Discipline Priest Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight (12.0.1)

With Atonement being such a core mechanic for Discipline, understanding how to apply it and the pros and cons of each applicator in incredibly important. The following is a list of each applicator available:

• Penance, when cast directly on an ally, applies Atonement. Keep in mind, that Twinsight bolts do not apply Atonement, so if you want to get an Atonement application out of this spell, it needs to be a defensive cast. However, with this spell applying Atonement and still providing strong output via its own healing, the Twinsight bolts providing Atonement healing, and the additional Atonement healing from Penance's passive effect, you get an incredible amount of value from a single, low mana, button. As a result this should be a very high priority Atonement applicator.
• Power Word: Radiance is our best and most efficient Atonement applicator with a massive amount of our gameplay revolving around this spell. On cast, it will apply 1 Atonement to your target and then jump to 4 additional targets, applying Atonement to them as well. In Mythic plus content, this is incredibly powerful as it can apply Atonement to your entire group in a single button. In Raid, this is utilized as a primary enabler to push for very large numbers of Atonements active at a time. As a result, this spell should be one of your most used Atonement applicators alongside Penance.
• Power Word: Shield is a solid single target Atonement applicator on its own. Depending on your exact talent setup, it can provide a solid amount of single target effective health on top of the Atonement application. However, keep in mind that it has a fairly large mana cost as an Atonement applicator, so be careful about overusing it and potentially ending up with mana issues. Keep in mind, however, when upgraded into Void Shield, each target your Void Shield splashes to will receive Atonement making this an incredibly efficient button.
• Flash Heal is a single target Atonement applicator with a decent direct heal attached. With the mana cost of this spell, you will rarely utilize this as an Atonement applicator directly. The primary uses this spell sees as a direct Atonement applicator is due to its interaction with Binding Heal which causes a single Flash Heal cast to apply Atonement to both the target and yourself.
• Finally, Plea is a single target Atonement applicator with a very weak heal attached. This spell is intended to fill the gap of an instant cast Atonement applicator with no cooldown. Your casts per minute of Plea in a dungeon environment should be almost nothing as you will frequently have better and more efficient options for applying Atonement. In raids, however, this spell sees usage in ramp sequences where you are attempting to rapidly hit high Atonement counts.

When playing Oracle, your primary usage of Penance will be defensive in nature. With Twinsight existing causing each cast of Penance to also fire bolts at the opposite type of target, the difference between the two targeting types was already very close. Additionally, penance contributes to Atonement healing via its own passive when used on an ally. Both of those combined with the fact that a defensive Penance cast applies Atonement to the target while an offensive one does not result in the application of an Atonement results in the scales being tipped in the favor of defensive casts only.

Shadow Word: Death gets its own section as a core gameplay mechanic simply due to how many different important talents this spell interacts with.

First, Shadow Word: Death triggers Expiation, consuming a portion of your active Shadow Word: Pain to immediately deal damage. Additionally, Death's Torment causes each Shadow Word: Death you cast to trigger two additional Shadow Word: Deaths at reduced effectiveness. These reduced effectiveness Death's, however, each trigger Expiation at full value. As a result, simply pressing Shadow Word: Death while you have a Shadow Word: Pain active on the target, regardless of the targets health, will result in a massive amount of Atonement healing for your group.

Shadow Word: Death also triggers Shadowfiend when used in execute range on a target. You are will always get at least one Shadowfiend off of a Death cast, but can get up to three Shadowfiends per cast if you are lucky, as the Death's Torment echos can also trigger Shadowfiend, but at a reduced chance.

Speaking of pets, Shadow Word: Death is also an activator for Inescapable Torment. Between the Shadowfiends discussed above and the Mindbender summoned via Evangelism if talented into it, you can get a solid amount of burst healing from Inescapable Torment alone.

With all of these talent interactions in addition to it doing significant damage itself in execute, this spell becomes an incredible powerhouse of a button for Discipline. Ensure you are keeping an eye out for targets that are low health that you can target swap to to hit Death in execute as the output swing from the execute damage itself and the Shadowfiend's summoned can be quite large.

Shadow Word: Pain is an incredibly important button for Discipline for a variety of reasons:

• First, it simply does a solid amount of Atonement healing over time by keeping it active. keep in mind that multiple applications of Shadow Word: Pain that are active at the same time will all contribute to Atonement healing, so you do not need to limit yourself to only applying a single Shadow Word: Pain if multiple targets are available.
• Shadow Word: Pain ticks have a chance to proc Power of the Dark Side which grants a solid buff to your next Penance cast.
• Shadow Word: Pain can proc Shadow Mend if talented.
• You need your DoT active on your target before casting a spell that triggers Expiation.

Overall, at the very least, you should be keeping Shadow Word: Pain active on one target, but you should look for opportunities to maintain it on multiple targets at once when possible. Builds that run Encroaching Shadows can utilize Penance to help apply your DoT to multiple targets at once.

Power Word: Shield can be a strong single target effective health tool as well as an Atonement applicator. Feel free to utilize the spell whenever you need Atonement on someone and Penance is on cooldown or they are full health and you are preemptively shielding incoming damage. Keep in mind that the spells cooldown is incredibly low and the spell is very expensive mana wise, so if you aren't careful you can easily run yourself out of mana very quickly by overusing this spell. Use it when you are going to get value out of it, not just to keep it on cooldown.

Our Apex talent, Master the Darkness, causes our Penance casts to have a chance to upgrade our next Power Word: Shield into a Void Shield instead. Void Shield is not only a larger shield compared to Power Word: Shield, but it also splashes to 2 additional targets. Those two targets also receive Atonement making this button a powerhouse. To make it even stronger, the final point of our Apex talent, Master the Darkness, causes a portion of the absorbed damage to be reflected back at the attacker which contributes to Atonement healing. As a result, if you get a Void Shield proc, you should always be utilizing said proc prior to casting another Penance to avoiding wasting a use.

With Atonement being such a core mechanic for Discipline, understanding how to apply it and the pros and cons of each applicator in incredibly important. The following is a list of each applicator available:

• Penance, when cast directly on an ally, applies Atonement. When playing Voidweaver, however, Penance is also an important portion of our offensive kit. While you can use Penance defensively to apply Atonement, the vast majority of your casts will be offensive in nature.
• Power Word: Radiance is our best and most efficient Atonement applicator with a massive amount of our gameplay revolving around this spell. On cast, it will apply 1 Atonement to your target and then jump to 4 additional targets, applying Atonement to them as well. In Mythic plus content, this is incredibly powerful as it can apply Atonement to your entire group in a single button. In Raid, this is utilized as a primary enabler to push for very large numbers of Atonements active at a time. As a result, this spell should be one of your most used Atonement applicators alongside Penance.
• Power Word: Shield is a solid single target Atonement applicator on its own. Depending on your exact talent setup, it can provide a solid amount of single target effective health on top of the Atonement application. However, keep in mind that it has a fairly large mana cost as an Atonement applicator, so be careful about overusing it and potentially ending up with mana issues. Keep in mind, however, when upgraded into Void Shield, each target your Void Shield splashes to will receive Atonement making this an incredibly efficient button.
• Flash Heal is a single target Atonement applicator with a decent direct heal attached. With the mana cost of this spell, you will rarely utilize this as an Atonement applicator directly. The primary uses this spell sees as a direct Atonement applicator is due to its interaction with Binding Heal which causes a single Flash Heal cast to apply Atonement to both the target and yourself.
• Finally, Plea is a single target Atonement applicator with a very weak heal attached. This spell is intended to fill the gap of an instant cast Atonement applicator with no cooldown. Your casts per minute of Plea in a dungeon environment should be almost nothing as you will frequently have better and more efficient options for applying Atonement. In raids, however, this spell sees usage in ramp sequences where you are attempting to rapidly hit high Atonement counts.

When playing Voidweaver, your primary usage of Penance will be offensive in nature. While you can utilize the spell defensively as a spot heal and Atonement applicator, the bulk of your casts will be against enemies.

Shadow Word: Death gets its own section as a core gameplay mechanic simply due to how many different important talents this spell interacts with.

First, Shadow Word: Death triggers Expiation, consuming a portion of your active Shadow Word: Pain to immediately deal damage. Additionally, Death's Torment causes each Shadow Word: Death you cast to trigger two additional Shadow Word: Deaths at reduced effectiveness. These reduced effectiveness Death's, however, each trigger Expiation at full value. As a result, simply pressing Shadow Word: Death while you have a Shadow Word: Pain active on the target, regardless of the targets health, will result in a massive amount of Atonement healing for your group.

Shadow Word: Death also triggers Shadowfiend when used in execute range on a target. You are will always get at least one Shadowfiend off of a Death cast, but can get up to three Shadowfiends per cast if you are lucky, as the Death's Torment echos can also trigger Shadowfiend, but at a reduced chance.

Speaking of pets, Shadow Word: Death is also an activator for Inescapable Torment. Between the Shadowfiends discussed above and the Mindbender summoned via Evangelism if talented into it, you can get a solid amount of burst healing from Inescapable Torment alone.

With all of these talent interactions in addition to it doing significant damage itself in execute, this spell becomes an incredible powerhouse of a button for Discipline. Ensure you are keeping an eye out for targets that are low health that you can target swap to to hit Death in execute as the output swing from the execute damage itself and the Shadowfiend's summoned can be quite large.

Shadow Word: Pain is an incredibly important button for Discipline for a variety of reasons:

• First, it simply does a solid amount of Atonement healing over time by keeping it active. keep in mind that multiple applications of Shadow Word: Pain that are active at the same time will all contribute to Atonement healing, so you do not need to limit yourself to only applying a single Shadow Word: Pain if multiple targets are available.
• Shadow Word: Pain ticks have a chance to proc Power of the Dark Side which grants a solid buff to your next Penance cast.
• Shadow Word: Pain can proc Shadow Mend if talented.
• You need your DoT active on your target before casting a spell that triggers Expiation.

Overall, at the very least, you should be keeping Shadow Word: Pain active on one target, but you should look for opportunities to maintain it on multiple targets at once when possible. Builds that run Encroaching Shadows can utilize Penance to help apply your DoT to multiple targets at once.

When playing Voidweaver, Mind Blast is not only a strong burst damage tool itself when considering modifiers like Shadow Tap and Overwhelming Shadows, but it is also an activator for a variety of talents.

First, Mind Blast summons an Entropic Rift, the core mechanic of the Voidweaver tree. This rift will not only follow around its target dealing significant damage on its own, but it also activates a variety of effects during its duration.

• Smite is upgraded into Void Blast, a much more powerful version for the duration of the Rift.
• Voidheart causes your Atonement healing to ber stronger for the duration of the Rift and slightly after thanks to Touch of the Void.
• Void Blast and Penance Atonement healing are both increased by a significant amount while the rift is active via Void Infusion.
• When the Rift ends, a Voidwraith is summoned.

Additionally, Mind Blast itself is an activator for both Expiation and Inescapable Torment and also activates Power of the Dark Side via Dark Indulgence. As a result, how you use this spell and when will have a major impact on your performance. With a 28 second cooldown before taking into account your Haste, its both up fairly often and not quite often enough to where if you press it on cooldown without thinking you can easily find yourself in a situation where you are missing a significant amount of your potential output when needed. Finding the appropriate balance of casting it often but still having it up when needed will be one of the harder parts of playing Voidweaver.

Power Word: Shield can be a ok single target effective health tool as well as an Atonement applicator, but because we generally do not talent into nodes that buff it when playing as Voidweaver, your overall casts per minute of this spell will be fairly low.

Our Apex talent, Master the Darkness, causes our Penance casts to have a chance to upgrade our next Power Word: Shield into a Void Shield instead. Void Shield is not only a larger shield compared to Power Word: Shield, but it also splashes to 2 additional targets. Those two targets also receive Atonement making this button a powerhouse. To make it even stronger, the final point of our Apex talent, Master the Darkness, causes a portion of the absorbed damage to be reflected back at the attacker which contributes to Atonement healing. As a result, if you get a Void Shield proc, you should always be utilizing said proc prior to casting another Penance to avoiding wasting a use.

In Dungeon content, Evangelism immediately heals your whole group for a non-insignificant amount on cast. Additionally, it causes your next two casts of Power Word: Radiance to be instant cast. This buff lasts forever, so you can hold those Radiance casts for as long as you need them, making this a very strong tool to assist with mobility heavy encounters.

In Raiding content, this tool is a primary enabler for what we call a ramp. This concept will be described in the next section.

Evangelism also activates either Archangel or Mindbender depending on what one you are talented into. This either buffs all your healing and absorbs for a period of time or summons a pet for a short duration to both deal damage as well as interact with other talents such as Inescapable Torment if talented.

While this spell has an very long cooldown at 4 minutes, its also incredibly powerful. When cast offensively, it will throw bolts at random enemies, dealing significant damage which translates to a large amount of Atonement healing if the group has Atonement active on them. When cast defensively, it will throw bolts at injured allies, healing them directly.

In both Dungeon and Raid content you will almost exclusively want to utilize this spell offensively. As Oracle and in dungeons there can be very niche scenarios where you might want to use this defensively, but those situations are rare. Additionally, as Voidweaver, Void Infusion's buff to Penance Atonement healing does work with the Atonement healing from Ultimate Penitence. As a result, as Voidwweaver you should always be trying to use this spell during a rift window to maximize its output potential unless you are specifically holding it as a gap fill tool to get you to your next Entropic Rift.

Power Word: Barrier shares a choice node with Ultimate Penitence, meaning you have to choose between one or the other. Power Word: Barrier can be incredibly powerful in any scenario where the incoming damage during its duration is significant enough. Keep in mind that it does require the group and or raid to be able to stack under the barrier for its duration to benefit, so some encounters it is very difficult to use even if the damage intake warrants it. While we are recommending Ultimate Penitence by default, keep an eye out for good situations to swap to Power Word: Barrier.

Pain Suppression is a very large Damage Reduction on a single target. Utilizing this either on the tank or on a player with a large damage over time effect on them can have a significant impact. When running the talent Protector of the Frail, you will have a lot of additional casts available of Pain Suppression, so make sure you use it often instead of just sitting on maximum charges.

1. Refresh your Shadow Word: Pain to ensure it lasts the entire duration of your Ramp.
2. Cast Flash Heal
3. Cast Penance - used on an ally
4. Cast Power Word: Shield
5. Cast Plea
6. Cast Evangelism
7. Cast Power Word: Radiance x2
8. Cast Shadow Word: Death
9. Cast Penance - used on an ally
10. Cast Mind Blast
11. Cast Penance - used on an ally
12. Cast Smite until Penance/Death become available again

1. Refresh your Shadow Word: Pain to ensure it lasts the entire duration of your Ramp.
2. Cast Flash Heal
3. Cast Penance - used on an ally
4. Cast Power Word: Shield
5. Cast Plea
6. Cast Power Word: Radiance x2
7. Cast Ultimate Penitence - cast Shadow Word: Death while traveling into the air. See the Advanced section below for more details.
8. Cast Penance - used on an ally
9. Cast Mind Blast
10. Cast Penance - used on an ally
11. Cast Smite until Penance/Death become available again

1. Refresh your Shadow Word: Pain to ensure it lasts the entire duration of your Ramp.
2. Cast Flash Heal
3. Cast Penance - used on an ally
4. Cast Power Word: Shield
5. Cast Plea
6. Cast Evangelism
7. Cast Power Word: Radiance
8. Cast Mind Blast
9. Cast Shadow Word: Death
10. Cast Power Word: Radiance
11. Cast Penance - used on an enemy
12. Cast Void Blast until Penance/Death become available again

1. Refresh your Shadow Word: Pain to ensure it lasts the entire duration of your Ramp.
2. Cast Flash Heal
3. Cast Penance - used on an ally
4. Cast Power Word: Shield
5. Cast Plea
6. Cast Power Word: Radiance x2
7. Cast Mind Blast
8. Cast Ultimate Penitence - cast Shadow Word: Death while traveling into the air. See the Advanced section below for more details.
9. Cast Penance - used on an enemy
10. Cast Void Blast until Penance/Death become available again

1. Refresh your Shadow Word: Pain to ensure it lasts the entire duration of your Ramp.
2. Cast Flash Heal
3. Cast Penance - used on an ally
4. Cast Power Word: Shield
5. Cast Plea
6. Cast Power Word: Radiance x2
7. Cast Mind Blast
8. Cast Shadow Word: Death
9. Cast Penance - used on an enemy
10. Cast Void Blast until Penance/Death become available again