Stats
Intellect – Intellect provides spellpower and increases the size of your mana pool. Each point of intellect provides 1 spellpower and 15 mana. Intellect also has a small effect on your mana regeneration from spirit. As a disc priest, you get a passive 15% bonus to intellect.
Spirit – Spirit provides passive mana regeneration.
Mastery – Mastery increases the absorption of your Power Word: Shield spell, as well as the absorption of the Divine Aegis effect procced by Prayer of Healing and critical heals. Every 179.28 points of mastery rating provide a 2.5% increase to the portion of your healing that comes from absorbs.
Haste – Haste increases your spell casting speed, and decreases the length of the global cooldown triggered by your instant spells. Every 128.06 points of haste rating provide a 1% increase to your casting speed.
Crit – Crit increases the chance that your spells that can crit – everything but Power Word: Shield – will crit. Every 179.28 points of crit rating provide a 1% increase in your crit chance. Critical heals currently hit for 200% strength, or 272% strength after the Divine Aegis effect and your baseline mastery are taken in to account. Thus, every 179.28 points of crit rating provide a 1.72% increase in the portion of your healing that comes from spells that can crit.
Gearing
Intellect is your most important stat because it provides spellpower and increases the size of your mana pool. However, every piece of gear that you will use, with the exception of some trinkets, has intellect on it, so intellect is not really something you need to think about when selecting gear. After intellect, your second priority is spirit. Try to get spirit on every piece of gear.
After intellect and spirit, your stat priorities get murkier. In regard to mastery and crit, their relative values depend on your spell selection. In general, based on the above stat information, mastery and crit will be about even in value if absorbs make up around 40% of your healing, with mastery being more valuable than crit at higher absorb portions and less valuable at lower. You can check where you get your healing from with addons like Recount and Skada.
Haste is harder to value than crit and mastery. Like crit and mastery it improves your healing output – in fact, haste is often better for output than crit and mastery – but unlike those stats taking advantage of haste also speeds up the rate at which you consume mana. So the value of haste varies depending on the content that you're working on. If you need to put out a lot of healing in a given (often short) amount of time, then haste is as valuable or even more valuable than crit and mastery. If you're more concerned with mana longevity, then haste is not particularly important. For example, haste is not particularly great for long endurance fights like Nefarian and Al'akir, but it's very good for fights that are short or that have intense healing phases, such as Cho'gall, Twilight Council, and Chimaeron. Also, as a note, if you want to spam Power Word: Shield – more on that later – haste isn't very valuable.
Reforging – Your first priority is making sure that you have spirit on every piece. After that, reforge in line with your gearing priorities.
Enchanting
Head – Arcanum of Hyjal, Guardians of Hyjal revered
Shoulders – Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone, Therazane exalted
Back – Greater Intellect
Chest – Peerless Stats
Wrist – Mighty Intellect
Weapon – Power Torrent and Heartsong are similar for regeneration. Power Torrent also provides some extra healing output, though, and so is probably the superior choice.
Offhand – Superior Intellect
Hands – Greater Mastery
Legs – Powerful Ghostly Spellthread
Feet – Lavawalker
Gemming (gem for socket bonuses, with the exception of yellow sockets that provide only 10 mastery, crit, or haste – put Brilliant Inferno Ruby in those).
Meta – Ember Shadowspirit Diamond
Red – Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Blue – Purified Demonseye
Yellow – Artful Ember Topaz, Reckless Ember Topaz, or Potent Ember Topaz, depending on your gearing priorities
Mana Regeneration
Mana regeneration comes from two sources, passive spirit regeneration and effects that restore a percentage of your mana pool. The formula for out of combat spirit regeneration (stolen from Vandreigan) is:
1029 + Coefficient(0.001 + (SPIRIT*SQRT(INTELLECT)*0.003345))*5
You get 50% of your passive spirit regeneration during combat. As the formula is based on your spirit and the square root of your intellect, getting more spirit is by far the best way to increase your spirit regeneration.
Spirit regeneration aside, as a disc priest you'll get a significant portion of your mana regeneration from effects that restore a percentage of your maximum mana. Rapture is the most important of these effects, with the others being Shadowfiend, Replenishment, and Hymn of Hope. Some disc priests use addons to track their Rapture cooldown and try to time shields to pop right when the cooldown comes up. This definitely isn't mandatory, though, as you'll likely cast enough shields as it is that you'll get frequent Rapture procs. Overall, these effects make intellect an important regeneration stat, on par with spirit.
Spell Selection
Tank Healing (Power Word: Shield, Penance, and Greater Heal are your primary spells)
Power Word: Shield – High healing per cast time, and efficient thanks to Rapture procs. Consider speccing Strength of Soul if you frequently tank heal.
Penance – Decent healing per cast time and very efficient. Cast on cooldown.
Greater Heal – Your primary tank healing spell.
Prayer of Mending – Use when the tank is at high health as a buffer against the next hit, and to help the raid healers out.
Flash Heal – Emergency use only; very inefficient.
Binding Heal – Useful for healing yourself without breaking the stream of heals going to the tank.
Heal – Fairly useless, as raid bosses hit much harder than this spell heals for. Useful for removing Weakened Soul if you have the Strength of Soul talent and low damage phases, and not much else.
Smite – Useful for stacking up Evangelism in low damage phases, or helping out with DPS.
Holy Fire – Also useful for stacking Evangelism, and unlike Smite does decent Atonement healing.
Raid Healing (Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Healing are your primary spells)
Power Word: Shield – High healing per cast time, useful for spot healing, proactively shielding people you know will take damage, and providing emergency heals to players in danger of dying.
Prayer of Healing – High healing per cast time and fairly efficient. Use if it will be mostly effective healing on at least three people.
Prayer of Mending – Decent healing per cast time and fairly efficient. Try to cast it on cooldown as long as raid damage is such that it will bounce at least a few times.
Penance – Efficient spot heal.
Holy Fire – Efficient, and allows you to stack up Evangelism. Try to cast it often enough to keep Evangelism up.
Greater Heal – Decent spot heal.
Flash Heal – Only use it if someone needs an emergency heal and they have Weakened Soul on them.
Smite – Fairly bad healing per cast time, try to avoid using it outside of low damage phases.
Power Word: Shield spam – This is a type of raid healing, but is different enough from “normal” raid healing that it deserves a separate section. The phrase “Power Word: Shield spam” refers to casting PW:S on a large number of people in situations where there is enough damage to guarantee that almost every shield will be consumed before its duration expires. The main difference between shield spam and normal raid healing is that shield spam involves casting Prayer of Healing much less frequently. This healing strategy is less efficient than the standard strategy, as PW:S provides less healing per mana than Prayer of Healing, but it can produce very high healing per second. If you're going to spam PW:S, make sure to put on Inner Will instead of the more general purpose Inner Fire. Also, not surprisingly, mastery is a very good stat for this healing strategy, so if you regularly spam PW:S you may want to invest less in haste and crit than you otherwise would.
A note on Atonement, Evangelism, Archangel, and Smite – Atonement, Evangelism, and Archangel are excellent talents with many uses. Atonement allows you to provide cheap healing and damage at the same time, and transforms Holy Fire in to a strong and efficient smart heal. Archangel is a decent cooldown that, at thirty seconds, can be up almost every time you need it. And the ability to monitor and maintain Evangelism stacks is one of the marks of a great disc priest, as is the ability to use Atonement healing to take advantage of encounter mechanics.
The above said, however, the Atonement healing provided by Smite is only a little better than the healing provided by Heal, at least under normal circumstances. Many raid encounters have low damage phases where you can switch to Smite healing to conserve mana and stack Evangelism, but outside of these phases the low healing per second and random nature of Smite healing limit Smite's usefulness. Don't be this player (original image taken from http://www.darklegacycomics.com/152.html):
Cooldowns
Power Word: Barrier – The best time to use this ability is, not surprisingly, when your group is stacked up and about to take significant damage. Several fights have clear points at which PW:B should be cast, for example Maloriak's red phase, Chimaeron's Feud, Nefarion's Crackle, and Cho'gall's Shadow's Orders. Outside of these fights, you can use PW:B to temporarily reduce raid damage on a pack of players - the melee pack is often a convenient target - or as a second Pain Suppression.
Pain Suppression – Use this when big damage is about to land on a tank or, less commonly, on a raid member other than a tank. As with Power Word: Barrier, many encounters have clear points where PS should be used, for example Omnotron's Acquiring Target, Maloriak's green phase, and Cho'gall's Flame's Orders. However, because PS provides a similar effect to tanks' own personal cooldowns, you should coordinate with your tanks on when they'll use their own cooldowns and when they'll need PS.
Power Infusion – Useful for both single target and raid healing, as it pretty much increases your healing effectiveness by 20% when it's up. This ability can also be used to help mitigate the mana cost of Power Word: Shield spam.
Archangel – Sort of like a slightly weaker Power Infusion on a short cooldown, except you need to have a stack of Evangelism to use it. If a low damage phase precedes burst damage, you can just chain cast Smite and Holy Fire to stack it up. If there isn't an obvious time to stack it with Smite, you can stack it up slowly with Holy Fire alone. This will be slow going, but Holy Fire, unlike Smite, provides Atonement healing that's similar to the healing provided by your actual healing spells, and so is usable outside of encounters' low damage phases.
Divine Hymn – Your big raid healing cooldown. Try to cast it while you have the Borrowed Time buff, to get an extra tick.
Spec
With Atonement: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRsbcRMochM
The points in Train of Thought can be moved elsewhere, for example Veiled Shadows (extra mana), Strength of Soul (single target output), or Desperate Prayer (survivability).
Without Atonement: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfhzrosbfRMochMZ0b
This spec has more room to play around than the Atonement spec, as Strength of Soul, Train of Thought, and Veiled Shadows are all optional talents. Inner Sanctum may also be useful on certain encounters. Note that the main reasons to skip Atonement are to max out both Train of Thought and Strength of Soul for tank healing and to pick up Inner Sanctum for extra damage mitigation.
Glyphs
Prime
Power Word: Shield – Strong throughput choice.
Prayer of Healing – Also a strong throughput choice.
Penance – Decent choice for tank healing.
Power Word: Barrier – Situationally powerful.
Major
Prayer of Mending – Strong throughput choice.
Divine Accuracy – Mandatory if you use Atonement.
Dispel Magic – Free healing, useful for dispel heavy fights.
Mass Dispel – Useful for removing debuffs quickly. However, Mass Dispel will eat a global cooldown whether or not you have this glyph. Also, in twenty-five man raids, Mass Dispel has targeting issues that limit its usefulness.
Smite – Not very good, as Smite's Atonement healing isn't useful outside of low damage phases even if you have this glyph.
Desperation - Possibly useful on fights with stuns, for example Nef.
Inner Fire - Minor damage reduction against physical damage, very situational.
Minor
Power Word: Fortitude – Useful for mid-fight rebuffs.
Levitate – Unless you like farming Light Feathers.
Shadowfiend – Fiend doesn't die from damage as much as it did in previous expansions, but there aren't any better choices for your third minor slot.
UI
First, get a raid frame addon - Vuhdo and Grid are popular choices, but there are many others. Be sure to configure your raid frames to show the time left on your Weakened Soul and Power Word: Shield effects, as well as incoming heals, HoTs from other healers, and locations of Prayers of Mending.
Second, choose between click casting (built in to Vuhdo, also doable with Clique) and mouseover macros. A typical healing mouseover macro looks like this:
#showtooltip Flash Heal
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Flash Heal
Third, find a way to monitor cooldown timers. This can be as simple as putting Power Word: Barrier, Archangel, Power Infusion, and Pain Suppression near each other on your bars, or as complicated as setting up Power Auras for them all.
Fourth, make some more macros. Here are two:
#showtooltip Flash Heal
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Inner Focus
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Flash Heal
This macro will cast Flash Heal at your mouseover target, and will use Inner Focus every time it is up. You can make similar macros for Binding Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Healing. The lines concerning sound effects and error messages prevent ugly red error text and "I can't do that yet" from showing up when you call the macro when IF is on cooldown.
#showtooltip Shadowfiend
/cast Shadowfiend
/petattack
Hit it once to summon your fiend, hit it again to make your fiend go after your selected target.
Lastly, as a disc priest it's probably worthwhile to download Recount or Skada. While the usefulness of the healing meter portions of these addons is debatable, you can use them to determine what portion of your healing comes from absorbs – great for determining stat weights – and for looking at what heals, other effects, and damage landed on someone immediately prior to their death (invaluable for all healers, but especially for disc priests because you have strong “saves,” like Penance and Power Word: Shield).
Last updated - December 5, 2011
