Thanks for the reply, Dawn. I agree with your overall assessment of the flaws in WoW healing these days, but I don't completely agree with your conclusions. Now, to stay with the Ultraxion example, I haven't done the heroic version yet; but if it's not *that* different in principle to the normal version, then it's a dps race, yes, but also an AoE healing race towards the end. You could look at it both ways: Bring a disc priest and gain dps during the first half of the fight, or bring a holy priest and make up for slightly less dps (because the disc priests I've seen haven't done *that* much dps with Atonement) by better AoE healing.

It was on Ultraxion normal that I got myself a ranking once, with the red buff and an end result of over 51k hps. I don't always top the healing meters, actually I usually don't but this fight is one of those where I shine, together with both Spine and Madness of Deathwing. Maybe that's why I reacted so needled :-)

Again, I have yet to see those fights on heroic. It's not that I'm totally opposed to going Disc; it's just that I don't see a compelling enough reason (yet). Btw, I healed Baleroc heroic as Holy too, my "secret" being the Jaws of Defeat trinket. It allowed me to spam Flash Heal without going oom and gaining very nice stacks so I could tank heal well when needed. I wasn't topping meters but I wasn't at the bottom either.

Could there be a case of a perception self-perpetuating itself? Holy priests are perceived as weaker, that's why fewer guilds use them, and then everyone looks at WoL and says, "oh my, hardly any holy priests! They must be crap. I'll go disc." Or it's because most guilds are 10man now. Whenever we have to go 10man for any reason, my healing is terrible, my hps stink and I'm at the bottom of the meters. I think Blizz might have involuntarily created another "niche" here, with holy being great in 25mans and nowhere else...