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Playstyle & Rotation
The Discipline Priest playstyle focuses on applying Atonement with your helpful spells and then healing the group through your damage. To make the most of your kit, you need to prepare for incoming damage events (especially in raids) by using a "Ramp" to apply Atonement to as many people as possible before the damage hits.
If you want to read more about exactly how Atonement works, check out the Atonement section of this page.
Oracle excels at strong healing outside of your major cooldowns thanks to a much more powerful Penance and the overheal protection provided by Piety.
Here are the raid ramp sequences:
Evangelism Ramp
- Refresh Shadow Word: Pain if its about to run out
- Void Shield (If ready, otherwise Power Word: Shield + 2x Plea)
- Flash Heal (Applies Atonement to yourself via Binding Heals)
- Evangelism
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Penance
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- Continue with your normal priority
Ultimate Penitence Ramp
- Refresh Shadow Word: Pain if its about to run out
- Void Shield (If ready, otherwise Power Word: Shield + 2x Plea)
- Flash Heal (Applies Atonement to yourself via Binding Heals)
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Ultimate Penitence
- Mind Blast (Cast it at the end of your channel so it casts while falling down)
- Penance
- Power Word: Shield
- Penance
- Continue with your normal priority
Damage Priority
- Keep your Shadow Word: Pain applied at all times
- Mind Blast (If you don't have a Power Of The Dark Side proc)
- Penance
- Shadow Word: Death (If the target is below 20%)
- Holy Nova (If talented into Lightburst)
- Smite
Outside of your big ramp sequences, use Void Shield + Power Word: Radiance as a "mini-ramp" combined with a few manually applied Atonements.
Even though Weal And Woe and Borrowed Time incentivise you to use Power Word: Shield between each Penance cast, I would advise against it as it drains your mana incredibly quickly. You should, however, definitely use it on your upgraded Void Shields.
Compared to the Oracle raid build, Voidweaver is a lot less mana hungry and makes use of all your pets with Inescapable Torment. It has very frequent "mini-ramp" windows thanks to Entropic Rift.
Here are the raid ramp sequences:
Evangelism Ramp
- Refresh Shadow Word: Pain if its about to run out
- Void Shield (If ready, otherwise Power Word: Shield + 2x Plea)
- Flash Heal (Applies Atonement to yourself via Binding Heals)
- Evangelism
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- Spam Void Blast until Entropic Rift runs out
Ultimate Penitence Ramp
- Refresh Shadow Word: Pain if its about to run out
- Void Shield (If ready, otherwise Power Word: Shield + 2x Plea)
- Flash Heal (Applies Atonement to yourself via Binding Heals)
- 2x Power Word: Radiance
- Mind Blast (This buffs your Ultimate Penitence via Void Infusion)
- Ultimate Penitence
- Penance (Cast it at the end of your channel so it casts while falling down)
- Spam Void Blast until Entropic Rift runs out
Entropic Rift Mini-Ramp
Damage Priority
- Keep your Shadow Word: Pain applied at all times
- Shadow Word: Death (In execute)
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- Void Blast
- Shadow Word: Death (Outside execute)
- Holy Nova (If talented into Lightburst)
- Smite
In execute (<20%), you should use Shadow Word: Death right before your Mind Blast so the potentially spawned Shadowfiend can trigger Inescapable Torment.
If you are not in execute range, make sure to use Shadow Word: Death outside of your Entropic Rift window to trigger Inescapable Torment from the Voidwraith that spawns after.
Compared to raid healing, Mythic+ is much simpler since a single Power Word: Radiance cast covers your entire group with Atonement.
For general group damage, you’ll want to drop a Radiance and then immediately go into your damage rotation. For larger damage events, you should use Evangelism or Ultimate Penitence.
If you need heavy spot healing on a single target, make use of a defensive Penance, Power Word: Shield or (if you’re talented into it) your upgraded Flash Heal from Shadow Mend.
Even though Weal And Woe and Borrowed Time incentivise you to use Power Word: Shield between each Penance cast, I would advise against it as it drains your mana incredibly quickly. You should, however, definitely use it on your upgraded Void Shields.
Damage Priority
- Shadow Word: Pain (Keep active at all times*)
- Mind Blast (If you don't have a Power Of The Dark Side proc)
- Penance
- Shadow Word: Death (If the target is below 20%)
- Holy Nova (If talented into Lightburst)
- Smite
* Shadow Word: Pain makes up a huge portion of your damage in larger pulls. Make sure you apply it manually to a few enemies at the start of a pack, then let Encroaching Shadows spread it to the rest of the targets via Penance.
Compared to raid healing, Mythic+ is much simpler since a single Power Word: Radiance cast covers your entire group with Atonement.
Voidweaver has access to Entropic Rift, which provides very frequent, high-impact group healing. Outside of your Entropic Rift windows is where you will struggle the most; make sure to use Evangelism and Ultimate Penitence if needed to bridge the gap.
If you need heavy spot healing on a single target, make use of a defensive Penance, Power Word: Shield or (if you’re talented into it) your upgraded Flash Heal from Shadow Mend.
Make sure to "snipe" low-health (<20%) enemies with Shadow Word: Death to spawn Shadowfiends. If there are no enemies close to execute range, you should still use Shadow Word: Death to trigger Inescapable Torment and Expiation. Finally, be sure to use your Void Shield before each Penance cast so they are not wasted.
Damage Priority
- Shadow Word: Pain (Keep active at all times*)
- Shadow Word: Death (In execute)
- Mind Blast
- Penance
- Void Blast
- Shadow Word: Death (Outside execute)
- Holy Nova (If talented into Lightburst)
- Smite
* Shadow Word: Pain makes up a huge portion of your damage in larger pulls. Make sure you apply it manually to a few enemies at the start of a pack, and if you play Encroaching Shadows spread it to the rest of the targets via Penance.
Cooldowns
Evangelism
Evangelism is your bread and butter for ramping in raid. Compared to The War Within, it doesn't extend your Atonements anymore, but instead applies five on its own and makes your next two Radiances instant. This is huge for getting 15 Atonements out fast. It also buffs your healing through the Archangel choice node.
Ultimate Penitence
Ultimate Penitence is a massive 4-minute cooldown that should typically be used offensively in Raid. You also gain a huge shield during the channel, so you don't have to worry about taking extra damage while you're in the air.
Power Word: Barrier
A strong 20% damage reduction cooldown which shines on fights where the raid is stacked and taking heavy damage over a short window. Because Ultimate Penitence is so strong right now, you should only swap to Power Word: Barrier if you can guarantee high value from the damage reduction.
Pain Suppression
Pain Suppression is a massive 50% damage reduction, making it one of the strongest external cooldowns in the game. Ideally, you want to use it on tanks or other players right before they take a big hit. With Protector Of The Frail, you also gain an extra charge and can lower its cooldown by using Power Word: Shield.
Defensives
Discipline Priest is historically a spec that suffers defensively, so it is important to know which tools you have available and how to use them effectively:
- Desperate Prayer: A decent defensive cooldown with a fairly short cooldown.
- Translucent Image: Turns your Fade into a 10% damage reduction cooldown you can and should use often.
- Protective Light: Together with Binding Heals you will constantly apply a 10% damage reduction to yourself whenever you use a Flash Heal.
- Pain Suppression: Usually an external for others, but don't be afraid to use it selfishly. Discipline is notorious for being squishy, and you can't heal the group if you're dead.
Utility
Priest generally has a lot of strong (but sometimes niche) Utility:
- Power Word: Fortitude: A strong group buff increasing everyone's Health by 5%.
- Mass Dispel: Dispels all magic effects from 5 friendly targets and removes one magic buff from 5 enemies. Can be incredibly powerful for specific fights or dungeons.
- Angelic Feather: Can be used to increase a friendly player's movement speed, but is usually used on yourself.
- Dispel Magic: Removes one magic buff from an enemy without a cooldown.
- Mind Soothe: Useful to skip specific packs in Mythic+. Does not affect enemies with True Sight.
- Leap Of Faith: Grips a friendly player to your location. Useful to help someone out of a bad situation.
Crowd Control:
- Psychic Scream: This is your main "stop." Can be further improved with talents like Void Tendrils.
- Mind Control & Dominate Mind: Takes control of an enemy. Niche, but sometimes you can use powerful abilities from the enemy to help your group.
- Shackle Undead: Incredibly niche "hard CC" that only works on Undead enemies.
Atonement in Detail
With Midnight, Atonement has changed dramatically. It no longer converts a static percentage of your damage but instead, it scales based on how many injured allies have the buff.
If you have a full raid covered with Atonements but only 5 players are missing health, those 5 people receive the full 45% damage transfer. If the whole raid takes damage and everyone is injured, the transfer drops to the lowest 22.5%, which is still stronger than only having 5 Atonements active. This change makes your healing outside of ramp windows much more impactful when you only have a few Atonements out.