Are you joking, garalon is the exact proof of what I am saying. On garalon holy is closer to disc than any other fight, exactly because you just can't set up any big absorb stacks. Look at fights like empress or windlord/blade lord or even ambershaper. Disc is miles ahead of holy because you can build big absorption stacks. Currently disc is imbalanced because its throughput is practically the same as holy but it is muchless resistant to overhealing. So looking at the same guy in the same guild (Homonoia) holy is 157k on garalon hc (http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...H/Holy_Priest/) but disc is 167k. 167/157, a 6% difference. Nerf disc throughput by 5% here and the specs are equal, but holy is not the median of all healers. If disc was 5% below the median it would squarely behind holy and balanced. In encounters however where there is shallow damage and hard burst disc is Miiiiles ahead of holy. Just like I said.
The evidence is absolutely contradicting everything you have said so far. Looking at the logs will verify what I am saying 100%.
You might have been there but you don't see that what you just said just agreed with my point. Its raw output that decides really the viability of the spec. We just went through a series of posts explaining how disc spirit shell trivialises very little and every encounter is healable without spirit shell. Why would you bring a spec that lacks the necessary throughput when it does not bring something you can't leave without. Limiting the amount of absorbs you can stack is enough to balance the utility of disc in mitigating short strong burst damage.The problem with disc was just raw output in the beginning, I was there. Obviously we are talking about current disc. Balancing disc is incredibly hard since you have to toggle absorbs with raw healing, and damage patterns dictate which of these is more successful. Even "barely viable" early disc would STILL be able to nearly mitigate raid mechanics, which is the issue at the very core of this discussion. It's what makes disc so unique and feel necessary.
Secondly, you are over valuing discs "rotation." It really is a nutshell of healing. In fact, MoP bubble spamming currently doesn't exist in MoP except for in PTR 5.2. And it really didn't exist much in Cata either. Any disc priest knew PoH spam was better. So again, what the hell are you talking about?
If blizzards plans go through, bubble spam will make a comeback in 5.2. Bubble spam is not hard, and you've said nothing to the contrary. And as I clearly mentioned in my previous post, atonement, SS, and associated cooldowns (PI, AA, IF) will be part of the rotation. None of that is hard, all you really need to know is when damage is coming. Smite away in between.
There is no "intricate" branching. Raid damage coming? SS or PW:S preshielding. Downtime with spotty, random damage? Smite/holy fire, occasional PW:S and penance to targets you need to get heals to quick. Use PI/AA/IF prior to dumping out your presheilds.
Discipline healing is a god damn flow chart. It's about as rigid of a healing spec as you can get.
Thus as I said exactly 5% below the median and 40% absorbs (through limiting the caps) is all you need for disc to be balanced.
There is no such thing as PWS spam in 5.1 (and there won't be any in 5.2). Bubble spam = Building large bubbles with aegis and spirit shell mate and there is branching everytime you have a big aegis stack and it is time for spirit shell for example. There is no PWS Synch your CDs with spirit shell and win = mediocre disc. Can you beat the other healers that way? After a certain gear level certainly, but that is not maximising performance. Disc is not a flow chart, but a constant stream of decisions, whose difference is easily 10% or more. Even things like casting a smite is a decision. Are you likely to need that faster borrowed time? Is the extra 5% healing worth it compared to a PoH? Sometimes it turns out its considerably better to pop archangel at 4 stacks instead.
Yes disc is somewhat inflexible, because it is nearly always GCD locked since maximising involves squeezing as much as you can within a 20-25s window, without screwing anything up. The more you squeeze in the better your performance but the complexity increases dramatically. Squeezing that extra 5-10% out of disc requires extreme effort and concentration. More than any other healing class in the game IMO. Its not easy and its not boring that is for sure. Some people might find the constraints of the disc game play difficult to stomach, or they might have no desire to maximise, in which case then yes disc can be boring and easy and still do really well since being 20% ahead instead of 22% is not really a big deal. That is a failure of the player though not the spec.
I think it is clear that you don't have an in-depth appreciation for the spec and that your knowledge is at best shallow. In short disc can be balanced EXACTLY as I say. Feel free to bring in all the evidence you want, I will shoot you down every time.
PWS spam is NOT making a comeback in 5.2. PWS is too expensive and the throughput is too weak, but more importantly PWS has a 15s duration. That means you can get a maximum of 10 up and expect to give them reasonable time for all to get absorbed, but 10 PWS will cost you 135k mana in those 10s and you will get back maybe 20k. PWS spam is 100% unsustainable and blizzard wants this to be the case. More importantly compared with penance, cascade, PoH, PoM and glyphed binding heal PWS is just too weak. PoH needs to be precast for maximum effect as does cascade and PoM, so the time before the burst you have for setting up PWS is very short. You will cast a couple mostly for borrowed time and that is it. The higher usage of PWS that GC is dreaming off is a wet dream and nothing more. It will be slightly higher. Maybe one additional PWS per rapture period just before a hard burst if there is no spirit shell, but that will be for borrowed time during the burst and not necessarily for pre-shielding.
In 5.2 all the complexity disappears because you no longer have to maintain absorbs on the raid, but also disc raw throughput is nerfed back to 5.0 levels, essentially. The atonement buff also means that disc will use atonement a lot more, which is a completely brainless way to heal. You play like a DPS most of the time....