Discipline Priest Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities in Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.0.1

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Class Overview
  • 2. Patch 8.0.1 Changes for Discipline Priests
  • 3. Discipline Priest's Strengths and Weaknesses
    • 3.1. Discipline Priest Strengths
    • 3.2. Discipline Priest Weaknesses
  • 4. Discipline Priest's Viability in the Current Patch
  • 5. Contents
  • 6. ChangeLog
• +Easy Mode
  • 1. Foreword
  • 2. The Basics of Discipline Priests
  • 3. Talent Choice for Discipline Priests
    • 3.1. Dungeons
    • 3.2. Raids
  • 4. Stat Choice for Discipline Priests
  • 5. Basic Playstyle for Discipline Priests
    • 5.1. Atonement Rotation (DPS Priority)
    • 5.2. Raid Healing
    • 5.3. Dungeon Healing
    • 5.4. Atonement Applicators
  • 6. Cooldown Usage for Discipline Priests
  • 7. Azerite Traits for Discipline Priests
  • 8. ChangeLog
• +Spell Summary
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Main Resource of Discipline Priests
  • 3. Basic Abilities for Discipline Priests
    • 3.1. Atonement
    • 3.2. Healing Spells
    • 3.3. Utility for Discipline Priests
  • 4. Cooldowns for Discipline Priests
  • 5. ChangeLog
• +Builds and Talents
  • 1. Talent Choices for Discipline Priest
  • 2. Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 3. Tier 2 (Level 30) Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 4. Tier 3 (Level 45) Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 5. Tier 4 (Level 60) Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 6. Tier 5 (Level 75) Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 7. Tier 6 (Level 90) Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 8. Tier 7 (Level 100) Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 9. PvP Talents (War Mode)
    • 9.1. Discipline Priest War Mode Talents
      • 9.1.1. General PvP Talents
      • 9.1.2. Discipline Priest PvP Talents
  • 10. ChangeLog
• +Azerite Traits and Armor
  • 1. Disclaimer
  • 2. Azerite Gear for Discipline Priest
  • 3. Recommended Traits
    • 3.1. Dungeons and Mythic+
    • 3.2. Raids
  • 4. Recommended Uldir Azerite Gear
  • 5. Outer Ring Traits for Discipline Priest
  • 6. Middle Ring Traits for Discipline Priest
  • 7. Inner Ring Traits for Discipline Priest
  • 8. Azerite Traits Details and Rotation Changes for Discipline Priest
    • 8.1. Azerite Traits Rotation Changes
  • 9. Find Azerite Armor By Trait/Power
  • 10. ChangeLog
• ×Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities
  • 1. Rotation for Discipline Priests
    • 1.1. DPS Rotation / Atonement
    • 1.2. Raid Healing
    • 1.3. Dungeon Healing
    • 1.4. Atonement Applicators
  • 2. Cooldown Usage for Discipline Priests
  • 3. Optional Read: Mastering Your Discipline Priest
    • 3.1. Atonement
    • 3.2. Absorption Effects
    • 3.3. Penance
    • 3.4. More on Cooldowns
      • 3.4.1. Tier 1 Talents
      • 3.4.2. Tier 4 Talents
      • 3.4.3. Tier 5 Talents
      • 3.4.4. Tier 6 Talents
      • 3.4.5. Tier 7 Talents
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Mythic+ Tips
  • 1. Discipline Priest in Mythic+
    • 1.1. Discipline Priest Mythic+ Rotation
    • 1.2. Discipline Priest Utility
  • 2. Mythic+ Talents for Discipline Priests
  • 3. Trinkets
  • 4. Mythic+ Affixes
    • 4.1. Tier One Affixes
    • 4.2. Tier Two Affixes
    • 4.3. Tier Three Affixes
    • 4.4. Seasonal Affix
  • 5. Mythic+ Azerite Traits
  • 6. ChangeLog
• +Common and Worst Mistakes
  • 1. Common Mistakes as a Discipline Priest
    • 1.1. Mana: Casting Power Word: Shield Too Much
    • 1.2. Mana: Casting Shadow Mend Too Much
    • 1.3. Performance: Not Managing Atonements Properly
    • 1.4. Performance: Not Timing Cooldowns Properly
  • 2. ChangeLog
• +Frequently Asked Questions
  • 1. Battle for Azeroth Discipline Changes
    • 1.1. What Changed for Discipline Priest in BfA?
    • 1.2. How Does the New Mastery: Grace Work?
    • 1.3. No More Power Word: Shield Cooldown; Back to Spamming?
    • 1.4. When Am I Going to Use Contrition?
    • 1.5. Is Schism Any Good Now?
    • 1.6. Luminous Barrier Seems Pretty Good; Is It?
  • 2. Talent Builds
    • 2.1. What Talents Do I Use in Dungeons?
    • 2.2. What Talents Do I Use in Raids?
  • 3. Trinkets and Azerite
    • 3.1. Should I Equip DPS trinkets in BfA?
    • 3.2. What Trinkets Am I Looking to Get for Raiding in BfA?
  • 4. Gear and Stats
    • 4.1. My Stats are X/Y/Z. Are These Any Good?
  • 5. Gameplay
    • 5.1. How Does the New Mastery: Grace Affect my Gameplay?
    • 5.2. How Do I Use Rapture Now?
    • 5.3. Should I Use Halo or Divine Star over Purge the Wicked Now?
    • 5.4. I See We Still Have Shadow Covenant; Should I Use It?
• +Boss by Boss Strategies
  • 1. Discipline Priest Boss Advice: Uldir, Halls of Control
    • 1.1. Talent Cheatsheet for Discipline Priest
  • 2. Taloc
  • 3. M.O.T.H.E.R.
  • 4. Fetid Devourer
  • 5. Zek'voz, Herald of N'Zoth
  • 6. Vectis
  • 7. Zul, Reborn
  • 8. Mythrax the Unraveler
  • 9. G'huun
  • 10. ChangeLog
• +Stat Priority
  • 1. The Basics of Stats for Discipline Priest
  • 2. Getting a Better Understanding of Discipline Priest Stats
  • 3. ChangeLog
• +Gems, Enchants, and Consumables
  • 1. Gems for Discipline Priests
  • 2. Enchants for Discipline Priests
  • 3. Consumables for Discipline Priests
  • 4. ChangeLog
• +Macros and Addons
  • 1. Macros
    • 1.1. Generic Macros for Priests
      • 1.1.1. Leap of Faith Mouseover Macro
    • 1.2. Specific Macros for Discipline Priests
      • 1.2.1. Shadow Word: Pain Macro
  • 2. Addons
    • 2.1. Generic Addons for Priests
      • 2.1.1. ElvUI
      • 2.1.2. Boss Mods: Deadly Boss Mods or Bigwigs
      • 2.1.3. GTFO
      • 2.1.4. Parrot or Mik's Scrolling Battle Text
      • 2.1.5. Weak Auras
      • 2.1.6. Recount / Skada / Details!
    • 2.2. Specific Addons for Discipline Priests
• +Gear and Best in Slot
  • 1. Trinkets for Discipline Priests
    • 1.1. S Tier
    • 1.2. A Tier
    • 1.3. B Tier
    • 1.4. C Tier
  • 2. Best in Slot List for Discipline Priests in Uldir
  • 3. ChangeLog

General Information

On this page, we list your Discipline Priest core abilities and how they should be used together (rotation) in World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth 8.0.1. We also explain when to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties that you will need to know if you want to excel at playing a Discipline Priest.

The other pages of our Discipline Priest guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Author

This guide is written and maintained by Mend, admin and editor at Focused Will (join them on Discord or read their Blog for healing Priests) and is reviewed by the staff at Focused Will. You can follow Mend on Twitter or Twitch.

1. Rotation for Discipline Priests

The Discipline specialisation revolves heavily around healing through dealing damage, thanks to the Atonement passive ability. We detail this below, but for now all you need to keep in mind is that dealing damage is an integral part of healing as Discipline.

In the sections that follow we will look at which abilities you should use to deal damage (in order to generate Atonement healing), as well as how to handle single target and AoE healing.

1.1. DPS Rotation / Atonement

The ideal rotation for dealing damage in order to generate Atonement healing is as follows.

1. Maintain Shadow Word: Pain (or Purge the Wicked, if you have taken this talent) on the target.
2. Use Schism as needed to provide a damage increase, and thus healing increase for your Atonements (if you have taken this talent).
3. Use Power Word: Solace on cooldown (if you have taken this talent).
4. Use Penance on cooldown.
5. Use Smite as a filler.

From now on in this guide, whenever we mention dealing damage for Atonement purposes, we mean that you should use this above rotation.

1.2. Raid Healing

For healing damage on multiple raid members at once, your primary tool is Atonement. The general idea is very simple: proactively place Atonement on the required players through the use of such spells as Power Word: Radiance, Power Word: Shield, or Shadow Mend, so that when the damage starts coming in, you can already begin healing them through dealing damage. You want to avoid being caught without having Atonement up on players when damage starts coming in, since this will leave you unprepared.

If you must heal a rather low number of players or if the damage taken is low, then you should use Power Word: Shield to apply and maintain Atonement on them, and, if needed, use Shadow Mend to prevent someone from dying. Throughout this time, you should continue to DPS. You should try to maintain around 3-5 Atonement buffs up, but do not get focused on maintaining a specific number. If your Atonement targets need healing (are all approximately less than 90% health) you should use Penance or Smite offensively to help top them off. Since you will be able to cast Power Word: Radiance in between Evangelism casts (assuming you are using this talent), you should use it as needed when the group takes damage. Be careful to not use Power Word: Radiance if you will be left without 1-2 charges for when Evangelism is off cooldown, or when the next major raid damage event is going to occur.

If the number of players you have to heal or the damage received are high, then you should use the following rotation.

1. Apply around 5 Atonement buffs using Power Word: Shield.
2. Use Power Word: Radiance once or twice about 4-5 seconds before the damage occurs (depends on the damage pattern of the encounter in question, in some cases it is best to hold a charge when there is more consistent damage).
3. Use Evangelism.
4. Use Shadowfiend/ Mindbender (not always required but is advised if there is high sustained damage).
5. Use Schism (if talented) so that it hits after damage is supposed to occur.
6. Damage Occurs
7. Use Power Word: Solace (if talented).
8. Use Penance to deal damage. Even if you take the Contrition talent, offensive Penance is superior with higher Atonement count.
9. Keep using Smite until Penance comes back off cooldown.
10. Use Penance to deal damage.
11. Use Power Word: Solace (if talented).

This provides you with approximately 2 additional ticks on your second Penance during both Power Word: Radiance Atonement durations. The higher your Haste, the more Smite casts you can fit inside this window and the more Penance ticks will occur within the Atonement window.

Depending on your talent choice, you will also supplement your AoE healing with Halo or Divine Star, but keep in mind that only the first target that these abilities damage generates Atonement healing (so you should view them as direct healing spells rather than means of doing damage).

1.3. Dungeon Healing

Dungeon healing relies on Atonement when the damage amounts are low to medium. For higher amounts of damage, you will need to make use of additional spells.

When the damage is low to medium, you should maintain Atonement on the target through using Power Word: Shield and simply perform your DPS rotation. This should provide enough healing to keep the target alive. Using Power Word: Shield this way should ensure that Atonement is always up on the target.

When the damage is high, Atonement healing will no longer suffice on its own. In addition to casting Power Word: Shield, you may have to spam Shadow Mend. In case of group-wide damage, you should use Power Word: Radiance to quickly apply 5 Atonements at 60% duration and use Schism, Power Word: Solace and Penance offensively to heal up your group. Shadowfiend or Mindbender can supplement your healing quite well in a pinch, so it is recommended to save the cooldown as best you can for packs or bosses that require the extra healing. If you have selected Shadow Covenant, you would want to follow up a Power Word: Radiance cast

1.4. Atonement Applicators

Power Word: Shield is best used in situations when you are on the move or there is low or moderate damage going out. On the other hand, Shadow Mend can be a great way to spot heal and apply Atonement in situations where you have the time to stop moving in order to cast it and when the death of the target is imminent. Power Word: Radiance provides a quick method of getting Atonement out in your group and can help in a pinch.

You should aim to maintain around 2-4 Atonement buffs active at any given time, as regularly applying and maintaining more will strain your Mana consumption and use global cooldowns that could be used for DPSing and providing more effective healing to your group.

2. Cooldown Usage for Discipline Priests

• Pain Suppression should be used on a tank, before a damage spike. Alternatively, it can be used on a raid member who is targeted by a very damaging ability.
• Power Word: Barrier should be used to mitigate intense AoE damage; it requires the raid to be stacked in one place.
• Shadowfiend should be treated as a healing cooldown that provides healing throughput during high periods of consistent damage.
• Rapture should be used when you anticipate a large amount of AoE damage. This allows you to pre-shield approximately 9-10 players with a sizable absorb, which also serves to set up Atonement on them for subsequent healing. Be aware that after Rapture expires any new Power Word: Shield casts will replace the previous buff on the target.
• Desperate Prayer provides you with a cooldown that increases your health as well as providing you with a heal equal to the amount of health increased. This is used in a situation where you need a quick self-heal or need the additional health to survive an ability.

We expand more on the cooldowns that you gain from your talents in a subsequent section.

3. Optional Read: Mastering Your Discipline Priest

While the guidelines we have given so far will enable you to perform very decently as a Discipline Priest, there are some subtleties which you need to be aware of if you want to play your character to its full potential.

3.1. Atonement

Atonement is a passive ability that causes a number of your spells ( Power Word: Shield, Shadow Mend, and Power Word: Radiance) to apply a 15-second buff (Atonement) on the target. Note that Power Word: Radiance only provides Atonement at a reduced 60% duration. While active, part of all spell damage that you deal is transferred as healing to the target(s) affected by Atonement. There is no limit to the number of targets you can have Atonement active on at any one time, and essentially all of your damage done (including from your Shadowfiend/ Mindbender) except from auto attacks results in transferred healing.

The exact amount of healing that is transferred to your Atonement targets is determined by how much Mastery you have, as Mastery: Grace increases the amount of healing on Atonement targets (including Atonement healing).

It is also important to note that Atonement heals cannot be critical hits themselves. They always mimic the behaviour of the damage that is being transferred. If the damage is a critical strike, then this is the amount on which the amount of healing will be based on. The UI will display the healing as a critical hit, but again, it is simply based on the damage amount. The implication here is that your Critical Strike chance does not double dip by increasing your chance for both critical strikes with damages and critical hits with the subsequent heals.

3.2. Absorption Effects

Discipline Priests have two absorption effects by default, and a third one that can be gained from talents.

Power Word: Shield is quite simple. You place a shield on a target, which absorbs a certain amount of damage, depending on Shields benefit from your critical strike chance, absorbing twice as much damage when this effect procs.

Damaging an enemy with Smite causes a part of of the next damage that they deal to be absorbed. This works on castable abilities as well as boss auto-attacks.

Luminous Barrier is a talent choice in the level 100 tier that provides an absorb to anyone within 40 yards when you cast it but will replace Power Word: Barrier.

3.3. Penance

We would like to make a quick note on the usage of Penance, which is to say that you can also use it directly on an ally, as a heal, instead of using it to deal damage and heal through Atonement. Situations where targeting an ally directly with Penance is superior will be quite rare; they are most likely to occur during dungeon content (including high level Mythic+), where it will essentially act as an emergency single target heal. However, if you talent into Contrition, you are more likely to cast it defensively since you will also heal all Atonement targets for a percentage of spell power. Even if talented into Contrition, you would want to cast Penance offensively when Schism is debuffing your target or you are at a high number of Atonements after casting Evangelism.

3.4. More on Cooldowns

3.4.1. Tier 1 Talents

You will obtain the benefits of Twist of Fate passively, provided that you hit a low-health target one with one of your spells. Aside from this, there is nothing for you to do about this talent except enjoy the increased healing.

Schism needs to be used in the same manner that Penance and Smite are used; when healing on Atonement targets is needed. Given it is on a moderately long cooldown, situations in which Schism is used would be to amplify your damage for burst healing. Ensure you cast all damage abilities with cooldowns (Penance, Smite and Power Word: Solace) after you cast Schism. When raiding, make sure Schism is available for your post-Evangelism DPS rotation.

3.4.2. Tier 4 Talents

If you are using Shield Discipline, then you will want to apply Power Word: Shield optimally. This means you want to ensure the shield itself will break from damage taken and not expire thus leaving you without receiving the mana return from the talent. Casting Power Word: Shield too much can happen, so be weary to not get too focused on applying Atonement with it, especially when current Atonement targets need healing.

Power Word: Solace should be used on cooldown to benefit from the Mana return. This talent is most likely to be used on encounters where there is continuous damage on your raid or party. If you have also taken the Schism talent, then make sure to time it so that you use Power Word: Solace on the target when they are debuffed by Schism (typically right after casting it).

Mindbender should be used in conjunction with Evangelism in raids (since the damage done by the Mindbender transfers as Atonement healing). In dungeons you can delay it for a short while to line it up with heavy group damage, but most likely you would want to cast this as close to on cooldown as possible.

3.4.3. Tier 5 Talents

Contrition is normally picked when spot healing requirements might require single target / spot healing during raid damage. Ideally, you would want to target someone such as the tank since they have higher health and less of your Penance is likely to go towards overhealing. Alternatively, you would use Penance on a target who is lower in health to bring them up quickly while also healing your party or raid.

Shadow Covenant should be used as close to on cooldown as possible, whenever healing is needed.

3.4.4. Tier 6 Talents

Halo and Divine Star should be used as often as possible, whenever there is a need for AoE healing.

3.4.5. Tier 7 Talents

Luminous Barrier can be used in situations where your raid or group will be spread out during periods of high damage and Power Word: Barrier cannot be effective.

Evangelism should be used in raids to extend your Atonement duration during high raid damage.

4. ChangeLog

• 11 Sep. 2018: Made several updates based on post-launch experience.
• 13 Aug. 2018: Updated for Battle for Azeroth launch.
• 28 Jul. 2018: Updated wording throughout page.
• 20 Jul. 2018: Updated raid healing section.

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