Gear
Tier Sets
With the second Dragonflight raid Aberrus, the Shadow Crucible comes a new tier set for Discipline Priests. This tier set grants some new bonuses when wearing 2 and 4 pieces of the armor set.
- 2-Piece - Shadow Word: Pain / Purge the Wicked damage increased by 25%. Power Word: Radiance healing increased by 15%.
- 4-Piece - Atonements applied by Power Word: Radiance last 3 sec longer. Your spells have a chance to cause your next Power Word: Radiance to be instant and cost 50% less mana. Can accumulate up to 2 charges.
Let’s first talk a bit about the 2-piece bonus for this tier set. This bonus is very simple as it gives a flat 25% increase to your Shadow Word: Pain or Purge the Wicked as well as a 15% increase to Power Word: Radiance healing. Both of these bonuses are good for all types of content, however a bit boring as it doesn’t interact in any way with how you play. When it comes to talent interactions the DoT buff makes Expiation an even better option.
Now on to the 4-piece. This bonus baseline increases Atonement duration when casting Power Word: Radiance from 9 seconds to 12 seconds. Already this bump in duration is a large power increase in specifically raiding scenarios, as it allows you 3 more seconds of Atonement healing on 10 of your Atonement targets. On top of this it has a secondary effect which allows you to stack up procs that have infinite duration that cause your next Power Word: Radiance cast to be instant and cost 50% less mana and it can stack up to two times. This second part is an incredible bonus as it gives you much better mana sustain in all types of content as well as letting you stay on the move when ramping in raid or when putting out Atonement in dungeons. Power Word: Radiance also has a longer cast time and since this effect makes the spell instant it effectively cuts down about 0.5 seconds on each cast of Power Word: Radiance, which will in turn give you one more global of damage during your raid ramps since you cast two.
Overall these bonuses give a nice bump to some of our main spells as well as allow Discipline Priest to get some much needed mana sustain and mobility during ramping windows.
Trinkets
With a new patch comes new trinkets to hunt down. The first two trinkets we'll talk about are your BiS for pure healing throughput. However, as they aren't easy to get your hands on, we'll also mention some alternative trinkets that are still great options to pick up.
Rashok’s Molten Heart - This trinket comes from the boss Rashok from Aberuss, the Shadowed Crucible. The effect of this trinket is similar to the effects from Conjured Chillglobe and Broodkeeper’s Promise from the previous tier but combined together and being much stronger. This makes it a top pick for Discipline Priest or any other healer, as the sheer value it provides is absurd. Getting raw healing as well as some extra mana sustain is very good as a Discipline Priest.
Screaming Black Dragonscale - This very rare trinket comes from the first boss in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible, Kazzara, the Hellforged. The trinket itself is similar to the Echo of Neltharion trinket, however this trinket grants intellect baseline which is great but the effect itself is weaker. This makes the amount of power coming from this trinket will be more consistent than the previous one. The active on this trinket can really come in handy on certain fights as the priest class lacks mobility. An excellent mechanic to use this trinket on would be the Overpowering Stomp on Magmorax. You could use the trinket right after being knocked up and be right down on the floor again while dealing some damage.
Neltharion’s Call to Suffering - This very rare trinket comes from the second to last boss in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible, Echo of Neltharion. The effect is incredibly powerful, as the sheer amount of primary stats the trinket gives you when it procs is very high. The effect alone makes this a good choice for Discipline, however you can get bad RNG and have it never proc on your ramp windows. The versatility is also not the greatest stat, but you want this trinket mostly for the effect itself. The damage you take during the effect isn’t insanely high, but combined with other mechanics happening while you have this bleed can leave you on the floor if you aren’t paying attention. Make sure you are tracking the effect to see both that you have the stats and that the bleed is ticking you down.
Ominous Chromatic Essence - This trinket comes from the boss The Forgotten Experiments from Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible. It is a simple stat stick which is something that Discipline Priest likes as you generally want to avoid random procs since it won’t always proc when you want on your ramps.
Beacon to the Beyond - This trinket comes from the last boss in Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible. Scalecommander Sarkareth. Getting mastery as a base stat is not ideal, but the on use effect of this trinket can deal some serious damage. Since the damage scales higher based on how many targets are hit this makes it a great pick for Mythic+ as you often face a target count of 5 or higher. With current tuning there is not a single trinket that can keep up with its current damage output.
Trinkets from the previous season like Voidmender’s Shadowgem, Whispering Incarnate Icon and Furious Ragefeather are still great options to use for Discipline Priest, but later on in the season they will most likely be outscaled by the new trinkets from this patch.
Notable Items
Voice of the Silent Star, dropping from Scalecommander Sarkareth, is a very powerful cloak which has a unique effect. It will grant you nearby allies’ lowest secondary stats as well as a large amount of your highest secondary stat which most of the time will be haste on a proc. This effect is incredibly powerful and will give you random bursts of haste which can speed up your rotation at certain times. The tradeoff of getting this powerful effect is that this cloak has no stamina, causing you to take a large hit in survivability somewhere in the range of 20k HP. This is something you’ll want to pay attention to if you get the cloak as you will be subject to be bursted down quicker than before.
Embellishments
With the revamped profession system in Dragonflight you’ll be able to put 2 Embellishments on your armor. These are powerful bonuses that help you out in some way shape or form, whether it be stat bonuses, random procs or quality of life changes. Here are the best embellishments for Discipline Priest:
Undulating Sporecloak: New to Patch 10.1, this embellishment looks to be the best option as it has two great effects that boost your HPS and increase your overall chance to survive in both M+ and raid encounters. These two things make it a great embellishment for priests, especially as we are lacking a bit in the defensive department. You'll want to look to craft this as early as possible as it is currently the best value you can get from an embellishment.
Magazine of Healing Darts: While this embellishment might not look that exciting, the effect does give you a decent boost in HPS. The big reason you'll look to use this embellishment is for the fact that it can be put on any crafted armor piece. Weapons grant you the largest power increase when increasing in item level, so your biggest power increase early on in the gearing process comes from crafting a weapon with healing darts.
Spark of Shadowflame Crafting Priority
- Primal Molten Spellblade with the Magazine of Healing Darts embellishment attached is a great choice. As it is a weapon, it will most likely provide your largest power increase. If you already have a high item level staff or a Main Hand/Off Hand combination, you can instead opt to immediately craft an Undulating Sporecloak.
- Undulating Sporecloak is the second priority for crafts, as the effect is incredibly powerful. However, it does not beat the combined power increase from crafting a powerful weapon and the Healing Darts together, making it second in line for crafting priority.
- With any extra sparks, you should try to replace low item level pieces with crafted ones, where you will receive the biggest power boost.
Onyx Annulet and Primordial Stones
Patch 10.0.7 introduces a new ring called Onyx Annulet and with it comes a certain type of gem called Primordial Stones. These gems grant you bonuses whenever you socket them into the Onyx Annulet. The Onyx Annulet does not offer any stats which means you will be sacrificing a lot of secondary stats to get the bonuses from the Primordial Stones. Here are the combinations of bonuses that I would recommend:
Hybrid Combo: Storm Infused Stone (AoE Situations) or Freezing Ice Stone (Single Target Situations), Exuding Steam Stone and Prophetic Twilight Stone. This combination of gems will give you a good amount of DPS as well as HPS, making it a great choice if you want to get a balanced gem setup for the content you want to do.
Damage Focused Combo: Storm Infused Stone (AoE Situations) or Freezing Ice Stone (Single Target Situations), Desirous Blood Stone and Prophetic Twilight Stone. This combination of gems is similar to the previous one, but switches out the Exuding Steam Stone for the Desirous Blood Stone. This will give you a bit of extra damage and is excellent if you want to push some more damage on a boss or in your Mythic+ dungeon and is my recommendation for running Mythic+ dungeons.
Healing Focused Combo: Wild Spirit Stone, Exuding Steam Stone and Deluging Water Stone. This combination of gems is great if you want to fully focus on healing, and is a great pick if you are struggling to meet healing checks in dungeons or raid encounters, or if you just want to boost your numbers a bit.