Discipline Priest Raid Guide
Welcome to the Discipline Priest Raid guide for the World of Warcraft patch 11.1! This guide covers everything you need to know to understand your character! Are you starting out and leveling up from 70? Check out the leveling guide!
Overview
Hero Talents
- Voidweaver focuses primairly on your own benefits, as it increases your damage every mini ramp, while Oracle focuses on enhancing your big healing cooldowns and providing utility to the team.
Disclaimer: WhileOracle is very strong this patch, this guide will concentrate entirely on Voidweaver until after the Race to World First has finished. This is because Oracle is more complex and currently unoptimised due to missing mythic boss timers, which means it’s likely to deliver poorer results for now.
- Every Mind Blast opens a Entropic Rift that does a lot of damage and gives you the following buffs and benefits:
- Smite is transformed into Void Blast and its Atonement healing is increased by an additional 100%.
- Voidheart
- Increases your Atonement healing massively.
- Dark Energy
- Increased Movement Speed.
- When Entropic Rift ends it collapses and does a lot of damage via Collapsing Void.
- Oracle grants you a new Ability that cycles through 4 different versions:
- Premonition of Insight
- Decreases the cooldown of the next 3 spells you cast by 7 seconds.
- Premonition of Piety
- Increases your healing done by a large amount and causes 70% of your overhealing to be redistributed.
- Premonition of Solace
- Your next Flash Heal or Renew apply a massive absorb and a 15% dr to your target.
- Premonition of Clairvoyance
- Gain the effects of all the other Premonitions.
- Premonition of Insight
Talents
When to use this Spec
This is the default loadout going into any boss unless specified otherwise. You have to adjust your class talent tree based on the utility needed for each encounter. To make your life easier, boss-specific talent loadouts are available in the Raids section.
Gameplay Altering Talents
Discover all talents that significantly alter your gameplay within the Spec and Class Talent trees. This section gives a concise overview of these talents and their applications but for a more detailed look check out the Rotation and Deep Dive sections below.
Spec Tree
- Shadow Covenant
- The most powerful buff for a Priest as it activates synergies between talents by transforming Penance and Halo into shadow spells.
- Inescapable Torment
- This talent greatly increases your damage while your pet is active and extends its duration, strengthening your Atonement windows.
- Void Summoner
- This essential talent lets you summon your pet more often. Be warned, missing Smite, Mind Blast, and Penance casts may prevent your strongest healing cooldown from being ready for the next deadly damage event.
- Schism
- Mind Blast increases your target's damage taken from your spells by 10%, so always cast it first when starting your damage rotation.
- Divine Procession
- Picking this talent extends your healing periods by a small amount.
- Indemnity
- Always start any ramp with Power Word: Shield for the longer duration Atonement.
- Protector of the Frail
- This talent grants an extra charge of Pain Suppression and reduces its cooldown with each cast of Power Word: Shield. This allows more frequent use of Pain Suppression, greatly easing difficult encounters.
Class Tree
- Phantom Reach
- Increases the range of your spells to 46 yards, which is a very powerful tool if used correctly. This allows you to reach allies even when the Raid is spread out, significantly increasing your ramp potential.
- Surge of Light
- The best recovery tool for Discipline Priests, because Flash Heal is your strongest direct heal outside of a friendly Penance. This talent helps significantly with mana management and mobility.
- Twins of the Sun Priestess
- When you cast Power Infusion on an ally, you also gain it.
- Rhapsody
- Allows you to frequently access a strong non-Atonement related group heal, useful if your Raid is stacking.
- Protective Light
- In combination with Binding Heal and Surge of Light, this talent provides a very easily accessible 10% damage reduction to yourself.
- Translucent Image
- Adds a new but weak defensive ability to the Priest class toolkit. However, when combined with Protective Light, it could save your life!
Hero Talent Tree
- Voidwraith
- Increases your cooldown strength due to it being a better version of your normal pet.
- Dark Energy
- A passive movement speed increase whenever your Entropic Rift is active.
Rotation
Tier Set
- 2-Set: Your healing spells have a chance to apply Insurance! to their targets that heals them for (1023.68% of Spell power) over 15 sec. Insurance! is consumed if an ally drops below 40% health to heal them for (614.25% of Spell power).
- 4-Set: When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed on an ally, they are granted Insurance! at 40% effectiveness. Allies with your Insurance! or absorption effects receive 15% increased healing from you.
Priority List
Only follow this list outside of any ramp sequences.
- Keep Purge the Wicked on your target.
- Cast Power Word: Shield on Cooldown.
- Cast Flash Heal on anyone in major trouble.
- KeepAtonement active on Tanks.
- Cast Mind Blast on Cooldown.
- Cast Penance on Cooldown.
- Cast Smite.
Cooldowns
Showcases of all the different cooldown sequences used by Discipline Priests in Raids.
Evangelism
- Your default ramp which results in 20 Atonements at a time. Practice this sequence outside the Raid until it is fully ingrained in your muscle memory. Make sure not to cast Renew, Power Word: Shield, or Flash Heal on yourself, as you miss out on the free Atonement from Binding Heal.
Ultimate Penitence
- The newest addition to the Discipline Priest's arsenal of powerful cooldowns, you can combine this with Evangelism if you are not playing Overloaded with Light and do not have a pet for your ramp. However, generally, you want to use it as a cooldown when your Shadowfiend is on cooldown. Make sure to target an enemy when casting this!
No Cooldown
- A sequence that does low healing and is used to avoid overcapping on Power Word: Radiance.
Deep Dive
Min maxing Shadow Covenant
- Your top priority is extending the duration of Shadow Covenant as much as possible. You do not only benefit from the buff itself, but you also gain a lot of extra mana by having your pet auto-attack more frequently.
Optimize using Power Word: Radiance
- Unless you consider your Raid's positioning in spread fights, you can't consistently achieve your 18-20 Atonement count. A simple way to increase your chance of having a higher Atonement count for your Ramps is to cast a Power Word: Radiance on a ranged player and another on a melee player. It is inadvisable to cast Power Word: Radiance on classes like Mages or Hunters, as they tend to be away from their allies, causing your Power Word: Radiance to not spread to anyone, resulting in a single Atonement.
When to cast and not to cast Halo
- Halo is not included in any of the ramp sequences in the Rotation section. Incorporate Halo into a ramp sequence if the cooldown reduction from Void Summoner is not needed. Otherwise, cast it as a healing spell outside of Atonement windows whenever the raid is taking moderate damage, or simply cast it on cooldown as it also deals great damage.
Min maxing Power Infusion
- While Power Infusion is your spell, the optimal usage is to disregard yourself and instead fully focus on your teammates. To achieve that you need to see your party members' offensive cooldown uptime. It is recommended that you use either addons or WeakAuras like those discussed in the Addon section to do this, or simply communicate with them and ask for them to request at the exact time they want it!
Understanding Mechanics
Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.
Liberation of Undermine
How To Use Your Healing Cooldowns
- These cooldowns were assigned with the primary goal of defeating the boss, rather than maximizing raw HPS.
Boss Tips
- Defensives
- Use Desperate Prayer when targeted by Incendiary Fire.
- Externals
- Use Pain Suppression as a personal defensive.
- Paradox
- Other healers make better use of Spatial Paradox.
- General
- Only go into bikes at the start of phases as Exhaust Fumes becomes stronger each time.
How To Use Your Healing Cooldowns
- These cooldowns were assigned with the primary goal of defeating the boss, rather than maximizing raw HPS.
Boss Tips
- Defensives
- Use Desperate Prayer during Colossal Clash to survive being hit by waves.
- Externals
- Use Pain Suppression as a personal defensive.
- Paradox
- Other healers make better use of it in this encounter.
How To Use Your Healing Cooldowns
- This boss got reworked after testing. Cooldowns will be provided after the race is finished!
Boss Tips
- Defensives
- Use Desperate Prayer when targeted by Sound Cannon.
- Externals
- Use Pain Suppression as a personal defensive.
- Paradox
- Other healers make better use of it in this boss encounter.
- General
- Cast Stampeding Roar in the intermission to help people reaching the overloaded amplifiers.
How To Use Your Healing Cooldowns
- This boss got reworked after testing. Cooldowns will be provided after the race is finished!
Boss Tips
- Defensives
- Rotate your defensives when Sonic Ba-Boom overlaps with Foot-Blasters at the start and at the end of each phase.
- Externals
- Use Pain Suppression as a personal defensive.
- Paradox
- Other healers make better use of it in this encounter.
- General
- Use Stampeding Roar during the intermission to help your team reach the boss quicker.
How To Use Your Healing Cooldowns
- These cooldowns were assigned with the primary goal of defeating the boss, rather than maximizing raw HPS.
Boss Tips
- Defensives
- Use Desperate Prayer when targeted with Incinerator.
- Externals
- Use your Pain Suppression as a personal defensive on this encounter.
- Paradox
- Other healers make better use of it in this encounter.
How To Use Your Healing Cooldowns
- This boss got reworked after testing. Cooldowns will be provided after the race is finished!
Boss Tips
- Defensives
- Rotate through your defensive arsenal when Foul Exhaust overlaps with another mechanic.
- Externals
- Use Pain Suppression as a personal defensive.
- Paradox
- Other healers make better use of it in this encounter..
Stat Priority
Understand your secondary stat priority and the tertiary stats needed for optimal performance during Raid boss fights as a Discipline Priest. For more detailed information, visit the Stats and Attributes guide.
The Conclusion here is that you want to equip the highest item level generally.
- All secondary stats are affected by diminishing returns. Click here to learn more!
Tertiary
- Avoidance - Reduces damage taken from AoE effects.
- Leech - Returns a portion of your damage and healing done as healing to you. (Excludes self healing)
- Speed - increases movement speed. (Does stack with other movement speed abilities)
The only time you should think about picking a lower item level is if it has Leech or Avoidance. Speed is nice to have, but you shouldn't consider this stat when choosing between two items.
- Here is a showcase of how powerful Leech is for a Healer: Breakdown of Mythic Fyrakk

Gear
Due to the way stat weights work for Discipline Priests, there isn't a strict best-in-slot list. Although it is theoretically possible to obtain items with all the correct Tertiaries, doing so requires extraordinary luck or several human lifespans because of the weekly reset system in World of Warcraft.
Slot | Item | Location |
---|---|---|
Head | Confessor's Unshakable Halo | Tier/Catalyst |
Neck | Strapped Rescue-Keg | Cinderbrew Meadery |
Shoulder | Confessor's Unshakable Radiance | Tier/Catalyst |
Cloak | Test Pilot's Go-Pack | Sproketmonger |
Chest | Confessor's Unshakable Vestment | Tier/Catalyst |
Wrist | Consecrated Cuffs | Crafting |
Gloves | Confessor's Unshakable Mitts | Tier/Catalyst |
Belt | Refiner's Conveyor Belt | Sprocketmonger |
Legs | Pit Doctor's Petticoat | Vexie |
Boots | Confessor's Unshakable Boots | Catalyst |
Ring 1 | The Jastor Diamond | Gallywix |
Ring 2 | Cyrce's Circlet | Siren Island |
Trinket 1 | House of Cards | One-Armed Bandit |
Trinket 2 | Eye of Kezan | Gallywix |
Weapon | Stix's Metal Detector | Stix |
Off-Hand | Vagabond's Torch | Crafting |
Authors Note:
This list shows the best items for healing in Raids from all sources. Keep in mind that getting different tier pieces with Leech / Avoidance changes which off-piece is best for you. Likewise, any other non-trinket item with Leech / Avoidance replaces the one suggested here.
Below you are presented with a good list of farmable alternatives that are obtainable outside of WoW’s weekly lockout system. While replaced in time as you progress, these offer immediate character power.
Slot | Item | Location |
---|---|---|
Head | Inventor's Ingenious Trifocals | Mechagon |
Neck | Strapped Rescue-Keg | Cinderbrew Meadery |
Shoulder | Shoulderguards of Fraying Sanity | Mechagon |
Cloak | Electrician's Siphoning Filter | Floodgate |
Chest | Saboteur's Rubber Jacket | Floodgate |
Wrist | Rixxa's Sweat-Wicking Cuffs | Motherlode |
Gloves | Punctured Apiary Gloves | Cinderbrew Meadery |
Belt | Ringmaster's Cummerbund | Mechagon |
Legs | Ancient Hardened Legwraps | Rookery |
Boots | Deranged Alchemist's Slippers | Motherlode |
Ring 1 | Footbomb Championship Ring | Motherlode |
Ring 2 | Bloodoath Signet | Theater of Pain |
Trinket 1 | Signet of the Priory | Priory of the Sacred Flame |
Trinket 2 | Carved Blazikon Wax | Darkflame Cleft |
Two-Hand Weapon | Neural Synapse Enhancer | Mechagon |
One-Hand Weapon | Electrifying Cognitive Amplifier | Mechagon |
Off-Hand | Deathwalker's Promise | Theater of Pain |
Trinkets
Below you can find active and passive alternatives to our recommended trinkets. Do note that some trinkets are better than others depending on the scenario.
Passive Trinket alternatives
- Reverb Radio
- A strong stat stick, providing you a lot of haste.
- Mug's Moxie Jug
- A strong crit stat stick.
- Mister Pick-Me-Up
- Good amount of healing, better while still learning the spec or encounter.
Embellishments
- Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension
- Very strong stat stick that gives you a high amount of a random secondary stat that changes every 8 seconds.
- Writhing Armor Banding
- Doubles the effect of your Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension.
Remaining Sparks
- Crafted items are 675 item level and regular items are 678 on max item level, therefore, it's not beneficial to equip crafted items outside of your 2x embellishments unless you don't have access to other high item level gear on that slot.
Consumables
- Phials
- Flask of Tempered Swiftness
- Food
- Feast of the Divine Day
- Combat Potion
- Algari Mana Potion -- Recommended
- Potion Bomb of Recovery
- Health Potion
- Algari Healing Potion
- Weapon Oil
- Algari Mana Oil
- Augment Rune
- Crystallized Augment Rune
- Sockets
- Masterful Emerald
- Culminating Blasphemite -- Unique, use one of each gem colour to enhance your Blasphemite.
- Quick Ruby
- Quick Sapphire
- Quick Onyx
Enchantments
Helm | S.A.D. |
Neck | Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
Cloak | Enchant Cloak - Chant of Leeching Fangs |
Chest | Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance |
Wrist | Enchant Bracer - Whisper of Armored Leech S.A.D. |
Belt | S.A.D. |
Legs | Daybreak Spellthread |
Boots | Enchant Boots - Scout's March |
Ring 1 | Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
Ring 2 | Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste Magnificent Jeweler's Setting 2x |
Weapon | Enchant Weapon - Stormrider's Fury |
You buy S.A.D. from the Great Vault Vendor to add sockets to your Helm, Wrists and Belt.
Races
For min-maxing a Discipline Priest in Mythic Raiding, different racial traits can provide a tremendous benefit to your characters. If this is not your top goal, picking a race that fits your style works just as well.
- Rocket Jump -- Goblin
- Jump forward, can be cast while falling or being knocked.
- Spatial Rift -- Void elf
- Spawn a shadow traveling into your facing direction, activate again to teleport to it.
- Maximum range of 100 yards.
Recommendation:
It is highly recommended to play a Goblin! Priests can be pretty slow-moving, and the Goblin's extra mobility really helps in those sticky situations.
Macros
Discover recommended macros for Discipline Priest during Raid encounters and watch a quick video guide on creating simple macros for your character.
All spells in this Discipline Priest Raid Guide are available as mouseover macros for your convenience!
Penance
/cast [@mouseover, help] Penance; Penance
Power Word: Shield
/cast [@mouseover, help] Power Word: Shield; Power Word: Shield
Power Word: Radiance
/cast [@mouseover, help] Power Word: Radiance; Power Word: Radiance
Renew
/cast [@mouseover, help] Renew; Renew
Flash Heal
/cast [@mouseover, help] Flash Heal; Flash Heal
Power Infusion
/cast [@mouseover,exists] Power Infusion; Power Infusion
Leap of Faith
/cast [@mouseover, help] Leap of Faith; Leap of Faith
Pain Suppression
/cast [@mouseover, help] Pain Suppression; Pain Suppression
If you press shift while using this macro you get the Angelic Feather automatically placed under you, skipping the control click.
/cast [mod:shift, @player] Angelic Feather; Angelic Feather
Replace your Purify macro if you wish. This macro makes it so that if you target an enemy you purge and if you target an ally you dispel, saving you a keybind.
#showtooltip Purify
/use [@mouseover, help] Purify; [harm] Dispel Magic; [noharm] Purify
Your Mass Dispel instantly goes off when you press the button without having to confirm click, use with caution.
#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Mass Dispel
A nice little Priest only macro, if you know you know.
/cast [nomod] Levitate
/cancelaura [mod:shift] Levitate
Addons
Below, you see a screenshot of the author's User Interface for their Discipline Priest, outlining which addons are used and how they are utilized in Raids to make your life easier.

- OmniCD -- Party CD Tracker
- Addon to track your party members' Cooldowns, mandatory for M+
- ElvUI / BetterBlizzFrames -- Party/Raidframe Addon
- WeakAuras -- Jack of all trades
- WeakAura allows players to create and customize graphical displays of game information. These displays, known as "auras" can show various aspects such as buffs, debuffs, cooldowns, health, and other important events.
- Plater -- Nameplate Addon
- Plater is a nameplate addon with an extraordinary amount of settings, out of the box debuff tracking, threat coloring, and support for scripting similar to WeakAuras + the WeakAuras-Companion for Mod/Script/Profile updates.
- BigWigs -- BossMods Addon
- BigWigs is a boss encounter add-on. It consists of many individual encounter scripts, or boss modules; mini add-ons that are designed to trigger alert messages, timer bars, sounds, and so forth, for one specific raid encounter.
- Details -- Damage Meter
- Shows you Damage/Healing throughout the dungeon
These WeakAuras are recommended for optimal performance in raids as a Discipline Priest.
Power Word: Life Glow
Glows your frame when Power Word: Life is useable

Stamina Tracker
Shows an icon when you need to buff stamina

Power Infusion Handler
Notifies you when someone requests PI of you

Atonement Tracker
Shows your active amount of Atonements

Changes this Patch
PRIEST
- Hero Talents
- Voidweaver
- Developers’ notes: We are cleaning up some interactions between Mindbender and Voidwraith to reduce its effectiveness for Discipline. In addition, we're compensating Shadow to tune Voidweaver up in comparison to Archon and to make up for the reductions to Voidwraith.
- Voidwraith's damage is now reduced by 25% when talented into Mindbender.
- Voidwraith's cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes (was 2 minutes), now matching Shadowfiend's cooldown.
- Voidweaver
- Discipline
- Developers' notes: The goal of these changes is to reduce the number of cooldowns Discipline has access to and bake some of that power into other abilities. In addition, we're resolving some pain points in the talent tree and making it easier to quickly get Atonements on allies by moving Overloaded with Light into a more central location. Finally, we're re-theming Purge the Wicked into a Shadow spell so that Twilight Equilibrium can be more consistently activated.
- New Talent: Divine Procession – Smite extends the duration of an active Atonement by 3 seconds.
- New Talent: Inner Focus – Flash Heal, Power Word: Shield, Penance, Power Word: Radiance, and Power Word: Life have a 20% increased chance to critically heal.
- Purge the Wicked renamed to Encroaching Shadows and has been updated – Now causes Shadow Word: Pain to spread instead of overriding Shadow Word: Pain with a new spell.
- Aegis of Wrath has been renamed to Eternal Barrier and has been updated – No longer decays over time and instead increases the duration of Power Word: Shield by 5 seconds and its absorption by 20% (was 30%).
- Void Summoner has been updated – Now reduces the cooldown of Shadowfiend, Mindbender, or Voidwraith by 50%.
- Void Summoner now only triggers from Mind Blast and Penance casts. Void Summoner reduces the cooldown of Shadowfiend by 8 seconds or Mindbender by 4 seconds (was 4 seconds and 2 seconds).
- Evangelism healing increased by 40%.
- Evangelism now heals all targets affected by Atonement for 4200% spell power, split amongst targets healed. Evangelism continues to extend Atonement by 6 seconds and its visual has been updated.
- Contrition has been made baseline and now logs as Penance healing.
- Penance damage and healing increased by 50%.
- The cooldown of Penance is now reduced by Haste.
- Developers' notes: Penance has many stacking modifiers that affect its power, which has made it feel weak when the player doesn’t have all these modifiers active. We would like Penance to still feel good on its own, so we’re reducing the effectiveness of Power of the Dark Side and Harsh Discipline while also increasing the base damage and healing of Penance.
- Penance healing now triggers Divine Aegis.
- Harsh Discipline now only increases the number of Penance bolts by 1 per talent point invested (was up to 2). The buff will continue to stack up to 2 times but will now represent charges instead of increasing the number of bolts per stack.
- Power of the Dark Side increases the damage and healing of Penance by 30% (was 50%).
- Power Word: Shield absorption increased by 15%.
- Power Word: Radiance healing radius increased to 40 yards (was 30 yards).
- Luminous Barrier healing increased by 20%.
- Smite damage increased by 25%.
- Shadow Word: Pain damage increased by 44%.
- Developers' notes: Shadow Word: Pain should be an important part of Discipline’s healing on Atonement targets to provide a steady stream of healing over time. Its damage has been weaker than we would like, especially compared to other spells in the kit like Entropic Rift, so we’re bringing it up and reducing Entropic Rift’s damage. This has a side effect of boosting Oracle’s damage comparatively to Voidweaver.
- Expiation no longer increases the damage of Shadow Word: Death and Mind Blast. Instead, it now deals damage equal to 200% of the duration consumed from Shadow Word: Pain.
- Indemnity increases the duration of Atonement applied by Power Word: Shield by 4 seconds (was 3 seconds).
- Ultimate Penitence now shields the Priest for 100% of their health (was 50%).
- Priests may now slowly move during Ultimate Penitence and can control their landing upon finishing the channel.
- Pain and Suffering increases the damage of Shadow Word: Pain by 15/30% (was 7/15%).
- Pain and Suffering now increases the duration of Shadow Word: Pain by 2 seconds per talent point invested.
- Divine Aegis no longer triggers from periodic healing or Atonement or causes Power Word: Shield critical heals to be stronger. Absorption increased to 30% (was 5%).
- Divine Aegis now displays on raid frames.
- Atonement’s heal impact visual is now hidden for allies in raids and dungeons.
- Several talents have changed positions in the talent tree.
- The following talents have been removed:
- Heaven's Wrath
- Rapture
- Train of Thought
- Oracle
- New Talent: Twinsight – 3 additional Penance bolts are fired at an enemy within 40 yards when healing an ally with Penance or fired at an ally within 40 yards when damaging an enemy with Penance.
- Premonition now has 2 charges baseline.
- Divine Providence has been removed.
- Voidweaver
- Entropic Rift damage reduced by 20%.
- Voidwraith grants the reduced effectiveness version of Shadow Covenant while talented into Mindbender.
- Voidwraith now returns 0.2% mana when talented into Mindbender (was 0.5%).
FAQ
A: Start using Pain Suppression as your own defensive cooldown.
A: You are missing to many global cooldowns, and don't have enough Shadow Covenant uptime.
Credits
Written By: Rycn
Reviewed By: Velo