Theories on a Disc/Holy Smite Spec

[Xelaeno]

Xel, you should know my seething hatred for Smite DPS and all it stands for by now.

Haha understandable.

[fabian]

The basic idea is you can choose to add some damage to your healing if you are soloing, in PvP, or even raiding encounters which aren't particularly demanding for you to heal. For those situations where you really need to heal, you'll do better with a talent build that focuses on healing. Source

So if you're brought on as a primary healer, you shouldn't be speccing into smiting. But you can't maximize your ability to deal with spikes of damage without speccing into and casting it. Make up your mind, Blizz!

For disc, I can some what understand but I consider Penitence a healing talent too since I am assuming it affects both healing and damage crit rate for Penance. Atonement is not mandatory but it is the most attractive talent: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=9ExShB6IeM0D2X.9dw.priest

For holy, it is the same situation for atonement. http://www.wowtal.com/#k=dI0JaVjSjQaavr.9dw.priest

[Xelaeno]

Quick question, are you sure that the heal will translate into a crit? I don't know anyone in the Alpha/Beta/whatever-stage-it's-at, nor manage to keep up with all the blue posts that I should, but has it been confirmed to crit if Smite crits?

My first thought is that it is like Vampiric Embrace. I don't always pay attention to numbers, but doesn't a crit damage with VE just translate to a larger heal and not a crit heal?

Excellent question. No I'm not entirely sure how that healing will translate. My first assumption is that it will work similarly to Glyph of PW: Shield, which crit based on the spell casted. But you are correct, it might just work like VE. If that's the case, an alternative option is to spec 3/3 in Test of Faith, increase healing done on target below 50% by 12%. If Smite healing picks the lowest health target (in range), we might get more healing out that way. But everything's rather sketchy at this point, so it's only speculation.

Also, the reason I think Smite healing won't act like VE is because VE applies to a lot of targets, if it has the "crit" component, it might be too much for the game to handle and cause lag. Smite healing applies to a single target, so it might be able to crit.

[Xeraluin]

can gain some dps by using pw:shield on tank.. maybe this will be a sort of dph(damage per heal xD)spec

[Vortrall]

The only odd thing I noticed was that surge of light affects holy nova instead of flash heal. With the new imp holy nova this could be quite the aoe dmg/heal. One holy has a gigantic chance to crit, and then your second is free but doesn't crit. Really helps with it's mana cost, and pumps out a great deal of heals/dmg.

Or it's just a typo and i'm fooling myself into thinking holy nova will be awesome. Meh.

[Xelaeno]

I believe that is a typo, the blue post still states Flash Heal.

[Balance]

I do hope this is some sort of a joke? You're effectively claiming that you can properly heal on PW:S without 3/3 B&S and on renew, while completely missing key talents from disc such as borrowed time, divine aegis and rapture, as well as guardian spirit from holy?
This goes beyond "low mastery". It is borderline general cluelessness. We priests LIVE by our top tier talents in both holy and disc which you happily pass to get a bit more smite damage. You can properly empower smite by going cookie cutter disc spec and just shoving a few more talent points in searing light. Not to mention that it will probably completely eclipse your spec on damage between healing because of 25% BT haste on smites when needed.

This is throwing the baby out with the water. Just use a PvP spec with smite glyph (if that doesn't change). It works almost as well on damage, and unlike your spec, it can actually do proper healing.

This is not a healing spec. This is a spec to focus on damage with healing utility. This spec would be more obviously based on damage if there were more purely damaging abilities at the time. There were enough free points for me to spec into quite a few healing talents, something that will be fixed if this spec does hit live.

For disc, I can some what understand but I consider Penitence a healing talent too since I am assuming it affects both healing and damage crit rate for Penance. Atonement is not mandatory but it is the most attractive talent: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=9ExShB6IeM0D2X.9dw.priest

For holy, it is the same situation for atonement. http://www.wowtal.com/#k=dI0JaVjSjQaavr.9dw.priest

This spec includes atonement because it focuses firstly on damage and on healing secondly. I skipped the end tier talents because they have fewer damage modifiers and there is a higher damage potential from hybrid speccing into holy/disc.

[fabian]

This spec includes atonement because it focuses firstly on damage and on healing secondly. I skipped the end tier talents because they have fewer damage modifiers and there is a higher damage potential from hybrid speccing into holy/disc.

My post was not directed towards you, so I do not understand the need to comment on it.

[Lucky_]

This is not a healing spec. This is a spec to focus on damage with healing utility. This spec would be more obviously based on damage if there were more purely damaging abilities at the time. There were enough free points for me to spec into quite a few healing talents, something that will be fixed if this spec does hit live.

Then I can only conclude that you don't have much of a clue how priest as a class is played outside your own niche (I'm guessing PvE holy based on how little you seem to understand disc tree).
Therefore, I suggest you do the following: next week, run daily HC as disc with searing light. See how much DPS you can squeeze out of the spec. It's fairly good of a demo because as a disc, you don't need to heal tanks unless they're horribly undergeared atm - you just pop in shield, pom and renew before he goes in and go max dps for the rest of the encounter.


You will notice the following issues, which will explain why your spec is utterly useless for what you describe as your goal:
1. Low damage on single target: Even with decent amount of haste and hit cap, you won't be doing much damage. This is mainly because smite, as a main nuke, is just not powerful enough, no matter how much SP and haste you stack to buff it up.
2. High AoE damage, but it's shadow: mind sear is awesome even for disc, but it just doesn't get any meaningful bonuses from your trees.
3. (off)healing: When you do need to heal a tank or group, it will come in heavy bursts. You'll need your cooldowns and penance to keep people up when proverbial shit hits the fan.

Your spec offers no solutions to these issues, which are general for priest doing holy damage, and are highly unlikely to change unless smite gets buffed to heavens. Which in turn is highly unlikely to happen seeing how we already do incredible amounts of damage in PvP because of smite.


Instead, if you want an aggressive smite dps/heal spec, go with modification of a current cookiecutter PvP spec: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=d0O_mqlf2P27P.9dw.priest or similar (6 points remaining can go to talents of your choice + you can drop imp mana burn for another 2 points if not going pvp).

That spec does address all above issues. You still have almost full healing power, and you retain largely full dps ability from your spec only losing surge of light and chakra (with chakra's functionality being very questionable for dps due to using different spells in a row often and ramp up time).


All in all, it seems that you're just not experienced with how and why smite works in general both in PvE and PvP, which is mainly an issue of hardcore PvE only holy and shadow priests.

[galindo]

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=Pe23zMLinUiC68g.9dw.priest

as of now this would be the spec of my priest in my mage/fury war/holy pr comp

have the priest get the the smite chakra, barrier us, have mage throw his cc out and let the smite spam negate the damage.

[Lucky_]

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=Pe23zMLinUiC68g.9dw.priest

as of now this would be the spec of my priest in my mage/fury war/holy pr comp

have the priest get the the smite chakra, barrier us, have mage throw his cc out and let the smite spam negate the damage.

Healing in PvP without penance is a pain at best and hopeless task at worst. Holy lacks PvP skills so badly, it never did well there. And it likely won't. All enemy has to do is put all of it's DPS and interrupts on you, and you will die long before your team has a chance to dent the enemy, as you don't even have PS to keep yourself alive in stuns, and your GS will be dispelled pretty much instantly. Add do that the general weakness of your shields and lack of penance, and you're pretty much dead man walking.

[Balance]

Then I can only conclude that you don't have much of a clue how priest as a class is played outside your own niche (I'm guessing PvE holy based on how little you seem to understand disc tree).
Therefore, I suggest you do the following: next week, run daily HC as disc with searing light. See how much DPS you can squeeze out of the spec. It's fairly good of a demo because as a disc, you don't need to heal tanks unless they're horribly undergeared atm - you just pop in shield, pom and renew before he goes in and go max dps for the rest of the encounter.


You will notice the following issues, which will explain why your spec is utterly useless for what you describe as your goal:
1. Low damage on single target: Even with decent amount of haste and hit cap, you won't be doing much damage. This is mainly because smite, as a main nuke, is just not powerful enough, no matter how much SP and haste you stack to buff it up.
2. High AoE damage, but it's shadow: mind sear is awesome even for disc, but it just doesn't get any meaningful bonuses from your trees.
3. (off)healing: When you do need to heal a tank or group, it will come in heavy bursts. You'll need your cooldowns and penance to keep people up when proverbial shit hits the fan.

Your spec offers no solutions to these issues, which are general for priest doing holy damage, and are highly unlikely to change unless smite gets buffed to heavens. Which in turn is highly unlikely to happen seeing how we already do incredible amounts of damage in PvP because of smite.


Instead, if you want an aggressive smite dps/heal spec, go with modification of a current cookiecutter PvP spec: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=d0O_mqlf2P27P.9dw.priest or similar (6 points remaining can go to talents of your choice + you can drop imp mana burn for another 2 points if not going pvp).

That spec does address all above issues. You still have almost full healing power, and you retain largely full dps ability from your spec only losing surge of light and chakra (with chakra's functionality being very questionable for dps due to using different spells in a row often and ramp up time).


All in all, it seems that you're just not experienced with how and why smite works in general both in PvE and PvP, which is mainly an issue of hardcore PvE only holy and shadow priests.

I'm not sure that I quite understand what you are trying to say in your post, so I will start from base 1.

Firstly I have played and raided as every spec quite often, even though I main spec as shadow. My priest did not hit level cap and start raiding until mid Ulduar, which is why I said on my first post that I did not have the vanilla/bc experience of some priests but it was a shot at theorycrafting.

Secondly, this is not a WoTLK spec…This is a Cataclysm spec given to us and made with the Cataclysm talent tree on the MMO champ site. I can’t possibly run this spec until Cata comes out unless you were talking about PTRs later or Beta.

The Issues You Listed:
1) Smite receives major damage modifiers in this spec that I have listed, these damage modifiers are the entire point of the holy/disc hybrid spec I have come up with.
2) Holy Nova is getting a remake/major buff and seems to be the AoE that holy dpsers are going for. In case holy nova AoE does not work I already have no Shadow Damage modifiers listed as a con of this spec.
3) I only expect a dps specs offheals to be as good as and other healing hybrids healing in their dps spec. It would be overpowered to have a healer that could dps as well as a main spec dpser. Again here I don’t understand what you are going for because this is a DPS spec.


The spec you listed includes penance, but completely skips inspiration, surge of light, Chakra (15% damage modifier to holy/shadow damage), and Imp Holy Nova. All things that need to be tested before being deemed useful or useless.

And I don’t even see what you were going for with that last sentence. Maybe rephrasing what you were trying to say would help or is there a misunderstanding with the point of this thread maybe?

[Turokuruvar]

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=9X8yBLIfyx4Xx7.9dw.priest

Is what I'm thinking as a disc spec. The smite talents I took don't preclude me from taking the necessary healing talents to get a solid deep disc spec. It allows for some creative use of offensive or defensive abilities as the situation allows, while not gimping healing.

[Hunterwep]

None here has put points into shadow for smite spec, the shadow mastery is extra spelldmg for all spells, so might take that into account aswel for free will tallent points

[Mandible]

No, since you only get mastery bonus to the tree you spend majority of points in .

[Balance]

No, since you only get mastery bonus to the tree you spend majority of points in .

Do you have a quote for that? The quote that I posted says that you get mastery points per point you put into a talent tree, I would probably have to rethink a few things if that is confirmed.

[Varaben]

At work so vi can't quote it, but yes you only get mastery from the tree you have the most points in. On top of that you get a max of 50 or 51 mastery bonus from that tree. Just google it, I assumed its common knowledge

[fabian]

Do you have a quote for that? The quote that I posted says that you get mastery points per point you put into a talent tree, I would probably have to rethink a few things if that is confirmed.

The quote is old, and will probably be hard to find, but the reasoning is easy. Why would a DPS spec need the bonuses from a healing/tanking and vice versa? No mana user will need meditation although the regen is getting changed from 5SR to in and out of combat(might or might not be a nerf but can't tell with the NDA), and then some classes would be OP in PvP because they would put out decent amount of healing while also being able to dps pretty well. Then priests would become pretty OP in healing since we've got 2 healing trees. Both healing trees getting 2 +healing% mastery bonuses(heals would probably be like HL), 2 meditation master bonuses(holy mana batman), and both tree's 3rd master bonuses benefiting from the mastery rating. Disc would probably be the most OP healer since DA would be triple dipping and where ever a DA is, there would be a Radiance HoT to buff their health even more.

[Lucky_]

I'm not sure that I quite understand what you are trying to say in your post, so I will start from base 1.
Secondly, this is not a WoTLK spec…This is a Cataclysm spec given to us and made with the Cataclysm talent tree on the MMO champ site. I can’t possibly run this spec until Cata comes out unless you were talking about PTRs later or Beta.

On the contrary, while it can't be "run", it can be theorycrafted very easily (which is your real implication here). Since you missed the point despite what looked like obviousness, I'll hammer you with some facts in hope that you understand the point.

1. You are trying to make a damage spec based on SMITE. Smite spamming nonstop with holy fire use every time it's off CD does approximately 3-4 times less damage then shadow at the moment (depending on encounter).
2. Spell damage coefficients are highly unlikely to change. This because disc priests already do far too much damage with holy fire + smite, something that everyone in PvP knows very well. Buffing smite damage coefficient compared to other skills would be a horrifying mistake for PvP balance, making priests essentially in a class of their own as healers. It will not happen.
3. As we can safely assume that 2. will ensure that smite coefficient will not be beneficially modified, we can assume that it will remain largely untouched. This means that equivalent shadow spec with similar buffs will still do somewhere between 3 and 4 times the damage depending on the encounter.
4.New talent buffs listed include 15% buff in disc tree (which will be taken in PvP), 20% from chakra, extra 2% from searing light buff (taken for PvP) and 15% crit buff from penitence (taken for PvP), as well as instant cast but incapable of crit from surge of light.


Last point damns your spec, and general idea of pure smite spec for damage in PvE. Even with all the new buffs, the damage increase is still well under 50% instead of 300%+ required for competitiveness, and one of the two talents you want to pick is of a VERY questionable value outside PvP, as surge of light makes smite incapable of critting, while reducing cast speed from 2 sec to 1.5 sec GCD. I CBA to do the math, but it doesn't require much crit before it becomes a DPS reduction talent, or at least it's damage addition value would get reduced to nearly nothing.

Essentially, you're trying to create the classic "bastard child" spec. It wouldn't be good at anything at all, being horribly inept at both DPS and healing in spite of being able to do both, and as such it will never become an acceptable raiding or PvP spec.

Conclusion: Smite talents are for PvP, and PvP only. That's where it shines, and is one of the premiere class-defining skills. Not in PvE. And PvP disc, the currently only viable PvP healer spec lives and dies by penance and PS, while any holy build would live and die by GS (should holy ever become viable in PvP), as it is the only proper survival cooldown the talent tree has.

[sealdonut]

A spec that can do decent dps and heal is so cool. Who gives a damn about min/maxing? I know you'll see me smite spamming my way through heroics and bgs lol. It's like mage with dispel/heals/better shields.