the order of 1710 per person per second, or about 13,680 raid healing. Remember, that's before you heal the tanks or put extra healing on the penetrating cold targets. It also means you are healing Anub for the damage of more than 2 of your dpsers. This is mathematically possible, and the number is actually less than this as you are likely rolling Wild Growths or some other HoTs, but this strategy is completely outrageous. On 25-man the amount of healing needed to keep the entire raid at that value is unattainable, and would negate more than half your raid's dps if you could do it.

Power Word: Shield is the best tool to react to Penetrating Cold. It places a large instant heal on someone that doesn't increase the swarm damage they are taking in the next couple of seconds. A shield makes sure people live through that first tick, which is why I don't PW:S the raid during that stage of the fight. This is especially effective on 10-man where there are only two penetrating cold targets, because one priest can be in charge of making the penetrating cold targets live (there is no need to coordinate) which is good for reaction time. For these reasons, I ended up specing Holy with Soul Warding (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) so that I could shield the cold targets and cast more powerful direct heals (aided to a great extent by an always active test of faith) without using shield the rest of the time. Body and Soul was an added benefit to help people out getting away from packs of scarabs.

It's true that discipline has absolutely rotten single target healing output compared to the other classes (people mention shamans and paladins, but druids are also far superior in terms of direct heals), but discipline still proves extremely effective on almost every fight, because it has the best instant heal (it's a shield, but it does the same thing for raid damage) and is the only spec with real shielding capability. If tanks are taking their entire health pool or near that in single hits or short bursts bursts, or raid members are taking sudden massive damage that threatens to kill them in a couple of seconds then discipline priests are amazing. If not then they everyone going to get healed to full pretty quickly by any combination of healers (I don't mean to diminish the importance of other healers here, but unless you are bringing multiple discipline priests to the same raid then you are going to have someone else there, and any of them can do the get-the-tanks-health-up job very well). Basically, it is only in very odd situations (leeching swarm is one) that having the large disadvantage in raw possible hps is really a problem, and if it weren't for the fact that the power word: shield was needed for another purpose, shield-PoH spamming (or just PoH spamming) would rival any other classes raid healing capability. The problem with having lower hps numbers probably won't materialize until Blizz decides to go through with their supposed plans to increase health pools and slow down healing, which won't be until 4.0 if it ever happens at all, and then everything will be substantially rebalanced.

Every hard mode Anub'arak parse I've seen brought two discipline priests and no priests of any other spec. Given that you generally just want one discipline priest per fight, I'd say that's clear evidence discipline has an advantage here.

We brought 1 disc priest, for what it's worth. You don't "need" Disc priests, it's just that PWS is incredibly good for Phase 3.

Again, Disc's raid healing qualities and utility are widely recognised. I'm highlighting single target (MT healer) HPS, in which case I feel that Holy has greatly outscaled Disc for the reasons outlined above. Disc is fantastic for raid healing 2 Penetrating Cold before they tick @ P3 of Anub HC, however, if your paladins or shamans don't login that night, a Disc priest would be significantly challenged doing their role.

Do you think a Paladin or Shaman could perform the role of the Disc in that same fight? I'll agree you do not have nearly the raw HPS of any of the other healers when it comes to single target but, a Shaman struggles to do what a Disc Priest can do on that fight and a Paladin simply cannot.

I think that fight is a very bad example to show off their worth since a resto shaman also brings mana tide and healing stream for Anub