Disc Priest Viable Healer?

[ragolas]

How good is a disc priest for healing? Im going to be running a pally tank 3 caster dps healer set up and thought PI would be a sweet topper and from wat I heard penance is a great healing spell so I was wondering if anyone has tried this yet?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Verify that what you read was posted after 3.1 went live. They nerfed penance substantially as I recall (I might be wrong; corrections welcome) and drastically toned down the spirit mana regen across the board. Not saying it's bad data neccessarily but just be sure people aren't theorycrafting with out-of-date info. I know pre-nerf, they were pretty much THE preferred healers for PVP and single-target healing.

[KvdM]

They nerfed penance substantially as I recall

They nerfed the mana gained from casting a healing spell talent. Pre-nerf penance could generate more mana then the spell cost, post-nerf the spell costs a neglicible amount of mana.

[Svpernova09]

They're GREAT for single target healing, but not that great for group healing. So if you're able to single target people in your group easily, Disc should do fine for you. Otherwise go with Holy and faceroll CoH every 6 seconds :_)

[Ken]

They're GREAT for single target healing, but not that great for group healing. So if you're able to single target people in your group easily, Disc should do fine for you. Otherwise go with Holy and faceroll CoH every 6 seconds :_)

Based on my Discipline priest's gear:
- Holy Nova does instant AoE healing for about 1.5k HP
- Prayer of Healing does about 5k AoE healing on the whole group
- Prayer of Mending does a good job
- In disaster cases, there's Divine Hymn which is an OMGWTFBBQ awesomesauce group heal.

I realize that Holy priests have *better* group healing, but Discipline priests have very decent group healing abilities too. Since 95%+ of all heals that are cast are single-target heals, I don't care for group-heal-based setups. You could argue that a Holy priest might be better in a raid, but that 's only true when the other healers in your raid adapt to that, because otherwise you end up without mana very *very* quickly.
I realize that some bosses require you to do constant AoE healing, but I have never gotten into trouble with a Discipline priest.

[edit] My favorite multibox healers are Resto druid and Discipline priest.
My favorite single-target healer is Discipline priest, because of penance.

[Svpernova09]

They're GREAT for single target healing, but not that great for group healing. So if you're able to single target people in your group easily, Disc should do fine for you. Otherwise go with Holy and faceroll CoH every 6 seconds :_)

Based on my Discipline priest's gear:
- Holy Nova does instant AoE healing for about 1.5k HP
- Prayer of Healing does about 5k AoE healing on the whole group
- Prayer of Mending does a good job
- In disaster cases, there's Divine Hymn which is an OMGWTFBBQ awesomesauce group heal.

I realize that Holy priests have *better* group healing, but Discipline priests have very decent group healing abilities too. Since 95%+ of all heals that are cast are single-target heals, I don't care for group-heal-based setups. You could argue that a Holy priest might be better in a raid, but that 's only true when the other healers in your raid adapt to that, because otherwise you end up without mana very *very* quickly.
I realize that some bosses require you to do constant AoE healing, but I have never gotten into trouble with a Discipline priest.

[edit] My favorite multibox healers are Resto druid and Discipline priest.
My favorite single-target healer is Discipline priest, because of penance.

I don't mean to argue that they aren't good AoE healers. In my experience in boxing situations it's easier (for me at least) to be able to throw AoE healing (Chain Heal, Wild Growth, CoH, Whatever) and not have to worry about changing targets.

[Ken]

I don't mean to argue that they aren't good AoE healers. In my experience in boxing situations it's easier (for me at least) to be able to throw AoE healing (Chain Heal, Wild Growth, CoH, Whatever) and not have to worry about changing targets.

Sure, but one extra AoE healing spell won't really be THAT significant, considering that you have a bunch of them by default?
Holy healing has more group healing power though, but from my experience this is completely unnecessary. (in both raids as heroics)

About the switching targets: I have 8 healing buttons:
- 1 that is close to my dps button, which is my main heal spam button and which heals my tank or my tank's target if his target is friendly
- 5 buttons that each represent a character on a specific account (so basically it's "heal account 1 to 5")
- 1 button that heals my tank or my tank's target, BUT that works for all classes that have *any* healing spell. This is an emergency single-target healing spec.
- 1 button for AoE healing (with modifiers for multiple types of AoE healing)

[edit] 666th post D:< :P

[Svpernova09]

I don't mean to argue that they aren't good AoE healers. In my experience in boxing situations it's easier (for me at least) to be able to throw AoE healing (Chain Heal, Wild Growth, CoH, Whatever) and not have to worry about changing targets.

Sure, but one extra AoE healing spell won't really be THAT significant, considering that you have a bunch of them by default?
Holy healing has more group healing power though, but from my experience this is completely unnecessary. (in both raids as heroics)

About the switching targets: I have 8 healing buttons:
- 1 that is close to my dps button, which is my main heal spam button and which heals my tank or my tank's target if his target is friendly
- 5 buttons that each represent a character on a specific account (so basically it's "heal account 1 to 5")
- 1 button that heals my tank or my tank's target, BUT that works for all classes that have *any* healing spell. This is an emergency single-target healing spec.
- 1 button for AoE healing (with modifiers for multiple types of AoE healing)

[edit] 666th post D:< :P

Yep, you're different healing buttons is definitely something I need to look into and is probably what is mostly affecting my opinions here. My setup currently is for the healer to target the tank when everyone else targets the tank's target to dps, and then I just cast whichever spells I need CH / LHW / HW / etc.

[Tasty]

- In disaster cases, there's Divine Hymn which is an OMGWTFBBQ awesomesauce group heal

Kinda gotta agree up in here. Divine Hymn is pretty much god mode for your group in PvP. Shame its getting nerfed