Use cooldowns based on damage patterns.
I have been making a big mistake I think with disc dps. I have been only using ultimate penance defensively like a noob. Less than 2 weeks in and I still have a lot to learn. I imagine that just that change will up my overall dps. 
Other than that I use everything pretty much on CD but my trinkets are mythic track tyrstone and heroic Rashoks still so that doesn’t help dps really.
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The 4 piece makes a much more major difference on Disc’s damage output more than anything. You switch from Mindbender to Shadowfiend and it resets just as fast as Mindbender did before, but with a lot more damage output.
Then you get the extra smite damage.
Oh yea, that too. I only have the KSM token but no other tier so far. Maybe next week will be my week!
Which is the most important part you need to learn and takes the most effort.
I spent way more time doing PVP than PVE as a healer - whether Disc Priest or Holy Pally. I need to just focus on doing a bunch of +2s and learn the fights.
Tanks just need to learn the paths and how many packs they can fight.
DPS dont have to bother learning anything.
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I’ve been analyzing logs on Holy Priests pushing 24s and 25s.
80% of them are running the Seventh Spine trinket and that trinket gives about the same amount of mana as the Rashok’s trinket did before. Imho this trinket might be on the mandatory side if you want to solve the mana problems on Holy
The 4-piece triggers on average once every 22.7 seconds, so you get about 7-10 procs a boss fight depending on how long it is.
Damage wise Holy is lagging behind Disc by about 10-15k on average.
My highest keys are 20s but I’m using the Seventh Spine for keys and I haven’t run into too many mana problems at that level unless the group is just bad. I wouldn’t use it for raiding, but it’s not bad for M+. I still have to drink before/after bosses sometimes but it’s getting me through the boss fights. I’ll probably upgrade it when I have more crests to spare (upgraded the Coagulated Genosaur Blood trinket first).
So I’ve Dabbled with holy priest yesterday never touched the spec until this Xpac, Honestly my mana regen as Holy was pretty stable?? Now It could be because i am rolling with my Disc Gear so i have over 30% haste (and i know holy doesnt benefit from haste which i feel is the Sole purpose for mana issues) besides that Holy feels how disc used to feel for me in terms of complexity and i somewhat enjoyed it. And Still Being able to DPS Pretty efficiently as well Doesn’t mean im dropping disc, But i may have to tinker around with spec a little more
I’ve been trying to get keys in on Holy, but I’ve been so focused on grinding high keys on Disc. I’m about to do a +21 on Holy, but then I get messaged by people wanting to try +25s or 24s. Happened 3 times already.
In fairness, dps need to learn what to interrupt or stun. When you’re doing lower keys it doesn’t matter, but when you get high some of that damage will nearly (or entirely in a high enough key) one shot any non-tank it goes out on.
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Pain supp is still better because of it’s OP 2 charges talent. With 3 sec shaved off every PWS you get so much usage out of it. Being able to back to back PS a tank on fort, or double PS 2 targets is huge.
40% DR is roughly equivalent to 66% more healing btw. So guardian angel is something like 38% DR effectively. The cheat death is the best part though.
I was exclusively disc in s2 for my team in high keys, but I did mess around with holy for a few keys when renew talents got changed and it felt pretty good. I was just running renew focused build with COH. All my healing was just instant casts and felt very strong.
10.2 though all I saw was a crap ton of nerfs to holy and I have no idea why lol.
From the logs I’ve seen top damage for high DPS disc has just been smite and penance pumping, and with some op raid trinkets.
What I used to do last season on disc was run the stacking holy nova talent and halo and just dump both every 40 seconds on a big pack for global efficient dps.
I also see some disc not even running ultimate penitence to have another point to make penance pump harder.
You get 2 charges of Pain Sup, but GS is up every minute, and you can fire it off on cd on the tank.
You can still get killed through Pain Sup. There’s been many times I’ve been one shot through it, but with GS it gives me a safety bubble. Even in raid when I play Holy I hardly die because I can GS myself.
It’s because they were balancing us around our new 4-set bonus. 
There’s a lot of items that contribute to your damage this season. Trinkets obviously… there’s a lot of choices between Belo’relos, Nymue, Music Box, and Gnarled Root.
Then you have that Shadowflame weapon that drops from Fyrakk and the Iridal staff which can crit for 800k.
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Obligatory I hate tier statement aside.
The cheat death is huge I agree, but isn’t very common, and that benefit clashes with the 1 min cd part. If you are getting cheat death value, you aren’t getting the 1 minute value.
I’m also only speaking from a key perspective. You could get one shot through PS still but it’s also significantly less likely. I could argue there are fortified pulls where PS on the start of the pull for a BDK/VDH is enough to get them rolling whereas they could get deleted through GA and proc the cheat death and then still be in danger.
It’s a little hard to compare I guess. I just think the 2 charge talent for PS is just overpowered compared to what GA talent gives. I think the GA talent should also give 2 charges. At least then you have some real uptime on single target throughput cooldowns to keep up with disc.
Barrier is more powerful than P.S. especially with all these hard hitting boss aoes. Just given the option I’d take 1 minute GS on Disc over PS, but you obviously don’t get that choice. D:
Disc just feels squishier than Holy and has one of the lowest survival rates out of the healers.
I’ve definitely used double PS as another group DR before. It’s pretty broken imo lol.
Surprised to hear that, I’ve never felt tankier on a healer than on disc, with the exception of paladins.
The main issue is that you’re cloth and a lot of the hardest hitting abilities are physical damage. You also don’t have instant cast big heals on speed dial like Holy.
IDK which ones are normalized physical damage but I certainly remember there being certain physical spells that don’t account for armor like Slicing Maelstrom in s1
That’s not the case. I remember looking at logs of all the big hitting stuff and they scaled with armor.
Worm boss in NLs boulder toss hit clothies for 20-30% more than plate wearers.
Just starting 21-22s on holy and they still feel easily doable; disc might end up being the meta spec but I suspect holy will be viable (even for very good but not top .1% players) up into at least the 24-25s again fairly easily.
Four-set bonus is nice as expected - if occasionally a bit clunky - but the change I wasn’t expecting was how much less often I was going oom. The mana efficiency+healing from tier set is crazy-good.
You do get in a weird-feeling situation where Apothesis procs but you’re at full stacks of serenity and sanctify, because all you burned through were the tier charges. So you’ve nothing to recharge and the only real benefit is a double chastise. It doesn’t feel great but it’s a good problem to have? I suspect I might need to get used to throwing holy words out more liberally, might resolve some of that clunk.