My spec and gear: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sentinels/luke/advancedhttp://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sentinels/luke/advanced

My character, Luke, is dual specced. One is disc PVE heals, and the other is disc PVP. I've toyed with Holy and liked it pre-85, hate it now. And I've toyed with shadow, and do not like the gameplay for it whatsoever.

My guild is very healer heavy, so I find I'm being asked to DPS a lot. Since I hate shadow, I went with my PVP spec tonight just for kicks, to see how we do. Four of us entered the queue for a tank, 3 mins later, we ran regular Halls of Origination.

Right away the tank questions why I'm not shadow, and I explain. He does a o.O cause he sees we're all in a guild together, but we're fun and cool people, so we rock the instance.

Trash DPS was pretty bland, 4.5k average. But bosses, wow. I was shocked.

6.5k DPS on bosses, which includes running around and all that. And it was consistent on each boss. Not to mention, atonement was helping the paladin healer a lot, who kept yawning and saying how easy this run was to heal for some reason. I enlightened him later on.

The tank whispered me, "Wow, not bad man. Not bad." All the other DPS were doing about 5.5 to 6k on the bosses, give or take.

My rotation: Penance, Devouring Plague, SW: Pain, Holy Fire, Smite x3, Penance, and just kept the dots and holy fire up so smite does more damage. I also used SW: Death when the mob/boss was below 25%, twice in a row, whenever it was available.

Not to mention the dispels, cure diseases, and lifegripping the DPS on the first boss up from the lever, epic usage there.

So, I'm not saying it's a viable RAID spec, or even heroics. But gee wizz, in my PVP gear, with the talents you see there, pulling my own and leading DPS on boss fights isn't so bad. The guild loved it and want me to rock it more often, and I'd be happy to oblige.

I plan on pulling 2 pts from Train of Thought and putting it into Twisted Faith for the hit. Wow, all this without being hit capped. I love it.

Anyone have any experience with it? My only gripe was drinking every few pulls, but that seems to be commonplace in this expansion anyway.

Very good report. Disc is a hideous healing prospect at 85 as it currently stands - but I'm with you on the damage front. It's not brilliant, but it's surprisingly solid. Especially if you stack your glyphs right. I've been having fun with DPS disc - I'm also using Shadow, which is ok but runs out of mana fast unless you're constantly self-damaging with Death, and I've had some healers get annoyed by that. Disc is self-sufficient, and can muck in with bubbles and utility when the crap hits the fan. And that can be the difference between a wipe and a win.

 

-----signature-----

Uuhhh Disc is amazing right now? We raid with 1 Disc in our 10 consistently and my standard heroic has 2 disc priests that alternate. The 3rd is a resto druid.

6.5k dps on bosses the low end of the spectrum for sure but higher than I would have expected at least.


In mostly 333 items on my lock I pull 10-12k on most boss fights, my warrior does 15-16k. When I tank I want to see dps at least at 8-9k, if everyones at 6-7k the healer usually OOM's unless highly over geared.

All of us were fresh level 85's, including the paladin healer. Everyone was pulling in 5.5 - 6.5 k DPS, tank, and all 3 DPS. Healer had zero issue with mana -- but, then again, my smites were healing the tank as well, so they may be what made the difference.

Also keep in mind, this is regular 85 dungeons, not heroic.

I've seen a few people talking about the "secret strategy" to trivialize Cata heroics: take a party consisting of tank, two healers, and two DPS, rather than the traditional tank, healer and three DPS.

Taking a dedicated healer and an atonement-spec Disc priest may actually be an even sweeter spot, since it's really a tank, one and a half healers, and two and a half DPS.

Consider, people take three healers in 10-man raids until they outgear them, usually. And certainly more than 5 healers in 25-man raids. So a greater-than-20% healer ratio is normal for challenging content.

I'm not surprised it's working well for you!

 

-----signature-----

well the best healer i have been with in a pug so far has been a disc priest

Funny how I got laughed at a couple months ago when I talked about DPSing as Disc. Here, on this very board.

Now here we are, early Cata, and Disc is rounding out to be the hybrid that trivializes heroic content.

Not that any of you laughed at me, the ones who did have avoided this thread like the plague I bet.

 

-----signature-----

We've been having a lot of fun with a shadow priest in our group. MC on the humanoid pulls has been working great, and vampiric embrace does a substantial amount of healing for all the fights where everyone is taking damage (which is most fights).

 

-----signature-----

I DPS/Off heal in heroics right now and we roll through them. I think this strategy works well. Healing rain then DPS works nicely and really helps the healer in terms of mana management.

 

-----signature-----