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Which is the more idiot-proof? Disc or Holy
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Post by
GenXCub
So, I have 4 80 healers. Shaman, Druid, Priest, Paladin. The priest is Disc, and never run as holy. The shaman and druid are what I'd consider the closest to my comfort zone as far as style of healing.
I've gotten more comfortable healing heroic 5-mans with the disc priest, but it seems like nearly every fight in a pug is more difficult to handle than when I'm on my shaman or druid. It's like a little contest to see who can make the healer's hair get pulled out the fastest. I'm doing PoH far more than I should be in most cases.
Yeah yeah, don't pug, or pugs do that. I get it.
It is easier for me to handle on my shaman though. I have a confidence that I can handle those situations with minimal deaths.
Would moving to a standard 13/58 holy build make those situations better?
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174266
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Post by
Aldones
For heroics...holy, for raiding...disc
CoH is an amazing spell for heriocs...instant and heals everyone. However, as disc, its closer to a pally...as holy, its closer to a druid/shammy.
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Post by
GenXCub
PoM tends to just get bounced to the one person who doesn't take damage and it's done. I don't like PoM in heroics. (Yes, I still use it, but I see it as being not very useful, compared to fights like Sapphiron)
I get the tank healing. That's fine. I shield people who take damage, but it always gets burned through, so I end up having to say bollocks and PoH the groups.
I think I just don't like that Penance and PoH are long cast times compared to what a Chain Heal gives me (and the Tidal Waves that CH generates makes for fast, sub-1-second spot heals).
It's like, if I'm in a group where multiple people are going to be 2-shotted, i'm kind of screwed as a priest. Do any priests here also run Shamans and can see where I'm coming from? It almost seems like priests were meant to be strictly tank or strictly raid, and aren't very optimal for 5-man healing.
Post by
Kaeldin
PoH is clearly a Holy spec feature^^ if you spam it too much go Holy for sure...
Disc is MT healing, if they ask you anything different than single target/2 targets healing go Holy... Disc sucks in AoE heals...
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387103
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Post by
GenXCub
There is no cast time on Penance. The effect begins instantly (after travel time) and is fully effected in 2 sec less any effects of haste. It's win. There are not many spells with more hp/s.
But you can't cast another spell for 3 seconds. The initial effect may be instant, but that's not what I really care about.
I see penance as a replacement for Greater Heal, Holy Light or Healing Wave. It's a larger heal. There's nothing about it, to me, that makes it better than those spells. The fact that it's channeled makes it just as unwieldy as GH or HW, but with a cooldown. If it didn't have a cooldown, I think I'd be more okay with it.
I use shields because that's what the class does, but to me, shields are like taking a loan out at the bank. I still have to heal them, usually with flash heal.
I guess my butthurt about all of this is that the Disc priest is the only remaining healer that has to do one target at a time. Everything with LK has become about AoE, both in dealing damage, and taking damage.
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Post by
GenXCub
If you have to heal a DPS THAT much, then it's an agro issue -> tell them to stop getting it.
This isn't the point of my post. I can heal a good group with any of my healers, I'm quite competent with it.
When I heal with my shaman, I feel it is more idiot-proof. people will say "well, your DPS is just being noobs, let them die, or don't group with them" and that's all well and good, but to say that doesn't happen is just not the way WoW works.
A good healer will keep the tank alive, an awesome healer will keep the whole party alive, despite people being dumb. There is a line where it becomes impossible, but some healing classes have a further line than others.
Everyone has jumped on the "disc is awesome" bandwagon that I see all throughout this forum, but my question is...
is holy more conducive to healing parties full of dumbasses when they don't do things right?
Shamans are very tolerant of this, paladins even moreso since they're so much more difficult to kill if things go really crazy.
Post by
Kaeldin
One more thing -
There are a couple of instances which are a lot harder than others. For example, AN is much harder without a shaman in the group. I have not tried it as disc yet. The rest aren't so bad - boss/group depending.
did this easily in priest... both Holy and Disc
and it was my first time playing Holy^^ no wipes... the group was not bad too, that helped a bit... why you say its needed a shammy?
Post by
Aldones
In case you haven't figured it out, Penance has 3 parts when it heals. The first part comes instantly, the second part comes after a second, and the third part comes at the end off the channel. It heals for about 2x what FHeal does and only costs about 100 more mana. When fully talented and glyphed, the spell has a 6.4s CD. For me, Penance will heal anywhere from 10-16.5k hp in less than 2 seconds. Furthermore, disc has talents that improve our FHeal, and a much better shield than holy.
However, Holy has CoH, on a 6s CD. This gives everybody in your raid a good amount of healing instantly. Holy should also be glyphed into CoH, this gives an additional 20% HoT for the next 6s after the initial healing. As well as a much better Renew and PoM.
As far as what's better for heroics, it really boils down to what you know better, and for me that's disc. I haven't specced holy since 3.1. If your just starting, I'd say holy is better for when you have a whole group of idiots, but disc is better for just 1 or 2 idiots.
PoM is your main idiotproof spell. The "idiot" pulls aggro or gets hurt in some way, and the spell passively gives them 3-4k healing and moves on to the next idiot to get hurt.
On a boss like Loken, while I have np as disc, every time I go there I wish I could respec to Holy. With all that AoE dmg (yes, I never let my "idiots" run), the extra AoE healing capabilites would be much nicer. Preload a PoH and follow it immediatly by a CoH, and you'll be good to go. It gets a little more complicated as disc.
Really, when it boils down to it, user preference is what it takes to heal. No one can tell you what is better b/c it depends on which class you feel more comfortable playing w/.
Post by
Skadja
In a situation like this:
Pally in outland quest greens/blues tanking Nexus: "Stuns do more threat than extra holy damage" -- using precisely the wrong Seal for tanking. And the poor hunter finally resorting to simply autoshooting in frustration and STILL pulling aggro off the tank when he didn't have cooldowns available. The pally even rezzed me after one boss fight then immediately ran out further into the dungeon and pulled while I had no health and no mana and was still eating/drinking. So with little health and mana I ran straight into some mobs the group had run past while trying to catch up in time to get in range of the group to shield him, hit Shadowfiend, and attempt emergency wipe prevention. Made us all wipe, oops. Though I kinda deserved it nobody blamed me though, everyone was just furious with the pally >.>
Everyone
shoulda hung back and let the pally go commit suicide, but oh well.
...I find that I CAN keep a group up like that as holy and complete a dungeon (did wipe 2x on that), but it takes a lot of work and some mad triage. PoM on cooldown constantly and CoH got a lot of use, too. The tank and later the Rogue -- frankly he was more useful -- had Renew or Gift on them a lot while I saved people's butts with shield + Flash (or shield, CoH for the group, Flash) as needed. If the butt wasn't in immediate danger of death, obviously no shield was required.
Wasn't using Serendipity at that time, would have gone a bit better if I had.
On the bright side, PoM will never bounce to a useless target in a situation like this. >.>
Naturally, since in a bad PuG you're pumping out tons of healing and agg isn't being managed in the first place, you take a fair bit of agg yourself, too. But that can be managed through fading or shielding and running past someone who can pull off of you. All else fails, Desperate Prayer. And if all THAT fails, Spirit of Redemption.
Holy's nice in that it gets a fair number of "OH SHI--" buttons. Desperate Prayer, Guardian Spirit, and Spirit of Redemption are a good combo when agg is unmanaged.
The biggest problem is running OOM since you can't manage mana quite so efficiently when you're constantly running in emergency mode, even with Pots and Shadowfiend...at which point a wipe is just about inevitable in a group like that. If the group is lucky, you die first and get SoR >.>
It wasn't a Heroic run but then I was only something like level 72 ;) A more experienced and skilled healer than I am could probably handle bad pugs in heroics with all of Holy's tools.
And I'm absolutely in awe of a disc healer who can keep groups like that up with its focus on single target healing and lack of poweful AoE. You disc guys rock.
Post by
Aldones
Meh, keeping retards alive isn't hard...though when you get tanks that have never heard of the word "aggro," it does get interesting.
I tend to get a lot of wars that sit at 100 rage while everyone else takes all the damage...fun times.
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