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.

For the past few weeks, everyone’s enjoyed patch 3.3 and the first ICC wing. We soak it up during our eager World of Warcraft breaks in the middle of the Holiday conundrum, knowing it will be awhile before the next wing is released. For my guild, the experience known as Saurfang (and informally known as this) came to fruition last night, thankfully after hot soup and a sandwich to ease my twitching nervous system.

At first, like many deceptive fights in progression raids, I thought Blizzard had once again made things too easy. And then, with very little warning (I think our raid leader read tidbits from WoWWiki at some point, but it’s difficult for me to listen to something that sounds like the mother from Peanuts), everyone dies and I think, “Progression raid is progressing!”

Happens every time.

I’m sure in another 3 weeks, I’ll have guild members complaining they made things too easy anyway, but for now, this kind of sharp learning curve spawns all kinds of hilarious and bountiful whispers. At some point, I told another one of the guildies through the pink text, “I’m Penancing Under Duress.” I will henceforth refer to this as iPud.

The question is: in 3.3, is it better to heal Holy, or to heal iPud?

Healing Discipline: Why your raid can benefit from your very own iPud

Here are three reasons iPud is the successful way to heal in 3.3:

1. For the bubbles! Taken from WoWWiki’s entry on Saurfang: Saurfang will cast Boiling Blood on random raid members. This can simply be healed through, though every tick grants blood power. While you can not dispel or normally remove this debuff, immunity abilities like Ice Block and Divine Shield will stop it ticking while active, as will a Priest’s Power Word: Shield. This can greatly reduce the amount of Blood Power Saurfang receives. Power Word: Shield procs Borrowed Time for faster Penance to deal with Mark of the Fallen Champion so that Saurfang doesn’t heal 5% of his total health. PW:S is also an excellent way to help with Bonestorm while running around (insta-cast + running = FTW!) and, provided you have Rapture, will help your raid maintain high mana/energy/rage throughout these extended fights.
2. You still have a Prayer of Healing strategy. One of the big arguments against Discipline is that it is ineffective for raid healing (even though I just mentioned that Penance is a great fix for Mark of the Fallen Champion.) While it’s true that Discipline is not as effective as Holy, you’re not nearly as gimped at raid heals as you might think, or people might make you out to be. Try procing Borrowed Time before Prayer of Healing; it won’t feel as fast as Serendipity 3, but you can get Borrowed Time faster than Serendipity 3, which means you can potentially pump out Prayer of Healing faster in the long haul.
3. Mana, mana, mana. I mentioned in a previous post how I had switched from Healbot to Grid healing. I heal faster that way. Healing faster meant running out of mana quicker, and when my 1400+ Spirit with my Darkmoon Card: Greatness could no longer keep my mana up, I switched from Holy to Discipline in a desperate attempt to fix mana issues I got tired of fighting. With that in mind, a higher Spirit (and Int too, but the delicate process of DMC:G is that Spirit > Int at all times for the proc) could fix Holy.

Healing Holy: Why iPud might not be the thing for you

Here are three reasons Holy may be the better option than Discipline in 3.3:

1. Speed demon bubble. Just because you’re not spec’d for a cheap, high-absorption bubble doesn’t mean that PW:S is useless. If you spec’d into Body and Soul like I recommended in my Lvl 80 Holy Priest Raiding Guide, you can utilize PW:S to help run from Bonestorm, help raid members stay away from blood beasts, and run back to the ledge during the airship event. Careful, though; Holy is a mana sink to begin with, and using too much PW:S is only going to make it worse.
2. Raid spreading out + Circle of Healing smart heal. Several bosses, yet again, require the raid to spread out. Chain Heal, even increased from an 8 to 10 yard jump, can’t cut it in several scenarios where the raid just needs to stay away from each other; this is where the Holy priest’s Circle of Healing really shines. If your raid needs a smart heal to take care of the raid damage, a Holy priest definitely brings a friendlier smart heal than the Restoration shaman. Going Discipline won’t give the priest this smart heal advantage.
3. Strategic Lightwell. Lightwell is actually rather useful in several of these fights. For instance, those with Mark of the Champion can stack on another HoT simply by making a pit stop at the nearest Lightwell location.

Why I prefer iPud over Holy in 3.3

I am a Holy priest at heart, whether it’s pewing or healing; but in 3.3, at least in ICC’s first wing, Discipline priests are definitely getting the spotlight. So many fights benefit from the improved PW:S and so many of them are mana intensive, requiring the spec that is more friendly to your mana pool and sustainability. Not only that, but there is a vast difference in the ease of healing the new 5-mans between the two specs; Halls of Reflection in Discipline is peachy, and in Holy, is like a flashback to the nightmare runs through a Heroic TK instance in green and blue gear. While Holy still has it’s clear advantages (like Circle of Healing), the disparity of them is too wide for it to hold a candle to Discipline.

The first time I get an opportunity to wriggle my way into an ICC raid as Smite, I’ll provide a compare-contrast on how our fair Smite spec is doing versus the new-and-improved Shadow spec. Until then, Happy Holidays!

I’ve Converted to Shadow Pew and Discipline Healing!

Hold on a sec. I realize I have guides for the total opposite experiences hovering in that menu above: my Lvl 80 Smite Priest Raiding Guide and my Lvl 80 Holy Priest Raiding Guide. I pew and heal quite the contrary to what ICC has done to me. There’s an explanation!

With the new changes to Shadowform, I decided to try out Shadow spec to familiarize myself with how Haste + Shadow Word: Pain feels. This is an important experience that all of us Smite priests should endure, in the most painful and un-liberating way. The reasoning? If you don’t know how to talk Shadow to people, you can’t really hold a candle when you’re trying to defend your “inferior” spec. Trust me! Shadow has undergone some drastic changes and so it warrants all priests get some hands-on experience so they don’t sound like numskulls when XYZ asks, “How’s that new patch treatin’ ya?”

But the real WTF ICC’s patch did to me is this horrible conversion from Holy healer to Discipline healer, complete with that nose-wrinkling spell called Penance. It reminds me of the time that one of my distant relatives brought me into [keeping religious location anonymous to avoid insulting said religious members] to part take in [unfamiliar religious practices that naturally make me claw for a different kind of salvation than what the location attempted to give me.] But Discipline didn’t undergo such drastic changes to demand a hand-wetting experience like Shadow did, so… “WTF?”

The answer is mana. I stacked my spirit high, I really did. I even invested in a Darkmoon Card: Greatness recently to further help my spirit out. When Marrowgar makes me OOM though, complete with blown potion and no fiend, and he’s still at well over 70% health–there be a problem! I blame this on three exterior facts that many of you might be experiencing:

1. A raid leader that thinks 2 healers is peachy. (Mind you, we’re not ToGC-25 geared. Try like some ToC-10 and ToC-25 items mishmashed together.)
2. DPS that think it’s okay to stick their finger up their nose for 1~5 extra seconds before removing a victim off a spike.
3. I switched from Healbot to Grid recently and it’s like switching from diet soda to regular; SUGAR RUSH!

Okay, maybe most people aren’t dumb enough to switch from Healbot to Grid healing on the crest of a new raid. That would be my bad. I heal a hell of a lot faster and, well, that means I drain mana faster.

Discipline priests, so the rumor says, don’t OOM as fast as Holy priests. Johannah the Smite Priest is here to tell you the myth is true. For as long as it takes for me to stop peeing through mana like a drunken psychotic, I’ll be healing ICC Discipline in the safety net of mana-forever-land. This will likely last a couple weeks, so expect me to provide at least one “This is how I heal Disc” post in the near future along with my Shadow experiences.

Then we’ll dissolve back to normal and I’ll write a Holy and Smite perspective on ICC.

…also, if you’re a Holy priest frantically switching to Discipline, make sure to buy the Penance ranks. Trying to heal ICC with a rank 2 of anything is pretty much fail. True story.