In this article, we present you the viable talent and glyph choices for your Discipline Priest (WoW MoP 5.3). We detail what each of the talents and glyphs do and in which situations they should be taken.

The other articles of our Discipline Priest guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

This guide has been reviewed and approved by Jhazrun, one of the best Discipline Priests in the world, who raids in Paragon.

1. Talent Choices↑top

• Performance-enhancing
• Survival
• Crowd Control
• Movement
• Utility
• Situational

There is no longer such a thing as a default build. Most of the talents are now viable. They can easily be changed, thanks to Dust of Disappearance (and Tomes of the Clear Mind from level 86 to 90). You will frequently find yourself changing talents and glyphs between encounters, in order to adapt your play style to different mechanics. Therefore, it is important to understand what each of your talents does and how they affect your play style.

2. Tier 1 Talents↑top

Tier 1 talents offer you a choice between 3 crowd-control abilities.

• Void Tendrils roots up to 5 enemies in place for up to 20 seconds. Killing the tendrils cancels the effects. The targets must be in the 8-yard proximity of the main target of the spell.
• Psyfiend spawns a friendly NPC that casts fears on nearby enemies.
• Dominate Mind takes control of an enemy player or NPC.

These talents have, at best, situational uses. They may be useful in some encounters, but most likely will only be used during trash and questing. Your choice will be largely irrelevant.

These talents do not influence your performance in any way, their uses being entirely situational. We advise that you choose the talent you prefer the most, or that one which applies best to the conditions of the encounter.

3. Tier 2 Talents↑top

Tier 2 talents offer you a choice between 3 means of improving your mobility.

• Body and Soul increases the movement speed of the target of your Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith by 60% for 4 seconds.
• Angelic Feather allows you to place up to 3 feathers on the ground. Collecting a feather (running through it) increases the player's movement speed by 60% for 6 seconds. Placing feathers has no cooldown, but you only gain a new feather every 10 seconds.
• Phantasm causes your Fade to remove all movement-impairing effects from you. It also makes you unslowable for 5 seconds.

We feel that Body and Soul offers you the most control over when to offer the movement speed increase, and to whom. However, keep in mind that pre-existing Weakened Soul debuffs on players (due to you or someone else having shielded them recently) may prevent you from using this. Also, using this basically means you may end up wasting a Power Word: Shield altogether (assuming the target does not take damage) only to offer the movement speed boost.

Angelic Feather offers a longer movement speed boost, and it has fewer restrictions than Body and Soul. It also costs less mana to use. It is, however, reliant on the recipients of the buff actively running through the feathers left behind. Moreover, targeting specific players with this ability when the raid is stacked together is practically impossible.

Phantasm is more of a PvP talent, with situational uses at best.

4. Tier 3 Talents↑top

Tier 3 talents offer you a choice between 3 performance-enhancing abilities.

• From Darkness, Comes Light passively grants you a 15% chance, whenever you use Smite, Heal, Flash Heal, Binding Heal, or Greater Heal to cause your next Flash Heal to be instant cast and have no mana cost. You can have a maximum of 2 charges of this buff at one time.
• Mindbender is an improved version of Shadowfiend, which it replaces. The Mindbender has a lower cooldown, and provides you with more damage and mana regeneration.
• Power Word: Solace is a spell that replaces your Holy Fire. The differences are that Power Word: Solace does not cost mana, and instead regenerates 1% of maximum mana when cast. It does not trigger the Atonement effect, but its damage is also done as healing to a nearby ally.

Each of these talents has its own situational uses, and they are all great. Making your choice will depend on several factors, most importantly the mechanics of the encounter and your own playstyle.

Mindbender is easy to use and provides a stable and reliable means of increasing your mana regeneration.

From Darkness, Comes Light can provide excellent burst and mana conservation, but it suffers from two disadvantages. First of all, it procs randomly, and, thus, uncontrollably. This makes it rather unreliable. Second of all, it does not proc from Prayer of Healing and Power Word: Shield, two spells that Discipline Priests may find themselves casting extensively in certain situations.

Power Word: Solace provides mana, as well as allowing you to keep up some amount of healing, and deal some DPS in the process. It also provides a decent amount of mana regeneration. If you are making extensive use of Atonement healing, then this talent can be very valuable.

5. Tier 4 Talents↑top

Tier 4 talents offer you a choice between 3 abilities that improve your survivability.

• Desperate Prayer is an instant-cast self-heal that heals you for 30% of your maximum health, with a 2-minute cooldown.
• Spectral Guise allows you to enter a pseudo-stealth state (you remain in combat), leaving behind an illusion of yourself. The effect lasts for 6 seconds, or until you receive 3 attacks.
• Angelic Bulwark is a passive ability that grants you a damage absorption shield, for 20% of your maximum health, each time you drop below 30% health. The effect has an internal cooldown of 90 seconds.

Here, we feel that the choice will come down to either Desperate Prayer or Angelic Bulwark. We prefer Desperate Prayer, because it can be used on-demand. Angelic Bulwark can be great when it procs, so it is useful for fights where you often drop below 30% health (progression content, most likely).

Spectral Guise is not able to compete with the other two talents in PvE.

6. Tier 5 Talents↑top

Tier 5 talents offer you a choice between 3 performance-enhancing abilities.

• Twist of Fate passively increases your damage and healing by 15% for 10 seconds, each time you damage or heal a target that is below 20% health.
• Power Infusion is a 2-minute cooldown that increases your spell casting speed by 20%, reduces the mana cost of all your spells by 20%, and increases all damage done by 5% for 20 seconds.
• Divine Insight grants you a 40% chance whenever you cast Penance, that your next Power Word: Shield will ignore and not cause the Weakened Soul effect.

You will have to choose the right talent for the encounter, although we are unattracted to the random nature of Divine Insight, even though its benefits are very appealing. If the encounter you are progressing on is one where raid members are frequently on low health (intense raid damage, progression content, etc.), then Twist of Fate will shine. Otherwise, in all default situations, we recommend Power Infusion, which is a healing cooldown.

An unexpected benefit of Twist of Fate is worth taking into consideration. The talent interacts perfectly with Atonement. This is to say, the healing from Atonement double-dips from this buff, being greatly increased. In situations where the boss is below 20% health, or where a recipient of your heal is below 20% health, you will gain the Twist of Fate buff, which will then greatly enhance your Atonement healing for the next 15 seconds.

Also regarding Twist of Fate, it is worth noting that you can often abuse (we use the word loosely here, and it is certainly not something against the rules of the game) this mechanic by damaging low-health adds in order to proc the effect. This works especially well on fights where there are many adds that spawn and die regularly throughout the fight.

7. Tier 6 Talents↑top

Tier 6 talents offer you a choice between 3 abilities that deal damage to and heal multiple targets.

• Cascade is a sort of "chain heal" or "chain lightning", depending on how you wish to use the spell. The initial bolt heals or deals damage to its first target, after which it splits in two, each bolt jumping to targets that are far away, until it eventually stops.
• Divine Star resembles a yo-yo, in the sense that the ball of energy travels in a path away from you (in front of you), and after reaching a certain point (24 yards away), it returns. Both on the first, as well as on the second trip, it heals allies in its path, and damages enemies.
• Halo causes an effect around you, which expands up to a 30-yard radius. Allies who are inside it are healed, while enemies are damaged. The highest amounts of healing/damage are received by the targets who are around the 25-yard mark.

Quite simply, you should choose the tier 6 talent based on the positioning of your raid during the encounter, and the type of damage that you will have to heal.

Halo will work best when you can position yourself at a 25-yard range from the players that need healing (since this is the range at which Halo does the highest healing).

If your raid is stacked, then Divine Star can shine.

If your raid will be mostly spread out, in such a way that Halo cannot be used well, then you will want Cascade.

8. Major Glyphs↑top

Even though there are no Major Glyphs that improve your performance in a straightforward way, there are several glyphs we feel you should be made aware of.

• Glyph of Penance increases the mana cost of Penance by 20%, but allows it to be cast while moving. We believe this glyph will be excellent, especially in later tiers when there is more Spirit on gear.
• Glyph of Weakened Soul reduces the duration of Weakened Soul by 2 seconds.
• Glyph of Binding Heal causes your Binding Heal to heal a third target, but it increases its mana cost by 35%.
• Glyph of Fade reduces your damage taken by 10% while Fade is active, turning the spell into a minor defensive cooldown.
• Glyph of Holy Fire increases the range of Holy Fire, Smite, and Power Word: Solace by 10 yards. It is useful for players who make use of Atonement healing and who desire a bit more flexibility in their positioning.
• Glyph of Prayer of Mending increases the healing of Prayer of Mending by 60% on the first target, but causes it to have 1 fewer charge.
• Glyph of Mass Dispel causes Mass Dispel to dispel magic effects that are normally undispellable. This glyph is practically mandatory for any encounters you need to use Mass Dispel to get rid of certain mechanics.

9. Minor Glyphs↑top

All Minor Glyphs are of purely cosmetic value, and they do not influence your gameplay at all.

10. Changelog↑top

• 20 May 2013: Patch 5.3 update: updated the Glyph of Mass Dispel description.
• 25 Apr. 2013: Fixed a small issue where we were mentioning Flash of Light (the Holy Paladin spell) instead of Flash Heal.
• 18 Apr. 2013: Removed Glyph of Power Word: Shield, Glyph of Purify, and Glyph of Levitate since they are all sub-optimal and should never be used.
• 27 Mar. 2013: Expanded the explanations of Tier 2, 3, and 5 Talents. Also updated the description of Glyph of Holy Fire to be in tune with its live realm version (now increases range of Holy Fire, Smite, and Power Word: Solace by 10 yards).
• 04 Mar. 2013: Patch 5.2 update.
  • Updated mention of the duration of the movement speed buff from Angelic Feather from 4 to 6 seconds.
  • Updated explanation of Power Word: Solace to account for the new way in which it works.
  • Added mention of the 5% damage increase from Power Infusion.
  • Added explanation for Glyph of Weakened Soul.
  • Added explanation for Glyph of Binding Heal.