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 Pre-Patch, 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.

Talents

This Discipline Priest build is well rounded and suited for leveling and dungeon content. For a deeper look at each talent and more specialized builds for specific activities, see the Disc Priest Talent Guide.

Rotation

This section is meant to give a good point of view for a standard ramp up when using Evangelism. This section gives a general overview, but more optimizes, 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 Shadow Word: Pain or Purge the Wicked
Cast: 2-3 Shadow Mend
Activate Overcharge Mana
Cast: 2-4 Power Word: Shield or Shadow Mend
Followed by Power Word: Radiance into an immediate Shadow Word: Pain refresh before the Overcharge Mana buff falls off
2nd Power Word: Radiance
Extend your Atonement with Evangelism
Begin Damage Priority.

Refresh Shadow Word: Pain or Purge the Wicked on boss if need be
Cast Schism
Cast Halo
Cast Mind Blast
Cast Power Word: Solace
Cast Penance
Cast Smite until your Atonement start falling off.

Stat Priority

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
Critical Strike
Mastery
Versatility
Gear in Battle for Azeroth 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.

Essences

The essence system offers powerful additional abilities to your toolkit that are unlocked throughout various activities like reputations, pvp and pve. Essences often have various situational or specific benefits, to find out more check out the full Discipline Priest Essences for the Heart of Azeroth - Shadowlands 9.0.1 here for unlock requirements and breakdowns of specific uses. Excerpt from the Essence Guide:

The Ever-Rising Tide - Tome of the Quickening Tides

Source: Nazjatar Bodyguards (click for details!)

Rank 1: Complete A Brief Respite / Down Into Nazjatar.
Rank 2: Complete Friends In Need / Down But Not Out.
Rank 3: Obtain Nautical Battlefield Training / Nautical Battlefield Training.
Rank 4: Obtain Aqua Team Murder Force / Aqua Team Murder Force.

Use on: Raids

The best Major essence for most raid encounters. It halts your mana regen over the course of the duration but is excellent for Discipline's ramps in a raiding environment. With a low cooldown there is very heavy emphasis on optimizing your ramp up windows to take advantage of the raw healing buff that is granted by each successive cast. The general plan will be to maximize stacks without severely impacting your build up on Atonements. The Minor Power is also useful, but entirely passive so you will not need to worry about micromanaging it. Additional primary stats or mana returned are consistently helpful and are well suited to both areas of content.

Enhancements

Only two gear slots can be enchanted by all players in Battle for Azeroth: weapons and rings. There are also glove enchants which can assist with professions, Enchanter-only bracer enchants which modify hearthstone use, and Tailor-only cloak enchants which reduce threat slightly.

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Machinist's Brilliance
Rings: Enchant Ring - Accord of Haste
Gems: Leviathan's Eye of Intellect and Quick Sand Spinel

Azerite

Azerite is the new power system in Battle for Azeroth. Throughout completing quests, dungeons, and other activities you will further empower your Heart of Azeroth. The higher level the Heart of Azeroth, the greater amount of traits that you will be able to unlock on your Azerite pieces. Azerite pieces are the Helm, Shoulders, and Chest pieces that contain a variety of traits and bonuses.

For more information on the Azerite system be sure to check out the Azerite Trait Guide or the DIsc Priest Azerite Section!