3.0.2 Priests

[mackenziemi]

So currently I have my Priest speced holy for max heals for my group. I have been reading about how they have made some adjustments to the Discipline tree to make it more viable for healing. I even found one post that went so far as to say that it was the best healing tree for single target healing. I am wondering what your thoughts are on this and how it might work in a multiboxing enviornment?

[algol]

Multiboxers usually don't want a single-target healer?

[mackenziemi]

True Circle of Healing is my friend, however there are places that I have mana issues with my priest. Where having epic gear isnt going to be possible while leveling in Northrend I am wondering if this is a viable option to solve the mana issue

[Malekyth]

If you're using a tank in your multiboxing team, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to emphasize strong single-target heals ... though I can't answer the OP because my priest is Holy. :) I haven't heard about the changes to Discipline, though a couple guys I worked with awhile back considered a Discipline priest mandatory in their 10-man raids, fwiw ...

[Spook]

My current, and final RAF group has two priests, once shadow, and one discipline (plust 3xWarlocks). The Disc priest is the healer, and does fine, although healing a lock group is pretty easy, and I'm very low level, only Lv45, and haven't run any instances.

My last RAF group, (1xPalyy, 1xHoly Priest, 3xFire Mage) that I leveled to 60 just prior to this patch, placed a bit more demand on the healer, and the Holy priest DID seem to be stronger than my disc priest.

Since you don't have to be Holy anymore to get Holy Nova, the difference isn't all that great, and I like being able to put the Spirit buff on the group, that now includes a bonus to spell damage. Only time will tell whether I'll miss circle of healing, from the Holy talent tree!

[Ateleiotos]

From what litle I've read, it seems that PW: Shield is the cornerstone of Discipline healing. It of course prevents a lot of damage but apparently there is a high level talent that produces procs which grant bonuses to your single target healing spells. So you use PW: S liberally and proc bonuses similar to those in the holy talent tree and the spell becomes about as strong as a Holy Priest heal. At least that's how I understood it to work, but I admit I read only enough to decide to remain holy for now. I'll look at it again while running WotLK dungeons.

[Vyndree]

Almost all healers are having mana issues (or at least, MORE mana issues than they used to) thanks to the revamp of downranking.

Even as discipline, I have a feeling that you're still going to OOM. The standard practice for healers is to utilize /stopcasting macros for mana efficiency -- i.e. Queue up a big heal, and if the tank takes no damage, /stopcasting before the heal hits and requeue.

Pallies FoL spam still has the mana return on crit, Druids have always been designed for keeping HoTs up on a tank, but Shammy and Priest healers are ooming much more quickly since they can't just spam chain heal rank 4/greater heal rank 4 infinitely anymore.

[genocyde]

I have raided as a priest main healer since ZG in the 60 days. I have NEVER downranked spells, and have not had mana problems unless a fight goes severely wrong (lot of DPS deaths making fight go too long, other healer dies etc.) of course thats raiding, hardly comparable to MB 5 mans but i guess my point was i don't know how the no downranking changed the game as I always considered it an exploit / easy way out.

That said, I am currently disc spec in PvP gear and let me say.... WOW is disc strong. I only have about 950+ heals in PvP gear but I was doing BG's yesterday and I found myself in a situation where it was me and my friend (arcane mage) 2 vs 6 against some decent horde. Neither of us ever dropped below half health. We killed all 6 (i stole 2 killing blows with penance lol) and went about drinking for the next run and laughing over vent pretty hard.

My favorite things about disc spec healing are reflective PW: Shield, Divine aegis, Rapture, and of course Penance. Rapture is quite nice for regenerating mana as long as you keep your PW: Shield up ( Ateleiotos is right PW: Shield is the corner stone of Disc healing ). I haven't had a whole lot mana issues with multibox healing with my priest as disc but I have a very very odd approach to healing with my priest. Namely my spam macro.

/castrandom [target=focustargettarget] PW: Shield, Prayer of mending, Penance

Some things i LOVE about this macro....



Since all 3 spells have a cooldown it has a built in throttle.
All 3 spells are instant health returns on cast. (occasionally you break your own Penance a tick early if mashing still working on how to fix that.
It's fire and forget, just focus your leader and you'll auto heal whoever your focus' target is beating on. i.e. If your tank manages to lose threat you'll automatically throw PREVENTATIVE healing on that mobs next target. Meaning if the mob switches targets to someone your not expecting (tank gets CC'd or something) you will get a PoM or PW: Shield on that target before he even gets hit (providing all 3 aren't on cooldown) and will not burn mana by casting a direct healing spell on a target with full health unless of course penance is up in the rotation but being channeled with 3 ticks (first ones instant) you have the likelyhood that the 2nd two ticks will be productive as the target will have been hit by then.
If a mob changes target to someone to cast a non damaging spell (debuff or cc etc.) you will throw a PW: Shield on them most likely as it has by far the shortest cooldown but technically if you go right back to your tank you didn't even use that spells cooldown because weakened soul debuff is considerably longer than the cooldown for PW: Shield anyway. Therefore you wont lose tooo much staying power on your tank heals.
Also make sure you have emergency healing set up because there might be times that this macro is not enough throughput to keep a target up. (power infusion, pain suppression, trinket, flash heal, etc. all come to mind)


Make sure that you grab every PW: shield talent in the tree, and get the glyphs for shield as well (20% of absorbed damage heals the target)

I wish I had time to elaborate on my disc healing but my break is over and I need to get back to work. I'll jump back on this thread when work is over. Hope this spawns some new ideas though.

Genocyde

EDIT: Grammer, other ideas