With the arrival of patch 4.2, Discipline Priests came into a few new items that rival tier gear and- perhaps more importantly- can be achieved with 5-man heroic Zul’Aman or Zul’Gurub runs.
Non-tier gear can assist greatly in gearing up to raid progressively if you’re low on Valor points, or have bad luck with the drops, or for non-raiders to keep up with raiders if you want to stay in shape to jump in later.
All of these drops have some combination of Intellect, Spirit, Spellpower, Critical Strike, Mastery and Haste. None has Hit.
Not everyone dedicates the entirety of their Warcraft life to the incomparable experience of being a Discipline Priest.
I can’t explain it, but there it is.
Recently the difficulties associated with playing an alt- long-forgotten, rolled to fill some raid niche that evaporated, miraculously reaching the level cap by picking flowers- were brought home to me when I picked up my dusty mining druid and determined to shape him into a lean mean healin’ machine.
Things went badly. Okay, more than badly. I didn’t know what to spec, I had no idea what a healing rotation even looked like as a druid, and I was- to my shame- booted out of my first pug after two rounds of trash.
To my delight and pathetic gratitude I stumbled upon Tree Bark Jacket’s wonderful Resto Druid Cheat Sheet. Specs immediately become clear, spells made sense, and I stopped wearing cloth.
I asked Keeva of Tree Bark Jacket if I could steal her layout to similarly assist those 85 Disc Priests who needed similar help -the short, sweet version of How To Disc- and she graciously allowed me to lift whatever I could carry.
May this be of some use to you in your new- or continuing- journeys as a priest.
Wowhead.com has a most excellent feature that I think few of us use to its fullest extent.
If you click on “Database > Items > Armor”, you can choose ‘Priest’ and then ‘Discipline’ (or whatever) from the dropdown menu titled “Start Weighting… Preset:”.
Doing this gives you a list of all gear for Discipline Priests in one huge list (I’d recommend limiting the required level or iLevel – 333 or higher if you want to run Heroics).
In the results, off to the right, there’s a ‘Score’ that shows how good it is for the spec you selected in ‘Presets’.
The down side is that it doesn’t have any commentary, but for pure numbers and names, it can’t be beat.
The new Cataclysm levels, 80 through 85, will be undertaken primarily in the new zones of Vash’jir (80-82), Mount Hyjal (80-82), Deepholm (82-83), Uldum (83-84), the Twilight Highlands (84-85) and in the PvP Tol Barad, as well as through the LFD tool.
The recommendations below will assist you while leveling, while in normal instances, and beginning to run heroic instances. These suggestions do not include low-, mid-, and high-level raiding suggestions, which can be found instead in our Disc Priest Cataclysm Raiding Gear Guide. This guide also does not include those items which can be found in heroic instances (see low-level raiding gear for those choices).
An exhaustive list of enchantments would be too exhausting to contemplate, so for each piece I simply recommend one enchantment that I think gets the job done and will serve you well for most of your five levels. Re-enchanting leveling gear is, I think, neither time nor cost effective given the relatively small benefit you’ll enjoy while leveling.
BEST DISCIPLINE PRIEST GEAR AND ENCHANTS: LVL 80-85
Northrend will likely dominate your 70’s, offering the best gear for your effort. Solo-able Isle of Quel’Danas rewards, high-level tailoring gear, and Hyjal vendor gear will give instance and raid drops a run for their money in these levels.
No level 80-required gear is included in this list. Level 70-required gear is shockingly useful at this point, and picking them up early can carry you through all ten levels with ease.
An exhaustive list of enchantments would be too exhausting to contemplate, so for each piece I simply recommend one enchantment that I think gets the job done and will serve you well for most of your ten levels. Re-enchanting leveling gear is, I think, neither time nor cost effective given the relatively small benefit you’ll enjoy.
BEST DISCIPLINE PRIEST GEAR AND ENCHANTS: LVL 70-80
The first ten levels truly do breeze past; it feels like only five minutes ago you were running errands for the blue space goats on your crashed outlier ship- and it was. But times change, and with them we must venture out beyond the structured and harmless world of our priestly infancy and into the Great Big World, where creatures attack you on sight.
As you move through levels ten through twenty, gear becomes more critical. The turning point truly is at 15, when you become eligible for dungeons, have a few talent points to assign, and can .
At this point, you’ll be challenged to find anything with decent Crit on it, and most gear will have less Spirit than you’ll want, but don’t fret. Maximize Intellect, grab Crit wherever you find it, don’t fear Spirit gear (you’ll get that stuff with less of a fight from the mages), and throw in a little Stamina to increase your survivability.
At this point, we want:
Spirit > Intellect > Critical > Stamina
Particularly for the first forty or so levels, the fastest way to gear up will be through the Auction House. If you’re playing the well-funded priest alt of a high roller, all well and good. If this is your only character, you are, as the British say, for it.
I’ve tried to include gear that comes from a variety of sources that may not be the absolute top stat gear to provide the non-high-rollers with a selection of gear that allows for some variation in following quest lines, and just plain personal preference (I refuse to set foot in Silithus, for example, no matter what Discipline Robe Of Shazaam might be there). And for those of you with a Daddy Warbucks alt suppling you with a steady stream of allowance packets, or far-reaching hopes, there’s a ‘Best In Show’ category as well.
An exhaustive list of enchantments would be too exhausting to contemplate, so for each piece I simply recommend one enchantment that I think gets the job done and will serve you well for most of your ten levels. Re-enchanting leveling gear is, I think, neither time nor cost effective given the relatively small benefit you’ll enjoy.
SECRET TIP O’ THE DAY: I always carry two extra pairs of gloves with me at lower levels. I buy the cheapest gloves I can find and then enchant one with [Enchant Gloves – Herbalism] and one with [Enchant Gloves – Mining] (my two professions), then make a macro to slip them on quickly. When I hit that “just a little too high!” herb or mine, I’ve got them in the bag and ready to go.
BEST DISCIPLINE PRIEST GEAR AND ENCHANTS: LVL 10-20
Either equip your heirlooms or just use what you find lying around, or get from quests. There’s no reason to be spending money at this point, nor any particular advantage (beyond using heirlooms) to so doing.
