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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsSpiritual Guidance: How to play an Atonement priest
by Matt Low 
Aug 1st 2011 at 8:00PM
Playing a discipline priest is all the rage these days, it seems, especially now that many raiders are busy messing around in Firelands. There is a small selection of discipline priests who exercise the Atonement and Evangelism style of healing to great effect. In the past, I wasn't really a fan of it at all because I felt that there were better options. The buffs Blizzard made to Atonement back in patch 4.1 involving Holy Fire made it increasingly more attractive. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance.
So the past few weeks, I've been trying to master this style of play. It isn't easy, and I definitely wouldn't recommend it for a priest who is new to the game or new to raiding. This week, I'll share with you a few tricks about what I learned and picked up.
The glyphs
Make sure you have Glyph of Divine Accuracy and Glyph of Smite active under major glyphs. You'll need both. For the third slot, I like to use the Glyph of Prayer of Mending, mostly because there isn't another choice better than that, anyway.
Your primary glyphs will be whatever makes you feel comfortable playing discipline. You probably want to use the Glyph of Penance, Glyph of Power Word: Shield and the Glyph of Prayer of Healing.
The spec
I'm offering an incomplete 31/3/0 spec for you as a baseline to start with. There are seven points left that for you to invest in other talents that you feel can help you or your raid. The extra haste from Darkness is nice and so is the faster Shadowfiend from Veiled Shadows. Or you can go for Strength of Soul, Train of Thought or other holy talents.
The style
Let's look at the cost of Penance. Penance at maximum level will cost me around 2,882 mana (for a dwarf). With five stacks of Evangelism, the cost of Penance drops to 2,017 mana instead. That's pretty darn cheap, if you ask me. This is one of the main benefits that the Atonement spec will net you. You also gain the added benefit of having a pseudo-healing cooldown at your disposal that increases the potency of your spells by 15% and nets you back some mana.
Evangelism stacks can be maintained indefinitely, purely through Holy Fire. What you want to do is cast it whenever it is off cooldown. The rest of the time, just stick to using normal healing spells as the encounter demands. I like to use Power Auras to track when Holy Fire is available. It also helps to create a focus macro so that you don't lose track of your current healing target.
From a positioning standpoint, I like to stay within range of the tank. I figure if I can heal the tank, then that means the boss is close enough that it can be hit with offensive spells, allowing me to refresh and maintain the stack.
Now, should there be any downtime during an encounter where there is little to no healing required, you won't get penalized for casting Smite. When we go up against Lord Rhyolith, I just open up on one of his legs immediately. Periodically through the encounter, I'll hit one to volley my Evangelism stacks up and not lose them. I should be targeting one of those large fire elementals or other adds that spawn, though. They usually die fairly quick before I can get around to them, and there's a ton of raid damage going on as it is.
Just play conservatively and watch your mana bar. If you think you're going to get dangerously low, stop casting Smite and stick to Holy Fire only until you regenerate some mana. You have a Shadowfiend and a Hymn of Hope? Use them!
Great! So when should you activate Archangel? Use it if you know that your Evangelism stacks are about to fall off and you have no hope of maintaining them. If the effect is going to wear off, you may as well make use of the mana return and then gradually rebuild it back from zero.
The other method (which is way better) is if you're anticipating some heavy damage coming on soon. Bust Archangel and go to town while healing every player who is still moving. Cast Power Word: Shield on a player, then follow it up with a Penance and a Prayer of Healing over and over until things become stable again.
Do trinkets matter?
Yes and no. Trinkets by themselves won't exactly make or break your class, but they may alter your playstyle a little bit. Most healers will use some sort of spirit trinket, a mana regen trinket or a throughput trinket.
- Shard of Woe
- Eye of Blazing Power
- Fiery Quintessence
- Jaws of Defeat
- Moonwell Chalice
- Core of Ripeness
- Darkmoon Card: Tsunami
Those are just some of the trinkets that practically scream "healing" all over them. But I'm going to add two more to that list that just might surprise you.
Wait a minute! Aren't those DPS trinkets?!
Why, yes! Yes, they are! The only offensive spell you'll really be using is Holy Fire. You've got a pretty good shot of proccing both of those trinkets just from the Holy Fire ticks, anyway. If I noticed Theralion's Mirror activating and boosting my mastery (almost over 70%), I'll load up and start casting Power Word: Shield on players around me or cast Prayer of Healing to force Divine Aegis through. If I see that my Volcano card has activated, that's an additional 1,600 intellect I'll have temporarily. Resort to actual healing spells, though, to take advantage.
Anyway, you don't need to go out of your way to get those two trinkets. But just keep in mind that you can (and should) take advantage of them when they proc.
Before I close this one out, I want to remind you that I consider this style of play a fairly advanced one. If necessary, test drive your settings at the target dummies. Practice keeping one focused while healing various players around you. Try to get a feel of how much mana it cuts away from you and what else you can do to get it back (or at least, make it mean something).
Spiritual Guidance has the inside line on pre-raid gear, valor point and raid gear, and healing strategies for bosses such as Atramedes and Chimaeron. Newcomer to the priest class? Look into Discipline Priest 101 and Holy Priest 101.
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
thebitterfig Aug 2nd 2011 3:47PM
Depends on level. At low-level, Disc does as much damage as shadow, and has fewer mana problems and is a better off-healer in Oh$#!! moments. I'm not sure at what level there's really much of a difference, but you should be good through level 40 at least.
Minstrel Aug 1st 2011 10:13PM
Just thought I'd mention this, a macro I've found useful for atonement specs:
/castsequence [@mouseovertarget,harm,exists,nodead][@focustarget,harm,exists,nodead] reset=10 Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite;[@mouseover] Heal
It's a Clique binding for me, so if you use Healbot or Vuhdo, you'd macro it as one of your click bindings. It casts Holy Fire if it's off cooldown and Smite otherwise. It attempts to cast it on the target of your mouseover target, if it's a valid target for a harmful spell. If you have a focus target (like the tank) and he/she has a target that's a valid target for a harmful spell, it will cast on that. If neither is the case, it will default to casting Heal on your mouseover target so as not to waste the mouse click. Since I view smite healing to largely be the "do when there's not more intensive healing to be done" action, I felt it was an equivalent to Heal.
The main value of this, IMO, is that it no longer makes using combat spells feel like a "different mode." You can cast Holy Fire/Smite in the same way as you cast all your other heals...by using a click-combination on a raid frame (alternatively, you can put it on your action bar if you're a mouseover key presser). That makes "weaving in" your combat spells much more seamless. To me, anyway.
Artemisian Aug 1st 2011 10:26PM
I find it pertinent this should be posted now. I've been healing with A/A since it came out for Cata, and I've loved it. However I've found Firelands has made it less useful - with increased gear I don't have issues of mana conservation, and found myself just spamming GHeal and Penance without getting the chance for A/A. Over the weekend I changed away from A/A and am now doing a fun build of stacking mastery and speccing into Strength of Soul. 30k shields every 7 seconds or so have proven quite fun. I know it's not the normal build, but I've found mastery works very well for me (and DA with mastery was a clear winner on Staghelm!)
themightysven Aug 1st 2011 10:36PM
#showtooltip Holy Fire
/cast [harm] Holy Fire; [@targettarget] Holy Fire
This Macro will let you cast Holy Fire while still having the tank targeted for normal heals/Shields.
Be aware when there are situations that your Atonement heals can go to NPCs and bystanders (Old Hillsbrad for instance in case 1, Setharia's Roost in case 2)
Jack Spicer Aug 1st 2011 11:34PM
Since you're not actually relying too much on the heal from Atonement, do you really think the Glyph of Smite is necessary?
Stillwell Aug 2nd 2011 12:20AM
It's a major slot, so you really aren't going to find anything significantly stronger to replace it with. Additionally it means that when you can rely on Atonement to carry your healing needs even farther. I'd say it's a pretty key glyph if you're going to pick up the talents.
That one Joey Aug 2nd 2011 12:31AM
My priest has 2 healing specs. a "progression" holy spec and a "farm content" atonement spec. I use fall of mortality + shard of woe for my holy progression spec and theralions mirror + necromantic focus for my atonement spec. Yes...when I have theralions mirror procced + necromantic focus stacks....my mastery is looking at like 60k-70k bubbles. It's insane. For farm content, I'm spending about 90% of my time smiting + holy firing, and the other 10% of the time just bubbling the tanks, and the occasional dps who dips low. This week, I ended chimaeron at 8k dps. Atonement priests are on the same wavelength as a mastery holy pally: They fill their niche, and they do it quite well.
jlhealy Aug 2nd 2011 2:30AM
Maybe I've been doing this entirely wrong, but I feel like I get a ton of healing out of atonement - 20-30k for a holy fire, 15-28k for a smite, depending on buffs and crits, plus with archangel each smite increases the damage (and subsequent healing) the next one does AND it is based on the damage you do, so I've seen numbers around 40k per smite during a perfect storm of CDs proccing and in excess of 80k for fights like Halfus. I am not heavily stacked in stats for smite, either, as I tank heal often, so I have a pretty conservative 3-way split in secondary stats.
Smite is half a second faster than heal and does 2-3 times the amount of healing, with almost no mana cost especially with archangel factored in, so I must be missing something here, as it seems rather profitable - yet people are saying that it is very low HPS?
I have only ever healed disc as atonement (I started as holy in September and tried out disc starting around January), so I am in the dark when people refer to the "real" disc rotation. What spells are those? I see a lot of allusions to a non-smite spec on this site, but I haven't seen it explicitly explained. :/
Thanks in advance for the feedback :)
Cigan Aug 2nd 2011 8:43AM
You mention Halfus, a uniquely Atonement positive fight. Other uniquely Atonement positive fights include Magmaw (if you do the 1 person kiting the worms approach), and the T11 BH boss, who's name eludes me right now. That and Atonement is kind of 5 mans, but who cares about 5 mans.
In fights other than that if you're raid healing then you're just working towards the archangel buff because your raid isn't staying in range of the boss. On fights like Nef you have the larger problem that the tank might not even be in range of the boss because that 15 yards is measured from the middle of the boss, not the edge of his hit box (I REALLY wish they would change that, it would in no way break the game). Atonement is actually in my opinion the superior spec for raid healing, because of Archangel, but you're not using it for the atonement, just the buffs.
The Other Spec, which you should be using if you're tank healing to be honest is the Strength of Soul spec. Where instead of all the Atonement stuff you take some other Raw Throughput, and take Strength of Soul. You're spamming heals on the tank, so their weakened soul dbuff goes away much faster and you keep PW:S on them as often as you can. It's a mana intensive approach, but you're tank healing so PoH is not part of your mana misery, it kind of balances out, and you do get more of your potential maximum rapture procs. So yeah, that's your other option.
BB Crisp Aug 2nd 2011 1:49PM
@Cigan
I wanted the hit-box thing changed too, but it would break certain fights. Namely, Al'Akir and Ragnaros. If it worked how we wanted, you could HF/smite the boss and smart-heal anybody within 15 yards of him from any side. I could be on the far right of Ragnaros and heal the tanks on the far left just by Dpsing. I tried it on Al'Akir once and was disappointed that nobody was getting healed, but I realized how ridiculous this would end up being.
Aurilia Aug 3rd 2011 9:34AM
@Cigan A lot of T11 is Atonement-friendly in certain circumstances.
Halfus after he gets stacks from killing drakes
Valiona and Theralion when the priest gets Engulfing Magic (100% extra damage, 100% extra healing. Effects stack for Atonement)
Magmaw when he's impaled
Omnotron while standing in a power generator
Maloriak during the first few seconds of the Green vial.
I'm sure there's more, but that's just the fights I know off-hand.
T12 doesn't appear to be as friendly for the spec, however, beyond keeping HF on CD.
rwilki Aug 3rd 2011 1:27AM
Just wanted to join in the chorus of support for Smite(lol) healing. I've been AA pretty much since it came out, switched to holy (*GASP*) briefly but soon saw the light and returned to the Holy Fire and Smite way.
I find it's perfect for tank healing the Shannox tank, less so on Beth'Tilac - but still the way to go. Using Power Aura's helps me to HF, Penance and PoM on cooldown and the boost of Evangelism for PoH spam is most welcome when needed.
BB Crisp Aug 2nd 2011 1:58PM
Funny, I'm exactly the opposite when it comes to those two bosses. I don't really like it for Shannox because of the level of kiting and movement involved, but I love it for Beth'tilac. I dps the big adds on the ground tank, then I can dps the boss for a while when the raid is stacked behind her. It also leaves Archangel available for when the raid is taking big damage at the end.
Hirumared Aug 2nd 2011 5:57AM
I've been healing using the atonement spec since day 1 of cata, and I absolutely love it. But it has never crossed my mind to use the spec solely for the evangelism buff. I mean I only smite/holyfire when there isn't any major damage going out, and I do the normal penance/POM/Rapture/archangel off cool down thing, but using it solely for the buff, that's genius. That never even crossed my mind to use it that way. As you may know, atonement doesn't work on ragnaros anymore so I always felt like I had 5 wasted talent points, now I only have 2 wasted talent points if I use it the way you described in this article. Thank you! (atonement also doesn't work on ali'kir, maybe it just doesn't work on huge boss models, which is annoying that rag is the huge boss of this teir)
Philster043 Aug 2nd 2011 7:54AM
Ditto. I was taken aback by the Evangelism buffs mentioned in the article. I usually just popped Archangel as soon as it became available. I feel pretty dense now.
Philster043 Aug 2nd 2011 7:50AM
Good article. I'll admit to having been a little out of sorts when I realized Cataclysm had changed my Discipline play-style almost entirely, but I guess I need to get over it one day.
I still heal mostly as a Holy priest now, though, but I'll keep your Atonement tips in mind for whenever I want to test Disc again.
Cigan Aug 2nd 2011 8:30AM
OK, I've played Atonement since Cata dropped, before holy fire and there is a lot of incomplete information in this article, and in the comments. I say incomplete because I don't want to make it seem like what is here is bad info, it's really a decent guide, it just doesn't finish.
My main beef is with the view of archangel as a mana talent falls a little short. It is generally not a mana dynamic because you're going to spend more mana getting your stacks back up than you would have if you'd left them up. However, that is less true now that we're only stacking them with Holy Fire in raids. So if you have one of those major int proc trinkets, and I would add mandala of stirring patterns to the mix of acceptable 359 trinkets, I know I know the proc doesn't have a chance of going off from your HF or Smite, and that bothered me when most of my healing was in 5 mans (when the proc isn't needed amusingly). In raids you're going to be throwing so many actual heals that it's not a problem. It will proc, and it's a HUGE Int buff. If you have that, Power Torrent, and Lightweave Emroidery then you can on occasion have all three int buffs up at once, and let me tell you when that happens and you drop archangel, or even better get an archangel and a rapture off it is great mana regen. So be aware of your buffs, maybe build them into power auras (To be fair I don't, but I'm considering it), it's worth it to pay attention to them.
The other thing is I find it a little unfortunate that the author mentions addons in this article (power auras), but doesn't mention grid and clique. These addons, or others that provide the same functionality are in my opinion a requirement for raiding in general, but they are an absolute requirement for Atonement healing. I have been using them since Ragefire Chasm because our guild leader used to raid heal in BC and had me install them. With them you do not target to heal at all, you just mouseover your raid frames (utilized by grid) and then do a click combination like shift+right click alt+left click etc to execute your heal. This leaves your target open for atonement. You just stay targeted on what you're going to holy fire/smite and then you can throw the spell whenever without changing targets or messing around with focus macros. There really is no other option for atonement healing, none at all. Just some things to keep in mind.
tbutton Aug 2nd 2011 3:09PM
"There really is no other option for atonement healing, none at all."
There are always other interface options. I use SUF for frames, keybound mouseover macros for all heals, and a target-of-mouseover macro for the HF/smiting. Just mouseover who you want to assist. This is similar to your setup, in that it doesn't use targeting, but all the heals are keystrokes, rather than click combinations, saving the mouse buttons for movement. I have the Q-R-Z-V quadrangle all keybound, with control and shift modifiers, for 36 spells in the left-hand, shown in dominos so I can remember what spec I'm in.
Cigan Aug 2nd 2011 3:19PM
Note I said Grid and Clique or other addons that provide similar functionality. You have to use something other than the default healing interface which is bad for healing, but really bad for jumping between dps and healing dynamically.
glenn Aug 2nd 2011 12:12PM
Always cast Smite when you are NOT casting Holy Fire, throw penance & PoM on the tank in a pinch, shield him if you know a large attack is coming, if AOE is inbound, glyph PoH and let the aegis shield and Inspiration to reduce damage (plus HoT).
All in all, with the elitist jerks spec build, healing in PUG gear is decently easy.
When I need tank reaction healing to bail from him dying, I simply shield, Pain suppress *if needed) and Penance/PoM him back to a quick full tick. Then I GHeal him up (or flash heal spam) and then DPS with a Holy Fire to keep it up as a DoT/HoT.
I DPS with smite, if tank starts to drop significantly, Penance/PoM. Most times, I hardly fall below 50% mana. If DPS stand in goop, shield, PoM, and F.Heal.
Or I let them die if they keep doing it :D
Also, PoH is handy, it shields, HoTs, and inspiration. 3 fold coolness.