Disc currently viable on Beta!

It's been quite a while, and I kept becoming sadder and sadder, but the last overhaul did it! Disc is now a good healing spec and actually somewhat fun to play.

Sure, I'll still need a mountain of haste to make it fun (I never could stand the enormous casting times), but at least it works again!
The last big list of changes to priests was the following:

Discipline

• Power Word: Barrier now costs 30% of base mana, down from 65% of base mana.
  
• Train of Thought now causes your Smite to reduce the cooldown of Penance by 0.5 sec, down from 1 sec.
  
• Rapture can now occur once every 6 sec, down from 12 sec.
  
• Soul Warding is now a Tier 2 talent, down from Tier 4.
  
• Atonement now heals a nearby low health friendly party or raid target within 8 yards from the enemy target equal to 60/120/120% of the damage dealt. (3rd Rank is still there but I guess they're changing the talent to 2 Ranks)
  
• Archangel Evangelism effect now has a 30 sec cooldown, up from 15 sec.
  
• Borrowed Time is now a 2 Ranks talent, down from 3 Ranks. Moved from Tier 2 to Tier 4. Now grants 7/14% Spell haste after casting Power: Word Shield. (Old - 5/10/15%)
  

Holy

• Spiritual Healing (Passive) now increases healing by 15%, down from 25%.
  
• Divine Hymn now costs 36% of base mana, down from 40% of base mana.
  
• Greater Heal now costs 27% of base mana, down from 29% of base mana.
  
• Blessed Resilience is now a Tier 5 talent, down from Tier 6.
  

Shadow

• Sin and Punishment now reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend by 3/10 sec when Mind Flay critically hits, down from 10/20 sec.

With these changes disc has taken a massive leap forwards and is finally caught up with holy.

I just healed through a normal run of Lost City of the Tol'Vir, and you know what? As long as I press a mass amount of buttons, I don't even have huge mana issues. And I seriously hope that they'll not nerve this, since you really have to work hard to get this happening.

Of course the rest of the group has to do the right thing, and not stand in crap, because then you're still hosed. And of course the tank needs to make sure he/she hits cooldowns at the right moments, and of course there are still moments where you think 'oh crap'. But at least it's a viable healing spec again.

And yaknow what? PWS isn't cast that often...in fact, I still don't want to cast it that often because unfortunately it's quite an underwhelming spell still. And I think the main reason you want to cast PWS is so that Renewed Hope starts running, increasing your chance for crits, increasing your chance for Divine Aegis.

I think my most used spell was smite, because Atonement is finally working and this replaces heal with smite (yay since smite takes half a second less to cast). This also meant that I will not be spending points in Strength of Soul, since casting something that takes as long as heal to cast, just to have to recast PWS is not really something I enjoy.

On the other hand, that does leave me points to spend...hmm...more haste perhaps? Or perhaps Twin Disciplines?

As you can see they also did a pretty good job in making several choices attractive.

Disc isn't so much mana restrained now as cooldown and haste restrained, and if you want to make disc work, better be prepared to press a lot of different buttons in the right order.

A couple of things I've noticed already:

- Use Inner Focus in combination with Greater Heal if you can.
Through Train of Thought your Inner Focus cooldown will be shortened, and Greater Heal is still one of the more expensive spells to cast of the ones that are free through Inner Focus.

- Surge of Light is a musthave
In either healing spec Surge of Light is a musthave talent. That free heal has saved my targets several times already.

- Completely unrelated: The Archeology raptor mount looks pretty cool!
(sorry, I just saw one riding by :-p)

- Mana comes from Archangel, not Rapture.
Rapture is the cream on top, but your main regen tactic is to time it so you will have Archangel available with 5 stacks. If you don't need the regen right now just keep smiting to heal through atonement, or cast a penance in between. (smite reduces the cooldown on penance now!)

- Healing through dps (even with lamo smite) is fun!
I have no idea how much dps I was doing; Recount was being funny again. But I have to say that healing through smiting is fun! One negative here and you have to watch yourself with it, you have to face your target when smiting, unlike when you're healing where you can face any direction.

edit: I wish I knew what's making that quote go odd...hmmm