Discipline Priest Leveling Guide from 1 to 80 — The War Within (11.1.5)

When leveling as a Discipline Priest, always target the gear with the highest item level available. Looking for specific stats on leveling gear will not matter, as you will most likely have a fairly large item level gap on items when you get another of the same slot.

Your first talent point unlocks at Level 10.

Your talent setup should be as follows if you plan on questing and doing open-world content.

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1. Cast Power Word: Shield on yourself if your HP has begun to drop.
2. Cast Power Infusion on cooldown.
3. Maintain Shadow Word: Pain on all targets unless the target will die before a significant portion of the DoT ticks.
4. Cast Shadowfiend/ Mindbender on cooldown unless you need to hold it for healing purposes.
5. Cast Shadow Word: Death if the target is below 20% HP. Be careful not to kill yourself with this spell.
6. Cast Penance on cooldown.
7. Cast Mind Blast on cooldown.
8. Cast Smite as your filler.

Starting at level 15, you can queue for dungeons with the in-game group finder. The following is a general priority list of healing spells in dungeons:

1. Cast Power Word: Shield on cooldown if a single player is taking damage.
2. Cast Power Word: Radiance when it is available and you have multiple people that need Atonement at the same time.
3. Cast Flash Heal when you need to direct heal someone if your Atonement healing is not enough.

In addition to these baseline abilities, there is a passive effect that is crucial to understand leveling as a Discipline Priest:

Atonement causes your damaging spells to heal all targets with Atonement on them. It is crucial that you DPS to utilize your Atonements applied instead of getting stuck in the habit of spamming direct heals. Follow the healing spell priority list above to apply Atonement, and then once all players taking damage have Atonement on them, follow the damage spell priority list.

1. Inner Light and Shadow is a toggle-able ability that grants you either 10% increased spell damage and Atonement healing or 15% less Mana cost on healing spells. Leaving this on the damage increase portion while leveling will result in a solid DPS and survivability gain.
2. Catharsis provides a fairly substantial damage increase when soloing content that is actually dealing significant damage to you. In cases where you are playing with others or the content is easy enough you are not taking significant damage, feel free to replace this talent with another.
3. Dark Archangel increases your damage and the damage of all allies with your Atonement by 15% for 8 seconds. This is great for small group world content where giving your group a DPS buff will be more impactful than taking a small boost to your own damage via any of the above three talents.