I was just about to say the same thing Minstrel, I'd include also that our Glyph for Prayer of Healing applies a small but no doubt useful HoT.

"The downside to absorption bubbles is that they're wasted if they go unused, which makes discipline priests great for handling burst damage but poor for handling DOTs and protracted damage."

In addition to Glyph of Prayer of Mending, a Discipline Priest can also choose talents that boost healing for Renew. Not to mention the fact that our shields DO absorb damage over time effects. As for protracted damage, if we're speaking of Atonement healing then that's the name of the game. Smite and Holy Fire are an Atonement Priest's mana efficient heals.

I'd also like to point out that there are two ways a Discipline Priest can specialize. One very much includes Atonement. The other is centered around direct healing, shield spam and those HoT mentioned above.

We already knew that DIsc was the flavor of choice when it came tank healing, but if people are starting to say that DIsc can out AoE a Holy priest; then, I have a lot to be depressed about as a Holy priest.

Sage, I would say that holy might need a little upgrading. Holy is extremely viable, but it doesn't really out-heal discipline in burst AoE situations, which Firelands is full of (Beth'tilac phase 2, Rhyolith phase 2, Majordomo scorpion phases, etc).

Holy still maintains the edge on discipline in sustained, long-term raid healing.

I think a nice change for holy would be to upgrade Divine Hymn (only for holy, via a talent or just a passive part of spec'ing into the tree) and lowering the cooldown. Of course, that treads a bit too close to "giving holy priests Tranquility," so a more class-unique tweak might be better.

@Sage
I wouldn't go that far but Discipline is hardly gimping along when it comes to AoE healing.

I think your mention of Circle of Healing, Chase, properly gets at the point I made earlier, that holy priests have the advantage on discipline priests in terms of sustainable raid healing.

Raid healing has two axes, really: burst and sustainable. Resto druids and holy priests are the best at sustainable AoE, but discipline priests might be the best at burst AoE (though shamans might be, also). What makes disc priests good at burst AoE healing is having a spammable AoE option that interacts well with Divine Aegis (which double dips into both crit and mastery) for added value...but they certainly can't spam it for too long, certainly not for the length of an encounter.

I did enjoy your article, though. I enjoy thinking about healer composition and how they interact.

As someone who runs both priest healing specs, but principally disc, aid healing can and is done well by disc priests but it can be a massive mana drain and there are some circumstances where holy just works better. Because Disc relies on PoH and that spell has the group restriction, if you are dealing with random target damage, I find holy works much better. Usually I play around with both when I'm raid healing to find which one suits the fight more. The two dragons in BOT I ususally heal holy.

I raid heal Shannox disc, DA just works better for me on that fight. Our holy priest does the exact same job just as well though :)

And I will second the comment further down. Holy can tank heal. Without a doubt, they can tank heal.

"It does depend on the type of incoming damage, as pulsing blasts like Beth'tilac's are perfect for discipline while I find that holy priests are more effective at healing a one-blast AOE attack like Ragnaros'."
I agree it depends but not for those reasons, or those situations. As well as burst vs sustained, damage is also random or predictable. Discipline deals best at healing predictable damage, because it has awesome tools for planning ahead, where Holy is almost purely a reactive spec. It doesn't matter if it's burst damage or not because if you know it's coming, you can pre-shield, stack Divine Aegis and Barrier it all the same. Right now Holy unfortunately is better only in a very small niche of random spiky raid damage like the AOE during Rag's transitions, which is tough to spot heal as Disc without having to resort to flash heal or just stacking DA with PoH in a pretty inefficient way, where Holy has a beautiful smart heal and a viable hot to work with. There are other issues with Holy v Disc and Holy isn't massively broken, but this probably isn't the column for it.