I’ve had no luck playing this. I’m always freaking out and end up hard casting heals because people are taking damage and I can’t keep them up.
I’m sooooooo used to reactionary healing it’s ridiculous. I haven’t successfully played disc since mop now 
help?
I struggle with this as well. I know some people are doing really well with Oracle but to be honest I find the mechanics really irritating, having to cycle through premonition effects and the focus on PW:S. I always find the rotation and cooldowns to be at odds with the incoming damage and end up spamming flash heal and running out of mana. I rarely have time to actually do damage to heal due to CC and even stacking a ton of mastery the pure healing throughput just never seems to be enough. I know in this case its most certainly a skill issue, it just seems as the talent suggests (premonition) that its far to based on predicting incoming damage, and is far more punishing when you’re wrong. I know its really strong right now for those that are good at that, but its personally pushed me away from the spec/hero talents, simply because I prefer more reactionary healing, and pure throughput.
I really wish Voidweaver disc was more viable in PvP as it is SO much more fun. In WPVP with no dampening, it seems amazing in small groups. But the low healing output with dampening and vulnerability to CC makes it a liability in arenas. Its an absolute blast to play though!!
You need to know the damage is coming, have Atonement applied beforehand, and then use Mind Blast and/or Voidwraith just before the damage hits and start blasting to heal effectively. This is all well and good when the damage is predictable, but becomes a problem if players are taking avoidable or unexpected damage while Mind Blast or Voidwraith are on cooldown. Do note that I’m using voidweaver as the assumed subspec because discipline’s ability to heal large damage events seems to be pegged to what voidweaver can do and oracle doesn’t seem to really have the juice to reliably heal the same way.
Discipline is notoriously difficult to play in low to mid key pugs.
Yea like I said it’s GREAT when there is no dampening i.e. wpvp and pve, as you are suggesting. It’s used quite predominately in 2s as well simply because of the damage in addition to healing. But struggles when your opponent has nearly any other healer.
Dampening just hits it particularly hard because it seems to rely more on haste and just pumping so anything that slows you down REALLY drops throughput on top of dampening. It just simply cant keep up with the incoming damage in 3s or SS after a min or two, which is unfortunate.
But yea, to your point, both in PvE and in PvP if other players are not on top of their game and taking avoidable damage, it can be frustrating.
Premonition needs to be deleted from the game. Besides that tho, Holy feels like it has too many buttons and yet priests still have a lacking tooltkit compared to other healers for this XPAC.
I prefer voidweaver for disc though. Shorter CDs and you don’t have to hardcast when you’re dealing oodles of damage with entropic rift & shadowed Penance, then its just keeping attonements up while you blast enemies in minmaxed Shadow Gear.
Disc, and healing priests in general, feels like the class that ks most punished for bad teammates or even just teammates who don’t understand your specs limitations.
On my evoker I feel like the only way people die is if I screw up and make mistakes, and tbf I do limit test a fair bit as I’m still learning it so people do die more than they should but thats learning.
My priest is another case all together. There are pulls in which I know beyond the shadow of a doubt I played it the best the class is capable of being played and people still died just because the tank pulled more than I was capable of, or DPS didn’t interrupt abilities they normally wouldn’t becuase other healers could handle the debuff/spell/etc in a way the priest simply can’t.
So while you have to really flip your mindset to know when big damage is coming to prevent it and have a Harsh Discipline stacked and ready to go with atonement out on everybody, you also need a party and especially a tank who understands you are not like other healers and they need to pull/interrupt/use stops accordingly.
If its about pvp disc is amazing from a through-put perspective but still needs to stay ahead of damage. This doesn’t just mean “don’t let people get low” it also means keeping your CDs lined up ahead of DPS CDs and getting the most out of spells like Rapture before dampening makes them damn near useless.
I don’t pvp. I’d be playing it in raid, maybe low keys. I don’t pug, but sometimes not all my dps are on board, so to speak. I’m not afraid to let them die though if it’s unhealable.
Just feel like dipping my toes in and giving it a go.
In raid you are effectively a raid CD. You are lining up Rapture+Evangelism to blanket the raid with ~20 atonements just before big damage comes and then unloading at mucb damage as possible to heal it. In between those windows you will have some mini-ramp times in which use your radiance charges and renew for smaller burst of raid healing, but that is pretty much your role…for however long it remains until people realize evokers can do in 4 buttons what it takes disc 20 to accomplish.
I couldn’t play evoker worth a crap.
No, its not completely a skill issue – The issue is the unavoidable damage vs healing throughput do not line up.
Lets use some examples:
Renew heals roughly 10-12k a tick. WTF is that? Honestly. - We have poison ticking for 350-600k a tick, and Renew heals for 12k.
Prayer of Mending healing for 60k a bounce?
Prayer of Healing healing for 250k on Crit?
HW: Sanctify roughly 200-250k on 1min CD with 2-charges that require you to cast PoH/Renew to lower CD
The ONLY reliable burst heals are - Heal, Flash Heal, and Holy Word: Serenity.
Sorry, I’m using Holy to much as an example… regarding Disc.
Unfortunately, even with these Tips which has helped me a bit. I get overwhelmed VERY easily because the damage is just TOO DAMN MUCH.
Screwing up a mechanic and getting punished is one thing, but struggling on unavoidable damage is another. Poison is a key component to most of the Dungeons and we have ZERO way to remove it, and its ticking for 250-700k a pop. What’s crazy is this is the damage on +2-6 Keys - It gets significantly worse on higher keys.
Timing keys is also nutty, 2 wipes and your done on nearly all keys.
If you want to push keys roll a Shaman - If you’re like me and enjoy Priest, unfortunately we’ll continue to suffer until Blizzard stops hyper-focusing on Shamans. Which are overperforming. (NOT ASKING TO NERF THEM) I just want priest to be brought up a peg or two… and FFS give us more removal… poison at least.
Voidweaver is definitely the play in 2s. Especially with a rogue or something. You just gotta get used to playing without radiance.
Yep, this. I was running a + 7 Grim last night and we wiped 4 times on the 3rd boss because the damn voidbound was lining up with the dragons knock back and if I didn’t have everyone at full HP, it was a instant wipe. I was stressing last night, averaging 850k hps overall after we completed it. I can’t imagine Disc doing any better since it’s throughput is lower in terms of raw healing output during high burst.
Health bar go down, fill health bar back up.
Simple as.
I spit out my drink.