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.

PvE Discipline Priest

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

Stat Priority & Reforging

Best Professions

Pre-Raid Gear

Rotation & Cooldowns

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

Best in Slot (BiS)

Addons & Macros

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 on a target who needs immediate healing, ideally on a tank to maintain Grace.
   • Penance 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 on cooldown 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 Smite spam and when you need to use your direct heals. However, Atonement healing can be a powerful tool for fights with tight DPS checks, or farm content where you just want to clear it as quickly as possible.

In these scenarios you can lean heavily into Atonement healing with the following simplified rotation. Remember to take advantage of the Evangelism stacks you’ll be building by using Archangel whenever you need to do some extra healing.

1. Swap to your direct healing priority list above if damage becomes too heavy for Atonement.
2. Use Holy Fire or Power Word: Solace on cooldown.
3. Use Penance on cooldown on an enemy target to deal damage.
4. Use Divine Star or Halo on cooldown if AoE damage (and/or healing) is needed.
5. Use Smite otherwise.

If you’re really trying to eke out every point of DPS you can, you may consider adding in Shadow Word: Death on cooldown. It doesn’t trigger Evangelism or Atonement, so you will not get any healing out of it whatsoever, but it does very good damage. It can only be used when your enemy is below 20% health.

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
  This is your reward for throwing out some damage when you’re able to fit it in. Use this whenever you’ve built up 5 Evangelism stacks (unless there’s nothing to heal and you’re just Smiting, 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.
• 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. If there aren’t any predictable damage spikes in an encounter, you can use this on cooldown (every 1 minute). Absorbs are more efficient than direct heals since they are less likely to be wasted on overheal. Note that this ability doesn’t scale with Archangel, so they 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 need 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.
• 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.

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

Dispels

• Dispel Magic
• Mass Dispel
• Purify

Revive

• Resurrection