I have picked up my priest again after a long break, she used to be my main as holy until I swapped her for a resto shaman according to my guild's needs.
I have dusted her off and respecced her to discipline in the last few months as it is a spec I never truly had a go at. I found myself enjoying it greatly, healing heroics with ease and really trying to get to grips with the spec.
I am a casual player and this is an alt, so she doesnt really have access to raids at all apart from PuGs. Which leads me to the situation I found myself in today. I decided to have a shot at VoA for the first time as I felt I was geared / confident enough to heal it. Kitted out in basic t9 and other similar level items I joined a VoA 10.
After the Ice Watcher was down the raid leader linked the healing meters (recount) and called me out for my 'lame' healing, which took me by surprise. I called up my own Skada meter which by default is set to absorbs + heals, and saw I had actually ranked above the other healer who was there. However according to the raid leader absorbs dont count, half of the raid were his guildies so they began mocking me for my poor performance and sent me on my way. One guy even said "Never be disc for raids tbh, its just useless."
A little downheartened I went on to join a 25man VoA straight after with a different PuG. Long story short we wiped on the Ice Watcher and the healing meters were linked again. Same situation, the raid leader calls me out in public and threatens to kick me, so I link my absorb + healing meters and prove to him I am actually pulling my weight (2nd or 3rd on my meter in that fight cant quite remember which), and explain that I am discipline so I will be lower than other healers on pure healing. He does actually apologise and lets me stay, although only after I am forced to defend myself (with a little help from the mage I was popping PI on for the whole fight).
It boils down to this: I dont care about numbers on the healing meters and I enjoy the play style of disc very much, however if I am constantly being forced to defend myself then I am not sure its even worth playing the character due to the hassle. I only have access to PuGs so I was wondering if any other disc priests have had this problem and how you deal with it / defend yourselves. Perhaps my healing compared to my absorbs IS too low, I wish I still had the numbers but unfortunately I dont. Is this a constant problem for disc priests who do PuGs? I considered changing my shadow spec to a holy spec to use in PuGs, but why should I when its disc I enjoy playing.
TLDR: Raid leaders calling me out in PuGs for low healing when I'm a disc priest and they obviously arent taking absorbs into account. Support / advice needed. Are others experiencing the same thing or is it just me? I only have access to PuGs, so yes it is kinda a big deal to me.