If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Since you’ve got your talent spec all sorted out now, the next logical thing to look at would be your glyphs. They’re even in the same pane, just hidden under a different tab. ;)

How you choose your glyphs is an integral part of “customizing” your game play. (And by “customizing” you know I mean “maximizing your healing throughput,” right?) Figuring out what works best for you is key to both your enjoyment of the game and, you know, keeping the people you need to be healing alive. They like staying alive, I swear.

The first thing you need to figure out before diving into Glyphs is your role within a raid. Are you primarily the tank healer, like myself, or are you a crazy, insane primarily raid-healing Disc Priest like my dear friend Matticus? Or, are you not raiding at all and instead pwn n00bs in PVP?

Know what you are now? Great! Let’s get started—

The Glyphs, Explained

The Mandatory Glyph

Glyph of Penance
Why You Need It: With Penance being your bread-and-butter, I-just-spent-51-talent-points-to-get-to-you spell you want it to be off cooldown and available as often as possible. The only way to do that is with this glyph.
Why You Don’t: None.

The Tank Healing Glyphs

Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Why You Need It: With a spell you use as often as PW:S it makes sense to glyph it for added benefit. In this case, it adds an instant heal to your bubble that also has a chance to crit and apply Divine Aegis to your target.
Why You Don’t: The argument is often made that the heal from this Glyph has a high chance to overheal. While that may be true (You don’t shield a target after they’ve taken damage, of course! You shield them before!) the additional chance to proc a new or renew the duration of an existing Divine Aegis is reason enough to take this glyph.

Glyph of Flash Heal
Why You Need It: You’ve got PW:S up on your target, and they have Weakened Soul. You’ve used Penance to top them off. But, oh no! Your shield just got completely eaten by a 20k melee swing and your tank has sustained a bit of damage. But, Penance is still on CD! What do you do?… You Flash Heal, of course. And with this glyph you can do so with 10% less mana.
Why You Don’t: None. (Unless you only cast Greater Heal during raids. And if that’s the case, please don’t tell me. I’ll be very upset.)

The Raid Healing Glyphs

Glyph of Prayer of Healing
Why You Need It: With this being your only multi-target heal, you want to squeeze as much out of it as humanly possible. This glyph is especially handy where your raid is taking steady AoE damage such as the keeper Mimiron in Ulduar during Phase 2 and 4.
Why You Don’t: Besides the reasons why you shouldn’t be raid healing as Disc Priest, there’s no reason not to take this glyph as a raid healer.

The PVP Glyphs

Glyph of Pain Suppression
Why You Need It: I don’t know about you, but when I PVP I spend half the time sapped, cycloned, sheeped, stunned, silenced, or otherwise and my poor teammates are getting ganked fast without my heals. This glyph gives you a chance to do something about it when you’re stunned: Hit that PS button and save a friend!
Why You Don’t: If you’re not PVPing, there’s no real reason to take this glyph. If you are, there’s no real reason not to.

Glyph of Inner Fire
Why You Need It: More armor = Less physical damage taken = More time alive = More heals for your friends.
Why You Don’t: Your shield should be up most of the time, and therefore absorbing the majority of the damage you are taking. If not, I’m pretty sure the opposing faction will be slicing your ass so fast Inner Fire will run out of charges in no time at all, and you’ll probably forget to reapply it if you haven’t already died. Moral of the story? I don’t think this glyph really helps that much.

Glyph of Mass Dispel
Why You Need It: There’s no greater satisfaction than dispelling a crap load of buffs off opposing players. Especially Heroism/Bloodlust. I love doing that. And, of course, doing so with less mana means I can do it more!
Why You Don’t: Mana cost of things in PVP can be both negligible and a big deal, depending on your mana pool in your PVP gear. If your mana is above 20k you could probably skip this glyph for something else. If your mana pool is below that and you find yourself constantly spamming Mass Dispel when you’re not healing then this glyph is a good choice.

Choosing Your Arsenal

Tank healing? The choice is easy: Go with Penance, Power Word: Shield, and Flash Heal glyphs.
Raid healing? A little trickier, but not by much. Drop PW:S for Prayer of Healing or Holy Nova, with the former being more preferable.
PVPing? Drop Flash Heal for Pain Suppression, and it’s up to you whether or not to also drop PW:S for Mass Dispel or Inner Fire. Since I don’t PVP all that much, I can’t really advise further. (Side note: if you’re an experienced PVPing Discipline Priest and would like to write a post about it, please let me know! I’d love to feature your insight here where mine is so lacking.)

What About the Other Glyphs You Didn’t Mention?

There are quite a few glyphs I didn’t bother mentioning, actually. These would be Glyph of Dispel Magic, Glyph of Fade, Glyph of Fear Ward, Glyph of Holy Nova, Glyph of Hymn of Hope, Glyph of Psychic Scream, and Glyph of Renew. I didn’t mention them because they’re not really that useful the majority of the time. Sure, there are situations where one or another would be very handy. But you don’t really want to be swapping out glyphs for every boss fight, do you? That could quickly turn into an expensive endeavor for you.

Wrapping Up

I hope this post was helpful to you in choosing your glyphs! Of course if you have any questions, comments, complements or criticisms please feel free to voice your opinions in the comments! I love hearing from you.

Upcoming next: Gear!

Tagged as Discipline Priest, Glyphs, Guide, How To + Categorized as Priest, L2Discipline, Priest