Goal : Make Lolsmite Dps less terrible

[Kelesti]

I levelled as holy ;-) Its not as bad as people say. First character too. Was a lot of fun in the early dungeons using all the spells I had available, holy fire, smite etc. They really could have expanded on the holy DPS with a third tree, but they went shadow instead. So i really doubt we will ever see viable holy DPS while we have the shadow tree, but it is fun to theorycraft and try out. I've seen some big numbers from smites on youtube and things. You'd never get a raid spot though

This. *also leveled Holy* And of course, ninja'ing a Ret Pally in TBC to exploit Sanctity Aura was hawtsecks

[Zuldain]

The idea of making a "smite" preist is the same as making a "shockadin" or a "melee hunter"

That class was not designed with this playstyle in mind, which is fine. Although it sucks to level a new character, if you don't like the shadow playstyle and want to cast "smite" style spells you should be playing a mage, ele shaman or balance druid.

My main is a hunter, and yes sometimes i want to melee, this is why i have an alt that is a melee class. I wouldn't try to glyph, gem, enchant and try to force viability of a roll that my class isn't intended to do!

I don't mean to be rude but when you can effectively put LOL in front of a build you're trying to have taken seriously it doesn't project well.

[Holyground]

I think that there are two forces at work here, and I'm not sure their supporters/detractors are noticing.

Some people are arguing for/against having a second dps talent choice that isn't Shadow. I agree with most that think this would be a terrible idea.

I, myself, would be intersted in bumping up the efficiency/dps of a holy/healing hybrid. I was a "hybrid" holy/disc leveling, which allowed me to heal comfortably in any dungeon and level efficiently. I found it to be comprable to shadow leveling, as I could always duck into an instance whenever the occasion arose.

My guild has a core raid group. I'm one of 6 healers--the holy priest at that. I like healing, but the content is so trivial, I started dpsing when the raid damage was low. I don't want to respec for t7 because A) we already have 2 Spriests in the raid, B) I like healing, even if I'm not needed as a healer and 3) This easy content won't last forever.

I can pull 2k dps easy and still throw heals as cookie-cutter holy fully raid buffed. It's not much in our raid, but it's *gasp* fun to do so.

I don't want hybrid level dps as a heal spec, but I would be interested in having a conversation about healers doing dps for portions of the fight and then healing the rest of it. Some encounters are almost there (loatheb, I'm looking at you... and glancing at you, too Flame Leviathan).

Are we straying too far into WAR territory, here? I mean obviously, the progression standpoint on this topic is just to bring as few healers as possible to stay alive because more dps=faster kills, but for middle of the road guilds, like mine, I think that there can be a happy place. Maybe I'm already in it.

[Abandon]

I think that was Blizzards original idea for the tree as well, back ages ago when Inner Fire still gave attack power.

[Holyground]

I really don't think a second dps talent choice is a good idea. My point was that I would have far rather seen a holy style DPS choice than the shadow spec... I would however go for a holy dps class.

At first I thought you were contradicting yourself, but instead what you're saying is that you don't like the lore of a shadow priest and instead wish it was Disc/Holy/holy DPS. That, also, is a terrible idea. If you don't like the style of priest DPS, reroll. I hear Paladins damage with the light.

[Anglarana]

Original post - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...43448643&sid=1

Hoping to get another few cool ideas from the mmo-champion community, if you think its worth putting down in the wow forums do that too!

Just respec to a proper dps spec, instead of waisting time in a fail build which has no use what so ever. Smite has always been there for the healers to get some minor dps in when healing isnt hard in a particular encounter. It was never supposed to be a "dps" (lol?) spec.

[unknownsock]

Lol smite specc used to be awesome DPS with a good raid group composition..
Id love to see it do something nowadays.

[AetherMcLoud]

I think that was Blizzards original idea for the tree as well, back ages ago when Inner Fire still gave attack power.

Well the original idea was that priests could tank, therefore inner fire gave attack power.

Much later though the Disc tree was somehow the mana efficiency / hybrid tree, with some +damage talents and all the mana stuff. Nowadays disc is just another way of healing, while holy still has at least some +damage talents in the lower tiers. Strange...

[G l o w y r m]

I had a smite build back in the beginning of BC when surge of light was broken. It was so awesome. The tooltip said the free smite wouldn't be capable of a crit but they were. I was able to proc SoL off of SoL smites and I used to have screen shots of me chaining together up to 7-8 SoL smites in a row all critting for like 3k ( I don't remember the dmg really of back then lol).

Damn I really wish I had those screen shots...it was just 7 yellow lines in a row in my combat log of crits all done in a matter of seconds. When it happened in PVP I would LOL so loud IRL because the guy on the other end was probably just like.."wtf just happened?!"

Anyone else remember SoL being broken like that and having a similar experience?

[Abandon]

Some bugs are just awesome fun. I remember when I got a buff "stuck" on me, it didn't go away. I was drinking while leveling my mage and the mana regeneration got stuck so I was constantly receiving mana as though I was drinking. AoEing packs of mobs and watching your mana bar go up was a little crazy.

I have seen people who have gotten Presence of Mind or Cold Blood stuck on them as well, always good fun to watch.

[Ananan]

I had Inner Focus stuck on me once on the isle after the Sunwell patch. Sadly I didn't use it very much before I zoned into MgT and it vanished.

[Deleted]

Excuse me for bringing this thread up.

But after seeing the smite thread on elitistjerks a few days ago, I started doing some math myself, I'm not going to post all of that here, unless you want me to, but with my current discipline gear, these would be my stats in a raidbuffed setting (balancedruid, resto shaman, retpaladin, frost/firemage)

2661 spellpower
43% holycrit
20% haste
4% hit (have 256 hitrating as shadow but have my disc gear equiped on armory)

1.6sec cast smite (1.2sec with power infusion)
1.2sec cast holy fire (0.9sec with power infusion)

I did a simulation of 20 seconds, with devouring plague and swain up on the target, starting off with holy fire and then spamming smite, then just before holy fire is about to come off cooldown, cast MIND BLAST, yes mind blast, I compared my calculations against Sw: death even with twin disciples, mindblast does more damage and is basically cast in the same time as an instant cast.

after that simulation I averaged out at 3690 dps, not like 5-6k like the best out there are doing but I did the same calculations for a destro lock in my guild with 41/30 build and using CoA, immolate and incinerate his stats are ,

2576 spellpower
50% crit
22% haste
17% hit

1.36sec cast incinerate
1.17sec cast immolate

And also applying the same 20 second simulation, starting with CoA, then immolate, spam incinerate until imolate falls off. and i got to 3803 dps with it.

If you want me to post the full math, I will take time to type it down.

[Kelesti]

Thanks iebe.

However, the reason we take Death over Mind Blast because Death can proc Spirit Tap (higher overall dps, and somewhat decent regen), both can but Death is a little on the cheaper side.

[Deleted]

Thanks iebe.

However, the reason we take Death over Mind Blast because Death can proc Spirit Tap (higher overall dps, and somewhat decent regen), both can but Death is a little on the cheaper side.

the difference between the two was about 17 dps. I guess it would be advisable to get 4pc shadow to try it out?

[Raptorg]

The idea of making a "smite" preist is the same as making a "shockadin" or a "melee hunter"

That class was not designed with this playstyle in mind, which is fine. Although it sucks to level a new character, if you don't like the shadow playstyle and want to cast "smite" style spells you should be playing a mage, ele shaman or balance druid.

Why?

It's possible to make smite builds viable with some design.

They made cats viable, so why not allow smite priests to be viable?

[Relina]

Excuse me for bringing this thread up.

But after seeing the smite thread on elitistjerks a few days ago, I started doing some math myself, I'm not going to post all of that here, unless you want me to, but with my current discipline gear, these would be my stats in a raidbuffed setting (balancedruid, resto shaman, retpaladin, frost/firemage)

2661 spellpower
43% holycrit
20% haste
4% hit (have 256 hitrating as shadow but have my disc gear equiped on armory)

1.6sec cast smite (1.2sec with power infusion)
1.2sec cast holy fire (0.9sec with power infusion)

I did a simulation of 20 seconds, with devouring plague and swain up on the target, starting off with holy fire and then spamming smite, then just before holy fire is about to come off cooldown, cast MIND BLAST, yes mind blast, I compared my calculations against Sw: death even with twin disciples, mindblast does more damage and is basically cast in the same time as an instant cast.

after that simulation I averaged out at 3690 dps, not like 5-6k like the best out there are doing but I did the same calculations for a destro lock in my guild with 41/30 build and using CoA, immolate and incinerate his stats are ,

2576 spellpower
50% crit
22% haste
17% hit

1.36sec cast incinerate
1.17sec cast immolate

And also applying the same 20 second simulation, starting with CoA, then immolate, spam incinerate until imolate falls off. and i got to 3803 dps with it.

If you want me to post the full math, I will take time to type it down.

I heard that most boss fights in the game last 20 sec.

[Shwaam]

The problem with making a talent tree capable of healing and damaging good is the balance for PvP. Talents which increases healing directly should NEVER affect damaging abilities.

[Xelaeno]

Interesting comparison there between MB and SW. I think with Glyph of SW and 4PC T7/7.5, SW wins in the end for higher DPM. However as you come close to the 2500 ~ 3000 spell power range, both SW and MB will start to fail pretty bad in terms of DPM compare with glyphed smite. Although hopefully with enough crit, the number of IST proc will make up for it.

To be honest I think blizzard screwed smite build big time in wotlk. we lost 4% hit from focused power, so stacking 368 (raid buff) ~ 446 (unbuffed) hit ratings seriously messed with our flexibility in itemization. I have been looking at the ulduer gear, one with hit do not offer crit, one with crit do not offer hit, one with hit and crit if any don't have spirit, haste is plenty though.

ps. i have short listed the approximate damage per cast numbers of smite & glyphed smite on my blog if anyone's curious. *cough*shamefully advertising *cough*. see sig.

[Deleted]

I heard that most boss fights in the game last 20 sec.

making a 1 - 2 minute simulation with a calculator and a pair of brains is quite a challenging thing to do, so I went with 20seconds..

edit: the problem with smite is it has potential to do decent damage, it is just to geardependant at the moment.

First of all in a raid setting we need more hit then any other caster, but that isnt such a big issue come ulduar gear. and even acquirable in current gear.

I made a small table weighing the importance of haste/crit. at 2700sp.. 10sec limitation

haste 0% 10% 20% 30%
crit
00% 1655 dps 1951 dps 1951 dps 2108 dps
20% 1803 dps 2098 dps 2098 dps 2395 dps
30% 1803 dps 2246 dps 2492 dps 2807 dps
40% 1951 dps 2246 dps 2690 dps 2971 dps

These are the numbers I came up with, these numbers are just spamming holyfire on cd and smite, if you count sw and devplague in that it increases by 500dps.

So let's take a closer look. it seems that going from 0% to 10% haste is a dps increase but going from 10% to 20% is not.
So I took a look at the casttimes of the spells, at 0% haste in 10seconds i got in 1 holy fire for 1.5sec and 4 smites for 2seconds. at 10% 1 holy fire 1.35sec 5 smites at 1.8 seconds (obviously i would need another 0.65seconds to get that fifth cast within ten seconds) So since there is no dps increase at 20% i assume that at 15% we will be able to get an additional cast every ten seconds.

at 30% I had time left after casting a sixth, so let's assume at 25% there will be another dps increase because we get six smites in ten seconds instead of four at 0% haste.

I wont explain the critnumbers, crit is a very unreliable stat compared to haste, but you can look at the 'rough' numbers.
at 0% haste i get five casts in ten seconds, that would theoretically speaking be a crit every fifth cast, thus doing one crit, and slightly increasing dps against 0% crit. 30% stays aproximatly the same, I underline it because as said earlier crit is unreliable, it can be the first cast that crit and then the fourth cast a crit, but I assumed that the third cast was a crit, thus also doing one crit in ten seconds. and at 40% crit that would be two crits out of five.

I hope that it's not to complicated just some personal brainstorming...

[dascia]

To the OP, personally I hope that smite will become a more viable build. I've never been shadow spec, nor will I ever be so either cause I really don't like the idea behind the spec. (I've never wanted to play an 'evil' char.)

As off spec I'm going for a disc/holy dps build with smite as main damage spell, I've tested it on the PTR and with all buffs up I do 50% more dps then in heal spec. In heal spec smites do about 2.4k, in dps spec it can be 3.2k, regulary 3.6k. I love the improved damage combined with the really high survivability cause of shields and the ability to heal yourself. (No need to drop shadowform since I don't have it.) 8)

The spec is awesome for farming mobs compared to heal spec damage, but for raids it's simply not viable. It's unlikely that I'd want to go dps in the 1st place, but it could become useful on some boss fights, for example Thaddius where you only need 3 - 4 healers and the surplus healers can go dps.