Disc priest all grown up

I never got around to announcing it beforehand, but my priest dinged 80 around two or so weeks ago! /cheer

Hence I’ve been focusing on getting Talá geared over the last week. She can now heal Onyxia’s Lair (both 10- and 25-man versions) and Trial of the Crusader 10, possibly also the 25-man version (but have not tried yet). She’s discipline/shadow-specced at the moment. She’s a bit of a spoiled brat really, getting mats and stuff for crafted BOEs from her older sister Eilonwyn. :P

Healing is quite enjoyable, in a different way as opposed to being a damage dealer. I find that a lot of times, it hits extremes of pretty much any experience in a dungeon or raid; at easy heroics with a geared tank I get sleepy, but in raids where my gear is just right for it, it can be quite nerve-wracking. You also get to be really happy (“my heal target lived!”) or really sad (“omg I’m so sorry lag spike QQ”). I feel that DPS is a lot more linear in this regard; even if you’re overgeared for the dungeon, you’re still doing something pretty much all the time, as opposed to the healer throwing a bubble on everyone and then waiting.

I’m also finding that gearing up healing is slightly hit and miss. From the perspective of someone who’s been a damage dealer for the longest time, with tools like Rawr that tells you equipping this item or using the gem gives you +x amount of damage per second, it’s not as straightforward for healing.  There are stat weights, but even juggling between throughput and longevity depends on a lot of factors–factors which you’ll only really know through experience. For example, I thought my intellect was more than enough, until I ran dangerously OOM on Koralon.

Even healing styles are varied, and from the discussions I’ve seen there is no hands-down right way, unlike when you DPS it’s usually pretty linear when you have your rotations down pat. It’s possibly easier for other healing classes, like trees (uhm, bind everything to rejuv and roll face on keyboard) but I’m constantly feeling that I’m not using my priest abilities to its full potential. I don’t use a lot of them enough: binding heal and prayer of healing to name a few (but I love divine hymn; it’s like my lazy button).

Being disc, though, I’ve already come across people who complain about my performance on the “healing done” meters. I’m usually last; while gear probably plays a small part here, the biggest reason by far why disc priests would be lowest on the healing meters is that discipline’s strength is in damage mitigation, such as through Power Word: Shield and Renewed Hope. Sadly most people just love looking at nice big numbers. :( Yes, you’re a pally, you have heavy, huge-ass heals. I’m not, kthx.

Maybe once I’ve got disc down pat I’ll change over to disc/holy and see how raid healing goes. I like the focus-target style of disc, but can’t hurt to try other heal styles, too. Now, just need to find out how to change the clickbindings in Clique automatically based on what spec is active. Hmm. *goes to hunt*