It’s the buttons. There’s so many buttons! 
As shadow I have my main rotation spells, and then utility. Nice and simple, but discipline? Omg I have healing spells, then I need to have a mod to cast on self, or my targets target. Then I have dps spells that need the same, and then I have utility spells
I’m so overwhelmed. How do you guys manage this?
I’ll admit I’m new to healing, so I’m probably still adjusting, but it’s just so many buttons. I see why people refuse to heal 
I have my healing and damage spells macro’d into the same buttons based on what I’m targeting.
So when I’m targeting an enemy and I press 3 I cast smite, when I’m targeting an ally I cast Shadowmend
I use the addon clique to heal. It allows me to use shift or ctrl clicks to cast different spells. So the majority of my heals are cast with that, leaving the keybinds for my damaging abilities.
There are a ton of abilities even with that. But it keeps it more manageable.
Oh and because clique is all mouseover healing it allows me to keep the kill target targetted, allowing me to get back to damaging faster.
Are you using mouseovers? They’re almost required as Disc, so you can always keep your target as an enemy and just mouseover to heal. I use mousebinds through VuhDo, and I can have each button cast a damage spell or a healing spell depending on if the target is hostile or friendly. Actually, I use way more buttons as Holy than as Disc.
I don’t use any healing addon, I just use macros. Do whatever makes you comfortable.
The macro that I was talking about earlier looks somewhat like this. A little different because of the self cast modifier you use.
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt,@player] [@mouseover,help,nodead] Shadow Mend; [@mouseover,harm,nodead] [harm] Smite; Shadow Mend;
I’m not really sure how to simplify it with the self cast modifier but it works.
To be fair, disc is the most difficult healer imo and requires the most knowledge. But the very basics is spam PW Shield/Shadow mend to rack up 4-8 atonements, radiance x2, spirit shell, schism, spam all your damage spells (mindgames, mindbender, mind blast, etc.) and then smite… repeat every minute or so lol.
I use healbot for healing but there are other addons that make it super easy as well like Vuhdo and a few others. Looking up a guide will also help a lot. Mouseover macros can be a bit confusing, so these addons make it much more simple.
I use mouseover macros for my direct heals, shields, and cooldown. In an ideal situation you are just getting your atonements out and then using your regular dps rotation.
I don’t macro my offensives, personally, I just target the mob who is most likely to die last so I don’t have to target switch to much.
Theres like 25+ spell buttons.
Just try to find the most useful of those and focus on that. Try making 12 buttons that offer the most benefit and have those be the main buttons, with the rest of them being situational.
Also you can macro multiple spells into one button using castsequence. Very useful.
Thanks for the tips guys. I’ve been trying a few things, and so far it’s gotten better
I changed most of my heals to mouseovers, and target of target macros. That way I never have to switch targets if I don’t want to
It works pretty well in smaller groups, but in large groups it’s still a struggle. In epic BGs for example, there’s just so many targets to monitor and I find myself mostly using mouseovers, which is fine, but because there’s 40 frames it’s very easy to misclick, move my cursor too far and heal the wrong person etc
Maybe I just need to get used to healing
Have the raid leader mark you and say in chat, healers are marked so you know where to run. Then just heal ppl who are close enough. And if you have time/are close go save that yahoo.
Oh I remembered another question I wanted to ask: When you know big damage is coming in a raid, what’s the best way to get atonements out?
Do I just shield a bunch of people? I takes so many globals, but using radiance seems like a waste if the healing isn’t needed
There’s your first problem. As any experienced healer will tell you, disc is for advanced healers. If you want to play disc, you want to know the basics of healing first. Anyone telling you to start with disc has got it all wrong. Holy (priest spec) is easily the best healer to start healing on. And once you get healing down, you probably have a relatively well geared disc priest to play. If I were you I’d also get a ranged dps spec or two under my belt. While ranged dps is probably relatively easy it still would help.
I disagree. I feel you pick one and stick with it until you know it.
I started as hybrid then disc so I could heal pvp.
Pick what you want and just try to get better at it!
Lots of videos u can watch too. I watched some holy priest videos when I first started doing mythics so I got an idea of what people were doing.
Good luck! Priest is the best.
Well, feel free to disagree. I suggest anyone new to healing get on the stream of Madskillzz and chat about it. The guy plays all of the healers and has a huge following. He will tell you the exact same thing–not to start with disc.
I started hybrid, then disc, now I’m holy. Worked great loved it. That guy can play everything he wants. Priests the best.
Sure. And good for you. But for a guy struggling like this guy, and asking for help? I have literally seen guys come into the streams of Madskillzz with virtually the exact same problem. And he recommended learning healing on an easier healer, like a holy priest and that disc is probably the hardest healer to play. Myself, I have healed on all healers and have been healing since vanilla and completely agree.
BASIC GUIDE! wow he even sounds like a tv announcer
It shouldn’t be that way imo, it’s setting new players up for failure.
When I first started doing hard mythics, it was a struggle. Basically I didn’t know holy’s spells well enough to be able to counter the damage being thrown at me.
But after playing holy for 2 months now I’m confident that I’m about as good as I’ll get with the spells I have.
Gear/mechanics is where I fail. So if you want to play a class, just play the class and learn what you can do, it will come to you naturally aslong as you keep playing and applying yourself to the role.
As a new healer I’d focus on basic concepts of healing and learning your role.
Which spec you do it on is largely irrelevant, disc may actually be easier as it is semi-similar to a dps caster and you have less healing spells to manage/know when to use or not.
If you’re having trouble understanding when to heal and which spells to use in which situation, playing something like Resto Druid or Holy Priest will be more confusing, as they have many more healing spells.
Others have mentioned mouseover macros, and things like healbot/vuhdo. I personally use Clique and mouseovers. So, I don’t have any healing spells on my bars, they’re tied to mouse button clicks with Clique. And because Disc has fewer healing spells, this works wonderfully. My action bars on disc are less populated than any other healer spec I’ve set up. I’d highly recommend getting something like Clique as it gives you a huge amount of bar space and mechanical efficiency.
Anyway, concepts like triage, learning and responding to damage patterns, getting a feel for how long you can rely on atonement healing (healing thru doing damage) and when you need to shift into direct healing, making sure your unitframes are the correct size and in a good place for you so you don’t misclick, are all universal healing concepts. Best to learn these now and not necessarily focus on the spec so much. If you tie your practice, knowledge and ability to heal completely to the mechanics of a single spec (or switch in order to do something “easier”) that’s the equivalent of treating the symptoms and not the cause, I guess is what I’m getting at.
All healers do the same basic things: set up for a pull, do dps for as long as possible, heal the incoming damage from mobs/enemy players.
How each spec does these things are where it gets really fun and interesting, but is a little more in depth than I’d worry about right now. As long as there is no complete party wipe, you’ve succeeded.
If you have any questions, I’d be happy to stream some simple gameplay for you, discuss UI options, addons, healing concepts, etc, you can add my discord at distance#4423. 
P.S. in an epic bg this is slightly different. There’s so many players, people are spread out, oftentimes running off to do their own thing, it’s very chaotic and you’re not meant to handle it all by yourself and be responsible for everyone’s health lol. Get a good unit frame addon that shows you clearly who is available to heal, stick with a group that knows what they’re doing and keep them alive. xD