Raiding with 2 Disc Priests - Can it be done?

[Divinorum 0]

Hey guys, I've got a question this morning specific to raiding as a Priest. I'm currently a raiding priest that's 10/10 Heroic BRF, and up until now I've been raiding with our progression team as Holy. I've played this spec because our guild already has an established Disc priest in the raid (he's the raid leader) and being lower on the totem pole means you have to compromise for the good of the raid (if you wanna get into the raid!). Prior to joining my current guild, I had been a Disc priest and was very, very comfortable playing that spec.

 

However, I really haven't enjoyed playing Holy very much. It took me a few weeks to bed into this new spec (which I'd never really played very much), and get the needed muscle memory in place so that I was operating at high efficiency. After sticking through that initial adjustment period, I feel I have the knack for it. My numbers have improved markedly week over week, but... I just can't generate the same HPS as a Holy priest. It's becoming frustrating because it's starting to suck the joy out of the game for me. My logs show that as a Holy priest I often rank middle of the pack or worse when it comes to HPS and percentile rankings. Flip that to Disc, and I'm among the *most* efficient, regularly scoring above the 85th percentile.

 

Does anyone know of or have evidence of a guild utilizing 2 disc priests for endgame/progression raiding? I'd be very interested to see how they handle healing assignments so that there's no overlap on the weakened soul debuff, and they can both operate at max efficiency. I've seen bits here and there that suggest one Disc takes Clarity of Will and tank heal, while the other takes Words of Mending and prioritizes Holy Nova a little higher in their spell selection. But, I've not seen any logs that corroborate that anecdotal evidence.

 

Any evidence that this is a viable raiding setup would be awesome. I really want to enjoy raiding with my priest and want to continue doing so. But doing it as Holy for the long haul just isn't appealing to me at all. The spec frustrates me to no end. And finding a new guild that'll let me be Disc isn't the answer, I love my guild. The raid leader is open to the idea of 2 discs, and I just want to show him evidence it's viable. If there's a shot it could be done, I'd like to know.

 

[Pandacho 286]

Hi, Divinorum and welcome to the forums!

 

I personally raid on two toons when one of them is a disc priest and it happened not once that we had two discs in raid.

 

Unfortunately, you did not provide any logs and did not mention your raid composition and healing setup, so I will try to answer in general.

 

The value of two discs in setup highly depends on who are your other healers.

 

1. The bigger your raid is - the better two discs will feel themselves. Meaning: 2 healers setup (discs) - pretty bad, 3 healers setup (with two discs) - problematic because one of them will have to direct heal most of time and this is not a disc's strong side, 4 healers setup (with two discs) - okay, 5 healers setup (with two discs) - completely fine.

 

2. If you have 3-4 healers setup and your other healer is a Holy Paladin - it's not very good for 2 discs because your CoW will interfere with the Beacons and both disc with CoW and Pala will lose more than gain.

 

3. You will always have to divide your zones of responsibility, groups to heal and pretty much take different talents in tier 7: CoW and WoM - so one of the discs will mostly prevent tank and single target (soakers) damage while the other one will shield the raid.

I am not saying here that disc with CoW shouldn't shield the raid, but due to the long cast time of CoW, they wouldn't be able to use PW:Shield proactively.

You will have to divide the groups in raid for PoH healing and shielding direction (one disc starts from gr.1 and goes forward, the second one starts from group 3 (15-man) or 4 (20-man) and moves backward)

 

4. You should use proper healing frames and always track Weakened Soul debuff so you wouldn't waste time trying to reshield debuffed raiders.

 

5. Two discs would feel better on farm raids where the damage is pretty low and 'healing' healers often get very high overheal numbers.

Two discs would make a problem on progress raids with high overall damage in small raid groups where the healers have to bring people back to full health pretty fast.

 

Anyways, it was the theory.

If your raid is 20-man+ and you don't have a Holy Pala - go for two discs, it's fine, in other case - you should plan very carefully what every healer is doing and maybe you will still have to switch to Holy on some fights to not complicate the life of everybody.

 

Hope, it helps.

If you have any more specific questions, you are welcome to ask

[Divinorum 0]

Thank you for the warm welcome and feedback!!! I apologize for overlooking a link to my logs. You can view them by clicking the link below, they'll be listed on the right hand side. Up until this week, we had been raiding with 1 Disc, 1 Holy Pally, 1-2 Druid/Shaman, and myself. As of this week, it appears we've picked up another Pally. Which really makes life more miserable for me. 

 

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/player/us/dalaran/divinorum

 

Myself and the raid leader (coincidentally, the disc priest) have come to an understanding that will allow me to switch between the specs depending on the fight and circumstances. On some occasions, he'll dps and I will Disc in his place. Which is all I've really wanted. I am all for doing what needs to be done for the raid, but it's arguable that me playing Holy doesn't even accomplish that - given that so much of my healing is overheal.

[Pandacho 286]

Yeah, I understand your concerns. But there is no much you can do in the situation when you have too many healers and they are playing same classes.

The only valuable decision here (and you already made it) for all the healers is to have a dps spec and rotate.

 

Btw, so much of your healing is overheal because you are using too many healers. I see 5 healers for 19-man HC in your logs.

In my team we switch from 3 to 4 healers when moving to 18-19 people (depends on fight).