Looking for some people to run a heroic with me Thursday/Friday at some point so I can test out this Holy spec I went into last night before I logged. I don't feel that I'm using my disc healing spec to it's full potential so I want to try Holy and see if it's a better fit for me before I end up in a bad situation (stuck with gear only good for disc, etc...)
I went with Flash Heal, Guardian Spirit, and Circle of Healing for my major glyphs. CoH glyph won't help much with 5 mans, but it should work out well in 10mans and up.
Definately need to work on getting some more gear swapped around with spirit on it. I made a Moonshroud Robe last night as my exaulted ones from Kirin Tor don't have any spirit at all and work better with disc. Re-Gemmed and changed enchants a bit and I'm sitting just over 1900 spellpower (self-buffed).
As far as gear goes (pre-10 man), I've been trying to get the mace from H Nexus, but it never seems to drop (well it did once, and a druid out-rolled me on it). I'm working on champion seals now with the Argent Tournament dailies as I figure I'll probably have that ilvl 200 dagger before I see the mace drop again. Dagger might be better for me anyway. The only other pre-raid item I'm interested in is the trinket from CoS normal. The Soul Preserver. Very nice trinket, and I'm kinda bummed because not many people run CoS normal. It's always heroic for badges or drake runs :)
Any other suggestions? Here's a link to my Armory (think I logged out with most of the holy gear on that I had)
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Zul%27jin&cn=Daemus&gn=Horde+Defense+League (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Zul%27jin&cn=Daemus&gn=Horde+Defense+League)
*edit* Oh yeah, I need to get off my butt and get my Sons of Hordir chain going as well for shoulder enchants - I started the chain the other day, so I'll get to it and get the dailies opened up for them.
ive found disc to be a very capable spec, the problem with it is the numbers just dont back it up. recount doesnt show the 16050 bubbles you put on people. and as far as the coh glyph everything ive heard is that its one of the must haves.
Any raid leader worth the title knows how to read meters and account for Discipline. The important thing when I am tanking and being healed by a Discipline priest is, "Did I survive the fight?"
Quote from: Vitandus on Thu, 2009-06-25 : 11:48
Any raid leader worth the title knows how to read meters and account for Discipline. The important thing when I am tanking and being healed by a Discipline priest is, "Did I survive the fight?"
This is true - My biggest concern is I don't seem to be throwing out shields nearly as much as I would like to be (and maybe that's because it was the 10man environment) and found myself doing a little bit of everything (tank healing, raid healing). It seemed to go a little smoother for me on Grobbulus as stratuspheer communicated with me before the pull if I wanted front (tanks) or back (dps).
I suspect in a 25m environment there would be a pally or druid, (possibly disc) doing some MT heals, and I'd find myself throwing out alot of Shields and hasted PoH's for aoe healing.
granted my priest is only 72, but i find ill toss shields on people as a heal. at 72 my bubble heals for 800-1000 so if someone is at 80%+ ill bubble them, bumping them to 100% health and absorbing the next 57.3 million damage (since we all know disc bubble is OP) and fights like ignis in ulduar it doesnt hurt to be bubbling everyone (if your mana pool can support it) because everyone takes damage and the mana refunded to you when bubble goes away makes the end casting cost very low.
You make a good point about the shields (glyphed of course) - I think I remember popping Inner Focus once and then my shield on someone and I could have swore it did a crit heal on them for about 6K. Of course I could have been seeing a Prayer of Mending tick as well. Never thought of scrolling back and looking to see what it actually was.
I know alot of the tier7 priest gear tends to favor the holy spec - I think obtaining this for disc might be sufficient pending I gem it the correct way. Most disc spec'd priests will favor intellect and crit, which is usually on alot of dps caster drops. It's quite obvious the ones with +hit on them are dps only, but you kind of seem stuck on the fence when it comes to choices on what is better for you. At least with holy, it's pretty straight forward.
If you're willing to dual spec holy/disc, I'd highly suggest it, so that you can switch in between encounters. Since holy somewhat more reactive, and disc is more preventative, you'll find that one spec works better for certain encounters. Disc has good synergy with avoidance tanks, and likewise holy works well with effective health tanks. Once you figure out what works best for each specific fight and your healing role in that fight, I don't think you'll have much trouble with either spec.
As for your mace, you could go for the crafted titansteel one to hold you over until you get something in naxx.
Thanks for the tips Dave...I dropped my shadow spec yesterday and picked up holy because frankly - I didn't have the +hit gear to dps in anything above heroics.
I'm sure I'll miss it during the quest / daily grinds - we'll see :)
I've also found, at least with my gear, that Disc is far more mana efficient in five-mans where you might not necessarily have a ton of Replenishment floating around.
mmm...for sure. In 5mans if I watch what I'm doing, i can usually come up with 60+% mana easily. I think I'll keep trucking with disc for now and I'll keep my offpsec shadow until I finish my loremaster achievement (I've got a some quests left in Storm Peaks, and some in Icecrown, then I'll have it). I tried doing a few quests last night, but I miss the mana regen from spirit tap. I'll wait till 3.2 lands to see what sort of shape disc is in then.
Well, with the healing gear I picked up from naxx10 on the weekend I decided to go back to disc/holy and I'm pushing over 2100 spellpower self-buffed (Inner Fire) in Holy spec. I went back and re-gemmed some of the gear to some 8int/8spi gems..Have some spellpower only, spirit, and haste as well. For some reason my armory hasn't been updating since last week sometime.
Being a priest I was looking at the naxx25 razuvious fight...How much +hit do the priests usually go with for Mind Control? I remember it was a big deal back in naxx40. probably not so much now?
I know I don't have much +hit at the moment (just the dagger from kirin tor revered and a cape/offhand).
I figure you already probably have two priests that are familiar with doing the MC etc...I know I'd probably want practice before I ever tried it. Might be something to try the next naxx10 (using the orb) to practice with taunting/bone barrier and what not.
As a shadow priest I go in there with max hit, however a miss isn't crucial. The tanks are usually there to grab an add for a bit while you try to MC it.
Just to add my own thoughts on a Holy spec, this is what I would recommend:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZcxLcfMqih0euqo:N0m0zV
If you've put points into Improved Renew, you'll want to buff the spell up as much as you can with Empowered Renew. I don't think Test of Faith is that important, since Holy Priests will most often be raid healing. Having Surge of Light maxed will really help with longevity during fights and make twisting in Prayer of Healing that much easier via Serendipity.
If your DPS is smart enough to use it, Lightwell is an amazing spell. Unfortunately, most people don't know how to use it properly, so it ends up being a waste. But if you have people that will use it properly, I'd move the Test of Faith point into Lightwell.
As for glyphs, as should be in the link, Flash Heal is generally agreed to be a must-have, and I think Guardian Spirit is great for the fights in Ulduar where the boss goes crazy every once in a whlie. I'm a huge fan of Circle of Healing, so I would tend to take that over the Prayer of Healing gyphs, since one of those will usually top off most of your DPS so the HoT goes to waste. This is especially true in a 25-man raid where there are lots of Raid healers topping everyone off.
Sounds like from your last post you went back to Disc, but I figured I'd post this for posterity.
Actually I'm running Holy & Disc at the moment...Still playing around with the healing style I like most. Holy is fun for me where it seems to be more straight up healing then mitigation as with Disc spec. I think I'm still trying to find the healing style I like most.
I was holy/shadow from about lvl 60+ (holy for the odd instance) and finally when hitting 80 I decided to give Disc a good shot. It's fun, but I dunno if it's my style of play. I love the huge mana pool and blowing shields left,right, and center is great. The only thing holding me back is I see this Penance change coming in 3.2 with another 2 seconds on the cooldown. I use Penance liberally now...Maybe I'll just have to learn to control it.
Thanks for the input with a recommended spec. I started out with 3/3 imp renew, and 3/3 Emp renew, but I found myself not really needing the 3/3 Emp renew as the initial heal from it was only 1400-1500, and ticking in the 1400 range vs. with 1 point into Emp Renew it was a 350ish initial heal, ticking for about 1200. People were getting topped off after the initial few ticks so it seemed like a waste. Easier to just toss out a CoH and top everyone up that way. I usually end up going 3/3 Imp renew because you don't have a lot of choice in the first few tiers of the holy tree and it's more or less considered a filler for me.
I went 3/3 into Test of Faith on my spec, just for that time if you do get stuck having to drop heals on the tank, or if the raid members get low, 12% to healing is a big boost in my opinion. Lightwell is great, but yeah I can see nobody using it at all, or just yelling "healz, heal me!" rather then them clicking the lolwell and getting a heal from that. But I could see that only being useful in certain situations.
The glyphs you mentioned are pretty much what I'm running with the exception of I have a PoH glyph on me instead of CoH. I have the CoH glyph in my bag for when I step into a raid, as I agree...It would be of more use to have 1 extra heal from that CoH then a HoT off your PoH.
So I may end up running Holy full time (since I don't have the gear to support both disc and Holy specs without re-gemming/re-enchanting some stuff) and picking up some +hit gear with the badges I'm collecting from heroics and go with a shadow offspec. I feel isolated running two heal specs right now where I'm not raiding all the time.
So yeah...That was a blast raid healing last night as Holy. CoH is OP (even more so when glyphed).
Apologies again for the mess up on the 1st Razuvious. I was spamming my attack button instead of the students ability when I had him MC'd and didn't realize that I needed to call out when boneshield was going down. Went much better the second time (especially after knowing where each ability was on the bar after MC'ing them).
It's a nice switch for that encounter.