- Author: Luxrah
- Date: March 24, 2025
- Updated: May 19, 2025
- Expansion: Mists of Pandaria
Discipline Priests in Mists of Pandaria will be looking to stack a mix of stats that provides them with the mana regeneration they need while also enhancing their healing and damage. You’ll need to know how to prioritize these stats so you can select the appropriate gear, gems, enchants, and consumables as well as for reforging, which is also covered in this guide.
Stat Priority
Your stat priority will focus on reaching a comfortable level of mana regen through Spirit, and then stacking stats that will benefit your damage and healing through Atonement as well as your absorption effects.
- Spirit (until mana is not an issue)
- Intellect
- Spell Power
- Critical Strike
- Mastery
- Haste
Spirit is the primary mana regeneration stat for all healers in Mists of Pandaria, with raw MP5 having gone away in Cataclysm. Priest healers gain 50% of their Spirit-based mana regeneration while in combat thanks to their Meditation passive effect. The amount of Spirit you need comes down to how comfortable you feel with your mana pool. Once you get to the point where you are not burning through your mana on a typical fight, you can start dropping some Spirit in favor of throughput stats. Until then, it’s more valuable to you than throughput stats since you can’t do much of anything if you run out of mana. All healers have a static mana pool in Mists of Pandaria, so mana regeneration is the only way to extend your mana.
- Each point of Spirit equals about 0.56 mana regained per 5 seconds.
Humans gain 3% more value from Spirit due to their The Human Spirit racial passive.
Intellect is your primary stat as a Discipline Priest, and you’ll want as much of it as you can get. Intellect is the main source of your Spell Power and also increases your Critical Strike. (Note that in Mists of Pandaria, it no longer increases your mana pool.) Your Mysticism passive effect increases your Intellect by 5%, adding further value to every point you acquire. You can’t reforge other stats to Intellect, so you’ll want to get as much as you can from your gear, although you will still want to avoid items that have completely useless stats for you such as Hit.
Hit is not a necessary stat for Discipline Priests. Your Divine Fury passive ability will guarantee that your important spells for Atonement are Hit capped and never miss. Hit is not worth stacking for the sake of other abilities such as crowd control.
Spell Power directly increases the damage and healing of your spells. Most of your Spell Power will come from your Intellect at a 1:1 ratio, but you will occasionally see it as a secondary stat on certain items such as weapons and trinkets. Each of your spells has its own coefficient that determines how much its effect is multiplied by your Spell Power. It’s worth noting that this stat does double duty for Atonement healing.
Critical Strike increases your chance of getting a critical hit with your spells, doubling their damage or healing. Crits tend to be a little iffy for healing since you can’t make them happen when you really need them, and they usually amount to wasted overheal when you don’t. But this stat has added value for Discipline Priests for a couple of reasons. For one, your absorbs can also crit, and absorption effects are less likely to overheal since they linger on the target waiting to be used. Your critical heals also proc your Divine Aegis effect, further boosting the absorption effects you have up on your target(s). Finally, your crits also boost your damage and therefore your Atonement healing, which makes this stat do double duty for you as a Disc Priest.
- Every 600 points of Critical Strike is equal to 1% increased crit chance.
Mastery increases the strength of your healing and absorption effects through your Shield Discipline passive effect. Your absorbs gain double the benefit from this buff as your other healing effects. This stat doesn’t help your damage, but your heals and Divine Aegis will still benefit from it, making this more valuable than Haste even for Atonement healing.
- Every 300 points of Mastery increases Shield Discipline by 1%.
Haste has the least value to Discipline Priests for a few different reasons. For one, many of the Disc Priest’s spells are instant cast, so they don’t benefit from making your casting speed quicker. Second, while many classes have breakpoints at which they can gain additional ticks of their spells over the duration, that doesn’t really apply to Disc Priests. Penance and Hymn of Hope simply channel faster and do not gain additional ticks. Renew is their only spell with notable breakpoints, and it’s not a significant spell in the Disc Priest’s arsenal. Third, Haste increases your throughput by speeding up the timeline of your casts, which also means spending your mana faster – a cost that you don’t get with Mastery or Critical Strike.
- Every 425 points of Haste is equal to 1% increased casting speed.
Goblins gain 1% increased Haste from their Time is Money racial passive.- Discipline Priests have no Haste breakpoints that are worth pursuing.
Reforging
Reforging can only be done for secondary stats, so you won’t be able to alter the Intellect or Stamina on your gear. Discipline Priests will want to reforge less valuable stats to Spirit until they are comfortable with their mana supply. After that, Spirit and other less valuable stats can be reforged into Critical Strike, followed by Mastery.
- Spirit (until no mana concerns)
- Critical Strike
- Mastery
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About the Author
1) crit vs mastery
2) other stats
1) crit vs mastery
After 12.5% crit, mastery will gives you more total defensive bonus (heal+absorb).
Why? Lets caclulate.
You spam smites, lets say each of them heals 100 (easier calculation).
How crit works? When smite crits, the heal will be the same, however the target gain 100 absorb also.
So it means 10 smite will be:
50% crit ➜ 1000heal + 500absorb
How mastery works?
Increases the heal (50%) and absorb(100%).
For example: u have 50% crit & 50% mastery:
50% crit ➜ 1000heal + 500absorb
+50 mastery ➜ 1250heal + 750absorb
So if u have:
12.5% crit: 1000heal + 125absorb
+1% crit (600rating) = 1000heal + 135absorb ➜ [+10]
+1.6% mastery (600rating*) = 1008heal + 127absorb ➜ [+10]
62.5% crit: 1000heal + 625absorb
+1% crit (600rating) = 1000heal + 635absorb ➜ [+10]
+1.6% mastery (600rating*) = 1008heal + 635absorb ➜ [+18]
So: above 12.5% crit, the mastery gives u more defensive (heal+absorb) bonus
So: above 62.5% crit, the mastery gives u more absorb bonus
Note1: crit also incrases dmg if it’s matter
Note2: heal can be overheal, absorb might be more useful. However if your heal is an overheal with atonement, then doesn’t really matter at all which stat do u have (cause u dont really need heal that time). But still absorb is better because it can avoid next attacks also => that’s why num2 rota(pw:s) is better for that imho.
*375 mastery rating needs for 1% mastery vs 600 crit rating for 1% crit
2) haste, spirit, sp(int)
Much harder to calculate. For SP~Int we should known the formula of the spells, I tried to calculate but given up.
Haste requires 425 rating for 1% => if u have enough mana it’s also better than crit (in total defensive bonus).
Good food for thought. A Smite crit should still do more healing than a non-crit because it does more damage, and Atonement heals for 90% of the damage it does. It looks like you may be calculating crit vs. crit+mastery there?
Either way, you may be right that Mastery pulls ahead on combined healing+absorption. It doesn’t help your damage, though, and there’s a reason you’re Smiting instead of casting direct heals. But of course, your primary job is always to heal, so I’m on the fence on this one. I will be doing some more research and coming back to this page soon.
Haste is a bit tricky as well. Since our mana pools are static, the only way to open them up is with more Spirit, so we’d probably need to stack both Spirit and Haste to make Haste viable, making it much more costly overall. That may be worth it at later gear levels, but I don’t expect it will be a good strategy early in the expansion.