Our healing composition is paladin, druid and me. I am there as raid healer. Paladin is mainly tank healing and druid is second tank healer/raid healer support. I have been experiment quite much with holy/disc (I find holy more fun than disc, but as disc I shine much much more). So I am full time disc now (I have been experimenting with many various disc specs too, but with lowering difficulty and mastering fights this issue seems obsolete).

I really feel strong as disc priest at healing. On Beth’tilac when fiend CD finishes in the begging of P2 I can spam PoH+PWS full time from 60% of boss till his death and really keep raid alive.

Our raidleader is resto druid and he also thought that holy paladin is the only option of tank healing. Last raid we didn’t have our paladin in raid. Enh Shammy offspec healed Beth’tilac and Shannox (we have bad experience with two healing it – random deaths and so on). I have been healing tank on Beth (piece of cake compared to downstairs job), Shannox tank (with SoS it seemed safer than when our paladin heals it). We have managed our first two healing Alysrazor kill (druid and disc priest) – tank healing was just thing of surviving of others But burn out phase was real pain (PoH spam, glyphed barrier + tranq).
Rhyolit can be easily two healed (if volcanoes are handled properly).
Baleroc – “Disc priest dream” – I had to heal soakers because our druid couldn’t provide enough burst (at reasonable mana cost) to keep them alive. PWS and some light penancing and Heal was just enough to do that. So we let him to build up max sparks and sustain cheap healing on tank.

But since we have our paladin most of the time, majority of the two healing fights (more and more these days) I am going Shadow :-/

Thanks for nice article

For myself, I look forward to continuing our 10man raids and it should be interesting to see how Holy fairs in our Priest/shaman/Pally healing composition. The only thing I truly wish they had changed (as you mentioned) was Holy Concentration. I run with 1500-1800 spirit as Disc and so I’m looking at dropping a lot of throughput to accommodate Holy’s regen mechanic and it makes me a sad panda

Irrespective, I’m looking forward to playing the spec I first healed with…Disc by night but Holy at heart

I too am excited for 4.3; and expect Holy to really push the envelope with the competitiveness and output. (especially since Druids are getting a much needed WG nerf). I think we’ll be right in line with their output.

I went into this tier as a priest who leaned towards holy and who genuinely believed that a holy priest could do anything that they put their mind to. I tried to ignore the warning signs that holy was not keeping up the way that it should have and tried to find positive things to focus on and that just didn’t work.

We had a 2 piece set bonus which gave us less mana returns than our previous 4 piece bonus did (I know I have the napkin math somewhere), we had to spend more time being active to see the amount of healing done that discipline priests were able to do in a fraction of the time, Guardian Spirit was not the life saver it should have been (I remember losing tanks on Baleroc even with GS, because they took more damage than GS was capable of healing through or triggering from), Lightwell was still by and large ignored, etc.

I took my break shortly after I first saw Alysrazor and I come back to the game ready to see the rest of Firelands that I missed and to expand my horizons, with regards to discipline.

With regards to the holy changes, I’m pleased to see some sweeping developments being made. But, on the other hand, I’m also kind of sad that it’s come to this. I don’t like that druids feel they need a shield and that shamans felt they needed Spirit Link totem, etc. PW: Barrier really set the tone for how the cooldown game would be played and I hate that spell, for that very reason. I don’t like that it’s become the playstyle or the ability that every healer (and healing lead or raid lead) thinks they should strive for.

Overall, I’m excited to see 4.3. I’m extremely optimistic (strangely) about the next expansion and how it will affect priests. I’m ready to dust my toon off and see how things go.

Good to have you back, sir!

For me, T12 is the first raid that I’ve felt comfortable as a disc priest, and overall as a healer. I had a resto druid in WotLK, but it was never my main toon (I tanked as a frost DK at the time in our main raid). I leveled my Priest halfway through T11 and started raiding with him near the end of T11. At that time, I was learning a lot, fixing lots of mistakes and inefficient healing practices.

We started T12 content 2 months after Rage of the Firelands came out and had a lot of catching up to do, but with what we’ve done I feel somewhat accomplished (less so because of the nerfs), but it’s hard to really pinpoint what I’ve learned in this Tier.

I’ve learned a lot; the versatility of being able to be the tank heal with the ability to throw a good amount of heals on the raid, the ability to smartly regen mana because of how much of our regen is based off of total mana percentage, how to properly efficiently heal… the list goes on.

I do know that this Tier has prepared me for future ones, and it’s a good feeling to know that I’m ready. But as for heroic raiding? Still working on that!

1. Hooray for this being back!

2. Holy buffs should make them a more viable raid healer, of course. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out, and to see if holy can, indeed, “win meters” like druids do (or close to), and whether this will gravitate stat priorities in general toward haste or mastery (I would probably lean toward haste due to Divine Hymn scaling, if nothing else).

3. I only did Shannox before I cancelled my sub in July. But, holy actually makes for a really strong Riplimb tank healer, and doubly so if that tank is a warrior, due to Body and Soul – both from Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith – in addition to Heroic Leap and Charge. (I’d never actually plotted out in advance using LoF until that encounter, to be honest, because usually our raiders were pretty good about moving and/or it wasn’t entirely necessary *for us*.)

Shannox is one of the few opportunities for a holy priest to actually make really good use of Chakra: Serenity, be they a tank healer or a Face Rage healer, which is actually refreshing, given most of T11 being in Chakra: Sanctuary, even in 10-mans, and I was able to manage staying in Chakra: Serenity the entire time.