Utolsó módosítás programmer, ekkor: 2014.06.26.
In this article, we list your Discipline Priest (WoW 4.3) core abilities and how they should
be used together (rotation). We also explain when to use your various
cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that playing
a Discipline Priest will face you with.
The other articles of our Discipline Priest guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the left.
1. Basic Rotation↑top
Healing is in great part based on your ability to react to the damage that
the raid takes, and as such there is no set rotation. Rather, you must understand
what spells are best suited to the different situations that can occur during a raid
encounter.
1.1. Tank or Single Target Healing
When healing the tank or a single target, you should use the two spells
on cooldown, as they are excellent in terms of mana efficiency:
In addition to using these two spells on cooldown, you have
several other options, depending on the damage:
- Low and moderate damage
- High sustained damage
- Emergency situations
1.2. Raid Healing
Raid healing as a Discipline Priest relies on 3 spells:
Prayer of Mending, 
Prayer of Healing, and
Power Word: Shield.
- Use Prayer of Mending on cooldown.
- Low and moderate damage
- High damage
- High sustained damage
2. Cooldown Usage↑top
3. Inner Fire and Inner Will↑top
As a Priest, you have access to two (mutually exclusive) self-buffs:
Inner Fire and 
Inner Will.
For the majority of the time, you will want to use Inner Fire and take
advantage of its spell power benefit. However, if you need to use a lot of
instant-cast spells (multiple Power Word: Shields, Prayer of Mending,
Dispel Magic), you can switch to Inner Will.
4. Optional Read: Mastering Your Discipline Priest↑top
While the guidelines we have given so far will enable you to perform very
decently as a Discipline Priest, there are many subtleties which you need to
be aware of, if you want to play your character to its full potential.
4.1. Smiting and Atonement Healing
Discipline Priests have a unique type of ability. By spending a number of 5
talent points in a few non-essential talents in the Discipline tree, they can
heal players, automatically, by dealing damage to enemies through 
Smite and
Holy Fire. This healing is a smart heal (it heals the lowest health
target in range) and it is very mana efficient. In addition to these benefits,
it allows the Priest to also contribute to the raid's DPS.
With the appropriate talents (
Evangelism, 
Archangel and
Atonement), each time you deal damage with Smite and
Holy Fire, the lowest health player within 15 yards of the target (the
target you have dealt damage to) is healed for the amount of damage that you
did.
Glyph of Divine Accuracy ensures that these spells will never miss,
and Glyph of Smite increases the damage of Smite (and with this, the
healing from Atonement) by 20% on targets affected by Holy Fire. Holy
Fire has a 10 second cooldown and its (very weak) DoT effect has a 7 second
duration.
Atonement healing is very simple: use Holy Fire on cooldown and spam
Smite on the target. You will quickly get a feel of the amount of
healing you can expect, and whether or not it is sufficient to heal the
tank or the raid.
Note that, while spamming Smite, your mana will go down (very
slowly).
If the period of low damage, during which you were Smiting, is followed by
a period of high damage, which requires a lot of healing, you should
use Archangel to gain a 15% healing increase (keep in mind that
Archangel will consume the stacks of Evangelism that you had been
building and/or maintaining).
Atonement healing is especially useful during times when the boss or another
mob takes increased damage. This will cause you to generate very high heals
on the nearby players, while also contributing to the raid's DPS.
4.2. Important Mechanics
In order to use your spells appropriately for the situations you
encounter, you must first understand several aspects of the Discipline
specialisation.
4.2.1. Mastery and Absorption Effects
The Discipline Mastery is Shield Discipline. Essentially, your Mastery
Rating increases the amount of damage absorbed by your absorption effects.
Discipline Priests have two absorption effects: Power Word: Shield and
Divine Aegis.
Power Word: Shield is quite simple. You place
a shield on a target, which absorbs a certain amount of damage (affected not
only by your Mastery, but also by your spell power). Applying a shield to a
target causes the 
Weakened Soul debuff, which prevents them from being
shielded again (by you or any other priest) for 15 seconds.
The Divine Aegis talent provides you with a passive absorption
mechanic. Each time
you critically heal with a spell, a shield is placed on the target and will
absorb damage equal to 30% of the amount healed. This does not mean that 70%
of the heal is an actual heal, and that 30% is an absorb; the absorb is added
to the heal amount. In addition to Divine Aegis from critical heals, all heals
from Prayer of Healing also add Divine Aegis.
Divine Aegis has a 15 second duration, and each new application of the buff
(such as from a subsequent critical heal or Prayer of Healing) will stack on
top of the previous Divine Aegis (merging the remaining amount of absorption
with the amount of absorption created by the new shield) and refresh its
duration. Note that the amount absorbed by Divine Aegis is limited
to 40% of the casting Priest's maximum health. In practice, this means you
cannot stack Divine Aegis higher than roughly 50,000 damage absorption.
Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis can co-exist on the same target at the
same time, without any kind of interaction between them. Damage caused to the
target will first consume the Divine Aegis (partially or entirely, depending
on the damage) and then consume the Power Word: Shield.
Absorption is a key element of Discipline healing. Shielding people is a
means of preventive healing, which reduces the spikes in damage taken and
ensures that damage is more predictable.
4.2.2. Borrowed Time
After each cast of Power Word: Shield you gain the 
Borrowed Time
buff. This reduces the cast time of your next spell by 14%, provided that you
cast a spell within 6 seconds (before the buff expires). Casting a spell
consumes the buff. Note that spells with an instant cast time, as well as
channeled spells, do not benefit from nor consume the
buff.
Normally, Discipline Priests have long cast time heals, namely 
Heal,
Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing. Therefore, these spells are the
best candidates for consuming the Borrowed Time buff with. What this means is
that, essentially, you will want to cast a Power Word: Shield, and gain the
Borrowed Time buff, before any of these three heals.
When you know that you will have to cast an important heal (a Greater Heal
on the tank, who will be taking high damage at that time, for example), it is
good to think ahead and have your Borrowed Time buff active.
Penance does not consume the Borrowed Time buff, even though its cast
time does benefit from the buff. An important note should be made here. For
maximum efficiency, you should try to cast a Penance after your Power Word:
Shield and before the heal which will consume Borrowed Time.
4.2.3. Mana Management
Discipline Priests have three means of regenerating mana during combat:
Hymn of Hope is a channeled spell that restores mana in a "smart" way to
several low-mana raid members and increases their maximum mana by 15% for 8
seconds. It has a 6 minute cooldown.
Hymn of Hope will, most likely, be only used once or possibly
twice during the encounter. The best time to use this ability is hard to
determine ahead of time, as it depends on a great number of factors. Follow
these guidelines:
- Try to use Hymn of Hope as many times during an encounter as possible.
- Only use Hymn of Hope when you are not at maximum mana.
- Do not use Hymn of Hope if you will need to interrupt the cast before it
finishes (8 second cast), because of having to move or heal.
- Do not use Hymn of Hope when there is a lot of raid damage. Your
inability to heal while channeling Hymn of Hope will force other healers to
compensate by using mana inefficient spells.
- Remember that Hymn of Hope benefits not only you, but also other low-mana
players (generally, these will be healers). This means that you should use it
when more healers can get the benefit from it, i.e. when their mana is low
and they can use class-specific mana regeneration cooldowns, such as
Divine Plea for Holy Paladins. This is because the mana-pool increasing
effect of Hymn of Hope increases the potency of mana regeneration cooldowns
which are based on maximum mana. In order to ensure that mana goes to healers
and not to DPS players, you can do some of the following:
- Have DPS players (only those who generally run low on mana) use their own
mana cooldowns first, ensuring that the healers are the lowest on mana.
- Have the healers stack up together in an area far away from the DPS
players, since Hymn of Hope seems to prefer closer players, despite its 40 yard range.
Shadowfiend will summon a pet that attacks the target, restoring some
of your maximum mana to you each time it makes an attack. Shadowfiend has a
slightly lower cooldown than Hymn of Hope (5 minutes, or 4 minutes with 2/2
Veiled Shadows). It should be used as many times during an encounter as
possible. Ideally, it should be used while Hymn of Hope or procs from
Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent or Lightweave Embroidery are active, as
these temporarily increase your maximum mana, and Shadowfiend grants you a
percentage of your maximum mana with each attack it makes.
Lastly, it is ideal to have your Shadowfiend active just
before 
Heroism/
Bloodlust/
Time Warp is used. This is because
pets benefit from the increased attack speed, if they are active when the cast
is made, but not if they are released after it has been cast. The extra attack
speed will translate into more attacks and thus more mana returned to you.
Rapture is a much more dynamic and delicate mana regeneration method
to master. Your goal is to have one of your Power Word: Shields break
roughly every 13 seconds, for as much of the fight as possible.
This is not as easy as it seems, in practice. Often, the only person taking
the sustained damage required to break a shield is the tank, and the
Weakened Soul debuff lasts 15 seconds, meaning you can only shield the
target once every 15 seconds. It could then take a few more seconds (depending
on boss attack speed, dodges or parries) for the shield to break, pushing
the interval between Rapture procs to close to 20 seconds.
When there is sustained raid damage, or when there are two tanks taking
damage at the same time, maintaining a high Rapture uptime is easier.
This is something you will have to practice in order to master. We
recommend using the Ingela's Rapture add-on to track the time remaining
until the Rapture internal cooldown wears off.
4.2.4. Inner Fire and Inner Will
As a Priest, you have access to two (mutually exclusive) self-buffs:
- Inner Fire: increases your spell power by 532, and also increases
your armor by 60%.
- Inner Will: reduces the mana cost of instant cast spells by 15%, and
also increases your movement speed by 10%.
You will want to have one of these two self-buffs active at all times (they
cost no mana to apply and have an unlimited duration).
For the majority of the time, you will want to use Inner Fire and take
advantage of the spell power benefit. However, if you need to use a lot of
instant-cast spells (multiple Power Word: Shields, Prayer of Mending,
Dispel Magic), you can switch to Inner Will.
Keep in mind that Power Word: Shields used in Inner Will will absorb
slightly less damage.
Finally, the movement speed increase from Inner Will can prove useful in
some situations.
4.3. Important Abilities
As a Discipline Priest, you have a great number of healing spells in your
arsenal. It is important to understand how each of them work. In addition
to the healing spells, you also have a number of valuable cooldowns that you
will need to make use of.
While we may, summarily, mention some of the interactions between various
abilities, we will also detail all of these interactions in a subsequent
section.
4.3.1. Healing spells
- Penance: this is the spell you gain for choosing the Discipline
specialisation. It is a very mana efficient spell. It is a channel spell. This
spell will heal the target three times, over a period of 2 seconds. The first
heal happens as soon as the cast begins (so, essentially, it is an instant
cast heal), the second happens one second in, and the third happens on the 2
second mark. These numbers are a bit different in reality, as this spell is
affected by your spell haste. A final note of importance, regarding Penance,
is that your character will automatically turn to face the target you are
trying to heal.
- Power Word: Shield: this is the most iconic Discipline spell. It
places a shield on the target, which absorbs a (rather large) amount of damage.
The amount of damage absorbed is affected by your spell power and by
your Mastery. The spell is instant cast and has no cooldown, but it
does apply the Weakened Soul debuff on the target (preventing them from
receiving another Power Word: Shield for 15 seconds). This means that you can
shield multiple people (such as in preparation for a damage spike) but not
repeatedly shield the same person in quick succession. The duration of the
Weakened Soul debuff is reduced by some direct heals on that target, if you
have talented Strength of Soul. Thanks to Rapture, each time one
of your shields is fully consumed, you regain 7% of your maximum mana
(although not more often than once every 12 seconds). Finally, for the 6
seconds following a Power Word: Shield cast, your next spell cast benefits
from 14% increased spell haste.
- Heal: this is your most mana efficient spell. It heals for a very
low amount, has a high cast time and a low mana cost. At a reasonable gear
level, you can spam this ability and not run out of mana. When used on a
player with the Weakened Soul debuff, if you have Strength of Soul
talented, it will reduce the duration of Weakened Soul by 4 seconds.
- Greater Heal: this spell is your "big" healing spell. It heals for a
very large amount, but also costs a lot of mana to use. It has a high cast
time. When used on a player with the Weakened Soul debuff, if you have
Strength of Soul talented, it will reduce the duration of Weakened Soul
by 4 seconds. If
Train of Thought is talented, then the cooldown of your
Inner Focus is reduced by 5 seconds each time you cast Greater Heal.
Flash Heal: this is an emergency healing spell. It heals for a
reasonable amount, but is very mana inefficient. It does, however, have a very
short cast time. When used on a player with the Weakened Soul debuff, if
you have Strength of Soul talented, it will reduce the duration of
Weakened Soul by 4 seconds.
Binding Heal: this spell is very similar to Flash Heal in terms
of casting time and mana cost. It heals its target for slightly less than
Flash Heal, but at the same time, it heals you for the same amount.- Prayer of Healing: this is your main AoE heal. It heals the entire
group of the targeted raid member (so a maximum of 5 players), provided that
they are within 30 yards of the targeted raid member. It is extremely mana
efficient, provided that at least 3 players will benefit from the heal (i.e.,
it will not overheal them). This spell also places a protective barrier,
Divine Aegis (very similar to Power Word: Shield) for 30% of the amount
healed on all the targets that it heals. Furthermore, with the appropriate
glyph, this spell also heals the affected players for an additional 20% over
6 seconds.
- Prayer of Mending: this is rather unique type of spell. It is a
single target heal, which acts as a buff that you place on a target. The buff
lasts for 30 seconds and has 5 charges. When that target takes damage, the
buff heals them and jumps from them to another raid member. It appears to
prefer jumping to lower health members, although this behaviour is not
consistent, nor does there seem to be a noticeable pattern when all the
players are at full health. When jumping, the buff loses a charge and resets
its duration to 30 seconds. When all the charges have run out, the buff
disappears. The cooldown of the spell is only 10 seconds, meaning that you can
keep it active at all times. Note that you cannot have the buff active on
multiple targets at once.
Divine Hymn: this is a channeled spell, which heals the 5 lowest
health targets in your party or raid (within 40 yards), every 2 seconds, for
8 seconds. Targets healed by this spell also gain 10% increased healing for
8 seconds. Despite the tooltip listing a hard limitation of the maximum number
of potential heals (12), this is not true in reality. In fact, the more spell
haste you have, the more heals you gain from this spell. It has an 8 minute
cooldown and it is extremely mana efficient.
Desperate Prayer: this ability is only available if you have taken
the Desperate Prayer talent. It is an instant cast, off the global
cooldown, mana free self-heal, which heals for 30% of your maximum
health.
Renew: this is an instant cast, healing over time spell. It is not
an efficient spell for Discipline Priests. You should only ever use this
spell when there are literally no other alternatives.
4.3.2. Cooldowns
Power Infusion: this spell can be cast on either yourself or another
mana using raid member. It reduces the mana cost of all spells by 20% and
increases casting speed by 20% for its 15 second duration.- Inner Focus: this ability, which is off the global cooldown,
makes your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing cost no mana and
have a 25% increased critical strike chance. Using this spell places a buff on
you, which has an unlimited duration, and lasts until one of the two
aforementioned spells is cast.
Pain Suppression: a single target damage reduction cooldown. Reduces
all damage taken by the target by 40% for 8 seconds.
Power Word: Barrier: places a protective bubble at a target location,
reducing the damage taken by all targets within it by 25%.- Hymn of Hope: this is a channeled spell that, over the course of 8
seconds, restores 2% of maximum mana to the 3 lowest mana raid members. In
addition to this, it also increases their maximum mana by 15% for 8 seconds.
Spell haste will increase the number of mana restores that this spell provides,
despite the tooltip listing a hard limitation of 12 restores.
- Shadowfiend: summons a pet that attacks your target. Each one of its
attacks grants you 3% of your maximum mana. After 15 seconds, the Shadowfiend
disappears.
4.4. Tank and Single Target Healing
When healing the tank (we associate single target healing to tank healing),
you have two spells which are excellent in terms of mana efficiency:
- Penance: you should use this on cooldown, unless the tank is taking
very heavy damage and requires the bigger healing from Greater Heal.
Try to always cast this spell while Borrowed Time is active.
- Power Word: Shield: casting Power Word: Shield on the tank is excellent.
Power Word: Shield is rather expensive, but the amount of absorption is also
quite large. Additionally, it provides you with Rapture, regenerating some of
your mana and it grants you Borrowed Time, speeding up your next cast of
(most likely) Heal or Greater Heal. Moreover, thanks to the
Renewed Hope talent, your spells on the tank, who is now affected by
Weakened Soul, have an increased chance to critically hit.
In addition to using these two spells on the tank on cooldown, you have
several other options:
- Heal: for times when the tank is taking a low amount of damage.
Casting Heal will ensure that your mana level does not decrease at all.
- Greater Heal: for times of heavy tank damage. Greater Heal heals for
a very large amount, and, with the Strength of Soul talent, also lowers
the duration of Weakened Soul on the tank, allowing you to shield more often
and benefit from Borrowed Time more often.
- Flash Heal: this is an emergency heal which should not be used unless
the tank has Weakened Soul and will die before you finish casting
Greater Heal. If Penance is available, and you believe that the first
heal from Penance will be sufficient to allow the tank to survive the damage
they take (or if the damage they are likely to receive will occur after the
second heal from Penance), then you should use Penance on the tank instead, as
it is more mana efficient.
- Binding Heal: this should be used in the same scenario as Flash Heal,
with the added mention that you yourself should also be in great need of
healing. If you are not in need of healing, Flash Heal is more efficient.
Prayer of Mending is an extremely efficient spell, and one of its
great advantages is that it performs its effect (jumping from player to
player, healing them as they take damage) independently of any action from your
part. The efficiency of this spell depends greatly on the type of damage
in the encounter. If there is no damage on anyone except for the tank, then
it is likely that the spell will jump once, and then its 30 second duration
will simply run out.
As a single target heal, (the tank, in this case), Prayer of Mending's
worth should be judged based on whether or not it is likely to jump to other
targets and whether or not the tank may die because of the time you spent not
casting a big heal.
Therefore, if the tank is taking low or moderate damage, and Prayer of
Mending is likely to jump multiple times, you should cast it on the tank. If
the tank is taking brutal damage, or if no one else is likely to take damage
for some time, then Prayer of Mending is not worth casting on the tank.
Finally, you can cast Renew, as a tank or single target healing spell.
Keep in mind that this is, by far, your least efficient healing spell (it is
instant cast, but because it heals over time, its effect will not be
immediately felt. Renew should only be cast if all three following conditions
are met:
- You are moving (so you cannot cast any spells with a cast time).
- The target has Weakened Soul.
- Prayer of Mending is on cooldown.
4.5. Raid Healing
When having to heal multiple raid members at once, your most efficient
choice is Prayer of Healing. This spell is extremely mana efficient,
especially if all 5 group members are damaged and require healing.
Prayer of Healing is even more beneficial if the raid damage is followed
by even more raid damage within 15 seconds of your heals (the duration of
Divine Aegis), as this means that the absorbs generated by Prayer of
Healing will be put to good use.
In preparation for a very big AoE damaging attack, you can stack
Divine Aegis on several groups (by casting repeated Prayers of Healing
on them, refreshing/stacking the Divine Aegis buff).
When using Prayer of Healing, keep in mind that the target of your spell
is the one which group members must be within 30 yards of, so try to heal
the player with the most central location (respective to their group).
Power Word: Shield can and should be used when dealing with raid
damage (provided that the raid damage is not so intensive that if you stop
chain-casting Prayer of Healing, players will die). This will provide you with
mana from Rapture, as well as with many procs of Borrowed Time, greatly
speeding up your Prayers of Healing.
Power Word: Shield is a quite costly spell, however, so trying to shield
everyone in preparation for an AoE damage spike is not extremely feasible
(though it can be done, if needed, several times per fight, with correct mana
management).
Prayer of Mending is a spell which you should try to have up all the
time during AoE damage. If the damage ticks every second, or (as is more
likely the case) every 2 seconds, you will have to cast it on cooldown to
maximise its uptime.
4.6. More on Cooldown Usage
Inner Focus should be used on cooldown, so that it is used as many
times as possible during an encounter. It is mostly used for the mana-free
aspect, rather than the increased critical strike chance that it provides.
Pain Suppression should generally be used on a tank, at a time when
they are going to receive a lot of damage. Be sure to communicate with the
tank, so that they do not also use a defensive cooldown at the same time. It
can also be used on random raid members who are targeted by specific boss
abilities.
Power Word: Barrier is an excellent ability for AoE damage reduction. Its
greatest benefits are when the entire raid is stacked up in the same place,
and it should be used as part of a cooldown rotation with other healers. Do
not hesitate, however, to use it on a single target (such as the tank) when
Pain Suppression is not available (provided, of course, that you are not
assigned to save Power Word: Barrier for a specific moment).
Power Infusion can be used to increase your healing throughput and
reduce the mana cost of your spells. It is especially useful during times of
heavy AoE damage, where you wish to cast many Prayer of Healing spells in
quick succession.
Power Infusion can be used, equally well, on a caster DPS player (Arcane
Mage, Balance Druid) to boost their DPS greatly.
