PvE Discipline Priest Rotations & Cooldowns

As a healer, the Discipline Priest has less of a set rotation and more of a priority system. You’ll be performing triage with your healing abilities and weaving in damage while using your cooldowns to maximize your output and minimize your mana usage.

Spell Priority

Inner Will should only be used if you expect to be casting a lot of expensive instant-cast spells, namely Power Word: Shield. Otherwise you should always maintain Inner Fire for its Spell Power bonus.

1. Cast Power Word: Shield in the following circumstances:
   • On a tank before the pull.
   • On any target who is in danger of immediate death.
   • On any target who is about to take a big hit.
   • On a tank or other high-priority target to trigger Rapture if it is off cooldown.
2. Cast Flash Heal if a target needs immediate emergency healing.
3. Cast Greater Heal on any target who is missing a lot of health.
4. Cast Penance on cooldown, taking the following into account:
   • Casting it on an ally will give them 3 stacks of Grace in one go and is optimal for tank healing.
   • If your tank doesn’t need it, casting Penance offensively for Atonement healing is preferable.
   • It can benefit from Borrowed Time without consuming the buff, so try to cast it after Power Word: Shield but before another cast-time spell so you can benefit from the buff twice!
5. Cast Prayer of Mending on a tank before the pull and every time it’s off cooldown.
6. Cast Divine Star on cooldown if you chose this talent, if the raid is positioned for it, and if there are at least a handful of players missing health.
7. Cast Cascade or Halo if you chose one of these talents and most of the raid is missing health.
8. Cast Prayer of Healing on a party where at least 3 of the targets are missing health.
9. Cast Binding Heal if both you and another teammate are missing health.
10. Cast Renew on priority targets who are taking damage if the target has Weakened Soul and your Prayer of Mending is on cooldown.
11. Cast Heal to top off a target if there isn’t more urgent healing to be done and you can’t rely on healing the target through Atonement.
12. Cast Holy Fire or Power Word: Solace on cooldown when possible to build Evangelism and to apply the DoT if you are using Glyph of Smite.
13. Cast Smite anytime you’re not doing something else in order to build and maintain Evangelism while healing through Atonement and contributing some extra DPS.

Atonement Healing

The strength of a Discipline Priest is in their flexibility. You will not be able to heal exclusively through Atonement for most fights. Much of the Disc Priest learning curve is around figuring out when you can afford to deal damage and when you need to use your direct heals and cooldowns. That said, you should absolutely be making use of Atonement as much as possible. This mechanic is the main reason that groups bring a Disc Priest, and it can make all the difference on encounters with tight DPS checks.

The following simplified rotation will maximize your damage and healing for Atonement. Remember to take advantage of the Evangelism stacks you’ll be building by using Archangel whenever you need to do some extra healing (but don’t feel obligated to use it just because it’s off CD – your Evangelism stacks are more useful for DPS).

1. Swap to your direct healing priority list above if damage becomes too heavy for Atonement.
2. Use Penance on cooldown on an enemy target to deal damage.
3. Use Holy Fire or Power Word: Solace on cooldown.
4. Use Divine Star or Halo if AoE damage (and/or healing) is needed and you have mana to burn.
5. Use Smite otherwise.
   • Avoid starting a Smite cast if Penance will come off cooldown while you are casting it.

Although Shadow Word: Death can do good damage on enemies below 20% health, it doesn’t trigger Evangelism or Atonement, and it will often miss since Divine Fury does not affect it. It’s therefore recommended to skip it, especially for raid bosses where the Hit cap is so high.

Important Cooldowns

In addition to your core healing spells, you have a number of abilities with longer cooldowns that you’ll want to utilize in opportune moments.

Healing & Defensive Cooldowns

• Archangel
  Use this whenever you’ve built up 5 Evangelism stacks unless you are currently focused on DPS, in which case you should save it for when you need to heal again. It’s got a short cooldown and will give you back some mana on top of buffing your healing done.
• Desperate Prayer (Talent)
  Heals you for a nice chunk of your health on a 2-minute cooldown. If you have this talent, remember to use it! It can only be used on yourself.
• Fade
  Fade has niche usefulness if you need to drop aggro when adds spawn. Otherwise it’s mostly useful as a small defensive cooldown when used with Glyph of Fade.
• Inner Focus
  Makes your next direct heal cheaper and guaranteed to crit (and proc Divine Aegis) on a short 45-second cooldown. It’s rarely worth holding onto this; just go ahead and use it on cooldown so you can use it as many times as possible over the course of the fight. It doesn’t trigger the global cooldown, so you can cast it at the same time as another spell, making it ideal for use in a macro.
• Pain Suppression
  This is your primary tank cooldown, reducing the damage your target takes by 40% for 8 seconds. Use it when someone is taking a dangerous amount of damage, or as part of a defensive cooldown rotation with your tank and other healers.
• Power Infusion (Talent)
  At one time this spell could be used on other players, but now it’s exclusively yours! It provides a powerful 20% spell haste, 5% damage, and 20% mana cost reduction for all of your spells for 20 seconds. Best used for direct healing due to the mana cost reduction, but you can also use it for Smiting if you’re trying to squeeze out every drop of damage you can.
• Power Word: Barrier
  This is a kind of raid-wide Pain Suppression. Use this it to mitigate heavy raid damage. You can even use it on the tank alone as an extra cooldown in a tank rotation.
• Spectral Guise (Talent)
  Using this ability will force enemies to un-target you. It can be used to break abilities like Fixate when they are cast on you. Beyond that, there’s also a way to “cheese” this spell to drop combat, assuming Blizzard doesn’t fix it for MoP Classic. You just have to cancel the effect before it expires (by clicking it off or using a macro). Keep in mind that this stealth effect doesn’t allow you to avoid damage, and it will break if you cast any spells.
• Spirit Shell
  A powerful cooldown that converts all of your healing from Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Healing into absorption effects for the next 10 seconds. Best used ahead of big AoE damage to pre-shield your entire raid, but you can also use it with your single-target heals to stack absorbs on your tank. Note that this ability doesn’t scale with Archangel, so the two cooldowns are best used separately.
• Void Shift
  You can use this to save another player who is about to take a deathblow, or even to save yourself. Just remember that you (or the other player) will be very low and will probably need immediate healing afterward. It can be a good idea to use Desperate Prayer or another personal cooldown alongside this for that reason.

Mana Cooldowns

• Hymn of Hope
  This is a powerful mana cooldown for your entire raid group, but it requires you to stand still and channel it (and not heal) for up to 8 seconds (reduced by your Haste). Look for the best time to use it so you don’t waste its cooldown or fall too far behind on healing during its channel time. It’s a good idea to call out when you use this so that your team can pair it with their other mana cooldowns, because it not only restores mana but increases maximum mana, so any abilities that restore a percentage of your total mana will restore more while it is active. The mana return effect always prioritizes healers, even if there are other casters in your raid with zero mana.
• Shadowfiend/Mindbender (Talent)
  This is your main personal mana cooldown. Make sure it’s hitting something or it won’t give you anything. You can cast it right before Hymn of Hope to maximize the mana return you get from it, since your maximum mana will be higher while you channel that spell. If you want your Shadowfiend to benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp, you must summon it after the buff has gone out.

Utility Spells

Discipline Priests have a variety of useful utility spells that also bear mentioning.

Crowd Control

• Dominate Mind (Talent)
• Psyfiend (Talent)
• Psychic Scream
• Shackle Undead
• Void Tendrils (Talent)

Movement

• Angelic Feather (Talent)
• Leap of Faith
• Levitate

Buffs

• Fear Ward
• Inner Fire
• Inner Will
• Power Word: Fortitude
  • Doesn’t stack with Commanding Shout, Dark Intent, or Qiraji Fortitude.

Dispels

• Dispel Magic
• Mass Dispel
• Purify

Revive

• Mass Resurrection
• Resurrection