First Time Raid as a Disc Priest - Advice?

[morningapproach]

I am raiding for the first time tonight on my disc priest. I raided in Cata and Wrath on my warlock, and this is my first time healing and I am TERRIFIED of underperforming. I am just about thoroughly gemmed and enchanted (waiting on an enchant from guildies later on today before raid at 9pmEST

Comments

[soozquu]

As a disc priest, you can easily heal both the tank and raid. Just talk about it with your raid team. Generally, though, even if you are assigned to "raid", you will still want to keep the tank(s) shielded at all times and keep pom bouncing off of them. Make sure your raid leader sets up the party with tanks/melee in one group and healers/ranged in the other. Your PoH spell is partywide only (even though all other healers group heals are raid wide ... but that's a QQ for another time :p )

I have used the Naga, but prefer a 5 button mouse. I also use Grid + Clique. I have no problems macroing things together in clique, then assigning that macro to Naga button. There is no right or wrong way to assign your spells. What I do is assign my most used spells to my easiest to reach buttons, my medium used spells to my somewhat easy to reach buttons, and my rarely used spells to my hard to reach buttons. I also keybind all my spells, in case something happens to my mouse/addon2.

My main bindings are:

Right mouse button - PW: Shield
Right mouse button + shift - heal
Right mouse button + alt - renew

Left mouse button - targeting
Left mouse button + shift - dispel magic
Left mouse button + alt - my level 90 talent of choice (I swap around based on the encounter)

Button 4 - POM
4 + shift - POH
4 + alt - binding heal

Button 5 - Penance
5 + shift - Greater heal
5 + alt - flash heal

When I used my Naga, I pretty much stuck to my Right, Left mouse buttons + buttons 1-6 (with shift modifiers). I would group similiar spells in pairs. For example, PoM was 3 and PoH was shift 3, Binding heal was 4, flash heal was shift 4, Penance was 5, greater heal was 6.

Macro'ed into some of the abilites are inner focus and power infusion.

My CD's are bound around where my hand rests on my keyboard. I move with both my mouse and my keyboard. I find it works better for me than moving with just my mouse. So I left those buttons alone. I use z, x, c, v, b, f, g, h, t and then shift + q, w, a, s, d, g, h, z, alt 1-5, f1 - f4. Not all of these bindings are used for healing. Some are for utility, convenience and soloing/dailies. Like Alt1 = buff fort, shift Z = mount, shift q = sw:pain, shift D = dominate mind.

Edit: For spells like holy fire, smite and shadow word: pain, I made macro's that would attack my target's target. I found it easier for me to keep the tank/whoever targeted and still be able to cast a spell on the boss then to click on the boss, then cast my spell.