So, about that T10 4piece change.

Haven’t heard about it?

Well, the most recent PTR build has a change for Healy Priests’ T10 4 piece tier bonus. The current, live version, is this:

Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

I always thought that was rather confusing, but then let’s be fair. I’m slow. I had decided to forego that particular tier bonus for two reasons:

1) By a strange twist of awesomeness, whose details I am not at liberty to discuss, I miraculously acquired a free Leggings of Woven Death. Since I now have those, I figured what the hell, and went and purchased Meteor Chaser’s Raiment, because Dwarves look oh so hot in a turtleneck. Cough. This essentially killed my opportunity for the 4 piece bonus anyway.

2) Did I mention I’m slow? I don’t even want to see the stats on how many times I would miss the reset cooldown on my Penance. It would likely just throw off my tank-healing rotation, and confuse me.

Now, there was a lot of outcry about the crappy set bonuses for Disc Priests, because it just looked like Blizz was completely out of touch with what Disc Priests actually do most of the time. In 10 mans they may tank heal (and both tier bonuses for Disc Priests are very much directed towards tank healing IMO), but in 25s it is much more common for them to be raid healing – Pallies are just that much better in 25s. The tier bonuses don’t really do much for shield spamming – but to be fair, gear itemization in general does not do much for shield spamming Disc Priests. It’s a bit of a mess. Borrowed Time means you don’t need haste. Shields can’t crit, so you don’t need crit. You don’t need mana regen. So basically, everything that’s not Spellpower or at least Intellect is just *yawn*.

Okay so let’s take a look-see at what the PTR may have in store for us in terms of a new T10 4pc bonus:

Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

I feel very ANH about this bonus, but it is definitely superior to the previous set bonus for shield spammers. It’s pretty irritating to change the bonus so late in the game though – quite a few people have already made their badge choices for tier or non-tier gear.

For Holy priests, I think it’s utter crap – and my main reasoning for that is coming directly from something Zusterke (for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration - who doesn't?) pointed out on the PlusHeal forums:

I'm confused by the idea that we get a FHeal bonus in the 2P and a Renew bonus in 4P when those spells seem to be competitors as filler spells.

I see Renew being touted more and more as a replacement for Flash Heal in many ways for Holy Priests, and I’m not sure yet how I feel about that. As someone who always ran with a lot of Druids, I hated it. Druids are better at HoTs, so it's better for me to focus on more burstiness while they deal with ... uhm, health pool softening. If you aren't druid-heavy, then yes, Renew is great.

In a raid, I do not heal in a vacuum - I heal as part of a team, and therefore, I consider the strengths of others in my team when making my own gear and talent choices. When I'm holy and healing next to a Druid, I rarely use Renew.

In conclusion though, if the PTR changes go through to live, it won’t really affect me personally, though I am sad for all those who saved up the emblems to get the bonus and will not like the change – Holy and Disc alike. If you had a good way to keep track of the free Penance or Circle of Healing proc, and if you were a tank healing Disc Priest, I would have thought it was pretty good.

As a side note… every time I read comments about Dawn Moore (the Healy priest column writer at WoW.com) I breathe yet another sigh of relief that I did not get that job. I may not always agree with her evaluations of things but… I know for a fact I would not handle that much criticism very well. Yes, yes… I’m a wimp.

I have a love/hate relationship with ElitistJerks, the kings of theorycrafting. If you are looking for numbers on something, they provide some of the best resources. If, however, you are looking for tips on how to handle various situations better, or how to become a better healer, they are useless. They will throw numbers at you and ridicule you if your numbers are not what they consider ideal.

The thing is, it is very rare to find yourself in a raid mix and situation that is ideal - that's why it's CALLED ideal. The numbers they provide always have basic assumptions attached to them - such as who else is in the raid with you, what buffs you have, that sort of thing.

But what if I *don't* have a resto shammy with me? What if there are no druids available for an innervate? What if we don't have a shadow priest? Surely all these things would be ideal, but it is not practical to always assume this will be the case.

The way you should gem and enchant your gear, the talents you choose, the stats you prioritize should all take your fellow raid members into account of course. As I've said before, raiding is about synergy, not about individual perfection. At the same time, the numbers and theorycrafting provided by folks like the ElitistJerks will very rarely actually properly apply - because it is very rare that the average raider will ever meet all the conditions assumed by the EJ calculations.

The problem is, people get so hung up on tiny little numbers that will potentially boost their stats by such infintesimal amounts, that they completely forget to balance themselves.

Theorycrafting and the math that goes with it gives people the impression that there is really only one "best" way to do something - the way that maximizes the numbers used in the calculation. But the average raid is a lot more dynamic than I think people like to admit. Changing things up is how people learn new fights, conquer new material. If I couldn't keep people alive with loads of crit rating, maybe I'll try it with tons of haste and see if that works better. And people heal differently. So if you don't gear yourself for how YOU heal, and instead try to gear according to how EJ insists you should heal, you are not doing yourself or your raid a favor.

Does that mean theorycrafting is stupid? Not at all - much like meters, it is a useful tool to help you improve. Use that theorycrafting to make decisions between choices you have in front of you, between items you might pick up. But don't let the theorycrafting of others dictate everything about your character, because especially for holy priests, there are a lot of flexible variables.

If you are new to a class or role, reading up on theorycrafting and scanning through the EJ priest forums is a fantastic idea. Had I not done this, I would still be stacking spirit and ignoring intellect. Until you find your niche, until you train your reflexes and trigger fingers properly, it is not a bad idea to default to the suggestions of the more experienced among your class, and those with the math skillz to explain it all.

But, once you get a handle on the basics of your class, and once you start to develop your own rotations and habits and strategies, stop depending on the way others choose to gear, and start figuring out what works best for you. There is an awesome discussion along this line of thinking from the Penance Priest for those Disc Priests who are at the stage of the game - you've got the basics down, now you are ready to personalize your style and priorities a bit.
There are still wrong answers, a la agility for Priests and all sorts of degrees of less obvious fail. Every healing priest (probably all priests period) need to pick up Meditation, for instance. It's really not optional. But just like how there are multiple wrong answers, I assure you friends, there are also multiple right ones.

From Poptisse, whom I absolutely adore, and for whom I have tauren-loads of respect:

"What people have to understand is the basics of raiding. When you gem and enchant your gear there is more then 1 aspect to look from. [...]Gems and enchants should always be decided upon a wide perspective of your raidsetup. My guide isn't a bible, neither is EJ guides."

Okay so in case you don't feel like searching through WoW.com front page (slacker) here is a copy and paste about what is known so far regarding the incoming stat changes for the new expansion Cataclysm.

• Attack Power on gear is gone. Instead, some classes will get 2 AP from each point of Agi (Rogues, Hunters, Shamans, Druids), and other classes (presumably Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights) will get 2 AP per point of Strength. Side effect: no more plate wearers stealing your gear
• Spell Power is gone. It comes from Int now.
• MP5 is gone. Spirit is the mana regen stat, and all classes that need it will get some form of Meditation. (Hunters, never fear - you don't use mana any more. More on this in a separate post.)
• Armor Penetration is gone. That one was just confusing.
• Defense is gone. Tanks are now defense-capped from talents, like Druid tanks.
• Haste now increases your rate of resource regeneration (mana, energy, rage, runes, focus).
• Block Value is gone, but blocks now mitigate a percentage of damage.
• Stamina is going to be more equal across different armor types - no more "plate HP envy."

(Source - http://www.wow.com/2009/08/21/blizzcon-2009-stats-vastly-simplified/)

This is one of those changes about which I'm totally on the fence. On the one hand, it makes a lot of sense. We have these basic stats, and really, everything else should be derived from the stats. Wow is based on D&D, and that's essentially how D&D works. Attack Power has always been based on Agility or Strength depending on class anyway, so there was really no need for excess AP stats. I never understood Armor Penetration (in my defense, I'm more the caster type dammit, don't call me a noob!). The Block Value eradication, and change of Block makes more sense to me too. I am cheering about Spirit becoming the main point of mana regen again (although a little irritated that they just nerfed spirit by buffing mp5, when they are making such a change in the expansion... but then again, let's all remember that despite all the excitement, Cataclysm is still a long way off). The fact that Hunters needed mana was stupid, I really like the idea of it going to focus, theres more similarity with their pets. I think it's pretty clever how haste is changing - I always thought it should be that way instead. Intellect should be the basis for more caster abilities, such as spellpower.

Now, another incoming addition for Professions is the ability to "Reforge", which will be specificly based on your profession. I.e., Tailors can reforge cloth items, Blacksmiths plate, etc. Reforging is the ability to readjust some of the stats on an item. For instance, if a cloth piece drops with 50 Spirit and 40 Stamina, I can reforge it to make it have 10 Intellect, 40 Spirit, and 40 Stamina. No word yet on the limitations regarding amount, however, you will not be able to add to a stat that is already on the item (So while I can add 10 Intellect, I cannot take 10 points from stamina to make 60 Spirit.)

Okay, now that i've covered those basics, here are the problems I foresee. In TBC, there was so much variety and specific stats on items, that it was not uncommon for an item to drop that was no good for anyone. Then they combined melee and spell haste into simply haste, and same for crit and +healing/+damage into spellpower. This simplification really changed the way gear dropped in raids - there was a lot more competition for each item. I don't think that's a bad thing... it's painful to disenchant some really nice items.

But now it's going even further. Without knowing what limitations they are going to put on reforging, I could pick up any cloth item (after all, armor class is still important) and remove stats on it to add stats that are important to me. So, in the extreme, all that really seems to matter is what armor class it is, and what slot? This is frighteningly generic to me. There have already been a lot of complaints in Wrath about how generic items seem to be (at least the artwork... how many different versions/colors of that damn Moonshroud Robe has my priest worn anyway?) It's too soon to tell for sure, or to get too worked up over it though. I'm working off of a very small amount of details at this point, but so far I am a little concerned.

All this information is derived from the first "Class, Items, and Professions" panel yesterday. There is a second one at 2:30 PST today, and I am waiting with baited breath for that one. I have a lot of ranting I want to do about Path of the Titans as well, but I'm hoping there will be more clarification at tonight's panel, so I'll hold off on my comments for that. The classes discussed yesterday were Hunter, Priest, Shaman, and Warrior. There weren't a whole lot of details, and it was pretty disappointing. I think the most exciting news so far class-wise was for hunters.

There are plenty of sources on teh interwebs for information regarding Discipline Priest healing, but I thought I would throw my own two cents in. If you’re looking for theory crafting, there’s no better place than ElititstJerks. If you’re looking for hilarity, try Bubbles. And if you want a perspective from a raid and guild leader who runs Discipline, check out Matticus.

And if you’re totally lost, and don’t even know where to start to try out this Disc thing you’ve been hearing so much about, well here I am. Rock you like a hurricane.

I’m not an expert, but I too went the way of the Disc. If you’re switching to Discipline from Shadow, you will have a completely different learning curve than if you are switching over from Holy. If you are especially n00by, bubble = Power Word: Shield :)

The first thing to remember as a Discipline priest, is that unlike other healers, your focus is on damage mitigation. You will not top healing charts. You are going to be bubbling and trying to prevent targets from taking any damage in the first place - therefore your priority is in damage prevention, not reactive healing.

Table of Contents

• Talent Points
• Stats
• Glyphs
• Spells
• Rotation

• Discussion on Enchants/Enhancements can be found in a separate post.
  

Talent Points

If you’re looking for a basic Talent Point distribution to give you an idea what you need at level 80, I threw one together that will suffice. You can move a few talents around here and there, but for PvE and raid healing, you will want all of the bottom half of the Disc tree.

Most Important Talents:

• Inner Focus – Personally, I’m pretty rotten at remembering to use this spell, but you really should take it and learn how to manage it properly. In addition to being providing you with a mana free heal, it also gives you a good shot at a nice crit boost.
• Improved Power Word: Shield – Discipline priests bubble. That’s what they do. You cannot call yourself a Disc priest without this basic, staple talent that ensures your bubbles are superior to Holy bubbles.
• Soul Warding – This effectively removes the cooldown from Power Word: Shield so you can bubble like crazy. Go nuts. You can spend all your time bubbling your companions – and that’s kinda like, what Disc priests do yo.
• Mental Agility – You will be using a lot of instant casts, so you might as well take this to move on to the next tier.
• Mental Strength – See below for reasons why Intellect is such a great stat for Disc Priests. This is a must-have talent mainly because in addition to a very nice increase in regen and mana pool, it is a prereq for Power Infusion, and gets you to the latter half of the tier.
• Reflective Shield – Why do I not include this in my PvE spec? With our personal delight in bubbles, why not have a reflective bubble? If you are speccing for PvE, skip this talent because it only applies to bubbles you cast on YOURSELF, and is therefore not worth the 2 talent points for a raid healing spec. Great PvP talent though.
• Power Infusion – This is a pretty snazzy spell that will give you (or someone else – it is castable on other members of your raid) a significant speed boost, as well as cutting down mana.
• Renewed Hope – This is a staple Disc spell. If you didn’t know, Weakened Soul is the debuff given when someone has Power Word: Shield on them to prevent you from spam casting your bubble on one individual taking damage. This talent explains why you should be casting Power Word: Shield on SOMEONE at LEAST every 20 seconds as a benefit to the whole raid. This is also why you usually want to bubble someone up before you start casting heals on them, because your heals will crit more when you do so.
• Rapture – This talent ensures that you do not run out of mana. Take this, bubble freely, and you will have few mana issues.
• Aspiration – the only part of this talent that is especially crucial is the reduced cooldown for Penance. But, that reduced cooldown is so crucial that this is a must-have talent.
• Divine Aegis – It’s your double-bubble! When one bubble just isn’t enough! You will likely be critting quite a bit.
• Pain Suppression – If you are joining us from the Holy side, this is the Disc version of Guardian Spirit. In other words, it is your oh shit button. Despite what I may have said elsewhere regarding the efficacy of an oh shit button that reduces threat, it still has a significant damage reduction associated with it. Don’t just use it on tanks! Everyone has that ridiculously aggro-happy mage in the group who needs the threat reduction…
• Grace – This talent is one more reason why Discipline priests are great single target healers. It’s a 9% healing boost, which is pretty significant.
• Borrowed Time – There are two parts to this talent. The speed boost is nice, no doubt about it, but that’s not what makes this talent required. The increase in how much your bubble absorbs explains why Disc priests keep yelling at Holy priests to stop making half-assed bubble attempts. Disc bubbles will always be far superior to Holy bubbles.
• Penance – The awesomest heal ever. You are not a disc priest until you have Penance. This will quickly become your favorite heal, and it should become your most used heal.

You’ll likely have a few talent points left over that you can spend over in the Holy tree. For the most part, you only want/need to spec into Holy deep enough to pick up Inspiration. Here are a few suggestions:

• Holy Specialization – Crit is pretty important to Disc priests, so you can go ahead and pick this up as your tier 1 holy talent for all your non-Penance heals. You know, those silly heals you’ll be using when you aren’t spamming Penance or your bubble. Pfft.
• Divine Fury – another anh talent picked up mainly to get to Inspiration. However, you probably will use Greater Heal in between Penance often enough to justify the half second reduction in cast time. This is all a matter of personal preference. If you find you are more of a Flash Heal spammer, pick up Spell Warding instead.
• Spell Warding – as an alternative to Divine Fury on your way to Inspiration, you can pick this up for a little extra survivability. Most AoE raid damage that can’t be avoided is spell damage, so it’s not a bad talent to have, just not a necessity.
• Inspiration – This is the most important talent for you to try to get to in the Holy tree. Because you will often be focusing as a single-target healer, which means you will often be the tank healer, this is an added damage reduction talent for you.
• Desperate Prayer – If you have an extra talent point left over, this isn’t a bad spell to pick up. It’s a personal oh shit button (I am not mourning the days when it was mana –free and Dwarf racial. No really, I’m not. ::weep::)

Stats

Alright, so you’ve got your talent points sorted out. Now it’s time to figure out your gear. You will probably already have picked up on some of the stats that are important to Disc priests by filling in your talent points, but here’s a more detailed look.

• Hit Rating – if you are new to healing, this applies to all healers – Healers do NOT need ANY hit rating. Heals always hit.
• Spirit – Holy and Shadow priests, take note. You do not get a spellpower bonus from Spirit when you are Disc. Spirit is very blah for Discipline priests. You can take it or leave it, but it's not really any better than Mp5, and should be well balanced with Intellect.
• Intellect – this is an important stat for all casters, of course, and certainly all healers, but if you are coming over from the Holy side please note this is an even more important stat to Disc priests. (This is another good reason why when deciding on your talents, Mental Strength is a must-have.) Intellect boosts the size of your mana pool, boosts your regen, and increase your crit rating. The size of your mana pool is actually in and of itself a regen mechanic – take a look at the tooltips for the following raid regen spells, and you will see why – Replenishment, Shadowfiend, Rapture.
• Crit Rating – Crit procs your “double bubble”, Divine Aegis, which is a large portion of the "healing" (mitigation) you will be doing, so it's pretty important.
  
• Spell Haste – it may seem that Spell Haste isn’t as important to Disc priests because we spend so much time using instants (a la Prayer of Mending and Power Word: Shield) but because Spell Haste also reduces your global cooldown, and therefore allows you to cast more bubbles in a smaller amount of time, it is still important. The Haste vs Crit debate still applies for Disc priests, but it is largely a matter of personal preference. If you want to read more about the theory-crafting behind it, check out ElitistJerks.
• Mp5 – The recent 3.2 boost to Mp5 makes it a better stat. If you are Shadow or Holy, and are used to avoiding Mp5 in favor of Spirit, remember that again, Disc priests don’t get any supplemental boosts from Spirit unlike the other talents. Therefore Mp5 is better for Disc priests in some ways. Mp5 will directly increase your mana regen while casting, with the tradeoff that it does not scale with Blessing of Kings, and similar buffs. You usually have a choice between Mp5 and Spirit, but it’s not a bad idea to have a decent mix of both. Intellect is still superior in some ways because of all the different ways it increases regen mechanics, and the fact that it scales with Kings, but it does have a smaller direct effect on your regen, so you don't want to solely rely on Intellect.
  
• Spellpower – In my original version of this guide, I neglected to notice the full tooltip of Borrowed Time - in addition to making your direct heals larger, your bubbles are also increased by 40% of your spellpower. That's some pretty powerful stuff.

As a side note, if you are switching to Disc from Holy, your gear will most likely be fairly sufficient to work for both specs, however, you will want to take a second look at your enchants and gems. Switch out your spirit enchants and gems for Intellect, crit, or possibly Mp5 to adjust better for Disc healing.

Glyphs

If you want to see a solid list of all the Priest Glyphs, Wowwiki has a nice one. For Disc specific glyphs, there are no minor glyphs that really matter too much. We don’t really have a whole lot of option, but most priests like to have the handy Glyph of Levitate. Everything other than that really is a matter of personal preference. I, personally, like to use Glyph of Shadow Protection, because it adds some time to my Shadow Protection buff, and I don’t really care about the other minor, heh. Now for some info about major glyphs for Disc priests:

• Glyph of Penance – This is a must have, hands down, no questions asked. Penance is your bread and butter healing spell, and you want to use it as often as possible, so you definitely want a reduction in its cooldown.
• Glyph of Power Word: Shield – You will be bubbling so much, that it’s very nice to get an extra little free heal from it.
• Glyph of Flash Heal – If you use Flash Heal a lot, this is a good option. Personally, I never have mana problems when I’m running Disc, but better safe than sorry, right?
• Glyph of Holy Nova – If you suspect it will be necessary for you to contribute to raid healing, this glyph is one of 2 that will help boost your raid healing abilities. If you like healing with the instant AoE non-smart Holy Nova, this is a good choice.
• Glyph of Prayer of Healing – If on the other hand you prefer raid healing with the long cast, but powerful AoE heal Prayer of Healing, this adds a nice little HoT buff to it.

The first two Major glyphs are pretty standard, but the third is more a matter of personal preference.

Spells

Healers don’t necessarily have a “rotation” per se, but due to cooldown management and the fact that Disc healers excel at single-target healing, they are more likely to have something close to a rotation than most other healers. We will start with just a basic list of the spells you will use while healing from each school.

Discipline:

• Pain Suppression – your oh shit button (or as Ghostcrawler likes to call it, the “oh snap!” button). Note the threat reduction – if you are going to use it on the tank, try to be sure he or she can handle the threat loss.
• Penance – One full cast of Penance will give three stacks of Grace to your target, increasing healing on the target. This is your bread, but it does have a cooldown. The Discipline tree is built around this spell and Power Word: Shield – basically, all the other spells are what you are casting while Penance is on cooldown.
• Power Infusion – Super boost. Use it on someone, or yourself, every cooldown, and people will learn to appreciate Disc priests more.
• Power Word: Shield – If Penance is your bread, your Bubble is your butter. Or maybe it’s the other way around? Not sure. Your bubble shield is what makes you Disc. Specced properly, it can mitigate massive amounts of damage, be cast every Global Cooldown (you know, when you aren’t casting Penance), and will keep up a nice raid buff after you cast it.

Holy:

• Binding Heal – There is little reason to ever just be healing yourself. You might as well cast this spell on someone else, and heal the both of you. I love this spell like whoa.
• Desperate Prayer – If you specced deep enough into Holy to pick up this spell, it’s a nice little personal oh shit button. It’s a matter of personal preference – I’m a creature of habit, and never remember to use it.
• Divine Hymn – This is essentially a once per encounter AoE heal. Remember to use it, it’s pretty handy. If you are assigned to tank heals, it may not be worth the risk of casting it for 8 secs, however – a tank can take a lot of damage in 8 secs, so be sure someone else is throwing heals on the tank in the mean time.
• Flash Heal – Staple small heal for all priests. You will probably still get a lot of use out of this spell as Disc, particularly if you pick of the Glyph of Flash Heal, and/or the talent Improved Flash Heal.
• Greater Heal – Staple large heal for all priests. If you aren’t as big a fan of Flash Heal, and prefer larger slower heals, this is your main choice, but be sure that you spec deep enough into holy to pick up Divine Fury if that is the case. Note that the talent spec I linked does not fill out Divine Fury completely, so you'll have to rob the talents from elsewhere, such as Improved Renew.
  
• Holy Nova – Baseline instant AoE heal for all Priests. It’s instant, AoE, no cooldown, but it ain’t cheap, and it ain’t smart. It is going to only heal the people in your party.
• Hymn of Hope – Regen spell. Note that this returns a percentage of mana – therefore, for a real boost, couple this with Shadowfiend and/or Replenishment.
• Prayer of Healing – Slow cast, very large, non-smart AoE heal. This is pretty powerful stuff, but keep in mind that it is not a smart heal. Unlike Holy Nova, however, it is not limited to your own party – you cast it on someone, and then it heals THEIR party.
• Prayer of Mending – Instant bouncy reactive heal. Keep it bouncing around at all times, and it does the work for you.
• Renew – Our nice little HoT. Unless you find yourself using Greater Heal a lot, spec into Improved Renew from the holy tree. In addition, if you pick up Mental Agility in the Disc tree, the mana cost is reduced. If you are solo healing a target (particularly the main tank), it's a good idea to keep a Renew rolling at all times.
  
• Redemption – Your basic healer rezzing spell.

Shadow:

• Fade – This is the panic button for when a mob is running at you. It is not a permanent threat dump, but it is usually enough to get the mob to forget about you so that the tank can pick them up. Better than running around like a mage, yes?
• Shadowfiend – Another regen mechanic priests have. Love it or hate it, shadowfiends are handy for mana intensive fights! Couple it with Hymn of Hope or Innervate, and you can easily go from an empty mana pool to a full bar. If you can’t couple it with other regen spells, use it early in a fight so that you get a chance to use it more than once.

Rotation:

Your “rotation” will depend largely on how you are assigned as a healer. In a raiding environment, you should be assigned to one target to make full use of your awesomeness as a Discipline Priest.

Single-Target Healing:

• Power Word: Shield - Always always always start with Power Word: Shield. Keep an eye on that Weakened Soul debuff – your target should have this debuff at all times. If there are other priests in the raid, kindly ask them to refrain from bubbling your target – your bubbles are better. In addition to keeping up the Weakened Soul debuff so as to get full benefit from Renewed Hope on your target, you need to be bubbling at least often enough to keep up Renewed Hope buff on the raid as a whole. Specced properly, there is no cooldown except global cooldown for your bubble, so you have no excuse not to bubble! And after all, why wouldn’t you?
• Prayer of Mending - Keep a Prayer of Mending bouncing around the raid. Start it up on the tank since they will likely be taking the first hit. This is another spell you need to monitor to make sure it is bouncing around at all times.
• Penance – Follow up your bubble or PoM with Penance. You want to keep three stacks of Grace up on your target at all times to maximize healing.
• Greater Heal/ Flash Heal / Renew– When Penance is on cooldown, and you have ensured that your target has the Weakened Soul debuff, fill in your cooldown times with Flash Heal and Greater Heal as needed. It’s a very good idea to keep a Renew rolling on your target as well.

With one target, your rotation is pretty simple. Prayer of Mending -> Power Word: Shield –> Penance –> Renew –> Flash Heal/Greater Heal. You should be able to get in 3 flash heals or 1 greater heal and 1 flash heal between Penance cooldowns if the weakened soul debuff is up.

Group Healing (Primarily for 5 man instances)

• Bubble Bubble Bubble!!! One of the biggest advantages for raid healing as a Disc priest is no cooldown on your Power Word: Shield. When in doubt, bubble. When happy, bubble. When dancing, bubble. Always be a-bubblin.
• Disc priests do not have any smart AoE heals, but all of our AoE heals affect the entire group, so in 5 man instances, it doesn’t really matter. If you have predictable large amounts of incoming damage for the whole party, use Prayer of Healing. For sporadic AoE damage, use Holy Nova. Otherwise, bubble penance and Flash Heal. With only 5 people to watch, it should not be too difficult to keep a bubble on everyone at all times, though it may be trickier to keep up the Weakened Soul debuff. Therefore, try to bubble the tank often enough to maintain a steady Weakened Soul debuff on the tank, and just try to keep a bubble on everyone else.

Raid Healing

• If you are contributing to healing the raid in general, it is not too different from healing for a five man. Bubble! If you are in a raid with other priests, ask them to avoid bubbling in general so that you don’t get frustrated. If there is another Disc priest in the raid, divide up your groups so that you will not overlap in your healing assignments due to the weakened soul debuff. It is exceedingly frustrating to be going around bubbling and to get error messages because the target cannot be bubbled again.
• Because neither Prayer of Healing nor Holy Nova are smart ("smart heals" automatically heal the people within range who are lowest in health), they really aren’t the best for raid healing, unless it is AoE damage that everyone takes. Even in this scenario, if there is a Holy Priest in the raid, their Prayer of Healing is likely to be more powerful, and a faster cast. So if you know some damage is incoming, go on a bubble craze first.

And there it is! Everything you ever needed to know about starting out as a Discipline Priest Healer for PvE. Unfortunately you will need to look elsewhere if you are looking for tips for PvP, as I am utter fail for PvP. I realize this guide provides no theorycrafting for you, and that is because MATH IS HARD zomg. If you are looking for more specifics about the maths behind my suggestions, mosey on over to ElitistJerks and calculate to your heart’s content. I spent a lot of time reading the stuff over there to get an idea for how to heal as Disc, so it’s definitely a spot you should check out.

If you feel you have graduated past the level of starter Disc guides, and are looking for more tips on min/maxing your priest, I highly suggest checking out PenancePriest (especially this post). PP is MUCH better than I am at theorycrafting and min-maxing.

Updated October 6th, 2009 (added link to PenancePriest post and Enchants)