Whats the difference between 6k damage absorbed.
And 6k damage taken then healed?

None….besides the fact that in one of those circumstances one of the players stayed at 100% health the other jumped to 80% for a time before being healed back up.

If it was possible, Absorbing 100% of the damage in a fight would be truely superior to healing 100% of the damage in a fight.

And stacking disc priests is dumb, due to weakened soul.

One thing about this blog that I would argue against is that disc “won’t have the throughput or super-strong AoE [of] a holy priest.”

Just check the ICC scoreboard and you’ll see that disc tends to out-heal holy on the same assignments — http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/clazz/ehps/pri/9/6/3/0

If you really find it that frustrating you can do 1 of 3 things:
1. Stop running with a disc priest, no other healing class has this mechanic
2. Ask your priest to shield you less (or not at all) it will put more strain on her PoM and Penance but I’m sure she’ll cope
3. Ask her to drop crit when she’s running 5mans, she will proc DA less and therefore need to heal you more

I personally go with #2 when I run with pallies, but it’s personal preference

These calculations are taken from the comments on wowhead.com, so its their calculations, not mine, but they seem to be correct.

A Diciplin priest on 2k Spell power, correct tallent spec, PW:S absorbs 5590 damage, and heals for 20% of the damage absorbed (1118 non crit) in total 6708 effectivly healed of an Instant cast spell with only 2k Spell power. Now I am fairly sure any Diciplin priest here can get 2k unbuffed, now add +174 for Inner fire, +46 for food buff and +125 for flask. thats probably >400 extra spell power if you include shammy totums.

Also, they really do well at keeping mana, I rarely ever run out of mana, even when spam healing, very strong healing class.

What we are talking about here is the idea of “effective healing.” Shields prevent damage that would otherwise have to be healed up (assuming a shield is used up, which it almost always is when used on a tank or when there is high raid damage–if the shield ISN’T used up, then it is not counted toward effective healing, at least not completely).

And Gruurk, as for ‘If I had a discipline priest again in my guild my first order to them is “Go respec to Holy or leave the guild”. I don’t waste time with this trash,’ please let me know what guild you run so I can make sure not to join it. Ignorant statements like this–the kind made in a fit of passion with no research–is what makes a bad player and a horrible guild officer or leader. Do a bit of Google searching and you will find many, many resources explaining why PvE Disc is a good thing (from casual blogs such as this all the way to posts by Elitist Jerks).

I personaly would definetly have one in my raid, especialy if you have a Holy priest or resto shammy to do the raid healing. Im a holy pally thinking about re-specing diciplin to help my guild out, as we have too many holy priests.

Damage absorbed is damage not taken which would have been healed if the priest wasnt there, just becasue they dont show off with their chart topping doesnt mean they didnt contribute.

Yes, a group probably will whipe if you have 3 diciplin priests, the same can be said if you have 3 resto shammys or 3 holy pallys, you need class variaty to bring diffrent buffs and diffrent attributes to the raid. I hate raiding without a pally, druid or shammy

Any chance of seeing the numbers from a few different fights? I’d be particularly interested in a VoA fight (as I’m used to running that for, you guessed it, PVP gear), although Naxx, Ulduar and any heroics would be good too!

(I was directed here by the Twisted Nether Podcast and have subscribed to your blog – keep it up!)

I posted it on my blog…all people need to know the usefulness of a Disc priests!

Luckily in my realm nobody questions the usefulness of Disc in PvE. But it’s still a very informative article.