World of Warcraft

Disclaimer: Some of the notions covered are general priest class, but I felt that a complete over-view would be better. The text is directed towards new disc priests or disc priests that played in wrath and feel the need to relate to something they know: a lot of things will be obvious for the experienced discipline healer but this text is directed towards the medium healer. This thread also does not cover in-depth PVP, as I am a rather poor pvp-er, like most dragon-slayers. Last, but not least, a lot of the opinions are personal experience. I will complete it with some math when I have the time, but if you disagree and have an argument for it, it’s welcome.

1. History (flavor text)
2. Common abbreviations
3. Spells
4. Talents and how they work together
5. Speccs and their related roles
6. Stat prios: reforging, gemming, enchanting, comsumables
7. Glyphs
8. UI, addons and macros
9. Few notes on Dragon soul.

1. History

One of the two healing priest’s class specs, discipline has had a colorful history, and is still not entirely settled in the wow community approval: back in vanilla and tbc it used to be a purely pvp specc (due to poor mana management it did not have the longevity required in pve) and some ignorant people still see it as a questionable pve possibility.

The true discipline rise in the pve environment began in WotLK, with the tree being completely overhauled and opening the way for a new healing technique, which supported preventing damage rather than healing it. The early pve days of discipline being focused on the rather “new” concept of “absorbing” made the specc be seen as the “shield class” much as resto druids have been seen as “hot class” - however, both those etiquettes generally did more harm than good, as the community tended to focus obsessively on just a single aspect of the specc instead of acknowledging the fact that discipline priests are still priests, therefore have a huge tool box. This new approach to healing ended up overly focused on absorbing damage, while actual healing spells suffered more and more from poor scaling. At the end of the expansion (WotLK), any other spell bar Power Word: Shield was seen as more or less obsolete.

Shields, different from normal healing spells, created oddities on occasions - such as Icecrown Citadel zone buff initially not applying to them, tanks not generating agro through them (fixed way back, but the occasional tank will still complain) or the healer legendary- Valanyr not proccing from Power Word: Shield. These setbacks would have put a normal healing spell in a cone of shadow, but the nature of shields - able to absorb before any damage has happened kept them highly efficient, by basically “stealing” any damage that other healers could have healed. Other “bugs” related to discipline absorbs back in those days would be: clashing with the aura shields in the Twin Valkyres encounter (making absorbs meters show ludicrously skewed numbers) and conflicts with Valanyr proc (where the Valanyr proc would “steal” absorbs from PWS). In the end of wrath, with the possibility of multiple rapture procs basically restoring more mana than was consumed for shields, shield blanketing becomes an extreme approach to healing. The Lich King encounter looks especially tailored for discipline priests’ highest peak of glory (as you needed at least one in order to be able to deal with the Infest mechanic), forcing every guild that wanted to kill this boss to bring a shield spammer (and making our brains bleed in the process).

All these clearly show that shields are a complicated and rather hard to balance mechanic and explain why the devs eventually wanted to move away from the concept of discipline priests wanting to be “the pure mitigation specc”.

Cataclysm starts with discipline priests needing to completely revise their healing ways - probably more than the rest of the healers, due to the death of what used to be 90% of the specc - aka, shield blanketing. Power Word: Shield is a spell that barely absorbs 10k damage in December 2010 and is used generally for the rapture proc exclusively. Rapture itself is fixed, and cannot proc anymore from multiple broken shields. The specc goes through a lot of balancing during the first 6 months of the expansion - the most important one being the massive buff to shields in February, followed shortly by the massive mana cost increase to kill again shield spamming, and the nerf to the duration - from 30 seconds to 15 seconds a few weeks later. Currently in 4.3, discipline is a strong specc that has managed to move away from exclusive shield spamming, although stronger gear allows higher and higher PWS usage. Considering it still keeps its old strengths in pvp while managing to fill successfully both the role of a raid and tank healer in pve, we can safely say discipline is one of the most versatile and strong healing specs at the moment.

2. Terms Defined

A/A: Archangel/Atonement spec
BT: Borrowed Time
CoH: Circle of Healing
DA: Divine Aegis
GS: Guardian Spirit
HC: Holy Concentration (talent, Holy tree)
HoH: Hymn of Hope
HpM: Healing per Mana, a measurement of efficiency
HpS: Healing per Second, a measurement of throughput
IF: Inner Focus
IW: Inner Will
MA: Mental Agility
PI: Power Infusion
PoH: Prayer of Healing
PoM: Prayer of Mending
PS: Pain Suppression
RSTS:Random Secondary Targeting System
SoR: Spirit of Redemption
SoS: Strength of Soul

3. Spells

http://greynet.nl/uploads/theorycraft.xlsx - courtesy of Ashalia, for those of you that understand/like spreadsheets. Thanks Ashalia! (tis updated for 4.3 too!).

Single target tools:

- Power Word Shield: the defining specc tool, this spell is enhanced by : improved power word shield and twisted faith as talents. Strength of soul lowers the duration of weakened soul, the associated debuff on the condition of casting single target spells on the shielded person. Weakened Soul also enhances your single target heals crit chance by 10% on the targets its on via Renewed Hope. Currently only affected by intellect and mastery in terms of strength, its benefits from haste/crit are minimal (haste by lowering its general cooldown, and crit by the possibility of the glyph heal to crit and proc aegis, as the shield itself cannot crit). A fairly geared 4.2 disc priest’s shields will easily go over 30k absorb. The Glyph of PWS will add 20% of the shield's absorb value as a direct heal.

- Penance: iconic for discipline, this is a very cheap heal, great for stacking grace to 3 in one go.

- Heal: the announced “staple” heal for cataclysm failed to achieve much popularity beyond the early days of undergeared 5 man hc running. The damage in raids is generally too high for this spell to cope with. Further more, for discipline, this spell is replaced by atonement healing (for those specced as such) or by greater heal combined with Train of Thoughts/Inner Focus use for mana efficiency.

- Flash Heal: former filler spell for all disc priests in wrath, this spells was greatly pushed back by its high mana cost. If your target is taking a beating and on low hp, use it, but otherwise, refrain, and prefer shields/greater heal.

- Greater Heal: our best single target tool: it is buffed by several talents and has good synergy with Strength of Soul.

- Atonement: the cataclysm new toy, it has a higher hps than heal or similar mana efficiency, however, it does not stack grace and cannot be targeted, also has a limited 15 yards from the center of the boss hitbox (not working on bosses with big hitboxes). 4.3: Atonement will now account for the target enemy's combat reach when calculating proper range, enabling it to be used on large creatures such as Ragnaros and Ala'kir.

- Renew: poor spell for disc, acceptable to use on the move or on a tank, but never in the top 5 prios.

AoE tools:

- Prayer of Healing: the only solid aoe healing disc has (divine hymn being on a long cd), it is still strong due to its 100% divine aegis proc, which stacks upon repeated casts . When aoe damage happens in more than one tick, and allows the prayer of healing aegis to be consumed, the discipline prayer of healing becomes a powerful tool. If you know aoe damage will hit the raid as soon as you pull (e.g. Beth'Tilac), you can stack up aegis to its maximum size (40% of the caster's health) and gain a considerable chunk of free healing.

- Prayer of Mending: we all know it and love it. In Cataclysm it can be glyphed for 60% more healing on its first proc: since you will cast it generally on the tank, thats a nice bonus.

Cooldowns:

- Power Infusion: nice on yourself or caster dps (20% increased casting speed and 20% mana reduction, 2 mins cd)

- Pain Suppression: tank saving cd (40% damage reduction and a threat dumper that should not be an issue for a tank, 3 mins cd)

- Power Word: Barrier: 25% damage reduction for 10 seconds, 3 minutes cd.

- Shadow Fiend: our inept mana returning pet; its returns can be enhanced by use during bloodlust (allowing the little moron to attack faster and give more returns) or by using it with a maximum mana proc (like power torrent, tailoring cloak enchant, volcanic potion). Higher mana returns can be obtained by using it in conjunction with

- Hymn of Hope: mana restoring tool; it will “smartly” restore mana to anybody with a mana bar thats closest to oom. Sadly ends up often in arcane mages mana bar, to their joy and our tears. Its effect will temporarily boost your maximum mana, making eventual rapture procs or shadow fiend returns wield more mana (or belf racial arcane torrent returns/ replenishment). The extra mana will be lost when the effect ends.

- Divine Hymn: our 8 minutes cooldown channeled heal: it will heal up to 3 (4.3: targets) lowest health targets around (up to 20 targets in 4.3) and give them a +10% extra healing received buff.

- Leap of Faith - nice new tool for pulling slow ppl out of fire or for fast repositioning/help with kiting.

Fear ward, Fade - they do what it says on the box.

Dispells:

- mass dispel : 1.5 sec cast, can be glyphed for reduced cast time, pretty mana expensive, don’t cast it if you have less than 3 targets to dispel (works on both friendly and hostile targets)
- remove disease - does what it says on the box
- dispel magic - works on both friends and foes

CC and interrupts:

Psychic Scream - unreliable as a healer due to hit rating issues, can be glyphed so the enemy doesn’t rumble around. It was useful during the Chogall encounter for dispelling worshiping targets, but nothing special for current Firelands raids.
To this day, discipline priests do not have an interrupt.

Damage Dealing and Healing: with Atonement speccs, smite and holy fire became indirect healing spells by producing a smart targeted healing replica of themselves when talented so. Both benefit from glyphs that enhance their use, and from the twin disciples talent.

Armors: Self buffs for all priest speccs, Inner Will and Inner Fire will provide the wearer with different enhancements: inner fire will increase your armor (quite irrelevant in PvE but good against melees in PvP and increase your spell power, while Inner Will will increase your moving speed (8%, does not stack with the boots enchant) and reduce the cost of your instants by 10%. If you find yourself oom-ing in a fight with high shields usage, or if you find a use for better mobility, Inner Will is a better idea than it sounds.

4. Talents and how they work with each other

Tier 1:

- Improved Power Word Shield - mandatory for all discipline priests, as it is a huge buff to one of our core spells.
- Twin Disciples - Static buff to our healing and damage, mandatory for priests in general, one of the few talents that has a good synergy with atonement healing because it will affect the healing component once through the damage, and twice from the heal itself.
- Mental Agility - mana conserving talent, generally mandatory for discipline (and holy). Discipline healing instant spells that will be affected by this talent are: Power Word Shield, Prayer of Mending, Power Word Barrier and Renew. The high cost of PWS makes this talent highly valuable for discipline.

Tier 2:

- Evangelism/Archangel - 3 talent points that belong to one of the main discipline specs. Unique in the game, this specc is centered around healing via dealing damage, and has been introduced in Cataclysm. Being rather new talents, they are not widely popular and face the same “weird child” fate as PWS did in WotLK, albeit not even close as overpowered/successful. Archangel is a 15% healing buff (and 5% of your maximum mana return) obtained upon consuming up to 5 stacks of evangelism obtained from up to 5 smites, and is best used before massive inc damage to give normal healing spells a boost. It’s usually not a great tactic to use Archangel if you just plan on continuing smiting, as the loss of the damage buff from smites affecting the healing component will just cancel out with the healing buff. These talents are rarely chosen (if ever) by pvp-ers, due to the fact that smite is a holy school spell, therefore getting interrupted while casting it will lock your healing spells aswell. Usually, these talents will also be coupled with Atonement (tier 3) and form what is usually known as an A/A specc.
- Inner Sanctum - generally seen as a filler talent for those that want to avoid Evangelism/Archangel. It is not a bad talent, but most priests prefer other choices.
- Soul Warding - reduces the cooldown of your PWS, making it a spammable spell. Although many disc priests more oriented to tank healing claim this talent isn’t very useful nowadays, I still find it good: being able to spam few shields before an aoe, while moving or just safeguarding a low hp dps is a big plus for me.

Tier 3:
- Renewed hope - mandatory talent for any disc that knows he will have to do some single target healing at some point. The talent gives a crit buff to single target spells as long as Grace/Weakened Soul are on the target, making this a no-brainer for tank healing.
- Power infusion - usually given to our caster dps raiders in the past, nowadays is seldom used on ourselves, both for the haste buff and the mana savings. A good idea is to use it before an aoe damage incoming in order to cast few shields, as instants will benefit most from a mana saving pov from the fixed 15 seconds duration (also the 20% reduction goes nicely with the high cost of shields - Note: t13 2p set bonus makes the use of PI with shielding less efficient, as the set bonus does not count shields as healing spells). Mandatory talent.
- Atonement - talent points that belong in the Evangelism/Archangel pack, together forming the A/A specc. Some priests tackled with the idea of picking Evangelism/Archangel without picking Atonement in order to just get the healing buff, but the common way is to take all 5 of them. Atonement has few pros and cons. The pro is that it is a smart spell and will heal the lowest target in its 15 yards range. The con is ironically also the fact that it is a smart spell: it cannot be targeted, making it somewhat unreliable, and it can heal pets. It also suffers greatly on bosses with huge hit boxes, and will not work on such occasions due to the fact that the 15 yards range is calculated from the center of the said hit box (4.3 fix: Atonement will now account for the target enemy's combat reach when calculating proper range, enabling it to be used on large creatures such as Ragnaros and Ala'kir.)
- Inner Focus - a free spell with a crit buff on a cooldown, so both a mana saving and throughput tool. Works great with greater heal via Train of Thoughts. Important talent.

Tier 4:

- Rapture - the main discipline mana returning mechanic. It is what makes us scale so well with intellect and it is also a tool that will make a difference between a good discipline priest and a bad one. Unlike holy priests passive regeneration, discipline needs to recover its mana in an active way: we need to cast a shield, and upon the shield being broken, we recover 7% of our maximum mana.
Rapture used to be 2.5% in WotLK and could also have multiple procs from multiple broken shields. Nowadays it has a fixed single proc regardless of number of broken shields. The proc has in internal cool down of 12 seconds which the standard UI sadly does not track, but can be visualized and optimized via add-ons like Ingela’s Rapture. A good discipline priest will try to obtain a rapture proc every 12 seconds, and further refining of the skill includes managing to obtain rapture procs during increased maximum mana periods in order to obtain more mana back (such as a power torrent/tailoring cloak procs , Hymn of Hope effect or Volcanic Pots use). Mandatory talent for any disc priest.
- Borrowed Time - the talent that in the previous expansion made us oblivious to any need for haste, it’s nowadays greatly diminished but still good. Borrowed Time effect will not get consumed by instant spells or penance, so a smart play move is to cast a PWS, use penance and then fire a normal cast time spell. Some priests will weave in renews, as they too benefit from the haste without consuming it, however renew is not quite a frequently used discipline spell (still useful to throw on the move sometimes or on the tank).
-Reflective Shield - the damage produced by this talent only works on shields cast on yourself so don’t start dreaming about the zillions dps your raid will gain on aoe encounters if you cover your mates in shields. I’ve rarely seen it taken even by pvp priests, although lesser geared rogues killing themselves on your shield could provide some entertainment.

Tier 5:

- Strength of soul - great talent for tank healing, binds PWS and single target spells in an amazing synergy by reducing our traditionally loved&hated Weakened Soul debuff. Sadly, not working with atonement.
-Divine Aegis - iconic talent to discipline and a must, producing a shield equal to 30%*mastery bonus of the crit heal/poh heal (procs 100% from poh) ,further enhancing the Renewed Hope talent. Further crits/poh will stack the shield higher. In a raid, each priest can build his own aegis bubble up to 40% of his hp, making it possible to add up several aegis shields on a target (unlike PWS that cannot stack). Patch 4.1 increased the duration of DA to 15 seconds. Also, Divine Aegis will not produce a shield if the full heal that would cause the DA is absorbed by a Death Knight's Necrotic Strike.
- Pain Suppression - our tank saving cool down. It does have a thread reduction attached but unless your tank is abysmally bad, you should not worry about it. Have it handy, on a mouseover macro or any other quick button.
-Train of Thoughts - mana saving talent. It will make greater heal spam be close to Heal spam efficiency if Inner Focus is used on cd, on a much bigger hps, and will give a nice tool to keep grace up by reduced cd penance to atonement users. This talent in my opinion, kills any use we could find for Heal in discipline specc, as for atonement users Heal is replaced by smite and for the rest, it’s replaced by greater heal.

Tier 6:

- Focused Will - PvP talent, hardcore raiders might argue its use in high aoe damage encounters, but usually not seen in pve specs.
- Grace - another talent that makes discipline a great tank healer, by basically buffing all our heals by 24% on the condition we keep casting single target spells on the graced target to keep the 3 stacks up. Grace used to be single target limited, nowadays can be present on several people. Penance ticks stack it to 3 in one cast. Atonement healing benefits from grace, however cannot apply it. Tank healers that want to heal as AA specc will have to weave in penance, Heal, Flash Heal or Grater Heal on their target to keep the grace stacks up.

Tier 7 and top talent :

- Power Word Barrier: - Introduced in cataclysm, this spell is one of the best raid cooldowns (and can situational be used on tank too if no aoe inc, albeit somewhat wasted on a single target). Its longer than other raid cooldowns duration leave room for intelligent play - like managing to cover 2 of majordomo’s scythes during his advanced scorpion phases when he is casting them very frequently. For those complaining that this spell doesn’t get better with gear, it scales very well with boss damage :).

Holy/Shadow tree talents that disc priests go for:

Tier 1:

- Divine fury - if you are leveling, you will greatly miss this until level 70. It makes the slow casts bearable. It’s great. I’ve seen priests wondering if the haste from darkness is not more useful: in what the affected spells concern, you would need a lot more than 3% haste to get 0.5 seconds off your casts.
- Empowered Healing - static buff
- Improved Renew - rather not. Renew is a poor spell for disc, don’t glyph/talent it for pve.

Tier 2:

- Inspiration - key tank healing buff. Depending on your raid composition/role, you may or may not want it (depending if another priest or shaman is providing it or generally if you are assigned to tanks). Due to how good disc priests are for tank healing, I’d rather have it from a disc than a resto shaman or worse, holy priest (just don’t expect this from holy priests, its bad). An interesting note is that the shaman’s version of inspiration is suggested for 4.3 to get the additional effect of adding 10% extra hp to its target, which might turn it into a better option to get from a shaman.

Other talents where you might want to spend your leftover points would be:
- desperate prayer (holy tree): nice for hc encounters to save your skin. You should not need this in normal content.
- surge of light (holy tree) : I’ve seen this one taken, however its not one of my favorite due to really low proc chance. This talent is not what it used to be in wrath.
- darkness (shadow tree): good throughput talent.
- veiled shadows (shadow tree): good mana regaining talent for long encounters, via a shorter cd-ed shadow fiend. However, don’t bother with it if you are running 5 mans, no boss lasts that long there.

5. Specs and their related roles

Unlike most other specs, discipline has two completely different talent arranging possibilities, leading to quite different play styles and variation in stat priority. One is a classic healing specc, usually known as non-AA specc, while the other contains a pack of talent points - namely Evangelism/Archangel/Atonement which lead to the specc being called AA specc (from archangel-atonement).

Personally, I prefer playing a non-AA specc when tank healing, and AA specc everywhere else. However, this is a personal choice and I do not raid bleeding cutting edge progress, so variations can occur, and I will try going over which variations can occur and what is the impact of each.

General non-AA specc is : http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfhzrosbfRMocuMZo

Variations to this specc:

- http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfhzrosbfRMochMZ0b - for maximum mana conserving with Inner Focus, Train of Thoughts and Veiled Shadows.

As you overgear encounters (be them raids or 5 mans), your raid just gets better or some special encounter mechanic allows you to ignore mana (e.g. Alysrazor), you might want to skip mana talents like the ones mentioned above and go for throughput - like getting points in Darkness. Additional throughput or just some extra dps/versatility can be acquired by taking Evangelism/Archangel/Atonement talents.

Tank healing

The reason I choose a non-AA specc for tank healing is the fact that I prefer not relying on the randomness of atonement for spot healing, and also because sadly atonement is still quite poorly related to other single target healing enhancing talents. Atonement healing does not stack grace on the target, although it benefits from it. Atonement healing is also unreliable and can target pets (even dk blood worms), and the last thing you want when tank healing (in my opinion) is your heal landing on a pet.

Thus being said, I prefer the synergy between PWS - Borrowed time (haste buff) - Renewed Hope (crit buff for both aegis and inspiration procs) - Greater Heal spam - Train of thoughts mana savings - Strength of soul stabilizing shields - Grace (+healing buff) for tank healing. All these talents and spells relate to each other and enhance each other giving a highly concentrated spot healing amount that combines damage mitigation (via Inspiration), damage absorbing (via PWS and Divine Aegis) and healing (with 24% buff via grace). Every spell you will cast in this sequence will relate to another and enhance it. All your secondary stats will work in synergy with each other. This specc is a great example of how balanced secondary stats can work together. In my opinion, this specc makes discipline priests the best single target healer in the game (yes, better than paladins when 2 targets are not involved).

However, there are priests that use an atonement specc for tank healing. The success of such a specc depends in my opinion of the damage pattern the encounter has. If the encounter has constant concentrated tank healing required, I would prefer the non-atonement specc described above. If the tank has alternate periods of high damage and low damage, a smite rotation can be inserted in between timers to gain the healing buff for the burst damage times. This healing way would require use of penance to keep the grace stacks up, weaved between smites in the low damage phases, followed by archangel-ed greater heal spam. One can argue the perfect synergy from the classic non-AA specc being broken as Atonement doesn’t work with Strength of Soul, but I’d say that in this case the synergy is more between the encounter timers vs. healing needed rather than between spells. Such a specc would look in the lines of: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRsbfkMoMhM . Further mana conservation dropped would be http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfrorRsbfoMoMhMZb .

Raid healing

The advantage of atonement is that it is a smart spell and if you do not have a specific target to keep up, it will just heal whoever needs most hp at that point. The reason why I prefer AA specc for raid healing is that usually raid healing is not a continuous job (basically the same alternate pattern described above) - boss encounters do not have continuous aoe damage, therefore you usually do have free time to smite few times to charge up archangel in order to release some nice aoe healing via archangel+PoH spam.

Typical AA specs would look like: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRsbcRMochM - with small variations regarding taking a self-saving tool like desperate prayer (I prefer dropping a point in Empowered Healing for it).

Going all throughput out would be along the lines of
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRsbcoMoMhMZh.

It is worth mentioning that AA specs are pretty mana efficient both by the 5% mana return from archangel but also by the efficiency of smite with 5 stacks of evangelism spam (almost as efficient as Heal spam but with more hps).

As stated, raid healing with an AA specc would be an alternate between evangelism stacking in low damage times, followed by releasing archangel in burst damage phases to cover for high raid damage via prayer of healing spam with a 15% buff to both its healing and aegis component. Power Infusion can provide an even higher output to the 18 seconds of archangel buffed healing via its haste buff, but you might prefer using power infusion for shield spam due to its mana reduction costs too. Divine hymn can also benefit from the archangel healing buff and/or power infusion (for extra ticks).

What you do not want to do after using Archangel is shield spamming, and the reason is that Archangel healing buff does not affect shields. A high output for a raid healing discipline priest would be something along the lines of : stack smitex4 before the damage, use power infusion - and spam 5-10 shields (less than 15 seconds before the aoe damage so the shields don’t expire), refresh evangelism with the 5th stack before it falls off and use it as the aoe damage comes followed by prayer of healing spam.

A more in-depth AA spec usage can be found at http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1710235742 , thanks to Carambha.
A last discipline healing technique that I’d like to cover would be shield spamming. Although true wrath style spamming is dead due to both the high mana cost and halved duration, the more gear is available, the less harsh is the mana limitation. One can see shield spamming a bit like arcane mage dps: it has a “burn” phase in which you can spend your mana by casting up to 12-13 (depending on your ms and haste) shields that you know will be consumed by inc aoe damage (the number of 12-13 is because shields last 15 seconds, the remaining time being the error margin added by your ms or haste levels - as the GCD unhasted is 1.5 seconds, so even if your shields are listed as instant, they are not quite), then a (preferably early) regen phase by using shadow fiend to recover the mana, preferably aligned with a power torrent proc (or other max mana buffs), followed by a “conservation” phase of casting normal spells before another burst phase. Depending on how much mana is available via various cooldowns - like innervate, mana tide, hymn of hope, there can be other “burn” phases. High level gear is required for this healing style and having the sinestra trinket (Shard of Woe) is a big plus (if not a requirement). Note: as of 4.3 to my knowledge, the Shard of Woe has been nerfed greatly.

Normal discipline raid healing will have a combination of shields spam and other spells usage, and the priest has to estimate how many shields he can use in order to make it to the end of the encounter. Any mana excess you might find yourself having can generally be spent on good chosen targets for shields (ofc, encounter dependent).

Last, a short word on disc as a damage dealer. It isn’t a popular choice as in my opinion the specc has little support from talents but there are people that tried it and are happy with it.
For more information on this specc you will have to check
http://natriispecs.weebly.com/world-of-warcraft-guide.html , however, a lot of data on it is unverified and will have to be taken with a grain of salt.

In conclusion, we can safely say disc has a rather wide choice of nuances regarding speccing. An important factor regarding choosing one or another specc will be the encounter mechanics: for example, one will ignore mana concerns for Alysrazor or will specc atonement for halfus/majordomo hc due to obvious advantages.

6. Stat prios : reforging, gemming, enchanting, consumables
Due to the base +15% intellect (from choosing the discipline tree), the way rapture works and the high importance shields play in a disc priest’s output, intellect is our greatest stat. Since reforging into intellect is not available, we are left with being able to get as much as possible via trinkets/enchants/gems. As disc, I prefer using int trinkets. An exception to this would be the sinestra trinket - Shard of Woe, which is still amazing and bis to current content (nerrfed in 4.3)

Although the only benefit discipline gets from spirit is the general healer passive regeneration via Meditation, spirit is still important as a regen stat . Depending on the skills of your raiders, some disc priests raid with less than 1.8k spirit (including myself), however, a 2.6 k level would be a more generally accepted number. As a freshly level 85 discipline priest, try to have at least around 2-2.2 k spirit before jumping in heroic 5 mans if you are not very experienced and self confident. Low spirit is just something you will need to try and decide yourself if it fits you.

Gems
Regarding gemming, I still prefer respecting the socket bonus for the simple reason that disc benefits well from all of them and none are a waste - so, +40 int (highest atm) in red slots and +20 int+20 spirit in blue sockets. The reason why I left yellow sockets for the last is because they require a bit of a discussion: the common concept is that discipline priests benefit from a balance of secondary stats, however, each of them has pros and cons.

Secondary Stats
Mastery will enhance your shields - be them power word shield or aegis. It’s a good stat for priests by providing guaranteed free healing. My usual breakdown at the end of an encounter will float between a pretty balanced composition of PWS (20%-30%), DA (25%-30%) and gh/poh depending if I was tank/raid healing (@30%). When tank healing with a strength of soul specc, my power word shield healing % is highest usually. From this, its easy to draw the conclusion that mastery affects directly 60% of my healing (and not affecting any single healing spell apart from PoH unless they crit). If you are using a lot of PWS/prayer of healing, mastery is a good bet. A lot of opinions I met were that mastery will only help if you are shield spamming, but I personally think that is not entirely accurate and prayer of healing proccing aegis 100% of the time combined with our specc crit buffs makes mastery play a pretty important role generally, further more when considered in sinergy with haste/crit.

The good thing about secondary stats for disc is that all of them enhance each other in some way, therefor no secondary stat can be seen as really useless. There is also a point where faster casts will produce more heals/unit of time and create more hps by raw healing and more DA shields produced. Disc has no real haste cap plateaus (we don't aim for obtaining extra ticks from hots for example), but it is considered a good stat for stacking when one aims for more throughput and has the gear to sustain the higher mana usage.

Haste will result in faster casts, thus more hps, however they will also drain mana quicker. Another downside of haste is that it affects PWS too little, by the only mean of lowering its GCD (in cataclysm the amounts of haste for capping GCD are very high). In conclusion, haste will only affect about 30-40% of your healing directly and another 30% indirectly (by more aegis procs). I would say that if you are still struggling with mana, mastery is a safer way to go. When mana is no longer a concern, haste is a better choice.
4.3 update: according to several simcrafts, haste outperforms mastery in the current levels of gear.

Critical rating is probably seen best to disc priests out of all healers due to the divine aegis mechanic. At this point in the expansion, gear can acquire a decent amount of crit to make it viable, especially after the rather big buff it got in the previous patch (healing spells crit now for 200% of their amount vs the old 150%). I prefer not stacking crit due to the fact that, first, for single target, our talents provide crit buffs and second, because as a healer, I do not like to rely on RNG. However, there are priests experimenting and being happy with crit stacking.

In conclusion, although the general directions in regarding secondary stats prio are mastery or haste, crit is seen as a viable option too by few select people, leading to yellow slots being covered by mastery+int/haste+int or crit+int gems.
Atonement speccs might incline towards haste, because smite does not benefit from mastery. Prayer of Healing spammers might like haste or mastery. Tank healers will probably want more haste than mastery, but a good balance is advised.
Gemming pure secondary stats or pure spirit as disc is bad. Don’t do it. Get as much int as you can.

Enchants

As enchants, prefer where possible intellect ones - though they might come in as more expensive. There are intellect cloak, chest (all stats), wrist and offhand enchants. An intellect proc comes from the Power Torrent enchant or from the cloak tailoring one. Enchanters have a choice of getting +40 int on their rings, while jewelcrafters can get 3x+67 int epic gems.
Enchants available (I bolded and underlined the best ones for disc)

Head [Arcanum of Hyjal] 60 int, 35 crit Requires Revered with Guardians of Hyjal

Shoulder [Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone] 50 int, 25 haste Requires Exalted with Therazane
[Lesser Inscription of Charged Lodestone] 30 int, 20 haste Requires Honoured with Therazane

Back Cloak -- Greater Intellect 50 int / Darkglow Embroidery proc spirit / Lightweave Embroidery proc int Embroidery is Tailoring-only

Chest Chest -- Peerless Stats 20 all stats; Chest -- Exceptional Spirit (40 spirit); Chest - Mighty Stats (15 all stats )

Wrist Bracer -- Speed 50 haste
Bracer -- Exceptional Spirit 50 spirit
Bracer -- Mighty Intellect 50 int

Hands Gloves -- Mastery 50 mastery
Gloves -- Haste 50 haste
Gloves - Greater Mastery - 65 mastery

Belt Ebonsteel Belt Buckle adds socket (+40 int)

Legs Powerful Enchanted Spellthread 95 int, 80 stam
Powerful Ghostly Spellthread 95 int, 55 spirit

Feet Boots -- Earthen Vitality 30 stam, run speed Boots --
Haste 50 haste Boots --
Mastery 50 mastery Boots --
Lavawalker 35 mastery, run speed

Ring Ring - Intellect 40 int Enchanters only

Off-hand Off-Hand -- Superior Intellect 40 int

Weapon Weapon -- Hurricane proc haste when casting or melee
Weapon --Heartsong proc spirit when casting
Weapon --Power Torrent proc int when casting

Pots, flasks and consumables

Mythical mana potions are the mana recovering pots of the expansion, restoring a pretty unimpressive 10k mana. If you can find 10 seconds to sit and sleep, a concentration potion can restore up to 20k mana (sadly pretty close to our hymn of hope). Another idea is to use a Volcanic Potion together with your shadowfiend and forcing a rapture proc during its duration: it will give both regen from fiend/rapture returns and some extra healing power for the duration. I’ll try do the exact math on this at some point.

With intellect having such a high value for disc, choosing the [Flask of the Draconic Mind] for 300 int is a no-brainer. The same can come from a guild cauldron’s [Flask of Battle]. From food, we can get extra 90 extra intellect from [Severed Sagefish Head] or the fish feast.

7. Glyphs

Prime glyphs: choice is between 4 major glyphs:

- glyph of penance - reducing penance cd by 2 sec, good glyph
- gyph of prayer of healing - if you find yourself being a raid healer generally and prayer of healing is on your top 3 spells, this will be good;
- glyph of power word shield: adds a good 6-7 k heal to the shields with the chance to crit and proc aegis: pretty much must have for disc;
- glyph of power word: barrier: increases healing from all healers by 10% under the barrier; most dragon soul encounters benefit from this, so I dropped the penance one for it.

Major glyphs: this is where atonement speccs and non-atonement speccs differ quite a lot

- glyph of prayer of mending: increases the healing of the first charge of Prayer of Mending by 60%; pretty mandatory for all speccs;
- glyph of divine accuracy: absolutely mandatory for atonement speccs (makes your smite/holy fire hit capped); it can also be coupled with glyph of smite (increases smite hits by 20% on targets affected by holy fire);
- other choices will be: glyph of dispel magic (however, not a lot of dispelling in firelands encounters), glyph of mass dispel (mostly pvp), glyph of desperation (pvp and used to be decent on halfus hc); glyph of Psychic Scream (roots the feared targets in place but increases fear’s cd), glyph of fear ward, fade, holy nova.

Minor glyphs: not many choices here

- glyph of levitate (for removing the reagent need)
- glyph of fortitude (reduced mana cost, useful when rebuffing in combat)
- glyph of shadowfiend (5% guaranteed mana return if the little moron dies before its time)
- glyph of fading - should be obsolete with today’s tanking really.

8. UI, addons, macros

As all healers, you will need well tailored to your needs raid frames, with information regarding health pools, buffs/debuffs on targets and various other utility you might find useful. The blizzard standard raiding UI, Grid with or without Clique, Vuhdo, Healbot or any other raid frames will do fine. Keep them properly sized and clean, but showing you enough information. For a disc priest, it is good to be able to track: power word shield (yours), weakened soul (from others aswell, so you don’t clash), aegis, grace, inspiration, prayer of mending (pref others too so you don’t over-write it), tank cooldowns and the odd renew.

Personally, I use Vuhdo, and I will explain why - however, all raiding frames have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Tools I like with Vuhdo:

- friendly but complex configuring
- shield amounts indicators: while the exact number is not shown, both the PWS and Divine Aegis icons can be configured to show a border around them, which will get consumed as the shield is absorbed.
- direction indicators: when you target is out of range, mousing over its name will produce an arrow pointing it its direction.

Another useful addon will be a cooldown/power-up indicator. You can use Power Auras, Weak Auras, but others may be suitable too. So far, I found useful to have Weak Auras (which is the one I use) show me: my mana levels near my character, a sound announcement when my mana us under 70% and my fiend is up (this I made for beth heroic before the nerf), a visual indicator for my power torrent procs, my cooldowns for penance/prayer of mending and evidently archangel/atonement stacks/duration visuals. All these are just reminders when I tunnel vision too much. For general cooldowns watching I use Fortexorcist, but nothing there disc specific really.

A good addon for disc priests is Ingela’s Rapture. It’s a simple install-and-go addon that will produce a sound (pretty annoying one) and an on-screen progress bar/anouncement for your rapture cooldown.

A cooldown use announcer is Raelli’s Spell Announcer.

For those that don’t like using click-casting, mouseover macros are an old verified way of healing.

They usually have the form of :

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead] SpellNameHere
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you attach it to a cooldown that you want cast instantly (without waiting for your current cast to finish), you can formulate it as:

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover,help,nodead] Pain Suppression

Other useful macros I use:

/show tooltip
/stopcasting
/cast !Power Word: Barrier

- This will remove some odities in barrier placing/casting if you accidentally double click.

#showtooltip
/cast shadowfiend
/cast shadowcrawl
/attack

This will make the little bugger teleport to its target and attack it. You can spam it if the fiend looks lost and confused.

/castsequence [@mouseovertarget, harm] [@mouseover, harm] [@targettarget, harm] [harm] reset=8/alt Holy fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite

This will cast a sequence of smite/holy fire on your target/your target’s target/your mouseover target’s target, in this order of priority. The number of smites inserted is adjusted to my haste, so that will need personalisation for each priest. Pressing alt will reset the sequence and restart it with Holy Fire.

Note of Heart of Unliving: this trinket has less int than Jaws normal, so it looked pretty meh for me. Atonement heals do not stack the buff, so if you are specced into it, you will need to be careful not to let them fall off ((10 seconds is a pretty short duration). I have found useful to have an aura (I’m using weakauras atm) to warn me when the buff is at less than 5 seconds duration, so I can toss a shield/penance/pom to refresh it. It helps a lot. Here is the string for it:

dWJrdaGAOqTlOOEnuiZeQyUQKzd0PbDtPQESs62QIdlyNkXEP2nH9JG(PuLHru)gjNxvAOiWGHsnCHCqI0LjDmH6CsQfkkwQKelgQ0YH8qjj9uuldPEUettetvftwvnDfxuu6QqbEMi56szJsIVdLSzaBxP8rOiFvsQ(SOAEqbnsOQ(grmAOkJxL6Ksf3sK6Ai6EsszCsL(lcTnLQDSpMHM7igfbew1RoRuIYfhPGGeXNc8LihbrWPfaXud(vXQAUyogZjyM08J5V5VpMxPaPq(4fAxjHKoMExURmDkj1sQPnqAYAVKYv6wlhtNIMwozVljDSedKMK0ljUcPK9KDzjPQtI7sshVBG0KjEmJ0CiL48gPMh9EAi18DpaGIoUsTS8Es3u0XjjY77K7ginjT53EaafDCL0%@!1X01j11Y1ssrsBG0j7Mh9EAi1ChXOiGWQEj9)PeLRQRbmsAdfkxeqHLIK2qHsF9ddxsBOq5sAdfOn)HfmUjwh4M6mMd)pCGuIaiXbbZZvuXhVe7J5bbZZvKpMN3i1COHcMlnC1nvmCdaaEBMyvLYhI8rAvoMPWs0ta(6mM1nvmMXxdGdEMlnC1nvmeGua4TzMGS4GJzOytrf1zmlcpAXhVeBo7DuquGBkHy3hk(Em3eWXCey4vrM)kUnaGZBKAg)S4qqfmahpMBIbbZZvKpE84XmwW)GNxKilBw0EoiyEUIkEH28GG55kYhZi9XmPzkSe9eGVoJzr4rl(4LyZzVJcIcCtje7(qX3JzK(0lsrHHczgdRM5wrRI(4mEmJNcZXB8IezzZGuHVpMruGQpMFAGd0hpEm3kkXvQhCdJZ4Xm8Bo7DuquGBkHy3hk(Emh8XC27OGOa3ucXUpu8n3rmkciSQxDwPeLlosbbjIpf4lrocIGtlaIPg8RIv1J5nVeNil7Xg

Dragon soul notes: I raid 25 mans only, so all my notes are from that pov. At the time of this post, the 5% buff has just been introduced and my progress consists in 3 bosses downed on hc. Killing Zonozz before the nerf and after have proven to be completely different experiences so, congratulations to those that managed to get dragon soul done before it seemingly having removed the element of hell (atleast for some encounters).

1. Morchock HC: the boss will split into 2 minibosses which will have to be handled by your raid in 2 groups, each containing 1 tank, half of your healers and balanced dps. The boss will choose his 2 closest targets for extra damage on stomps, so you will need a “soaker” for those: we chose to use subtlety specced rogues, one on each side. As a disc priest: this fight is quite friendly to shield spamming due to fixed timers on stomps that hit everybody. You can pre-shield as many ppl as you can before a stomp, and follow with prayer of healing spam. I used an AA specc and managed to charge up archangel in downtimes (especially during black phases). Shielding will be costy on mana but you have black phases to regenerate - hymn of hope or chug a concentration pot. Still, it would be a good idea to dump some of your mana at the start shielding so you can use an early fiend. A bit of help can be aquired stacking up aegis on 1-2 groups before the pull, and refreshing it so it lasts till first stomp. You can use barrier for a stomp or a crystal.

2. Zonozz HC: our strategy consisted in having 5 “soakers” to bounce the ranged ball - consisting in shadowpriests with dispersion and firemages with cauterize: other classes with a high dmg reduction cd can do it aswell. We did 9-9-9-1 bounces and then burned the boss. For my part: I memorised the order of the soakers and shielded each before his bounce for a bit more safety. In rest, PoH spam, shield the ppl with debuff, keep pom on cd. I kept my burst cds for black phases - PI with PoH spam for the first, had to deal with half of the second with just PoH spam as PI wasnt off cd yet, DH for third. Preshielding ppl with debuffs or ppl that have to run to eyes before black phase starts also helps. Depending on your raid assigns, you can use your barrier for the 7th bounce if the raid is low, or use it in the first black phase on your half of the raid - with the downside that it will only cover few ppl. For our first kill I saved the 2nd barrier for the end of the fight, when damage gets brutal, but after the nerf, it wasnt needed anymore.

3. Hagara HC - We used the “bunch up ranged&healers in the middle for frost phase” tactic. I smited most of the time in the normal phases (unless you are specifically asked to tank heal, tank dmg can be pretty harsh on focussed assaults). On frost phases I kept smiting a crystal to keep evangelism up until waves spawned, then moved to the center and spammed poh with archangel. This phase required a cd rotation and I used my barrier in it. You might also be asked to dispel the melees with the frost debuff, be careful not to dispel it while he is in the melee bunch, the crap on the floor will slow everybody down and probably kill them with a wave. Ask them to move towards the middle a bit to get dispelled. For the lightning phase, again spammed poh with arch on my designated group, shielding the ones closer to crystals or whoever gets low on hp. We had the ice tombs bunch up to be aoed somewhere close to the boss: make sure your tank doesnt los you with tombs. I kept smiting in this phase because atonement heals ppl in tombs, but that shouldn't be needed really and you should do this only if you are not a designated tank healer. Pay attention if your other healers get tombed and switch to tank healing if needed.

4. Yorsahj HC. Important: holy fire with the purple debuff will blow your raid up. However, this doesnt necessarily mean AA speccs are a no-no here: if you like the specc (as I do), you have plenty of time to smite outside purple phases, and the healing buff from archangel helps with more brutal combos like red/black/blue or yellow/black/blue (also the mana, be careful to pop archangel after the mana void has drained you). Raids cds are needed in these combos . The fight is about timing your cds properly and dealing with the purple debuff correctly. Each healer should have a designated group to prevent cross-healing and surprise purple explosions. Personally I cast greater heal/penance on each member of my party: the debuff will reset before you got to cast 5x4 greater heals, and you don't fall behind with ppl getting on low hp. Another good thing you can do is pre-shield your party and the tank before purple debuffs spawn or before mana void (you will loose your mana anyway so blow it).
Spells that trigger the purple debuff: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=105171/deep-corruption#comments

5. Ultraxion HC: again, at the time of this post I have not seen this guy dead, but we’ve given him a look. The fight is a dps check, otherwise not many differences from the normal version. Since the dps requirements are very high, the kills pre-nerf required it being 4-5 man healed (5 if you had really good dps). The damage in the start isnt that high so you can just smite and let the other healers deal with the dmg, helping when needed. For disc priests, red crystal and blue crystal are good to use, green one-not so good since the aegis portion of our heals does not get replicated by this buff. PWS does not scale with the red buff so dont bother with it outside rapture procs. Paladins scale very well with the red/blue crystals in this fight, so in case you have of of them, they will do really good. You will need to switch to actual healing towards the end.

6. Warmaster Blackhorn hc: Another fight in which poh spam shines, combined with preshielding before twilights. I'm currently running with pretty low spirit, so switching between IW and IF helps with that (or just stay iw if you will forget about it). Otherwise, for me its a case of smite to keep up evangelism and use archangel for bursts after twilights. Spot heal/shield the ones that soak. In the last phase, you will prolly have to support the tank healing (which can get pretty high dmg) while spamming poh on the group. Use barrier for twilights and roars in last phase.

7. Spine of Deathwing hc - I found running in IW a safer bet (I am however playing with 1.8k spi and HoU). Usually I smite to charge up evangelism, and use archangel for high stacks of blood on amalgamation and at explosions. For rolls, a combo of pre-shielding/shielding or archangel works well too. Its a pretty long fight, time your mana cds so you get the most of them. I always shield the gripped ppl, with prio on those with debuffs, also always keeping a shield on tanks. If I get the time, I also shield the ppl with debuffs before explosions. The fight ends up being pretty heavy in shield usage even if the healing debuff ignores shields, thats why eventually I preferred inner will. For tendon phases I prefer smiting the crap out of the tendon and letting the other healers finish up the dmg from the explosion - to help with the dmg. I use PI on a caster@tendons, but for later phases you might want to keep it for yourself for some burst healing. The timers are in such way (at least in my group) that you wont have PI up for each tendon.
In the beginning I was tempted to use a lot of single target healing for soaking debuffs. A combination of PoH and GH/penance proved better, there is constant dmg going on because of the bloods. Use your barrier for the 9 stacks explosion, and pref have a rotation of raid cds for all of them.

8. Madness of Deathwing (normal/hc mode). It is a pretty long fight so use cds early to have them again. I like doing this fight as AA specc, there is plenty of time to smite and the atonement heal is not bad when random ungrouped ppl get slapped by tentacles. I’m using fiend right after the first platform, and if I managed to burst some mana down, hymn too - you will have it again towards the end of the fight. For me the fight is an alternate between smiting the boss in lulzphases, smiting the tentacle when they spawn (poh feels pretty useless unless ppl in the same party happen to get hit) and poh spam with archangel when aoe dmg happens (bolts and blood phases).Use barrier early, chances are you will be using it 3-4 times during the fight. Otherwise, its a fight of endurance with mana, not hard if you time your cds properly and dont spam uselessly. The hc mode only brings more dmg, especially on the tanks, and the parasite factor: the person with the parasite will take truckloads of dmg, so have a healer assigned to that - and that healer needs to spam and keep the person topped as one unlucky tentacle slap combined with the debuff will one shot them.

I’m currently running Dragon Soul with an AA specc, stacking haste, with as low spirit as I can get - which is 1.8k+HoU. For madness I preferred higher spirit so far but I'll try my usual.

Courtesy of Shakta of Turtles (:D), here are vids of dragon soul hc 10 man modes from the pov of a disc priest. http://www.youtube.com/user/Xynnqt?feature=watch
Thanks!

An excellent in-depth guide.

Requested for sticky!

Very long, but interesting readthrough.

Good work!

Stickied as well.

Awsome work, sticky requested ofc :)

An awesome, useful thread. Requested sticky.
PS: please disable the head. I got used to your BE icon :P

Someone finally posted an up to date guide about Discipline, very nicely written Saphiramoon! Requested for sticky from my part. I've been wondering whether or not to write one, but if I did I'd have waiting until I cleared 6/7 Heroic at least. You summed it all up nicely though, couldn't have done it better.

/cheer

EDIT:

An awesome, useful thread. Requested sticky.
PS: please disable the head. I got used to your BE icon :P

Seconded, Belf icon please!

Thank you all for the appreciations, and I will try to polish this with some numbers here and there.

As for the belf icon, I'm not really showing the helm ingame, its just armory updates lately are very slow. My head showing usually appears after me running around in some old tier set (those were some awesome helms!).