Ok, so I'm gonna be 70 real soon and want to respec for holy DPS and survivability.

I made my own talent build because I want it to suit my play style, but at the same time I don't want to miss anything important.

Am I?

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/priest/talents.html?tal=5020320130225120501000205051302020052000000000000000000000000000

Well, if you're going for BGs to do holy damage, that isn't too bad.  However, I would say you probably don't need to worry about Silent Resolve, since it prevents things from being dispelled, but the only things they'd dispel would be SW:P, which isn't a primary damage dealer for you, or maybe a buff.  Instead, I'd spend those points in Imp Fort.

You may also want to look at a way to get some points into Focused Power as well, because the extra hit and reduced cast time on Mass Dispel will both prove useful in BGs.  In fact, 2% bonus to Hit alone will add more to your Damage than the 1% Damage and 1% crit will.  That is, the base hit against the same level is 96%, so we'll assume no hit and 800 DPS before dropping points in either talent, then 0 points in Focused Power and 5 points in Force of will give you 860 DPS.  At 1/4 point distribution, your DPS would be 865.667 DPS or ~0.66% DPS increase.  At 2/3, your DPS would be 862.125 [Note: Spell Hit caps at 99%] or ~0.25% DPS increase.

Of course, that analysis doesn't take into account the change in Surge of Light procs, but that's difficult to calculate without making an assumption about where your crit stands.  Besides, the main point of Surge of Light isn't DPS, it's mana conservation.

Just cause I'm interested too, let's see how Surge of Light works.  Let's say your smite hits for X and you have C crit, then your average Smite hits for (1 - C)X + 1.5CX = (1 + 0.5C)X.  IOW, if your non-crits hit for 1600, your crits will hit for about 2400, and your crit rate is 20%, you'll average 1760 per hit.  You can calculate DPS by just dividing by the cast time of 2s (assuming 5/5 Divine Fury).  So, assuming all else is the same but 2 points not in Surge of light, your DPS is (1 + 0.5C)X / 2.  For the example above, that's 880 DPS.  DPM would be (1 + 0.5C)X / 385.  For the example above, that would be 4.57 DPM.  This also leads to 192.5 MPS.

With surge of light, your average hit would be the same, but a crit would be worth 2.5x the damage in 1.75x the time (the second one is instant, but eats a GCD).  So, an average one would hit for (1 + 1.5C)X in an average time of (1 + 0.75C)2.  So, using the same numbers from above, your new average damage would be 2080, but your average cast time would be 2.3s.  So, your new DPS is 904.35, your new DPM is 5.40, your new MPS is 167.39.

So, with 20% Crit, you only gain about 2.8% damage, but your DPM increases by 18.2% and your MPS drops my 13%, giving you a LOT more longevity.

So, now let's see how it affects your numbers.  So, if your current crit is C, then the value of 1 more crit is as follows:

DPS  = (1.015 + 2.26125C + 1.125C^2) / (1.0075 + 2.26125C + 1.125C^2)
DPM = (1.015 + 1.5C) / (1 + 1.5C)
MPS = (1 + 0.75C) / (1.0075 + 0.75C)

So here's how it works out, at various crit levels, here's how 1% crit affects those numbers

crit  +DPS  +DPM  +MPS
0%    0.74%  1.50%  0.74%
10%    0.60%  1.30%  0.69%
20%    0.50%  1.15%  0.65%
30%    0.42%  1.03%  0.61%
40%    0.36%  0.94%  0.57%
50%    0.31%  0.86%  0.54%
...
99%    0.17%  0.60%  0.43%

What you'll notice is that crit is actually MORE valuable in play DPS up until 20% crit, but increases your DPS less per point after 20%.  You'll also notice that even if you crit every hit, it will always increase DPM more than average, and it's one of the few talents that will actually improve MPS.

So the real question is, because the value it affects DPS continues to drop, does Surge of Light ever actually become bad for your DPS?  Let's find out:

100% Crit rate without SoL:

Damage = 1.5X Time = 2
DPS = 0.75X  DPM = 0.00390X  MPS = 192.5

100% Crit rate with SoL

Damage = 2.5X Time = 3.5
DPS = 0.714X DPM = 0.00649X  MPS = 110

So, yes, it does actually eventually hurt your DPS, in fact, we can find out when it hurts it, by solving the below for C:

(1 + 0.5C)X / 2 = (1 + 1.5C)X / (1 + 0.75C)2

The solutions for that are C = 0, 0.667, and 0 doesn't make sense, so it only hurts your DPS if you have greater than 2/3 chance of critting (which is absurdly high, and probably almost impossible to achieve), and even then, it's STILL massively buffing your longevity.

So, FWIW, there you have it.

That was incredible, thanks.

It was very easy to follow. I wish there was a way to request a sticky for this :)

I just hope all my math is right, otherwise...