Ballistae

Holy dps is purely a pet project of mine, when taking time of tanking with my warrior. While I doubt I'll raid with my priest anytime soon, I'm curious about the less travelled paths in the game, so this thread interests me.

Now, as has been stated one of the problems of the smite build is the lack of bringing something worthwhile for the raid. I'm wondering, if a 41/20/0 build would be that much of a downgrade dps wise? PI only gives at least +1,66% dps, but you'd also have 5% more Int and Spirit. And PI and PS (and Imp DS if paired with a deep holy priest) adds some functionality however under used it may be.

 

Amiko

or "How to cheese SoL with Holy Nova and provide actual raid utility"

So -- Holy DPS has been a pet project of mine for a long time. I've been shadow priesting for since pre-TBC, but the call of smite, just for the cheese factor of the name of the spell has come to me many times.

I've now been running the build on and off when i could get a raid to accept me on a fairly regular basis.

First, lets talk about itemization, then talents, then play considerations and how it all fits together.

Itemization:

Spell hit -- hit cap yourself. This is important for all the regular reasons. I want to note here that the mana-etched dungeon set + the scryer blood gem is mostly the best way to go -- it gets you close to hit cap with set bonuses you can't beat till fullish t4 or t5.

Crit to 25% -- If you can get your Holy Crit % to ~25% your set -- this means you only need to itemize 15% of crit rating which is not that difficult. It's also excellent that this is a relatively low number as a lot of haste gear replaces crit the way gear is itemized these days.

Spell haste -- if you can get a full .5 of spell haste, then do so. This has a huge effect on DPS and keeps your timing consistent because most of your casts will _already be on the global cooldown_. Why? Because you will always be proc'ing SoL. I'll explain later.

Spell Damage -- for the boom. after ~25% crit rating, it's all about spell damage.

Spirit - stack as much spirit as you can. It translates directly into +damage and mp5.

Talents:

Here's the build:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Lets go over the critical talents by tree here, you can sort of mingle about the points as you please as long as you hit these critical talents, So i'm not going to go in depth about the details of minor talent selection -- that's an exercise for the reader. There are exactly 9 talents that make this fun and respectable.

From Discipline:
1) Mental Agility - _Absolutely Essential_ put all 5 points into this.
2) Divine Spirit / Imp. Divine Spirit - this helps translate spirit into spell damage. It's also a sexy raid buff to toss around, and frees healing priests to spec deep holy.
3) Focused Power - Reduces the amount of spell hit you need to itemize.
4) Force of Will - Reduces the amount of crit you need to itemize and buffs DPS.

From Holy:
1) Holy Specialization - Again reducing the amount of crit you need to itemize.
2) Divine Fury - Reduces cast time on critical spells
3) Holy Nova - _Absolutely Essential_ There is no more underestimated priest spell.
4) Holy Reach - _Absolutely Essential_ increases range of holy spells and _Radius of Holy Nova_
5) Surge of Light - Instant 0 mana non-crit Smite on _any spell critical_

How it all Works:

It all works with an incredibly simple spell rotation:

1) Holy Nova
2) Smite

The entire point of this is to force surge of light(SoL) to proc.

A note about how holy nova and surge of light: Holy Nova is a pure Area of Effect spell ( ignoring raid group setup ) that does both Damage AND healing. You want to position yourself so that the maximum number of Friendly AND unfriendly targets are within the area of effect of holy nova at all times. Holy Nova hits on the 2 roll system against unfriendly targets, and a 1 roll system against friendly targets, with an individual critical hit chance against each target. If you have 10 targets in range of holy nova and a 20% holy crit rate, you should see 2 criticals ( critical hit/critical heal ) each time which = a SoL proc. The higher your crit rating, the less targets you need to maintain range on. Remember that you count as a target.

Pick an appropriate rank of Holy Nova for the fight your in. If the fight is going to last 10 minutes, use a lower rank holy nova -- the point is to amass critical hits to proc surge of light, not to have a specific effect with the holy nova -- though it has massive raid healing benefits as well -- with ~1000 Spell Power, spamming Rank 1 holy nova provides about 800 hp5 to everyone within range. Depending on the nature of the boss fight, this can almost provide adequate raid healing for all your ranged characters. Who said Holy DPS has no utility? Stack up enough spirit/mp5, add mana pots and shadow fiend and you can easily rank your holy nova up to 3 or 4 which = ridiculous raid healing while providing a constant stream of significant DPS.

Synergy with Mages:
This specifically applies to AoE situations: Arcane Explosion at max rank is 377-407 points of damage. Holy Nova 242 to 280 Holy damage and 384 to 446 healing AND CAUSES NO THREAT. This mean that healers can spam flash the mage who is also being healed by the holy nova, and not worry about more then 1 AoE target because HN is threatless, the mage has less to do because the mobs are also taking damage from HN.

Synergy with Warlocks:
Essentially the same as mages, except Hellfire becomes even more viable as the hellfire damage to the warlock is covered by the HN healing of the priest -- it can apply exactly the same way as with mages when used in combination with Seed of Corruption.

Synergy with Druids:
Tree of Life form effects all players in that druids group. Holy Nova affects all players within range. Assuming a proper distribution of trees in your forest of raiders the raid healing effects of holy nova can be raid dramatically ( Planning this synergy is nearly the same as planning for CoH synergy, with the differencing being the AoE heal is based on your position, not the position of the target ). Moonkin form is +5% critical -- hello see obvious benefits.

Synergy with Paladins:
With All Paladins: Holy Nova activates spiritual attunement -- but spiritual attunement only works with actual healing done, not over healing: In regards to healers, I'm sure someone's written about the proper use of Blessing of Sacrifice elsewhere.

With Retribution Paladins: Here's where things shine -- Ret paladins have notoriously small mana pools -- this can be directly addressed my making sure that the ret pally is, as often as possible, just inside the range of holy nova activating spiritual attunement. Additionally since the ret pally is just inside the holy nova range, then so is the boss usually -- add the benefits of Judgment of the Crusader and Sanctity Aura and you've got some really nice interactions going on, a long with a not insignificant trickle of damage from the nova. With Sanctity Aura, Consecration, Holy Nova and Spiritual Attunement you have some of the most reliable and survivable AoE in the game.

Continuing Efforts:

Spell rotation -- Finding effective ways to work Holy Fire and SW:P into the rotation. Currently, you can keep down ranked SW:P in the rotation as well conserving mana without diminishing DPS.

Since your constantly raid healing with holy nova however, knowing when to you can spare the global cool-down for SW:P or the 2.5 seconds to cast HF can be pretty situationally intense.

I haven't done the math yet to figure out what the best possible spell rotation is, but i know it won't be heavy on those spells -- It seems that SW:P and Holy Fire are mutually exclusive -- cast one, or the other, so as not to interrupt your Nova/SoL:Smite stream too much.

If you are taking the time to out of the the smite stream, try and keep it limited to the GCD: Renew a tank or other damaged target -- at ~1000 Spell Power your renew is not exactly insignificant. Toss a Prayer of Mending, maybe even PW:S -- but keep it limited to instant casts to take full advantage of mental agility, and not interrupt the nova/SoL:Smite Stream.

While you don't provide the nifty mana regen of shadow priests to non-paladins, you do equate to some fairly massive raid healing while maintaining DPS.

Thanks for your time.
Some help with math would be fabulous. Hopefully I'll have some WWS stats for the so inclined to pick apart to help work out proper modeling of all of this.

 

Kazekan

I see a couple issues with the Smite Priest idea in general.

One is that a couple people have assumed that they will be getting a Ret Pally in their group for 10% holy dmg. The reality is however, that a Ret Pally (if one is even brought to an end game, non-farm raid encounter, which they are), they will be in a WF group. WF brings a good 30% DPS increase to the ret pally. His 10% holy dmg to your HN and Smite is not going to make up the difference in dmg he loses, especially on non-AE boss encounters. If your raid DOES put a shaman in your group along with say a boomkin, and he puts down WF to help out the pally... something is wrong.

The second thing is raid utility, as has been mentioned before. Our guild really has no issues with trash at the moment, so the HN spam during that stuff just wouldn't really be all that great. Granted, we haven't done MS trash yet in BT (which i hear is a pain), however everything up to Teron has been easily dealt with. I can't see any reason to bring someone because they "help with trash mobs." In Hyjal it might be kinda fun, but during the boss fight itself where all you're doing is spamming Smite etc. and not contributing anything else to speak of (except maybe pain suppression for whatever reason), then it's just gunna be sorta bleh. I would really like to see someone's WWS in a Hyjal+ encounter as discDPS though, just to see how they keep up.

The third thing I see as being wrong with not a smite priest in general, but the HN usage is this: There are maybe a handful of encounters throughout the game atm that actually promote clumping together (Tidewalker for one). In most boss fights you are pretty much encouraged, if not basically forced, to spread the heck out (most of the Hyjal bosses if not all). Not doing so can result in massive raid dmg, and spikes that HN spam won't really be able to keep up with all the time. There are also a lot of fights that are very melee unfriendly (*gasp!*) because they force the melee classes to stay bunched up (albeit usually in 2 groups), however keeping as few people in melee as possible is usually what you're going for. In the end, sticking a Disc priest in there to HN spam the melee is like adding one more log to the fire. Instead of having a resto shammy or CoH spamming priest heal the melee, you've now stuck one more melee into the fray.

I'm sure Disc priests can do decent DPS, enough to keep up with other hybrids and so forth. The question however is... depending upon your raid group... couldn't someone do it much better? Would you not be better off supplying your group with mana/hots via VE/VT instead of relying upon PBAoE spells to do the heals whilest doing down-ranked HN spam w/ some Smites thrown in? Even if you spam Smite during that fight... that's all you'll be doing. The usefulness of Pain Suppression as a viable raid talent has already been discussed in other threads, so I won't go down that road. Again, HN may be nice for trash, but it's not really gunna help you out a lot on most bosses.

I can't remember the last time I heard a guild say "ahh man, we're stuck on such-and-such boss's trash so we can't progress! this sucks!" :P

On a side note! BoSacrifice for pallies is a joke if you're trying to increase your mana regeneration through it. Not only does it require other healers to then heal you (unless you're in a SP group), but you also have to factor in the mana cost in an of itself for actually casting it. I think I remember it costing about 240 mana, and since you'll be taking 104 dmg a hit, that's basically 10.4 mana back for every hit done to the person. That means they'll have to get hit ~24 times just to make up for the mana used on the spell itself, not to mention the GCD used and the buff that was taken OFF the person you casted it on. ~24 times every 30 seconds? Most people during any boss fight are not going to get hit that often, and sometimes not even the tank. I can't really think of anywhere where someone would get so many DoTs on them (in PvE of course...) where using this spell would net more mana back to you than it would actually cost. Even trash really doesn't go around stacking DoTs on people, let alone non-cleansable DoTs.

Just my 2 cents ^^

 

Caligula

That's pretty much the craziest WoW strategy I've ever heard. I'm all in favor of thinking outside the box though. I'll help you out a bit. First thing that comes to mind is, with the tiny radius of HN, you are basically requiring that your group members be within 12 (?) yards of you at all times. We'll also assume that you want to damage the boss or any adds on the encounter to somewhat guarantee a SoL Proc from hitting 5+ targets each time. We'll break it down by boss and see which ones this would be effective on.

For now, we'll assume that you can be put in the melee group, although I don't think that would work in real practice. We'll also assume that you need to hit your group AND the boss with HN for full effect (with some exceptions, fights that have constant adds to AOE is one).

Attumen = Yes, everyone should be grouped up already.
Moroes = Partially, for part of the fight people are running around killing adds, for the rest of it you can group up and dps the boss.
Maiden = Yes, if you are in the melee group. No, if you are ranged.
BBW = Yes, but it would be a risk of keeping people near the boss.
R&J = Yes.
The Crone = Yes, plenty of targets to hit here.
Curator = Yes, I'll assume that grouping up and aoe healing would cancel out most of the arcane damage. I would probably tax your mana without a shadowpriest.
Nightbane = Yes, the common strategy is to group up for both phases.
Aran = Yes, grouping up doesn't change anything on this encounter.
Netherspite = No, not feasible to group at all considering the portals.
Prince = Yes, if in melee. No if in ranged (you'd never have your ranged group stand next to the boss).

That's a pretty good record for Karazhan.

High King Maulgar = Yes, I suppose. You could safely dps the priest, warlock and HKM himself (avoiding WWs). You'd have to convince your group to follow you around to kill each one, it would be very tricky.
Gruul = Yes with the melee, no with ranged. Ranged spread out around the boss, grouping up would result in increased cave-in damage. Also, after a ground slam your group would have to come back together, losing lots of DPS time. It's just way too much extra work for little gains. With melee you'd have to watch threat, being so close to the boss, but I guess it would be doable.

So, Gruuls has a lot of caveats, you could make it happen with the proper group makeup but overall it probably wouldn't work very well.

Nalorakk = Yes, if melee. No if ranged (grouping up results in knockback of everyone including healers).
Akil'zon = Yes and no. Mostly no, you want to stay spread out for most of this fight as not to chain the lightnings. Perhaps being in the melee group would work.
Jan'Alai = Yes, many targets to hit here with aoe for a good portion of the fight.
Halazzi = Yes and no. If you're quick on totem killing then yes, if not, grouping up is a poor strategy that would result in a lot of unnecessary raid dps.
Hex Lord = Yes. HN would be pretty decent on this fight actually with the aoe shadow damage/
Zul'jin = Yes, mostly. It would be tricky to coordinate phase 3 and 5 for this strategy to work. Phases 1, 2, and 4 should be no problem.

ZA is mostly a yes.

Hydross = No, grouping up is bad. Forcing more grouping would add unnecessary amounts of extra healing.
Lurker = Yes, if your group can move as a unit when necessary.
FLK = Yes, no real reason not to group up here.
Tidewalker = Yes, threat-less aoe on murlocs would work well.
Leotheras = No, far too much spreading out in the WW phase to make this viable.
Vashj = I'm going to have to go with No. Far too much moving around on this fight and far too much going on to make people attempt to group in a small area near the boss for HN heals and dps.

About 50/50 in SSC.

Alar = Yes for phase 1, No for phase 2. Phase 2 requires spreading out every 20 seconds (if I remember correctly), that's an awful lot of grouping/ungrouping for little benefit and more risk.
Void Reaver = Yes if melee, No if ranged.
Solarian = Yes, aoe on the adds would work well here.
KT = Yes, if with melee, No if with ranged.

TE looks good if you are allowed to go with melee.

Rage Winterchill = Yes if melee, no if ranged.
Anetheron = Yes if melee, no if ranged.
Kazrogal = Yes, as long as no one in your group has mana problems.
Azgalor = No, I think the RoF would kill your spec.
Archimonde = Only if with melee.

Again, it would work here if you were with melee groups on most of the fights in Hyjal.

Najentus = Yes if melee, no if ranged.
Supremus = No, grouping up within 10 yards of him is a recipe for dying.
Akama = Yes, you could aoe down any of the adds.
Teron = Yes, grouping is fine on this fight.
Gurtogg = Yes and no. You couldn't group up near him to hit Gurtogg with HN, but your healing on your group would be good. Sort of a catch 22 here.
RoS = Yes, grouping is fine if you're careful and P3 aoe healing is key.
Shahraz = Yes, tons of aoe damage to heal here, and maybe you'll make use of that shadow aura.
Council = No, far too much spreading out and moving around. The melee group isn't even grouped up on this fight.
Illidan = Phase 1 = yes, phase 2 = yes, the rest of the fight I'd say no, they require you to spread out too much.

In conclusion, it really all depends on whether you can be with the melee group whenever you need to. This means you'd be taking the place of a rogue or warrior. You'd need a comparison of the extra healing you'd do, plus your dps, versus the dps loss from taking a melee out of that group. What kind of DPS are you doing with this spec? Healing? I'm still really skeptical. You are asking a lot from your party on many fights and I don't know that the gains would be worth it.

 

Amiko

RE: Kazekan

I made no assumptions about the presence of either a boomkin, an elemental shaman, or a retribution pally. Indeed, the synergies section, I spent the most time dealing with being grouped with mages, warlocks, holy paladins, resto druids, and your impact on other priests.

Secondly, since HN has nothing to do with group make up there is no reason at all that if there is a meele group consisting of a ret pally and an enhancement shaman, that you couldn't be in that group as well. But you don't have to be to have a good synergy with the ret pally and take advantage of their debuffs ( if not their aura ) and trigger their spiritual attunement.

I absolutely think that you're right that there are certain encounters where it's just not ideal. That's true of anything, and it's the job of the player to make it work. Tried to take a fire mage to A'lar lately?

RE: Caligula

You keep noting the group difference "yes if melee, no if ranged" or vice versa etc.

This over looks one of the great strengths of holy nova/Circle of Healing vs. Vampiric Embrace. Group make up is only relevant for ancillary buffs, not for the usefulness of the primary ability. HN is AOE healing, affecting everything within the spells radius, regardless of group structure.

With holy reach it is a 12 yard radius, but 12 yards is a perfectly reasonable in keeping you out of melee range. Secondly, all of this casting is instant cast, meaning you can cast on the run -- movement is critical here. It is a crazy strategy, and it requires you to be on the ball.

Regardless, you can always fall back to regular Holy Fire/Smite rotation.

On occasions when you cannot spam HN, or the HN spam is not useful, you can always transition to a more usual Holy Fire/Smite rotation, or even convert to a general healing roll -- from a healing perspective, the key talent of Divine Fury is already there, and it's trivial to move points into improved healing, healing focus and Imp. PW:S without dropping the key DPS talents. With ~1000 to ~1200 spell power you'd easily be a perfectly reasonable off healer, and a perfectly respectable one in full healing gear ( >~1500 +heal ). And with the full boat of Mental Agility you're in a very good place to keep up renews and Prayers of Mending, PW:S's etc.

What I really need to do though, is just run it. It very rarely gets actual log time since most raid's are iffy about taking non-traditional class/builds. Hopefully, i'll be able to mess with my gearing enough that I can start go get those logs for people to start picking at -- who knows, it might be totally unworkable, but speculation is just speculation.

Cheers,
Amiko

 

Lodi

The description for Holy Nova suggests that it's group only, unlike Circle of Healing. Yes?

 

Amiko

Bwah, i might be totally flawed here.

I think you're right, looking at the tooltip, though it doesn't seem to jive with my experience of the spell.

mutter.

Time to go re-spec and findout.

 

Hegen

Shortly before BC, I used Holy Nova in AQ20 during the Buru encounter where you clump up the end and only have a few seconds left anyway due to the stacks so that mana wasn't an issue. At that time, Holy Nova only provided heal for the group you are in. Time plays tricks on the memory, but it would sure have looked different there on the life bars than it did, even with diminishing returns after 10 targets.

Should that have changed, please post your findings. Would be preferable to the CoH on Malacrass where we are currently stuck.

That being said, your concept is interesting if weird at first. Spamming an AoE spell to get free smites.

As for raid utility: in Karazhan, a smiter can easily switch between damage and emergency healing infight as well as switch to full healer for specific encounters where you want more healers. Compared to non-healing druids, paladins and shadows, the smiter can keep a healing-capable spec. This flexibility is great if your raid is in the situation of doing most encounters with 2 healers, but not all of them. I'm not sure however, that this continues to be of value beyond Karazhan. In Zul'aman, for example, a good class mix is important, so that you have enough dispells, decurses and different crowd controllers. Since you want a holy priest there as well as shadow, you are the third priest. With 2 tanks, 2 additional healers and a rogue, that leaves only 2 slots for mage, warlock and hunter.

 

Amiko

Once upon a time, it was the 31 point talent. For a while, what it did exactly, changed every patch, so it's hard to say what it does exactly actually anyway. I think it's been stable since 2.0 but it sort of got flagged as "this is the spell you use to find rogues." and dropped.

I don't like taking holy priests to ZA. There isn't an opportunity for enough time spent OO5SR. That said, a lot of the fights would be really friendly to a ret pally ( particularly Jan'alai ).


Back to the smite at hand though:

Lets say holy nova's tool tip is correct -- that means group make up is meaningful again.

Speculatively, the largest impact to the build is that you need to spec probably another 5-10% crit past hit cap to make up for the lost targets.

I am hopefully going to be smiting a full clear of kara again this Sunday. I'll follow up with some WWS stats so that some retrospection and modeling can take place. It would be helpful if some other interested parties could run the experiment as well.

 

Cob-

It's not viable because of mana restraints.. Better to have the priest with 2300+ healing and Smite Talents. My Smites land for roughly 1.2k, with talents you would see a nice boost.

 

Hegen

Without taking this too far off-topic: Especially since 2.3., time OO5SR is not nearly as relevant as it used to be. I run ZA in PMC stuff with about 320 MP5 I5S and about 500 MP5 O5S. The difference is noticeable, but it's not make or break. Also, in most of the fights, you easily manage to steal some time OO5SR, even including Malacrass. If I look at our other healers (somewhat less equipped paladin, much better equipped druid), the ratio of equip vs. effective heal is pretty much in my favor. In my opinion the reason for this is that a holy priest can make very effective use of PoM, CoH, and PoH in ZA. I just checked: at Malacrass, these three make up for almost 70% of my total effective heal, PoM alone is 18%.

While this really is a holy DD thread, I encourage you to review your assessment. Just like you ponder spell combinations to somehow get a raid capable holy DD, a holy priest going to ZA needs to review his entire arsenal to be fully effective. In ZA, you can use literally everything (except maybe mana burn and mind control), it's *the* raid instance where I feel fully useful (while certainly stressed out). If you feel like discussing this further, though, I guess we should move somewhere else.

 

tedv

As a shadow priest, I'm 3 Crimson Spinels and a T3 weapon away from the optimal PvE raiding gear, yet I'm normally 10th to 12th on damage meters (and second on threat). I provide a ton of raid utility in that I enable 4 casters to deal more damage than me. If a holy priest for DPS is going to be better than a shadow priest, you'll need to do more than random collateral healing on fights to justify a raid slot. Your DPS will have to be at least as good as the mages on a standard tank-and-spank fight.

So what would be your ideal gear setup, and what's the theoretical DPS this will achieve? If it's not in the 1600+ range, the raid slot simply isn't justified. And I don't see how that would happen when your best case for damage amplification is having a retribution paladin in your group for a grand total of 10% more damage. That's how extra damage I get from my Affliction Warlock who won't even spec Malediction even before counting talents.

 

Amiko

I can only account for the gear range in range that is available to me. My guild is currently progressing through SSC and TK.

From my own stats as shadow ( shadow is my main spec ) :

Lurker fight in SSC: 171 spell hit ( capped with talents ), ~1200 +shadow ~9% crit: ~660 dps
-- not too bad focus is on maintaining VT and imp. VE ( which threat caps me ) not pushing strait DPS through.

Curator fight in Kara: 153 spell hit ( 5% off cap or something ), ~900 spell power ~23% holy crit: ~560 dps
-- was third on that list behind a destro lock and a combat rogue who were considerably better geared at ~707 and ~660 dps respectively. Noting the pretty significant gear differential, and the greater scaling of smite/hf by spellpower/crit as opposed to MF/MB/SW, if equally geared it should more then make up the difference.

Have to be able to run equal gear on equal fights to get a meaningful comparison though, which is not something I've been able to do yet.

I'd like to note that I had ZERO sustainability problems, and pounded through the prince fight without a single mana pot.

The fights are "similiar" except in how they're completely different. I don't know that there is a whole lot to extract from this ( other then a buch of LOLz >20000DPS YOU SUX0rz! junk -- but i suppose i'm asking for it. )

Anyway, i was able to pull down a bunch of gear to use for this build considering Kara's basically a farming for alts run these days.

As far as what the gear spec'ing strategy? Go read the earlier post. If you want a specific gear selections, then you're not theory crafting you're making brownies off the back of a box: go buy a guide.

In synopsis though, as noted (way) above, spell hit > spell haste > spell crit >= spell power.

Why spell haste?

It's the single largest multiplier to damage. If you can stack a full .5 of spell haste then your out put cycle becomes the same regardless of SoL procs smoothing out the DPS curve. ( There has to be some destro warlock thread here noting the impact it has on shadow bolt vs crit. )

I'm farming kara for the badges and ZA for the gear to try and put a haste stack together as well. I'm also a firm believer in spell haste for holy priests as well ( GH on the GCD!?, ROCK ON muh-thah-hea-lah \mm/ ).

 

Belenos

It seems to me the main question about the viability of a "use holy nova to proc surge of light" is, Is this really competitive with just casting damage spells?

I see the attraction of getting easy crits with holy nova or circle of healing, which translates into free smites, but this means you're using 2 global cooldowns for each smite, or 3 seconds. You could outright cast the smites in 2.5 seconds... yes you pay the full mana cost, but the smite can also crit, while iirc Surge of Light's smites cannot crit.

So it seems to me that if you're looking for the best holy DPS possible, you'd just cast your smites and look to potting and gear to cover the mana requirements. This strategy is a clever way to get a lot of group healing while still thowing out some mild dps, and for some niches would be fun (would have killed on Vael in BWL), but I don't see a lot of fights calling for this kind of hybrid role.

Author of CasterWeaponSwapper: suggestions welcome by forum PM or to wikwocket@gmail.com.

 

flyingtoastr

A retribution Paladin will actually provide provide 12% more total damage (Improved Sanctity Aura is 2% more in addition to the 10% from the base spell) and 219 Holy Spell Damage from Judgement of the Crusader. The 219 damage from JotC works out to ~156 more base damage to Smite (not to mention the 3% extra crit provided by Improved SotC). In addition the retribution paladin will (in most circumstances) be keeping up a Judgement of Wisdom. Running a quick calculation, that JoW works out to an ideal base of 74 Mp5 if you simply spammed Smite with no SoL procs. With (for argument's sake) a 25% chance to crit (and 2/2 SoL), JoW will return ~77.4 Mp5 (ideally) spamming Smite. The synergy between a Smite Priest and a Ret Pally is excellent, the only problem being that you would severely gimp the pally's personal DPS from lack of WF/UR/BS/etc.

The main problems that I see with the spec is the lack of spell critical support. If there was a talent either to increase critical damage or give a viable damage increase via critical strikes (i.e. Vengeance or Flurry) I could see the spec becoming much more viable. The placement of PI is also troublesome; its too hard to shave points in order to get 5/5 Mental Strength without dropping SoL. As it is, it seems like a fun gimmick spec (I would love to try it on my priest if she had more spell damage) but little more than that.

Some people's minds are like cement: all mixed up and permanently set.

 

Hegen

Time for fact-finding: I respecced, got Holy Nova again and tested the issue in Zul'Aman.

Damage aspect: range restriction and reduced damage per mob if too many mobs in range. Tested with the large packs on the way to Zul'Jin. Threshold is probably 10, like other AoE spells, I guess.

Healing aspect: affects members of the caster's group only, just like the tooltip says. No effect on the other half of the raid whatsoever. Not in log, and nothing to be seen on the life bars either (I don't trust the log completely: priest shield actually absorbs Gruul shatter damage, though not visible in the log).

 

Amiko

It's absolutely casters group only, and it suffers from 10+ diminishing returns just like other AOE spells.

Sadly, I haven't been able to test the spec again since my guild is focusing really hard on progression right now and I haven't had the spare time to put this all together yet.

I also need 2-3 more ZA drops for my haste suit which i can use both for this fun goofy spec and an MF heavy shadow rotation.

I'm returning to this soon, so uh "stay tuned." but as far as I can tell I'm on the short list of people seriously attempting to work out a reasonable smite spec.

 

Jaedis

I've had thoughts about this before as well. The thing that I ran into is simply that people won't be open to it, much like SP weren't accepted well pre-BC.

Yep, the biggest problem is you don't bring much to the table-- though a Pain Supression on the right target in the clutch could be nice, and a lot of healing priests skip this talent.

 

heel

I'll be testing this spec in nearly optimal T6 gear through full runs of BT and Hyjal this week. I did some napkin math and I am expecting good things.

 

ollepe

Hope to hear from you how it did go.

 

Hegen

If you are not a full smiter, but put a few more points in the holy tree, you do bring something to the table: flexible healing. A smiter can give reasonable emergency healing and HoTs even in damage equipment, something a shadow priest can only do at the expense of switching form.

The question is only: how man raids can or want to make use of this. If you take Zul'Aman, I can see lots of reasons for taking a hybrid smiter instead of a second shadow priest as a third healer. On trash the smiter can dps, even provide some AoE, cast around flash heals where needed, and on boss fights provide healing, damage, dispell or all of it depending on the group's needs. This may be especially useful while a ZA raid is on the progression from 3 healers down to 2, at least on the first bosses, in order to make chests 3 and 4. Other classes/builds are more limited in this respect due to the need for form change or upper-tier talent requirements.

Still, this flexibility is probably worth most in 10 mans and much less so in 25 mans. It's also little researched in practice, especially in progression raids where the question "am I worth my raid spot" really matters. Therefore, even for smiter advocates, it's very hard to say what that flexibilty is worth compared to a shadow priest, for example.

 

Faustryn

There's a lot of great theorycrafting and discussion, but yet one thing seems to be overlooked in all this. If you're a Human, you benefit from a 10% racial bonus to spirit. This is a nice bonus, especially if you have a lot of spirit. What's even better is that it scales (in comparison to a draenai's static +1% spell hit racal), plus it can be applied to both dps (smiting) and healing.

 

heel

Results: ~1300dps with full pots, in a ret paladin group. Spec was this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Gear was 1370 unbuffed holy damage (counting the spirit talent), 27% holy crit, capped hit, and 262 spirit. Rotation was SW:P -> Smite until SW:P drops. Used Holy Fire only when Focus procced. Not as good as I had hoped, unfortunately. Since it offers close to no raid utility (Imp DS and that's it), damage output needs to increase by 15-20% or so to make it raid viable. In addition, there's the issue of being forced into a melee group . . . yeah. One thing that I was pleasantly surprised at was longevity; I had no problems running out of mana while chain potting.

 

Emissary

I like to drift in and out of smite-spec when my guild's taking things slow.

What I am wondering is the importance of surge of light to the average priest with this spec. Given a reasonable amount of latency, and the ease with which crit can be pushed well over the 25% mark with talents, even at low levels of progression, would it not make more sense to head further down the discipline tree and get the hit and power infusion. I'll hopefully be testing this myself against HKM, gruul and void reaver tomorrow and will be able to add my own results to the pot



**of course one thing I forgot was mana efficiency. Very worried aobut how I'll hold up in the long fights, but we'll see.

 

Kamileon

Read Post #9 in this thread:
http://elitistjerks.com/329068-post9.html

Surge of Light *lowers* DPS but raises DPM. Whether or not it's useful in a spec depends on if you need the additional hit from talents to reach the cap, and have trouble with mana.