Smite Spec

[Zzeke]

So I've been a priest for a long time now, and one of my favorite thing in the priest's past was the elusive Smite spec. I often played it in Classic and BC, I was excited in Wrath, as the initial talents showed that ti could become a more viable dps hybrid spec, but it was ultimately killed. Then, in Cata, the talent changes were finallized and the closest thing to it now is the Attonement aspect of Disc.

So I just got around to thinking of some way it could have become a dps spec for Priests. I see that they are considering reworking talents a bit, so it got me thinking of a dps portion of the Holy tree.

Now, I understand that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to fit these ideas into the healing-centric Holy tree, but I'm not really taking everything into consideration. this is more of a "What-If" sort of thing.

All I've done is created and tweaked some of the spells and talents that would be used in a Holy DPS rotation. Blizzard has a lot of pure Buff talents, and I don't really feel like making them for here would be interesting to anyone, so all I did was made talents that modify existing abilities.

- - -

Holy Fire - Deals moderate damage and applies a stacking Burn DoT, Holy Flames. This can be stacked up to 5 times and deals moderate damage every 2sec over 10sec. 1.5sec cast, 4sec CD.
~Cruciation - Holy Flames ticks have a chance of causing the next Holy Fire cast to apply an additional stack of Holy Flames.

Smite - Deals holy damage to a target. 2sec cast, No CD.
~Conviction - Casting Smite 3 times in a row reduces the cast time of the next Light of Judgment to 1.5 seconds and increases its crit chance by 25%.

Light of Judgment - Deals heavy Holy damage to the target. Consumes Holy Flames to deal additional damage per application. Also removes any Shadow DoT effects on the target. 3sec cast, 6sec CD.
~Judgment Day - When Light of Judgment is cast, nearby targets are also judged, increasing the damage they take from Holy Nova for 10 seconds.
~Tribulation - When activated, the next Light of Judgment cast will not consume stacks of Holy Flames, but instead deal damage as if 5 stacks were applied, and then apply 5 stacks of Holy Flames to the target. this Light of Judgment will cause no threat. 1min CD.

Holy Nova - Causes an explosion of light around the target, dealing damage to it and nearby targets. Instant, no CD.
~ Bathed in the Light - When Holy Nova hits more than one target, the next Holy Nova cast has its mana cost reduced by half. No internal cooldown.

Clemency - Removes all stacks of Holy Flames from the target, and grants you mana equal to X times the number of stacks, and increases the holy damage you deal for 4 seconds per stack consumed. Instant cast, shares 1min CD with Purgation.

Purgation - Consumes all stacks of Holy Flames on the target, causing it to erupt in flames, running around helplessly and suffering heavy damage every second for 1 second per stack consumed. Instant cast, shares 1min CD with Clemency.

- - -

The basic rotation goal is to build 5 stacks of Flames with Smite and Holy Fire, then cast LoJ for burst. The time it takes to reach 5 stacks should ideally take 12-16 seconds, considering the ticks from Flames would sometimes proc Cruciation.
To maximize the CD of Holy Fire, you would cast two smites between every Holy Fire. This would allow the Flames dot to tick for about half its duration.
Then, after 5 stacks has been reached, you can cast smite 3 times in a row to buff your next LoJ with Conviction. So, The 5stack Flames tick for 7.5 seconds, or 3/4 their full duration. LoJ consumes the flames for big damage, and Holy Fire can be cast immediately to start stacking again.

The damage Flames deal would be moderate. At 5 stacks, it would be a significant boost to damage, though overall using LoJ would be better.

Aside from Flames stacking, the priest could also make use of Smite spam. Casting three smites in a row would always grant Conviction, allowing for a more relentless, bursty damage rotation for quick killing. Three smites, buffed LoJ, repeat. The holy alternative to Mind Spike.
However the lack of Flames damage would cause this to be weaker in the long run.

Shadow Abilities would not be useful in the Holy rotation, as LoJ would remove any SW:P or DPs. Mind Spike could be tweaked to remove Holy Flames, too, to discourage people from integrating it. And, overall, shadow abilities would not benefit from the damage boost granted to Holy Spells though talents, so Mind Blast would be useless. Though, I don't want to outright disable Shadow abilities, like Shadowform does.

For AoE, LoJ would buff the damage the spammable Holy Nova would deal. Also, casting Holy Nova on a group would make it mana efficient to spam with Bathe in the Light.

Clemency/Purgation would have their uses. Clemency would be the most used probably, for its mana return and damage buff. Purgation would be sort of a burst-damage
ability, as well as a CC cooldown. Compared to LoJ, its damage would be weaker, however. Though, it could be used on the move if casting isn't an option.

The Tribulation talented ability would be useful as an opener, instantly dealing heavy damage and applying an early 5 stacks of Flames, with no danger of threat.
You could continue to cast 3 smites and LoJ from here, pop Clemency for an instant damage buff, or Purgation to continue the burst.

- - -

So yeah, just ideas that I had. I've always found Priest to be really enjoyable, so I've had plenty of ideas to come up with myself. I didn't spend much time polishing up the post, or formatting it excitingly, but I hope it was somewhat interesting to read for people.

[Magicochon]

I recognize that you did some serious effort to make a holy dps spec fun to play. However it is pretty mechanical (but I think it's still more developped than some real dps spec, like fire...)

I don't understand the point of your 2 1min cd
Adding a new holy word would mean new chakra stance. We already have a chakra "dps" stance and our "holy word" is simply "chastis" (not sure of the spelling).
I guess the best thing would simply make a talent that empower your chastis into your clemency thing.

But sincerly, I highly doubt they'll ever do this.
But still gj for making something original with the debuff management. Much more developped than what people usually post.

[Irisel]

I really like the ideas. The only thing I can't think of, is how would holy, a powerful healing spec, also be a good damage spec? You would be the most powerful thing in the game by a large margin. There just doesn't seem to be enough talents and/or talent SPACE on the tree to balance between the two, as in sacrificing one for the other.

As a pure dps spec, it sounds fun. I would try it for sure. The only thing I can think of as a dps spec, though is that it has bit of a ramp up time.

[Zzeke]

I wasn't really taking into consideration the rest of the Holy tree when I made this; I was thinking in terms of as if the Holy Tree turned out different than it was now. Like, a "fourth" tree, if you will. Though, I suppose the whole idea would work well with the Chakra stance. I only named them Holy Word because I wanted to show they were linked through their names. I'll remove them, and keep Chastise in as its Chakra ability.

The thing I recognized that was missing from this was a true RNG proc. The random proc I have is more or less guaranteed to happen at least once during a stacking rotation, and isn't anything extraordinary. Perhaps something to cause Holy Word: Chastise do something special?

Oh, also, the damage Smite and Holy Fire pump out wouldn't be weak by any means. It would be consistent DPS that is building up to a big burst from LoJ.

[Smurfcat]

I always thought holy priest would be a fun DPS spec, or at least unusual.

[[-Spiritus-]]

I honestly appreciate your effort, but Blizzard has outright said explicitly no on a viable "holy" based DPS spec.

They have, however, moved more in the direction of making Disc a dps/healing hybrid, but it is far from exclusively viable [i.e.- I only heal via DPS spells]. The design of the game just cannot support it [I could write a chapter on why, but I ask you to take my word for it].

Would I love to pew pew with holy based spells as a priest? Absolutely. However, I realize that this just isn't going to happen in this expansion, and most likely never in WoW.

[Zzeke]

You know, I honestly don't like the differences between Disc and Holy priests right now. I think that they could easily be combined to create a much more interesting healing role than they do being separate. And that would open up another tree to use, a second DPS tree.

Who knows? It may happen in the future. They've done a lot to talents over the years; something like this isn't out of the ballpark.

I'll probably add more to this in the future, too. There's a lot more I think could be done if Holy DPS had more room to work with.

[Count Zero]

You know, I honestly don't like the differences between Disc and Holy priests right now. I think that they could easily be combined to create a much more interesting healing role than they do being separate. And that would open up another tree to use, a second DPS tree.

Who knows? It may happen in the future. They've done a lot to talents over the years; something like this isn't out of the ballpark.

I'll probably add more to this in the future, too. There's a lot more I think could be done if Holy DPS had more room to work with.

But what would their 2nd dps tree be ? Holy-based ? I don't see it happening.

[Vlado]

But what would their 2nd dps tree be ? Holy-based ? I don't see it happening.

One of the "not-well-known" facts for the initial role of the priests at the very beginning was (as far as I remember) to be kind of a "Monk" class combining healing with melee dmg. What I recall is that this was intended in the alpha or early beta of Vanilla.

There was an article for this some time ago, but I can't find it at the moment to share it with you.

If this article was based on the truth, then I would not be surprised if one day this idea gets back from the dead

[Zuziza]

I honestly appreciate your effort, but Blizzard has outright said explicitly no on a viable "holy" based DPS spec.

They have, however, moved more in the direction of making Disc a dps/healing hybrid, but it is far from exclusively viable [i.e.- I only heal via DPS spells]. The design of the game just cannot support it [I could write a chapter on why, but I ask you to take my word for it].

Would I love to pew pew with holy based spells as a priest? Absolutely. However, I realize that this just isn't going to happen in this expansion, and most likely never in WoW.

The recent watercooler points out that Ghostcrawler kind of regrets getting rid of these hybrid spec possibilities though. I wouldn't say it's impossible for a holy DPS spec to come back (the lockout on talents in a tree could get revoked if he follows through with that feeling), but I agree that it is unlikely. Being able to tweak a hybrid spec for things like holy DPS would be very fun for levelling and PVP at least.

[Hogbobson]

Even though this kind of spec (at least what I've read) is called "LOLSMITE!!", I've always liked them exactly for that, and I like what you're trying to do.
And hey, if a really useful "LOLSMITE!!" spec came to existence, maybe it wouldn't be called "LOLSMITE!!" anymore.
"LOLSMITEOWNED!!"

[Xelaeno]

The watercooler really makes me laugh. Their reason for having the lock system on the talent tree is entirely due to...balance??? Well, last time I checked there are still overpowered main specs in pvp. It didn't make much of a difference except removing options. A lazy design philosophy of "since balancing is too time consuming, let's just remove hybrids entirely"

And the load of bullocks on "oh but new players will fall into traps". So...you want to create a game where players cannot make mistakes? Why not make it even simpler, have three talents, one for each tree, something like "1/1 Cookie Cutter Holy Spec" and be done with it?

I think they should remove the restriction. The new mastery and core ability system is great. However, they should make it so that if you were to spec half-half between two trees, you will not be able to get that tree's core ability. For example, if you want to spec Smite, you put 40% of your points in Discipline (till Attunement) and 60% of your points in Holy (till Chakra). The trade off is that you will not be able to get Chastise or Penance, which is essential for a holy or disc healing priest. However, you will still have meditation/enlightenment etc from the holy/disc tree, based on the % of points you spend in each.

With this in mind, there is less possibility of creating a spec that is insanely overpowered.

Spec in the old days such as restokin, tank shaman, melee hunter, sl/sl lock, and the rogue hybrid build that I don't remember what was, could all make a come back. A restokin without swiftmend and starsurge will have its own challenges at play. They would be half specs, the stranger variations in addition to the 3 main specs we already have.

[Ynna]

Stuff

Hi, Xel.
I know you really want Smite (or Holy DPS) to be a thing, and don't get me wrong, I do as well. But Blizzard doesn't want it, which is a shame. They didn't lock people in one spec because they wanted to remove Smite-priests (Atonement shows they want a spec that uses Smite to be, if not successful, possible) but because on a larger scale it was impossible to balance. They're already having trouble with 30 specs, so tossing in all the hybrid-specs as well would be even harder.
I feel you're slightly overreacting when saying things like: "1/1 Cookie Cutter Holy Spec", but I do get that you're angry/annoyed, so I'll let it slide.

I must say I like you multi-spec idea, especially by balancing it by removing the "spec spells", but it's just not going to happen. Blizzard doesn't want it.
I still think a Holy tree that follows the Feral-model would be a good way to accomplish Holy DPS, at least a better idea than half-and-half speccing.

[Xelaeno]

Lol I'm not angry

Perhaps the only thing that ticks me off is that they removed hybrids for balance, which they didn't achieve, not even close (pvp). Still the same old fotm.

[Zuziza]

think they should remove the restriction. The new mastery and core ability system is great. However, they should make it so that if you were to spec half-half between two trees, you will not be able to get that tree's core ability. For example, if you want to spec Smite, you put 40% of your points in Discipline (till Attunement) and 60% of your points in Holy (till Chakra). The trade off is that you will not be able to get Chastise or Penance, which is essential for a holy or disc healing priest. However, you will still have meditation/enlightenment etc from the holy/disc tree, based on the % of points you spend in each.

With this in mind, there is less possibility of creating a spec that is insanely overpowered.

I would hesitate for this option if they removed all the bonuses you get from each spec. That's 1 spell, the mastery, and 3 passives each. They wouldn't want to give us double since that'd be insanely OP, but would not getting any bonuses still be viable for the hybrid? The easiest thing for them would be to not give any bonuses if you don't put at least 31 points in the tree, so there's a cost to whatever cool mixes we can make out of the hybrid talents, but it's difficult to gauge just how weaker/stronger it'd be without the bonuses.

[Xelaeno]

Most hybrids will need those passive abilities to become remotely viable. One solution I can think of, is to allow the hybrid build to gain only the passive abilities and mastery from the tree with the most points spend. So a 15/26 Disc-Holy hybrid build will only have passive abilities from the Holy tree (Spiritual Healing, Meditation etc). And since there's always an odd number of points (41 in this expansion), you will never run into a situation when you have two trees with equal number of talent points. With that said, if during leveling, you do happen to have the same number of points in both trees, we can always implement an option to choose which tree you wish to specialize. You will then gain passive bonus from the tree of your choice, but only from that one tree.

[Kelesti]

....uhh, that's kind of why they got rid of it, Xel. It was stupid to balance, and the passive system baked into the 50 point trees effectively screwed people over.

I just... why are we talking about this again?