Should priests spec Discipline or Holy in ICC?
3.3 is aging like a fine cheese. Enough bosses have released in ICC now that I can come back to my original discussion on your raid getting it’s very own iPud (I’m Penancing Under Duress.) Since finding answers on what you should do in ICC-25 man is easy, let’s look at whether you should spec Holy or Discipline for ICC 10-man. (Which I’m running today, yay!)
Short answer: Do both.
Got duel spec? Okay, good. Now make one spec Holy and the other Discipline. You can get your 50g back doing your random daily later. (Need to have a DPS spec for switching roles because you have too many healers? I’d suggest switching roles per raid instead of per fight; it’ll simplify the dilemma.) Now I’ll go over the details why.
There are several bosses where you can play whatever floats your boat. Some say it’s great to have the damage reduction and bubbles in a raid for all fights, others say the impact Holy priests make on the charts is astronomical. If you want to be a winnar though, you’ll need Discipline for Saurfang and Holy for Festergut (some call him Sporeface.)
For Saurfang: Your bubbles are going to slow down how fast he gets runic power, and therefore how quickly he starts to mark people into a pit of utter doom. You’ll be amazed at the difference you make in this fight when you’re Discipline; no other healer comes close. (They might think they do if they’re chart whores though. 
)
For Festergut: Raid damage EVERYWHAR. Holy has an advantage here, letting you run around and CoH, not to mention the Serendipity build-up for your huge PoH spells. Plus, I’m a Holy fan, so… of course I’m going to recommend it for something. :p
Of course, if you don’t have dual spec–or you’re just unwilling to spec Holy and Discipline because the concept seems asinine (it used to seem stupid to me, too)–then you can play whatever fits comfortably with your playstyle. I personally stand by my theory that Discipline is more useful and Holy is more fun, but this is an opinion that can be supported or diverted with endless amounts of subjective numbers and theorycraft. In the end, you should do what’s right for you, and what’s right for your raid based on the other healer you’re paired with.
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By Bluededorian, February 1, 2010 @ 12:22 pm
First three encounters in 10, holy is best. Icc25, dis is best for tank heals. Saurfang10 and festergut10 IMO and through experience dis is best. Now one thing you have to consider is your fellow healers, can you trust them to heal the raid if you go dis..
By lapray, February 6, 2010 @ 9:31 pm
Being dual spec Disc and Holy is not new netheir stupid
Its awsome for dedicated healers.
Good Job
By Anonymous, February 23, 2010 @ 1:51 am
I’ve two-healed Festergut in ICC10 as disc for a couple of months without any problem. However, we’ve just recently killed Dreamwalker and I think holy would definitely be better. We had a shaman 100% focused on healing the boss, and a paladin raid healing (when he wasn’t in a portal) while beaconing the boss. That left me to do about 80% of the overall raid/tank healing, which was horrible as disc. It was the first time… well, ever, that I’ve had mana issues. Even with the paladin out helping, I couldn’t spare the time to do a full hymn of hope, and unless I got lucky my shadowfiend would usually miss about a third of his attacks due to running around to find new things to attack. Not to mention having to *gaps* do actual healing instead of just absorbing and cleaning up messes
I’ve always been 100% disc, but now I’m dropping my rarely-used arena spec for a holy spec.
By Kourtnie McKenzie, February 24, 2010 @ 11:41 am
Thanks for the comment! Out of curiosity, when you two-heal Festergut, is there a specific class combo you use? Or does it generally work with 2 healers of any class floating around your raids? We’ve had bad news with 2 healers, but I keep telling them it’s because they need some CoH love.
We don’t have a paladin at the moment that stably shows to raids; on the contrary, I’m pretty much ironclad stuck in a Discipline healing role.
Holy is incredible amounts of fun. I wish I could dabble with it more frequently in ICC.