Discipline Priest Battleground Blitz Guide — The War Within (11.0.5)

In Battleground Blitz, the primary role of Discipline Priest is to support your team with strong healing and damage output. Their first objective is to keep their team alive, more through damage prevention than actual healing. Their second objective is to support their team with damage, crowd control, and offensive purges to keep the enemy team under pressure. Atonement allows Discipline Priests to accomplish both objectives simultaneously as the damage they deal heals their entire team.

Here is the talent build you will be using to maximize your damage output:

• Ultimate Radiance
• Inner Light and Shadow
• Phase Shift

These are the 3 PvP talents you should be using in battleground blitz. Ultimate Radiance makes an already strong spell, Power Word: Radiance, instant. This is beneficial for you, as there are many interrupts you will have to deal with in BG Blitz. Inner Light and Shadow makes healing spells cost 10% less mana and increases healing through Atonement. Phase Shift will help you move around the map easier. Discipline Priests have very little mobility when they are slowed and this helps with that issue.

For an in-depth guide to Discipline Priest talents, read here:

In Battleground Blitz, without the Arena Dampening effect, healers, when left alone, are able to sustain against many players with relative ease. The way to counter the high throughput of healers in Battleground Blitz is with the effective use of crowd control.

Discipline Priest has many tools in its kit to aid with this:

• Psychic Scream
• Void Tendrils
• Mind Control
• Leap of Faith - Not a defensive, but can be used to help teammates move around the map a bit easier. This pairs well with the Save the Day.

You have several defensive abilities you can use to help keep you and your team alive.

• Power Word: Barrier is your most powerful defensive cooldown when playing with the PvP talent Dome of Light. You want to use it when your team is taking heavy damage. It is usually best to use it as an answer to powerful offensive cooldowns used by the enemy. It can also be used when a Rogue uses Smoke Bomb on one of your teammates. That way, your teammate should stay alive long enough for the Smoke Bomb to end, and you will then be able to heal.
• Pain Suppression is very powerful defensive. With the talent Protector of the Frail it doesn't have such a long cooldown anymore. It will primarily be used while you are stunned and anticipate either follow-up crowd control on you, high burst damage on someone in your team, or both. You should still use it outside of a stun if someone in your team is going to die.
• Rapture is a very powerful cooldown that should be used when the enemy team has high damage, but nothing that warrants the use of your Power Word: Barrier or Pain Suppression. You want to use it before your team is critically low on health as it empowers your Power Word: Shield, but not your actual heals. When this cooldown is active, you will keep reapplying Shields on your team to prevent their health from dropping further, and while your enhanced Shields protect them, you will use either Power Word: Life or Power Word: Radiance to heal them up. You want to avoid using any Holy spell that can be interrupted, such as Penance, during Rapture, to make sure that you are not locked out of your Power Word: Shield.
• Void Shift is a powerful cooldown that allows you to instantly save an ally, or yourself, from very low health by exchanging your health percentage with an ally. This can be used as an answer to overwhelming damage you cannot mitigate or heal through.
• Desperate Prayer increases your health by 25% for 10 seconds and instantly heals you for that amount. This is a good spell to use when you are the target of the enemy team and struggle to keep yourself alive.
• Fade is a very underestimated cooldown as Discipline Priest. Thanks to the talent Translucent Image, Fade reduces all damage taken for a short amount of time. Fade has a very low cooldown, so make sure to use it whenever you take significant damage, and you won't need it as a freedom effect.
• Shadowfiend is a powerful offensive cooldown and a good defensive one. You can use it for burst damage when your team goes for a kill. You can also use it before a CC chain on you to have it heal your allies through Atonement while you are in CC. Note that your Shadowfiend grants you Mana every time it attacks. As such, you do not want to use it when you are at 100% Mana, but you want to use it as early in the game as possible to get the cooldown back early to generate even more Mana and stay in the fight longer.
• Power Infusion grants your target 25% Haste for 20s. You can use it both offensively and defensively. If you play with a teammate that greatly benefits from it, such as an Assassination Rogue, a Retribution Paladin, or an Affliction Warlock, you want to use it on them when they use their offensive cooldowns. Otherwise, you can use it on yourself when you are about to do your burst damage. Last it can be used on yourself when you struggle to keep your team alive and need extra Haste to heal faster. Remember that thanks to the talent Twins of the Sun Priestess, you also get Power Infusion for yourself when using it on an ally. Note that with the talent Twins of the Sun Priestess, using it on an ally also grants you the effect, so you won't have to choose.

1. Intellect;
2. Versatility;
3. Mastery;
4. Haste;
5. Critical Strike;

The stat priority for Discipline Priest is the same in Battleground Blitz and Arena. If you want an in-depth explanation and suggestions on gear, read our gearing section here:

If you get either Warsong Gulch or Twin Peaks as a map, you will likely be playing offense. This means that when an enemy player picks up your flag your goal is to kill that flag carrier. Your main focus will be to keep your offensive team alive by any means necessary. Rotate Pain Suppression, Void Shift, and Rapture to stay alive as long as possible. Psychic Scream is a valuable crowd control spell because it can be used on multiple players. Use this when several enemies are stacked.

On resource race maps, your primary goal is to keep your team alive at whichever base is decided to be fought over. There is not much room for you to make plays or defend bases by yourself. The best healers will be able to heal through the team fight and ensure the team fight is won by their team. Trade Rapture/ Pain Suppression when your team gets low and focus on maximizing Atonement healing.

Similar to resource race maps, your goal is to keep your team alive in the big team fights. The goal on this map, unlike normal Rated Battlegrounds, is to team fight at one node and try to cap both bases. This results in long 7v7 team fights, and the winner will more than likely pull ahead quickly. Trade Rapture/ Pain Suppression when your team gets low, use Void Shift on a teammate that drops low, and dispel crowd control with Purify. Use Psychic Scream when multiple enemies are stacked.

Note: Capping the flag will make the inactive bases active, and both teams will have to recap the nodes. Use this tactic if your team is falling behind on points or lost the team fight.

Ranged DPS specializations will always be the best orb carriers on Temple of Kotmogu, so do not grab the flag unless it is a dire situation and you have to. The most important part about this map is to win the initial team fight and quickly gain momentum by grabbing 3 orbs and standing in the middle of the map. When the enemy team starts to resurrect, leave middle and kite around the center. Here are some tips for this map:

• Players take more damage the longer they hold the orb. This means that, eventually, the Orb carriers will die. Ideally, your team will only hold 2-3 orbs at a time so that you do not easily wipe when you have high stacks.
• Make sure you die on the correct side of the map! You and your team will resurrect depending on where you died. If you die on purple side, you will resurrect on blue side and vise versa. Ensuring you and your team resurrect together is crucial, this will allow you to regroup faster and quickly wipe the enemy team that will be weak.
• There are leaves at every orb; if you are low on Mana, make sure you grab one!