Wow, the changes were better than hoped. In particularly the PoH change fixes a key Disc issue (our AoE is ineffective outside of heroics), and the Serendipity change fixes a key Holy issue (being a FH bot is really boring).

My only concern is that the other big issue with Disc in raids is that shields don't stack, so it's very suboptimal to bring two disc priests. In fact, depending on the details of PW:Barrier (which I'm eager to see), it might even make the problem worse. I'm still hoping for some fixes here, even if they didn't make the initial list.

PvP:

The lack of poison cleansing remains our biggest obstacle. Shamans got curse of tongues removal, paladins got 50% off curses, priests are still stuck with no way to remove viper sting and the worst active mana-regen.

They need to fix shadowfiend and vipersting and then priests are mostly fine.

I do sort of wonder about Blizzard saying on one hand that they want to move away from the idea of group-based healing, then on the other hand apparently planning to revamp PoH to work like the pre-3.0 CoH.

Well, it's more of a band aid. They still want to move away from groups in raids ultimately. But without bigger changes to PoH and also Nova they just wouldn't fit in, otherwise the CoH days are back. And this time cooldowns on the spells wouldn't stop Holy priests AoE-healing the hell out of encounters, because one could just rotate them.

I've been wondering wether the mana spring/healing stream combo will be raid-wide. That would be nice, because I'm getting tired of pestering the raid leader into grouping me with a Shaman. Any thoughts on this? (Is Healing Stream raid-wide already?)

I'm also concerned about the sound of Barrier being group-only or something. But considering that it would be a major slip-up in the current anti-groups-in-raids-mentality it's probably either raid-wide (unlikely), like CoH or maybe like Nova with a target limit.

Giving Disc Priests more AoE healing is nice and all, but I thought they were meant to be single target healers. It rather feels like homogenisation at the moment.

Well disc can raidheal too, of course its not nearly as good as holy (at least used to be pre 3.0.8). But with extra spellhaste I kind of cast flash heal throughout the entire fight. Just mix it with the appropriate healing spells (pom for saph etc) shields and penance and youll do fine. The numers will still look bad compared to a holy because mitgation is still not accessible in recount whatsoever :-/

I too want to see how PW:B will be implemented; the possible implementations I can think of:

-Like PoH will be; cast on a group, essentially every person in the group gets a shield, absorbs X.
-Raidwide on Y targets (smart target) absorbs X.
-More like the Paladin talent - [spell]53530[/spell], when cast, everyone gets the buff (or something) and the absorption is collective, based on a priority system of hit order and then smart target (for instance, if sapphiron's breath ticks, everyone gets hit at once, it would absorb damage on the lowest health first, and then on the others in order of health until all damage is absorbed or the shield runs out)

I like the sound of the 3rd one, I'm not sure how tricky it would be to implement - nor of the power level of it, which would depend on cooldown/mana cost I guess.

The first PoH - style sounds more likely, since he did say group - though he didn't say party specifically, so it's not necessarily true.

And I think the 2nd option is basically CoH all over again.

I'm looking forward to the details on this, as well as whether it will count towards rapture, perhaps even give BT; whether it gains from improvements to PWS, etc.

Since they haven't included everything, some of the other things I'm hoping:
-Reorganization of the discipline tree - move some talents from the lower tree higher up - might make shuffling points to get some more in the holy tree actually viable.
-They haven't announced what will happen with Improved Divine Spirit; I'm hoping they make it baseline as well - barring that, buff the amount so it is at least even with Flametongue, or let them stack.
-Binding Heal and rapture.
-I'd like to also see something to make GHeal more viable to cast - with BT, GHeal is a bit faster sometimes, and it's nice to cast for larger DA's, but it's still not that great of a spell - something like the Serendipity talent would be very nice, but then we sort of have that with BT and it'd be too close to holy.
-They already mentioned one of the changes they didn't include in the highlight was making the Shadowfiend more reliable; I like this - although I haven't yet had to use it since I got my Greatness deck, and even before as discipline I rarely did unless I was battlerezzed.
-Shield stacking - I'd like to see DA stack - whether accumulative or some sort of refresh mechanic.
-Longer duration on Grace (makes it much more viable to toss a heal to another player without losing the stack on your tank)

Perhaps they'll just roll PW:F and DS into 1 spell to save some candles now. Wonder if this will prompt them to fix the PoH LoS bug. Else you could try doing Gothik with 1 healer by having both sides fight by the wall, with 1 person from each group on the same side.

Interesting taster though - wonder whether Power Infusion or Pain Supp will get moved to the 21pter in Disc, PW:B seems a little strong to take DS's place. No speculation for now. Borrowed Time powered PoHs will be an excellent addition to Disc's armory, esp. if PW:B triggers it. The range of PoH feels very large though as an out-of-group-raid heal. Esp. if you compare it to chain heal. Wonder if it will keep the unlimited targets? Could be some very happy hunters there.

Could be quite interesting if PW:B worked like a catch-all version of Anti-Magic Zone

I'm in with the crowd that was disappointed to not see more mentioned about the discipline tree, though there is still plenty of cause to hope that there are more changes to come.

I worry that the main reason Discipline seems adequate now is that things are easy enough that everyone will seem adequate. Right now it seems like we have a few talents that are very good but most are extremely subpar. There are also too many strictly PvP talents, and they should really just get rid of Reflective Shield if they aren't going to get it to work on other people. It's not that great a talent anyway.

Going up the Discipline tree I definitely get the feeling like I am just choosing where my points are the least wasteful so I can access the good talents at the top.

This is not a valid concern. I'm sure it's annoying not being able to cure poison but each healing class has a similar restriction. Paladins can't cure curses, Druids cannot dispel, Shaman can't dispel defensively. Priests can offensively and defensively dispel 2 spells with 1 GCD, much better than the paladin or shaman equivalents. Although priests may have the worst active mana-regen as you claim (which wouldn't be by much if true) they have the best passive regen.

Complaining about viper sting is a little on the funny side to me after playing a hunter in level 70 arenas against priests and being burned dry within 3 GCDs.

I'm actually rather exited about the combination of Borrowed Time + the new PoH. Seems rather nice, especially in combination with the PoH Glyph, Divine Aegis proccing on every crit, absorbing additional damage and giving back mana via Rapture.

I always took their issues with groups to be more along the lines of "Spell A can only affect players in YOUR group" and was more in reference to the buff/synergy system. As they make more and more buffs raid wide you can begin to make groups by function and not buffs/synergies since those are accounted for just by being in the raid.

Making spells castable on ANY group is a great solution to that problem and still allows for some strategy in raid makeup without having to worry about Rogues getting the 6 different buffs they needed as in TBC. The alternative is more smart heals, which are certainly powerful, but take a lot of the fun out of healing in my opinion.

EDIT: I guess I misunderstood their design goal. As posted in post 1669 they really do want to eliminate the idea of groups in raids altogether. Can't say I agree with that, though.