It’s alright in raid…sort of. Still annoying when mechanic lands on you while you are ramping.
Now, M+ and Arena are much harder…
Sure its pretty easy to be a mediocre disc player. It’s pretty hard to be a good disc player. From the perspective of m+ imo its much harder than other specs, all you have to do is play a pally to see how much easier it is on other classes. Also its relative right…disc is harder than rejuv spamming and rolling riptides and healing surges. Just my opinion though.
Disc priest is really easy in battlegrounds however
I disagree, but respect your opinion. Disc can be easier though, assuming a few things. First, that your UI and especially your frames are set up well. Second, that you are experienced as a ranged damage doer. Third, that you have experience healing. Fourth, that you yourself are good at mechanics and dodging, and getting the timing of managing them correct. If you have to heal yourself up a lot and/or you are hit with interruptions to your rotations too much, you are not going to be very good.
The difference between disc and other healers is that you need to know when the big damage is coming in. Then you have to use your cds well at those times, and/or have your atonements out before it hits so that you time your big damage to hit just as the group is taking damage. That requires a lot more skill than just healing up a group. You also have to be good at targeting mobs, and preferably the right ones, all the while watching your party frames. A typical reactive healer like a holy priest can get away without thinking much about damage patterns at all. You also don’t really have to pay attention to mobs and doing damage to them–mind you, you can. But you only need to do damage if you like and during down times.
Oh, and you don’t have to play disc the way described here. You can play it any way you like, but the way described is how it is meant to be done.
Just my two cents.
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Just like every other healer, althought tbh I’ve rarely used more than the default UI, aside for playing around with xpearl during BC and a little in WoTLK, the default UI is actually better than most people want to admit.
Just like every other healer
Just like every other healer
Just like every other healer
The only thing you mentioned that disc has to do that other healers don’t. There is one big problem here though. It is specifically because disc is a hybrid abomination between DPS and healing that they can’t actually expand it’s tool kit. This leads to a very narrow design that limits skill expression. As a result what do we end up with? Well in order to actually target an ally and heal you have Penance, Shadow Mend, PW:S and Radience. That’s it, that is literally your entire toolkit for selecting targets to heal. Each is extremely specific at what it is suppose to do, 1 for burst healing, 1 for spot healing, 1 to prep for damage, and 1 for AoE atonement placing.
And as for damage? If you take scism than you have 1 DPS steroid in Scism, 1 DoT to keep up, 3 CD spells in Mind Blast, Penance and Mind Games, and then you spam smite. None of this is complicated or difficult, like any other DPS rotation it’s just a priority list of cast what is off CD and then spam your filler. People like to say “but you have to manage atonement” as if that is really different from a Druid managing HoTs.
There is nothing special about the spec, and the combination of healing/DPS literally forces a stream lining of the spec of it’s tools and in turn limits how a player can really demonstrate and express their skill. Literally everything you said about “know when damage is coming” could of been said about the spec when it spammed PW:S during WoTLK and yet no one was stepping up to say “OMG disc so skilled.” Those things have not changed from expansion to expansion.
Targetting Mobs isn’t hard, I’ve literally been doing that since BC because I actually realized “hey a lot of mobs that buffs on them that when dispelled make the run easier.” It isn’t difficult and in many cases you can use target of target macros so you don’t actually have to deselect the tank or DPS you are healing. Don’t act like selecting 1 of 5 mobs is going to be difficult for a spec that needs to select the correct target of 25 players to heal.
I really hope people who think that Disc has some great skill cap, or allows for skill expression jump into BC and actually play Priest then. That is when we really got to show our skill as a class. We had a kit literally bursting with options and you didn’t just need to use the correct spell but the correct rank and you didn’t get to depend on the spec telling you what to do but instead decide which tool was right for the given situation. I got a feeling many who are playing disc now will have their heads spin.
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You keep saying every other healer, but to be honest, these things are a lot more critical on disc to have learned first because you have a lot more on your plate when playing disc. What I mean is, it is a lot easier to learn these things on other healers–all of which are a ton easier and where you have really only to focus on healing others up. Disc requires you to know these things before your play disc because disc in itself is relatively hard–maybe not at low levels but as you progress.
You can try to start on disc, but to have not mastered basic healing first means you have a lot more to master.
People like to say “you have to know it cuz disc is hard” but always fail to actually explain how it hard. It’s like some hive mind decided to say “disc is hard” and everyone ran with it without having any clue what supposedly make it hard.
I literally pointed out how everything you said, save 1 thing, applied just the same to every other healer and then discussed in detail how that one thing isn’t really as difficult as people want to say and gave reasons to back it up.
Meanwhile I am met with generic “other healers are a ton easier” “they just focus on healing” and “disc is relatively hard.” Surely if you feel disc is actually hard you can defend it better than that. Maybe refute my points they way I did yours and give specific reasons that can be addressed as to why you believe what you believe. Just a thought.
Well, okay. For one, you have a lot more to focus on as disc. You have a different kind of toolkit that involves not only healing, but also damage reduction and damage and healing through damage. Most healers are reactive. They are very simple in comparison–health bars drop and you heal them up.
In comparison, disc requires you to know the damage that is going to occur ahead of time. You have to recognize, for example, when one of the group is failing mechanics or in a bad place or whatever, and expect them to need healing before it happens. You have to know when the whole group is going to take damage ahead of time. You have to know how to position yourself so that your radiance hits everyone. You have to know when to rapture, when to put out a barrier. You have to expect damage is coming ahead of time. Your hps, generally is also lower than other healers, so you can’t make a lot of mistakes. Plus, you also have to do damage in the most effective way because the damage you do translates to healing. Hence you have to know two rotations–both a healing one and a damage one.
There is more to it too. A lot more. For example, things like mana management. When to use penance defensively. When to use shadowmend. When to stand pat and when to move. When to time your moves so that you don’t lose a lot of healing/damage time. Communication is also critical with disc.
It’s not like you can’t get away with not doing things properly, but as you progress to more and more difficult content, your level of mastery becomes more and more critical. This is like other healers, but a lot more so–at least in my view.
Subjective but I’ll fully address this a little later.
A different toolkit sure, the main crux of my argument is that our toolkit is in fact different in that is it stripped down to bare bones resulting in limited ability for skill expression.
A different toolkit doesn’t instantly mean better or more skill intensive.
If you want to compare to other classes I think that is fine and realistically the closest is probably a druid imo. It needs to prehot before damage so the HoTs are ticking much like a disc will preatonement for when it fires off it’s DPS rotation. This means the playstyles are not as different as you think, in terms of preempting damage to get ahead of it.
This playstyle isn’t unique to disc in truth all healers need some measure of preempting damage to be ready to heal, some more than others.
You mean like a holy priest might need to do for Guardian Spirit, or Life Grip, or a Paladin might need to with BoP, Mistweaver with cacoon, etc etc. Realizing when an ally is failing a mechanic and being able to cover for it is a basic skill of being a healer not something unique to disc. More often than not the big disc CDs like barrier are not something you choose to use, it’s something your raid/group calls for taking away the skill expression from you. This is an argument that in practice simply doesn’t hold water as it is either not unique or more often managed at a group level than an individual priest level.
So does every other healer. Just because they manage it differently doesn’t mean they don’t have to have those skills.
You can target a person with radiance your positioning for it is irrelevant.
Again CDs like barrier tend to be called for by raid leaders not something you choose. Rapture isn’t hard it is literally what we did in WoTLK where you preempt a big raid wide damage spike with blanket shields.
If you are pushing end game content this is true of literally every spec and roll it is not unique to disc.
If we had a skill intensive rotation you might have a point but we don’t. We have a select few spells to keep on CD and filler and then 1 big nuke in Mind Games. This isn’t a complicated or skill intensive rotation, like say Feral Druid in WoTLK was. It’s literally one of if not the most basic DPS rotation in the game.
This has largely been removed from your control. It’s weaved into your rotation via solace and a long CD shadow fiend. It isn’t like BC where you have to manage the 5SR, various down ranked spells, shadow fiend, all while healing constant damage. Mana management now a days is done rather passively instead of something you actively manage during an encounter. The most skill intensive part of it would be finding a moment to drink in between chain pulls.
The problem with your argument is you are literally listing off things every single healer should be doing and then acting like it’s unique to disc. The only part of it that is unique to disc is the requirement of a DPS rotation. The problem is our DPS rotation is braindead keep XYZ on CD and spam your filler. It isn’t hard at all, the spec is literally designed to tell you “this is how I am played” and little decision making is really required of you.
I know it may sound like I am being hard on the spec or maybe that I even hate it. I don’t, I am far less “work I hate you, you suck” in regards to disc and far more “look how the massacred my boy.” I love disc and always have, I hate what they have done to the spec. Disc used to be one of the most skill intensive healing specs back during BC because of it’s high mix of healing and utility to back it up and it was up to the player to decide how to use and get the most out of the spec. Now it’s streamlined to the point it really doesn’t have it’s old flexibility. It’s forced into a very specific playstyle with little real decisions to be made by the player.
Playing disc used to be like walking into a kitchen with fresh ingredients and tools and making whatever you are capable of. Modern day disc is like those prepackaged meal kits that walk you through step by step how to make exactly what the meal kit wants you to make.
Let’s just say there is a reason a chef gets paid to do the former while anyone can do the latter.
Why would disc be unique here? In raiding aren’t cooldowns from every class coordinated? Why wouldn’t disc cds not be called for at specific times? You’re acting like disc is some unique special healer and braindead at the same time.
I don’t dispute that, I actually specifically said “CDs like barrier” elluding to the point that they are raid coordinate and not done so by the individual playing the class. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.
I’m refuting the idea that disc is uniquely challenging or requires a significant amount of skilled compared to other healers. I am also pointing out that the spec has actually been simplified to an extent that it actually inhibits skill expression.
OK but it is in dungeons.
Like I get what people mean when they say ‘oh disc healing isn’t that hard, I can atonement heal fine!’ After all, I do too. I even swapped to NF and Holy recently, and feel like NF is pretty bad for Disc in dungeons, and still feel atonement healing isn’t a big deal.
But in reality, as you start pushing keys higher, the VAST MAJORITY of players on Disc are going to go through this experience:
“Oh my god, my atonement does like nothing and these mobs hit so hard??”
“I just shadowmended this guy and his health immediately went away, I literally can’t stop hitting the shadowmend button this sucks.”
“I have no mana now and the tank won’t stop pulling wtf”
“What the hell how do disc priests even do this? Do their groups just take no damage? That has to be it!”
The majority of Discipline’s skillcap for dungeons is learning when people are actually at safe health values for your atonement to take over. Disc doesn’t have any real strong reactive heals, wheras every other healer does. Which means for most healers, you can see a problem happen and react to it far easier than you can as a Disc priest. The tools Disc does have to reactively fix bad situations aren’t even the most intuitive. Most people aren’t going to look at Rapture and go ‘wow wait maybe this is really good for catching up on healing!’ And even if they do, it won’t fix a situation as quickly as a Sanc/Hymn will, or HTT/Cloudburst will, or a Soul of the Forest WG/Tranq will, etc. Disc needs to learn to Triage heal - something that is already harder on its own, but Discipline isn’t even the best at doing that - that honor belongs to Holy Pally. Discipline plays somewhere between the two - needing to know how to triage heal, and when they won’t need to waste mana on triage healing and can instead cover it with their passive Atonement.
All that said, on top of that, other healers need to learn how to pro-actively heal in order to do +18s, Disc needs to learn how to do that before they’re doing +10s if they’re in gear on-level for the content. This already sets the skill floor higher for a Discipline priest than most other classes. You could make an argument that other classes do proactively heal too, and I’d grant you that, but in no way do other classes need to consider pro-active healing in easy content - disc generally still does until they outgear it.
Kinda like a Druid knowing when to let his HoTs tick on his group and when to just top them off directly?
So your argument is that disc lacks specific tools every other healer has. Perhaps that has something to do with a spec being streamlined to the point it’s tools are actively limited resulting in a forced playstyle that limits skill expression? Now if only someone was bringing that point up.
This is fair and a point I’ll conceed that is both unique to disc and part of the learning curve.
I never denied the spec has a learning curve but learning when you need to actively heal someone and when you can let your passive healing mechanics, IE atonement/HoTs/Chain heal bounces/etc do their work is a basic part of every healing class. Is your argument that atonement is worse than other classes so disc requires more skill? Maybe that disc lacks tools other classes has because it’s trying to force a clunky DPS to healing mechanic resulting in a forced playstyle that lacks basic tools healers need to function and to properly allow players to demonstrate and express their skill?
Just trying to understand your argument here because in some cases it feels like you are agreeing with me even if you don’t realize it.
You are making an argument for the speed at which people develop specific skills now, not that one requires more skill over the other. No one is going to say some little league kid has more skill than Michael Jordan because the kid didn’t fail to make the team the first time he tried while Michael had to practice. Just because a class requires you to learn/pick up a specific skill faster, or have to use it sooner, doesn’t mean the class as a whole requires more skill, only that you prioritize specific skills.
No - because a Druid doesn’t need to do this in low level keys. Generally, they only need to play around Soul of the Forest and popping the rest of their hots when people get hit.
No. My argument is that it doesn’t have obvious reactive buttons. For a player who doesn’t heal much, the toolkit is not as straightforward as say, Holy Word: Sanc, Wild Growth, Wellspring/Ascendence, etc. all of those buttons are very obvious what they should be used for. When you look at Disc priest, you have people doing +8s arguing in another thread here that you shouldn’t be using Radiance for its healing but only as an atonement applicator - which is markedly incorrect at a higher level of play. You have people not understanding when/how they should use Rapture.
Honestly, I think Disc and Holy Pally kind of go hand-in-hand here in SL. They both are not healers that are super easy to get a grasp of. Holy Pally just has a step up for M+ because Beacon of Virtue can carry people who don’t really understand the Holy Pally kit yet.
Sort of, but no. Most healers as they’re starting to push keys only need to worry about using one or two GCDs on their DPS. They can focus almost entirely on reactively healing groups through damage and easily hit +15 keys doing so. This just isn’t the case for Disc. It’s not that Disc lacks the tools to do so - it’s that Disc needs to consider when it should be doing DPS versus when it should be healing far more often than any other spec.
For an example of what I mean, a Druid putting Lifebloom, Rejuv, Regrowth, Efflo and Cenarion Ward on a tank is just going to keep that tank up with little maintenance. They don’t really even need to think about WHEN to place these HoTs on the tank. They can keep all of them but Cenarion up at all times, if they want. A Shaman has 5 million tools to just keep a tank and their DPS alive at all times.
A Disc priest cannot just put atonement on a tank and start DPSing. They will not sustain the damage that way. They also cannot just sit there and Shadowmend the tank either, as they will run out of mana that way. They need to play with both just to be on an even playing field with a healer that is only doing one.
Yes, that is what a skill floor is, and that’s what makes Discipline a harder healer. We’re not talking about absolute top potential play of any given healer. When you’re pushing +25 keys, every healer is going to be difficult to play, and none of them are going to have it significantly easier than another, since they all are solving similar problems with different toolkits.
Where difficulty comes into play in WoW is at an entry level.
You’re looking at this in a completely different way than anyone else is.
Let’s say we’re looking at a digital artist versus a traditional artist. When they’ve both spent 30 years perfecting their craft, it will be extremely hard to tell one that the other one is a better artist than them, or that it takes ‘much more skill’ to do traditional art versus digital art. In fact, both artists would probably look at each other’s medium and have a respect for each other’s skill. The traditional artist might look at the digital artist’s work and go ‘wow that’s crazy, I would never be able to do that kind of color work on a canvas’ And the digital artist will look at the traditional artist’s work and go ‘oh wow you’re able to get textures that I just can’t replicate with my brushes.’
But you can’t deny that when you’re an artist that’s spent a year on each kind, most artists would not be able to deny that traditional is more difficult to learn. If you’re looking to make a simple piece, the huge amount of conveniences that come with a program makes it much easier.
That’s closer to what people are talking about when they say Disc is a hard spec to learn. They’re not saying Discipline priest players are huge galaxy brains that are way higher skill than all you other healer bois. They’re saying that Disc is not easy to get into, and takes work to start doing well on in content that other healers have an easier learning curve for.
How soon they needs to do it in progression content doesn’t change that they still need to do the same things Disc needs to do to progress, regardless if they have to learn it at +15 or +5.
That is literally the point. “Disc doesn’t have obvious reactive buttons” while we could argue the semantics of this the reality is that you are stating disc lacks what other specs have naturally. This doesn’t mean it can’t compete or do good, viabilty isn’t what is being discussed here. What is being discussed is does the spec require more skill than others and is the spec as a whole complete from a design stand point. The answer to both is no. It requires the same skills as others, it may require you to learn some things sooner than others but it doesn’t require you to know or understand the game more than any other healer. From the design point it directly does lack in several places because of it’s streamlined nature the player is limited in how they can really express their skill instead leaving them instead having to play the spec exactly how it was designed to be played instead of being able to make the spec work for them.
If you are healing keys you should be doing DPS to help you group finish faster, or hit timers. This isn’t a skill unique to disc the biggest difference is they don’t get healing out of it like disc does, meaning they would actually need to switch between a DPS and healing mode while Disc is always healing either directly or via it’s damage.
You are aware in the list you provided you pointed out more healing spells that druids have than disc entire kit right? Penance/Mend/Radiance/Shield is what disc can actually cast on it’s allies. It lacks an actual HoT, I know PTW+atonement is suppose to count which is laughable to me, it lacks a long cast time heal, it lacks a decent AoE heal, it gives all this up because Atonment is suppose to be this awesome super special thing that makes them a unique snowflake and it just doesn’t. It’s a shackle that holds the class back design wise because as long as the spec is cursed with atonement the devs CAN’T give them the actual heals they need because that would be broken.
As a result the spec is saddled with this clunky, poorly thought-out DPS to healing non-sense that forces the spec into a pathetic and linear healing style.
This is completely false. With proper design skill can, and should be, expressable at all stages of the game. This is the crux of the problem though and why you think disc requires some unique degree of skill. You think time to pick up and learn determines skill compared to developing a degree of mastery and the varying degress of mastery that are possible.
Other healing specs have a tremendous degree of mastery available because they are not so linear in their design. Instead of their spec being a road map for what the dev wants you to do they are instead given tools to make the best of. With disc once you learn how the devs want you to play the spec you are on auto-pilot because there really isn’t any means for the spec to deviate from that style.
I’m looking at this from a mastery level while you are looking at it from entry level. It’s easy to pick up chess and learn how the pieces move, it’s freaking hard as hell to memorize the positions and play at a Grandmaster level. Your stance is that Disc is hard because learning it’s style is difficulty. I’m saying it isn’t hard because mastery in the style is pre-determined it’s so refined from a design perspective there is little ability for the player to refine it themselves.
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Great, so you agree - Disc is harder to learn. That’s as far as this needed to go.
It literally does, and you’re saying it does above. You can’t just say Disc needs to consider more difficult things in earlier keys, but then also say that all classes are the same.
Well yes, it does require you learn things much sooner and at a faster pace, and is thus difficult to learn. When you throw a kid who’s never played a game of football into an organized game, he’s going to do worse than the kid who’s been playing pick up games for a while now.
This doesn’t even make sense. The only way your argument of skill levels only exist at a point of mastery works, is if you are only considering the point of mastery. If Disc doesn’t lack anything fundamentally at that level of mastery, then no, it doesn’t lack anything as a spec.
Jesus, we’re talking about casual players, dude. Even further, we’re talking about a player who has NEVER TOUCHED HEALING. They’re not gonna be doing great DPS, flat out.
Because Disc’s burst healing tools are tied to damage. This is literally the point of the class, it doesn’t make sense to say it fundamentally lacks something when it has it, just behind extra steps (and those extra steps are what creates the larger learning curve!).
I’m struggling to even comprehend what you’re talking about here. Are you saying skill floors don’t exist? If so you’re incredibly wrong. It’s a term that’s been getting used in the gaming space more and more, but it’s been around in a bunch of other performance-based activities. I know acrobats use it a lot. Skill floor is baked into any design you make. Even in a world where the healers were all completely homogenous, there would be a base skill floor.
This sounds like you just don’t play a good disc priest, honestly. There’s no significant difference in freedom of Disc’s playstyle versus any other healer in the game’s playstyle. With all of them you can take sub-optimal builds and specs and do fine. People have completed high keys with different talent builds on Discipline. Most healers have very similar build diversity at 20+ keys.
Maybe you quit disc too soon to see that, or something, but the class isn’t as rigid as you’re making it out to be. Or at least, it’s not any more rigid than Pally/Druid.
Then you’re completely wrong, and that’s basically where the discussion ends. You haven’t even come close to proving this. You’ve just said Disc ‘lacks tools’ when it really doesn’t lack them any more than a Holy Pally.
Your attempt to say learning different skills sooner is like saying it takes more skill to play Basketball than to play Football. Prioritizing one set of skills over another set doesn’t mean you have more skills, or require more skill, it simply means you are different.
Using your analagy you are effectively saying that the kid in little league has more skill that Tom Brady because the kid in little league struggles to learn the game.
By contrast my argument would be more along the lines of “if the forward pass was still banned in the game of football than Tom Brady could not demonstrate how skilled he is.”
You don’t seem to grasp this concept.
I know it may be hard to understand but when you are talking about skill expression you are going to be talking about at the highest levels. Hell to use another game as an example Lee Sin in League of Legends is reknown as a champ that is not only difficult to pick up but also insanely hard to master because of all the unique interactions and tricks you can pull on him if you are good enough. Regardless of how difficult disc is or isn’t to pick up, something I would argue is subjective, the degree of skill expression available to the spec is limited, regardless of how you spec the class, because of how linear it’s design is. You don’t have a toolbox that you can figure out how to use, you have a instruction manual of “you will play like this or fail” which takes very little to master.
No, you may be talking about casual players, I have always been talking about the spec, it’s design flaws, and how that limits player skill expression. You are attempting to limit it to a specific group, I’m never going to let the conversation be so narrow, because frankly the casual players are irrelevant when you are talking about how a spec enables skill expression as skill is naturally something that comes with mastery, IE the highest levels of play.
If you want to talk Burst heals in disc it is literally Mind Games, which is actually tied to a Covenant not to the class itself. This means if you are not Venthyr you will lack those burst heals and instead be stuck with the significantly weaker atonement heals you get out of Penance, Smite, Mind Blast and Solace. Beyond that you can make an argument for some big shields via Rapture which can buy you some time to get people back up but it won’t “burst heal” them by any means.
I’m saying if you design a class properly than you will see just how skilled a player really is at all levels. Disc loses a lot of it’s ability for skill expression at a higher level because of the limited toolkit that lacks any real nuance. Disc is effectively a giant mallet, you can hammer with it and thats about it. The other healing specs are a loaded tool chest that you can do so much more with and have so many interactions that many people don’t think of. Sure you can build a table with both but you can make the table a work of art with a tool chest while the mallet will make simply make it function.
I have played every healer in the game, at max level of varying expansions although haven’t maxed them all this expansion. Their styles vary a great deal from discs, have much more flexiblity and tools enabling to change up and adapt your playstyle to the situation presented, IE express your skill.
Disc by contrast lacks this. You will spot heal with Shadowmend, you will AoE heal/proc atonement with Radience, and you will spam your pre-determined DPS rotation the exact same way everytime with only remote change being when you use Mind Games to recovery a hard AoE hit. You will use Barrier when DBM tells you big damage is coming, you will use Pain Suppression in similar fashion. You won’t deviate from this hardly ever because the spec simply can’t, it isn’t designed to allow you to deviate, it is designed to play this way and it is designed to linearly this is all it can do.
It has nothing to do with suboptimal builds, it has everything to do with a limited and linear design.
I’ve made done plenty to prove this point, from picking apart the tool kit, to comparing it to the flexibility of other healers, to using multiple analogies that you ignored. Just because you wish to ignore it doesn’t change that fact. I’ve been willing to listen but you really haven’t said anything that actually refute my comments, you have attempted to redirect a conversation about spec design to be about new players picking up a spec. If you can’t see how different those conversations are there is really no helping you understand why everything you have said so far has had nothing to do with actually addressing the topic at hand.
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The game has too many priests. Make a shaman or a monk. Dont bother with priests heals. There are much better healers.
Disc is hard if you’re not paying attention and don’t know what you’re doing. Their “oh no” button is basically Flash Heal that also hurts the target, and it’s also the button you’re supposed to press to get your Atonements rolling because PW: Shield is weak outside of cooldowns. If people are dropping below half health you did something very wrong and there’s almost nothing you can do to fix it, but if you stay on top of your game then your party will rarely be in danger.
Apparently it’s rewarding to play for those skilled enough to handle it, but I do not count myself among that group. As soon as I get in the groove, my mind starts to wander and five seconds later it’s a wipe.
For Holy Paladin, I just never cared for them. They used to be Flash Heal bots, and now they’re basically melee Disc Priests without the benefit of Atonement. It’s hard enough for me to understand Disc, HPal is beyond my feeble comprehension.
As for races, literally whatever you want. Racial spells went the way of the dodo a long time ago, and most of them are no longer even in the game. The racial bonuses are hardly a deal maker or breaker, either. But since you obviously have Mag’har Orc unlocked, I would recommend them if you prefer to stay Horde. If ya went through the trouble of unlocking an allied race you may as well get some use out of it!
Martyrofsand your posts on this topic are some of the most well thought out and intelligent that I have seen. I stopped playing Disc because I tired of the playstyle, it didnt have alot of options and unless you performed specific tasks at all times you basically sucked. It was boring. Thanks for giving out some valuable information on the spec that needs to be heard. An d thanks for putting the Disc elitist’s in check ! 
Ive played other MMO Hybrids before (Runekeeper in LOTR, Chloromancer in Rift, etc) and Disc has got to be the WORST “damage to heal” hybrid spec I have ever experienced. Blizz just cant get it right. Done with the spec for good.