Hi, I want to run a healing character. I chose Priest. As a “primary healer” it seems obvious and all the information I can find to choose “Holy” over “Discipline” but when I look at the stats Discipline seems to offer the best option for healing with Penance (in its healing mode). Dungeon run in Holy mode have left me struggling to keep pace with the damage dealt in a way I don’t seem to when I am in Discipline mode.
Is this just because I’m low level (34)?
Thanks in advance k
I wouldn’t put too much on low level progression. Every class scales differently. That being said Holy is easier to play than Disc and newcomer friendly.
Discipline is healing through damage he is dealing so it’s obvious he will have good damage per second in dungeon. As Holy you should focus on reactive heals, if someone got damaged heal him, try not to bother yourself with dealing damage when playing holy priest. (or maybe insta holy fires if you have mouseover macros).
At this level use Renew and help with Flash Heals and Holy Word: Serenity in critical dangerous situations.
I enjoy holy play style way more.
Holy do not struggle at healing damage, it is a really good healer.
Probably is the low level. Holy revolves around the 2 Words and also works super well with mastery, it will get better later.
There is pretty much no effort put into balancing the game before level 120, maybe 110 if you squint. Healers do more damage than dps sub lv30-40, tanks can be top dps in dungeons all the way up to mid-BC levels. Some classes don’t even get any cleave/aoe ability until the tail end of vanilla levelling. Some tank specs take literally double or triple the damage others do until sometime around the cata/mop stage.
Just play whatever feels better for you, before you hit Legion content nothing makes sense and the points don’t matter.
I also find holy to be extremely overpowered in leveling dungeons, was often top dps and ofc top healing
Disc - you have to prethink and prepared for incoming damage. When to preshield, who to preshield is important. That’s why it’s kinda more difficult than holy.
Holy is kinda reactive healing. People get damaged and you just heal them. If you in trouble just use that insta mega heal or cd. Holy spells are simple and easy to understand.
Few dungeons like Strathome in which tanks decide to overpull - Disc don’t have much choice than spamming your crappy single target(shadow word something). When you can heal by doing DPS as disc - its easy to keep up and easy than holy. But when incoming dmg is too much and you can’t keep up even with penace on tank you don’t have many options.
I hope this clear few things at low lvl.
Also few tank classes don’t even need heal much like protection warrior.
Your example of Stratholme is just perfect as it is the only vanilla dungeon which may be considered “hard” for levelers 
Disc priest will suffer there heavily.
It is more that some tanks at low level simply can’t take damage.
OK. Thanks for all the input. I’ll keep working at the Holy Priest thing.
I did do a dungeon as Discipline and survived but seemed to have to work harder than when I was Holy.
Little happier that I have worked out that you can hunt as Holy wile waiting for dungeon finder to find you a group.
Thanks again k
Agree, some tanks don’t come online until a bit later. For example until they have their mastery and celestial fortune (as well as higher gear levels for that high base stagger) monk tanks need quite a bit of healing in lower dungeons.
I mean at current (61) my baseline stagger is about 34% (65% when ironskinned). My 120 Monk currently sitting on about 64% base stagger (89% when ironskinned) as well as having the dodge mastery and celestial fortune (as well as the level 100 talents which make quite a big difference to monk damage intake). This is a huge difference in what the healer has to do.
Tanks always tend to scale better later into the game so the picture we get of them in levelling dungeons versus endgame is quite distorted.
Also a lot of classes lack their full dps toolkits when levelling so disc, comparatively offers a lot of group dps when levelling compared to endgame, as disc has it’s “full” damage toolkit arguably before 60 (talent just make it better QoL) which is why often a loomed disc priest who knows what they’re doing will be floating in the middle/upper end of the DPS charts in most levelling dungeons. This makes them a lot stronger than Holy in general levelling because trash is quite inconsistent- some trash are basically just sacks of HP (so damage is more important) and it’s only very occasionally you need to actually pull your finger out and heal intensely. This again is more suitable for disc than holy.
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