Different sets holy AND disco specs?

[Calantha 2]

Hello guys,

 

I'm new to this forum. Or at least, I'm freshly registered. I read of course for a longer time :). I have been looking first if I could find my answer but so far I was unsuccesfull.

 

I am a holy priest. I play holy since 2007 with the outmost pleasure. Have of course also had disco but that was to me always secundary. At this moment I would like to change my shadowspec to disco and thus be the versatile healer a raid needs. This made me wonder. Since there is a lot to reforge, re-gem etc. if you change spec. Do those of you that have both holy and disc have two different sets? Or do you constantly reforge/gem etc? Or do you accept the fact that when you go to your second spec not everything is perfect?

 

I really am puzzled here so I hope you could enlighten me.

 

With my outmost kindest gratitude in advance :)

 

A fellow priestess 

[Gwenymph 414]

There are differing opinions so I'll give you mine first.

 

I keep the same gemming and reforging for both my Holy and my Disc spec.  I go Crit heavy in both.  The only pcs I change out are the Tier Pcs.  I prefer 4pc for Holy and 2pc for Disc.  With Holy you'll just have to be a little more mindful of your mana consumption.  But not enough to warrant a second set of gear or even regemming/reforging.  If you are fine w/ your mana in Holy spec just make sure you are tracking Rapture and your Meta Procs while in Disc to stay on top of your mana while making the transition.

[Krazyito 521]

In my opinion, Holy is the most versatile spec in terms of stats.  You can pretty much stack any one of the 3 secondaries and not be wrong.

 

What actually matters is how you play the spec.

[Calantha 2]

Thank you so much for your kind answers. So basically I don't have to worry about a thing.

 

@Krazyito: Do I understand you right if I say that when I have my main spec holy, finetuned everything to that and change to disc I don't have to change a thing? 

 

My stats are spirit-->haste--->crit---> mastery btw

[Krazyito 521]

Idk, you said it weird for me.  You should set up for Disc and then just use that for holy.

 

Basically I'd say do what gwen does and have a mostly Crit > mastery > haste build for disc and holy.  For holy, all the stats are pretty much equal in a sense, so the differences come down to playstyle and how you heal.

 

Then it also depends, if you want faster casts in holy, for example, you might need to change some reforges or a few pieces to get more haste

 

Disc has a pretty set way of doing gemming, while holy you can change it slightly depending how you want to heal.

 

If you want to have a good disc set you're going to maybe have to change how you heal as holy to accommodate the more crit heavy build by using the same gear.  If you feel like you want separate stats, you can try to make a new set of gear for disc and just swap out, or just keep gemming/reforging.

 

In the end stats don't matter all that much, just how you play.

[Calantha 2]

Ah, the other way around it is then. I understand now. I will look into it. Disc is pretty much a spec that I will use incidentally. Holy is my first and only love but as a healer i also want to be able to offer my group the possibility to change around if needed. I am however pretty much a holy-junk lol.

 

Thanks again. Very much appreciated!

[Espiee 161]

Holy is a bit of a special snowflake.

 

 

 

In one sense, they have two very distinct ways they can heal, one centered on Renew and one centered on AE spam-healing. They are both well-rounded playstyles, but I feel it should be said, the former is only viable in smaller raid-settings, namely flex groups with 10-15 players and 10m raids. In bigger groups than that the latter build is the only viable way to heal as holy.

 

Both play styles are described in Icy Veins' Holy Priest guide.

 

With their focus on different sets of spells, Renew builds tend to focus exclusively on haste to bolster its throughput, prioritising crit second as mastery does virtually nothing for the spell, while crit still adds a chance to do double healing. For an AE build haste is conversely detrimental to its healing.

While haste will decrease the cast time of your heals and thereby increase your HPS it comes at a significant mana cost. Since haste only affects cast time, it won't make each individual cast heal for more, but simply let you cast more spells and heal more that way. Mastery and Crit is however mana-free increases to your healing, since they increase the potency of each cast, leaving cast time and mana cost unaffected. Considering the extra spirit you'd need to compensate for haste, mastery and crit are the best throughput stats available to you. Those two stats are however very equal in terms of throughput gain. Whether you go all mastery, all crit or try to balance the two will only marginally effect your throughput, and like Gwen has already pointed out, if there are cases where you want to go discipline, going for a pure crit build is a good option as it will reduce the need to change gear when changing spec.e

Edited August 27, 2014 by steve