It's previously been stated that a priest can effectively sustain DPS with lower ranks of spells.

It's also been said that a priest can effectively sustain DPS with high mana per 5s gear.

Consequently, it's quite hard to build up an optimal gearset for priests

i.e. you could use Shimmering Geta, Essence Gatherer and Lok'amir il Romathis/Royal Scepter of Vek'lor [+104 damage, 17 mana tick and 1% hit] or alternatively Snowblind Shoes, Jin'do's Judgement, and Wand of Qiraji Nobility [+78 damage, 19 mana tick and 2% spellhit].

There's lots of combinations. I'm not a DPS priest but some people are - just for the sake of it, I was interested in which approach works better in terms of raid DPS. Downranking or regen.

I made 2 gear sets - 1 which concentrated on getting high +dmg with some spell hit and 1 which concentrated on getting high +dmg with regen. View at http://ctprofiles.net/1066304 - (yes, these gear sets are probably unrealistic for most priests).

All I was interested in was how long a priest could maintain an "acceptable" level of raid DPS (which I've set at 350 DPS, based on lock/hunter damage in recent meters). First thing I had to do was determine how much regen whilst casting each gearset got with standard/cheap Alliance raid/food buffs (BoW, MoTW, DS, Kings, Sagefish Delight).

People CAN use MMPs and Flasks on special fights but we're probably talking about farm content here so assume people are being lazy. I also had to find how much mana (Arcane Int) and how much +dmg (Arcane Elixir, Brilliant Mana Oil) each had.

Damage set:
Regen whilst casting: 85.9 mana/5
mana pool: 7360 mana
+dmg: 727
spell hit: 8% spell hit
Holy damage crit: 21.1%

Regen set:
Regen whilst casting: 155 mana/5
mana pool: 8062 mana
+dmg: 526
spell hit: 6%
Holy damage crit: 17.7%

The next thing that I had to do was determine how much damage (on average) they would do with various ranks of Smite (2s cast). They'd probably get better damage/mana with Holy Fire but I sort of forgot about that. I haven't factored in crit (150% damage) nor spellmiss' vs lvl 63 mobs nor the approx 5% "resistance" that lvl 63 mobs have.

Damage set:
Smite (rank 4) - 95 mana - 709 damage
Smite (rank 5) - 140 mana - 781 damage
Smite (rank 8) - 280 mana - 1049 damage

Regen set:
Smite (rank 4) - 95 mana - 544 damage
Smite (rank 5) - 140 mana - 616 damage
Smite (rank 8) - 280 mana - 884 damage

Assuming Judgement of Wisdom on the target and treating it like a 29.5 mana spell reduction (50% chance to proc 59 mana), how long would each priest last chain spamming each spell?

Damage set:
Smite (rank 4) - 7.8 mins
Smite (rank 5) - 3.2 mins
Smite (rank 8) - 1.1 mins

Regen set:
Smite (rank 4) - 82 mins(!)
Smite (rank 5) - 5.5 mins
Smite (rank 8) - 1.4 mins

What is the point of all this? Well, for one, gearing for regeneration at the expense of +dmg for priest DPS is probably bullshit or at least not as important as it is sometimes considered. There's nowhere NEAR enough of it in game (ungimped) to allow a priest to last as long as a mage/lock. Downranking spells will see you lasting many times longer without even looking for regen because there are literally no ways of replicating the absurd efficiency of these spells.

Brilliant Mana Oil (36 dmg, 1% crit), Arcane Elixir (20 dmg), both cheap buffs.

Think his figures differ from mine because I believe that smite 4 @ 727 +dmg is worked out as follows...

((91-105)/2 + (727 * 2.5/3.5))x1.15 (force of will + searing light) = 709 damage. His says 708-726 damage.

I'm guessing that he did this as 1.05 (force of will) x 1.10 (searing light) instead. I don't think damage multipliers are applied like that but I could be wrong.

edit: He lists the base damage of Smite 4 as 97-112 which differs from the Thottbot description @ http://www.thotbott.com/?sp=984 but that could well be wrong.

It's not really a specific event I'm looking at, more of which approach works better - downranking or regen.

BTW - God bless any paladin keeping Judgement of the Crusader on a target whilst healing/cleansing - so no.

are you using shadow? or smite spam?
If alliance, continual JoC on target?

Did you even read the post?

I think that the fact that you were targeting 350 dps with +727 damage shows that this is all pretty meaningless.

Sorry, i posted my previous post before he edited his.

http://smulan.se/priest_dmg/11873/
Fully buffed, flasked, potted, with my current gear.
http://ctprofiles.net/569702 - Select DPS to see the gear.
For if the #'s didn't come up.
Smite -
rank mana cast dmg crit max crit avg DPS DPM MPS
8 280 2 1392-1460 20.7% 2190 1573 786.8 5.620 140.0

350 Dps ? That's a very very low #. Given the listed 786.8 DPS doesn't factor in Resist / Partial Resists on a Level 63+. However I could sub in and wear +6% hit to help that a bit. Add in the 100 DPS SW:P and that's pretty decent for a priest.

Now onto the reason priests don't DPS.
When my guild first started clearing into the plaguewing, a bunch of our "crappy" DPS classes showed how much room for improvement they had ^_^. Things have since improved, however these first few times I'd brought my DPS gear and helped blast them. I was able to stay top 3 DPS without flask of supreme power. (Had blessed wizard oil, greater arcane elixir, sanctity aura and judgement of crusader). I however, at the end of a two Stoneskin Gargoyle pull was completely OOM, and several times had to pop a major mana potion just to last through. Mages were probably sitting at about 50%+ mana after it. Downranking would further our endurance, but not enough to compete on the longer fights in game. Fights like Patchwerk are completely impossible for a DPS priest. Alliance shadow priest with judgement of wisdom might be able to pull it off. It's completely not possible for a smite-spam priest.

Yeah I checked the values in game and your figures for Smite 4's base damage are correct - Thottbot's are probably out of date. I realised this on the edit. I assume this came from the priest patch when the mana efficiency on Smite was slightly boosted.

One thing you might like to add is spellhit and mob level in your figures. People also talk about lvl 63 mobs have a 5% partial resist rate.

It would be interesting if you could also show the duration that they could keep chain casting these spells (so adding in Meditation, Mana Tide/BoW and Judgement of Wisdom would help) as well as other buffs.

No, when you level your spell grows stronger without gaining a rank. I know people have a hard time beliving this is true, so a way to check it within like 10minutes is to do this. Start a paladin (or any caster class) and check the values of your first spells. Kill some stuff and you will see that the values in the tooltips change for everytime you level up. So thottbots values are correct. Bascily no place (atleast that I could find yet) list the level 60 values. ;)

If I get more time etc I will maybe add more stuff ;p Glad you like it ;)

If it seems a little low compared to what you're getting Yuckie, that's because in your example you have constant Power Infusion and Sanctity Aura.

By downranking in your gearset, you can lose 30% of your DPS for a spell that costs 65% less, i.e. you could cast 3 Smite 4s @ 1000 damage for the cost of 1 1500 damage one (Smite 8) - and that's 3 chances to proc Judgement of Wisdom - and 6s of mana tick compared to 2. If you want to chuck down the NDBs or MMPs, for sure, you can rank up to 8 but even then you're not going to last very long.

Smite 4's 350 DPS with +720 spell damage is low indeed but Smite DPS increases fantastically with gear because it gains a 20% increase in DPS from casttime and a 15% damage increase from talents, and potentially another 10% from a semi-rare paladin aura.

Without an equivalent to lifetap/mage armor/evocate/mana gems, etc. or heavy consumables, downranking is literally the only way a priest can sustain a decent level of DPS without running OOM. But what did you expect? Priests aren't a DPS class in that sense.

Yep, I know the diffrence is silly but still a slight diffrence and I want the site to match in-game value, hence; Note! This page is only accurate for level 60 chars. at the bottom ;p