I am the person who usually makes healing assignments for my guild's raids and I'd appreciate any criticism or advice on how I've been doing things.

99% of the time our healing team is composed of two Holy Paladins, a Holy Priest, a Resto Druid, and a Resto Shaman. I'm not worried too much about assigning tank healers. I usually just assign each Paladin a tank and they are good at keeping them up while spot healing the raid and helping out each other as necessary. If I ever need a third tank healer, I assign our Resto Shaman to that job. If we happen to only have one Paladin and no Disc Priest, I assign the Resto Shaman as our second tank healer.

Mostly I wonder if I can do any better when assigning raid healers. For most fights I end up just telling myself (the Holy Priest), the Resto Druid, and the Resto Shaman to "heal the raid" and that's it. In certain fights (e.g. Northrend Beasts) I've asked the Resto Shaman to specifically focus on our melee and that can help. When we have multiple Holy Priests, I find it useful to divvy up the groups so that we don't overlap PoH. How would you recommend I improve my raid healing assignments? Do others find it useful to assign individual raid healers their own groups?

Overall I think my guild has been pretty successful in the healing department. I'm just looking for opportunities to improve.

I was Discipline for the first wing in ICC. I felt like Disc brought more to the table up through Saurfang because damage tended to be more RSTS/spiky than raid wide in all four of those fights. However, I've switched back to holy because the first wing is now easy for us and the second and third wings feel less spiky and more raid-wide-damage to me.

When it comes to Holy vs. Disc I prefer Disc when I think I can save lives with it. I'm thinking of fights where a quick PW:S or Penance is going to save someone who would otherwise die. When it comes to lots of raid wide damage I prefer CoH + Renew to keep the raid topped off. Especially given that my raids usually have a single Resto Druid, I like having the raid healing HPS of a Holy Priest.

Either way, I don't think our healing composition is an issue. What I'm curious about is whether or not others have had success with more specific raid healing assignments and what those assignments are.

As far as general raid healing, we rely on each individual healer being smart enough to adjust according to the immediate need. Generally, assigning specific groups or individuals does not usually lead better success, as long as you trust the raid healers will stop their mindless spamming of the raid whenever there are dangerous spikes to individuals or a small group.

If you find that your raid healers are tunnel visioning the raid and not taking care of the critical situations (for example slime victims on Putricide), then assigning some heals and accountability is probably the smart way to go. But even that situation, it is often hard to specific assign healing because the positioning of each healer in comparison to all the dps is not always predictable (for example, if you get a 2nd green slime target and people are blown in different directions from the first green slime target).

The only fight we assign healing for is for PC targets when we go back to Anub'arak heroic.

I'll be doing BQL for the first time on 10man tonight. I'd love some advice on whether I should be disc or holy for this encounter. I'm asking this not to start up the holy vs. disc general argument but based on my group's specific composition. I will be healing with two resto shaman.

May not sound like the best composition but the two players are very strong healers and we always excel with this combo on 10mans because of their individual performance. It does not go as smoothly when we bring in other players of different classes. The three of us just work better together.

I'm leaning towards disc since they will bring the aoe heals in force. I think a bit of preventative healing may be in order for this reason. I know I can always switch if it's not working for me. I would appreciate some feedback ahead of time however to make the best of our 15 attempts. Feedback is appreciated. Again I'm not looking to rekindle the general disc. vs. holy arguments. I specifically would like opinions based on my group's composition. Thanks!

The caster DPS and healers may be too spread out on blood queen to let chain heal bounce optimally. I'd recommend going holy and letting the shamans cover the tanks and melee and focus yourself on keeping up the ranged dps and healers mostly with renew and prayer of mending. Obviously you should cover for each other when anyone has to move for pact of the darkfallen or swarming shadows.

Pact of the Darkfallen only affects two targets on 10 man. Blood mirror is the damage done on the tank and the player closest to them, the offtank.

We downed Blood-Queen Lana'thel last night on 10 man. Healing was done by me speced disc, a resto druid and a shadow priest.

We started off with me pre-shielding and the druid pre-hotting the entire raid. I used fear ward on myself as well to be able to mass dispell the fear she does. I reapplied fear ward after she had feared, to be ready for second fear.

During the encounter I kept shield up on all raid members, kept PoM on cooldown, keep renew on key dps and tank, and used penance as a emergency heal. I also use a couple of PoH along the way. Flash heal was used as filler when I had the time.

We let our shadow priest be the first bite target after her initial bite, to raise his passive healing.

As I recall I was almost at 4k hps from shield alone.

I had a hard time tank healing Festergut the other day. My question is - is a Disc priest with a 5.1k GS capable of solo-healing the tanks during 10 man Festergut?

I was assigned to only heal the tanks. I never healed anyone in the raid. I spammed flash heal/penance/pws/pom on the first tank until the switch, then I began doing the same on the second tank. Shortly after the first tank switch I was down to 25% of my mana (I had around 27k buffed). During the time it took to cast shadowfiend I fell behind on heals and the tank died, even after using Pain Suppression. (The boss was around 40% I think). Both tanks had 45k HP, and I was healing with a resto druid and resto sham. I don't know if they were helping to heal the tanks.

When I am unable to keep someone alive, I assume it is my fault (even though sometimes I find out later that the tank failed to switch after too many stacks; or we hit an enrage timer). So my question is: was this my fault? Should a properly geared/specced Disc priest be able to keep both tanks alive alone without running into mana issues?

For some background, I normally play as a shadow priest; I am specced disc for arena and pvp. I know that an optimal PVE spec differs from my current spec, however the PVE spec and my spec looked close enough where I thought could get by, at least for 25 toc and 10 man ICC (at least the first wing). I also have a similarly geared Holy Paladin.

My gear isn't overwhelming, but I think it is adequate for ICC 10 and TOC 25 (all triumph badge gear, two pieces of tier 9.5, and the rest 232 ICC 5man gear - around a 5.1k GS). My paladin has similar gear.

Here is a link to my armory (The pants are gemmed for int/haste with brilliant spellthread)
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...rgath&cn=Ciril

On a side note,

I read from other disc priests who say they never run OOM. In the 5 man heroics up to TOC I have no mana issues, and I do ok in 25 man Onyxia as well. But when I do TOC 25 or ICC 10 I have constant mana problems. I even have mana issues during Halls of Reflection, regardless of the gear of the tank. Essentially I find myself spamming flash of light, penance, and PWS as fast as I can just to keep up with the damage. However, I can't do this very long before I run close to OOM. My paladin has no such issues - I have enough healing power that I don't need to spam HL over and over, and even when I do, I can chain cast much longer than my disc priest can.

I've been our guild's dedicated Disc Priest for ICC, and I focus the MT on Festergut 100% of the time as well. I stand on the tank and spam heals like you do, but the difference is that my guild's Holy Priest keeps up Renew on the MT as well as the Resto Druid keeping up Rejuv and tossing the occasional Swiftmend if I fall behind. I think with your gear and spec, you'll be hard-pressed to keep the tank up "solo", and you're going to run out of mana without help.

Here's some things that I'd recommend: First, Twin Disciplines, Enlightenment, Improved Flash Heal, and Renewed Hope are all your friends. You'll be healing harder and faster, and costing yourself less mana while seeing the tank take less damage by picking up more traditional PVE talents. I might drop your points in Divine Fury and move them to Imp. Renew and Holy Spec. as well, as I'm guessing you aren't using Gheal on Festergut anyway. The benefits of a stronger renew and a bit more crit outweigh the "nothing" of faster gheals you aren't casting

Secondly, bite the bullet and invest in some more epic gems. If you plan to be Disc regularly, I'd suggest either Runed Cardinal Rubies or Luminous Ametrine, depending on the slot color. Spirit gives us very marginal benefits, and you've got plenty of haste already. Get yourself a cloak enchant

You mentioned both that you think you're adequately geared for ToC25 and ICC10, but also that you have serious mana issues at that tier. Cleaning up your gear and spec will help a lot with that. After that, communicate with the other healers that are with you and let them know that you'll need some help from them in terms of constant HOT uptime, and cool-downs on reserve if you get behind. During our transition back to p1 after the tank swap I'll tell the other healers that I'm gonna sing for a bit, then I'll cast Shadowfiend, Inner Focus, Divine Hymn, and Hymn of Hope, with shields in between the hymns to keep the tank topped off and haste through the long casts. Our guild usually gets the kill around the 3 minute mark, so mana isn't an issue at all for me with that strat.

I agree with everything that’s been said on the subject but I wanted to emphasize and add a few things. As Sjonkel said, you shouldn't be healing the tank(s) alone, when damage on the tank ramps up, AoE should go down, so make sure your fellow healers help you out during the second and especially third parts. While a PvP and PvE disc builds are at least 90% similar, there is a big difference, survival vs. longevity. Basically Improved Flash Heal and Renewed Hope will really help your mana last, you can give up things like Unbreakable Will and Absolution for them.

I'm not sure which pieces are parts of your shadow set too, but [Luminous Ametrine] will increase your mana pool, as opposed to Reckless, which while helping throughput, will drain your mana faster if you spam. SP/Spirit is not ideal for disc, [Royal Dreadstone] will give you more regeneration. How are your raid buffs? Make sure you have at least one and better yet two DPS providing Replenishment, it makes a big difference with our large mana pools. Arcane Intellect and Mp5 (BoW or Mana Spring Totem) will also help you last. Finally, try Shielding yourself and using Shadow Fiend with Divine Hymm after the explosion, when tank damage drops significantly. Hopefully the AoE heals can keep the tank high enough for those few seconds.

I decided to stay disc last night for Blood Queen Lana'thel (10man). It actually worked out really well. I had no issues at all with healing it. The two shamans seemed to keep us at a "safe" level of health with ease and we one-shotted it.

Earlier in the evening however we attempted the encounter on 25man. I was disc but I believe next time I will be going holy. For myself, I think that the sheer throughput wins out in that fight. It seemed like too many people were dangerously low in hp for the majority of the fight. Of course that's no doubt the terrible raid awareness and positioning that tends to plague our guild on new content. The learning curve is a bit steep for a few unfortunate souls. We ran with one pally, 3 shaman, 2 resto druids and myself.

Did anyone figure out the mechanics of Guardian Spirit on Dreamwalker? We went with 2 holy priests tonight and we both got the message "invalid target" a couple of times when trying to chain guardian spirits back to back. It seemed like there was some kind of hidden cooldown on the ability.