Cataclysm Atonement Discipline 4.3.4 PvE Guide

Atonement Discipline 4.3.4 PvE Guide

Atonement Discipline PvE Guide

This guide covers:

1. Requirements
2. Talents
3. Glyphs
4. Rotation
5. Gemming
6. Reforges
7. BiS List

1. Requirements

DS 4set bonus or ilvl 392+ *
a party/raid that understands you will be focusing on absorbs and support instead of straight off healing (recount-linkers NOT welcome)
knowledge of the boss mechanics
A good main healer in your raid, you will be doing more 'support' than 'healing'
*you may use this at lower item levels, however low stats will not make your job healing easy

2. Talents

http://i.imgur.com/6uTnOyi.jpg
required talents optional talents
Discipline:
there are 5 optional cooldowns/talents in this tree, you must use at least three points in them

Improved Power Word: Shield - you will rely on shields - 2/2
Twin Disciplines - more healing done (at the end of the day you ARE a healer) - 3/3
Mental Agility - less costly PW:S - 3/3
Evangelism - decrease cost and increase damage of abilities - 2/2
Archangel - restore some mana and increase healing done - 1/1
Inner Sanctum - PvP talent, of little use in PvE - 0/3
Soul Warding - no cooldown on PW:S - 2/2
Renewed Hope - extra crit doesn't hurt and you will need it later - 2/2
Power Infusion - use on yourself, or a caster during TW to see what dps is - optional
Atonement - healing with dps... your main source of healing in this build - 2/2
Inner Focus - minor cooldown, extra crit chance, mana is not an issue for us - optional
Rapture - 7%/14% mana regen every 12 secs - 3/3
Borrowed Time - Extra haste! - 2/2
Reflective Shield - PvP/Solo Dungeon talent, useless in raids - 0/2
Strength of Soul - shaves off time from Weakened Soul - optional
Divine Aegis - shield from crits and PoH - 3/3
Pain Suppression - defensive cooldown - optional
Train of Thought - Inner Focus or Penance cooldown decreaser - optional
Focused Will - PvP talent, little use in raiding - 0/2
Grace - extra healing taken by target from any healing taken - 2/2
Power Word: Barrier - defensive AND healing cooldown - 1/1

Holy:

Improved Renew - you have no use for it - 0/2
Empowered Healing - Extra healing done - 2-3/3
Divine Fury - less cast time on our atonement heals - 3/3
Desperate Prayer - neat free, instant-cast life-saver - optional
Surge of Light - small chance for free instant FH - optional
Inspiration - defensive buff triggered by crit - optional

Shadow:

Darkness - More haste - useful but optional
Veiled Shadows - lowers cooldown on Fade and Shadowfiend - optional

3. Glyphs:

Prime:

Penance - Penance has 2sec lower cooldown
Power Word: Shield - heals target for 20% of absorbsion value
Power Word: Barrier - increases healing taken*
Flash Heal - increases critical chance to targets at/under 25% hp*
*switch between barrier and flash heal glyphs depending on the encounter

Major:

Divine Accuracy - with this you need 0 hit rating and never miss
Mass Dispel - cast time from 1.5>0.5 seconds, saves time, saves lives
Smite - target takes 20% more damage while HF dot is up

Minor:

Levitate, Fortitude and Fading are somewhat more useful to us, no major differences apart from sometimes using a little less mana and not requiring reagents

4. Rotation

As a priest healer you assume your primary job is to spam Prayer of Healing and Greater Heal but you are Atonement, your primary healing abilities are Holy Fire and Smite on the mob/boss you are fighting.
Atonement is a so-called smart heal so overhealing with it is nearly impossible, it will heal anyone (including hunter/death knight pets!) in range of the boss.
So that's your time filler... but when when the raid takes massive damage you pop your Power Word: Barrier, Archangel and start casting your Prayer of Healing to heal/stack shield with Divine Aegis.
You should ALWAYS keep PW:S on the tanks, it is your mana regen ability and a helpful absorb
Penance... 3 heals over a few seconds... nothing too powerful, except that it stacks your Grace on the target!! increasing the healing the person takes from you by 24%!
This makes your urgent healing (someone is on 1% hp!?!!) rotation look like this: PW:S to keep them from dying on the spot, Archangel, Penance to stack Grace, Flash Heal them until Weakened Soul is down (Strength of Soul talent comes in handy) or their hp is full, reshield, continue spamming Holy Fire/Smite on your enemy
PW:S on people with low hp
PW:S on people who are about to take damage (crystal runners on morchok, debuff on zonozz etc.)

5. Gemming

Red

Solid Intelect - Brilliant Gems
Yellow

Intelect/Mastery - Artful Gems
Intelect/Haste - Reckless Gems if you need haste cap
Blue

Spirit/Mastery - Zen Gems

6. Reforge/Stat Priority

Intelect > Mastery => Haste > Spirit
you will get more than enough spirit from T13 items, even if you reforge them to nearly full mastery, following that, haste depends on your gear, T13 again provides nearly enough of it and your first order of buisness will be to reforge out of spirit into mastery so you end up between 2k and 2.5k spirit, add a few Reckless gems if you don't feel comfortable with your haste levels. Mastery increases your shield power and with the DS 4set that becomes an even more important stat

7. BiS Items

Head - Cowl of Dying Light
Neck - Petrified Fungal Heart
Shoulder - Mantle of Dying Light
Chest - Robes of Dying Light
Back - Woundlicker Cover
Wrist - Bracers of the Banished
Weapon - Maw of the Dragonlord or Vagaries of Time
OffHand - Ledger of Revolting Rituals
Wand - Finger of Zon'ozz
Gloves - Handwraps of Dying Light
Belt - Cord of the Slain Champion
Pants - Legwraps of Dying Light
Feet - Janglespur Jackboots
Ring1 - Signet of Suturing
Ring2 - Ring of the Riven
Trinket1 - Windward Heart
Trinket2 - Insignia of the Corrupted Mind*
Trinket3 - Seal of the Seven Signs*
Trinket4 - Will of Unbinding*
*Switch trinkets according to fight requirements, Seal and Insignia haste boosts stack!

Nice guide!I saw you in raid and you are very good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by demlk

Nice guide!I saw you in raid and you are very good.

this for pvp?

Quote:

Originally Posted by nanalinux

this for pvp?

It's for pve,lol

It's near impossible to make a Mastery > Haste build. The haste you with with DS gear is just too much. As you might already know, I have 25% haste on my holy priest with just 2 reforges (chest and ring) since every item gives haste.

Also, it's been proved in every Theorycraft that Haste increases the healing throughput, therefore it's better to stack Aegis faster (haste) than stacking it more powerful (mastery)

If we follow that rule, then crit chance > mastery. The difference between an Aegis on 39% mastery and 45% mastery is nearly nothing (just an example), while a critical aegis has double the value of a single Prayer of Healing

also, discipline has incredible criticals. 70k, 80k, 90k..that's more than what holy priest can do. Another reason for Haste > crit. A critical Greater Heal or holy fire can create a 20-30k aegis which is something really powerful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaterasu2302

It's near impossible to make a Mastery > Haste build. The haste you with with DS gear is just too much. As you might already know, I have 25% haste on my holy priest with just 2 reforges (chest and ring) since every item gives haste.

Also, it's been proved in every Theorycraft that Haste increases the healing throughput, therefore it's better to stack Aegis faster (haste) than stacking it more powerful (mastery)

If we follow that rule, then crit chance > mastery. The difference between an Aegis on 39% mastery and 45% mastery is nearly nothing (just an example), while a critical aegis has double the value of a single Prayer of Healing

also, discipline has incredible criticals. 70k, 80k, 90k..that's more than what holy priest can do. Another reason for Haste > crit. A critical Greater Heal or holy fire can create a 20-30k aegis which is something really powerful.

I've ran this spec for several DSs so far and it's worked well for how I do things... going haste might work great for 10mans, but for 25mans mastery is a much better choice purely because you can not keep aegis up on enough people to make it worth it

Let's be realistic. I went from 31% to 45% on my mastery and the difference was barely significant. having a 33k vs a 36k shield changes virtually......nothing

If I reforge to critical rating with current BiS gear and reforging spirit to critical, I end with around 1600 spirit and 25% crit chance. Give that Focus magic and hunter critical chance buff, that's 33% critical chance.

While we are sacrificing some spirit, it's still beneficial because 33% is A LOT, and most of the time your Prayer of Healing and single-target spells will crit, creating a 20k aegis on the target....instantly.