And I agree, Cascade is literally a must-have for raids if you are Disc. I’m just warning people against translating “Divine Star sucks in raids” into “Divine Star always sucks”, because it can be pretty awesome. I’m specifically talking questing, no quibbles with your raid advice. 8)

Looked up my Mindbender in the raid logs, to back up what I was seeing in Skada and in the world in general (i.e. need to pull multiple virmin in my farm plots to ensure the squid doesn’t run out targets to hit). Even when trying to use Atonement as much as possible, the Mindbender still contributes 35-45% of my damage. My squid alone did more damage during boss fights than our Crane Kick-loving mistweaver did. Translate that back into really brief open-world fights, and 1-minute-CD squid is OP!

I also forgot to mention Glyph of Psychic Scream for questing. I always leveled as shadow before, and wanted to take DPS glyphs over that one. But now I love the power to fear at will — between Psychic Scream and Psyfiend, you can keep a bunch of mobs tied up for quite a while, while letting your DoT tick away on them. Psyfiend is even usable on solo fights — it will keep re-fearing the same target. It’s pretty awesome to watch a mob try to stutter step towards you in tiny half-second increments of freedom, while you cackle, cast a couple instants at it, and watch your squid beat it to death before the fears wear off.

I dropped my holy spec for shadow and I’m not regretting it. I picked up FDCL and Divine Insight for talents and DOT ALL THE THINGS. Seriously, Mind Flay isn’t even on my bar. Dot up everything, mash all the procs (impossible to miss thanks to all the lit up buttons) and enjoy your killing power. Got to 90 this way and I regularly pull 3 mobs while doing dailies with very little trouble. Fear when things get messy of course and I’ve got my root talent as a backup. The glyph that lets you heal yourself in shadowform is a must-have. I’m not an expert on priests but I’m having fun and doing good DPS (35kish in crappy gear) in 5 mans so I must be doing something right.

I like your point on the Mindbender talent. Imma give that a try for a while.

I guess what I wasn’t clear about WRT Divine Star was that I was talking in my healer-voice, not deepser-voice, so Cascade as a raid talent is actually what I had in mind. But I shall install Divine Star on the shadow spec tout de suite given your comments. Thanks!

Definitely feeling the squishiness of the dark side, that’s for sure. Switching to Disco for the really tough fights has to be one of the most amusing bits of role-reversal ever.

Thanks for the comments!

I consider the following must-haves for disc questing:
• Glyph of Holy Fire: makes a “nuke” instant-cast
• Mindbender: not for the mana, but the DPS! This little guy puts out a lot of damage, and with the 1 minute CD goes by REALLY fast. Also because you’ll be putting out so many atonement heals (given only 1 or 2 targets to receive them), that the Flash Heals from From Darkness Comes Light aren’t needed.
• Divine Star as your level 90 talent: Cascade is awesome in raids (fulfills a key niche of burst AoE healing that disc otherwise completely lacks), but it’s not very impressive as a damage spell. Unlike Cascade, Divine Star can heal and damage on the same cast, and it’s easy to have all your friendly and hostile targets grouped together while questing. I usually use Divine Star in 5-mans for similar reasons… Just make sure you’re standing sufficiently back from the group, because it’s VERY easy to snag extra mobs with it.