Post by ZoraLink
HoR is rough, but I got through it in Disc by spamming shields, dropping PoM on the tank whenever it was up, and liberal use of Flash heal.
I have about 2300SP and 20k mana on my priest (similar to my resto druid), all disco except for 11 points down into holy to give me desperate prayer. I had NEVER managed to successfully heal PoS until tonight, I'm not sure what I did differently this time, the group wasn't fantastically good geared or that smart either...
...In general, prayer of healing is too slow to cast and cost a horrible amount of mana. Flash heal barely keeps ahead of incoming damage on ONE target, nevermind the other four... Nourish on my druid easily crits for over 8k, flash heal for 4.5k if I'm lucky, and costs MORE mana. Greater heal crits for what I get out of nourish, takes longer to cast and costs lots more mana, and renew is again weaker than druid's HoT and more expensive. Failblizzard at work I say. :(
I can do any of the new instances fairly OK on the druid now (sht can always happen of course, but typically group makes it through the instance!), I rarely need to use innervate, and I also die a lot less even if other players aren't very good. Disco priest....not nearly as easy. I run dry a lot, most of my heals are weak and the only really great one (penance) only hits one target and has a cooldown on it. :( Shields help of course, but shields don't actually HEAL people and they eat a lot of GCDs meaning while I sheild one guy someone else is getting hammered. Shields merely delay, absorb maybe 5k damage or so and they're only available every 15 secs.
The way I see it, disco needs better AoE healing, badly. And much better flash heal; it's really underpowered, especially compared to druid's nourish. Not sure what lesser healing wave and flash of light hits for with similar gear since I don't have any such healers, but half the healing for greater mana cost = crap when comparing priest and druid.
If you are a Discipline Priest and your shields still have a 15 second CD, then you Sir are a fail Priest. Shields are the staple of Disco Priests so not talenting to improve them as much as possible is just silly and you are bound to have a lot of problems. Similarly, you can get
Glyph of Penance to reduce the CD and
Glyph of Power Word: Shield adds a small heal to your shields. You're not playing the class correctly, comparing it to a Druid which is a no no, and quite frankly I'm surprised that no one on the Disco train has ripped you a new over this yet. Go read the stickies and fix your spec.
As far as spells, that you want to do is to keep up PW:S up on everyone, but if you know ranged and yourself will not be taking damage, just keep it on the melee and tank. PoM the tank on every CD. I like to keep Renew up on the tank and any fire happy dps. Lots of FH and Penance on every CD (8sec), Pain Suppression on the tank if Penance is on CD and he's about to bite it, and Inner Focus + Greater Heal. Abolish Disease and Dispel/Mass Dispel when needed.
Disco has great AoE
damge mitigation. If no one gets hurt, they don't need to be healed. Comparing Disco to a Druid won't get you anywhere. It's a completely different play style and you have to think of it like that. I recently took a Holy offspec and getting into the mindset of having to wait for damage to happen and then heal it is challenging for me instead of throwing out preventative shields. Similarly, it's also quite different to have AoE heals be the main focus instead of having a more defined healing priority like with Disc. Tank > Heals > DPS
...And back at OP.
I found them difficult at first and I still don't particularly enjoy doing them. The groups of vyrkrul before the cave in Pit leaves me nearly oom after every group, but other than that they're fairly easy now. I think it also has a lot to do with how experienced the tank is within the instances. If they're using their defensive abilities at the right times then it helps me out a lot.
HoR has become the funnest dungeon in the world to me so long as all the dps are geared and pumping out high numbers. I healed a 33k buffed hp pally tank last night and it was awesome.
As I mentioned before, I recently took Holy as my offspec and I wouldn't touch any of the new instances with a 10-foot pole while Holy, not just because I'm still learning how to play it properly, but also because even with with my 6k-7k shields, the group still takes a lot of damage and I burn a lot of mana with dispels/disease which would leave me oom half-way through a fight if I were Holy instead of nearly oom at the end as Disc.
I'm currently amazed and wondering how you removed the weakened soul debuff. Unless you run with PvP gear. Which makes me sad.
Also, since people seem to hate that group of Vrykul before the tunnel/after Ick and Krick (I do too!), if you stay by Ick's body right after killing him, the Vrykul won't run down. Mount your group up, then charge up the hill, and the Lady Vrykul will run down while you run up, NOT aggroing to you, then you can just ignore them all together.