PvE Discipline Priest Stat Priority & Reforging

Discipline Priests in Mists of Pandaria are primarily interested in Spirit and Intellect, with their secondary stat priority depending on the spells they expect to be using most. 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.

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

Stat Priority

Your stat priority will vary slightly based on how heavily you are using Atonement versus direct healing and absorbs. We recommend using the standard priority ranking on the left unless you know for sure that you will be leaning heavily into Atonement.

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 heal at all 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.

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.

Mastery increases the strength of your healing and absorption effects through your Shield Discipline passive effect. Your absorbs gain double the benefit as your other healing effects. Heavy Atonement usage will reduce Mastery’s value since you won’t be using your absorbs as much. Otherwise this is a very strong stat that consistently buffs your throughput, so you’ll want to prioritize it above Crit or Haste. Every 300 points of Mastery increases Shield Discipline by 1%.

Critical Strike increases your chance of getting a critical hit with your spells, doubling their damage or healing. Crits can 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 crits also proc your Divine Aegis effect, further boosting the absorption effects you have up on your target(s). Finally, your crits also boost your Atonement damage and therefore your Atonement healing, which makes this stat even stronger when you’re leaning heavily into that mechanic. Every 600 points of Critical Strike is equal to 1% increased crit chance.

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, Divine Hymn, 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. With all that said, Haste is most useful to Disc Priests when they are going to be raid healing, since it will speed up their Prayer of Healing spam. Every 425 points of Haste is equal to 1% increased casting speed.

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 Mastery or Critical Strike, depending on the priority options above.

1. Spirit (until no mana concerns)
2. Critical Strike (if using Atonement heavily)
3. Mastery (any other situation)