Oracle disc : Who wants to play shield/heal spec in raid?

This topic is for those who want to heal with priest in raid but don’t like the dps=heal approach and don’t want to play Hpriest until it’s fixed (Hpriest has more HPS than this build, just not fun to play atm).
I started playing for fun a shield/heal spec for raid with Dpriest using Oracle’s talent tree, and it was kind of effective. With my guild we managed to kill up to the 3rd boss in nerubar’s mythic and working on the 4th now, and I used this build.
Don’t expect this build to bring you to the best HPS (it most probably won’t), but it can be played without being a troll-build if done right.

The advantage over traditional disc are:

  • Focus on healing (no need to dps at all, no need to throw atonements)
  • Easy reactive combo (no need to ramp and foresee every damages phases)
  • Can heal better than disc during no-damage phases

The biggest drawback, imo, is that you heal less during the combo than a voidweaver disc would.

There is a base playstyle and then you can choose multiple end-tree talents depends on how you prefer to play, which i explain below.

THE BASE PLAYSTYLE:

Outside of combo you heal with Flash heal, Shield and Penitence. Their is no need to pre-apply atonnement for combo: Flash heal and shield will do.

You want to prioritize Mastery (seek 30-35% with pots and even more), then crit and haste (about 15-20% each).
Then always take in consideration than 30% mastery = 30% more heal/shield on targets with atonnement ! If you want to use Penitence or Shield on a target without atonnement, cast a Flash heal before. (With Oracle a Shield is about 600k, which goes to about 800k on target with atonnement)

The basic combo is: Radiance+Radiance+Mind blast+Penitence

When up, you use the oracle premonitions during the combo always by 2 (starting with the first 2), which gives you always Insight and Piety:
Premonition+Premonition+Radiance+Radiance+Mind blast+Penitence

Insight will reduce the cooldown of both Radiance and Mind blast, enabling a second combo earlier.

Every two premonition rotation you have 2 charge of Solace, you may want to apply the shield beforehand:
Premonition+Premonition+Flash heal+Flash heal+Radiance+Radiance+Mind blast+Penitence

The base talents you want:

Waste No Time (oracle): Allow you to insta-cast both Radiance, very usefull during damages phases where you are required to move, and it makes you heal faster as Radiance is quite long to cast.
Perfect Vision (oracle): As you want to always cast both premonition and profit of instant Radiance cast, i think it’s better to have them on a 1m30 cd rather than 2m cd and 40% bonus effect (but it’s okay to take the 40% bonus).
Brigth pupil: As you want to cast both Radiance, this talent reduce the cd of the combo by 6s, and Waste No Time deals with the Radiance cast time.
Dark indulgence: Improves penitence healing or damage for combo, works great with Harsh discipline.
Lenience: You don’t need an atonnement uptime, and while it may not seem a lot, 3% DR ends up as more DRPS than many of the HPS given by most disc talents (according to my wowanalyser’s stats)
Harsh Discipline: It works very well with Dark indulgence, Contrition (see below), and Weal and woe

If you want to use Penitence to heal, you MUST take Contrition, it will do decent healing during combo. I recommand to always take Contrition, it allows you during combo to use Penitence as dps for more aoe-heal with atonements (Oracle improves Penitence damages by 40%), OR to use it on a low life target as a strong st-heal and do lesser aoe-heal with contrition (which is still correct aoe-heal), and you definitely want that on bosses like Queen using Feast.

This is the base of the oracle disc shield/heal raid build. Then any combination of the 3 non dps end-tree are viable, and here is the advantage of each:

Aegis of wrath: Your shields are about 800k, and 1M when cast on target with atonnement, but it decrease. This is a very good talent if you are able to place shield just before damages. Works great with Rapture. Take Exaltation too.

Weal and woe: Use it to improve your shields. If you take it your probably want to take Harsh Discipline. The combo will always grant you 8 stack of Weal and woe. Additionally, Ultimate penitence always gives you 8 stack too. Finally, you want to sync it with Rapture as the 80% buff from Weal and woe multiplicate with the Rapture 80% buff (if your base shield is 600k, Weal and woe will improve it to 1M, and then Rapture will improve it to 1,8M. And it may critic for a 3,6M shield). With Perfect Vision, Rapture and 2 stack of Premonitions are both 1m30 cd, which make the new combo:
Premonition+Premonition+Radiance+Radiance+Mind blast+Penitence+Rapture+Shield anything but keep 1 charge of Rapture for next combo (coming earlier due to Insight) Radiance+Radiance+Mind blast+Penitence+Shield

Overloaded with light: It seems bad and it actually is, except it throws a raid wide short atonnement which make the difference : due to this atonnement, you uppies (Ultimate penitence) will have about 30% more healing due to mastery, and most of the time you cast uppies during raid wide damage, so you will greatly benefit from Lenience !

From my experience trying the comination of this tree end-tree talents, their is no HUGE difference in HPS. So below are the combination that i liked the most.

THE FULL SHIELD BUILD:

The shield’s bonus cumulate by multiplying ! With this build you can cast a 10M shield (my record is 13M) !

The talent you want:
Aegis of wrath + Weal and woe + Harsh Discipline + Exaltation

The combo:
Premonition+Premonition+Radiance+Radiance+Mind blast+Penitence+Rapture+Shield anything but keep 1 charge of Rapture for next combo (coming earlier due to Insight) Radiance+Radiance+Mind blast+Penitence+Shield

Your shield are about 800k (which decrease over time), 1M on target with atonnement (2M on crit).

The gear set give you a shield bonus from 15% to 30% during combo.

You need to take Divine Aegis before Aegis of wrath, which increase critical shield’s amount absorbed by 10%.

With attonement bonus from mastery + 8 stack of Weal and woe + 1-2 stack of the set bonus, the shield is about 2,4M-5M (crit), with rapture it goes to 4M-10M (crit) !
And if you cast on youselft with Prophet’s will from Oracle, you can have a 13M shield (WTF)

But take in consideration it need’s to crit with ALL the bonus, and the amount decrease by 30% over 10sec.
Nevertheless, your rapture’s shield should be about 1,5M-3M (crit) and 1,9M-4M (crit) on target with atonnement.

THE I-WANT-THEM-ALL BUILD:

Talent you want:
Aegis of wrath + Weal and woe + Overloaded with light

The choice you need to do:
Let go Harsh Discipline OR Lenience (and keep 1/2 Harsh Discipline)

Before throwing lenience, just try it and look at its DRPS using wowanalyser, you will see that it’s a close choice between the good symbiosis of Harsh discipline with other talents and the good DRPS of lenience.
For exemple, on my two kills of Sikran mythic and according to wowanalyzer, lenience did 80k and 89k DRPS while Harsh discipline only 40k and 28k HPS (but Harsh discipline works well with Dark indulgence, Contrition, and Weal and woe)

ADDITIONAL INFO:

Outside of the talent described before, i recommand taking Shield Discipline for the mana. I personally don’t take any Shadow word pain talent (nor purge) and cast pain on boss only when nothing else to do. When you have taken all the heal/shield talent you may have points lefts, I personnaly go Schisme + shadow covenant + 1/2 abysall reverie, and cast Shadowfiend when up before a combo for some extra healing (not much though).

Note: Addons such as Details don’t take DRPS from Lenience nor Power word: Barrier into consideration for the HPS, which can go up to 100k+ DRPS (together) depending on the fight (104k DRPS barrier-only on my last Sikran mythic).

Feel free to discuss this build !