As a Priest, especially one who heals, the main stats you worry about are spellpower, intellect, spirit, stamina, haste, crit, and mp5. Agility, strength, and anything else I didn’t mention (such as hit and armor penetration) need not apply.

Spellpower

Without much explanation, it’s easy to tell what this stat does for you. The more spellpower you have, the more healing your healing spells will do and the more damage your damage spells will do. But what’s interesting about spellpower and the Discipline Priest is that it also increases the amount of damage absorbed by Power Word: Shield thanks to this lovely talent called Borrowed Time. It is also the only stat that does this, so it’s very important as shields are a big part of what being a Discipline Priest is all about. There’s also no such thing as too much spellpower.

Another thing to note about spellpower: Currently every single healing class/spec besides a Disc Priest gets a spellpower boost from a base stat such as intellect (in the case of Holy Paladins and Resto Shaman) and spirit (in the case of Holy Priests and Resto Druids). Thus, we only get spellpower from spellpower.

Intellect

It makes you smarter! No, not really… sometimes, I wish it did. What intellect really does is increases your mana pool and also gives you a bit of crit and mp5, all of which are essential. The bigger your mana pool, the more spells you can cast and the larger your mana returns will be from Rapture and Replenishment. Currently intellect is slotted as the best stat to stack for mana regeneration—However, there can be such a thing as having too much intellect. The majority of the time, this is not a stat you really need to worry about since all cloth caster gear has intellect on it. If a piece of gear has more intellect on it than what you are currently wearing but less of everything else it is not an upgrade. There are many more factors that determine what is an upgrade and what isn’t than just how much intellect it has.

Stacking intellect is not a bad thing, but it has it’s consequences. You’ll be sacrificing other stats such as spellpower, haste, and crit in order to do so. In my opinion, it isn’t the best idea especially since it doesn’t give you spellpower. I’ll give you an example. Compare my spellpower, haste and crit to my friend Matticus. Currently we’re both raiding ToCr/ToGCr on 25-man every week and are wearing gear from those places. However, Matt uses trinkets that have intellect on them whereas I have one with intellect and one with spellpower. Matt also gems solely for intellect whereas I go with intellect/spellpower depending on what color the socket is. (More on gemming in the next article if you’re wondering what I put in blue sockets.) Here’s how our numbers factor out:

As you can see, Matticus has 155 more intellect (for ~2,300 more mana) than me but lacks about 370 spellpower. Sure, he’s able to cast more spells than me… but if you really think about it 2,300 mana is not that much of a difference. Most spells cost between 500-1,000 mana. That means he’s only able to cast between 2-5 spells more than me in any given fight (if there were 0 mana regen, of course, because I like simple math) Even so, his healing spells are not hitting for as much as mine are and his shields are absorbing less.

Spirit vs MP5

The great debate. Should you focus on one or the other or use both? Which is better? Which gives more regen? Well, I’m going to tell you this: For you, they’re pretty much the same. Spirit is a stat that increases your mana regen, and MP5 is just a raw mana regen number. Because we don’t get spellpower from spirit like Holy Priests do it isn’t as important a stat and it doesn’t really matter if you tank a piece of gear with MP5 instead. All of the current cloth caster gear has spirit on it, the only things you’re going to see with MP5 are trinkets, rings, neck pieces, and weapons/off-hands. Thus those are the only items you’ll even have to worry about this debate for.

While spirit is not equal to MP5 it comes very close. In order to get the most out of spirit, you have to have a ratio of it to intellect. Zusterke has a table and a calculating tool to help you figure stuff like that out. Spirit also has the benefit of stacking with buffs like Blessing of Kings. However, I have found that even fully raid-buffed my regen values from spirit have been slightly lower than the MP5 found on similar gear (based on numbers produced by the addon RatingBuster in my comparison tooltips). If you find yourself in a situation where you have two pieces of gear with the exact same stats as eachother except that one has spirit and one has MP5, I would choose the MP5. I would also gem for MP5 over gemming for spirit for the hybrid colors green and purple. (So, int/mp5 green gem instead of int/spirit.)

Haste vs Crit

The second great debate, and for this there’s no real right answer besides “it depends on your play style.” Both haste and crit are amazing stats to have as a Discipline Priest, and while you can choose to focus mainly on one I wouldn’t recommend it. Your best bet is to have a good amount of both, evenly dispersing your gear between the two.

Haste increases your casting speed and lowers the global cooldown (GCD). While the GCD can never become lower than 1 second your spellcasts can. So, if you find yourself with a Flash Heal that casts faster than 1 second (with Borrowed Time) you are not saving yourself any more time by stacking haste. It’s also good to remember that you will already have a base 6% haste due to the Enlightenment talent (which does not show up on your character pane in the haste tooltip). A good number to aim to keep your haste at is at least 10%, so 4% from gear. Currently I have a total of 15% haste with talents and gear and my Flash Heal takes ~1.2 seconds to cast without Borrowed Time. (With it it’s a little under a second, something like .942 seconds.)

Crit increases your chance to cast a critical heal which will heal for 150% of your spell instead of 100%. Crit also does one key amazing, amazing thing for Discipline Priests: It procs Divine Aegis. Thus the more crit you have, the more chances you have to proc DA shields and the more damage that will be absorbed. Unlike haste there’s really no such thing as too much crit. For T7 I aimed to keep my crit between 20-25% and in T8/9 between 25-30% for healing spells. (Which is 15-20% and 20-25% from gear, respectively.) Obviously raid-buffed these numbers will be higher.

Next up in L2Disc: How to make your gear choices, including enchants and gems.

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!

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.

Why? Well, you see there’s a million and one guides to holy priests out there. Wynthea’s writing a series for World of Matticus, Ensidia’s priest has one, to name a few. But if you google “Disciple Priest Guide” you get next to nothing. It’s rather sad and off-putting. :( And considering the amount of fail Discipline Priests I’ve seen (from inspecting random priests in Dalaran to PUGing), I feel the need to correct this issue and fill the gap.

Stay tuned—First thing I’m attacking is TALENTS.