It’s time to do some bubbling! Yep, Disc priests are back, and whilst we can’t spam soap bubbles of invulnerability like we used to, we’re still awesome healers. So, as we face up to Deathwing’s Bits, if you want to know what spells to use, what gems and glyphs to buy, what talents to spec, or how to reforge in Patch 4.3, read on.
Updated 6th Dec 2011 for Patch 4.3
Disc Priest Changes in Patch 4.3
Very little has changed for Discipline in 4.3. The main change has been a fix for Atonement, meaning it will now work properly when used against large bosses like Ragnaros or Al’Akir.
However, of course stat increases mean that your style of healing may change, and this guide has been updated to reflect 4.3 levels of gearing.
Spell Usage/Rotation
Disc priests, like all healers, don’t have a “rotation” as such. Instead, each spell has a different ideal use, and you’ll use them depending on situation:
Tank healing
- Power Word Shield: One of your primary heals. Cast when the tank’s about to take significant damage, and generally whenever you can.
- Penance Fairly powerful and efficient. Use whenever it’s off cooldown.
- Greater Heal Primary healing spell if the tank’s taking more damage than Heal can cope with.
- Heal Your “spam healing” spell. Use whenever the tank’s taking damage, but if his or her health is going down even with Heals, it’s time to switch to something more powerful. Becomes increasingly less useful with better gear – if your mana can handle it, consider using Greater Heal as your spam heal on harder content.
- Flash Heal Your panic button. Will run you out of mana FAST, but will also heal the tank FAST.
Raid/group healing
- Power Word Shield: Also very useful for raid healing. Cast on people you know or suspect are about to take damage. Fast and high healing.
- Prayer of Healing: Your primary group heal. Use whenever it will be useful for healing at least 3 people.
- Prayer of Mending: The “Bouncing Heal”. Cast on cooldown – as a smart heal, it’ll go where it’s needed (hopefully).
- Other healing spells: Use Penance when it’s off cooldown, and Greater Heal to spot heal as needed. Only use Flash Heal if someone’s about to die and you can’t use Power Word Shield.
Cooldown spells
For when it’s all gone a bit Pete Tong:
- Power Word: Barrier :Best used when the raid’s stacked and you know they’re about to take a lot of damage – Red phase on Maloriak, for example. Note: this is a powerful CD and can save your raid if used right.
- Pain Suppression: Powerful damage reduction – coordinate with your healing target as to when to cast this if possible, as it duplicates the effect of many tank cooldowns.
- Divine Hymn and Power Infusion: Your other two “Oh, crap” buttons. Best to not use both at once, to maximise your ability to react to The Bad.
What about Evangelism/Atonement/Smite Priests?
You may have heard about the so-called “Smite Priest”, an alternative Disc build that heals by using DPS spells.
It’s a very fun build – use if you want to try it out. However, it’s more complicated than a non-Smite priest.
If you decide to try Smiting your way to victory:
- Tank Healing: Proceed as above, but use Smite instead of Heal if you ever get time for it, and try to use Holy Fire if you get a chance. If healing gets hairy, you should have enough stacks of Evangelism built up to cast Archangel, which is a decent cooldown on a very short timer.
- Raid Healing Use Holy Fire on cooldown, as it’s a powerful smart heal. As above, pop Archangel for heavy damage. Use Smite where you’d be casting Heal otherwise.
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Discipline Talent Spec
The standard Disc talent spec looks like this 4.3 spec
Here’s a good Atonement spec: Atonement/Evangelism spec for 4.3
Stats, Reforging and Gems
Intellect is your most important stat, boosting your healing and mana pool, followed by Spirit, which controls mana regeneration. Haste, Mastery and Crit can all be useful in different circumstances, but are all less useful than Int or Spirit – see below.
Gemming: Gem for socket bonuses unless the socket is a yellow socket providing 10 or less Mastery, Crit or Haste – gem those for Intellect with Brilliant Inferno Ruby.
Reforging: Reforging depends on your mana. Reforge to Spirit if you ever need mana. Otherwise, reforge to a balance of Crit and Mastery, or Haste if you’re really sure you won’t run out of mana on the content you’re healing. (Haste increases your healing power but also means you consume more mana).
Discipline Priest enchants
Several professions have “superior” enchants – use them if the stats are appropriate. Felfire Inscription on shoulders from Inscription, for example. Note – a few enchants can be swapped for Spirit enchants, like Chest, and so if you’re having mana problems, Spirit enchants are decent alternatives.
| Head | Arcanum of Hyjal |
| Shoulders | Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone |
| Back | Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect |
| Chest | Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats |
| Wrist | Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect |
| Hands | Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery |
| Belt | Ebonsteel Belt Buckle |
| Legs | Powerful Ghostly Spellthread |
| Feet | Enchant Boots – Lavawalker (the run speed is very useful) |
| Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Power Torrent |
| Off-Hand Weapon | Enchant Weapon – Superior Intellect |
Glyphs for Disc
Prime: Glyph of Power Word: Shield, Glyph of Penance, and Glyph of Prayer of Healing. Swap one for Glyph of Power Word: Barrier if it’s vital for the content you’re doing.
Major: Glyph of Prayer of Mending and Glyph of Dispel Magic are the stand-out choices. The third is your choice – not vital whatever you choose – unless you’re Atonement, in which case you need Glyph of Divine Accuracy.
Minor: You’ll hate people who ask you to cast Levitate if you don’t have Glyph of Levitate. Glyph of Fortitude is also very useful. Glyph of Fade can be useful, and it’s not like there are other fantastic choices.
Links
- Plusheal’s Disc Priest guide – Excellent and thorough, if slightly strangely ordered. The Plusheal community in general are also great. Not updated for Patch 4.3, but it scarcely matters.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
most disc priests would probably dissagree about “smite priest” not being as powerful. You need to consider it on a fight by fight basis, the only fight I do not currently use my AA/atonement spec is baleroc and I have only got ranaros heroic left for progress. last tier the only fight i would not use smite spec on also is chogall if we used a mage to get to 100 corruption for heroic mode.
atonement is very strong if raid members are in range. and even if not, Archangel is the one reason why AA/atonement spec is superior to an SoS spec on most fights. 15% increased healing ever 30 seconds for 10 seconds is a pretty insane buff, not to mention the 5% mana back isnt too shaby. and you are also contributing damage (albiet a low amount) this is laso an extra benefit to a raid.
but anyway, there is currently only 2 bosses in cata so far which i would not opt for AA/atonement spec. and chogall is only dependant on how you kill it. recently we just used 2 healers for it so then i was still able to use my smite spec.
all that is from a 10 man pov. i have also cleared firelands on 25 man, again baleroc is the only fight i would not use smite spec, and opt for a SoS spec.
also not to mention that when you can heal through atonement the casts of smite and holy fire are much shorter than heal and heal for more. it is also far more mana efficient than using flash heal and binding heal.
it does become a bit more RNG because of the rules of who atonement will heal. but this should never be a problem if you are considering your spell selection depending on the target you want to heals health as well as other raid memebers who may be close enough to recieve the atonement heal
@Comfort –
Hi there.
My Discipline Priest is currently lvl 64 and i have leveled him mainly trough instance healing.
I haven’t played the AA spec you mention, but would like to try it. You think that would be a better spec for 5 man heroics when i reach 85?
Thanks
I think you should stay with disc because when you hit level 85 for heroics disc focuses on healing mainly the tank and that is what you mainly do in heroics. You could have it as an off spec but you might want to have shadow as your off for DPS. I am a level 85 disc priest and I am pulling up great numbers in dragon soul. It wouldn’t hurt to try it out. Since your so interested I would look more into it.
-Red
@Rodericus –
I leveled holy DPS priest in BC when hit rating didn’t matter for holy spells and have had various Disc specs since. I finally got a guildy who just recently converted from Holy to Disc for healing. AA is what I run, he runs a spec that focuses more on the bubbles.
It’s all going to be about the kind of stats on the gear you have – reforges can do miracles, but the base gear will still dictate whether you are mastery, haste, or crit heavy. AA doesn’t need as much mastery but does need more haste and crit – crit’s not terribly important DON”T reforge to it – because you’re going to focus less on making bubbles bigger and more on getting off those smites to get your healing boost from AA. If you have a lot of mastery, holy or a disc spec without the AA is probably going to be easier. I’m biased towards my AA spec which we run 2 heals regular firelands with me and a holy pally on – also depends on how many nubs (not worth the 2 o’s for noob) you get in your pugs because if you get a group that delights in doing stupid stuff, they are gonna die and you will be looking for a wall to bang your head on…
@Fen Sandar – Thanks, that’s a very interesting and useful comment!
reforge TO spirit? what?? hahahahaha
@sanitycheck – I’d be interested to hear arguments against doing so?
Spirit is a lot less valuable to disc than compared to holy. For holy regen from spirit is increased by 30% for holy, which is the extra regen that holy priests get. Disc priests however only get the Meditation ability from spec. Thier extra mana regen comes from intellect in the form of rapture.
Rapture how ever is not the only form of regen from intellect, all mana users regen mana from replenishment and intellect gives a passive mp5 like spirit, but it is a lot lower in value per point of intellect.
The mana that a disc priest is getting from these intellect regen mechanics is very high, so through put stats are more viable and you would be fine to reforge into other stats than spirit. as disc I run around with ~ 2500 spirit but im in mostly firelands heroic gear, as holy which is currently my main spec after the buffs in the latest patch i have a little under 3200.
I wont post any maths here, because in the end it is always player dependant, but because disc priests recieve a bigger benefit from total mana pool regen mechanics (rapture/replenishment/shadow fiend (though this is all specs)) spirit has lesser value, than say for a holy priests or even other classes (paladins now have the same 30% extra regen as holy priests and shamans mana tide totem is powered by spirit).
Wait, what?
I’m currently looking for a guide to reforging 4.3 discipline priest, and well… Your guide won’t be any helpful for me.
At first – Heal. Wut? Heal, you are using it? I’m using greater heal, and my mana is fine, why should I use free_but_doing_nothing_spell on tank?
Second – smite healing IS goddamn useful. It heals for lot, cost nothing (so its better than Heal), and it’s smart-heal
Third – spirit on all gear? Well, i’m 90% wearing FL stuff (hc and normal), lot of it don’t have spirit, and I have too much mana. Why? Because I have too much spirit! I have 3000 spirit on gear, 3227 mana regen in combat, and it seems to be too much.
Consider to rewrite that guide.
@Raptoos – Thanks for your comment!
Obviously, more than any other role healing’s hard to write a super-specific guide for. There’s only one Assassination Rogue rotation, but healing can vary wildly depending on context. Whilst you may not find Heal useful, for example, other priests I’ve talked to find it valuable – and yet others agree with you that it’s basically pointless.
Having said that, this guide’s recommendations do need some updating to bring them in line with current gearing, and I’m going to adapt them accordingly. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!
@Hugh Hancock –
From a casual player pov, i find your class guides very usefull and have been visiting your site regularly for info. So far, didn’t have any kind of trouble by following your tips!
Keep the good work and thanks for sharing, really nice of you for doing it!
I’ve been playing my Disc priest for a pretty long time now. Starting out with the normal spec but changed over to Attornment, Attornment makes the play more interesting. There is more to do and that makes it a bit harder but also more fun. I dropped ALL my spirit at least as far as I could. This is because if my shield is used up (and it should allways be) it will return me my mana. It is better to have a bigger schield by int, mastery or crit (Crit also works for your smite). I do not use haste as I still consider my main abilities the shields and attornment and these are instant.
I’m a longtime healing priest, and I actually checked your guide for quick help on speccing a leveling warrior alt. Out of curiosity I checked your disc/holy guides. They are excellent for a beginner/casual player to get the basics. My one comment would be, for both Disc and Holy, the minor glyph of Fortitude is actually key for raiding priests. You will be expected to re-buff battle-rezzed people mid-fight, sometimes 3 times in a fight, and that glyph saves 2265 mana per cast. That’s huge for a minor glyph. Highly superior to the Fading glyph in a raid situation.
Very good point – I’m changing that just now. I agree, Fort is very useful when rebuffing mid-fight.
For the 4.3 update, stat weights as definitely don’t “balance crit with mastery”
Stat Weights: Int>Mastery>Spell Power>Sprit*>Haste>Crit
Spirit should be as high as you need to not go OoM on the hardest encounter you’re healing. With trinket effects included, somewhere between 2-3k for starting Heroic DS depending on other raid mana CDs.
As for haste, even though we don’t typically use renew, having the haste level useful for Holy is good if that’s your other spec.
Also, it is now advisable to stack Borrowed Time and Power Infusion before casting Divine Hymn as long as you have the raid buffs to hit the 62.5% haste (which is doable if you have the 12.5% haste unbuffed)
Interesting stuff – thanks!
Can you point me to a source or some maths for Mastery being by far the strongest secondary stat? All the guides I’m reading (Icy Veins, EJ) are sticking to “equal but different” for the secondaries.
So you are saying that Glyph of Inner Fire is not usefull in pvp? Its probably the best glyph there is except from the Prime ones.
Definitely not! This is a PvE guide only – I know naaathing about PvP
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