Here’s a Discipline Priest class guide which will help you improve in the arena. This is part of a course for how to play Disc Priest like a pro. This allows you to learn all the secrets and strategies of the world’s best in just a matter of minutes. Know all about the Disc Priest inside of an arena setting. Let’s take a look at how to heal inside of the arena including how to deal with burst damage.
OPTIMAL SUSTAINED HEALING
Kicking things off first, the most important task as any healer is to know how to heal through sustained damage that the enemy is doing. You probably know the answer to this and it’s what’s drawn you to Disc Priest in the first place- Atonement.
Atonement allows you to heal your allies with a portion of the damage you deal but to fully utilize this very niche way of healing, you first have to understand how Atonement works. Atonement is applied via your Shadow Mend, Power Word Radiance and Power Word Shield. However if you are playing with the trinity PVP talent only your Power Word Shield will apply it. How Atonement works is simple, 50% of all damage that you deal heals your allies that have Atonement with this amount being increased by a further 20% if you select trinity. This 20% is additive and not multiplicative so trinity is incredibly strong for consistent healing. Bear in mind though that it is only your own spells which contribute to Atonement healing so for instance PVE trinkets will not. It’s also worth knowing that damage reduction effects or defensive cooldowns that opponents use do not affect the amount that you’ll heal with Atonement.
So now with a better understanding on how Atonement works, let’s take a look at which abilities contribute to Atonement healing. It’s basically all of your damage abilities with the exception of Shadow Word Death.
Inside of the arena, Atonement is your way of dealing with the sustained damage of your opponents and in an ideal world you’ll always want to aim to do as much of your healing as possible with Atonement as you can. It’s your most efficient mana wise and also of course contributes your team’s damage. When healing with Atonement your first priority is to get up your Purge the Wicked and the more targets the better. Picture this as a Druid’s Rejuvenation, the more you have out on your enemies, the more healing you’re going to be doing. As well as also giving you power of the dark side procs increasing your penance and ceiling. Then you’ll want to make sure that you’re using Power Word Solace off CD, this does some decent initial healing but more importantly provides you with mana back. And then there’s Penance, Penance can be used differently depending on the scenario. If you’re healing the consistent spread pressure from something like a Warlock or Shadow Priest for instance, Penance is best used offensively. Whereas if you’re healing single target sustained damage from something like a cleave, you’ll want to use Penance defensively so on your ally. That’s the 3 most important abilities Solace, Purge of the Wicked and Penance with the two foremost being the biggest contributing factors to your Atonement healing and the way of dealing with sustained damage.
Now of course there is also Smite which is a fantastic way at dealing with sustained damage when you have the time. Smite costs 200 mana and heals for a very minor amount. So if there isn’t much damage going out and you can get away with casting this then you should always add it to your rotation.
To recap, get Atonement up on the target taking damage primarily with Power Word Shield. Get Purge of the Wicked up on at least your main target but the more the better. Power Word Solace off of cooldown and then make sure to Penance off CD either defensively or offensively depending on the scenario. Then fill any down time or very low points of damage with Smites.
BURST HEALING
Atonement acts as a nice blanket of healing for your party or yourself but there are a lot of times when it just won’t be enough to heal through the incoming damage. In these times you’re going to have to increase your healing throughput and to do this there are few different abilities you can use. There is Power Word Radiance, Shadow Mend and Mind Blast. You should always remember that these abilities are merely a throughput increase and you should always prioritize and keep to your sustained healing rotation. Just use these abilities to instead recover.
Starting off with Shadow Mend as this is your primary way of dealing with high amounts of damage. In terms of mana efficiency Shadow Mend isn’t too bad, not great by any means but it’s not going to cost you to run out of mana instantly. So if you see your target’s health dropping and you don’t have Penance and Atonement isn’t going to cut it, you can throw out some Shadow Mend. It is also a fantastic ability due to being in the Shadow School of Magic. If ever there are times where you get kicked unholy you can always recover with this spell. Shadow Mend is of course a caster ability and in those times where you really need to pick somebody’s health up fast and in an instant you’ve got Power Word Radiance.
Now on its own Radiance barely does any healing. If combined with Ultimate Radiance and the Shining Radiance conduit as well as having Twist of Fate, it turns your Radiance into practically a lay on hand. The drawback of Radiance though is its very hefty mana cost. And because of that it should always be your final means to recover your panic button. Let’s say relying heavily on Radiance to be your main way of healing people up will cause you to run out of mana incredibly quickly but in some cases it will absolutely be necessary. Do always try to rely on your Penance of Shadow Mend before considering throwing out this spell. Try to make it a goal to heal as little with Radiance as you can during your games. Another way to heal through burst damage which may seem unorthodox with Shadowfiend. When you think Shadowfiend your first thought is just a mana CD which does some damage, yes but it actually deals very high damage which contributes to your Atonement healing. Making using your little friend during enemy burst CDs a great way to in turn not only get mana back but also help heal through some of their pressure.
Then there’s Mind Blast, at first glance probably doesn’t seem like a good way to deal with higher damage output but it does about the same effective healing as a Shadow Mend while also contributing damage. There are 2 aspects to the spell, you’ve got the initial healing from Atonement but then you’ve also got the huge damage absorbed which will absorb the damage that the target of your Mind Blast does. Essentially look at it this way, if the target you want to heal is about to die and needs an initial heal you’re better off Shadow Mending or Radiancing. However if your target’s dipping low and isn’t at risk of dying, Mind Blast should be cast over Shadow Mend. It’s also worth noting that as Mind Blast absorbs the damage the target deals, it’s not affected by healing reduction effects like Mortal Strike or even Dampening. Which makes it even stronger than you might first think.
Final way of dealing with burst damage via throughput is going to be Mindgames. Mindgames is usually seen as this huge offensive CD to use during kill attempts. Yes that is correct and is its best use. However you will find there are some cases especially in less set up based Priests comps where you’ll want to use this solely for healing. Mindgames itself does a large burst of Atonement healing and then even converts the target’s damage dealt into healing while even restoring mana. Mindgames if used on a target just about to deal some damage or that has DoTs out could effectively offer anywhere up to 20k healing in a single global.
To recap, to increase your throughput you should first always look to Mind Blast then if you need some raw healing and have time to cast, you should be utilizing Shadow Mend. And finally if you need some instant healing in a flash, Radiance is the best choice but beware of the mana cost. Meanwhile if you are not doing a set up anytime soon and need some mana back or just want to pump some burst Atonement healing, Mindgames can also be used. Remember it’s best used for those set ups.
PREPARING FOR DAMAGE IN THE OPENER
To set the scene, the starting room gates just opened and you’re walking out into an arena match. How do you prepare at the start of the arena game? What should your globals be? First and foremost is getting up Atonement onto your teammates and yourself and this is always done with Power Word Shield. Afterwards you can then sit down, drink and recover that mana. Mana efficiency is incredibly important on Disc as you’ll learn. This is important for a few factors, it’s going to give you the small buffer of a shield, it’s going to get Atonement up and give you trinity if you’re playing it. Not to mention even if you’re not playing with trinity, putting up pre-shields and Atonement on targets will then give you access to your mastery. How mastery works is that your healing is flat out increased on targets with Atonement, so things like Shadow Mend and Radiance. Let’s say you get caught in CC in the opener and your teammate drops low. Once the CC ends then you are forced to Radiance. Although spells like Radiance or Shadow Mend apply Atonement when you’re not playing trinity, their initial use to apply that Atonement will not give you the mastery benefit. Disc Priests generally speaking though don’t have to deal with damage in the opener as a lot of their compositions are the ones getting the openers themselves. Even in these cases getting up Atonement will make your set ups a lot more potent.
HEALING WHILE BEING TRAINED
This part is where every single Priest starting out will always struggle with the most. Let’s discuss how you can successfully attain this. First of all is picking the correct talents, if you are going to be trained or think that you’re at risk of it you are going to need 2 talents- Masochism and Dome of Light. So the gate opens and you’ve got the enemy running straight at you, what do you do? The first tip is to delay them connecting as long as possible. Instead, look to use a pillar to run around max range, force them to either blow some mobility or start on your partner. This tip may seem minor but trust us any time spent delaying or preventing the enemy from connecting is going to help a ton.
Masochism not only removes the damage portion of Shadow Mend more importantly has a 10% damage reduction attached to it. When being trained you should ideally look to keep this up 100% of the time and this can be done prior to the enemy even connecting. I know your Atonement healing may feel like it’s doing nothing at all while getting trained. It may not be one-to-one healing the damage that you are taking but it really adds up and helps to give you some blanket healing. So don’t neglect your Solace. Make sure that you have Purge the Wicked out and maintained and the same for Mind Blast. Mind Blast on the target training you will absorb a lot of their incoming damage allowing your Atonement to put in some extra work.
Disc Priest is also very fortunate to have multiple schools of magic at their disposal to heal through pressure. So making the most out of these 2 schools and using them correctly will make kicks a non-issue. So when you are being trained, if you are going for Shadow Mend on yourself and get interrupted, you can cast a Penance and vice versa. Overall though while being trained, a large amount of your healing should be coming from Atonement still with both Shadow Mend and Penance defensively being the way to maintain your health. In threes you are also more than likely going to have Ultimate Radiance which you can use with Twist of Fate for almost lay on hands levels of healing. Be careful here, Radiance is a crux that you do not want to rely on. And in twos you shouldn’t be picking it solely due to its high mana cost and the fact that you can easily deal with the damage without it. So although you ultimately have that fallback, always try to look to use Shadow Mend or Penance defensively to heal through elevated pressure and let your Atonement do the work. What really allows this strategy to work is correctly rotating your defensive CDs and trading them proactively.
TIPS TO MIX-MAX HEALING
Let’s talk about some tips to min-max your healing throughput even more. Mana efficiency is the key here. Managing mana is often the difference between good and bad Priests. The general concept to understand is that every ability which applies Atonement costs a high amount of mana. Whereas spells which heal via Atonement cost significantly less. So for instance a Power Word Shield costs 1,550 mana for a very weak absorb. Shadow Mend is 1,750 for a decent heal and Radiance is almost twice that at 3,250 mana per use. Whereas if we look at our damaging spells (see below). Solace returns mana giving you 500 per use while Shadowfiend gives 500 every time it hits the target. Understanding how much mana spells cost and just how big of an issue mana as a whole is for Disc Priest can really help to improve your efficiency thus have a positive effect on your throughput.
A popular trap a Priest commonly falls into is spamming Power Word Shield every time a weakened soul drops off. If you need single target healing then Shadow Mend is almost always the better choice. The only exceptions to this are if you or your team needs a speed increase from body and soul, you need healing on the move, need to apply Atonement with trinity or finally that you’re using Rapture.
Another cool tip is that Radiance can be used in a multitude of different ways because of its ability to ignore line of sight. As long as you can cast it on a teammate or yourself and the friendly target is within range, it will ignore all LOS effects allowing you to essentially heal around pillars or even through them.
INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER CLASSES
Learning interactions between us and other classes, Priest as a whole has quite a few. Staying on the Radiance topic, now that we know it ignores line of sight, it can actually be used as a tool to heal through a rogue smoke bomb or shadowy duel just as long as either yourself or a teammate is in range of the player in the bomb or duel. If you are not in range, another great tip with Rogues is that your barrier, unlike some other ground effects like Earthen Wall for example, works through smoke bombs. So if you see a smoke bomb you can place Power Word Barrier on top and give your ally some damage reduction.
Then of course there is Shadow Word Death. Not only is this ability great at finishing targets off but can also be used as a way to break enemy CC if used a second before it lands. The most common use for this is Polymorph.
0:00 – Disc PvP Guide
1:16 – Optimal Sustained Healing
4:10 – Burst Healing
7:59 – Preparing For Damage In The Opener
9:09 – Healing While Being Trained
12:30 - Tips To Mix-Max Healing14:11 – Interactions With Other Classes