Discipline Priest Healing Easy Mode — The War Within (11.0.7)
On this page, we explain how to easily play Discipline Priest in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.0.7), using the simplest rotation, talent tree, stat priority, gear setup, etc., without sacrificing performance.
Foreword
This page is intended for players who are new to the game or class, have no intentions of raiding Mythic difficulty, or simply want a more straightforward way to play their specialization without being overwhelmed by the numerous subtleties and active abilities that need to be taken into consideration for optimal play.
The Basics of Discipline Priests
Discipline Priests rely on healing players by dealing damage (through
Atonement), but also has traditional heals and absorption spells, which
are to be used in situations where Atonement is not sufficient.
Healing through dealing damage allows them to contribute to the group's DPS
while still performing well as a healer. Discipline Priests provide some of the
greatest burst healing in the game on a relatively short cooldown.
For a more in-depth description of the spells you have available to you as a Discipline Priest, take a look at our spell summary page.
Beginner's Guide to Discipline Priest in The War Within
Beginner Raid Talents for Discipline Priest
This build utilizes Mindbender in all situations to keep things simple. In an optimal world, you will swap between Mindbender and
Shadowfiend based on the encounter timers to get the most optimal use of your pet, but when you are first starting out, just stick to Mindbender.
Mythic Plus Talents
There is not much flexibility in our tree so this talent build is generally used in all situations outside of moving points for utility purposes on a dungeon by dungeon basis.
Stat Choices for Discipline Priest
Currently, you will want to prioritize secondary stats as follows for all content:
- Haste
- Mastery
- Critical Strike
- Versatility
While we provide stat preference lists, swapping gear to higher item level items — and their higher Intellect/total stats — should, usually, provide a larger upgrade than using lower item level items with better stats. The exception to this rule are items with important tertiary stats like Leech, which should still be used ahead of other items without them, unless the difference in item level is around 10 or above.
For more information on stats for Discipline, please take a look at our stats page below.
Atonement Applicators
Renew is an instant cast, single target
Atonement applicator with a small heal-over-time effect tied to it. The largest benefit to renewing is that it can be cast while moving.
Power Word: Shield is an instant cast, single target Atonement applicator with a fairly strong shield tied to it. While this is a very potent option for applying Atonement to a single target, it does have a cooldown.
Flash Heal is a 1.5-second cast, single target Atonement applicator with a decent-sized single target heal tied to it. With this costing more Mana than Renew, as well as requiring you to stand still, it will not see nearly as much play as your primary applicator outside of a few situations. The first situation where this gains significant strength is when the single target heal portion of the spell is relevant. The other would be to abuse other talents, like
Surge of Light or
Binding Heal.
Power Word: Radiance is a 2-second cast, multi-target Atonement applicator with a decent heal tied to it. Power Word: Radiance applies Atonement to 5 people, but at a reduced duration. This is useful in raids for getting large coverage before a major damage event or in M+ to quickly cover the whole group in Atonement.
Power Word: Life will also apply Atonement to the target, although it will not be used as an Atonement applicator as its primary use case. The Atonement provided by this spell is mostly a bonus in addition to its primary function, unlike most other spells on this list.
Basic Playstyle for Discipline Priests
Discipline Priests rely on applying Atonement and then dealing
damage to heal through Atonement.
Raid Healing
Due to the way Discipline Priest heals in Raid content, it is nearly impossible to present a simplified version. If you are interested in Raid healing, we highly recommend that you take a look at the full rotation guide found here:
Dungeon Healing
Healing in a dungeon relies on Atonement in AoE healing situations
or situations where the single target healing requirements are low. In
situations where the incoming damage becomes significant, you have a multitude
of cooldowns to augment your healing, both AoE and single target.
Your core method of handling AoE damage will start with
Power Word: Radiance. This not only provides a large heal to the entire
group but also applies Atonement to the whole party, setting up the next part
of your rotation.
Once Atonement is active on the party, focusing on DPSing. Your DPS rotation
will involve summoning either Mindbender or
Shadowfiend first to activate
Shadow Covenant, getting up the
Schism debuff via
Mind Blast, and then casting
Penance,
Shadow Word: Death followed by
Smite until
Penance is back off cooldown, or your Atonements fall off your allies.
This general overview can be augmented with other cooldowns and abilities
like Power Word: Barrier,
Rapture,
Halo,
Holy Nova with
Rhapsody, and more.
For single target healing, you will primarily want to rely on Atonement when possible. If the whole group is not taking damage, you can fall back on a single target Atonement applicator to not waste a charge of Power Word: Radiance, but after that, you'll follow the same DPS concepts to heal via that Atonement.
In situations where either the incoming single target damage exceeds what
you can handle with Atonement, or your heavy-hitting DPS abilities are on
cooldown, you can fall back to just raw single-target healing to keep someone
alive. Your general tools for that will be casting Penance defensively on an
ally instead of against an enemy, casting Power Word: Shield, casting
Power Word: Life, or casting
Flash Heal.
Make sure you are making heavy use of your Pain Suppression charges,
as with
Protector of the Frail talented, you will have plenty of charges
available. Feel free to toss them on individuals taking heavier damage than the
rest of the party so that you can continue focusing on healing via Atonement
instead of needing to break that cycle to focus on single-target healing.
Cooldown Usage for Discipline Priests
Evangelism is a Discipline Priest's primary raid cooldown. Utilizing this properly is key to performing well with the specialization. Always aim to have at least 15
Atonements out before using this cooldown. Evangelism should always be used after a double
Power Word: Radiance cast. See the raid healing section above for a detailed cast sequence involving Evangelism for a better idea of how to use this well.
Mind Blast and its debuff when talented
Schism, deals solid damage on its own but also increases the damage the target takes from subsequent spells. Use this spell at the beginning of any DPS sequence to increase the impact of the entire rotation. The increased damage caused by the Schism debuff does increase
Atonement healing.
Pain Suppression should be used on a tank or another party/raid member before a damage spike or when they have some form of debuff that will cause heavy damage over time.
Power Word: Barrier should be used to mitigate intense AoE damage; it requires the raid/party to be stacked in one place.
Shadowfiend /
Mindbender should be used for additional DPS (and therefore Atonement healing). Not only is the damage from these pets significant on their own when considering their auto attacks as well as
Inescapable Torments damage, but they also activate
Shadow Covenant leading to windows of much higher damage and, therefore, healing.
Rapture increases the strength of your next few
Power Word: Shield casts, the exact number dependent on if you're talented into
Exaltation or
Indemnity. There are 2 primary ways to utilize Rapture in mythic plus content. The first is to use Rapture to apply a shield on each group member in quick succession, preempting a large burst of damage. Utilzing Rapture in this manner will allow you to reduce the impact of that damage event making it less lethal and easier to heal after the fact. The second method of utilizing Rapture is to abuse its longer duration by slowly applying large shields to cover single-target healing requirements. By delaying each cast to build up
Weal and Woe stacks and your tier set, each Shield cast will be very large. In Raid content, Rapture will primarily be utilized as part of a ramp sequence to provide strong shields and longer duration
Atonement's to targets via
Indemnity. It's overall impact in raid as a cooldown is much lower.
Ultimate Penitence lifts you into the air for an extended period, firing off penance bolts either at allies or at enemies, depending on your target when casting the spell. This ability can be used when your Shadowfiend or Mindbender are not available to provide a significant amount of healing to the group/raid. You will generally want to prioritize using this as against enemies instead of on allies. Just be careful about where you will land when this spell ends, as you are unmovable during it. You are, however, given a fairly large personal shield during the cast to help keep you alive while in the channel. This spell can also be used to mitigate knockbacks or displacement effects on bosses.
Desperate Prayer provides increased health for its duration but also provides healing for the amount that it increased. This provides you with a quick heal when you drop low and added survivability.
Power Infusion provides a Haste steroid that can be used either on yourself, during a ramp-up or a high-intensity moment in dungeons, or used on an ally DPS during their cooldowns for more group/raid damage output.
Changelog
- 15 Dec. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.7.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within Release.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 27 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Aug. 2023: Updated M+ talent recommendations and updated wording for raid.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated Talent recommendations.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 22 Jan. 2023: Updated talent recommendation for patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Priest Guides
Guides from Other Classes
Raid Guides
This guide is written and maintained by Clandon, Healer in Vindicatum and Owner of Warcraft Priests (join them on Discord. This guide is peer reviewed by other staff at Warcraft Priests and other notable members of the healing community.
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