Discipline in Challenge Modes (Starter Guide)

[RayuEU]

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

.:: Table of Contents ::.

• About me
• Introduction
• Spells
• Talents
• Glyphs
• Gear
• Dungeon guides

.:: About me ::.
My name is Julian "Arthelais", I am 20 years old and I live in The Netherlands. Currently I am working on my bachelors in mathematics and informatics.

I started playing WoW during Wrath of the Lich King on a casual level and I got into raiding during Mists of Pandaria, at which point I also decided on sticking with my Priest. I raided with Ascendance (top 20 guild) for a few months and I have done a bit of arena PvP as well, but my focus is mainly with competitive Challenge Modes right now. I started my quest for gold medals in December and ever since I have been working hard on forming a team of strong players around me to compete for world records with.

300+ gold medals completed and several world records later I thought it would be a good idea to share my knowledge with the community to hopefully give a boost to popularity of the Challenge Mode 'scene' which currently consists of only 3 active teams and to give players some basic information to give them a kick-start in getting their medals.

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...thelais/simple
WoWprogress: http://www.wowprogress.com/character...zzak/Arthelais
Skype: RayuEU (feel free to add me)

.:: Introduction ::.
Challenge Modes are completely different from raiding and you will have to get used to the unique play-style that goes with this. Do not let this scare you off! When I started I was certain gold medals would be out of my reach as I was wiping my team on the first trash pack try after try, but with time and practise I managed to get past these obstacles and the process feels extremely rewarding, especially if you work to find yourself a team and progress as if you were a raiding guild (I made many good WoW friends this way!).

If you have trouble getting your friends to do Challenge Modes with you, try OpenRaid. I used this website myself when I was getting my gold medals and I still play with the same tank I met on there! Just keep in mind that Challenge Modes are intended to be frustrating and not only test your gaming skills but also your psychological skills and team spirit. Keeping motivation is the most important thing regardless of your goals.

Discipline is an excellent spec for healing Challenge Modes and pretty much mandatory when you go for world record times. The simple fact that you can heal while you DPS puts you far ahead of any other healer in the game - Atonement is your best friend and your play-style will revolve around it. The anticipative character of the spec also gives you more and better ways to handle spike damage which makes it very reliable.

I believe everyone is capable of eventually getting all 9 gold medals if they keep at it, achieving goals beyond that requires a bit more. This guide is aimed at the beginning Discipline Priest, but if there is demand for it I am willing to make a more advanced guide as well. I assume that you have played your Priest in other parts of the game so I will not go into the basics of class mechanics.

.:: Spells ::.
If you have a raiding background you will find that applying the same play-style to Challenge Modes will probably not get you very far. The damage your team takes is much spikier and less predictable and cooldown management and communication with your team are crucial. The tactics described later in this guide are designed to minimalize randomness and optimize the utility of your cooldowns, but you will still have to deal with these difficulties.

As said before, your play-style revolves around Atonement. The damage you can deal while healing will actually help you a lot as it shortens the length of the fights which makes them easier on your mana, prevents you from running out of defensive cooldowns and makes the medal timers easier to beat. On the healing side of the equation it turns out Atonement is extremely useful for almost every encounter; it is mana-efficient, gives strong reliable HPS and the best thing about it is that it is smart healing. This last thing means that every tick of Atonement healing will go to the lowest-health player in your team and this combined with the fact that you get a lot of Atonement ticks in short time frames means that it is ideal for 'sniping' heals on your tank.

Atonement uses the following priority system:
Divine Star/Halo > Penance > Shadow Word: Death > Shadow Word: Pain DoT up > Holy Fire > Smite

You can drop Shadow Word: Pain and Shadow Word: Death from your rotation to increase healing, or consume Evangelism stacks for Archangel.

Of course just spamming Smite will not do the trick. Sometimes you will simply need more HPS or tunnel your healing on your tank. Your other spells can be used to achieve this and I will go over situations and how to handle them. I will add situations to this section depending on questions in response to this guide.

High constant damage on the tank
Consume Evangelism stacks. Spam Flash Heals, preferably with Spirit Shell up to avoid overhealing. Use Power Word: Shield whenever available.

High spiky damage on the tank
If the damage becomes too spiky to keep your tank alive with Flash Heals (there will be times where your tank can get one-shot) you will have to resort to using a cooldown. Don't panic and use all of them, communicate with your tank about this so he does not pop a cooldown too and think ahead or discuss with your team how to handle these situations beforehand. You bring Pain Suppression, Power Word: Barrier and Void Shift to the table. The nature of the first two is the same, but Pain Suppression is stronger while Power Word: Barrier can be group-wide; use these when you can anticipate the damage. Use Void Shift if your tank is already on low health. If a cooldown is used you will usually not have to also spam Flash Heals.

High constant raid damage
This is hard for a disc to deal with properly, luckily this situation is also quite rare in Challenge Modes and usually the result of mistakes; for example the tank not being able to hold aggro or players standing in pools on the ground. This kind of damage is difficult to anticipate and so you are left with only your Prayer of Healing spell, possibly empowered with Inner Focus and Archangel. Call on your team to assist with defensive cooldowns and personal heals. In the rare case that you can anticipate the damage, use Power Word: Barrier. In the situation where you have 2-3 people dipping low Binding Heal can be a good solution as Prayer of Healing is slow and has a lot of overhealing in this situation.

High spike damage on a DPS
Keep an eye out for when this happens. Because Atonement is smart healing, for a few seconds your heals will be directed to the DPS that is on low health. This means your tank loses out on heals and you might have to use an in-between heal or call for a small defensive cooldown to keep him alive while you heal the DPS back to full. If you glyph into Binding Heal you can also use this spell to keep both the tank topped and bring the DPS back to full.

High spike damage on you
This is very dangerous, because Atonement has a reduced effect on yourself. You will have to use a cooldown in some situations to keep your tank up while you Flash Heal yourself. Another option is to use Binding Heal.

No damage
Keep using your DPS rotation! In some cases you will even be able to AoE using Mind Sear, which is actually quite strong.

Preparing for incoming damage
If you have nothing to do for a while but expect damage to come in soon, you can use spells like Renew, Prayer of Mending and Spirit Shell to prepare for this. A good example of a situation like this is when you are waiting for the countdown at the start of a run.

.:: Talents ::.
Talents play an important role in Challenge Modes. You can even swap them around during runs to have optimal performance on all parts on the dungeon (and you should!). I will go over every tier and explain the pros and cons of each talent choice.

Tier 1: Void Tendrils, Psyfiend, Dominate Mind
Your CC tier, which sadly is not very strong in Challenge Modes. Void Tendrils can keep mobs into place for a short while without them going for the nearest target, making it the only 'safe' root in the game. This is rarely useful but can save your tank if he gets cornered trying to kite. Psyfiend is a risky talent if you don't glyph into Glyph of Fear, because it will cause mobs to run away which can result in ninja pulls. Dominate Mind can be useful when going for certain advanced tactics but will never be used in my dungeon guides because it impairs you from healing, requiring good coordination from your team. All in all, none of these talents have much use in Challenge Modes.

Tier 2: Body and Soul, Angelic Feather, Phantasm
The Priest's movement tier. Let's eliminate one choice: Phantasm is absolutely useless, I have never found any situation in Challenge Modes where I wanted to use this talent. You will never get root or slow effects on you. That being said, the choice is between Body and Soul and Angelic Feather. Personally I run with Angelic Feather, because you mostly use this tier to get from boss to boss and Angelic Feather just does a better job at that, having better up-time and costing no mana. Body and Soul does not require a global cooldown though, making it strong if you want to increase your tank's mobility on a fight. Note that these effects can impair your tank's ability to use nitro boosts or other movement speed increasing effects because of the way the mechanics in-game work.

Tier 3: From Darkness Comes Light, Mindbender, Solace and Insanity
The mana regeneration tier, which is actually a big source of damage too. From Darkness Comes Light gives you the ocassional free Flash Heal instant, but it is very random and you might not always get procs when you want them. Solace and Insanity does almost nothing except for give you a small amount of mana back every once in a while. This leaves Mindbender as the best talent in the tier, giving you both the best mana returns and damage increase of the three.

Tier 4: Desperate Prayer, Spectral Guise, Angelic Bulwark
Survival tier. Desperate Prayer and Angelic Bulwark serve the same purpose, with Desperate Prayer being reactive and Angelic Bulwark being passive. Since you usually do not have much time to react to spike damage in Challenge Modes I like Angelic Bulwark better of these two, but Desperate Prayer can help you in preventing Atonement ticks from being directed to you instead of your tank. Spectral Guise is a very strong situational utility spell, allowing you to stealth past mobs and to play around with your aggro. This can be used to replace Invisibility Potions allowing you to use more DPS potions throughout the instance.

Tier 5: Twist of Fate, Power Infusion, Divine Insight
Primarily a DPS talent tier. Let us look at Divine Insight first; this talent allows you to shield your tank more often, but it is not guaranteed to proc and so not a reliable talent. Most importantly however, it does not improve your damage, which the other two talents in the tier do. The choice between Twist of Fate and Power Infusion heavily depends on the situation. Consider for yourself how often Twist of Fate would proc on a certain dungeon and compare that with Power Infusion up-time. Swapping these talents during a run may boost your performance by a lot. Note that if you run with haste on your gear that the combination of Heroism/Bloodlust + Power Infusion will bring you over the haste cap.

Tier 6: Cascade, Divine Star, Halo
AoE damage/healing tier, with Cascade being the clear loser in any situation because it simply doesnt do a lot of damage compared to Divine Star or Halo and the healing is not efficient in small groups. You will run with Divine Star most often, because Halo tends to ninja pull a lot and requires both a large amount of mana and good positioning to be effective. Halo is good when you are sure you will not ninja pull anything, you have a good position and you are not struggling for mana.

.:: Glyphs ::.
I will only go over the glyphs relevant to Challenge Modes, which is quite a short list and you do not really get much choice here.

Glyph of Smite
Mandatory. This is just a flat damage increase, nothing much to explain about why this is good when you are rushing through a dungeon!

Glyph of Penance
Recommended. At the cost of mana efficiency, you gain amazing mobility. Since you have to heal 'on the move' a lot in Challenge Modes and Discipline is not the best spec for this by default, this glyph is very good compensation.

Glyph of Holy Fire
Recommended. Increases the range of your damaging spells to make it equal to that of ranged DPS classes. This allows you to position yourself better on many fights and get that first spell off just a little earlier when you are moving towards a boss.

Glyph of Fear
Situational. As mentioned earlier, Psyfiend can be used in combination with this glyph to have mobs tremble in place. Both Psyfiend and Psychic Scream can be used to interrupt mobs and incapacitate them for a short duration while you have this glyph. Doing this is not recommended if you do not use Glyph of Fear because it will spread out the mobs and you risk ninja-pulling.

Glyph of Binding Heal
Play-style dependant. Personally I rarely ever use Binding Heal because the healer almost never takes high damage unless it is raid-wide, but if you tend to stand in stuff a lot or for some other reason find yourself struggling to keep a filled health bar, this might help you.

.:: Gear ::.
Note: you can do just fine in your regular healing gear. this section is for people who want to get the most out of their stats.

For Challenge Modes you will take on different priorities from raiding when it comes to gear. I will not go into what enchants/gems you should take but I will simply give you two priority systems which depend on your play-style and goals.

Defensive, safe build:
Intellect > Spirit > Critical Strike > Mastery > Haste

Aggressive build recommended for times past gold:
Intellect > Crit > Haste > Spirit > Mastery

You should always start with the first build, because the second requires not only good play and mana management by yourself, but you also need your team to be able to support your play-style. The aggresive build gives you almost no mana regeneration and so if a boss does not die within a certain time frame, you are going to run out of mana. I recommend starting with the defensive build and slowly reforging spirt to crit when you feel more comfortable with your mana.

.:: Dungeon guides ::.
In this section I will go in-depth on the different Challenge Mode dungeons and your role in them. The tactics discussed are relatively safe to execute but you can do fine even if you choose not to follow them exactly. I intend to extend this section dungeon by dungeon and I would like to eventually add video footage of myself putting the suggested strategies to practise.

Temple of the Jade Serpent
While waiting for the countdown spam Spirit Shell + Flash Heal on your tank and get in a quick drink in the last second to get your mana back. Have your tank pick up all of the trash before Wise Mari and keep up with him. Use Renew, Prayer of Mending and glyphed Penance to keep him healed while you are on the move and Fade to avoid getting aggro while doing this. Use Heroism/Bloodlust and your personal DPS cooldowns when the trash is nicely grouped up and put Power Word: Barrier on the melee group. When Power Word: Barrier runs out use Pain Suppression on the tank if the trash is still alive and have your tank pop a cooldown if there is still damage going around after that. Keep an eye out for people standing in the Corrupted Water pools that drop on the floor when an Elemental dies. Try to get a quick drink in before you pull the boss.

Wise Mari
This fight revolves around killing the Elementals that the boss spawns quickly in order to advance the fight further. The boss gains an extra ability compared to the Heroic version of this encounter which allows him to cast Waterbolts at any player standing outside the water circle in the boss room. This rules the back of the room out from being a safe spot, so have your tank stand in the niche in the back of the room but inside the circle with the melee DPS and have the ranged group and yourself stand in the front side of the room, but away from the water areas. This way the ranged DPS do not have to worry about pools spawning under them and can safely DPS. Help the DPS kill the adds when they are up and switch to direct healing your tank as soon as they die. Make sure the melee DPS keep their eyes out for this still. When all four adds die, have the ranged DPS and yourself group up on either the left or the right side of the boss room and have your backs to the wall. This way you will not have to move around the boss all the time and can just take the hit from the beam (it does not hit for much). This increases group DPS by a lot. Atonement should suffice to heal this phase, your DPS cooldowns should also be available again, use them.

When Wise Mari dies you get a speed buff which stacks with other speed buffs. Use it to get to the other side of the instance, to the Lorewalker's room. Drink up and use invisibility to get past the first few packs and break stealth when everyone is on the small bridge where the Songbird stands. Have your tank pick all the mobs up and take them down to the Lorewalker. Make sure you keep distance from the small Shas because they silence players in melee range of them and dispel your team whenever the Songbird sleeps someone. You should have Pain Suppression and Power Word: Barrier back up by this time so use them on your tank. Since this trash is mostly AoE'd down you should not focus on your damage too much. Have your team try to focus interrupts on the Songbird. When the trash is about to die kill the Artifact that triggers the boss to spawn. Drink up to full mana if you have time.

Strife and Peril
Unlike the Normal/Heroic version, only one event can be triggered on Challenge Mode - Strife and Peril. This fight is very straight-forward; start on Strife and bring him to six stacks of the buff he gets, then swap to Peril and bring him to six stacks too. Swap back to Strife and repeat until both are dead. Make sure the bosses do not go immune. Atonement should suffice to heal the damage, use your DPS cooldowns when they come back up.

When the bosses are both dead you gain another movement speed buff. Head to the back of the room and follow the path to the central square. Drink up. There are three packs of Shas, all consisting of one big Sha and several smaller ones and also two big Shas patrolling the square. Pull them pack by pack and keep an eye out for the patrols; try to pull one patrolling Sha with each of the first two packs and do not go to the next pack of trash until the big Shas from the last one are dead. Do not stand in melee range to avoid getting silenced by the small Shas. Have your team focus interrupts on the big Shas to avoid getting overwhelmed with the debuffs they apply to the party that reduces the effect of your spells by 75%. Dispel this debuff whenever someone gets it and prioritize yourself. Resort to Mass Dispel if Dispel Magic is on cooldown. Move out of pools on the floor spawned by the Shas. Use Pain Suppression and Power Word: Barrier when they become available. Ask your tank to stop pulling more packs if you struggle with mana. Spirit Shell your party right before a new pull to have a buffer for the spiky group-wide damage. When all of the trash is dead have your team move away from the center to avoid instantly pulling the boss when she spawns and get your mana back.

Liu Flameheart
Only use short (1-minute) DPS cooldowns on this boss and keep an eye out for the waves she spawns, move away from them. Make sure you instantly dispel your tank when he takes a debuff from the boss because it ticks for a lot and can one-shot your tank if she uses her other ability while it is up. When you get the boss down to 30% health you will reach phase two. In this phase you will fight the dragon, make sure you move out of the pools he spawns under random players because they hit really hard and are not instantly visible.

When the boss dies, three big Shas will come out of the Sha of Doubt boss room. Drink while you have the tank pick these up and once again have your team coordinate their interrupts to avoid getting overwhelmed by debuffs. Move out of the pools too.

Sha of Doubt
Heroism/Bloodlust and all remaining cooldowns should be used straight from the start. Have everyone stack on the tank and stand still. Dispel whoever gets the debuff from the boss and when the boss goes immune, swap to the adds that spawn and AoE them down. The adds will come to you, so do not move! When they are all dead the boss will become attackable again. Finish him off.

[a little Kappa]

Bump for Arthelais!

Best priest I ever done world records with

[Arindel]

Arthelais gave me some advice when i wanted to start healing challenge modes. Followed everything he said managed to get 9/9 gold in a day!

Awesome guide defo follow it if you want to get your golds nice and easy

[Forgottenone]

I got 9/9 gold on my warlock but am trying again and my group has a disc priest this time. This should help her and my group out a ton, thank you for this

[Ampere]

Cool guide! I have done all golds on 2 of my tanks, but I might want to give them a shot on my Disc Priest and I'll definitely refer to this guide to get started.

[Mesima]

Bookmarked! I'll be needing this for when I get my priest to 90 and attempt challenge modes.

[Einai]

This is going to be a novel by the time you're done Only comment I have is about body and soul/angelic feather, using these with other movement speed increases (nitro boosts, sprint, roll/chi torpedo, stampeding roar, etc) isn't an issue, just have everyone in your group add a cancel aura to those abilities.

[Deleted]

Great guide, keep them coming, about to start challenge modes next week and this will help!

[Syri277]

your dismissal of solace is concerning. it's been proven by math that it's the superior choice for mana regeneration by a far margin.
Edit: nice guide overall though, thanks!

[Vilbu]

your dismissal of solace is concerning. it's been proven by math that it's the superior choice for mana regeneration by a far margin.
Edit: nice guide overall though, thanks!

Using solace might end up you having lots of mana, though in challenge modes the key as a disc is to be able to deal alot of damage. Mindbender can give you almost equal or bigger mana regen overall, since the cooldown is only 1 minute compared to shadowfiends 3 minutes. If the run aligns with shadowfiend cd nicely it will be better in terms of mana regen, assuming it will be able to deal damage for its full duration. In most cases the 3 minute cd is just too long and you will be left with only 1 or 2 uses with your sfiend and if that is the case you very well will be better off with mindbender. Not that it is superior from the dps perspective but it is also a great way to regen hence the 1 GCD per minute. And if I am not mistaken, holy fire deals more dmg than solace and has no travel time.

The guide is great and insighftul! Thank you alot RayuEU!

I would suggest you adding some vital info to the gear section, which might seem to irrelevant for most of the people but has quite big impact after all like:

- Challenge modes won't support legendary gems or tier bonuses and all gear will be scaled down to ilvl of 463.
- Prefer gear with alot of sockets, since normal gems won't be scaled down.
- Try get trinkets with a good old ICD, RPPM trinkets tend to proc alot less often with lower gear (haste) levels. Vision of the Predator trinket is beastly for disc (2nd boss in gate of the setting sun hc)
- Using klaxxi amber regen stuff will be alot faster than drinking if you need the mana.

[otro]

Good stuff!

[Kuniku]

great guide, have book marked it for when I manage to get a group of guildies interested!

[Deleted]

High constant raid damage
This is hard for a disc to deal with properly, luckily this situation is also quite rare in Challenge Modes and usually the result of mistakes; for example the tank not being able to hold aggro or players standing in pools on the ground. This kind of damage is difficult to anticipate and so you are left with only your Prayer of Healing spell, possibly empowered with Inner Focus and Archangel. Call on your team to assist with defensive cooldowns and personal heals. In the rare case that you can anticipate the damage, use Power Word: Barrier.

High spike damage on a DPS
Keep an eye out for when this happens. Because Atonement is smart healing, for a few seconds your heals will be directed to the DPS that is on low health. This means your tank loses out on heals and you might have to use an in-between heal or call for a small defensive cooldown to keep him alive while you heal the DPS back to full.

High spike damage on you
This is very dangerous, because Atonement has a reduced effect on yourself. You will have to use a cooldown in some situations to keep your tank up while you Flash Heal yourself. Another option is to Void Shift a DPS.

Binding Heal says Hi!

[RayuEU]

Binding Heal says Hi!

Thanks! How I missed that I do not know, will add it straight away.

[Deleted]

- Challenge modes won't support legendary gems or tier bonuses and all gear will be scaled down to ilvl of 463.
- Prefer gear with alot of sockets, since normal gems won't be scaled down.

- this is for both gems (meta and 500stat), and do not use i600 cloaks they are terribad in 463
- you only win the socket bonus over a piece without socket, every other stats are scaled down to compensate the extra stats gained from gem(s)


Really good guide tho, a lot of instructive stuff ! Keep goin'

[Deleted]

From Darkness Comes Light is by far the best talent to take for anyone who is just looking to get gold. With ambers any poor healer can just drink from 0 to 100% mana in between pulls without losing too much time. A poor healer however will have troubles with reacting and taking this talent means you have 1 extra second to react for high damage on the tank. This talent is infact a dps increase for most groups as too many healers tend to spam heal their tank without using attonement, this talent will allow those insecure healers to make more use of attonement.