Cataclysm has brought quite a few new things to WoW. One of the things I was fairly skeptical about was the new “Smite-to-heal” or “Atonement” spec for Discipline priests.
For those of you who don’t know, there are 2 separate PvE specs for Discipline: Strength of Soul and Atonement.
Strength of Soul
Strength of Soul builds are fairly straightforward and are currently the most popular build for most Discipline priests. It’s the spec most people are familiar with. It revolves around the talent Strength of Soul and works by weaving in your single target healing spells with Power Word: Shield on the target. With the change in 4.0.6, SoS builds have become much more powerful due to the Strength of Soul talent reducing the duration of the “Weakened Soul” debuff that is left on the target after casting Power Word: Shield. This causes Power Word: Shield to be cast more often, resulting in a higher HpS.
Here’s a basic Strength of Soul build: 31/8/2. The 2 points in Darkness can be switched around to Surge of Light depending on your preference.
Pros: High single target HpS, ability to spam shields (to a degree)
Cons: Mana efficiency, weak AoE heals
Tip: Power Word: Shield is your friend in this spec. Every time the Weakened Soul debuff wears off the tank, cast it again.
Atonement
The Atonement build has been both praised and frowned upon by the priest community. Some people think the ability to heal from DpS is a new, fresh idea while others are completely turned off by the idea and believe healers should heal. Either way the spec is fairly controversial.
Atonement works by casting Holy Fire/Smite on an enemy target. The result is a healing effect that looks similar to Word of Glory that heals a nearby party/raid member for 100% of the damage done.
At first I was fairly skeptical. The main issue I had with Atonement was that the healing aspect wasn’t reliable to the tank. Instead, Blizzard designed it as a smart heal which heals the lowest health party/raid member. The problem is while most of the time the tank is the one being hit, they are not ALWAYS the lowest at any given time. This causes the heal to be unreliable. Not being able to pick and choose who to heal is the control that the spec lacks, and this causes people to shy away from it.
On the flip side, Atonement has a couple things that Strength of Soul doesn’t offer or isn’t as good at with the primary being efficiency. Smite and Holy Fire (recently buffed) scale incredibly well with Intellect. With 5 stacks of Evangelism, my Smite spell costs around 500 more mana than my Heal spell, but it heals for significantly more and has a .5 lower cast time. This equates to more HpS compared to Heal and makes Smite a very efficient “filler” spell. With 9700 spellpower, I get 23-24k critical strikes with Smite depending on procs. Being .5 seconds faster to cast, Smite becomes almost as powerful as Greater Heal with a much more generous mana cost. On top of that, any extra damage buffs (Arcane Tactics) or debuffs (Critical Mass) you or the boss have scale with Smite as well increasing it’s damage and healing. With a mana pool of 126k, I find I regen mana faster than I can spend it on Smite. This is mainly due to the high scaling of Replenishment for Discipline priests.
Another benefit to Atonement is a talent called Archangel. This talent is on a short 30 second cooldown, gives back 5% mana with full stacks, and increases your healing done by 15% for 15 seconds. This talent makes Atonement priests better raid healers than SoS priests. The 15% healing buff is a nice cooldown that can be used for some Prayer of Healing spam during heavy raid damage. This also makes your Divine Aegis absorbs a little bigger as well.
For 10-man teams, the Atonement spec isn’t very good. This is mainly because you have less healers looking after the tanks. You need more control than what it offers especially because you will most likely be assigned to tank heal and Atonement doesn’t reliably heal the tank.
For 25-man teams, Atonement is AMAZEBALLS. With 5-6 healers backing you up, you can usually Smite away and end up topping the meters mainly because you don’t have to think who needs healing at the time. Atonement heals the lowest health raid member, so the throughput is always guaranteed when you cast (as long as the target is within 15 yards of the enemy target) and has much lower overheal compared with other healers.
This is the Atonement build I currently use: 31/7/3. Again, you can take points out of Darkness and add them elsewhere if you wish.
Pros: High HpS, better raid heals, more utility (can tank or raid heal), extra DpS on boss for faster kills
Cons: Atonement heals don’t reliably hit the tank
Tip: Smiting is fun, but don’t forget to use your other spells too. Penance, Power Word: Shield for Rapture, Greater Heal, etc. all should be utilized as well.
Between the 2 specs, I prefer Atonement. I just think it’s so much more fun and it’s such a different way of healing rather than mindlessly spamming single target heals. Both specs do very well and have their place in raids. I think of the SoS spec as mainly a tank-healing spec, while I consider Atonement to be more of a tank/utility spec.
WTS Heals 
I have to disagree about atonement being bad for 10 man’s
I constantly run as atonement in 10 man’s which I put myself as the floating healer in s role that is tank support and also raid support, which basically means I heal specific ways during a fight, heavy tank damage I smite/holy fire the boss, heavy raid damage I am prayer of healing raid.
Yes in 25’s you have more time to be on full time smite healing, but it plays a very important part in 10’s as well.
Hello Reviam!
I think the word “bad” is a bit harsh. I don’t think it’s bad. I think Atonement viability depends on which healing role you play for your team. I can see Atonement being viable in 10’s if you aren’t strictly assigned to heal the tanks. However, with my experiences 10’s usually value Strength of Soul builds over Atonement due to the level of control SoS offers and as a Disc priest (unless there is a Holy Paladin) you are usually assigned to tank healing. The 15 yard limit and the “smart” heal cause the healer to lose control over who gets healed when. And with less healers backing you up, the tanks are less likely to get healed when needed.
In the long run it is a matter of personal preference. If Atonement works for your 10-man team, then that’s great! In the end, the boss being dead is the only thing that matters. 🙂
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I love the concept of atonement healing but I hate how unreliable it is. Seeing atonement healing the hunter or warlock pet does not make my day. I absolutely love archangel as a healing cooldown because I think the angel wings look awesome! The atonement healing spec is also fairly limited since you are forced spend 7 talent point in evangelism/atonement/archangel/train of thought. I find that atonement healing is a bit clunky in execution but it’s hard to argue with it’s throughput. Smite heals for a lot but I get severe tunnel vision while doing so. Reminds me of my days as a huntard…
Until they make Smite stack Grace (maybe it does now?) and make the Evangelism buff actually affect shields, I won’t like Smite healing 😛 But if they fix that, I’m ready to give it another chance!
Now that Attonement works off Holy fire I have changed out one of my glyphs with the smite glyph that gives your smite a whooping 20% increase for I believe 5 secs after you Holy fire. My holy fires are now hitting for around 25K and the heal that procs off that is around 30k. Yes you can only get 2 smites off but that is a huge buff to your heals.
I mean my smites are now hitting for 25k not holy fires my bad sorry 🙂
How did not know about this site?? Well, I found it now, and wanted to say Kudos and that I really enjoyed this article and your takes on Atonement/SoS Disc healing. I’m in a 10man group, so I usually take SoS but I’m famous for using our “between boss” breaks to run back and respec real quick lol. It’s excellent for certain fights, even in 10s but I see how it would be better in 25s with better tank coverage.
My 1 comment about the talent trees you posted (besides the fact that they’re really nice overall) is that I personally don’t take Darkness as Disc. Not because Haste isn’t helpful..actually I prefer it as long as I keep a decent amount of Mastery and some Crit..but because Desperate Prayer has saved my behind more times than I can count. I usually stick the last point in Inner Sanctum (if SoS) or take SoL (if Atonement). Personally, I love that our healing trees have these filler points that are mostly playstyle decisions that make you think and I hope that they stay this way.
At first I was sceptical about AA spec too, especially after my first raid being placed on tank heals – I found that I can’t spare gcd on Smiting if I don’t want to lose the tank. However, next runs were 25man, and really – it does shine there. You have both the time to stack the buff and pop Archangel for aoe damage.
I have a problem with balancing the stats tho, I can see you also put your points in Darkness – I really feel like I need more haste than I have now, how do your secondary stat distribution looks like in AA spec given your current gear..?