Fartha

-20% for all spells anytime...
34.27.00 could be better in raid ?

 

Qobble

Hi everybody!
Here some of my thoughts about a smite build.
My gear is ZA/T5/T6.
Spelldamage unbuffed: 1126
Spellcrit: Holy 20,58%, Shadow 15,58% (185 Crit rating)
Spellhit rating: 157
Spellhaste rating: 102
I prefer spelldamagefood (23 spelldamage + 20 spirit), superior wizard oil (42 spelldamage), flask of supreme power (70 spelldamage)
Usually I have a shaman in group giving 101 spelldamage and some mana totems.
The paladins provide Blessing of Kings and Blessing of Salvation.

Our raid focus is Mt. Hyal (4/5) and Black Temple (4/9) (which means we are a typical casual raid I guess).
I used to be a shadowpriest, but for Bloodboil in BT we wanted to test pain supression, so the good old but golden dream of a smiter in a raid had been ressurected.
Sadly you can only protect every second felraged guy with pain supression during the Bloodboil fight. The help of the pain supression is a big deal when progressing this bossfight and this ultimate saved my ass a lot of time. After having earned this experience, I thought why not keep up testing the smiting build having in mind the upcoming changes in patch 2.4.

And here is my "strange" spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (34/26/1)

Why no range? Because I use Holy & Shadowspells in my spellrotation, having ranged holy spells and nonranged shadowspells does not fit my playstyle. I don't have Holy Nova, because I think the GCD and my latency would brake down my DPS wenn just spamming Holy Nova + Surge-of-Light-Smites. Moreover, I don't think just spamming two spells in a 10 minutes fight sounds awesome. I liked the spellrotation of the shadowpriest, so why don't have a "complex" version of a smiting spellrotation.

My spellrotation is like:

Holy Fire - SW:Pain - Mindblast - SW: Death - Smite - Smite - Smite - Smite - Minblast - Smite - SW: Death

In Hyal Trash it is easy to get a killing blow and if spirit tap procs you get a huge spelldamage boost (spiritual guidance)
and mana regeneration. Shadowfiend, the shaman (he might fire his bloodlust & wrath of air totem after my release of the shadowfiend, providing an extra 4000 mana, returning almost 10000 mana) and beeing alchemist with alchemiststone don't let me have any mana problems and I can burst damage when trinket+PI are ready to go. I am a troll priest, so berserk will do the rest to really hit hard.
I bring IDS to the raid and when I die I spam some group heals or greater heals until the angel fades away.

Playing a smiter like this is fun like hell and I want more ;-)
I'm about getting the spellhaste rings from BT trash and we're discussing a retri paladin for our raid.
However, I think Power Infusion will become insane, the haste boost and the spellcost reduction sound really awesome and could perfectly fit this playstyle.

I am not a math expert nor a huge theorycrafter and this is why I ask here for help.
What can I pimp? Any sugesstions about the spec? Any comments?

 

nydora

I've been wanting to toy with a smiter build for a while. how is your DPS in comparison to the mages/locks/hunters? the post a while back said that he felt he needed an additional 20% damage in order to be competitive. do you have a WWS of the night?

 

Cyberium

Hello there, smite priest here also. I have some questions regarding your gears and build.

1) You do not have SoL and I wonder how does that work for you. Granted, without it you free free talent points for extra base damage on the smite, but that also reduced the over dps without SoL. Do you sense any significant difference?
2) You have haste rating. Smite is very close to global cooldown (and of course, the new haste would also reduce GCD), while that boosts your dps, would it also make you go oom more quickly? Which leads to question #3....
3) How long can you last in a raid boss battle?
4) I uses SW:P and SW myself, but reluctant to use MB because it's mana intensive and we don't have the mana return like Spriest. If we avoid MB, would it result in overall better dps overtime?
5) What is your say on +spell compare to +crit? If a smite priest skip the SoL talent, I suppose +spell would be more emphasized but which one is more effective?

More math from 2.4 plz! XD

 

weashell

Hello smiters!

I'v been always working on my smite gear and now have about %40 crit chance at raids(holy only) 10XX spell dmg and 7X hit rating which is ok for me at Raids. <3 Boomkin aura..

The thing i wanna share is; Smite's Rank 1 has only 1 sec. casting time and triggers Surge of Light. I dont know what changes with haste set on 1 sec casting but prolly will reduce crit chance. Anyway thats really useful at raids or everywher when having mana problem.

btw IMO that smite spec is farm based O.o

but still I'm hoping something better in 2.4 ^_^

 

Matari

Here are some Surge of Light calculations that will hopefully clear some questions and make the answers more transparent. The basic idea of this method is to parameterize in terms of the number of casts N. For a given number of total casts N with a crit rate C, we have the following

(Number of normal smites) = Ns = (1-C)*N
(Number of crit smites) = Nc = C*N
(Number of surge of light smites) = Nsl = 0.5*C*N

Then we can easily form three quantities, the total damage done, total time take, and total mana used. Assume that a normal smite does a damage of D, takes a time of 2 seconds, and costs an amount of mana M. Then we get

(Total Damage Done) = Dt = D*Ns + 1.5*D*Nc + D*Nsl
(Total Time Taken) = T = 2*Ns + 2*Nc + 1.5*Nsl
(Total Mana Used) = Mt = M*Ns + M*Nc

Now plugging in the algebraic equations for Ns, Nc and Nsl,

Dt = D*(1-C)*N + 1.5*D*C*N + D*0.5*C*N = [D*(1-C) + 1.5*D*C + 0.5*D*C]*N
T = 2*(1-C)*N + 2*C*N + 1.5*0.5*C*N = [2*(1-C) + 2*C + 0.75*C]*N
Mt = M*(1-C)*N + M*C*N = [M*(1-C) + M*C]*N

Dt = D*(1 + C)*N
T = (2 + 0.75*C)*N
Mt = M*N

If we were to go through this all again without Surge of Light, we would get

Dt = D*(1 + 0.5*C)*N
T = 2*N
Mt = M*N

If we want to find DPS, we just find the ratio Dt / T. If we want to find MPS, Mt / T.

(SoL DPS) = D * (1 + C) / (2 + 0.75*C)
(Non-SoL DPS) = D * (1 + 0.5*C) / 2

(Sol DPM) = M / (2 + 0.75*C)
(Non-Sol DPM) = M / 2

The quantity of intererest is how much is actually gained by having Surge of Light over not having it. Define P to be the percent increase of SoL DPS to non-SoL DPS.

P = 100*[D * (1 + C) / (2 + 0.75*C)] / [D * (1 + 0.5*C) / 2]

P = 100*(2 + 2*C)/[(2 + 0.75*C)*(1 + 0.5*C)]

Here is a graph of P vs. C, percent increase in DPS versus Crit rate.



Doing some elementary calculus you can show that P is greater than 100 until C = 2/3. This is when SoL DPS and non-SoL DPS are equal, and has already been shown by others in the thread. Doing some more calculus reveals something even more interesting. The maximum percentage increase you can get from SoL is 100*(31 - 8*Sqrt(15)) which is approximately 1.613%. This occurs when C = Sqrt(5/3) - 1, approximately C = 0.29099.

In real words, Surge of Light will give it's maximum DPS increase at about 30% crit. The maximum DPS increase you can gain from Surge of Light is about 1.61%.

 

Sapphidia

Thanks a lot for those numbers, Matari. Certainly confirms my thoughts on Surge of Light - fundamentally an exceptional mana booster given that it gives more clearcasting than 5 points in a mage's clearcasting once over 20% crit, but merely a very average dps boost (1% total dps boost for 1 talent point seems the average for a blizzard talent, so it's somewhat underperforming as that).

One curious thought I'm having is the usefulness of the Darkmoon: Wrath card ( [Darkmoon Card: Wrath] ). This trinket has fascinated me since its inception, mostly as it seems so underpowered. I'm wondering if a Smite Priest is possibly one of the few PVE dps classes that can utilise it best.

Mostly - focussing on Spell Damage, Spell Hit, and Haste now 2.4 helps with instants, would give the average smite priest a rather low crit. Crit isnt especially important to stack due to Surge of Light being more about mana restoring, but the Darkmoon Wrath card excels when you're at -low- crit firing only things that -can- crit... and if a sizeable number of your shots are instacast Smites that cannot crit... yet still add a charge to Wrath... it seems that the mechanic of Surge of Light with a low base-crit vastly favors using Wrath as one trinket slot.

My heart tells me when I fiddle with figures that Wrath will still end up being a fairly sub-par trinket, but it feels that a dps mechanic focussed around regular 0-crit direct damage spells is -perfect- for abusing the Wrath mechanic. Any smitey priests tried it?

 

Amiko

This is more a question for Matari:

Given that spell haste is the new "in" stat, and the effect it has on the GCD how would this effect the DPS modeling of SoL.... Specifically -- if you stack around 255 spell haste ( which isn't that hard these days really -- it's what my offset smite gear is at at the moment ), you end up with a smite cast of ~1.72 an a GCD of ~1.29.

Additionally, if you model it for the 15 second period of time in which one might be effected by power infusion you end up with a cast time of ~1.38 and a GCD ~1.03 ( anyone know if blizz rounds these to anything in particular? ) As cast time approaches GCD time I'd expect a net loss in the usefulness of SoL from a DPS perspective -- especially if you compare it to what happens with this amount of haste ( ~1.03s cast, 1s GCD ) which should result in a net loss of dps from SoL...

Just some thoughts.

-L

 

ilkori

The way Matari split out the equations makes the effect of haste very easy to calculate.


(Total Time Taken) = T = 2*Ns + 2*Nc + 1.5*Nsl

This becomes modified by the haste equation:
New Casting Time = (Base Casting Time * 1570) / (1570 + Spell Haste Rating) = (BCT * 1570) / (1570 + H)

the new T would be:
(Total Time Taken) = T = (2*1570*(Ns+Nc))/(1570 + H) + (1.5*1570*Nsl)/(1570 + H)


This makes the DPS and DPM equations rather ugly, but a series of graphs could be made to illustrate the results with this new variable.

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney

 

Amiko

My magically unclear "this amount of haste" was 255 haste rating + heroism/bloodlust. With equal casting time and 0 percent contribution from crit i'd expect SoL to be a net loss.

I'm math tool impaired ( spreadsheets, -blink- ). I was hoping some amiable fellow might be able to be conned into graphing it for us :P

 

rescued

I've been toying a bit with smite spec for grinding, very minimal arenas (lacking resil gear for it), some bg's, and have raided once or twice as it (t5-t6 content). The gear I have for smite spec isn't extraordinary by any means, but it seems it's a little more high-end than most others displaying data on it at the moment. I paid a few guildies to respec (Pally, druid, shaman) and come help me run some numbers.

Here are the buffs I was running,



And the numbers I came up with,



For reference, I was pulling 1167.7 sustained dps, but only for 142 seconds (went oom). 1610 +Holy Dmg (didn't take soulfrost off of my staff or I could've pulled off 1650 with my current gear) and 26.19% crit.

The times I raided as smite, I was sitting around 6th on damage, though our raids consist of a lot of support classes. I found myself needing an innervate from one of our ferals to compete. It was fun, and really made our raid dps'ers pick up the pace a bit to stay ahead of me.

Overall, however, my final personal judgement is bringing a smite priest is in no way worth the raid slot. It reminds me of trying to justify a balance druid back in the MC days. Hopefully this helps a bit.

*Edit: Here is a link to the build I was testing maximum dps output with: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Amiko

Your numbers don't match up with themselves.

From your recount -- you cast 61 times -- that's 122 seconds, or 1313dps which is more in line with your total +dam/+crt ( which eyeballing it, should put you at ~1400dps spam casting ).

Did you go OOM at 142 seconds, or at 122 seconds?

 

rescued

I was eyeballing recount, it looked to stop collecting data when I stopped casting after I went oom, and not when I left combat - once I went oom I had to run away from the mob and drop aggro. Since the people in my party continued to attack it, perhaps Recount kept collecting data assuming I was still in the fight.

 

cippu

rescued, my personal opinion is this :
1. You don't have Mental Strength and Power Infusion(you should test again with those talents).
2. I'm not good at making graphs or something like that, but from what i saw my DPS is almost as much as my bonus damage(I am a human priest so yes, the 10% racial does help with Spiritual Guidance and ImpDS).
3. I belive the gear on armory isn't the one you tested so i would like to see it(that will help alot to form an opinion on your time chaincasting smites till oom and not just giving numbers like 1610 +Holy Dmg or t5-t6 content).
4. I hear everybody say this about smiters "a smite priest is in no way worth the raid slot" and never heared a priest of explaining the importance of ImpDS raid buff given by a smiter and NOT a holy priest(the so called spirit healers); this is the only thing coming to my mind atm.
5. The fact that i can chain cast smite and oom in 2 min for me is excelent, a raid is totally different than a testing ground like Dr. Boom (imagine an arcane mage if he spams AB); also I would like to know if you used shadow fiend on your testing.
6. I can't wait for RAWR to become available for priests.

 

Amiko

Rolling up the discipline tree to power infusion means you've got to sac to points somewhere to reach Surge of Light. The only appropriate thing to drop is the hit talent, which is a very gear dependent talent to drop.

That said, PI can have a huge effect on DPS, particularly if you're already stacking haste. SoL can be counter productive if you start stacking enough haste.


Raid utility for a smiter is absolutely present, but it takes a little bit of creativity since the cookie cutter raid strategies don't include it.

Consider a smiter in the Kaz'rogol fight -- stick 3 warlocks and a caster shaman in the group -- pop heroism, and force surge of light procs with low ranks of holy nova while the warlocks lifetap. A good time is had by all.

 

rescued

I chose to forgo Mental Str. and PI for more static damage. I understand it is not a spec that is optimal for raid utility/longevity, I was simply trying to force as much dps as I could. I have regemmed and re-enchanted my gear about 5 times now and it's getting relatively expensive - about 3/4 of the gear I use for smite I also use for shadow. I'm not convinced whether going +hit, crit/spellpower, straight spellpower, etc is best for smite viability. At the time of testing, a majority of my gear had +9s for shadow. There are also a few +spirit enchants etc. I will post an exact gear list within an hour or two, once I get home.

Almost all of our raid healing priests (including myself) are specced CoH at the moment, so the utility of imp. DS would be gained from using a smite priest. Also, of all the dps classes, a smiter would gain the most benefit from innervates. There is some interesting positives from bringing a smiter, but it is my personal opinion that the benefits of bringing other classes outweigh them.

Also, yes I did use a shadowfiend, as shown by the Recount charts. I would've returned more if it had Curse of Shadows + Shadowweaving on the target (as in a raid setting) and also, I've heard Power Infusing the shadowfiend helps as well though I have not tested this myself and do not know if it's true.

Since smite isn't very well researched, I'm not sure whether using SW:P is worth the mana/gcd, whether to rotate Holy Fire in, or just smite smite smite. There seems to be a division on whether to bother getting Surge of Light too, though in my opinion, due to the mana-heavy nature of the spec, any increase in DPM is worth it. If our guild ever goes back to SSC/TK perhaps I can spec smite and try to get some more realistic numbers, but I have done it once, and I found it to be too mana intensive to be viable when given the option of going shadow providing so much utility.

 

cippu

Sorry about the shadow fiend, was typing in a hurry.
Ok, from my calculations(hope rawr will be availble for priests soon) the most dps output for a smiter should be around 1.9k(more or less)...as for a mage it would be 2.4-2.6k.
My question is this(since I am very new to this theorycraft thing) : does the 75% loss in dps(actually i haven't managed to get total dmg output in theory..) compensates with :
1. talents like ImpDS , Power Infusion , Pain Supresion(if u like to drop, Surge of Light, Spirit of Redemption, Spiritual Guidance for it)
2. occasionally an offhealer (the so called insurance...witch frankly you can't compare any BH with a pure GH cast sort of speak)
I am heroic geared now with this spec and it's doing fine ... the only thing that bothers me is that a smiter (and i really hate to say this) can't compete at end game level with same geared mage in terms of dps(witch of course it will be imba since a smiter can heal).The 25% loss seems to much for me at least.
In terms of dps(not dpm..witch is why SoL is there for), yes, for me at least, SW:P and Holy Fire help a lot(SW:D to for the mana cost and proc of SoL). Usually i stay low at first, then go all out, then regen a little again with Holy Fire Inner Focus and SW:P(with the spirit i have it helps even 2 ticks of out of 5SR), nuke again...and so on.From what i saw on the new gear u can even go full out without worrying about oom at end game raiding(like i said before you have to move not just stand and cast).Think of a smiter as an arcane mage in mirror(only with lower dps but can heal).
Also a smite's coefficient is the same as AB the only difference is that a mage can't keep spamming AB while a smiter can in end game.And, besides that, for a human smiter, 2.5 SPI = 1 DMG(as you already know..), so the paradox is that a smiter stacks spirit not for mana regen but for DMG mainly(at least that's what I do).

 

kidpreacher

You are correct, I am have raided as a holy smite spec. It's fantastic dps, though you can't crack top 5 total damage if you have good pure dps classes. However there is no better hybrid do everything caster left. The benefit of having a holy smite priest in this build that Brumm and Eleazer on Emerald Dream has perfected. Now granted both of us are adjusted at the moment to main heal the tanks for our guild, but when raiding dps smite we go with the spec below

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It allows them to play as the ultimate utility class. Now from much 25 man Gruul/Mag testing mainly and karazhan testing we have found that at 30 percent holy crit (that's counting focused will's hidden crit) you can sustain a constant smite over a 6 minute boss fight with one pet and one pot, which is pretty close to a mages output.

In kara with straight smites and no swp except on bosses I can run around 826 dps, with 30 percent holy crit 934 spell power and 120 hit, 32 haste, not counting the 4 percent add to smite in the disc tree. I usually run about 7th (about 730-780 depending on if I had to flip to heals for a sec) 25 man raid dps, and Brumm tends to run anywhere from 5-10th depending on his utility

The benefit to the smite dps spec is it's a bonus healer. In case someone goes down, there is no other class/dps that can both heal and dps with the same skill, there is no need to respec simply change weapons midfight and start healing or if you have a boss that needs extra heals you flip gear. The biggest bonus is that it gives your holy healing priests the benefit of not having to spec into spirit giving them 5 extra points to play with to use for improved greater healing/Circle of healing and mana conservation talents.

No you cannot keep up with mages/locks/hunters/rogue/ele shamans/ but that's not the roll of smite dps it's the utility and raid buff spirit provides, and if you dont' know how good divine spirit is you don't run with resto druids ;p.

However, I never use SW:P or SW as they seem to be mana that I can use to cast another smite, and holy fire is a complete joke and waste of time. In final testing, we have found that at 30 percent holy crit (counting Force of Will) you can then begun to hold your own mana wise because of SoL, than you simply stack spirit for the mp5/dmg that you get from it. There is no gear so I usually rock the mage gear for the crit and add some spirit gems and enchants as well as a few pieces of spirit gear to help.
The new badge gear is nice teh High spirit/Hit chest combined with the High Crit Leggings looks beautiful.

Spell Haste - I haven't done the math, and am scared to do it, yes dps will increase but so will mana drain lol, so it's up to you in my opinion.

 

Dubo924

Currently my Priest is spec'd for smite DPS. This came about once I respec'd from shadow to disc for PvP. I had the DPS glad set which tempted me to try holy DPS. I've ran through instances, no raids, and almost always come out on top for DPS using primarily smite.

What I found with my smiting disc spec is that I am amazing in BGs, I can heal with the best (I can only imagine if I had healing glad set) and also practically destroy any class aside from the cheap rogue and geared MS warrior. I've read about people who do 5v5s with a similar spec and have 2000+ rating. I haven't attempted arenas yet and don't think I will as a DPS discipline priest.

Whether or not holy DPS is viable for raiding I do know it is a damn good spec for BGs and possibly arena with the right group comp. Many times I find myself taking on 2-3 people at once solo. To me holy DPS is uselss in raiding, your class is more viable strictly healing or as a SP. That's all.

 

glowacks

What's the reason behind Imp Mana Burn and Martyrdom other than not having to respec for Arenas? Points in Martyrdom would be more useful in Absolution for those times where you need to Mass Dispel or whatever. Same for Improved Mana Burn, which would also let you drop 1 more in something like Imp PWS or maybe all 4 into Mental Agility to make SWP more efficient. Also, the 3rd point in Imp Healing seems worse than another point in Mental Str unless you're healing a decent amount of the time; as a pure raid DPS you're better off moving those last 2 to Holy Reach anyway.

I am definitely suspicious of you being able to provide more than Inspiration and about 2/3 of a regular healer unless your gear is absolutely on par with the rest of the healers. Without talents in PWS, Renew, or Emp Healing, there's no one spell you have that might be at the same effectiveness as fully heal spec priests. No Spiritual Healing makes you 10% weaker regardless of what you do. It seems like your only use is on the tank spamming whatever heal you can maintain for the length of the fight in order to keep Inspiration up.

Ok, you can Mass Dispel faster than the rest of the priests. But I don't think that gets you a spot on Felmyst.

 

kidpreacher

You need to reread what I wrote, I am not saying I can outheal a healing specced holy priest, the idea is to provide ultimate utility. Most 25 man endgame require 7 or more healers, so what if you can bring 6 and a smite priest who can flip to the 7th on bosses if needed and continue sustain a decent amount of dps. PWS is pointless at max it does exactly 2k damage taken and is gone, I never use renew, nor have seen the need for it if you have druids healing with you. Imp healing is a great healing spec but has nothing to do with smite.

I spec improved mana burn and martyrdom so I don't have to continuously respec. Finally, why in the world would you not spec into Focused power it gives smite a 4percent chance to hit. Limiting your hit cap allowing more points to go into crit and spell power. The purpose of smite is utility dps/healing equalling both, it's a great utility spec and allows your holy priests to spend the divine spirit points in Emp Healing/Circle of healing and Mental strength. You are attacking a spec designed to provide maximum dps/mana consumption/with maximum usage of GCD. SWP just doesn't work in anyway with smite being the primary form of dps. I am not designed to be main healer simply backup healer. And seriously how many times while raiding are we ever mass dispelling. I have done it twice in my entire raiding career, and rarely is it needed.

 

• frmorrison