Discipline Priest Healer Guide - The War Within 11.1

By AutomaticJak Updated: 2025/02/28

Discipline Priest OverviewAtonementAtonementShadow CovenantMindbender Discipline Priest Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Weaknesses

Discipline Priest Cheat Sheet Discipline Priest Changes with Patch 11.1Void SummonerSmiteDivine ProcessionSmiteEvangelismUltimate PenitenceEvangelismAtonementUltimate PenitenceRapturePower Word: ShieldPurge the WickedShadow Word: PainPenancePurge the Wicked Discipline Priest Hero Talents: Voidweaver and Oracle Mind BlastAtonementSmiteVoid BlastShadow CovenantMind BlastShadow CovenantPremonitionPremonition of InsightPremonition of PietyPremonition of SolacePremonitionTwinsightPenance Playing a Discipline Priest in AtonementPower Word: RadiancePower Word: ShieldRenewFlash HealAtonementPower Word: Radiance

Always Be Casting - While your damage abilities are incredibly important for healing your allies, they also extend the duration of your Atonement buffs on allies. Always be casting Penance and Smite during downtime to make the most of your Atonement buffs.

Discipline is a "Ramping" Healer - Discipline thrives in a raid environment where they are covering specific and consistent damage events that they can prepare for. Sites like Lorrgs are amazing when preparing for raid encounters so you can observe trends where other players used their cooldowns to burst the most healing. Knowing what mechanics you are going to be "ramping" up your Atonement count and then unleashing a flurry of damage abilities is absolutely imperative to your success. Furthermore, Discipline does not heal in steady quantities. A common mistake for new Disc players is applying 2-3 Atonements, dealing damage, then repeating. Instead you should be focusing on large "ramps" of Atonements that you follow up with damage, spending specific periods only applying Atonements followed by moments where you are only damaging to squeeze out value from those Atonements.

Mythic+ Healing Can Be Polarizing - Like in a raid environment, when you have Shadow Covenant uptime, you are at your strongest. While in a raid you can count on other healers to produce heavy healing while you are in your cooldown period, in dungeons you need to be prepared for when you are lacking Shadow Covenant uptime. That means smart usage of the revamped Evangelism which has a flat heal split between all allies with Atonement or your damage reduction in Pain Suppression and Power Word: Barrier is key to mitigating damage on your allies when you are not as easily able to heal them up.

Gearing a Discipline Priest in Haste > Mastery > Critical Strike >> Versatility. IntellectQuestionably Epic Live What Professions are Best for Discipline Priest?TailoringBest in Slot gear What Race is Best for Discipline Priest?Wowhead Profiles

This guide is written and maintained by Jak, Healer for Incarnate on US-Tichondrius, Author of the Holy and Discipline Priest Guides.

You can catch Jak on Twitter, Youtube and streaming on Twitch if you want to check out more of his content!

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Tags: PvE

Comments

Comment by LoKHor

Great guide. I just specced into disc after hearing good things about it (priest alt but I miss the old TBC and Wrath heroic dungeon healing).

Looking forward to getting to 120 and testing out the spec / relearning how to heal.

You may like to remove the artifact weapon section.

Comment by Regitsu

The nerfs to this healing class are pretty significant, I am not sure if this is a viable healing class any longer. Discipline Priest is a unique healing class with no Hots all have to be pre-emptive. Atonement took a 5% debuff, Smite took a 9% debuff, for a total of 14%. Holy Nova took a considerable debuff but there has always been problems with holy Nova since Warlords of Draenor. My concern is why drop an expansion and 2 patches later change power word Shield. Weakend soul the debuff is now reapplied for a healing Class that was already struggling for AOE healing. Rapture took a 40% decrease which was not listed on the new guides. These nerfs look unnecessary for a healing class that was never on top anyway.

Comment by ridiculousq

Awesome guide. tyvm jak

Comment by Zingerbro

awesome! thx

Comment by Nanee

22.01.2019/ Tested in Uldir Heroic last ones and Uldir Mythic 1st bosses - that nerf was slight and didn't touch PvE healing much.
I guess it was more for the PvP stuff, on Arena Disc priests now gets malested, but in raids and Mythic+ it is almost the same, just need to spamm shadowmend quite often (ALOT more often xD), Shamans and Druids are healing gr8 now, so we aren't OP but still in the same numbers as they are, just slightly bigger numbers ^_^

Comment by VinciousM

One thing I’d like to point out: a lot of new disc priests probably come here and there’s one thing in the guide that’s misleading: using PW:S to apply atonements to allies is a BIG no. It’s a waste of mana. Applying it through Shadow Mend, especially outside of burst windows, is a lot more efficient.

Unless the person is about to literally die unless they get the shield and/or you have to move then it’s okay, but shadow mend is the better choice.

When it comes to full ramp and you wanna pop rapture of course you use it, but other than that you really shouldn’t need to.

Comment by BubbleTria

Fantastic guide, thank you for putting it together!

Just a quite note, when you're on some of the tabs (like Essences) another tab called "Simulations" becomes available, but if you click it, it takes you to a dead page, the simulation tab doesn't appear on the overview so might be a bug?

Comment by Mikkoto

Great and useful guide. It helped me very much.
I am still having issues using Rapture over Spirit Shell in dungeons. For a reason I feel more comfortable running Spirit Shell in M+ as well.

Comment by AndreasBW1978

My comment relates to spirit shell. The nerf to 80% was corrected and increased again slightly to 85%. At least that's what I see in the game with my discipline priest on 13.03.2021 on the german server Antonidas.

Comment by Care

NEW DISCIPLINE PRIEST PVP TALENT SUGGESTION

#tooltip Assimilate
Assimilate causes your next Power Word: Shield to become undispellable, purgeable or 'spell stolen' for it's entire duration or until broken.

This could work as a great pvp talent for Discipline Priest due to it not being extremely overpowered and a nice addition to damage prevention during enemy offensive cooldowns. There is certainly room to improve or nerf the ability throughout the next triple threat expansions seasons, some of these suggestions can be found below:

Your next 3 Power Word: Shield's' take this effect which works well with the new adaption to the Rapture talent.

Assimilate also reduces all damage taken by 15% when it is broken or finishes it's full duration.

For the next 10 seconds Assimilate causes ALL Power Word: Shield's to be undispellable, purgeable or spell stolen.

Nerf suggestions could include:

Assimilate is now dispellable and the player who had the shield dispelled or spell stolen will instantly receive 50% healing from the total shield amount immediately upon dispel.

Assimilate causes your next Power Word: Shield to be undispellable or purged but can be spell stolen. The effect does not transfer onto the stolen Power Word: Shield only the absorption amount.

Notes on the ability name creation:
1. to learn (information, a procedure, etc) and understand it thoroughly
2. to absorb (food) and incorporate it into the body tissues
3. to become absorbed, incorporate, or learned and understood
4. to bring or come into harmony; adjust or become adjusted

Comment by Baboocha

Hi, can someone explain why it is recommended to Skill Mindbender even tho we get the Voidwrath from the Hero Talents as an upgrade from Shadowfiend in the Priest Tree? I have unlearned Mindbender and Voidwrath seems to be still excactly the same as with Mindbender. First i thought you will get both but this iisn't the case either. Maybe this has a specific reason. please help.

Comment by Viking101

Why are we taking Miraculous Recovery on the hero talents?

Discipline Priest Healer Guide - The War Within 11.1

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