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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 3 of 3)
Helio Aug 2nd 2011 2:44PM
Thanks for your great article, Matt. I've played a disc priest since early WotLK. I liked it then, but absolutely love it now, largely because of the atonement/archangel mechanic. Based on my experience, I thought I would share three observations that could make life easier for those new to disco fun:
1) As Minstrel posted earlier, binding Holy Fire and Smite to mouseover macros is damn near essential. I use this: /castsequence [@mouseovertarget, harm, exists] reset=10 Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite; [@mouseover, help] Flash Heal; [harm, exists] reset=10 Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite; Flash Heal. (I'm not in front of the game right now, so this could be a tiny off). I simply hover over the party/raid frames and cast this on the tank or on a reliable ranged dps when and if adds spawn. This truly does make healing via atonement (and thus maintaining your stacks of evangelism) feel more like "healing" and you don't have to worry about target switching.
2) In order to get the most from the archangel buff, I bind Power Infusion to Archangel like this:
#showtooltip Archangel
/cast [@Helio] Power Infusion
/cast Archangel
(If you use this macro, you need to cast Power Infusion @ your toon's name, obviously). This macro essentially forces me to decide when Archangel is useful enough to also blow Power Infusion, so I'm not popping it simply whenever I've got five stacks. If I know that PI is on CD (which I monitor with Power Auras), I feel more free to use archangel, but if PI is up, I'll wait until a necessary moment (last phase of most boss fights, for example). The archangel buff plus the mana reduction and haste buff from PI makes you extremely powerful during AoE healing phases (in which my preferred rotation is shield, hasted PoH with Borrowed Time, shield, PoH, shield, PoH, etc.).
3) A note about mana and trinkets: I NEVER have mana issues during earlier phases in fights (mostly tank and spot healing with shield, penance, atonement and G Heal when necessary). Be advised that this does require careful rapture management. When more intensive healing is required, I begin my AoE rotation (see above) and start burning through mana like crazy. When I dip below 50%, I wait for my Mandala of Stirring Patterns int proc (which I watch using Power Auras), use my shadowfiend and immediately cast Hymn of Hope and wait for the first tick. I usually stop channelling then, and watch as my mana shoots back up to beyond its normal max. Then I continue my mana burn rotation.
There are other obvservations I could share, but hope that these few will perhaps be helpful. If anyone's curious enough to look me up, my toon is Helio on Eitrigg (US).
Happy priesting!
ZephyrSP Aug 3rd 2011 9:19AM
Atonement priest is amazing for leveling, at least for me. Everything is easy enough in pre cata normal dungeons that I'm very glad for the extra mechanic to play with. Throw in mind blast, dots, and spirit tap, and I can contribute a solid 10-20% of the party's damage while healing
jonathan.mcknight Aug 2nd 2011 4:35PM
I play atonement spec and I absolutely love it! now I'm not quite at the gear level to do the encounter but this question came to me while reading the article. Healing the Bealroc encounter I'm wondering if the heal or the smart hot via atonement would trigger vital flame if I cast holy fire on Bealroc while shard tank healing?
Matthew Aug 2nd 2011 8:32PM
How is atonement for arena or BG's ?
Gunter Aug 4th 2011 8:15AM
Not great. You can get locked out of the holy tree if smite/holy fire is interrupted = fail.
Dassiris Aug 4th 2011 4:27AM
I have been playing the Disc AA build from 4.0.3 and thought its many changes and improvements. I just wanted to point of something that may people are missing and what makes this really work for tank healing when the boss isn't to large like on the Nef fight like you say. Because of the talent Train of Thought this reset the CD on Penance and there lies the synergy between smite and penance. With this I usually Smite Smite Penance Smite Smite Penance varying the timing on the spells depending on the incoming dmg... Using PW:S PoM to help catch up when needed. The only time this is a pain is in 5mans where AOE dmg to the whole group can be really high so getting your Smite/Penance get pushed aside by GH and PoH. Fights that I can think of is Dragon Hawk boss in ZA if you group is being stupid and stacking up and stuff.
For most fight even in ZA/ZG my main rotation on my priest is Smite/Smite/Penance and other mixins. Blowing AA and other CDs and using GH/PoH to heal for some ungodly 16-20k HPS(think panther boss lol).