Discipline Priest Best Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits — Dragonflight 10.2.5

Please be aware that as of the Dragonflight Pre-Patch and Dragonflight expansion, all Covenant abilities, Soulbinds, and Conduits will only function while within the Shadowlands. This page will temporarily remain as a reference.

This page assumes that you are already familiar with Covenants, Soulbinds, and Conduits. If that is not the case, we have a number of pages that can help you get up to speed:

• Covenants Guide, which explains what Covenants are, what perks they bring, and how you can join one;
• Priest Covenant Abilities, which lists all the abilities that Priests gain by joining each Covenant;
• How To Change Covenant?, which tells you how you can switch Covenant (rejoining a former Covenant will require you to perform a number of tasks to regain their trusts);
• General Soulbind Guide, which explains what Soulbinds are and how you can pledge yourself to them to open up their Soulbind tree;
• Priest Conduits, which lists all of the Conduits available to Priests.

Kyrian will be the best option for mythic plus content. For raiding, both Kyrian and Venthyr will have their place. Both Necrolord and Night Fae remain incredibly far behind the other two.

For more information about Discipline Priest Covenants, please read our Covenants and Soulbinds analysis section at the end of this page.

We will list below a summary of our best Conduits, by type. If you are interested in the full details, continue reading through the next section of the guide. Please refer to our Priest Conduits list if you want to see all Priest Conduits.

• Best Potency Conduits — When running Evangelism: Courageous Ascension / Shattered Perceptions, Shining Radiance, and Rabid Shadows will be your go-to. When running Spirit Shell: Courageous Ascension / Shattered Perceptions, Exaltation, and Shining Radiance will be your go-to. Once you gain access to your four piece tier set bonus, Swift Penitence gains significant value and becomes your second best potency conduit.
• Best Endurance Conduits — Condensed Anima Sphere followed by Translucent Image and then Charitable Soul.
• Best Finesse Conduits — Clear Mind is the only Finesse Conduit expected to carry consistent benefit due to the others being extremely situational.

With Patch 9.1.5, we can now swap our Conduits at will instead of being limited by Conduit energy. The only thing this really changes for disc is that its far easier to swap Exaltation in and out when swapping between Evangelism and Spirit Shell in raid or swapping to the ideal mythic plus tree that only runs two Potency Conduits when Kyrian.

Regardless of which Covenant you pick, you will be able to gather and use the same Conduits, with the notable exception of the Potency Conduit that enhances your Covenant class ability.

We will be listing the Conduits you can obtain below, ordered by perceived power and accompanied by an explanation on their place in the list.

1. Courageous Ascension is a significant damage increase to an already hard-hitting spell.
2. Shattered Perceptions increases both the initial damage of Mindgames as well as the amount of damage it can absorb, making a very potent spell even more so.
3. Swift Penitence (with 4 piece tier set) provides a bonus to the first bolt of your penance that gains significant strength with the 4 piece tier set bonus.
4. Exaltation (with Spirit Shell) increases the duration of Spirit Shell by a small amount, as well as giving a decently-sized increase to the absorption rate.
5. Shining Radiance drastically increases the healing of your Power Word: Radiance.
6. Rabid Shadows (with Mindbender) increases the attack speed of your Mindbender, allowing you to get a few extra attacks during the abilities duration based on a variety of factors.
7. Rabid Shadows (with Shadowfiend) increases the attack speed of your Shadowfiend, allowing you to get a few extra attacks during the abilities duration based on a variety of factors.
8. Swift Penitence remains a very solid choice and comes in slightly behind most of the Covenant specific Conduits.
9. Festering Transfusion increases the damage, healing, and duration of Unholy Nova.
10. Pain Transformation grants your Pain Suppression target a percent Max HP heal in addition to its normal effect. Due to Pain Suppression's long cooldown, the overall benefit of this Conduit is fairly low and not very impactful overall.
11. Exaltation (with Evangelism) increases the duration of Rapture by a minuscule amount, as well as increasing the strength of your shields slightly.
12. Mind Devourer provides Discipline with a small damage buff to Mind Blast, which is, unfortunately, not very significant.
13. Fae Fermata provides a weaker version of an already weak buff for a short duration on one additional target, when you move one of the Fae Guardians. It is not currently recommended you take this Conduit.

1. Condensed Anima Sphere heals you for a percentage of your Maximum Health whenever you take damage once every 10 seconds. This provides a very solid amount of passive self-healing.
2. Translucent Image provides an on-demand damage reduction to Fade. This is a very solid defensive when used during high damage periods and should be taken as your best Endurance Conduit whenever you feel you will remember to use it.
3. Charitable Soul provides passive self shielding. Due to being entirely passive, this can be moved to number 1 on this list if you struggle with using fade well.
4. Light's Inspiration provides an additional heal to yourself when using Desperate Prayer.

Due to most of these Conduits being extremely situational, it is impossible to provide a ranked list. We recommend utilizing Clear Mind as your first choice as it is the most generally applicable. Past that, it will depend heavily on your current situation. Feel free to pick whatever you would like if you end up with multiple Finesse Conduit slots.

Unfortunately for Discipline Priest, there is a very large gap in strength between the top two Covenants in Kyrian and Venthyr versus the bottom two in Necrolord and Night Fae. Our current recommendation is to go with the Kyrian Covenant as the default choice for both Raiding and Mythic Plus with Venthyr gaining significant power once double legendaries and the 4 piece tier set bonus have been aquired.

The primary reasoning behind Kyrian in Mythic+ comes from a few factors as well. Mythic+ dungeons are often limited by certain moments of extreme difficulty, whether self inflicted by pulling much larger than usual or by a few boss/trash mechanics being significantly stronger than their surrounding peers. Boon of the Ascended offers a brief period of extreme HPS to allow you to manage those moments when most others cannot. Due to Mythic+ having, on average, a higher available enemy target count than in most raid situations, the AoE portion of Boon is also relevant compared to Mindgames only hitting a single target regardless of whats available. Keep in mind that this is strictly relevant for damage as you don't heal via Atonement for every hit of an AoE spell. Kyrian also has access to the Legendary Spheres' Harmony as well as Forgelite Prime Mikanikos for a total of a potential two minutes of cooldown reduction on Boon of the Ascended, which is a significant power increase.

Necrolord's Unholy Nova suffers a few issues that make it less than ideal. With it just being tuned fairly low compared to its competition combined with it having a square root calculation on its damage, it remains a poor choice competitively. The more targets you hit, the less damage each individual dot ticks. Since you only get healing via Atonement from one dot, hitting more than one enemy target with this spell makes it heal for less.

With Night Fae's Covenant spell Fae Guardians being as both clunky and unimpactful as it is, the rest of the Covenant package is not quite enough to make up for it and is one of the worst Covenants you can pick for Discipline.

Boon of the Ascended provides a very powerful ability on a fairly long cooldown that is well suited for both mythic plus content and raid. Kyrian's signature ability Phial of Serenity can act as an on demand heal as well as removing many dangerous debuffs from yourself that you normally would have no way of removing. While not the most interesting signature ability, it is definitely powerful depending on the situation.

Pelagos provides a very strong stat buff and will be your general go-to Soulbind for raid while you belong to the Kyrian Covenant.

Forgelite Prime Mikanikos will be your go-to Mythic Plus Soulbind and will see situational play in raid due to his final trait Effusive Anima Accelerator granting up to a minute off the cooldown of Boon of the Ascended.

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Note: When attempting to utilize Forgelite Prime Mikanikos in Mythic+ content, you only utilize two Potency Conduits due to the third Potency being far weaker than Hammer of Genesis. The below tree is an example of what you would use when utilizing Mikanikos for raiding. See the top of the page for the recommended Mythic+ Mikanikos tree.

Mindgames is a very powerful single-target nuke that contributes to Atonement healing, making it an extremely potent spell in regards to amplifying our burst sequence's potential output while also being fairly straightforward to use. Door of Shadows being a mobility spell for one of the more immobile classes in the game is also a positive and will see significant use.

Theotar the Mad Duke will be your go-to Soulbind while Venthyr for all situations.

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Unholy Nova, while easy to use and contributing okay damage, provides little in regards to healing contribution compared to the Venthyr or Kyrian alternatives. With Unholy Nova utilizing a square root calculation for the damage it deals per dot, the more enemies you hit with this ability, the less Atonement healing you receive in return due to only a single DoT transferring through atonement. Fleshcraft on its own is not a very interesting or powerful cooldown due to its long channel time requirement but has multiple very interesting improvements from Soulbinds. Any form of defensive for a class that has few defensives is always going to find value regardless of its difficulty of use.

Bonesmith Heirmir's first trait Forgeborne Reveries is a very interesting trait that hides its trues strength in the most uninteresting part. While the "continue to fight past death" portion of this trait is very thematic, the flat 3% intellect it provides at all times is very powerful and makes this your go-to Soulbind for Necrolord.

Emeni is a well balanced Soulbind that is solid in all content types. Unfortunately it is beat out by Heirmir in most situations.

Plague Deviser Marileth does not compare to the other two options outside of the very unique capstone Ultimate Form offering crowd control immunity. This always has potential to see use based on the situation and mechanics you are currently dealing with.

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Fae Guardians, while a very thematically interesting ability, has a few issues that leave it one of the worst options for all content. Being the only Covenant that provides no immediate throughput increase on top of both of Discipline's single target Atonement applicators being tied to a guardian, makes getting full value of any of the buffs on a single target very difficult. Soulshape being a mobility spell is very valuable for a class with limited mobility options. Comparing Soulshape to the other mobility spell, Door of Shadows from the Venthyr Covenant, Soulshape will provide superior movement in long distances but on a longer cooldown.

Dreamweaver is the overall best choice for progression content for Night Fae with Podtender providing a cheat death mechanic. The capstone ability Field of Blossoms is also solid.

Niya forces you into a dead last tier ability in order to get both Conduit slots leaving you effectively an entire ability down compared to Dreamweaver, but Korayn is in a similar position. Niya's first ability Grove Invigoration provides a larger gain over Korayn's first ability, making her the desired choice if you aren't utilizing Dreamweaver.

Korayn's Soulbind tree leaves a lot to be desired with a fairly poor final row after the Potency slot as well as the first tier ability, Wild Hunt Tactics being worse than Niya's alternative. This leaves Korayn in a situation where they are unlikey to see play over either of the alternatives.

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind:

Below is our chosen path and Conduits for this Soulbind: