Hi everyone, it's Jack.
I'm back with our dragonflight season one guide for discipline priests. This guide will provide you with everything you need to start your gameplay, whether it's for raiding or Mythic plus. I will also show you where all my content will be and keep you updated on any changes and new developments in the season one Mythic plus dungeons and the vaults of the incarnates raid.
In this video, we will be discussing the talents for discipline priests. I will include all the strings for the talents in a pinned comment, so be sure to check that out in case any major changes occur. This video serves as an introduction to the spec and provides a better understanding of the gameplay with discipline priests.
I want to give a big thank you to the Focus Will Community, the theory crafters, glitch small priests, and many others who have been working hard on the math and science behind discipline priests. You can check out their Discord in the description below.
Raiding
At the moment, we have a few raiding talents to choose from.
These talents offer flexibility, such as the ability to improve purify spells and spell magic.
Support talents like spell warding can be useful for reducing magic damage, while taking words can increase Smite damage.
Inspiration can also be swapped out for body and soul or improved Master spell, depending on the encounter.
In most cases, Halo will be a necessary talent unless the group is heavily stacked.
Powered life will also always be used, as it is a strong talent despite the nerfs it received in beta.
Mind Games will be used consistently throughout long fights, and all of the talents leading up to it will be taken.
In some fights, it may be necessary to use Phantasm to avoid certain boss mechanics, but those will be described in our boss-by-boss guides for vault of the incarnates when they are released.
In the discipline spec tree, Schism is always a must-have talent.
Bright pupil is a great option in a raiding environment because it increases the number of radiances, improving output efficiency.
Indemnity, which extends the duration of atonement, is also a useful talent to have. The improved duration of Schism is not typically necessary.
Evangelism is a must-have talent in the current state of the discipline spec tree.
There have been many changes and builds throughout beta, but the current strong build includes taking Light Strasse, wrath Unleashed, and utilizing the synergy between those talents and harsh discipline and Twilight equilibrium.
This allows for powerful ramping with Smite and harsh discipline, followed by a potent Penance at the peak of atonement application.
The atonements are extended in duration by evangelism, allowing for a large amount of damage to be dealt in a short window of time to quickly top off allies.
To understand the gameplay, it is important to maintain a purge the wicked on as many targets as possible, often using Penance to cleave it across multiple targets.
Shield should be kept on cooldown, and atonement application will heavily utilize Shields and renews.
When using the upcoming Innovation innervate potion in dragonflight, it can be activated before casting spells to increase their buff duration.
A lower rank of the innervate potion can be used to cast a large number of Shields and renews, applying atonements, before canceling it before casting radiances for a significant discount on atonement application.
The gameplay will involve using the passive effect of train of thought to reduce the cooldown of powered Shield, reapplying purge the wicked, and activating harsh discipline before applying atonements with Shield.
Double renew Shield will be used repeatedly until the final atonement is applied with flash Shield.
The Binding heals talent in the class tree allows flash shield to be cast on another person.
In order to effectively use your Shadow fiend, it is important to apply atonement to both yourself and your enemies.
This will ensure that your last development application is effective.
I recommend casting one Radiance charge at range and another on melee so that they do not overlap.
This will allow you to extend the duration of your evangelism and maximize your damage output.
Once you have applied atonements to yourself and your enemies, you can begin dealing damage to convert into healing.
This process begins with using Twilight equilibrium to buff your shadow spells.
For example, you can use life's wrath, a radiant damage spell that is both holy and fire, to buff the damage of your Schism spell.
From there, you can use mind games to add shatter damage, and Independence to buff your Halo.
This will allow you to benefit from harsh discipline instead of Twilight equilibrium.
After casting Halo, follow up with four Smites to reduce the cooldown of Penance.
Then, use Penance and any remaining Smite casts to deal a large amount of damage.
This combination of spells has strong synergy and can be very effective.
Wrath Unleashed is a powerful ability because it increases your Smite damage by 40 percent, making it an efficient source of both damage and healing.
However, it is important to be mindful of your Mana consumption when using this ability.
For this reason, abilities like mind Blast are not included in this ramp profile because they are expensive and do not provide a significant increase in damage compared to their cost.
It is important to carefully manage your Mana and use abilities that provide the most benefit for their cost.
This is not the only type of ramp profile available to you.
Typically, you will have intermissions of about 45 seconds between your various ramps.
This means that you will have one large ramp using abilities like evangelism, lights wrath, and Shadow fiend, and then 45 seconds later you can use Rapture.
This allows you to split Rapture and evangelism into two separate ramps, although the specific approach can vary depending on the situation.
When using Rapture, make sure to activate harsh discipline ahead of time and maintain Purge the wicked.
Use shield and then activate Rapture to make powered Shield have no cooldown.
Follow up with as many shields as you can before the duration ends, and use double Radiance charges to maximize your damage output.
This combination does not extend the duration of atonement, so you can use Schism and follow up with Mind Games, Halo, and smites to deal a large amount of damage.
Once again, this approach takes advantage of the train of thought passive by using lower tier, lower Capstone type traits to reduce the cooldown of Penance and increase its strength.
This allows you to be more Mana efficient than using abilities like mind blast, which can drain your Mana quickly.
Additionally, this approach provides good absorb coverage and additional atonement duration through the use of Shield and Indemnity.
This is a common flow for encounters like vaults of the incarnation and the Primal Council, where you need to quickly alternate between different ability combinations every 30 to 45 seconds.
In order to clear fire patches, you need to have the Frosted ability and jump into them.
Lightning affects can also be useful, but you need to be grounded by jumping to Earthen pillars.
This is often seen in taros testing, where players will spawn pillars and the boss's friend will destroy them, dealing damage.
The damage may be high on Mythic difficulty, so you may need to space out the damage from the pillars.
Alternatively, players may be able to survive the damage and focus on building up large value ramps.
The specific strategies used will depend on the group and their comfort level, but using this general guide can help with applying atonement and building up healing.
When you are in between damage events, you will have access to two Radiance charges thanks to the bright people passive.
These charges can be used together or separately, as long as they are used in between Rapture and evangelism uses.
It is important to keep your shield on cooldown and use it on tank players or targets taking bleed or debuff damage.
Following this up with a Radiance cast or two can help with healing and avoid using abilities that cost a lot of Mana.
If you are in execute range, it is recommended to use Shadow or death for the large damage output, and to use tied evasion to avoid blowback damage.
This is a useful strategy for progression and Dungeons.
While Shadow or death may not be specifically included in some of the images, it should always be activated if possible.
Timing the application of atonements and dealing damage can be challenging, so here are a couple of ways to work on that.
One way is to practice timing mechanics during beta or PTR testing, when there are no timers available.
This can help you learn to properly plan and time your abilities.
Another way is to focus on two real components: timing the atonement application and timing when you are going to deal damage.
By working on these components, you can improve your ability to time your abilities effectively.
One way to improve your timing of abilities is to use Boss Mod tracking or add-ons to track your timers.
Another way is to use Landmark timing. With Boss Mod tracking, you can see when a boss is going to do a mechanic and apply atonements about 18 seconds before the incoming damage strikes.
It usually takes around 9-10 seconds to apply atonements individually, and an additional 4 seconds to cast Radiance charges and extend with evangelism.
This means that the atonements should be applied around the 18-19 second mark. This is a general rule of thumb, but the exact timing may vary depending on factors such as haste and timers.
Some boss fights in the game will not start dealing damage until the timer reaches zero.
At the end of the 18 seconds, the boss will begin a five-second cast, and the damage will happen at the end of that cast.
To track this, players can use in-game notes, a third-party tool, or a weak aura to monitor the boss combat and know when the damage will activate.
They can also reference Warcraft logs or streams to see when the damage occurs.
To prepare for this, players can start applying atonement 19 seconds before the damage happens.
It can be challenging to deal with mechanics that are based on raid-activated incoming damage, such as the mines spawned by Pain Smith Rasnal.
Players must walk over the mines one by one to activate the damage, and this can happen anywhere within a four to five second window.
This affects the timing of atonement applications, so it's important to find a consistent landmark to plan around. For example, on the Pain Smith fight, I always looked for the mines that spawned after the ball wall passed.
The ball wall took about 60 seconds to travel through the room, so I began applying my atonements around 18 seconds before the player would start running over the damage.
This allowed me to be ready to deal damage when the window opened.
To make the most of discipline's strength, your team must be consistent and reliable.
Otherwise, you may be too late or too early when it comes to dealing damage.
This requires both personal skill and teamwork.
In my written guides, I will provide Boss-by-Boss information on the mechanics you should focus on, the timers you should watch for, and how to split between Rapture and Evangelism.
These guides will be available on my Wowhead page before December 12th, when the raid drops.
Mythic Plus
As we focus on mythic plus dungeons, I wanted to showcase the talent tree.
The link in the description below has all of our talent exports and details for you to review.
This covers a safe class build that includes disease dispels, even though they may not be necessary in every dungeon.
Talents like Pious are very strong to take advantage of, and you should always be running Powered Life.
Mind Games is a significant investment for a dungeon environment, but it can be useful if you want to reduce passive damage from crystal reflects.
Keep in mind that it is an option available to you.
On the talent tree, you don't need to cast Radiance on cooldown to benefit from the Bright Pupil effect, and maximizing HPS is not always necessary in a dungeon.
So, despite its weaknesses, I often prefer to use Luminescence because the extra second of atonement application is useful when playing with the Shadow Covenant talent.
In beta, they buffed our baseline damage with a passive in the top left, which is now a 30 flat damage buff that decays after passing five atonements.
As a result, your five-man damage is very high, and benefiting from it is crucial when using Shadow Covenant.
I'm also speccing for a longer duration of Shadow Covenant, even though I don't have enough Shadow abilities to fill 11 seconds of time.
This allows me to use Twilight Equilibrium to efficiently weave Shadow and holy spells, creating a powerful pseudo-ramp for my five-man gameplay.
It also lets me use expensive abilities like Shadow Covenant and Mind Blast more effectively, thanks to supporting buffs like Psyche, Shadow Covenant, Schism, Expiation, and Twilight Equilibrium.
These resources help me rapidly increase health pools, even though it can be expensive.
The problem with using abilities like Blaze of Light, Train of Thought, and Smite spam is that they are slow at restoring health.
In some cases, burst boss mechanics will require you to use more Mana-intensive gameplay and playstyles to survive.
Discipline is always stronger with better gear and can deal more damage, but in a five-man environment, you can't rely solely on Smite.
In a raid, you can prepare for incoming damage and use powerful cooldowns like Light's Wrath, which scales with raid size, and then follow up with more Mana-efficient abilities.
In dungeons, you are on your own and may need to play more aggressively with your Mana to ensure everyone's safety.
In a five-man environment, you can create pseudo-ramps or lighter ramps depending on how aggressively you want to use your resources.
In general, keep your shield on cooldown, primarily on the tank, and spread Purge the Wicked through casting and Penance.
Holy Nova is only useful for maximizing damage and doesn't contribute to healing.
Of course, be prepared for incoming boss damage.
Activate harsh discipline in advance with Smite and keep your shield on cooldown.
Use Radiance followed by a Shadow Covenant, Schism, and Independence into Shadow or Death if you haven't.
Take advantage of Mind Blast, then go into Mind Games, Divine Star, Smites, and Penances.
All of this is good stuff to Minimax your damage.
You may not always be able to take advantage of Twilight Equilibrium, so keep that in mind.
When you have the sequence at the beginning of your Atonement application and Shadow Covenant, take advantage of it when you can.
Remember to consider the passives you're playing around with.
After casting a Penance, you should always be looking to get your Shield cast off thanks to wheel and woe.
This is because wheel and woe buffs your Shield based on the number of penance bolts that you fired off.
It's always very important to maintain and watch your Purge the wicked on your enemies. This is because a passive-like expiation consumes the duration from Purge the wicked to deal damage instantly.
It can be very good to be able to consume that damage and add some extra bursts to your output.
However, it's also really good to make sure Purge the wicked is lingering on enemies when they die because you have a class talent called "throws of pain" right above "mind games" which returns Mana to you if a target still has Purge the wicked on them when they die.
This means that being able to regen Mana actively through Shield discipline and Shields getting consumed through Purge the wicked lingering on targets through things like throws of pain is very impactful and important to be playing around with.
This will help you be a lot more sustainable with your own mana and allow you to keep up where other healers may not be able to when they are playing too expensive and loose with their mana in dungeons.
Once again, you are on your own, so being self-reliant through your cooldowns is going to be incredibly important for Dragon Flight Season One.
This is because the boss fights deal large amounts of unavoidable damage, but there is also avoidable damage that everybody likes to avoid.
The best way to master playing discipline in a five-man environment is to be very knowledgeable about the incoming damage and threats presented by the different enemy mobs.
Ruby lightpools are a great example of consistent damage and unavoidable damage on basic timers.
Whenever you engage with a large fire Elemental, it will always hit the entire party and put dots on them.
When you engage with the various boss fights, you will have consistent timers as to when each event will happen.
Being proactive with Rapture helps from the start because it will smooth out the damage that happens to the raid or party.
Instead of having everyone get hit for 40% of their life, it will be reduced to 15 or 10% once you've shielded all of them, requiring less work and delaying the need to use things like Shadow Covenant.
This allows you to trim certain casts, like Shadow Covenant or Mind Blast, to save Mana and play more efficiently.
It also prepares you for longer boss encounters and more challenging tyrannical boss fights because you won't have to be as stressed with your Mana.
You can save it by timing when you want to use expensive abilities to burst, and then playing very efficiently and effectively with your cooldowns, like Rapture or dropping a barrier onto everyone.
Even using it as a tank external can always be very useful.
There are many times, such as in Algathar Academy, where random hits are going out onto various players.
In these situations, dropping a barrier onto everyone or running into the trash pool with Rapture to shield everyone is incredibly effective.
This is because sometimes a player can get double hit by a random mechanic and drop incredibly low.
Having that extra bit of shielding helps you focus on the player when they drop low, and helps you use powered life follow-up shields.
Sometimes, defensive Penance, even though it's more of an emergency, allows you to use those tools and get time for it while everyone else is still benefiting from damage reduction or shielding.
This allows you to save a life while still providing atonement healing from dotting with Purge the Wicked.
Dungeons are going to be a lot more challenging and I think this raid is going to be quite challenging as well for disc priests to learn and come back from a lot of the different Covenant changes and gameplay changes that have gone on over the past couple months but I’m very excited and I think you guys should be as well because I think the future for discipline priest is going to be looking very bright so for any updates again check that pinned comment uh if anything really big changes or something from this video I'll make sure I have a comment says hey this has changed here’s where to find the gameplay updates or here’s where to find the guide updates to be able to address those changes and if nothing's updated it'll just say hey no updates yet alright.
Thank you so much for watching guys I hope you all found this useful, be sure to sub check out the live stream as those are where some of the best supporters are the best way to support a lot of the content is and of course we do have our subscription as well on the YouTube channel with the join button for like the memberships if you’d like to do that as well that would be wonderful, thank you so much for watching guys hope you all enjoyed it found it useful and I'll catch y'all next time!
