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.
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.