Discipline Priest: Midnight Expansion Preview

Welcome to our Midnight expansion guide for Discipline Priest. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Discipline Priest spec in the forthcoming Midnight expansion, including changes and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the Midnight Alpha. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Discipline Priest, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Alpha, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Discipline Priest, among many specs in the game, saw a large amount of changes focused on reducing the amount of abilities you have to press in your core rotation, and limit the amount of procs or things you might need add-ons to help track. To accomplish this, we saw many changes to baseline spells, class talents, hero talents, and our spec talents.

The following spells were formerly baseline and have either been removed from our specialization or have been turned into a talent.

• Renew (No longer accessible as Discipline)
• Psychic Scream (Was baseline but is now a talent)
• Fade (Was baseline but is now a talent)
• Shadowfiend (Was baseline but is now a talent)

Our class tree received massive changes going into Midnight with a lot of new talents and a reorganization of existing talents. The following are some of the more notable changes to our class tree.

• Many nodes have changed positions within the tree.
• Many former baseline spells are now talents that you are required to spend points in to gain access to.
• Many low impact nodes that we have not interacted with in a while or that added low value spells have been removed from the tree and replaced with new talents.
• Many of said new talents are simple stat gains.
• At max level in Midnight, you will have an additional 3 points to spend in this tree.

Overall, despite how large the changes look at a glance, the end result is a few low impact spells removed and some new pathing for mostly the same result. The rework of our class tree did not significantly overhaul the utility or defensives we have access to, it just simply shifted around the order in which you pick them up.

Going into Midnight, the developers have pushed a significant number of changes targeting healers in general with the goal of reducing the number of cooldowns in the game, reducing burst healing, and in general flattening and slowing down healing. The following is the quote provided about their goals with Discipline Priest specifically in the Alpha patch notes:

With that in mind, the following is a list of the more notable changes to our specialization tree.

• Evangelism has been redesigned. Instead of extending your active Atonements, it now instantly casts a Power Word: Radiance and gives you a 10 second window in which you have no cooldown on Power Word: Radiance. This allows you to replace our currently long ramp up windows with Evangelism into 3 additional Radiance casts in quick succession.
• Plea has been added to our class tree to fill the same niche Renew did previously. This allows us to have an instant cast Atonement applicator that is cheaper than Flash Heal. The downside is that you now need to spend a talent point in your spec tree to gain access to it instead of it being baseline like Renew was.
• Ultimate Penitence has been moved to the choice node with Power Word: Barrier in place of Luminous Barrier, which has been removed from the game. In addition to Ultimate Penitence being moved, it has also lost access to Overloaded with Light, meaning it no longer has access to Atonement application on its own.
• Shadow Covenant has been removed and replaced with a simple passive Shadow damage and healing increase.
• Inner Light and Shadow has been added at the bottom of our spec tree as a toggle-able buff that swaps between increased damage and Atonement healing and reduced mana cost of healing spells.
• Void Summoner has been removed, making our Shadowfiend and Mindbender 3 minutes and 1 minute respectively no matter what.
• Greater Smite has been added as a ramping, significant boost to Smite in scenarios where you can chain cast them in a row.
• Shadow Tap has been added providing a fairly large modifier to Mind Blast and Schism has been removed from the game. This brings Mind Blast back to the forefront as an actual hard-hitting DPS button instead of a debuff applicator.

In addition to the spec talent changes we also get access to our new Apex Talents, Master the Darkness. These points exist separately on the Spec Tree and you can commit up to 4 points into them.

The first point you must take in your Apex Talent section gives your Penance a 50% chance to upgrade your Power Word: Shield into Void Shield, which is stronger and shields two additional targets.

After the first point, you have the ability to pick up either the two point node that increases your Shadow damage and Atonement healing by 5% per point or the one point node that causes Void Shield to reflect 50% of the damage absorbed back to the attacker. This damage does do Atonement healing.

Oracle has received a significant rework, removing Premonition entirely. In return, the base node now provides two charges to Penance. Premonition of Piety has been turned into a passive node with a permanent 20% overheal redistribution effect. This tree does still have 3 nodes that have not been implemented, so expect more changes to come for this tree before Midnight launches.

Voidweaver has seen very few changes outside of the 3 new points that have been added; Touch of the Void, which extends Voidheart for 8 additional seconds after Entropic Rift expires, Overwhelming Shadows, which increases the damage of Mind Blast by 50%, and Quickened Pulse, which causes your Shadow Word: Pain and Entropic Rift to deal damage 25% more often.