Wrath of the Lich King Patch: 3.3.5a
Intro:
Welcome to yet another one of my guides on how to play priests. I have been playing priests for quite some years and have learnt a lot about them. So here I am trying to make your life a little easier so that you don’t need to go through the same issues I did.
These days I’ve seen many people trying to play priests and have no idea on what to do.
This guide will mainly focus on priest talents for Discipline and Hybrid Discipline specs I’ve played over the years. Each of these talent trees will be followed by the significance of the talents tree, what are the advantages, disadvantages, some tips, etc.
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Discipline Specialization
Discipline priests play a vital role in any area they play be it battlegrounds, duels, arena, dungeons, etc. The main strengths of the disc spec is that the shields absorb quite a lot and also it is great for dispels. In Wotlk disc priests have decent damage output as well and hence are even very viable in 1v1 duels.
The first thing you need to accept is that you need to be defensive right through in your gameplay with an occasional offensive bursts to help blow some opponent cds giving your team a better chance for the kill.
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MUST HAVE MAJOR GLYPHS:
1) Glyph of Penance
2) Glyph of Pain Suppression
Also a useful minor glyph is the Glyph of Levitate since it makes your mobility more and always reduces the fear of jumping of cliff’s in Arathi Basin and similar battlegrounds.
Why these two glyphs you might ask. Well firstly penance is your main healing spell , hence glyphing it will reduce the cooldown of the spell so that you can use it more often. Penance heals a very large amount in a short time so it is a must have.
Glyph of pain suppression is required since you are a healer and you will have loads of people pouncing on you. You need to stay alive to keep your team alive. Hence this glyph is very useful since you have better chances of surviving when someone is trying to burst you down and you are stun-locked.
The third glyph is flexible and should change depending on the spec you play and your gameplay style.
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About Discipline Priest CCing -
As a discipline priest you have only 1 major CC which is Psychic Scream and it has a 30 seconds cool down. But to land the psychic scream you need to have 5% hit rating. So don’t think just because you are a healer it is okay to have 0 hit rating. Also make the most of your professions and use Nets, bombs, magic dust, etc. due to your shortage of ccs.
Additionally you can use shackle undead to shackle Ghouls and Gargoyle’s of Dks.
You also have mind control which can be used to stop enemy healers from healing or a dps from dpsing. You can also control the player and throw them off cliffs and edges to kill them. Very lethal spell but needs cooperation of nearby players to ensure you don’t get attacked and your target is not attacked.
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Important Stats to meet –
• Hit Rating – 5%
• Spell Power – 3100 Self Buffed (Atleast)
• Resilience – 1300 (For Arena) and 1100 (Battlegrounds)
• Mana Regen – 500 (Self Buffed)
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Standard Discipline Specs
1 ) Traditional Discipline Healer Spec:
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bao8otesvn...0Spec.jpg?dl=0
This is a very defensive spec and focus more on raid or party healing at the same time increases survivability by damage reductions. The cast time for damaging spells in very large here and hence you would need to depend on someone else to do the damage.
This is probably the best healing spec for battlegrounds currently on Warmane for disc priests.
If you would like to use this spec in arenas make sure to swap out 2/2 Reflective Shield for 2/2 Improved Mana Drain since in arenas you would like to mana drain healers as fast as possible.
The third glyph for this spec should be Glyph of Power Word: Shield.
The play style is simple for this spec.
• Shield everyone you can including yourself
• Drop renew on people who don’t have full health and aren’t taking damage. The gap between ticks in renew is pretty large but since they aren’t taking damage it is alright.
• Make sure you have Prayer of Mending applied preferably on an MDPS taking damage.
• If a person is taking consistent damage make sure to have shield on them, renew them and spam flash heals to keep them up.
• Penance someone if they are low on health and are taking damage.
• Dispel Magic to get debuffs off your allies.
• Use mass dispel to make offensive dispels which is a key element in disc game play. Make sure to dispel pala bubbles, Shaman Watershields, mage frost nova, etc.
*Offensive dispels are as important as defensive dispels.
• If several people around you are low health use your “Oh **** Spell” a.k.a Divine Hymn (With Inner Focus to reduce mana cost) and once they are healed start shielding them all up again.
2) Smite Spec:
Link - https://www.dropbox.com/s/z7j5ochjty...0Spec.jpg?dl=0
This spec as the name suggest relies more on the Smite Spell you have. This is a more offensive disc spec which has smaller cast times for your damaging spells and also increased damage outputs. This is my favourite spec for arena since you can pressurise your opponent with offensive spells apart from your amazing healing.
Your third glyph should be – Glyph of Smite
Your battlegrounds healing I’d suggest you replace improved mana burn with 1/1 Inner Focus and make 2/3 Divine Aegis.
You still need to perform the above mentioned healing functions and the game-play is the same. Except now you can do more damage. Make sure you you apply your dots and start with Holyfire. Spam smite till Holyfire is off CD again and GG.
There are some offshoot versions to these standard talents but I’d suggest you build your own offshoots if you chose to digress away from these talents to suit your play style.
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Hybrid Talent Trees
Hybrid talents aren’t recommended unless you completely know what you are trying to do. The play style of discipline priests is completely different from holy playstyle which is completely different from shadow playstyle.
Hybrid specs tend to lose out on some very essential bottom tree talent points at times but as long as you know what you are doing it will work out.
In order to be successful with hybrid specs it is essential for you to know what talents you have and what you don’t. Once you know that it becomes easier for you to understand how your playstyle should be.
1) Discipline-Holy Hybrid Talents:
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/30ctwb0llz...ybrid.jpg?dl=0
This hybrid specs tries to draw out positives of both discipline and holy specializations.
The main positives from the discipline spec is the great absorbs from the shields and you can immediately shield multiple targets.
The main strengths of the holy spec are Instant cast healing, AOE healing and more mobility by 60% increase in movement speed thanks to the shield.
This talent doesn’t use Guardian Spirit since I personally found it not very useful for PvP, it is more useful for tank healing in PvE. Hence I skipped this talent point.
Use more spirit offsets here since you don’t need much haste since majority of your healing spells are instant cast. Spirit gives more mana regen and more spell power thanks to our talents.
The Major Glyphs are different since we have fewer disc talents here.
Major glyphs:
Glyph of Circle of Healing
Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Glyph of Renew
Minor Glyph:
Glyph of Levitate
The play style in this spec is very similar to the traditional disc healing spec with a few variations.
• Shield everyone you can including yourself
• Drop renew on people who don’t have full health and aren’t taking damage. The gap between ticks in renew is pretty large but since they aren’t taking damage it is alright.
• Make sure you have Prayer of Mending applied preferably on an MDPS taking damage.
• If a person is taking consistent damage make sure to have shield on them, renew them and spam flash heals to keep them up.
• Dispel Magic to get debuffs off your allies.
• Use Circle of Healing to AOE heal 6 people with one instant cast. It has a short CD of 6 seconds so make the most of this spell. It will be one of your most used spells in battlegrounds
• If you get a Surge of Light proc, this means you have an instant cast for your flash heal spell. Cast the flash heal on a target with the least heal.
• If you have a large number on enemies near you use holy nova since you will have a better chance to get a crit on one of them enabling the surge of light proc giving you an instant cast flash heal.
Survivability is a little less on this spec but you can keep a large number of people up while constantly moving away from enemies.
This is by far my most favourite healing spec and it is the most fun to play. You can pull off great absorbs like disc shields and you can AOE heal at the same time.
2) Discipline-Shadow Hybrid Talents:
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vevn0cusrj...0Spec.jpg?dl=0
This is a spec most people would probably laugh at when they see it, but I’ve tested this spec for a good 3 months or so and I can tell you it is completely viable.
This spec of course has less healing output compared to any of the above specs. But this spec has some pretty good damage output for Disc priests.
You can also use this spec in duels and still offers good survivability and decent damage throughput.
Your third glyph is completely flexible here, I would suggest you use Power Word: Shield or Glyph of Mind Flay for more damage.
The main advantages of this spec is that-
1) Dots tick harder
2) Mind Blast has short cast time and does more Damage
3) Mind Sear (AOE Damage) – Ticks Hard in BGs
4) You have all the benefits in the disc tree
5) You have mind flay which is a great spell in terms of damage and also slows mdps trying to reach you. This is one more offensive spell you can use now.
6)Your Psychic Scream CD is decreased to 23 seconds from 30 seconds if you have your PvP hand item with you.
Macros
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MACROS
Shield/Shield Self – Allows you to shield yourself without targetting yourself using shift modifier of normal shield bind.
#showtooltip Power Word: Shield
/cast [nomod] Power Word: Shield; [mod: shift, target=player] Power Word: Shield;
Mass Dispel – Stops the ring disappearing when you spam the mass dispel bind.
/cast !Mass Dispel
Dispel Self – Dispels yourself while targetting anything.
/cast [target=player] dispel magic
Death removing shield – Uses death and removes shield and dispersion so death will break poly w/o shield absorbing dmg back
Note: you may wish to have two death binds, one for deathing players to get a kill and a quicker one for deathing things like poly.
/cancelaura power word: shield
/cancelaura divine aegis
/cancelaura dispersion
/cast shadow word: death
Divine Hymn Macro-
#showtooltip Divine Hymn
/cast [target=player] Power Infusion
/cast Inner Focus
/cast Divine Hymn
Mind Controlled Announcer –
#showtooltip Mind Control Announcer
/cast Mind Control
/say Mind Controlled %t. Don't you dare touch him.
Simple Macros
Rocket/Hyperspeed Accelerator – /use 10
Belt Bomb – /use 6
Dispel Party1 – /cast [target=party1] dispel magic
Dispel Party2 – /cast [target=party2] dispel magic
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That’s all I have for this guide. Hope you liked it. If you have any suggestions or criticism let me know. Thanks for the support.
-Darkxss
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Member
Talents Guide for PvP Discipline Priest
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Member
Damage from SwD couldn´t be absorbed from Shields on you´re self @ WotLK
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