Discipline Priest Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.0.5)

Your primary playstyle in Mythic Plus will revolve around rotating between casting Power Word: Radiance followed by a cast sequence of DPS spells to utilize the Atonement provided. Single target applications of Atonement are generally not nearly as valuable due to how powerful Radiance is, but occasional use of Power Word: Shield will be utilized, especially with procs from Weal and Woe.

Your DPS windows following your Radiance casts will often involve a Voidwraith cast, allowing you to abuse both Shadow Covenant and Inescapable Torment. With Voidweaver in the mix, Mind Blast itself provides significant power even when your pet is unavailable.

Your goal in dungeons is to abuse Void Summoner to push very low cooldown Voidwraith. With how many modifiers are tied to having your pet active ( Shadow Covenant and its associated talents), the worst thing you can do with this iteration of Discipline Priest is sitting on your pet and not casting it.

• Power Word: Radiance is a 2-second cast by default, multi-target Atonement applicator with a large heal tied to it. Power Word: Radiance applies Atonement to five people but for a reduced duration. Not only is this our best way to apply Atonement to a whole group, but it is also a significant heal on its own. As a result, the majority of your Atonement application in a key will be from Radiance.
• Power Word: Shield is an instant cast, single target Atonement applicator with a shield tied to it. While this is a very potent option for applying Atonement to a single target, it does have a cooldown. This should be your first choice if you need to apply Atonement to a single target.
• Flash Heal is a 1.5-second cast, single target Atonement applicator with a decent-sized single target heal tied to it. While this is an option for single target Atonement applicator when a single target is injured and needs Atonement, the majority of your uses will come from Surge of Light procs.
• Renew is an instant cast, single target Atonement applicator with a small heal-over-time effect tied to it. The largest benefit to Renew is that it can be cast while moving. In most cases, Renew will see very little usage in Mythic+ and should not be a button you are pressing often.

With Voidwraith both activating Shadow Covenant and being strong itself via Inescapable Torment and Essence Devourer, your pet enables significant throughput while active. Combining this with Mind Blast activating Entropic Rift from your Voidweaver creates moments of extremely high burst healing. These 2 abilities will be the primary drivers behind your healing capabilities in dungeons.

The following is a general sequence you can utilize when both cooldowns are available. Keep in mind that there are many variations available based on the exact scenario you find yourself in, but the following is a good starting point:

1. Cast Voidwraith
2. Cast Mind Blast
3. Cast Power Word: Radiance
4. Cast Penance
5. Cast Void Blast
6. Cast Shadow Word: Death
7. Continue to cast Void Blast and Penance when available until your Atonement falls off.

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:

1. The first is to use Rapture to apply a shield on each group member in quick succession, preempting a large burst of damage. Utilizing 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.
2. 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.

While the damage of this spell is not massively ahead of your normal rotation involving Voidwraith, it does provide the benefit of granting a large self-shield as well as granting you pushback/movement immunity, allowing you to potentially avoid/cancel encounter mechanics. Utilizing this spell when you are not in a pet window as a supplementary cooldown or to utilize the defensive nature of the spell leaves it in a solid place as a flexible cooldown.

It is important to know how the targeting of this spell works. By casting Ultimate Penitence with an enemy targeted, the spell will prioritize throwing bolts at enemies. When utilizing this version of the spell, ensure you have Atonement active on the group to get any healing out of this spell. When casting this spell with an ally targeted, the spell will prioritize throwing bolts at allies. While you will still see an increase in healing from Ultimate Penitence if Atonement is active on the party due to our Mastery, it is possible to use this defensively if you find yourself without any Power Word: Radiance charges and are desperate for healing.

Something to keep in mind when utilizing this spell is that the bolts from Ultimate Penitence will generate Weal and Woe stacks, so ensure you utilize said stacks before using your next Penance cast.

In general, both offensive and defensive Ultimate Penitence are good options to utilize in dungeons.

Power Word: Barrier is a powerful cooldown, assuming your group can stand under it for the duration. A significant, group-wide damage reduction is nothing to ignore. Look for opportunities where your group can stack under the Barrier while high damage is occurring.

Pain Suppression is a very large Damage Reduction on a single target. Utilizing this either on the tank or on a player with a large damage over time effect on them can have a significant impact. When running the talent Protector of the Frail, you will have a lot of additional casts available of Pain Suppression, so make sure you use it often instead of just sitting on maximum charges.

Penance is not only one of our most iconic spells but also one of our most powerful and versatile. While the majority of our penance casts will be utilized for damage against enemies, casting them on allies is completely viable and immensely powerful, depending on the situation.

Penance is modified by a variety of spells/talents, including Castigation, Harsh Discipline, Power of the Dark Side, Shadow Covenant, Blaze of Light, and more. When all of these effects are stacked on top of each other, the result is a massive cast for either Atonement healing or a gigantic single target heal. Playing around things like Harsh Discipline and Shadow Covenant to buff our Penance casts is a major facet of Discipline Priest gameplay.

With how reliant Discipline is on our Voidwraith windows as described above, it is critical to understand the massive value of Smite due to Void Summoner. Filling available GCDs with Smite casts can shorten your pet cooldowns significantly. Ensure that you are casting Smite as often as possible whenever you don't absolutely need to be casting something else.

Currently, Shadow Word: Pain is completely outclassed by its replacement Purge the Wicked. If you are looking for Shadow Word: Pain in your spellbook or on your action bars when utilizing one of our recommended talent builds, you should be looking for Purge the Wicked instead.

Our DoT is a significant part of our kit for a few reasons. The damage Purge the Wicked deals does result in Atonement healing for every target the DoT is on. Having five targets with Purge the Wicked on them will result in significantly more Atonement healing than a single DoT. As a result, at the beginning of a pull, getting as many Purge the Wickeds active (either by casting them ourselves or spreading them to other targets via Penance) is very important.

The other benefit to Purge the Wicked within Discipline's kit is that it procs the passive Power of the Dark Side, which allows us to provide a significant amplifier to our next Penance cast. Please note that you only need 1 active Purge the Wicked to maximize your potential Power of the Dark Side procs. Having more than 1 dot up does not increase your chances of proccing Power of the Dark Side.