version 3 - updated to include a solo farming buildSmite is a holy dps build for priests. It is a discipline and holy hybrid build with two backbone talents:
Holy: Surge of Light
Discipline: Power Infusion
The above are the absolute standard for any Smite build, due to the nature of our holy dps spells. Additional essentials to a Smite build include but are not limited to the following:
Holy: Searing Light, Holy Specialization, Divine Fury, Spiritual Guidance
Discipline: Improved Inner Fire, Inner Focus, Meditation, Mental Strength, Focused Power
Allocation of all other talent points may vary based on personal preference and role. In this post, I will explain some of these variations and their uses. Each build is followed by a short description with highlighted talents explaining the reason behind the spec.
This build is designed for 10/25 man raid instances. It is designed to maximize your damage output.
This talent reduces the cooldown of your Power Infusion by 24 seconds and your Inner Focus by 36 seconds. Using PI and IF every cooldown will save you mana as well as increase your dps. Also, it is important that you know when your shamans will pop Heroism/Bloodlust because haste effect from PI does not stack with Heroism/Bloodlust.
Half of the spells you will cast in a raid setting will be shadow. These include Shadow Word: Pain, Shadow Word: Death, Devouring Plague, and Mind Sear. Darkness will effectively boost you damage output from all these spells by 10%.
Increases the damage of your SW:Pain by 6%.
This filler talent will increase your overall raid survivability by reducing all magical damage taken by 10%. Magical damage include fire in OS 3 Drakes, frost from Sapphiron, and arcane from Malygos.
Inexpensive shield is useful because it prevents spell pushbacks.
SoR is usually taken from a pure utility point of view. If you accidentally fall to your demise, you can at least help out the raid by Flash Heal spamming for a few seconds. The spirit and spellpower boost that comes with it are rather trivial, a mere 13 spellpower and 50 spirit with a stats of 1000 spirit. So for this build, we will avoid this talent.
An alternative of I, this build contains mana conservation talents that will improve your dps longevity.
A prerequisite for Improved Spirit Tap. This talent will benefit you during trash pulls.
If you cast Shadow Word: Death every cooldown, this talent will grant you an amount of mana equivalent to 2/3 of a Runic Mana Potion every 10 minutes. Result may vary based on gear.
This build is designed for solo farming. It contains talents that will increase your solo survivability, longevity, and efficiency.
This will improve your mana regeneration significantly.
Reduces the cost of your PW: Shield by 15%.
At 2000 spell power, this talent will do approximately 2250 damage per shield on average, enough to save you a cast of SW: Death.
Rank 1 Rapture returns mana equal to 1.5% of your total mana pool. In other word, if you have a 20k mana pool, you have just reduced the mana cost of your PW: Shield by half! Not a bad filler at all.
This talent will save your life. Fighting an elite bigger than your size? PS yourself for less incoming damage. Accidently pulled a whole village of murlocs? PS yourself and aoe them down. Random players trying to gank you? PS yourself and laugh in their face.
Hey Xel!
ReplyDeleteany chance you would have some WWS number lying around? I remember reading a post on EJ back in TBC about how taking a smiter was more viable than taking 2 holys... playing a preist at the time and bored of healing (I rerolled drood in the end), it made me intrested in this spec!
link me up tell me it's viable!
Hi Phood,
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I do not have a WWS count for smiting at this point, the raids I run are not organized, just random pugs I joined. With 1700 spell power unbuffed, I'm pulling around 1800 ~ 1900 dps in 25 man, 1700 dps in 10 man, and approximately 1500 dps in 5 man heroics. My damage output depends heavily on available buffs in the raid. And reaching the hit cap at this point is my greatest challenge. (446 without misery/draenei racial).
As for whether it is viable or not, I cannot give you a definite answer at this point. It all depends on how the new mana regeneration model will present itself once 3.1 goes live. As well as how the new smite glyph will scale with our damage.
At its current state, Smite spec is a viable spec for 5 men heroics and grinding/leveling. It has not presented itself as an efficient damage dealer in a raid setting, although it does bring the flexibility of having an additional fully healing capable healer who can swap roles as either dps or healer between bosses. However, this part of our utility will be fully eliminated once dual spec goes live, so we are looking at a very uncertain future for smite priests.
Interesting. I'll be reading.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the blogging.
Gobble gobble.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the updated info. I'm currently leveling the smite route and I'm having a blast (about to hit level 72). Shadow reminded me so much of my warlock.
ReplyDeleteI will admit I have more mana issues leveling as smite but sitting/drinking isn't as bad as on a mage. Compared to a mage, I find HN/aoe funtimes to be easier than aoe pulls as a frosty.
Keep up the good work. Your blog has been bookmarked!!!
Thank you for your kind words. I'm glad you are enjoying Smite.
ReplyDeleteI like Smite leveling personally because the spec makes great use of all your stats and optimizing them - spellpower/spirit/intellect boost via talents. As well you still retain your full ability to heal, making leveling much less boring.
Of course you can do all that with a shadow spec too, but waiting for mind flay to tick just feels "slow" to me comparing with a lucky SoL proc. Even though shadow offers competitive leveling as well.
Very interesting, I'll keep an eye on you :) And nice banner, but forgive me for pointing out that gramatically correct is "has begun".
ReplyDelete/facepalm, I fail >.<"
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for pointing out the error, it's fixed now.
I'm currently running 34/28/9 as follows:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bqIbh0hVMIoZ0Et0bbqbZ0gb:uiZV0z
I'm pulling 2100-2300 sustained DPS on a test dummy, and I'm interested in improving this figure a lot more. Feel free to look me up on armory. If I ever find a way to make this raid viable, I will post my exact rotation. For now, I'd like to say that I do not use SW:D, and I only use MB if both shadow dots are up and the holy fire dot isn't.
Very interesting, thank you for sharing. Nice to see a solid hit capped Smite priest walking around. :)
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts on SW:D is that it is a much cheaper way to activate Improved Spirit Tap than Mind Blast and it does more damage conditionally.
Assuming you have 5/5 Darkness, 5/5 Twin Discipline, 2/2 Focused Power
@ 2000 Spellpower:
Mind Blast: 2147.5
SW:Death: 2005
SW:Death (Glyphed): 2305.75
@ 2500 Spellpower:
Mind Blast: 2392.7
SW:Death: 2263
SW:Death (Glyphed): 2489
Mind Blast gives you more dps as Glyph of SW:D only activates itself when the target is under 35%.
So I suppose use MB till 35%, then SW:D. Cast these only while waiting for Holy Fire to get off cooldown, as a single Glyphed Smite blows both of them out the water...
In terms of raw dps:
@ 2000 spellpower:
Smite < SW:D < MB < G.Smite < G.SW:D
@ 2500 spellpower:
Smite < SW:D < MB < G.SW:D < G.Smite
But of course, target dummies don't have health limit, so Glyphed SW:D won't be activated.
Judging by my tests on a target dummy, Smite is more DPCT (damage per cast time) than Mind Blast while the Holy Fire DoT is up, but Mind Blast is more DPCT during the 3 seconds the Holy Fire DoT is inactive. As far as I can tell though, SW:D is less DPCT than any of the other spells, and therefore I do not use it in my rotation.
ReplyDeleteNote, however, that I did not take the imp spirit tap talent since - assuming 1000 spirit - a 10% spirit increase is 100 more spirit = 25 more spellpower... not a significant DPS increase if it involves putting weak DPCT spells in your rotation. Also, I do not glyph SW:D either.
For some numbers, I am running 2518 spellpower, 370 hit raiting (14.1%), 20.87% holy crit, and 134 haste rating (4.09% without talents) with Inner Fire and Divine Spirit active as well as my Illustration of the Dragon Soul fully proced.
I guess my question is: are you sure Improved Spirit Tap is worth taking?
I agree it is nice to see some Smiter theorycraft, and I eagerly await your response :)
If you do not use Glyph of SW:D, then yes you should use Mind Blast instead of SW:D.
ReplyDeleteIf you use Glyph of SW:D, when your target is down to below 35% health, SW:D will do more damage per cast than Mind Blast. It is also the cheaper option between the two.
Here's the exact numbers, in terms of DPCT:
@ 2000 spellpower:
Smite < SW:D < MB < G.Smite < G.SW:D
1246 < 1337 < 1431 < 1495 < 1537
@ 2500 spellpower:
Smite < SW:D < MB < G.SW:D < G.Smite
1450 < 1508 < 1595 < 1659 < 1740
But you are correct about IST. the spellpower gain is not significant as you said, assuming 1000 spirit, you gain close to 25 spellpower and approximately 288 mana per proc (if it proc). The mana gained might be even lower, my formula's rather sketchy at this point.
The reason I recommended ST/IST is for its utility. It's great for farming and is a cherry-on-top for using MB and SW:D by giving you a chance to regenerate mana. Otherwise, skip it, as with your gear, you will probably be better off with Aspiration 2/2 96 seconds Power Infusion for a simulated 5 minutes boss fight than gaining 1080 mana overall.
In summary, during the 3 sec gap when Holy Fire is on cooldown, use Mind Blast until mob is below 35% health, then switch to SW:D w/ Glyph until mob is dead will result in maximized dps.
Use MB only for target dummy testing, as they will never get below 35% health, so SW:D glyph will not apply.
Edit: Numbers are in raw Damage Per Second, excluding spell cooldown, not DPCT sorry.
ReplyDeleteDamage Per Cast / Cast Time
SW:D uses 1.5 GCD as its Cast Time
Cool info, I might snag a Glyph of Shadow Word: Death then for raiding :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I didn't know that ST/IST stacked with meditation (I'm not super familiar with the exact shadow talent mechanics). Good stuff.
Here's a WWS for a Patchwerk kill: http://wowwebstats.com/awgwqv4g2m4na
ReplyDeleteI was flasked and well-fed. There was heroism, and I got (I think) 3 PIs. (2 from me, one from another disc priest.)
It's not terrible, but last or second-to-last DPS is sad :( I'm curious what the stat priority for a smite priest is, and perhaps with different gear, it would perform better.
Nice numbers, hey at least you beat a warlock, that's something there.
ReplyDeleteYour dps is pretty good, a lot higher than I expected. I guess raid buffs etc makes numbers a lot harder to predict.
As for stats, what I personally aim for is 30%+ holy crit after food/raid buff, 3/3 enlightenment with additional 214 haste rating from gear to fit smite x 4 into holy fire dot exactly. You might need more due to latency, but 214 will get you 1.75 second smite. My haste calculations are not finished, as Surge of Light tend to screw up any kind of rotation.
Hmm, I'll look and see if I can obtain gear with some more haste such that I can fit smitex4 even with no SoL procs. That could potentially go a long way. Thanks for the advice :D
ReplyDeleteI was below 30% crit, but I think I would have been at or over 30% with a moonkin, which we did not have that day.
No problem. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chardev.org/?template=166276
Here's a list of gear fully gemmed/enchanted with some basic raid buffs. It's not best in slot but suppose you are interested in the 4 pc tier 8 bonus, I think this is a good setup. Most of these stuff are easily obtained through VoA and Naxx, except perhaps Staff of Endless Winter and a few other random Ulduar pieces.
While unbuffed, you get 370 spell hit ratings, 221 haste, 30% holy crit.
After buff, you get 2757 spellpower, 35% holy crit, and enough spirit/intel to feed malygos.
I made this based on my own profession of tailoring and enchant.
ps. I'm horrible at gemming, if you play around it, these gear might yield more spellpower, I have no idea.
Quoting Xel here:
ReplyDeleteNice numbers, hey at least you beat a warlock, that's something there.
Meh. You beat a warlock, but the most important thing is you didn't let yourself fall below the tanks (like the warlock did :P). I mean, even the UA/Revenge spammer Tank you had, wow. And 3.8k isn't all that bad, but of course leaves room for improvement. Thanks for going out on a limb there, Commontone.
i'm wondering what the best spell rotation would be? Only putting dots up while holy fire is on cd, do you throw prayer of mending so it can bounce for crits?
ReplyDeleteLike Commontone, Executus I was able to pull about 2.3-2.5 dps with the smite spec, versus 2.8-3.1 in shadow (though i must admit i'm quite rusty in shadow) but i wonder if the smite would be higher with the extra PoM crits
Hi Dazai,
ReplyDeleteNo I do not use POM when I dps. This is because I'm usually in a raid with at least one other healing priest, so my POM often gets overwritten causing me to not benefit at all from its crit.
Smite spell rotation is rather tight if you want to max the amount of time holy fire is on the target so you will not have any seconds to spare for applying POM anyway.
I don't think POM will increase smite dps effectively so I don't cast it.
Surge of Light gives no DPS increase. The .5 seconds you lose off the cast are countered by the inability to crit. It only gives mana efficiency
ReplyDeleteI'm going to try levelling as Disc from L32 and see how it feels, will be using the 'solo farming' spec as template. I like this blog, good reading.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThat is a common misconception. Despite the fact that SoL cannot crit, it will still increase your DPS until you reach a certain "breaking point" with your gear stats. The behavior of SoL is not linear, it is affected by crit chance, crit damage modifier, and haste rating (or spell casting speed).
The actual math is a little long to list out in this comment section, but I am working on a post entirely dedicated to SoL so hopefully the real effect of SoL will become clearer by then. I have seen many forums claiming SoL doesn't increase your dps when this is technically untrue.
But anyway, for now, I will tell you that SoL build will do more damage than a non-SoL build until you reach 63% crit chance, when you pass 63% crit chance, a non-SoL will surpass a SoL build in damage. But 63% is a very high breaking point, I doubt that anyone can actually achieve that much crit chance with the current in game gear.
@ Gravity
Thank you.
i just started rolling a priest with the intent of doing holy DPS as main spec for raiding, im excited to see what i can manage to do with it. it will be my first major experiment in theory crafting and my first caster DPS, which i think is quite a large feat.
ReplyDeleteit beats jumping around dalaran on my tank though while waiting to setup raids
Nice blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm starting a Priest with the intent of speccing for Disc/Smite DPS. My vision is to have a very good all rounder so I can dip into whatever facet of play that takes my fancy. The only thing I won't be doing is raiding, I've had enough of that.
Can a build like this main heal a 5man quite comfortably, assuming a decent amount of skill (which makes all the difference IMO)?
If the answer to that is yes, do you think it could do it in PvP gear, optimising intellect and spell over spirit?
Like I say, I'll be doing everything but I suspect I will find myself gravitating towards PvP and thus I will likely be wearing the PvP epics before anything else. Problem with this is that the PvP lacks Spirit and that makes me question whether I want Spiritual Guidance and the Disciple talent that increases Spirit and haste? Or would I be better chucking Spirit out?
I also wondered how a build like this would perform soloing old content? I didn't raid until Wrath so there is a lot of old raids I've never seen. I know certain bosses are out of the question because of the way they work but I hear of Druids and Pallys having a lot of success at soloing old content, how does/would a Holy DPS Priest get on with that?
Finally, as I play around with the talent calc I keep changing my mind about mana reduction talents. Part of me has always considered them pretty weak, as they aren't giving you a unique effect like many other talents and are essentially doing the same as just stacking some more int would do.
HOWEVER, one of the biggest hurdles for this sort of build is huge mana consumption/drain so I'm wondering if I should go all out with Mental Agility, Absolution etc etc for longetivity. After all, I would not be giving up 'essential' talents to do so.
Likewise, I'm not too hot on the Holy Spec talent. 5% crit is nice to have but seems so easily reproducable through gear, and crit in the world of resilience seems so unreliable. Plus, with no +crit damage talent crit is further less attractive to the raid Priest. It's hard to find something worthwhile to take instead of Holy Spec though.
For what it's worth I'll be staying away from the Shadow tree and Shadow spells in general. I will probably cast Devouring Plague and SWP because it seems silly not to. And I expect SW:Death I'll use too. Even thought Spirit Tap is great for levelling I don't like the idea of talents that only apply to one facet of play and then don't work elsewhere. The only talent of this nature I think I'll tolerate is Improved Mana Burn because it is simply so effective if you're fighting mana using opponents in PvP.
@ Anonymous
ReplyDelete"Can a build like this main heal a 5man quite comfortably, assuming a decent amount of skill (which makes all the difference IMO)?"
Yes.
"If the answer to that is yes, do you think it could do it in PvP gear, optimising intellect and spell over spirit?"
The problem with the pvp gear available is the distribution of stats. The healing set has spirit only, the dps set has crit but no spirit. A smite priest needs both spirit and crit to function properly. The intel stats on both sets are about the same. What I would recommend is to go with the healing set. As you mentioned since you won't be raiding, you don't need 3xx hits.
One question for you is whether you plan to pvp as a healer or dps. I would imagine the dps set to be better for dps but it won't help you in healing 5 man because the mana regeneration is practically non-existent.
A pvp smite priest is very squishy. But my question is whether you intent on pvp in arena or battleground. For arena, you will definitely need every possible mana saving talents, and you are correct, you can spec out of holy specialization because of resilience. I wouldn't imagine a smite priest doing so well in arena however, we lack the survivability talents of a discipline priest and our dps is less mobile than that of a shadow priest. For battleground, you should go into Holy Specialization, as not everyone is in their pve gear so your best chance of survival is to stack crit and nuke someone down before they get to you.
I never soloed old world content using a smite spec so I cannot answer your question regarding that. I would imagine a 41/27/3 build would be your best bet for that matter.
edit: as not everyone is in their pvp* gear
ReplyDeleteHey Xel, like I said before, I'm going back to smiting and turning my blog into a smite blog about my experiences. I was wondering if I could post one or more of your specs on my Smite Priest Primer page, if I label them, like, "Xel's Max DPS Spec" and link back here? If not, I totally understand, but I thought I'd ask.
ReplyDelete@Fuyuko
ReplyDeletePermission granted
Much <3!
ReplyDeleteI used the 37/27/7 build listed at the top and found it to work quite well in Heroic Occulus and Heroic AN. I used Glyph of Smite, Glyph of Shadow Word: Death, and replaced Glyph of Power Word: Shield with Glyph of Holy Nova. In Occulus I used Holy Nova on the adds in the beginning of Occulus and used Smite when Surge of Light procced. I have %11.63 hit 2690 Spell Power with Inner Fire and no other buffs. I pulled 3100 DPS on trash in Occulus, 2500 in trash in AN, and 2800 on the 2nd boss on AN. For elites I would start with SW:P and DP then SW:D and MB then Holy Fire and spam Smite. I like the change. I'll have to see how things change with Mind Sear (unglyphed). I often forget to pop cooldowns so I did not use PI IF or my trinket in AN or Occulus. With PI, IF, and the ilvl 245 healing trinket from Emblems of Triumph I could pull 2400 DPS on the Heroic Training Dummy. I hope that helps anyone who's thinking about it. It's fun, but I think I'll respec my secondary spec back to Shadow in the next week or two.
ReplyDeleteI remember back late in BC when, mostly BT/MH geared, I went smite for fun in a friend's SSC progression runs for a couple of weeks (they were 3 or 4 bosses deep at the time) While not a match for similarly geared dps in my own raids, by outgearing that group by a full tier I was able to come in towards the top of dps. Now I'm pretty much at the same point gearwise so wanted to figure out what stats would look like today.
ReplyDeleteSpec-wise I came to the same conclusions you did and landed 37/27/7, with the only difference that I elected to go 2/2 Healing Focus and left Spell Warding at 3/5, figuring if there's a $#^-storm brewing, it would be more productive if I needed to switch to heals.
I'm don't have much BIS dps gear to build a set from (MS disc), did not regem/enchant anything, and am having to step down a couple of items to achieve the hit cap, but was able to assemble the following on character sheet:
Fully Hit-capped Raid Set(368, assumes IFF or Misery)
SP: 3854 (w/ IF and DS)
Holy Crit: 40.14%
Haste: 779 (29.76% w/ Enlightenment)
Mana Pool: 29968
MP5: 471 (solaces stacked)
Assuming regen will be a major concern despite replenishment, I opted to use dual solace to supplement longevity (hit was attained directly from other gear slots). If replenishment along with timely use of SF and HoH prove sufficient, use of stacking dps trinkets would drop SP by 13 to 3842, but provide an additional 4.75% holy crit, pushing that to 44.88% unbuffed -- well over 50% after raid buffs.
You've clearly given this a lot more thought over time than I have... What are your thoughts of the importance of stat-weightings (haste vs crit vs spirit vs MP5)?
@ Bigslick
ReplyDeleteMy initial reaction of the Solace trinkets back when they were first introduced was that they were the perfect set for mana starving smite spec. The SP on them is amazing and since dual Normal/Heroic trinkets stacks the buff at the same time, you really don't need a lot of time to get 8 full stacks x 2 going.
My thoughts on stat-priority is the following:
For damage: SP -> Haste -> Crit
For regen: Spirit -> Intel -> Mp5
Smite spec has had mana regen problems since the beginning of time and I doubt it will go away anytime soon. Taking that into consideration, stat-weighting should look like the following:
SP -> Haste -> Crit -> Spirit/Intel/Mp5
Spirit comes after Haste and Crit because unlike warlocks our spirit talent only grant 25% spellpower conversion. Mp5 comes last because it cannot be buffed and doesn't benefit us other than base mana regen. Solaces are a special case because aside from mp5 they give solid amount of spellpower.
Stacking Crit will increase Smite dps, but only half as good as Haste. I see Crit as a primary regen stats for Smite priests due to Surge of Light. I played around with the numbers in the Smite Dps Simulator. The simulator showed that increasing crit rating by 10% yield similar but slightly lower dps increase than stacking haste by 5%. However, increasing dps using haste will increase mana consumption by a big chunk, while increasing dps with crit actually reduces mana consumption.
For example:
Original, 35% Haste, 50% Crit, 4205 dps, mana consumption 102477
Stack Crit, 35% Haste, 60% Crit, 4344 dps, mana consumption 99309
Stack Haste, 40% Haste, 50% Crit, 4388 dps, mana consumption 106415
Stacking Haste consumes 7% more mana than stacking crit.
Taking this into consideration, I went through Chardev to find how much haste and crit the current content can provide. The best possible combination while still maintaining the hit cap (relatively speaking) is this:
http://chardev.org/?profile=432185
After flask/food/raid buff:
Hit: 361 (7 hit off, but with Draenei you should be well over...happy stalking)
SP: 4158
Holy Crit: 49.5%
Haste: 1013
Spirit: 707
Mana Pool: 36343
MP5: 640 (dual solaces stacked)
With Wrath of Air totem, Ret paladin, and Enlightenment, you will reach 50% haste. That's 1 sec GCD and 1.33 sec normal Smite. The haste cap for 37/27/7 spec is 1012.
Priest dps gear is made for shadow priests. The set does not contain spirit. It also doesn't have enough hit because shadow priest have a very low hit cap. Gear that carry hit does not have spirit on them, so in order meet the hit cap and maximize haste and crit, it is nearly impossible to stack spirit to the top like a holy priest. Without spirit, Smite priest mana regen is compromised, but then again we never really had much from the beginning. Dual solaces will help our mana regen significantly.
@ 50% Haste, 50% Crit, 4686 dps, mana consumption 113863
The simulator uses a 5 minutes fight as a model. The mana consumption is huge, but let's do a calculation to see whether we can meet the mana requirement.
Original Mana Pool: 36343
Shadow Fiend: 5% x 10 attacks over 15 seconds = 18171.5 mana
Hymn of Hope: 3% x 4 ticks over 8 seconds = 4361.2 mana
Glyph of SW: Pain: 64.38 mp5
Replenishment: 363.43 mp5
Base regen: 640 mp5
----------------------------
Total: 1067.81 mp5, over 5 minutes: 64068.6 mana
OVERALL MANA AVAILABLE OVER 5 Minutes: 122944.3
The data is over the required mana consumption for 50% Haste and 50% Crit, so I think it's sustainable.
PS. Of course, everything is based on the simulator in which I am not 100% sure of it's accuracy. But I have previously compared my recount dps number in game with the numbers generated by the simulator, they matched so I'm assuming it's at least partially accurate. You can find it here:
http://misc.eatabrick.org/cgi-bin/smite.pl
Edit: Simulations are done using 4000 spellpower as base.
ReplyDelete