It really isn’t that bad so far. In beta I could play it to a decent level and it has only been buffed.
I actually prefer Oracle on a couple bosses in the current season, too. I MIGHT play it as high as I can just for fun first. But I know people will be asking me to play my Shaman in higher key or if I’m on priest VW lol.
To put it into numbers , voidweaver has 20% more atonement, around 50% more ST damage, around 200% at least more aoe damage, the healing disparity is double digits and not in the scale of 10. Its above 20
In raid, yes, but I don’t think so in dungeons. Oracle’s raid performance is relatively bad for a number of reasons, but chief among them is that Disc’s raid playstyle is ramp because of how atonement scales and Oracle has nothing to drop into a ramp. In Oracle’s best case in raid it’s pretty much not even close, no. I wouldn’t even say it’s a 20% loss, it’s more like 25% if I were guessing.
I think people are massively underestimating Oracle in dungeon though because they’re playing it like VW but with premonition. In reality you shouldn’t play or build it anything like VW. It sounds very counterintuitive, but it does work. It just is a major damage sacrifice, and you’ve gotta be OK with that. Oracle’s small group healing is actually perfectly fine (good even), because most of what it effects has better value from priority healing.
VW WOULD blow it out of the water if this season was mostly 30s interval bursts, but it’s really not. There’s a lot of cases in this dungeon set where VW covers the first burst comfortably and is struggling with a second mechanic 15s later.
Sidenote though, Voidweaver disc is currently super overperforming in raid. It’s currently topping a lot of meters in 30man heroic which is kinda wild. I expect they might get nerfed.
I’m going to run some m0s tonight as Disc. I’ve been playing Archon Holy just to get a feel for it.
So after running those dungeons: here’s my thoughts.
I would say the lack of healing coolies and weaker single target heals is probably the biggest downside to Disc now. When I play Holy and the healing checks are really pushed to the max I feel like I’m more than able to keep up because I have 4 cds to rotate through. Disc has a lot harder time getting rid of those giant absorb shields in Grim Batol compared to Holy.
With Disc? If Mindbender and Mindblast are on cooldown: god speed to you.
From heroic (dungeon) testing i was doing equal healing about 800lk on both hero talents, with VW obviously does more damage, but i felt oracle had more answers when as Cath said, once you had used mindbender and mind blast i could get caught.
I settled for a mix of holy and shadow with mindbender, and uppies down to heavens wrath. insight 4 penances helping lower the cd on uppies fast and uppies with piety was awesome.
Plus large pws and rapture went something i neglected in season 4 and became something to actively use now and PoM being an added and passive heal
I know this is a healing thread so far, but i’ll throw my shadowy hat into the ring and say that when i get a group i’m having fun, but i swear it feels like people are actively avoiding me for the color of my name atm lol
Does any oracle priests have a weak aura they can share. It does get annoying having to mouseover to see what premonition is next
I use one called “Premonition Tracker ICON.” I am sure there are ones out there that are better, but this one seems simple and does what I need it to do.
Voidweaver Disc feels INCREDIBLE for 12 seconds and then helpless for 18sec.
Do with that what you will.
If your group can manage to not die for the 15sec or so you’re useless, you can effortlessly top them all off in your next mindbender + mind blast burst. Voidweaver Disc has arguably the highest 5man HPS possible during those 12sec and it’s FREE and you’re cranking damage.
But yeah, after that your group needs to kick, AoE stop and avoid ground effects or they’re dead. If your group can manage the ebb and flow of “no healing at all then all the healing in the world” Disc is fine. If not, then not.
Don’t sleep on how wildly OP both mind soothe and PI are for this season. They’re both incredible.
P.S. I main spriest but right now my Brewmaster is better geared and doing more content just due to demand. I refuse to do Mythics with Disc. Just doesn’t vibe well with Brew. Brew needs consistent healing due to stagger (and general squishiness early expansion) and Disc cannot do it safely. Rdruid has the ideal healing profile for Brew and Mark is 1.5% extra vers. So keep in mind Disc (or any healer’s) viability is often comp dependent, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I’m preferring Rdruid, Rshaman and Hpal this season - avoiding Priest, MW and Pres Evoker. I run a somewhat static Brew, Aug, Arcane with X DPS and Y Healer - often PuGs from the LFG pane so we can be picky.
As me and a friend found out yesterday.
We have noticed that this isnt happening. My tank friend keeps track and said dps are just not interrupting or ccing and its causing a truck load of damage to go out. Im almost working up a sweat healing some pugs atm.
As a decent 80+% parser archon dps tanks of similar ilvl absolutely gap me in overall. Please send help blizzard.
It’s funny, on my Spriest I’m over here sweating to do 1-1.2mil DPS on mob packs around 6 mobs. I can do it, but I need to go into the pull with insanity pooled, halo up, torrent up etc. My monk? I walk up, hit a cooldown macro, press two buttons and I’m doing 1.4mil DPS. Couple Dance of Chi-Ji procs do more damage than my entire Spriest lol! And Monk isn’t even considered a particularly meta AoE DPS.
With this most recent 6% damage hotfix, I think Spriest will end up around B tier for raid. For a first tier, that’s pretty good. Shadow is normally very weak early expansion. But in Mythic+? Good lord. Thank god we have Mind soothe or PI or I wouldn’t get any invites at all. Our AoE DPS feels clunky and very far behind the pack, and now with a 5% psychic link nerf.
It will get better with gear. But yeah. Spriest is struggling right now in my experience.
What spec would you run as oracle.
My raid group is finally raiding - so the one I’m running in my heroic because I wanted to try it out, LOL. Basically a LW/DI that skips all the AoE stuff.
Edit: Here
Interesting so you went full into the holy side of the tree.
BT would give you faster time geting raptures out.
Wondering how your mana will hold up without faster shadowfiends or mind benders
Ahh i see you took shield discipline
Discipline Priest The War Within Talent Calculator - 11.0.2 Beta (wowhead.com)
Variation of that, i mocked up after seeing yours
Nah, I’m running holy in raid. 
My disc oracle setup is just messing around in dungeons.
Sorry, I totally thought this question was in response to another thread where I said I thought holy oracle was probably decent and I hadn’t seen anyone running the build I would run. My bad!
As far as dungeon disc, I’ve been running fully holy side of the tree to see how it is - and dungeon mana is totally fine. In my experience on Disc we’re basically infinite mana anyway.
My reasoning for not grabbing Scov in dungeon is largely that my Scov windows aren’t that powerful. Without taking the line all the way down to IE, the biggest benefit I get out of it is shadow penance. And unless I take the line down to Void Summoner I’m just not going to be in it that often. Also not willing to sacrifice points in Harsh Discipline unless I really am just taking the whole bender line.
If I were gonna play both, I’d probably go with:
Basically replacing my uppies with bender windows.
hmm i supposed i was trying to create more answers. Insight with dark penances with shadowfiend recharges it faster plus is another healing cd you can use coupled with uppies as another answer and obviously raptures with AoW as another.
Still gives you some dps value
i understand what you mean but there is some terrible pugs out there that had me scrambling
I’ve found that spamming penance has almost always been a mistake versus alternating Radiance>Penance>Radiance>Penance which nets you another radiance charge, or using insight as a mini-rapture.
If I was taking IE it might not be, though, yeah.
I haven’t really struggled yet even pugging, but then again M0s haven’t been too hard yet. Once M+ starts I’m gonna see how high I can climb on oracle disc, and I’ll probably try a few things out.
Steamvault last boss. no one clearing the debuff and just dropping stuff around the boss. Became a nightmare