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Discipline Priest has always been a peculiar healer in World of Warcraft. Their gameplay based on damage prevention and converting damage into healing is both simple in theory and quite complex to play in reality. The reason is that discipline needs to be prepared for what's coming, and relies on pattern knowledge more than other specs (especially compared to its sibling Holy Priest.
Discipline Priest was simplified quite a bit for this upcoming patch, so let's look at how it plays now!
I want to start by mentioning that the guides are made by myself, and I am not a class expert. Hopefully, this will help get you started and will include some information that was harder to find. I want to emphasize that these pages more than anything are here to act as a portal to the content creators and other useful links in the right column (or scroll to the bottom on mobile). They are the experts :) In the mean time, if you read something that you think is inaccurate in this website, please let me know, so that we can make sure no erroneous information is shared!
Simply put, not much, the Cooldown Reduction (CDR) playstyle based around spamming Penance and Smite to get an impressive uptime of Mindbender will still be at the core of the gameplay loop. If you liked Disc in Season 3, you can get into Season 4 without fear!
Discipline priest is different from most other healers in that it does not really have maintenance healing, such as Prayer of Mending or Riptide that you should use on cooldowns, simply to maintain some healing on the group and prepare procs and other combos when the damage input spikes.
On the other side, Discipline Priest, especially with the addition of Priest Discipline 10.2 Class Set 4pc, mostly revolves around a DPS rotation to maintain maximum uptime of Mindbender with Void Summoner and Inescapable Torment. You will rarely need to hold it, and simply will prioritize casts of Penance, Shadow Word: Death and Smite for this purpose. Smite also reduces the CD of Penance thanks to Train of Thought, creating some really big CDR windows.
You should aim to maintain atonement on your tank, which will be relatively easy thanks to Priest Discipline 10.2 Class Set 2pc , so that you passively heal them. You should also use Power Word: Shield as a preemptive action on targets about to take damage (the Targeted Weak Aura works marvels here)
As soon as there are more than 2 people taking damage, use Power Word: Radiance. You have a lot of charges of it, and very little reason to hold these charges. Just use them and keep doing damage to heal more with Atonement.
There is one main tip to help you always be prepared. Keep Purge the Wicked up on as many targets as possible always. All Multi-target abilities (e.g. Halo) of Disc Priest heal through Atonement only on their first hit, Purge the Wicked however converts into atonement for every tick on every mob. This turns any application of your Atonement into a strong HOT when you can maintain it on 6+ targets. Penance will help you spread it, and should also always be used on cooldown.
Starting a pull as a Discipline priest is a little ritual and it deserves a mention here. You will want to pre-apply Power Word: Shield on your tank as they move towards the pack, then apply one Purge the Wicked, followed by Penance to start spreading it. It is important that you always get yourself comfortable with all the enemies Dotted, to get some "passive" Atonement at all times.
Atonement is the way you heal as a Discipline Priest. The only other real sources of healing are Power Word: Radiance and the absorbs from Power Word: Shield. This means that it is important to be good about applying the buff and and to know what produces good atonement healing.
Two very important things first:
So the next question is which spell do produce the most atonement healing? Penance, SWDeath and Mind Blast. Those will move your bars up.
Discipline is by conception very well tooled to handle AOE Burst Healing. The idea is always the same: Apply atonements, then deal burst damage to heal through Atonement.
The burst is amplified by using ShadowCovenant and/or Schism (Mindbender and/or Mind Blast).
In general, a good rule of thumb is to maximize your atonement healing on the group, and avoid refreshing it too early by using direct heals. Do not let people die however :D Being able to gauge when atonement is enough and when you need the extra heal is what makes a discipline priest skill. In any case, make sure you track the remaining duration of your atonements in a very readable way for you.
Now I want to put a point of warning here. The way a disc priest delivers their burst healing is a branch of theorycrafting in itself. Please read the following paragraphs as more of a source of inspiration to get started, and certainly not an absolute truth. It is harder to find "hard" data on m+ bursts than raid bursts, but I encourage all to experiment and check out what the best players do!
The first idea that comes to mind is a good way to handle unexpected Damage:
Power Word: Radiance > Mindbender and/or Mind Blast > Penance > SWDeath > etc
This will work in 90% of cases, Radiance applies atonement on everybody, then you get your amplifiers and heal everybody. One very important pain point with Radiance is its range however. 30 yards is not very big, and it means you want to adopt a position between the melee and the ranged, then cast it on you (the range is from the target of the spell) to ensure you get everybody in. If you are out of position, make sure to target the most central player. This is a very standard way to mess up as a Disc priest
Now then, The order and timing of Power Word: Radiance, Mindbender and Penance matters a lot. There is no one size fits all there. For starters, do not hesitate to put out Mindbender early, just make sure that it buffs Penance. Power Word: Radiance healing can be somewhat of a bait. It is nice, but be careful of being too late, that is really the worst thing you can do! Penance on the opposite should probably be delayed a bit. When burst are really massive, you certainly do not want to waste a tick because you pressed too early and everybody was still at 100%. Get Mindbender and Power Word: Radiance out, and then enjoy the comfort of being ready. You can tempo with a smite or two to time your Penance for perfect efficiency :) Being too early on Penance could be what's holding you down on long bursts like Tree boss in Waycrest or Infinite Fury in DOTI.
You cannot move while you cast Radiance, which can be a big problem on some patterns (knockbacks, swirlies everywhere). Better be extra early and completely forfeit radiance healing than being late in these situations!
Rapture is a good cooldown. It is also not the simplest to use. Basically, you want to perform your atonement application with Rapture / Power Word: Shield casts ahead of the incoming damage. However it will blanket some solid shields on your team to prevent a good part of the initial burst of damage, making it that much easier to heal.
Power Word: Barrier is a very strong way to negate a damage event. After all, the only real reason to burst heal is if the next tick of damage will kill someone, people can very well be at 20%, they do the same damage to the enemy. Power Word: Barrier will make it so that in most cases, people will not die from the incoming damage, making it a prime tool against 1-Hitters.
Also, it is a percentage based damage reduction. It scales with the incoming damage. So It gets stronger every key level. The only tool any healer has access to that is better is Zephyr.
Unless you have a specific timing you are thinking of using it in the next minutes, it is important to use it, in general, the issue is more that people might not use it enough. It has the excellent side effect of forcing everybody to stack, which will help the group.
Well Discipline Priest does have two charges of Pain Suppression (thanks to Protector of the Frail). So there's that. Use them, it is by definition a very poor reactive tool, so dont wait for the right time, it will most likely be too late.
Other than that, it is a tough pattern for Disc Priest. Using a Targeting weak aura is highly recommended to put down a preemptive shield, as you always want to be ahead of the damage, it will create some breathing room for you.
If the bleed is stronger than what you can produce with atonement, you will be in a dire spot, Flash heal has been buffed quite massively and will help, but it still will not feel comfortable. Take command of your teammates defensives, plan with them, this will make you much stronger.
This toolkit weakness makes tools like Ward of Faceless Ire extremely strong for Discipline. Be on the lookout each season for such trinkets, we loves them. The closest this season is Revitalizing Voodoo Totem which you should most likely try.
Despite the nerfs to Mass Dispel, it is still one of the best tools there. Use regular dispel > Mass Dispel > Regular Dispel > Pain Sup and hopefully this should be over!
Desperate Prayer is a surprisingly efficient cooldown, and since it is also the only true defensive you have, making good use of it is essential. Angel's Mercy has been pretty good, but you would typically use BindingHeals if you need Protective Light. Light's Inspiration is a decent pick if you want more power in this defensive, although you may have to trade some utility to get it.
Fade when talented into Translucent Image provides a short cooldown defensive. It is not very strong, but use it every time you can anyway, it is off the GCD, there is no reason not to. Note that it can dispel roots and snares when talented into Phantasm. this can be very good in certain dungeons where some debuffs doing damage can be dispelled this way, as well as essential against the Entangling Affix.
Another quick defensive is Protective Light. You can quickly cast Flash Heal on yourself before a damage event to apply atonement and a 10% DR. It does work through BindingHeals, which makes the combo very efficient in high keys.
Other than Mass Dispel, Priests have another grand tool: Mind Soothe.
While Mind Soothe has been nerfed to not affect enemies who can see through stealth, it is still likely that it has usage to create innovative routes. It can be very useful in a pinch to avoid a patrol from getting aggroed into the current pull.
Power Word: Fortitude is a strong group buff, more and more useful as key levels progress to avoid 1-shots.
Psychic Stream is not the best tool in the game but it does give you somewhat of a AOE interrupt, which can be practical. You have to be close to melee, but you will be for Holy Nova anyway.
The ultimate niche-but-game-breaking utility. Dominate Mind helps you grab some mobs with interesting casts for your purpose. In particular, it is immense versus the Incorporeal Affix as it will reduce your enemies damage.
Shackle Undead is a spamable CC, which is great since it means you can lock down a caster by yourself. Now the issue is that it is highly dependent on the mobs you will face as Undeads are not so common in the dungeon pools. One particularly interesting quirk though is that it helps you solo the Incorporeal Affix with Dominant Mind.
Leap of Faith is best used in a coordinated group, where you can help someone move, grab your tank behind a wall, and other little placement tricks. in PUG, it is tough to use it without being obnoxious.
You will naturally get damage as you heal as a Disc Priest, but there are a few ways to further optimize.
We mentioned it about maintenance healing, but let's double down on it. Keeping Purge the Wicked up on as many targets as possible is what will make your disc gameplay robust, and that's also a big vector of your damage! The skill ceiling is pretty high there, and that's definitely an area you should focus on, it makes everything else easier.
You will most likely talent into Inescapable Torment. It provides strong AOE damage as long as you take care of using Penance, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death to proc the AOE damage and extend its duration. It is really solid damage, and it also reduces your cooldown on your Shadow Covenant, so use and abuse!
Directly related to this is becoming good at sniping mobs with Shadow Word: Death. You can use outside of execute just to extend Mindbender, but you would gain much more value if you are able to target the right mobs to take advantage of the execute bonus. It is a lot of damage to do so, and also quite sizable Atonement healing! If that's something that can help, mouveover macro can be great there.
After the nerfs to Rhapsody for Discipline, it is unsure where Holy Nova will land. It still has value on big AOE, to be seen if Rhapsody is still a full-time pick however
This was hopefully a nice and helpful introduction, but if you want to get further into healing with Discipline Priest, you should look for more information, from more expert players. IV Discipline Priest Guide and Wowhead Disc Priest Guide might include more than this present guide, and be more precise about the priority list.
When it comes to video content, I really recommend Jak's Youtube Channel, starting with his video guide for the spec:
At this point, you should have enough information to get pretty high. What's left will be gear and stat optimization, for which you should use the QE: Live tool.
And then it is really watching the very best play, review some logs, ask for for feedback in the class discord or in the streams chat, and get better, one step at a time. Good luck!
Jak has been one of the most prominent priests in the community when it comes to M+. He also creates a lot of video content.
If you can catch him on stream, Moadmoad is an incredible discipline priest player, world famous for his Dominate Mind tricks. He plays regularly in high level competitions with team Mandatory (former Monka)
Warcraft Priests
The Priest Class Discord
Wowhead Disc Priest Guide
IV Discipline Priest Guide
PI Helper
It will let you know who is using a cooldown when PI is up. Can be configured to react when people send you a command by whisper
This is a general purpose tentative build for 10.2. Will need more study to confirm some choices
A build with Uppies! It is a spell that can be hard to use, but it is worth trying it out nonetheless
This is going to be the beacon of this tiers, although it will not be as strong. Be careful of the DOT it will leave on you!
Ward of Faceless Ire© 2023 Bubu
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