Discipline Priest Healing Easy Mode — The War Within (11.0.5)

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.

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.

Currently, you will want to prioritize secondary stats as follows for all content:

1. Haste
2. Mastery
3. Critical Strike
4. 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.

• 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.

Discipline Priests rely on applying Atonement and then dealing damage to heal through Atonement.

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:

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.

• 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.