Edit: Patch notes now correctly indicate that Grace can be applied to multiple targets. Awesome!

Edit 2: MMO had originally reported that the official PTR notes included the change to Grace; they have since removed it. Blizzard's official PTR notes are not reporting a change to Grace. Not awesome.
Has anyone been on the public test realms to confirm/deny whether Grace can be applied to more than one target?

So PW:S gets stronger... but Renew gets cheaper. And we will probably have Grace on more targets, making Renew on them even better.

Does this all make Renew (glyphed and/or specced) even more viable or would we be using more Shields instead? Or both?

I still can't find this in the notes..

I realise speculation on the changes that are still only on PTR and thus may be subject to change can make these discussions futile. Even so, I currently see a number of talents which we had recently written off, seem to be worth taking a closer look at again.

The buff to PW:S absorbs, making it more efficient, along with FH and GH now proccing the effect from SoS could potentially make this talent very strong for single target healing, maybe even more so than ToT, although some number crunching on that would have to be made. Both talents together, along with the Grace changes, should make us very competent tank healers though.

Also, the buff to PW:S may make consecutive shielding viable again (especially on split damage across groups where PoH falls short). This would make 1 or 2 points in Soul Warding pretty much mandatory again, but I suspect that is rather fight specific as PoH should still remain our most powerful AoE heal.

Last but not least, the changes to Surge of Light make this highly attractive for us now as I see it. Proccing off both smites, greater heal, heal and FH means we should see a significantly higher proc rate on this in most encounters where we're not just PoH spamming.

Shortly put, I'm at a bit of a loss here to which talents we should sacrifice in order to obtain these new goodies. Darkness is most likely going out the window for any non-poh fulltime spam build, but that still leaves us at least 2 talent points shy in the Disc tree. Mental Agility may be viable for cutting into, assuming we can make up for it by stacking more spirit, but this would again decrease the efficiency of PW:S. Alternatively, the AA spec could be sacrificed, but this would significantly reduce the viability of SoL and reduce our burst healing capability.

I think optimally we'd run two disc specs: One for single target healing, and one for raid healing. Only minus there is that most fights (especially in 10m) require you to be able to fulfil both roles reasonably well.

I actually envy the mainspec Holy priests now, it seems to be easier to get the desirable talents there if these changes go through. But I guess we'll have to wait and see for ourselves on the PTR, and then hopefully we'll know more to guide us if and when the changes go live.

I continue to have the same issue with my macros as well even after turning the spell queue to 0ms under interface>combat. Has anyone found another solution to this problem? This one can sneak by you while your not paying attention during a fight so I suspect more people are having the problem and are just not aware of it.

On another note: the official patch notes do NOT list the change to grace which is kind of a bummer. Has anyone been on the PTR to confirm the grace change?

I'm having a hard time understanding how disc healers are raid healers in a 25m team. PoH only heals the group which contains your target and PW:B can cover everyone in it, but with a 2 min CD, you can't spam it. With the changes, you may be able to keep a few shields up. Divine Hymn only heals the 3 lowest health ppl. You can keep PoM bouncing around, but you can't rely on it to heal the person in need, except tossing it directly on the person in need, who is still taking dmg. I can see helping out the raid healers in this fashion, but it's not being a raid healer. So what is a disc raid healer using to be most effective? This a role I haven't been in before. LK times I was always a tank healer.

PoH does NOT only heal the group you are in - it heals the group your TARGET is in. Which explains why it doesn't really matter for PoH which group you're in.

Reading the tooltip for the spell may help illuminate: Prayer of Healing

Regarding that doesn't that strike as little weird anyhow, that we're back to pretty much being forced to have melee in group 1 and 2, ranged in 3 and 4, healers in group 5 + some healers in group 4. Wasn't blizzard striving away from group heals and things like that? CoH was changed purely because of this new philosophy if I'm not totally mistaken? Feels kinda backwards.

Anyhow Eaxia, penance, shields (which are getting buffs, yay!) and greater heal is all fine if you're raid healing single targets. Also since you have this awesome prayer of healing, maybe try set up some kind of healing that you take care of the big group damages that everyone in melee group 3 takes, while your shaman try to focus more on those singletarget spikes, or who ever else that wants to do it, doesn't need to be a shaman.

Discipline might not have the same numbers as holy have if you're talking about pure hps, but remember that absorbs are different kind of healing than just healing, use this to your advantage. Ending a fight with 50% mana? Why not spend those 50% mana in throwing a Prayer before the damage hits, giving everyone in that group a divine aegis and a hot. I also know that with inner focus and a rapture procc every 12 seconds for 6% mana back is giving me more mana than holy priests have, which makes me lasts a little longer, making me able to heal while others scream for a mana tide. Discipline have always been (at least for me) about making up for HPS losses by being able to do stuff before the damage comes, whether it be throw a prayer on the group before the damage is there, or spam shields.

Hope this post helped out some for you Eaxia.

As others have mentioned, your raid leader should be organizing all your melee and ranged into their own respective groups.

A raid-healing disc priest will likely be concentrating on covering each group with Prayer of Healing, and during low-damage portions you could either be supporting with Smite if you're AA spec to build Evangelism, or assisting heals on the tank with Penance/Heal to keep Grace up.

PoH-blanketing would benefit most from Mastery and Haste, with Inner Focus macro'd. If you're AA spec, make regular use of Archangel for increased power to PoH. Glyph for Prayer of Healing, Power Word: Barrier and fill the 3rd slot with whichever glyph you find tastiest (Penance, Power Word: Shield, Dispel Magic, or after patch 4.0.6 glyph of Prayer of Mending)

Just to continue on my last point about Disc having an overflow of equal (or close to) talents, especially if the changes from PTR go live. Currently there's 42 points in the disc tree, while Holy has 37. In the disc tree yes, 4 points are arguably for pvp mainly, but holy has 2 similar points + State of Mind which by all looks will be redundant. So a holy priest will have a much easier time obtaining "the necessary talents" from the holy tree, plus any goodies from low-tier disc and shadow.

Guess we could hope that some of the 2/2 talents we have would be converted into 1/1 during PTR testing, for example RH, ToT, Grace, BT or Atonement. Most of these talents are some you either take 2/2 in, or 0/2 in anyways. Freeing some points up that way would mean we could get most of the "good" talents in Disc, and still dip down to get Inspiration and SoL in the holy tree, or Darkness from Shadow.

I'm not unhappy about us getting a number of our talents buffed so they may be worth taking; it has just struck me a bit odd how many points I can place outside the Holy tree in my offspec, compared to when Disc specced, especially seeing it is now the intention that both trees can be used for PvP (and thus should require roughly the same amount of points in them for PvE and PvP).

Edit: This just to emphasize my point from the last post: Assuming the changes come through PTR unchanged, an AA specced disc priest will likely have to choose between being first and foremost a raid healer, or a tank healer. While I would like us to be able to fulfill the same roles to more or less the same extent with the same spec (much like Chakra offers this option to holy priests), perhaps being dual disc specced would be the optimal choice for some of us.

I've been trying to keep a balance between haste, mastery, and crit for my Disc healing set. My guild is starting raids this week and I am still not comfortable with some of my numbers.

Haste 7.93%
Crit 12.28%
Mastery 11.61

I have sideways-upgrade gear and the reforging available to move some of those numbers around, I'm just not sure if I should. I would like to get a higher haste but I don't want to gimp the potency of my heals. What are some numbers I should shoot for my first raid?

Regarding POH group requirements, I really see a big difference between the old party-bound small COH, and POH. The former had a very narrow range, and basically, it could not reach ranged and melee. POH has a wide range around the target. If you choose your target intelligently, in many cases, you're able to reach both ranged and melees (typically, in heroics, I usually set myself at mid-range, if possible, and target myself for POH).

The main effect, together with most group buff (totems !) going raid-wide, is that you can now have mixed melee / ranged groups. It's not ideal, and you prefer to group them. But if you have 12 melees + tank, it's not a big drama. You can perfectly adapt.