Playstyle & Rotation
In this section of the guide we will talk about how you actually want to play Discipline Priest. Important things to pay attention to, what your general rotation looks like as well as how your actual ramps look like in raid will all be covered here.
Rotation Altering Talents
In the new talent tree you will find many talents that change how you perform your rotation. One of these is Twilight Equilibrium. While you have this talent you’ll almost always want to weave between casting holy and shadow damaging spells, as it yields you a 15% damage buff that transfers through Atonement. While preparing for damage events you can use Twilight Equilibrium to buff your Purge the Wicked or Shadow Word: Pain by 15% so that your DoT will tick harder and also put out more healing through Atonement.
Expiation and Inescapable Torment are both spells that interact and push you towards more aggressively casting Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death. When playing with Expiation you want to make sure that you always have more than 3/6 seconds left on your current Purge the Wicked before casting Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death so you can gain the full damage from the talent. While using Inescapable Torment you should make sure you have the abilities to trigger it available right as you drop your Shadowfiend or Mindbender, and if possible you should look out for the 20% execute range. This is due to the fact that you can utilize Death and Madness to get an extra hit from Inescapable Torment which results in some extra damage and potential healing.
Train of Thought allows you to more frequently cast Power Word: Shield and Penance. This facilitates some changes in your ramp up rotation, as well as possibly allowing a second Penance during ramps using some talent setups.
Ultimate Penitence is a talent that came with the rework in patch 10.2, you want to use this ability to fill out any gaps where you’d wish you had a Mindbender or Shadowfiend available to proc Shadow Covenant, this is a great replacement button for those situation and provides a large amount of damage, while also acting as a defensive option situationally.
Raid Ramps
In the overview we spoke briefly about what a ramp is and how in general terms you will want to execute it. Now it’s time to dive a bit deeper and see what your actual ramps look like. We will look at the order in which you’ll want to cast your spells to put out the most amount of healing within your Atonement window.
With the change to Harsh Discipline introduced in Patch 10.2 you’ll always aim to save up two charges of Power Word: Radiance whenever possible. This is because the buff from the talent stacks up and therefore gives you higher throughput overall, than if you were to spread out your Power Word: Radiance casts.
Something that is important to note is that different talent builds change which order you’ll want to cast your spells, as spells like Twilight Equilibrium and Expiation and many other talent choices require you to change your rotation in order to reap the full benefit of these talents, none of these talents are currently recommended, but it is something to keep note of in case you want to try them out.
Important note about Flash Heal + Binding Heals: When you cast Flash Heal on another target with Binding Heals talented, which will be the default for all builds, you will apply Atonement to both yourself and your target. For that reason you always want to avoid applying a single-target Atonement to yourself through the use of Power Word: Shield or Renew while ramping so you don’t waste the extra Atonement.
We’ll break the different ramps into three main categories. Evangelism ramp, Rapture ramp and Mini-Ramps. These different types all have different cast sequences that you’ll want to perform correctly to gain the most amount of throughput that you possibly can. If you have any on-use trinkets you’ll want to use these most likely during your Evangelism ramp to boost its power even more. First let’s look at the first two types, step by step.
We’ll break up the next section into 2, one for each of the recommended builds, both sections will have an Evangelism ramp, a Rapture ramp and Mini-ramps, and the Oracle build will feature another cast sequence featuring Ultimate Penitence. First we will look at the different ramps for the recommended Voidweaver build.
Voidweaver ramp cast sequences
Voidweaver Evangelism ramp
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- 3x Renew
- Power Word: Shield
- 2x Renew
- Flash Heal
- Power Word: Shield
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Evangelism
- Voidwraith
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- Void Blast
- Shadow Word: Death
- 3x Void Blast
- Penance
- 3x Void Blast
Voidweaver Rapture ramp
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- Rapture
- 4x Power Word: Shield
- 2x Renew
- Flash Heal
- Voidwraith
- Mind Blast
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Penance
- Void Blast
- Shadow Word: Death
- Void Blast
- 2x Smite
- Penance
Voidweaver No Rapture/Evangelism mini-ramp
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- 2x Renew
- Flash Heal
- Power Word: Shield
- 1-2x Power Word: Radiance
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- 5x Void Blast
It will happen in some encounters that you want to pair Evangelism and Rapture together and when that happens you simply combine the setup part from the Rapture ramp with the offensive spell part from the Evangelism ramp.
Oracle ramp cast sequences
Oracle Evangelism ramp without Clairvoyance
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- 6x Renew
- Flash Heal
- Power Word: Shield
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Evangelism
- Shadowfiend
- Mind Blast
- Premonition of Insight
- Smite
- Premonition of Piety
- Penance
- Smite
- Penance
- Smite
- Penance
- Shadow Word: Death
- Penance
- Halo
Note: The reasoning for the gap between the 2 Premonition casts is because they are off gcd but have a small internal cooldown so it is worth it to fit a cast in between the 2 Premonition casts.
Oracle Evangelism ramp with Clairvoyance
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- 6x Renew
- Flash Heal
- Power Word: Shield
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Evangelism
- Shadowfiend
- Mind Blast
- Premonition of Clairvoyance
- Penance
- Smite
- Penance
- Smite
- Penance
- Shadow Word: Death
- Penance
- Halo
Oracle Rapture ramp
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- Rapture
- 4x Power Word: Shield
- 2x Renew
- Flash Heal
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- 4x Smite
Oracle No Rapture/Evangelism/Ultimate Penitence mini-ramp
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- 3x Renew
- Flash Heal
- Power Word: Shield
- Power Word: Radiance
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- 4x Smite
Oracle Ultimate Penitence ramp
- Purge the Wicked
- Power Word: Shield
- 2x Renew
- Flash Heal
- Power Word: Radiance
- Mind Blast
- Ultimate Penitence
- Penance
The same goes for the Oracle build and it will happen in some encounters that you want to pair Evangelism and Rapture together and when that happens you simply combine the setup part from the Rapture ramp with the offensive spell part from the Evangelism ramp.
On most fights where you will have chosen this build you will want to send your Evangelism ramp and then go straight into the Oracle Ultimate Penitence ramp right after your atonements from the Evangelism ramp falls off.
Defensives
Priest is historically a class that suffers a lot defensively, so it's important to know what tools you have available and how you want to use them effectively, as this class is very squishy and it's easy to die if you aren't paying attention and don't pop your defensive cooldown before damage intake comes.
Fade becomes one of our better defensives through the talent Translucent Image, this is a button you generally don't want to sit and hold for too long, as in most cases you’d have it back for when you want it, you should press this before any significant damage intake as if you press it on cooldown you will end up having close to 50% uptime on a 10 damage reduction.
Desperate Prayer is our “main” defensive and should generally be used with some planning in mind, you’d want to press it before any time you could potentially die to ticking damage, hard to avoid damage or large hits, it's important to make sure you make the most out of this ability, as it is very rare that you die from normal damage intake whenever you press it, especially if you’re talented into Light’s Inspiration.
Pain Suppression it’s important to pay attention on most fights if your tanks or other raid members need your Pain Suppression as an external, cause if they dont it very quickly turns into your best defensive and can be used to survive most mechanics, for a lot of fights it ends up being very good to press this on yourself during a difficult to perform ramp timer, as there typically is high damage intake and a lot going on during the most difficult part of your rotational gameplay.