would you recommend holy or disc for m+ for a beginner healer? never played a healer and i cant make up my mind on what spec to choose.
disc seems to be strong but maybe not as beginner friendly. got no idea about holy. or should i just switch to a pally instead? thanks for the advice.
Beginner I recommend Holy. If you donât play high keys (+18 up), Holy is stronger, Night fae btw.
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If it were me, Iâd go pally. The damage is broken. And they are average healers almost on par with holy priests in some ways with healing, about as easy, and minus the lacking defensives, and plus the immunity (with bubble), and plus a good stun spell, tankiness, and strong single target heals (mind you Flash Concentration for H Priest makes up for this), and great tank heals. Holy Priest can do damage (not much this week though-on a relative basis), but pally is currently the highest damage doer of all healers (by a mile vs holy priest). Pally is weak though in terms of group heals (but that is generally no problem in M+) and mobility, but these problems are relatively minor.
Disc is my favorite, but probably the most difficult healer to master. Also the damage was nerfed going into SL, which is very sad. Due to the damage output of holy pallies played well, timing is a lot easier on them.
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Holy is the stronger healer of the 2 however, due to the dynamics of mechanics and timers, discipline is the required spec to get further in m+, generally speaking. There are also certain affixes that discipline just bold faced suck at like this week for example, where discipline cannot manage grievous in higher keys whatsoever. Due to certain weeks like this, I would recommend you just learn both. Discipline however is easier to master imo. Holy has way more buttons and combinations you can do in certain scenarios. Discipline is extraordinarily static by comparison. Discipline also requires your teammates do not screw up as much, as they cannot put out anywhere near the same HPS as a holy priest can, but by nature, you have to have this in a group to accomplish higher keys anyways, which is why discipline is more viable at higher end keys (most of the time).
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Both specs are able to get KSM and pump higher keys if thatâs your goal. Ultimately it just comes down to which one youâre more comfortable playing. I can highlight the pluses and minuses of both specs, but a specific spec wonât handhold you through keys.
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I agree with this anymore, sadly so⌠Priest is just not the way to go anymore, for heals or dps, especially if you live the #puglife, there is always something that brings it better than you⌠I love my Disc Priest and will always play it, but I always feel at a disadvantage compared to others⌠I would not feel this way if I had a dedicated group to play with, but life right now doesnât really allow me that pleasure, so I pug, wich is very sub optimal for Disc Priest, but whatever, Iâll just keep going, but for some one just getting into the healing aspect of the game, I could not, and would not, suggest any Priest spec⌠saddens me but thatâs how it is⌠Go Shaman or Pally
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Iâm sensing an incoming problem hereâŚ
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Definitely go holy with flash concentration legendary. With that leggo holy is designed super well and makes a lot of sense. It isnât that disc canât do it, its that discâs tuning is kinda weird rn and the mythic + tools while in some cases strong donât necessarily provide the on demand healing needed for keys.
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seems i will be rolling a paladin. so far it looks like they are good in all type of content and with all specs. i have never been a meta slave but this xpac is favoring certain classes especially druids and pallies.
I have to heavily disagree. Pally is a healing brute, holy is a refined professional. The number of tools you have on holy to deal with healing is miles ahead of paladin. Paladin relies on your group to be decent. A good holy priest can carry a group of less than decent people.
If youâre not going for keys higher than 15, and you donât have a guild or full group of people you can count on to be amazing at the dungeon with few mistakes, you will do much better learning holy priest than paladin.
I say this as someone who has played both paladin and holy in current mythic +
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I respect your opinion, but think you are in the minority on that one. Holy priest, in my view, is the easiest of all healers to master. Disc, imo, is the hardest of all healers to master.
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Holy paladin is kind of in the same boat as disc priest for pugging though. They are both âhealersâ whose heals are gated behind dps. Holy paladin is very very dependent on your teammates doing their jobs properly.
I have mained a paladin (holy/prot) from TBC to the first few weeks of SL when I rage quit the game for two months over the state of holy paladin and now I am back maining my priest. I have only briefly tried the new playstyle and absolutely despise it.
I have seen many forum posts on the paladin forums of people complaining about struggling with aoe healing with glimmer. Your healing drops off a cliff if you have to leave melee range for any reason because you are glued to melee range spamming CS to lower the remaining cooldown on Hs. Your mileage may vary, of course.
The caster paladin of ages past is dead, and it breaks my heart. I would recommend making a shaman.
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I really disagree with the posts on pally here. Iâve healed as priest and paladin and paladin is extremely strong. Much much stronger than priest. Paladin can easily carry a group with beacon of virtue and divine toll. The amount of cooldowns you have as pally to save a messed up pull is actually insane. Bubble + sac, lay on hands, AM, toll are extremely powerful toolsâŚ
Every key will not be timed if the group isnât doing their job correctly. But paladin can easily carry a lot of bad mistakes - much much harder than a priest could. Its way easier to get in groups as a paladin and you have higher dps than a disc priest, and you can correct mistakes.
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Yup. Paladin is âSâ tier. It is beating R Shammy now in the highest keys in the game. Make no mistake though. A lot of this has to do with the high damage output a pally can do.
I canât personally comment on the healing a pally does but know it is at least adequate. But I am making one now, and in dungeons, my toon is often topping the damage meters. Seriously. This is not doing keys, but just the same. The damage is a huge plus to timing keys.
In relation to disc priest, this is extremely annoying to those of us who like disc priest for the damage it does. Honestly, though, while I can pump 1-1.5k dps on a key when the group is good, H Pally can double that and even do 4k a run. H Pally is also tanky, has an immunity, and has no mana issues.
Honestly, I see no reason to main Disc in 9.1 because of this. I will be maining H Pally at that point.
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Highly doubt somebody was doing 15s at iLvl 200 because nobody would invite them to the group and they would be over iLvl 200 before they even reach 15s. We were doing 15s at iLvl 210-215 because we spent time farming 207s and 210s.
Respectfully, I have to say that the reason people think discipline is harder is because it is an awkward spec and itâs pre-emptive healing, not reactive. Reactive healing is always harder to manage no matter what, because it gives you less time to deal with consecutive goof ups. The cogwheel of ârotationâ and options you get are severely limited by comparison. As holy, you can cogwheel the type of healer you are back and forth, being arguably the best at both aoe heals, and single targets, if you know exactly what youâre doing. I donât know of any other healers that can hit almost 50,000-60,000 HPS in M+ (not heals done, HPS) in their burst window. Respectively in the same light, they can also keep up quite nicely to paladins as a tank healer too. Unfortunately though, most people who play holy just simply donât know what theyâre doing or how to tip that cogwheel back and forth, in a similar and invisible comparison to boomkins.
Discipline doesnât run that tipping schematic. Their abilities are static, and they have to comprehend when people need damage reduction, and understand the timings of when to apply them as well as smart usage of their group heal. Reapplication and timing are key, but this awareness to timing still rings the same for reactive healing as holy. Holy must know exactly what they must use, but they do not get the pleasure of starting with anywhere near the same DR/Mitigation. They have to plow heals through all of it, so pre-cast group healing timed attacks is often times crucial, but less effective than the DR/Shielding that discipline gets. Thatâs why itâs harder to master.
Respectively I would say of the 2 specs, if you want to be generally decent at both, holy is in fact easier, but to truly master either or and be exceptional beyond the pool of others, holy has a WAY higher skill ceiling. Far more buttons, and far more combinations with your different cdâs that can boost one spectrum or the other to insane proportions, that require far more careful consideration. Gearing for it properly is also not something you can find in any guide yet. This is probably playing the largest role against holy currently. All of the guides I have found so far have been astonishingly misleading, with clear misunderstandings of the classâŚ
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Yeah true, it was meant as in if its an alt character youâll get still invites at low ilvl. I got invited at that ilvl that way.
I strongly feel that you are in the minority with that view. I think holy is a lot like most other healersâand disc is a breed of healer separate to all others because of how you can heal via damage. Holy healing also adds a six second hot via Echo of LIght, generally added with any healing spell cast (except for renew?), making holy very forgiving. You can also heal a variety of ways on a holy priest, implying that you can go at it any way you like and still be successful. No other healer allows you to go at it so many different ways, in my experience. Of course as you start to do higher and higher keys, you have less room for varietyâand it gets to be that there are fewer and fewer ways to do it best.
As for difficulty, I agree with the consensus viewâthat Disc has a highest skill ceiling of ALL healers (not only vs holy priest)âand I speak from first hand lengthy experience with both priest specs, and all other healers as well (at least healing dungeonsâbut disc is far harder in raids, in my view). It would not surprise me if disc had the highest skill ceiling of all classes/specs in the game, to be honest. You are also forgetting that disc typically does a fair bit higher dps simply because a large chunk of your healing ought to be done via dps via atonement. Hence, Disc is not only superior for both raiding and M+ for this simple reason, but it is more difficult as a result. Remember that holy has no real need to target mobs to heal. Disc requires you to be watching health bars in addition to targeting mobsâwhich adds in a host of potential line of sight and range issues. If you donât do damage while healing holy it is a problem because you need to do damage to time a lot of keysâbut with holy it is not nearly so necessary at all times. With Disc, if you dont do damage, then you will simply run out of mana. Healing via damage via atonement (mainly smite) is extremely mana efficient, and Disc has serious mana issues that require you to know the spec wellâotherwise you will be drinking every pull or every second oneâthat or asking for innervates constantly.
I would also add that another layer of difficulty is inherent in mastering disc that nobody has mentioned. It is largely a healer that is optimized via management of CDs. Holy also has CDs to manage, but not as many that are so imperative to playing it well.
If you want an easy pug life probably go holy. If its a fixed group Disc.
When would you EVER need this? lmao. How in the world can a group even take 60,000 DTPS? Do you have like every single player sitting in cleave range on a key where the cleave is just enough to not kill you?
That said, Shaman can absolutely do it, as can Paladin if they feel like blowing everything. The difference with Paladin is they have an insanely strong set of externals that allow them to just completely ignore damage instances.
Youâre really hyper-minimizing Discâs playstyle when Holy, even at its top played level, is cutting off half their spell list. Have you watched any of the 23+ keys done on Holy? Because they are handling every situation the same way - weave Holy Words for your Conduit to buff up your regular heal casts and brute force your way through pulls with high HPS. Itâs not exactly rocket science or some kind of âthis takes years to master!â kind of healer.
Pretty much every healer, when it comes to class mastery, is going to put in the same amount of work. Holy is just a far smoother and simpler learning curve up to that mastery point. Wheras Disc takes about as much effort at the very top level, but on the way up the skill curve looks more like a series of cliffs.
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