From Disc to Holy

dI've been disc ever since the last BC patch. I loved penance, and when I heard that CoH went to a cooldown...well, that was the end of Holy for me. I was disc before the majority became disc, and I was good at it.

I can probably still be good at it, but my shields are currently doing a bit more than half of what they were doing before the patch, atonement isn't working in a raid environment due to the range limitation (or at all at times it seems), shields are so not worth casting...I didn't even take the strength of soul target on beta anymore, and the rest of the spec seems...well, boring.

Sooo...I'll be playing with holy.
Not only will it be a new route to take, and hence a new challenge, I also believe it will be the stronger spec in Cataclysm. Absorption is and will always be one of the strongest mechanics in the game, since if placed right the overheal done is very low to non-existent. But the fact that discipline is actually showing the better mana numbers kind of makes me suspect that if treated properly, holy will be the more powerful spec.

This does mean I will have to learn to heal again, and stopcasting to preserve mana, but I guess there's a price to pay for following where the power lies. But hey, no better time than to learn it at the end of an expansion when you have mana to burn.

My impressions so far:

- Chakra PoH will be of limited use in 10mans.
PoH is pretty, but if you're not careful you will be wasting a lot of mana with it. So while it's a really nice toy to play with, I'm not sure how often I will be in this chakra state.

- I need to stick a power aura in to remind me to use my holy word spells.
I keep forgetting that my holy word changes depending on the chakra state, and also that I should be in a chakra state if I want to use the holy word as a heal. (watch me hammering my button wondering why it's not doing anything).

- I should read, take in, and then put aside what most of the theorycrafters come with.
This for me is a standard. I generally read what everybody says to have a good basis of knowledge to work with, and then I apply that knowledge according to my playstyle. Since I seem to have a very different playstyle than most of the big voices out there, there hasn't been an expansion yet where I went along with the big flow entirely. (my disc spec was built around crit for example, not spellpower)

- I haven't got the faintest clue what the best stat will be yet.
I've been reading that haste will not be as useful, and all I'm thinking is "Gah, that heal is taking looooooong!! Need more haste!"

But I have to admit, I haven't actually been able to play around in Cata raids too much just yet, so it's hard to judge. I have been playing around in Cata heroics, and so far haste seems like a pretty nice stat to go for. It will allow me to become more reactive to the situations, and while my throughput and mana is not helped by stacking haste, if my heal actually lands in time...who cares if it's not as big as it could be.

Maybe this is just a transition feeling mostly, I mean after all I do come from the fastest played spec in the game, with mostly instants, so having to wait for a spell to finish casting is...

- Surge of Light is absolutely useless
6% on smite or heal...yeah, right. That is like....uhm....once per instance? No way, better spend my talent points elsewhere, like reduced cooldown on shadowfiend.

- There's still a crapload of bugs in the holy spec, most of them have to do with Holy Words
There's still quite a few weeks before Cataclysm so I'm assuming these will all be fixed still. Untill then we'll just have to heal around them.

Anyways, holy seems like a really fun spec now, and I'll be poking it. So yeah...instead of disc guides...I might just write holy guides.