Learning to Disco Part 2: Mana Regen

So. To Continue:

It's time to address Discipline Priest mana regen.
Mana regen comes from 3 stats for a Disco:

Intellect
MP5
Spirit

I'll take them in reverse order of awesomeness:
Spirit: Meditation allows 30% of mana regen while in combat. Even with Inner Focus, you're rarely going to be exiting combat as Disc. You're a spammy class, and you don't have fancy tricks nor the HPS output of Holy to compensate for exiting the 5-second rule. You will, of course, but it's not something you rely on. Meditation just makes spirit not useless. So Spirit – avoid it, you'll get plenty regardless.

MP5: Does what it says on the box. It doesn't scale, it doesn't boost anything or have any other benefits. More mp5 just means that much more mp5. Nothing more, nothing less. Better than spirit.

Intellect: There's your baby. Intellect scales with Mental Strength and Kings, adds a little (very little) crit, and most importantly increases the size of your maximum mana pool. This is so important not just because more mana = more heals, but in your case, your key mana regen abilities are a percentage of your maximum mana pool. So the more mana you have, the more mana regen you get.

Those abilities are:
Rapture – nerfed because it was frankly ridiculously OP and now provides a 2.5% of your maximum mana whenever your shield is fully absorbed. It has a 12 second ICD, however, and a constant shield on a tank will guarantee you almost full "uptime" on this. Example: I have 32k mana fully raid buffed. 2.5% of 32k is 800 mana. My cost of Power Word: Shield is 666 mana, leaving me with 134 mana gained every 15 seconds, minimum. More likely on intense fights is the full 12 second uptime, so at maximum, Rapture is giving me approximately 56mp5.

Shadowfiend – You can use Shadowfiend more than once per raid boss fight, so make sure you send it out early once you've healed a little through the initial burst (shielding up potential high-damage targets and yourself, renews and PoMs etc). It gives you 5% of your maximum mana every time it hits. The shadowfiend lasts for 15 seconds and has a 1.5 second attack speed = 10 hits x 5% of your max mana. That's right, if you're lucky and get the full benefit of your shadowfiend, it will regen 50% of your maximum mana. But that's not all… if you combine it with:

Hymn of Hope – Learn to love it. Pop a shield for Borrowed Time and cast a hasted Hymn. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 sec. That's another 20% to your maximum mana! This will benefit your Shadowfiend as well when it's up, and give you extra boost Replenishment while it lasts (16 seconds total, as the 8sec buff is refreshed on each tick of the channel). 3% x 4 ticks = 12% which again is boosted by the 20% additional maximum mana. So for the above example of 32k, that's boosted to 38.4k mana, giving 4600 mana back, plus the fact that my shadowfiend is hitting for a 20% higher mana pool. Using Hymn and Shadowfiend together will basically fill your mana bar, so it's something I've learned to use the second time Shadowfiend is popped in a fight, when it's nearing the end and things are going nuts. If you don't need that much mana, remember to use the abilities separately.

Obviously, Replenishment also gives you maximum mana pool returns, and so benefits from the larger mana pool as well.

So, Intellect as much as you need for a comfortable level of mana, then spell power all the way?Talents and Stats up next.