Hey all, couldnt find anything similar in this forum - due to boredom I'm considering starting a priest alt for DPS as something different, and whilst we all know how marvellous Shadows are, I'm curious as to the power of a Disc/Holy priest focussing on Smite DPS, and whether such a priest would be worthy of a Ranged DPS Slot for a raid.

What got me interested is the rather large amount of multipliers it seems possible to stack onto Smite via a build something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxghzI0zrxZ0Et0bbqbZo

Not sure if that's optimal, but that gives Smite the following modifiers:

+10% Spell Crit (From Holy spec and Force of Will
+15% total damage (from Force of Will and Searing Light)
+4% to hit (from Focussed Power)
20% Threat reduction
50% chance of clearcasting on a crit (the spell is instant and non-crittable, so the 2.0 speed down to 1.5 speed will cancel out the potential damage loss of no crit)
+35% Spirit -> Spellpower (Spiritual Guidance + Imp DS) Maybe around 100-150 bonus damage raidbuffed?

And best of all: a reduction from 2.5 seconds to 2.0 seconds cast. If I'm correct, the only Damage spell that benefits from a cast reduction this massive is Wrath (from 2.0 to 1.5), so that's a full +25% total DPS boost from cast time.

The priest would also come with 15% in combat regeneration, and a bunch of damage reduction talents. Oh, and could spot heal without form switching, but I'm not caring about that side - i'm merely interested in the raw damage potential of a priest spamming nothing but Smite as raid DPS. Oh, and it's holy damage, so I would imagine that's the equivalent of coming with a high natural amount of Spell Penetration as nothing has the resistance.

I may be wrong, but the holy/disc damage talents seem to have much more "bang for the buck" than those of a mage or warlock, although the trees are a bit filled with talents that wont fully benefit. 10% damage to one spell (-the- spell) from 2 talent points? But regardless, looking at the build above, that seems a rather large amount of multipliers onto a single damage spell. Whilst the overall utility and raid-helping wont be anywhere near that of a shadow priest, the sheer amount of multipliers, bonus crit and bonus damage you can stack onto smite from a rather unversatile damage build have got me wondering if I -could- spec a Priest for Holy DPS and be a reasonably competitive DPSer.

Certainly blizz seem to think it's viable looking at the damage version of the T4 priest set :P

Am I missing something, or does the DPS output of this kind of build (when raid buffed and in high enough spelldamage gear) warrant looking at? I'm not sure what I'm missing compared to a mage (no evocation, higher spell cost, but possibly compensated by higher IC regen, shadowfiend and more frequent clearcasts), and obviously no real viability beyond single target DPS. But a smite dpser seems to me (on paper) to be moonkin-level DPS but with 20% threat reduction.

Anyone gone for a pure smite dps build in good gear and can comment how they perform? Or should I just give up now and go shadow from level 10?

Yep, I'll agree there. One could argue that you always need -one- priest in the raid with imp Fortitude and imp Divine Spirit, so if the priest takes up a ranged dps slot then that frees up the healing spots to be Druids/Paladins. One could argue that in Karazhan at least, an extra Shackle is as good as an extra mage, and it's one extra dispeller, but I certainly wont argue that other classes will bring more.

My main thoughts were more along the lines of "could I possibly compete in DPS so well that they'd -have- to take me?" I've been in raids where mages are doing comparable damage to Prot Warriors or dpsers are pvp spec and just can't keep up with the top of the class. Assuming all dps classes do near identical DPS, you'd never take an extra holy priest for dps (unless your healer priest didnt have imp Divine Spirit), but with all those multipliers on Smite... hmm... maybe it's a pipedream, but "all multipliers are broken". It just seems that there's huge dps potential in there somehow that might warrant taking one.

With 35% crit, 16% hit and +1000 spelldamage (which I don't think is actually possible unpotted), smite is only a theoretical 884 dps with no lag. +10% crit is solid, but no talent for +100% crits hurts a lot, and +15% damage is only decent -- shadow priests get +45% pre-CoS, and fire mages get +30% pre-CoE. 2.5 seconds -> 2 seconds is good, but Empowered Fireball/etc. actually results in FB getting a higher benefit from spelldamage.

Also, Smite spec suffers from the same basic problem as Moonkin -- huge mana problems (smite is close to 200 mana/second), and no compelling reason to bring one. Other than the ability to switch to healing (and fairly well, as there aren't enough damage points to skip all of the healing stuff), all that a smite priest would bring is damage. As rogues like to point out, if all you're contributing is your damage, your damage needs to be #1. There's fights where other classes don't contribute to anything but damage, but Netherspite is the only fight I can think of where you could plan on smite priests contributing more than damage (and any other hybrid could do just as well there).

Don't forget the biggest possible synergy though; bring a Ret paladin tagging your mobs for +272 holy power, +3% crit, and giving you a +10% holy damage aura.

Due to the inability to bring anything truly unique to a raid, there is no real reason for a Smite DPS build. Any success with the build will be due to the player's motivation and fervor. Whereas there are many multipliers for the spell, there are just as many, if not more, for a Shadow build, or a Mage.

The biggest drawbacks for a Smite DPS build are the lack of a crit modifier from 150% to 200% and the coefficient on the spell's benefit from spell damage.

Surge of Light is mathematically equivalent to a 200% crit damage modifier, since it makes half of your smites deal 150% + 100% damage for 250% total. (150% and 250% damage average to 200%.) Of course, it also eats a global cooldown.

Arguably the one thing this build brings to a raid is Power Infusion, which will be nuts on a shadow priest (for the boss) or mage (for AoE). But I don't think the utility of power infusion is worth giving up the utility of another cloth DPS class.

On the plus side, at least you'd have a use for all the T4 set pieces with spell crit on them!

Surge of Light is actually modellable as follows.

150% + 100% damage over 3.5 seconds rather than 100% over 2. So, your "crit" deals 250% damage but only over 1.75 cast periods, rather than 200% over 1 cast period (e.g. frost mages). This gives an effective crit modifier of 1.428.

Yep, I said it. Surge of Light lowers your DPS. It raises your DPM, though.

Assume a 20% crit rate. Assume a non-crit does 100 damage.

With no SoLight, you can model your damage (ignoring resist/hit calculations and all scaling contributions, just crits modeled) as (1*.8 + 1.5*.2)/2*100 = 55 DPS.

With SoLight, the model becomes:

(1*.8/2 + 2.5*.2/3.5)*100 = 54.28 DPS.

Setting crit to be a variable (c), we get:

(1*(1-c) + 1.5*c)/2*100
(1 - c + 1.5c)/2*100
(1 + .5c)*50 = noSoL DPS

((1-c)/2 + 2.5*c/3.5)*100 = SoL DPS
(.5 - .5c + 0.714c)*100
(1 + .428c)*50 = SoL DPS

As crit scales up, SoL DPS continues to fall behind because a free non-crit smite is just not that good.

Hm. There's maybe a flaw in the SoL model, because the % of smites non-crit is actually affected by the % crit somewhat differently. Gimme a few to work this out.

I really am curious what the peak there now is with an improved crusader and a sanctity aura, though. Shadow Weaving and Improved Scorch got included for their respective classes in someone's offhand comment; Smite just has more of it's synergy put in cross-class elements.

SoL DPS

[top]
(avg_dmg/2)(1 + (.5 * crit_chance)) + (crit_chance * .5)(avg_dmg/1.5)

Non-SoL DPS

(avg_dmg/2)(1 + (.5 * crit_chance))

~6% increase