Discipline Priest Quick Start Guide
Looking to start playing a Disc Priest in World of Warcraft and just want simple advice? Look no further! In this guide, we will cover everything you need to start easily playing a Disc Priest in Shadowlands, without all the fuss of detailed guides.
Whether you're new to the spec, a casual achievement hunter, or a returning player looking to refamiliarize yourself with Disc in Shadowlands, these easy guidelines, covering simple and effective talents, rotation, and gear setup, will get you into the action as easily as possible.
Please keep in mind that this page is meant to get beginner players started quickly, and does not contain much in the way of detailed explanations, mechanics, competitive options, gearing, simulation comparisons, or nuance. For more in-depth information, including all those optimizations and more, check out the complete Disc Priest Guide pages linked in the navigation on the left-hand side of the page.
Best Covenants for Discipline Priest
As a quick recap, we've created the table below to highlight the notable differences between covenants. Don't hesitate to click the headers to go to their respective guides!
| Best Raid Covenants | ||
| Covenants | Rating | Best Soulbind |
| Kyrian | Good | Pelagos |
| Necrolord | Decent | Emeni |
| Night Fae | Poor | Dreamweaver |
| Venthyr | Great | Draven |
| Best Mythic+ Covenants | ||
| Covenants | Rating | Best Soulbind |
| Kyrian | Low Keys: Great High Keys: Great | Pelagos Pelagos |
| Necrolord | Low Keys: Good High Keys: Decent | Emeni Emeni |
| Night Fae | Excellent | Dreamweaver |
| Venthyr | Low Keys: Good High Keys: Good | Draven Draven |
Best Discipline Priest Legendaries
Twins of the Sun Priestess is your preferred craft for Mythic+. Keeping the benefit of Power Infusion often helps you avoid using other major cooldowns to stabilize your team while also empowering your ally. Often you'll slam this down on cooldown with your paired up ally's cooldowns but for emergency moments where you need to use it for your own benefit this can increase your ally's damage at a key time while still giving you a bloodlust-like effect to help your team.
Clarity of Mind is your preferred craft for Raiding in Castle Nathria. Extending Atonements, giving you more time to create larger shields with Spirit Shell.
Detailed Discipline Priest Builds
Note: There are currently no talent variations depending on your covenant selection. For a deeper look at each talent and more specialized builds for specific activities, see the Discipline Priest Talent Guide.
This Disc Priest build is focused on maximizing the Spirit Shell talent. Your focus will be to output as much healing as possible after casting Spirit Shell to create the largest absorbs possible. This talent selection is the preferred build for the Castle Nathria raid. Halo or Purge the Wicked can be utilized depending on the encounter.
This Disc Priest build is a balanced Mythic+ build to give you good flexibility and healing support if need be. Rapture, Pain Suppression and Power Word: Barrier to support them. Twist of Fate is great for sustaining your allies when they take heavy damage, especially during Tyrannical bosses and Prideful situations. If you are comfortable with the dungeon and the group, feel free to take Schism.
Stat Priority for Discipline Priests in Shadowlands
Discipline Priests primarily favor Intellect through Item Level, along with Haste, though secondary stats are generally close in value. Find out more about how stats work, including sample stat weights and scaling plots in the Stats Guide, or get an overview of gear to look for from dungeons and raids in the Disc Priest Gear Guide.
- Item Level
- Haste
- Mastery
- Critical Strike
- Versatility
Gearing in Shadowlands is heavily focused on pursuing item level upgrades on your gear pieces. While haste will be a primary focus to prepare for raids, if you find a non-haste item that is 10 item levels higher than the haste piece, it is quite likely that the higher ilvl piece will be better. Some exceptions to item level can be rings and some trinkets. For further detail, check the gear guide.
Best Enchants for Discipline Priests
Many gear slots can be enchanted in Shadowlands power enhancing enchants: weapons, rings, bracers, chest, gloves and boots. Some of these will be utility based for gathering or reducing fall damage.
Recommended Discipline Priest enchants:
- Ring: Enchant Ring - Tenet of Haste
- Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Celestial Guidance
- Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Fortified Leech
- Chest: Enchant Chest - Eternal Bounds or Enchant Chest - Eternal Stats
- Bracers: Enchant Bracers - Eternal Intellect
The next two are utility based.
Potions and Flasks for Discipline Priests
- Flask:Eternal Cauldron or Spectral Flask of Power
- Potions:Spiritual Healing Potion, Spiritual Mana Potion or Potion of Sacrificial Anima. The sacrificial pot should be used near the end of your Spirit Shell ramp to cast 2x Shadow Mend or Power Word: Shield, followed by 2 Power Word: Radiance casts back to back for the most mana savings. In dungeons the instant mana is very good to better stretch out your mana in between Prideful spawns.
- In dungeons Potion of Soul Purity can be very useful for removing debuffs that you cannot dispel.
Weapon Oils for Discipline Priests
- Healing:Embalmer's Oil: This does very little healing at all. Opt for the damage oil instead.
- Damage:Shadowcore Oil: This does NOT convert into Atonement healing but it actually does something unlike Embalmer's Oil.
Best Food for Discipline Priests
The optimal individual food is Tenebrous Crown Roast Aspic with Cinnamon Bonefish Stew being cheaper but weaker.
Feast of Gluttonous Hedonism is the highest quality feast in Shadowlands and should be preferred over individual foods.
Best Gems for Discipline Priests
Recommended Discipline Priest gems is Quick Jewel Cluster with Quick Jewel Doublet being the cheaper version.
Rotation for Discipline Priests in Shadowlands
This section is meant to give a good point of view for a standard ramp up when using Spirit Shell. This section gives a general overview, but more optimizations, talent variations, and advanced tips can be found in the Disc Priest Rotation Guide. When Ramping your focus is on spending time building up Atonement count on the raid and then you Follow-Thru with the damage priority in order to maximize the value of the Atonements.
- Reapply Purge the Wicked
- Cast: ~6 Power Word: Shield
- Followed by Power Word: Radiance into an immediate Purge the Wicked refresh
- 2nd Power Word: Radiance
- Extend your Atonement with Spirit Shell and cast Mindbender
- Begin Damage Priority.