L2Discpline: Growing Your Talent Tree
If I had a nickle for every talent spec I’ve seen that made me cringe, I’d be rich. Okay, well… Maybe not rich. But I’d have a shitton of nickels.
In my experience, the only way to choose the right talents for your play style is to first have an understanding of what the talents do. So, I’m going to break down the talents for you one by one before I start getting into full specs. Get ready, set, go!
Holy Tree
I’m going to start with the Holy Tree because you can only really spend a maximum of 18 points in it before you consider yourself a either a Hybrid or a Holy Priest, and not Discipline.
Tier 1
Healing Focus: Pushback reduction is nice, and I have found it handy for fights like Mimiron during Phase 2 where I’m being shot at a lot. A lot of people skip this talent because they feel it doesn’t make much of a difference, but I’d rather not risk losing a tick of Penance, or having added cast time on a Flash Heal.
Improved Renew: Good only as a small improvement for your buffer spell. Additional healing on our one-and-only HoT has it’s advantages, but it’s certainly not an end-all make-it-or-break-it talent. Can be skipped in favor of talents in Tier 2.
Holy Specialization: If I ever see a Discipline Priest with any less than 5/5 in this talent, I die a little inside. CRIT IS IMPORTANT, and you should definitely take this because it’s a free 5% on all of your healing spells, because they’re all holy magic. (Yes, even the Discipline ones like Penance!) More chance for critical heals equals more chance for Divine Aegis procs, and who doesn’t want more of the shiny golden bubbles? There is no reason not to take this talent, and all 5 points will open up Tier 2.
Tier 2
Spell Warding: If you don’t feel strongly about putting 2/2 Healing Focus and 3/3 Improved Renew and will also never use Greater Heal and therefore not waste 5/5 in Divine Fury, then this talent is your only substitute to get to Tier 3. But the magical damage reduction in PvE is pretty much negligible.
Divine Fury: For those of you who cannot get yourself out of the Greater Heal rut, take 5/5 in this talent. Shorter cast times for a spell you refuse to not cast will be beneficial to you. Otherwise, skip it. I feel the 5 points could be better spent filling out Tier 1 completely to get to Tier 3.
Tier 3
Desperate Prayer: SUCH a handy spell! I don’t understand people who don’t take this talent, it’s saved my ass so many times. Definitely worth 1 point in my book.
Blessed Recovery: More or less a PvP talent, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone put any points into this for a PvE spec. Skip it.
Inspiration: If you are ever in your entire healing career going to heal a tank, even if it’s just once, FILL OUT THIS TALENT. The additional 10% mitigation on physical damage on any tank type is an amazing buffer to have. Hell, it’s nice to have on the raid, too!
Tier 4
Improved Healing: This is the only talent in Tier 4 Holy that I’m willing to discuss with you. For those paranoid about your mana pools (though I really have no idea why you should be) the mana reduction this offers to Penance is nice. However, that’s really the only spell that you’ll be casting with alacrity that this talent benefits. (Unless you’re a Greater Heal user.) To even get to this talent you’d have to spend another random point somewhere in the first 3 tiers to open it up, and then another 3 to fill it out. Considering it’s another 4 points spent here just to reduce the mana cost of one spell that you can’t even spam because it has a cooldown this talent is, in my not-so-humble opinion, not needed at all. (I would, however, consider taking it in a Hard Mode Vezax-specific spec. But only then.)
Discipline Tree
Now the fun part. Discipline is unique from Holy as a main tree because it has much less flexibility within it. There are PVP-specific talents and PvE-specific ones, along with those that benefit both. To get the most out of your Discipline Tree for your play style you have to pay careful attention to which talents you are sacrificing for others.
Tier 1
Unbreakable Will: Negligible in PvE, but perfect for PvP. If you’re creating a PvP spec, take this talent.
Twin Disciplines: For anything other than PvP your first 5 points in Discipline should be in this talent. It benefits so many of your spells, including Renew.
Tier 2
Silent Resolve: First things first, Healing has a different type of aggro table than DPS does. When you cast a healing spell approximately 65% of the health you’ve healed (repeat: HEALED, overheal does not effect aggro) is divided evenly among all mobs present at the cast time of the heal. So if you heal your tank for 1,000 you gain 650 aggro. If there are two mobs present, like a boss and an add, each mob gets 325 aggro towards the caster. If there are 3 mobs, each gains ~217 aggro and so on, so forth. With tanks generating as much aggro as they are capable of now and DPS as well, healers are usually on the bottom of the aggro table. Taking this talent makes a negligible difference in the aggro you generate from your spells. It WILL NOT save you from getting gibbed when an add spaws just as your amazing 15k Penance crit lands on the tank and it’s introduced with more aggro on you than anyone else because no one has attacked it yet. Situations like that is what your Fade spell is for, not this talent. With that being said, this talent is kind of mandatory in PvP because of the other benefit it gives you—making your buffs, DoTs, and HoTs harder to dispell.
Improved Inner Fire: In BC, this talent was considered a moot point. It didn’t really do all that much for you unless you PvPed. Now, however, due to the spellpower boost added to Inner Fire this talent is very handy and pretty much mandatory in my book for all specs. The armor bonus is great for PvP, and the spellpower bonus is great for everything. This is especially key for Discipline Priests as we currently have no talents that give us spellpower from a stat like Intellect (such as Pallies and Shaman) or Spirit (such as Holy Priests or Druids). You should take all the spellpower you can get!
Improved Power Word: Fortitude: This boost to stamina can considered base for any spec. However, these points can be sacrificed if you consistently run with other priests who have this talent, and thus your improved buff is not needed. Though, honestly, I don’t understand where else you’d put this point for a PvE spec, and in PvP all stamina is worth having.
Martyrdom: Strictly considered a PvP talent, you should skip this for PvE.
Tier 3
Meditation: Mandatory for all Priests, from Disc to Holy to Shadow, PvP to PvE.
Inner Focus: Incredibly handy for costly spells like Divine Hymn and for situations where you’re running low on mana and need to conserve. Inner Focus is off the global cooldown so you can macro it to Divine Hymn, like I did. When you’re running low on mana, cast Inner Focus and wait until the next heal is needed—the buff does not have a timer so you can wait an infinite amount of time before your next spell and Inner Focus will still be available to eat the mana cost.
Improved Power Word: Shield: Don’t even make me tell you that this talent is MANDATORY.
Tier 4
Absolution: If you are your raid’s designated dispell bitch, this might be a good talent for you to invest in. However, I really only see it being useful on fights were you’re spamming Mass Dispel. Because of this, I consider it a PvP talent.
Mental Agility: Unlike Absolution, this talent will reduce the mana cost of ALL your instant-cast spells and not just your dispell ones. Thus it takes care of Dispel Magic and Abolish Disease along with Renew, Power Word: Shield and all your buff spells, to name a few.
Improved Mana Burn: Another useful-only-in-PvP talent.
Tier 5
Reflective Shield: If you’re still leveling, this talent might be a little handy. The reflective damage only applies when the mob is attacking YOU, not someone else that you’ve cast a shield on. It’s pointless in PvE and situational in PvP.
Mental Strength: Considering the many benefits that you gain from Intellect (to be discussed at length later when I talk about gear) this talent is definitely worth maxing out.
Soul Warding: Another one of those talents where I will revoke your Disc-Priesting license if you don’t have it in your tree. This is what allows PW:S to be spamable.
Tier 6
Focused Power: Additional spell effectiveness to ALL healing spells plus a faster Mass Dispel? Yes, please!
Enlightenment: I would take this talent for the 6% haste increase alone, the increase to Spirit is a nice bonus though.
Tier 7
Focused Will: More free crit? This time not Holy-specific? Sure! The second part of this talent is also very handy for PvP.
Power Infusion: Help your raid help you, or just help yourself. It’s great to cast on random caster DPS to up the anty on any given boss fight if you’re feeling generous. If you’re feeling selfish, macro it to your Penance! You cast Penance often enough that this will keep it on cooldown.
Improved Flash Heal: Definitely worth maxing out for the mana reduction alone, and the added crit is a major plus! (For those of you who spent 18 points in the Holy tree to get Improved Healing and took 5/5 Divine Fury because you like to cast Greater Heal, you can probably skip this talent.)
Tier 8
Renewed Hope: More free crit? PLUS raid-wide mitigation? Mandatory talent. End of discussion.
Rapture: Easily your best and most reliable way to get mana returns, at higher levels of intellect the amount of mana you receive back actually exceeds the cost of the shield. So, uh… Mana producing shields, anyone? The second part of this talent will have your tanks thanking you, too. And maybe even some DPS.
Aspiration: Lower cooldowns for all your main spells? TAKE IT NAO!
Tier 9
Divine Aegis: The lovely crit-procced shields that this blog was named after! I can’t tell you how amazing Divine Aegis is until you really experience for yourself. The shields are stackable up to 10k absorption and each crit will renew it for a full duration. (The only time I’ve ever seen a Disc Priest skip this talent is in a PvP environment because PvP gear has little-to-no crit on it.)
Pain Suppression: Saving the asses of tanks everywhere. This is your mandatory cooldown for fights where your tank can’t live without one, or the occasional “OH SHIT!” situation. Awesome for PvP if you have it glyphed, as well. (Also of note: Contrary to popular belief this spell does not reduce the existing aggro of the target you cast it on. It only reduces the aggro generated while the buff is up, which is a negligible amount.)
Grace: This can be stacked up to 3 in a single Penance, and is renewed thereafter by every Flash Heal, Penance, or (gasp!) Greater Heal. Like Inspiration, if you’re ever going to heal a tank ever, it’s mandatory. (If you’re a crazy raid-healing Disc Priest I can see you forgoing this talent because it can only remain on one target at a time and thus is not ideal for whack-a-mole.)
Tier 10
Borrowed Time: There is no excuse, anywhere, for not putting all 5 points into this talent. None. Seriously. Absolutely none.
Tier 11
Penance: HOLY SPARKLES! …Okay, let’s be serious. This is your main spell besides PW:S and it only costs you a point! It’ll stack Grace to three each time you cast it. It gives you three chances to proc Divine Aegis instead of one like a traditional healing spell with a cast time. It heals just as much as Greater Heal for half the cost, in half the time. The first tick is instant! Did I mention it sparkles?
Putting It All Together
For optimal single-target healing efficiency in a PvE setting (aka: tank healing in heroics/raids) your best choice is a 57/14/0 build with variations in the Holy tree. You can go with one that uses Healing Focus and Improved Renew, which is my choice, or you’re that fan of Greater Heal I don’t understand, go with Divine Fury. Basically this is your starting point; Where you decide to put the talents to get to Tier 3 in the Holy Tree for 3/3 Inspiration and 1/1 Desperate Prayer is up to you. While this can be considered “cookie cutter,” you can see that there’s not really any other good places for your talent points to go.
If you’re going for a PvP build, though, your choices are a little less straight-forward. I would start with something like this as a shell, but since I am not well versed in PvP I can’t really advise you further.
Thank you for reading the first installment of L2Discpline, I hope you enjoyed it and learned something! Next time I get up on my soap box I have a thing or two to say about Glyphs.
Tagged as Discipline Priest, Guide, How To, Talent Spec, Talent Tree, Talents + Categorized as Priest, L2Discipline, Priest
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I agree with everything you mentioned here. Currently testing out a built with 3/3 in Improved Healing, since I never used Renew anyway. Not really sure what I think of it so far. A Greater Heal when under the effect of Burrowed Time is nice, but that is about the only time I use it.
Inspiration no longer increases armor, it reduces physical damage taken by 10% instead.
Great post!
Oh wow, this is a terrific guide and, more than ever, you are tempting me to respec discipline. I’ve always secretly want to go disc and Tam *looks* like he *should* be a disc priest (how could anyone resist spells like Martyrdom and Penance?!) but I’ve always been holy because it’s *slightly* more flexibile, especially if you’re running a lot of random 5-mans, which I was while I was levelling.
Even as a holy priest, I find ‘Improved Healing’ a really difficult talent to deal with. The thing is, without it, it makes ‘greater heal’ pretty much non-viable, even if you only cast it while you’re feeling serendipitous. (When I was messing about with builds – not very well, admittedly – I jettisoned it on principle and then I realised greater heal cost something like 4 years to cast). But obviously you never ever ever use heal or lesser heal, and as a holy priest, you don’t have access to penance. Equally I’ve used divine hymn something like 3 times but that’s probably me not taking full advantage of it.
What I’m trying to say here is that it’s a talent that kind of demands you spend a point or two in it, but seems to give you very little return, regardless of whether you’re disc or holy. Gah! Worst of all possible worlds.
Sorry, this is totally epic and a bit about holy healing which you probably don’t care about :)
@Tam Well, I’m glad I’m tempting you to respec Discipline. You should try it as your offspec and see how you like it!
And yeah, that talent is really nerve-racking. I don’t bother going that far down the Holy tree. Having to put any points in it with a deep-Holy spec would make me very sad.
I really enjoyed this! I’m leveling up a weird combo of disc/holy (tier 1)/shadow (for mindflay cuz I pvp alot) and have had a hard time choosing talents. I do it all – solo, pvp, and heal in groups, and your guide allowed me to make better choices. I’m level 63 now. Once I’m 80, I’m going disc hard core. Its as much fun as my resto druid main!
Great guide! It inspired me to make a few changes to my talent build. I think it’ll work out for the best!
What a great guide! I wish this had been available when I started levelling Hulan from 70-80. I switched from Holy to Disc and really struggled at first until I gradually figured things out. Now I’m not sure I’d know how to heal as Holy any more! Tam, Disc is a lot of fun but I did find some 5-mans tricky until I got some decent gear. Loken in HoL is the one that I found the hardest.
>> Pushback reduction is nice, and I have found it handy for fights like Mimiron during Phase 2
You should know that pushback in this phase (Rapid Burst) was removed over 2 months ago.
>> But the magical damage reduction in PvE is pretty much negligible.
This is the real reason I’m commenting. I think you’re opinion is rather naive and severely underestimates the value of this talent. Ulduar for example has, maybe, 3 or 4 of the 14 bosses that don’t do some significant amount of raid wide damage. In Crusader’s Coliseum 3 of the 5 bosses do raid wide damage with a “highly likely” on the other 2. Very quickly,
Ignis – Flame Jets
XT – Tantrum
Iron Council – High Voltage
Kologarn – OOOoooblivion!
Auriaya – Sonic Screech
Hodir – Frozen Blows
Thorim – AOE Frost Bolt, Frost Nova, and possibly Chain Lightning
Freya – Nature’s Fury, Sunbeams, Ground Tremor
Mimiron – Hand Pulse, Rapid Burst, etc.
Vezax – Profound Darkness
Yogg – Debatable because there isn’t technically a raid wide magic hit (I think) but there’s enough random magic flying around that you may get hit
Algalon – Cosmic Smash, Black Holes, Black Hole Explosions
I wouldn’t call that negligible. I’m speaking mainly from a Hard mode perspective but it’s also relevant to up and coming priests (at or below gear level) doing Normal modes.
While this may not be 100% accurate mathematically, think of it this way … 10% spell damage reduction is equivalent to 10% HP increase. I have 24000 HP raid buffed so that’s an additional 2400 HP. That’s almost 2 Flasks of Stoneblood. Would you call that negligible?
Nice writeup, I’d just add one footnote on Grace, with the change to where it only can be on 1 target at a time several people have just put 1 point in it so that whenever you have to spot heal someone that’s not the tank you have a chance that your Grace stack won’t fall off. That spare point can go pretty much anywhere you want it, I suggest Imp. Renew if it’s not maxed.
Again, great guide.
I agree with Haruki, especially on the matter of hardmodes. Generally, I recommend taking the points of of Imp. Renew for it. I also don’t take Desperate Prayer (I trust my healers :D), which puts me at 4/5 Soul Warding. For Firefighter, that plus self bubbles plus pally aura and GotW just help so very much.
Spending that one point in Desperate Prayer isn’t so much about trusting your healers, but having that one extra emergency button. I can’t tell you how many times it’s saved my arse, particularly in fights where we’re split into distinct groups (Iron Council and the Twins come to mind). I say, do what you can to spare the healers: I’d rather we didn’t waste time running to each other for healing.
I do agree with Haruki. Pushback is so, SO rare in raid encounters. The only time it’s ever been an annoyance is during Faction Champions, and bubbling myself nips that problem. It’s a waste of points – I dump mine in Spell Warding for survivability.
Pushback is a bigger issue in Ulduar, although you still run into it in fights like Beasts, Anub and Champions. This is doubly true in hardmodes. I couldn’t imagine not having at least 1 point in it in those fights.
As far as Desperate Prayer saying lives, I’ll admit it doesn’t do that to me. I so rarely used it before getting rid of it. I just cast PW:S on myself during oshi- moments, since it’s hot keyed already anyway. *shrugs*
@Haruki, I’ve honestly never looked at it that way. It makes sense, and I can see the benefits as you list them, but I don’t think that the 10% spell damage reduction is equivalent to 10% more health. Not all damage is spell damage and there are definitely many things that it won’t save you from if you don’t get healed and/or are not careful.
@Seriah, I have seen priests do that! Thanks for reminding me to point it out.
@Mediocredreams, What if you already have Weakened Soul? I usually keep PW:S on me throughout the entire fight, not just on ohshit! moments.
I was told that Divine Aegis is something I can remove from my build because Paladin tanks have trouble generating mana — and therefore threat when they are bubbled. I guess this is because they regen mana from heals. Is this much a problem for most paladin tanks?
@Ellanelia: No, I’ve never experienced this problem with paladin tanks (and I’m usually healing one as my guild’s MT/RL is a paladin) except on the General Vezax fight where mana regeneration is severely limited. It shouldn’t be a worry anywhere else. You should definitely have Divine Aegis in your talent tree.
Great Post…. Seriously a great guide.. will definitely help out..