Discipline heals with a mana budget. Penance fires three healing bolts every 12 seconds and Renew (Rank 10) heals over time for an instant cast. The rest of each fight is a choice between an expensive fast heal and a cheap slow one, made by how much mana you have against how much fight is left. Divine Aegis turns every critical heal into a small shield on top, and Power Infusion adds 20 % healing for 15 seconds.

This is the single-target build, which heals one target all fight. It heals 1,210.4 HPS on a one-minute single-boss fight, which ranks 5th of 5 single-target healers. For the party build, use the Party switch above.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• Penance is cheap healing. Three bolts of 425 plus 19 % of your healing power cost 385 mana, less per point healed than any rank of Greater Heal, as Blizzard's 8 October notes intended. It is 13.6 % of your healing on a one-minute single-boss fight.
• Mana for long fights. Meditation keeps half your Spirit regeneration running while you cast. On a three-minute fight it is worth 11.5 % of your healing, more than any other talent.
• Crits pay twice. Divine Aegis adds 15 % of each critical heal as a shield, 3.9 % of your healing with no button to press.

• Power Infusion on yourself. Our priest keeps it, and on a one-minute fight its 15 seconds are a quarter of the fight: worth 5.1 %.

Weaknesses

• The shield scores nothing here. In our fights nobody takes damage, so a shield only counts its absorb. Power Word: Shield returns less per point of mana than any heal in the rotation, and it can't crit. No searched rotation casts it, so Improved Power Word: Shield, Soul Warding and Renewed Hope are worth 0.0 %.
• Behind Holy on raw healing. The Holy tree's Spiritual Guidance and Spiritual Healing add more healing than Penance, Divine Aegis and Power Infusion do. Holy out-heals Discipline on every fight we run.

• Penance loses on short fights. When mana isn't the limit, Greater Heal heals more per second of casting. On a one-minute fight Penance is worth −0.8 %: the sim would score higher without it.

How healers are measured

Healing per second over the whole fight, with the fight's mana: your pool, regeneration, mana potions, Demonic Runes and your own mana cooldowns. Targets sit at full health and nobody takes damage, so every heal counts in full and overhealing is not modelled. A shield counts its whole absorb when it lands, and so does each Divine Aegis.

The single-target build heals one target, itself, on one boss and on three. A group heal counts one target there.

The heals are our own model on the engine, built from the client's spell data, and the rotations are generated from mana rules rather than written by hand. Inspiration, Prayer of Mending, Binding Heal and healer set bonuses are not modelled. The Method page has the details.

On every fight

The single-target build ranks 4th on two-minute fights and 5th on the others. On one minute you never run short of mana, so you cast Greater Heal rank 5 all fight and Divine Fury's faster casts are worth the most (13.1 %). From two minutes on, mana decides, and Meditation and Improved Healing take over. Pick a row to read the whole guide for that fight.

Races

For the Horde, Undead lead every fight of two minutes or more. Their Dark Sacrifice turns health into 1,600 mana plus your Spirit over 15 seconds, once a fight, and on a mana-bound fight that mana is healing. Trolls take the one-minute fights with Berserking, 10 % casting speed for 10 seconds. Undead fall to the bottom of the one-minute boards.

For the Alliance, Gnomes lead the longer fights. Expansive Mind adds 5 % to your mana and Eureka! makes your next three direct heals 10 % cheaper and 10 % stronger every two minutes.

On one minute, Night Elves lead instead: Elune's Light adds 10 % crit for 15 seconds, a quarter of the fight.

What a Priest brings to the raid

Power Infusion is the buff a Discipline priest adds. Our benchmark priest keeps it for itself. The table shows what it is worth to the damage specs you could give it to instead. Prayer of Fortitude, Prayer of Spirit and Prayer of Shadow Protection are in the benchmark raid for everyone already.

Changes

Each row below is a re-run of this build on this fight after a change to the engine, the game data or the search. Read the Updates page for the reason behind each one.