Holy or disc?

Don’t think OP is looking for philosophical and existential answer here, friends :joy:

OP if you’re doing M+ only disc is pretty easy to get the hang of it, Holy is fine.

If you’re looking for Raid, holy is fine to learn, Disc is a lot more complicated.

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Holy is as straightforward as a spec gets. All your spells are just direct heals.

Right, so you belong to the exact group I was talking about. Long time players that are looking to push higher key, and are trying to weave DPS and play synergistic talents are going to have a harder time getting maximum performance from Holy. They’ll also have an easier time with Disc because they are already engaged enough players to be experimenting beyond just healing.

A new player who’s just starting out with healing? There’s very little synergies you need to use.

I don’t think this is fully true if we’re talking about the same thing. You need your holy words, renew, PoM and flash heal and that’s about it. You don’t need to play lightweaver and run heal, PoH isn’t a necessary bind at all. You can choose to play them, but like… On Shaman or druid I have a ton of binds.

We also only have 2 real CDs in Apoth and Hymn, unless I’m just misunderstanding you? I guess Archon Halo, too, but that’s hardly a cooldown outside raid and more of something you’ll be using a ton of for passive healing. Oracle is a little complicated, but no moreso than it is on Disc. We match basically every other healer (or are better). Disc priest has to track barrier, pain supp, evang, bender and uppies. Monk has sheilun, revival, cocoon and chi-ji (and chi-ji is WAY harder to learn without a guide in your face). Shaman has a billion random cooldown buttons. Pally’s got Seasons, AM, Tyr’s deliverance (though it’s less of a CD now), Wings (which is about as complicated as apoth)…

I just don’t really see how we can make an argument that Holy is a straight up harder healer than most specs EXCEPT FOR pushing to high key on it is hard because it is squishy and requires a lot of weaving spells when you need high burst healing (which again, is only really in higher level keys).

My guess is OP already checked out and is either just continuing to play spriest or a DPS alt.

I won’t argue all those points, but I understand his argument about core keybinds. I’ve run my Disc priest off and on since Wrath, but I’ve dipped into other healers as well. Mistweaver in Legion, for example. What made me come back and then test myself against M+ was how few core Disc abilities need a keybind, versus what can be relegated to clicking or modded keybinds. There are abilities that need to be pressed frequently, every 2 to 20 seconds, and mistiming one, or reacting slow, or letting your finger slip trying to reach Shift+4, and wasting a GCD means death for one of your group members… Disc has fewer of these than most other healers. It’s especially elegant in converging its dps and healing rotation, unlike eg Mistweaver that has a whole set for healing and then another 4-5 rotationals for dps.

Allot of this is subjective. I love the aesthetics and straight forward gameplay of Holy. Also, dem Holy Fires.

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I have enjoyed raid as holy, M+ as disc, remember you don’t have to be only one spec nowadays!

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i found the best way to learn disc is thru pvp honestly, baptism by fire, do it!

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Holy is marginally easier than disc because you’re even harder to kill or CC thanks to spirit, ascension, and holy ward. This can make it easier to deal with low CR games where double DPS might try to roast you. Your insight will also be spent on instant cast prayer of mendings instead of kickable penance. You will actually spend less time casting on Holy than you would as disc, which has to cast penance a lot.

That said, you need to just play them both and decide for yourself, they are very different play styles and as someone who players both, I think you can do equally well on them, and player fit is always more important than FOTM tuning.

When I read this it, it takes me back many many years. I don’t know if there’s truth to this, but I think I was the biggest outside factor in the change to multi spec. They already had dual spec in the game, but I wanted more, so I made a post on the forums.

At the time I made the post I was just coming back to WoW from a MMO called Rift. There was many reasons I enjoyed Rift, but likely the biggest reason was the ability to switch to any spec I felt like with the click of button. The freedom to play whatever I was in the mood for or to match the content I was playing without any hassle of paying for respecs and rebinding keys was phenomenal.

Also around this same time the WoW forums just started using a downvote system. Think it also had a thumbs up, but I specifically remember the downvote, for good reason.

As it turns out, many WoW players back then didn’t like having more options. Yes, I was as confused as you. When I posted explaining I would like them to allow us to play all specs without hassle so we could enjoy more things about the game, the most common response(s) were:

“I don’t want my guild to make me raid with multiple specs”

“I don’t want to learn anymore than the two I already have”.

Some paraphrasing there but pretty close and there were others comments as well.

Along with these comments came a flurry of downvotes. I don’t know if the final tally was the most downvoted comment ever in WoW forums but it was surprisingly more than I expected.

Now, I don’t know if WoW devs read my comment, but I know they did. If you get that many downvotes they’re going to read the post to figure out why. So, in a way I should’ve thanked everyone for highlighting my plea to provide us more options.

I don’t recall the exact timing of post to the release of full multi spec, but it doesn’t feel like the two were that far apart. I think that post highlighting what others games were doing successfully and how WoW devs could easily implement the same thing was read and turned into what we have today.

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Go Disc, it’s the meta. If you want to be spec carried, auto invited, have little to no buttons to press and mindlessly zerg healing.

Play Holy if you want to actually have to execute mechanics at higher levels, use your brain, and have at least 5x the buttons of a Disc Priest.

:man_shrugging:

Note: you can still be a 5 head Disc, but the low level to above avg players 100% carried by the spec as it’s insanely OP and broken.

Probably easiest healing spec to play, and still quite strong, but not OP or broken. IMO healing is in a good spot and pretty balanced.

I think disc is just still highly represented cause it’s easy and it’s what lots of people already had geared so they’re just going to play it. No reason to swap it out with a side grade.

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