So what is everyone going with today? Am I going to be the only one with a heavy disc spec? I've seen a lot of people claiming to go shadow.

51+/5+/0 if you're on a team with a more attractive target. Penance is an amazing healing spell, but it can't be self-cast. 47+/14+/0 if you're the tank in most of your games. The new blessed recovery is decent, and desperate prayer will save lives.

I'll be trialling try some weird 30+/33+/0 spec which picks up blessed resilience and focused will.

Not a weird spec at all, it's probably gonna end up quite common in 2s, because as you said Penance is amazing but you're gonna be the target in 2s so it's just wasted.

34/34/0 +3 is a very good level 80 spec but not so great at 70 when the meat of that spec is just out of reach.

Trinket the first stun. Best case scenario is you are using [Powerful Earthstorm Diamond] and 5/5 Unbreakable will. They do stack, and it will make the stun less painful. Fear is actually on the small list of CC that paladins aren't completley immune to now, and most (I think) will not put the 7 points in holy for the fear duration reduction, in favor of reduced cooldown HoJs.
Spec wise, blessed resilience is very good simply because the ret tree is so focused on increasing crit chance.

I'm not 100% familiar with the new abilities, but I'm pretty sure HoJ is still their only spell interrupt, so gheals shouldn't be difficult to get off if you can survive the first Hoj > Repentance > arcane torrent combo.

Grab your ankles and think of England. Or - fight fire with fire and bring more ret paladins than the other team.

Non-ironically:

Pre-HOT yourself, they have no healing debuff, so renew is actually really good. Against ret paladins the deep holy spec is actually better since blessed resilience rules and so does blessed recovery. The rest is trying to live between fears, but between bubble/trinket and their partner, that might be very difficult.

How does this look for mostly shadow? Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Think this is a viable spec or should priests just go disc and call it a day?

Just a quick edit: I was thinking battlegrounds but I wonder if it will work for arena as well.

Hmm, 515 res... I imagine you have great PVE gear also? Are you shadow or disc/holy? When I was shadow, I noticed that people don't stay alive long enough for my dots to do much damage so I went disc/holy.

I throw on my sunwell dps set and nuke as shadow. I had tried disciple, but I couldn't really heal all that well due to people (and myself) falling over in seconds.

I'm currently Shadow with my former Disc gear. I picked up dispel resist from Disc and put the rest in shadow, skipping all the crit related talents. With only 7.5% base crit they just don't seem worthwile. My gear is heavily gemmend and enchanted for survival. I'm around 475 res, 11.5k HP, 30% physical damage reduction (without shadow form). For glyphs I picked the Dispel and Shield glyphs. The Shadow ones just didn't seem appealing.

I have no big problem with surviving in BGs at the moment. Of course if more than 2 dps are on me then I'll go down quickly if fear doesn't get them off. But that's supposed to be the case. I can survive casters pretty well. LoS, dispel and silence are powerful tools. Melee is a bit harder, but with the ability to drop snares and damage reduction after fear it's actually better than before.

Currently Retri-palas are quite dangerous. But in BGs they don't always have all cooldowns ready just to kill one Priest. I really miss faster Mana Burn here. I was also surprised at the damage Moonkins and Mages can dish out if they catch me in the open. It sounds silly but I almost got 3-shot by a Moonkin before I could get around the corner.

I'm debating wether Pain and Suffering wasn't a poor talent choice. I rarely dps one target for long enough to refresh the duration and I have very little spirit. But then. what else would I spend the points on? Mana cost reduction? Spirit Tap?

I share this same sentiment. Then drain and outlast aspects of pvp are currently out the window.

Anyone done any testing to see if resil is even working anymore? I hear mixed results on this subject.