I've read threads in the WoW forums that confirmed a 34/27/0 spec as being able to keep up with DPS in 5 mans, heroics, and 10 mans.  I've seen armory pages of priests in epic mage gear from Kara speced for Surge of Light and Power Infusion.  I've seen videos on Youtube.com of priests tossing awesome burst damage with smite crits, surge of light, and SW:D.
I used to have a full disc spec and I can see how having surge of light to go with all those crits would be nice.  Even then I managed 20% party damage (keep in mind MC doesn't get you anything on the charts) the 2 or 3 times I DPSed Ramps and Slave Pens.

So yea...I'm gonna do it.  I'm taking the plunge.  I'm dumping my 21/40/0 raid healing spec for lolsmite.  I'm not in a Kara guild yet so all I'm doing in 5 mans.

Here's the talents I'm thinking based on what I've seen in the armory.

34/27/0

Comments? Concerns? Flame?

Sounds like the people with these specs are pretty well geared...

So you are basically getting... 10% crit, 15% more spellpower, 35% of your spirit added to SD, 20% cast time reduction on smite, probably a 25% chance on average to have free instant cast.

Shadow gets basically 15% crit, 25% bonus damage, causes a 15% bonus damage debuff, 10% HIT!!, returns 25% health/damage and 5% mana/damage, 30% better SW:P, VT - Another dot w/ a 100% SD coefficient, 15% mana cost reduction on most used spells.

The only benefit of Smite over Shadow is Imp. Spirit buff (25-40 SD to all casters basically).

Shadow give 150+ mp5, 150 health per second to their party, 5% more spell damage for all casters, additional 10% for shadow (locks)... and  of course reaching 16% spell hit is very hard without raid drops - and 10% bonus to hit (126 hit rating) is massive.

-what is your current spell hit I dare ask?


"The first guild to defeat illidan still had their Spreists in Frozen SW and spellstrike, why haven't you made it yet?"

All the bits I've read don't claim that smite priests are out-dpsing anyone...simply keeping up with those with comprable gear while still providing extra HOTs, Shackle Undead, and Mind Control.

Vampiric Embrace does give back HP to the group but most of that ends up being over-healing on the dpsers and healer doing little more than pulling extra threat.  The ticks on the tank are nice but having an extra renew from me on the tank the whole time would probably heal for more.  I do still have a few talents that effect my healing that shadow priests won't have so if/when shit happens my off heals would be a lot less crappy and I wouldn't have to shit forms which brings in the heal about 1 second sooner.  That's the only real definative advantage I'd have over a shadow priest.

True, I wouldn't be supplying ticks for mana.  There I got nothing.  The best I could do there is Divine Spirit which isn't quite as good.  Although, many people don't really care about the whole +mp5 from spriests thing saying that if you can't beat a raid boss without mana from a spriest then you just suck.  Not my stance at all but still something to consider I guess.

Also true than shadow provides awesome bonuses to shadow damage.  In the same gear I have right now I could get 2000+ damage mind blast crits when I was shadow speced.  My smites currently crit for about 1650-1700, but with Surge of Light you can add about 1200 to that so a crit averages for over 2200.  And Smite has no cooldown and even with the GCD from SoL (esentially making smite a 3.5 sec cast when it procs) I can still get off 2-3 smites per shadow priest's mind blast.  The rest of the time is usually mind flay which is effecient yes, but won't do as much damage as smite.  That's without Power Infusion though I would probably use that on a mage or warlock most of the time.

The 10% spell hit is also something I can't match with talents, but I'm sure I'll hit the magic number (forget what it is right now) with just gear eventually.  Not every caster takes +hit talents and I'm sure they manage too.

I plan to emphasize +spirit as much as possible since this spec seems to benefit from spirit more than any other class.  With that hopfeully my mp5 is going to be impressive so this might turn out to have lots of endurance.  If I go OOM I can always spam rank 1 holy nova for SoL procs.  If there are enough friesds and/or foes around to get critical heals/hits off of I could probably hit SoL on every other cast no problem, all the while spending very little mana.  Beats the hell out of wand dps.

I've done some number crumching and after much algebra I've found the following:

Assume identical gear.  I used 700 +damage base before adding talents and buffs, a 15% crit chance before talents, about 150 spirit and about 8500 mana before talents.

Surprisingly, when comparing the spell sequences of: Holy Fire + Smite + Smite + Smite versus Mind Flay + Mind Flay + Mind Blast + Shadow Word Death, I found that Smites beats Shadow by a small margin up until 5/5 Shadow Weaving is applied after which Shadow begins to pull away.  Both were in the area of 800 dps, but under optimal conditions with raid buffs, potions, Spell Strike procs and trinket cooldowns these numbers would obviously be higher. 

Note that I did not include the Misery debuff becasause I am assuming that both priest are in the same raid so they would both benefit from Misery.  Also, the Shadow priest in my calculations has Improved Divine Spirit on him for a small boost to spell damage.

Also, since the first few seconds of a fight for Shadow spec include casting debuffs (Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch).  The Smiter would therefore have a bit of a head start with the Shadow priest overtaking him after 15-20 seconds or so (more if Power Infusion is used).

The down side (and it is a huge down side) is that Holy Fire + Smite x3 takes over 1400 mana while in the same about of time Mind Flay x2 + Mind Blast + Shadow Word Death takes a little less than 1100 if the Shadow priest has talents to decrease mana cost.  Even with higher spirit and a 10% larger mana pool the Smite Priest with constant spamming will go OOM about 20 seconds sooner than the Shadow Priest while using this sequence. 

Note that this does not include extra mana from Vampric Touch since in this example both of the priests are in the same group and both benefiting from it.

I am very curious to see what happens when a Paladin with Sanctity Aura and Judgement of the Crusader is in the mix since that 10% or 12% boost to holy damage puts the Smiter on top even after Shadow Weaving is applied.  I also want to see what happens as the Smiter stacks more and more +crit gear since crits boosts DPS and mana efficiency by quite a lot for this build.

And even though a Smiter will run out of mana sooner, I don't think it's unreasonable for a priest with good enough gear to be able to last a long boss fight, especially if there is any combination of Vampric Touch, Blessing of Wisdom, and/or Mana Tide Totem in the raid.

FINAL CONCLUSION: Smite builds have better burst damage while lower overall dps, better off-healing abilities, but much worse endurance.  Still, if you ever get a tell from a smite-priest that wants to dps your 5 man or even heroic dungeon or 10 man raid you should probably let him. 

I'll update this in about 2 weeks once I am able to reactivate my account and give this spec a whirl.  I'd be very appreciateive of anyone sharing stories of playing/running with a smite priest or if anyone wants to try this before me.

You should also not that VT and SW:P are the highest damage/cast time spells... since VT gets a 100% coefficent for 1.5 sec and shadow spec Pain gets a 140% coefficient also for 1.5 cast.

Also VE can be put up without pull any aggro, so starting with a VE, VT, SW:P can be done before the tank has enough aggro to hold a smite crit.  So yes if you open wiht burst smite might win for a few secs... but dots will win in the end.

But now imagine 2 shadow priests in the same group since you assumed the smite priest had one... shadow weaving would be up immediatly and you could SW:D with almost no loss since you would  get your health back within 2-3 sec and you'll never have to drink.  Also in a 5-man my holy pally would just start meleeing and consecrating since I would hardly have to heal - since everyone would be getting >300 hps.  Of course I do that anyways since I get bored.

For a normal 5-man you group composition doesn't matter as long as your tank/healer can handle it though... the point is that for dps a shadow priest is better utility and damage... and holy smite is closer to holy so you can be the primary healer a little better in instances.  For soloing shadow destroys though with blackout, spirit tap, mind flaw, reduced fear cooldown...

WOw

Thats what I have to say about your 34/27/0 talent build.

Though I do agree with posts in this topic, and several others, that Blizzard should do something to aid the Holy Damage( LOLSmite ) Priest, as I, and possibly a whole bunch of others find it to be a more enjoyable Priest spec.

I have toyed with it a great deal, and have found a build that works wonders with DPS and very effective main and off healing, not losing much to a fully spec'd Healing Priest. 

I have noticed that through proper application of dots and being hit capped ( its like 161 talented, 202 untalented ), that it beats out Shadow in the long run for damage, though not raid utility. 

When I get Timbal's from MrT, and play around with some of the new +spirit badge gear, I'll check the new damage coeffs on it, and play around some more.

But in short, the Smite Priests real raid utility is that they have the ability to drop good dps, and good healing when needed (trying to fill that role in my guild )

Anyway, heres the build that I use.....

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?505200013040212250000023505100032015 2000000000000000000000000000

Theoretically, with enough crit and spell damage, LOLSmite will beat out Shadow for pure DPS purposes, because Holy spells having better spell damage coefficients and good synergy with a Ret Pally and a mana battery.  That said, the amount of extra DPS a LOLSmite Priest can do isn't significantly more than a Shadow Priest, but the utility is FAR less.

A LOLSmite Priest does bring a decent off-healer to the raid, and possibly IDS (so the other Holy Priests can go CoH), but that's it.  A Shadow Priest brings massive amounts of mana regen, Shadow Weaving (increases all Shadow Damage, so great for Shadow Priests and Warlocks), Misery (increases ALL spell damage, so great for Shadow Priests, LOLSmite Priests, Warlocks, Mages, Shamans, Moonkin Druids, Prot Pallies, etc.), and possibly silence.  IOW, what little amount a Shadow Priest may lack in personal DPS is more than made up for in buffing total raid DPS and whatever mana they bring back.  Plus, the Shadow Priest can still off-heal if necessary, though not quite as well.

The only thing a Shadow Priest really lacks that a LOLSmite Priest can bring is IDS.  A normal raid will probably bring 3 Priests (1 IDS, 1 CoH, 1 Shadow).  For a LOLSmite Priest to make sense, you either have to bring 4 Priests to make it worth while (1 LOLSmite, 2 CoH, 1 Shadow), but then you're losing out on another class, which means you're losing one other pure DPS class, for the small benefit of one CoH priest over an IDS Priest.  Chances are that the DPS from a LOLSmite priest is FAR behind what a pure DPS build can bring, like a Hunter, Warlock, Mage, or Rogue.  So, in essence, you're trading several hundred DPS for upgrading an IDS Priest to a CoH priest.  Now, CoH is nice... but not THAT nice.

Basically, LOLSmite is a fun build, I have more fun with that build than I do with Shadow, but it just isn't fit for raiding.  It's a really good leveling spec, and good for 5-mans and even feasible into Karazhan.  But that's about the limit of it.

Seems this kind of build will be very possible in WOTLK, with more talents poitns to include spirit tap

if u want a epic mount then stay holy... if not then go w.e u want

this would do 2 http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?tal=05023001300000000000002340510023 20152501051500000000000000000000#none

FOA, if you're going deep enough to get CoH, I'm assuming you're healing at least T5 content.  If you're not, it's not worth it, and you need to completely reconsider the build.

Why are you doing Holy build and taking Spirit Tap?  If you're healing it is utterly useless.  Trade those 5 points for Mental Agility and you'll have a lot more mana longevity.

Further, Wand Specialization is another waste of talent points.  It's great for leveling, or if you are doing a ton of soloing, but useless if you're healing.  At least Unbreakable Will is situationally useful when healing; Wand Specialization is not even remotely useful.

Why AREN'T you grabbing Inspiration?  It is a very useful talent that saves ALL of your healers mana and can sometimes even prevent a wipe.  Instead, you're grabbing... Lightwell, Holy Nova, and an extra point in Holy Specialization?  Lightwell, is a waste.  Holy Nova is only situationally useful in 5-mans and PVP (and not useful at all if you're in content that would make you want CoH).  Holy Specialization is only useful IF you have Inspiration.

Finally, why are you even posting a CoH build in a LOLSmite thread?

Behold, http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Sporeggar&n=Kwakzalver

This is the priest that once gone by the name of Health, on The Venture Co and Ravenholdt!

I have since TBC was planned always believed in holy dps, actually I was the first level 70 priest on Ravenholdt (second overall on server, some tripleplayed-rogue beated me by 6 hours) ... which I did with reflective shield spec.

Also everyone has hold me for an idiot 90% of the times, but it is really possible!

For best endurance use your shadowfiend early, it will topoff your mana and is ready again before you know it. Also dont be afraid of using potions!

I use the holy fire > smite > smite castsequence, which yields the best mana and dps averages.

On trash mobs, go with the smite-all-you-like ... but be 100% sure you are able to and dont pull agro.

As you see my gear is pretty nice for these type of specs, I have 35,75% crit on my holy dmg spells UNBUFFED! You should specially watch lightning bolts flying around while doing AoE packs.

What matters most for dungeons and raids, you always have that extra missing healer. Believe me, from a healer PoV most of the times there is one healer too much for most bosses and trash is not even doable for a priest against pallies powerflashing the whole raid. What I did was in my former healing-hybridspec, to just put on my dps gear and try to outdps the mages/rogues ... which after a while with obtaining more and more gear started to finally happen! So I respecced to what I already planned carefully ... lolsmitezzzzzz, god it was LOVELY!!!


Ode to the priests of the World of Warcraft .... sorry that I've been VERY inactive, but I will return when the BATTLE to 80 starts!!!


PS: My spec has the least useless talents, atleast the way I play ...

/edit: forgot to mention that the best group for NUKEFORCEONE is: Shadowpriest (yes, this is what makes the ultimate combination of raw power to this group ... mana regen), elemental shaman, retardin (sanc aura), oomkin and ofcourse your hybrid-priest!

Also forgot to mention ... holy nova is THE best AoE you can have in your raids AoE groups ;)