I am currently Discipline and am most happy tank healing and tossing out bubbles when needed. However there are some nights that it seems like we don't have enough raid healers and too many tank healers. For example, last night on Festergut we had a holy paladin on the tanks and other healers were assigned a group each while also being told to key an eye on the tank. I ended up using a lot of PoH's and that means that it really takes a toll on my mana. When I'm tank healing it seems like I can never run out of mana.. but raid healing, I have to use everything, even a pot, to keep going.

So first - is PoH the problem? Should I just avoid using it even though it looks so, so tempting when everyone is taking steady damage? Typically I shield everyone, PoM, Renew, and PoH.

Secondly - my offspec is shadow. I've been toying with the idea of a holy offspec for burst raid healing. However there seems to be one big problem with this - gear. I'm afraid that I'd need to get several different pieces of gear that's better suited to Holy. At best I am wondering if I could simply switch out one or two pieces to make up the difference in spirit and haste.

Third - I thought of this the other day. Instead of a holy offspec, what about a separate disc spec that focuses more on raid healing with things like improved renew?

What do you think?

Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... ess%C3%ABa

PoH does suck a lot of mana from you, but it shouldn't be enough to drain your mana pool completely if you're intelligently using your mana cooldowns (pots, trinkets, hymn, fiend). That being said, raid healing as disc (without a solid druid or shaman behind you) isn't the easiest to do. I use a lot of shields, renews and flash heals/binding heals if I ever raid heal as disc but I never just shield everyone unless I know something big is coming; but your question points to holy so here goes.

Most of your gear could be dual-used for holy (from your current disc set-up). If you feel it in your mana regen, you can try for a few more pieces of spirit gear, but coming from disc, your crit should help a lot to proc Holy Concentration and give you a boost. Again, mana CDs are your friend.

As for a renew disc spec, I don't know if its viable but I never took the opportunity to build it out and try it. If you set one up, I'm sure we could offer some feedback.

Same thing happens to me, some nights we have 2 healadins, others only 1, others none.

In short yes, PoH is powerful but costly. On this fight there are 2 tank healers all the time on the tank, then 3 to 4 raid healers, as 1 of the tank healers you should not be raid healing.

You would be surprised, holy gear isn't that much different from disc. I switch from disc to holy with no change on my gear and I have much less spirit than you do, and my haste is not that much higher than yours 17,5% i think. Actually my holy offspec has even less mana issues than my disc spec and much less overhealing.

Not a chance, there are no raid healing talents in the disc spec.

I agree with others - I think the cookie cutter Disc spec is able to raid-heal, but there's obviously some finesse involved. PoM & PW:S are going to be the major contributors. PoH is good to use every now and then to catch up with the damage, but for the most part, I'd stick with Renew/Flash, PW:S, & PoM.

One option might be to share assignments with a friendly tree. A Disc priest can bubble/PoM 10 raiders very well while a druid blanket-hots.

I guess I feel the most burden when we don't have enough class diversity. Last night we had a holy pally, two disc priests, a holy priest, one shammy and a tree that kept dying early on. There are times when we don't have a tree at all, or a shammy at all.

There's actually an interesting thread a little ways down the main page about taking Mental Agility over Holy Concentration for Renew style holy priests. Theoretically this should make your gear switches alot easier, since it reduces the value of regen completely in favor of making spells cheaper and would potentially allow holy priests to gear like discs.

There isn't any super solid math or anything, so if you were main spec holy I'd caution you on changing up all your gear--but since you've already got the disc style gear it might work very well for you.

While class diversity and synergy aren't necessary, having those synergies really can make an encounter much more tolerable if not easier. Personally, I would prefer to have a maximum of ONE disc priest in a raid, 10 or 25, because that disc is me and I don't like when a shield doesn't land because someone else has Weakened Soul on them. But on a more general level, it can be difficult to have mainly-single-target healers heal a whole raid, like a combo holy pally/disc. Having one resto shaman/resto druid/holy priest in the mix can really allow each healer to do what they excel at while everyone stays alive. Again, not the end of the world, but I always build raids with some kind of philosophy in mind.

Hmm I'm keeping my eye on that thread I'm going to have to read up some more on holy to get a better understanding of it since I have 0 experience with raiding as holy. If it's possible though I'd love to try it.

I'm not sure Festergut is the best illustration of a need to switch to Holy.

First, everyone gets mana starved by the end of Festergut, it's such a heal-hungry fight. At least Disc get the chance to game the Rapture returns of a ton of shields popping at once when blight is exhaled.

Second, the big reason Holy is considered a better raid heal spec is CoH, but as the ranged are spread out so much for the majority of the time, its hard to bring into play. You can obviously ignore this point if you're assigned to a melee group (but if that's the case, why not stay disc and use a glyphed Holy Nova instead?).

If you have more than one disc priest, then in general it's probably worth having a holy offspec. I'm unconvinced that switching the only disc priest to holy would help a raid at all. I think for Festergut in particular, disc is a strong spec.

I agree. I normally do pretty well on Festergut all told, between tank healing and shielding the raid otherwise. Disc is pretty powerful for the Renewed Hope (-3% damage aura) and powerful shields that help cushion the raid damage, not to mention being able to pump out some big heals and big bubbles when the tank is being focuses more heavily than the raid.

That being said though, I still maintain that raid synergy can accomplish a lot. If you have a lot of single tank healers (pallies, disc priests) then it can be useful to pick up an extra raid healer if you find they're in short supply. That's why I was disc/holy for the start of ICC. As I've progressed though, I've found there are no fights that I do much better at in holy than disc (quite possibly related to my playing disc much more often than holy), so why not stay disc the whole time? In the end, it counts more for how you play and how comfortable you are in your spec, rather than the strengths of the spec itself.

If I remember correctly, I think we have only one holy priest. Originally we had 4 disc priests, but one switched to shadow, one switched to holy, and that leaves two. The other disc priest, I'm not sure what is going on - she never uses PW:S unless she is told to (Saurfang) and instead she seems to be using a lot of renews, though she has a pretty much cookie-cutter disc spec. I haven't figured her out yet.

Maybe someone should tell her without using PW:S, disc is kinda useless?

Disc makes for an amazing 'swing' healer on Fester. Big heals on the tank at high inhale, and spreading the bubbles at low inhale - with an explicit assignment of swapping back and forth.

I'd go so far as to say it's a fight that really showcases cookie-cutter Disc's ability to perform two quite unique roles, and to do both, well, without change of gear, glyphs or spec.

PoH... works, but it isn't your strength. Ideally your raid healing would be acomplished not with a group split, but with bubbles (and ProM) from you, while HoTs, chains or smartheals filled in the health deficits (the bubbles give the HoTs time to work, and two sorts of crazy-efficient heal both get used to full effect).

I'm not going to say you're doing it wrong, but I do think the healing assignments you imply aren't the ones I'd give. (And we've been 2-healing Fester, recently, in gear a tier worse than yours - Disc priest and resto shaman.)

Particularly if you have two disc priests in the raid, I could understand why one is relegated or otherwise told not to liberally apply shields. That allows one to bubble anyone with damage, while the other can push out more heals (as opposed to absorption/mitigation). Not the best way to do it, but they may have specified healing roles more than we know.

I don't give out the assignments, so I don't have too much control over that. And honestly I'm not sure I know enough about each class to offer up better ideas.

As for the other disc priest, as far as I know she's never been told to not shield people. But maybe she's afraid to when I'm around? But even then we have our assignments, she should feel comfortable bubbling her group. I don't know. Maybe I just need to ask her. I don't want it to come across wrong though Argh.