Holy Fire Spec - A Smite Priest's Blog

Basic Keybinding for Healing Priests

2011-09-09T19:30:00.030-04:00

Cataclysm introduced many new spells to the priest's healing arsenal. While you can technically bind your healing spells to multi-button mouses, I personally find key-binding far superior. Here's a summary of what I use, based on individual spell use frequency as well as the size of my left hand.

Movement Keys: AWSD

	Holy	Discipline
1	Heal
2	Circle of Healing	Holy Fire
3	N/A	Smite
4	N/A	Archangel
Q	Power Word: Shield
E	Greater Heal
R	Chastise	Penance
T	Prayer of Healing
F	Flash Heal
G	Guardian Spirit	Pain Suppression
Z	Dispel
X	Cure Disease
C	Renew
V	Prayer of Mending
B	Binding Heal
Shift + 2	Chakra	Inner Focus
Shift + B	N/A	Power Word: Barrier

Notice that I try to keep the same healing spells used by both spec on the same key, so that when I do change spec occasionally, it doesn't feel foreign. Basic spells such as Greater Heal and Heal still have the same key-binding for both spec.

Characteristic spell of both spec are bind to R. Chastise, which morphs into either Serenity or Sanctuary in Holy, and Penance for Discipline.

The fourth row of the keyboard consists of two emergency keys. F for Flash Heal, which is easy to remember simply based on the name, and G, for either Guardian Spirit in Holy or Pain Suppression in Discipline. The letter G is just slightly further to the right to prevent you from hitting it by accident. At the same time, it's close enough to reach when you need to use it.

I also set the self casting modifier as Shift in the WoW interface. So that when I need to heal myself, I can simply press Shift + C for self-renew, or Shift + Q for self-PW: Shield. I do not have to de-select my current target to do this. This is especially useful in pvp. Having to target yourself, do something, then target your partner and do something is ridiculously inconvenient. It also helps with instant casting while moving, as you do not have to click your unit-frame to cast spells, making mouse turning much easier.

Less frequently used spells, such as Chakra State/Inner Focus/PW: Barrier, can be bind to Shift + ?? that cannot be self targeted. You cannot cast Binding Heal on yourself, so Shift + B is used for PW: Barrier instead.

Last but not least, remember that your TAB key is used to target enemy targets. Do not mouse click enemy targets, it's slow.

For the remaining spells, you can either click, or bind them to modifiers such as Alt + ?? or Ctrl + ??. For myself, I just click them. But I organize their location in my action bar accordingly.

Cooldowns: Divine Hymn, Hymn of Hope, Shadowfiend, Power Infusion, Trinket
Buffs: PW: Fortitude, Inner Focus, Shadow Protection, Fear Ward
Life-saver: FADE. Unless you are raiding with a flawless tank, I think this spell saves more priests' ass than Guardian Spirit, Desperate Prayer, or Pain Suppression combined together...seriously. You see the enemy nameplates flashing red with "high threat"? Hit Fade!

Revamping

2011-06-09T11:50:00.002-04:00

This blog has been eating dust for too long. I have returned to commence the revamping process. Everything here is out of date, so there are a lot of things to update. I also removed the old layout, it's boring and stale. I have put in a place holder for now, I actually like the simplicity (made the content area wider for easier reading).

So I think that's all for now. Your patience is much appreciated. Thanks.

End of Wotlk

2010-10-14T01:32:00.010-04:00

Patch 4.0 went live yesterday. To me, this marks the conclusion of Wrath of the Lich King. Talents and class mechanics will be tuned for 85, so the game experience in the next few month will shift constantly until a few month after the launch of Cataclysm. As a result of this, I think I'm done with WoW for now.

My highlights for Wotlk are the following:

Full clear Naxx 10 in a pug for the first time
Full clear ICC 10 in a pug for the first time
Completing Benediction quest line
Wiping on Sindy 10 for 4 hours in a pug and witnessing the raid leader raging and kicking 1 warrior and 3 more warrior replacements
Healing Heroic Hall of Reflection
Holy Nova farming in Icecrown
Winning a Battered Hilt in Pit of Saron on the first day returning from hiatus. (I sold it)
Doing 2s arena with my DK partner and getting Hot Streak with him having 500 resilience and moving with a touch pad. I suppose we got lucky. We finished off with 1100 rating 5 days later on the night before he quit WoW, had a blast, best partner ever. Vent helps, but I think I made his ears bleed on one of our match days.
Getting Twilight Vanquisher title in a pug and had mount ninjaed by a DK. You may ask why it's on Master Loot, the answer is the DK kicked everyone but 3 guildies from the raid when Sarth was at 1%. So it wasn't on ML, but we weren't getting anything. I didn't really care about the drake, but trade chat was crazy afterward, admittingly I had fun watching the drama unfold itself.
Pug finish Ruby Sanctum 10 and 25
Took a resto druid for my pug and watch him rocking ToC 10 and later ToCG 10 with 4300gs. He two healed with another resto druid. He was good, gearscore fails.
Finally got enchanting to skill cap after 2 years.
Finally managed to pick an alt class/spec that I enjoy and can commit to level - feral bear tank.
Writing this blog

I know my "Highlights" are not Val'anyr or Light of Dawn but they are personally perspectives. I don't play all that much, usually a few weeks of hardcore gaming then a good half a year of hiatus. Regardless, Wotlk was fun. Dual spec was a nice addition. Smite was relatively broken compare with what it was in TBC and sadly, only more broken in Cata but we'll see.

Peace out.

Smite Videos

2010-09-07T13:04:00.004-04:00

Holy Nova Farming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4h3tgEFH5k

Smite Target Dummy Dps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX4XM8doPYg

Beta 12694 Talent Builds

2010-08-05T16:05:00.016-04:00

The talent trees had gone through a lot of changes since my last post. I have been holding off on commenting on them until now because they look very unfinished, especially the holy tree. However, the latest beta build gave me some ideas, so here is a post on what I think so far.

Before I start, let's refresh our memory on the principle changes of the talent tree design in Cataclysm.

Available talent points have been reduced to 41 points, averaging 1 point per 2 levels. You must put at least 31 points in a single tree before the other trees are unlocked and available to you. This means any previously viable hybrid spec xx/28/0 or alike will no longer be allowed in the game.

So what does this mean to Smite priest? I think devastation was my first thought. But really, it only means one thing - Power Infusion is no longer available to the standard Smite spec, a major dps loss.

PI had been in the Smite spec since TBC. They removed Searing Light, they removed Enlightenment, they removed all the hit and pushback talents last build, but none of that concerned me as much as this change. What sadden me is that this change is pretty much irreversible due to tree balancing. Shadow priest must not have access to PI because it will make them overpowered. Therefore, PI will most likely remain where it is in tier 3 or even deeper tier until launch.

Aside from the bad news, what is new? Well, as of today it seems Veiled Shadow will now be available to Smite priests, so I predict we can kiss our mana issue goodbye.

Build I: Standard Smite 8/31/2

Holy Tree

The top part of the tree is pretty much free territory. I'm not a fan of renew myself so I placed all the points into talents that improves direct healing. Improved Holy Nova, Body and Soul, and the new Surge of Light will make this an affective AoE farming build. 31 points will also ensure solid healing should you wish to take on that role.

Shadow Tree

Two points in Veiled Shadow will reduce the cooldown of Shadowfiend by 2 minutes. Three minutes Shadowfiend will make life a LOT easier on our mana so rejoice.

Discipline Tree

Not much to be said here except that there is simply not enough points to fill every talent we need. Archangel will give us solid mana back when we are really in trouble. It's great for farming but for serious dps, I don't see us using it often because it removes our dps buff.

On the side note, I think a discipline pvp build with 3 minutes Shadowfiend will be one sick experience in arena or battleground. Shadow priest with Archangel will also be very fun to play. I think Blizzard did promise %Spirit to %Hit conversion talent so there is still hope for a solid Smite build, but for now, I hope they don't butcher anything else next patch.

Smite: Priest Cataclysm Talent Preview

2010-06-10T08:49:00.037-04:00

Blizzard has released another preview of the priest talent tree in Cataclysm. Here is everything copy/pasted from mmo-champion. There are a lot of new Holy DPS support talents in both the discipline and the holy tree, excellent, excellent, time to get smiting!

Anyway, here's the new cata talent calculator courtesy of mmo-champion.

Discipline Talent Tree

Tier 1 (Left to Right)

Unbreakable Will (5 ranks available) - Reduces the duration of stun, fear, and silence effects done to you by an additional 6/12/18/24/30%.
Twin Disciplines (5 ranks available) - Increases the damage and healing done by your instant spells and the damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield by 1/2/3/4/5%.

Tier 2 (Left to Right)

Penitence (3 ranks) - Increases the critical effect chance of your Smite and Penance spells by 5/10/15%.
Improved Inner Fire (3 ranks available) - Increases the effect of your Inner Fire spell by 15/30/45%.
Focused Power (2 ranks available) - Reduces the cast time of your Mind Control spell by 0.3/0.5 seconds, and your Mass Dispel cast time is reduced by 0.5/1 second.
Martyrdom (2 ranks available) - Gives you a 50/100% chance to gain the Focused Casting effect that lasts for 6 seconds after being the victim of a melee or ranged critical strike. The Focused Casting effect reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting priest spells and decreases the duration of interrupt effects by 10/20%.

Tier 3 (Left to Right)

Atonement (3 ranks) - When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low-health friendly target within 40 yards equal to 15/30/45% of the damage dealt.
Inner Focus (1 rank available) - Instant - 1.5 min cooldown - When activated, reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.
Improved Power Word: Shield (3 ranks available) - Increase the damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield by 5/10/15%.

Tier 4 (Left to Right)

Evangelism (2 ranks available) - When you cast Smite you gain Evangelism, increasing the damage done by your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 2/4% and reducing the mana cost of those spells by 3/6% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
Mental Agility (3 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 4/7/10%.
Improved Mana Burn (2 ranks available) - Reduces the cast time of your Mana Burn spell by 0.5/1 seconds.

Tier 5 (Left to Right)

Archangel (1 rank available) - Consumes your Evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your total mana and increasing your healing done by 3% for each stack. Also allows you to channel Penance while moving. Lasts 18 seconds.
Enlightenment (3 ranks available) - Increases your total mana and total health by 2/4/6%.
Power Word: Barrier (1 rank available) - Requires 2 points in Improved Power Word: Shield - 13383 Mana - 40 yd range - 0.5 sec cast - 3 min cooldown - Summons a holy barrier on the target location that absorbs 293 damage done to party or raid members within it each time they take damage. While within the barrier, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. The barrier lasts for 15 seconds or until it absorbs 1955 damage.

Tier 6 (Left to Right)

Reflective Shield (2 ranks available) - Causes 22/45%% of the damage you absorb with Power Word: Shield to reflect back at the attacker. This damage causes no threat.
Soul Warding (3 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Power Word: Barrier - Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 1/2/3 seconds, and reduces the mana cost or your Power Word: Shield by 5/10/15%.

Tier 7 (Left to Right)

Divine Aegis (3 ranks available) - Critical heals create a protective shield on the target, absorbing 10/20/30% of the amount healed. Lasts 12 seconds.
Power Infusion (1 rank available) - Requires 2 points in Enlightenment - 3294 Mana - 30 yd range - Instant cast - 2 min cooldown - Infuses the target with power, increasing spell casting speed by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds.
Improved Flash Heal (3 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 5/10/15% and increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal by 4/7/10% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.

Tier 8 (Left to Right)

Renewed Hope (2 ranks available) - Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance (Heal) spells by 2/4% on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect, and you have a 50/100% chance to reduce all damage taken by 3% for 1 minute to all friendly party and raid targets when you cast Power Word: Shield. This effect has a 15-second cooldown.
Rapture (3 ranks available) - When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled, you are instantly energized with 1.5/2/2.5% of your total mana, and you have a 33/66/100% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect can only occur once every 12 seconds.
Aspiration (2 ranks available) - Reduces the cooldown of your Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression and Penance spells by 10/20%.

Tier 9 (Left to Right)

Focused Will (3 ranks available) - After taking a critical hit you gain the Focused Will effect, reducing all damage taken by 2/3/4% and increasing healing effects on you by 3/4/5%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 8 seconds.
Pain Suppression (1 rank available) - 1647 Mana - 40 yd range - Instant cast - 3 min cooldown -Instantly reduces a friendly target's threat by 5%, reduces all damage taken by 40% and increases resistance to Dispel mechanics by 65% for 8 seconds.
Grace (2 ranks available) - Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells bless the target with Grace, increasing all healing received from the Priest by 2/4%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Effect lasts 15 seconds. Grace can only be active on one target at a time.

Tier 10

Borrowed Time (5 ranks available) - Grants 5/10/15/20/25% spell haste for your next spell after casting Power Word: Shield, and increases the amount absorbed by your Power Word: Shield equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of your spell power.

Tier 11

Penance (1 rank available) - Enemy: 30 yd range - Friendly: 40 yd range - 3294 Mana - Channeled - 12 sec cooldown - Launches a volley of holy light at the target, causing 394 to 439 Holy damage to an enemy, or 1201 to 1354 healing to an ally instantly and every 1 second for 2 seconds.

Holy Talent Tree

Tier 1 (Left to Right)

Holy Focus (2 ranks available) - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting any Holy spell by 35/70%.
Searing Light (3 tanks available) - Increases the damage of your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 4/8/12%.
Divine Fury (5 ranks available) - Reduces the cast time of your Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 seconds.

Tier 2 (Left to Right)

Divine Accuracy (2 ranks available) - Increases the chance to hit with your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 10/20%.
Empowered Healing (5 ranks available) - Your Greater Heal spell gains an additional 6/12/18/24/30% and your Flash Heal, Heal, and Binding Heal gain an additional 3/6/9/12/15% of your bonus healing effects.
Spell Warding (5 ranks available) - Reduces all spell damage taken by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Tier 3 (Left to Right)

Desperate Prayer (1 rank available) - 3706 Mana - Instant cast - 2 min cooldown - Instantly heals the caster for 4995 to 5876.
Improved Renew (3 ranks available) - Increases the amount healed by your Renew spell by 5/10/15%.
Inspiration (3 ranks available) - Reduces your target's physical damage taken by 3/7/10% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Circle of Healing spell.

Tier 4 (Left to Right)

Healing Prayers (2 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending by 10/20%.
Improved Healing (3 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Divine Hymn and Penance spells by 5/10/15%.
Blessed Recovery (3 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Spell Warding - After being struck by a melee or ranged critical hit, Blessed Recovery heals you for 5% of the damage taken over 6 seconds. Additional critical hits taken during the effect increase the healing received.

Tier 5 (Left to Right)

Holy Reach (2 ranks available) - Increase the range or your Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of your Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova, Divine Hymn and Circle of Healing by 10/20%.
Spirit of Redemption (1 rank available) - Increases total Spirit by 5% and upon death, the priest becomes the Spirit of Redemption for 15 seconds. The Spirit of Redemption cannot move, attack, be attacked or targeted by any spells or effects. While in the form the priest can cast any healing spell free of cost. When the effect ends, the priest dies.
Deliverance [PH] (3 ranks available) - When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 3/6/9%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 seconds. **PH. Will likely need to be replaced or updated**

Tier 6 (Left to Right)

Surge of Light (2 ranks available) - Your spell critical strikes have a 25% chance to cause your next Smite or Flash Heal spell to be instant cast, cost no mana but be incapable of a critical hit. This effect lasts 10 seconds.
Holy Concentration (3 ranks available) - Your mana regeneration from spirit is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 seconds after your critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal or Empowered Renew.

Tier 7 (Left to Right)

Choir Leader [PH] (2 ranks available) - Your Divine Hymn also heals you for 10/20% of your total health during its duration, and the channel time of your Hymn of Hope is reduced by 10/20%. **PH Name. Will likely need to be replaced or updated.**
Lightwell (1 rank available) - 6177 Mana - 40 yd range - 0.5 sec cast - 3 min cooldown - Creates a Holy Lightwell. Friendly players can click the Lightwell to restore 8634 health over 6 seconds. Attacks done to you equal to 30% of your total health will cancel the effect. Lightwell lasts for 3 min or 10 charges.
Blessed Resilience (3 ranks available) - Critical hits made against you have a 20/40/60% chance to prevent you from being critically hit again for 6 seconds.
Improved Holy Nova (2 ranks available) - Reduces the global cooldown of your Holy Nova spell by 0.25/0.5 sec., and increases its critical effect chance by 25/50%.

Tier 8 (Left to Right)

Body and Soul (2 ranks available) - When you cast Power Word: Shield or Leap of Faith, you increase the targets's movement speed by 30% for 4 seconds, and you have a 50% chance when you cast Cure Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases.
Chakra [NYI] (5 ranks available) - When you use Prayer of Healing, Renew or Heal 3 times in a row you will enter a Chakra state empowering you for 20 seconds. You can only be in one Chakra state at a time. Prayer of Healing - Increases your area-of-effect healing by 2/4/6/8/10%, and reduces the cooldown of your Circle of Healing by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 seconds. Renew - Increases the periodic haste effect of your Renew spell by 3/6/9/12/15% and reduces the global cooldown of your Renew spell by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 seconds. Heal - Increases the critical effect chance of your Heal spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and your Heal has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Renew on the target. Smite - Increase your total damage done by Shadow and Holy spells by 4/8/12%. Starting at Rank 2 - Increases spell power by 10% of your total spirit. Rank 3 changes the talent to Spiritual Guidance - Increases spell power by 15/20/25% of your total spirit. * NYI. See the descriptions above.**
Thriving Light [NYI] (2 ranks available) - Reduces the duration of Wound effects on you by 15/30%, and reduces the damage taken by bleed effects by 10/20%.

Tier 9 (Left to Right)

Empowered Renew (3 ranks available) - Your Renew spell gains an additional 5/10/15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew will instantly heal the target for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.
Circle of Healing (1 rank available) - 10706 Mana - 40 yd range - Instant cast - 10 sec cooldown - Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 16 yards of the target for 1813 to 2000.
Test of Faith (3 ranks available) - Increase healing by 4/8/12% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.

Tier 10

Divine Providence (5 ranks available) - Increases the amount healed by Circle of Healing, Binding Heal, Holy Nova, Prayer of Healing, Divine Hymn and Prayer of Mending by 2/4/6/8/10%, and reduces the cooldown of your Prayer of Mending by 6/12/18/24/30%.

Tier 11

Guardian Spirit (1 rank available) - 1235 Mana - 40 yd range - Instant cast - 3 min cooldown - Calls upon a guardian spirit to watch over the friendly target. The spirit increases the healing received by the target by 40%, and also prevents the target from dying by sacrificing itself. This sacrifice terminates the effect but heals the target of for 50% of their maximum health. Lasts 10 seconds.

Shadow Talent Tree

Tier 1 (Left to Right)

Dark Thoughts (2 ranks available) - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting any Shadow spell by 35/70%.
Improved Spirit Tap (2 ranks available) - Requires 3 points in Spirit Tap - Your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death critical strikes have a 100% chance, and your Mind Flay critical strikes have a 50/100% chance to increase your total spirit by 5/10%. For the duration, your mana will regenerate at a 17/33% rate while casting. Lasts 8 seconds.
Darkness (5 ranks available) - Increases your Shadow spell damage by 2/4/6/8/10%.

Tier 2 (Left to Right)

Shadow Affinity (3 ranks available) - Reduces the threat generated by your Shadow spells by 8/16/25%, and you receive 5/10/15% of your base mana when your Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch spells are dispelled.
Improved Shadow Word: Pain (2 ranks available) - Increased the damage of your Shadow Word: Pain spell by 3/6%.
Shadow Weaving (3 ranks available) - Your Shadow damage spells have a 33/66/100% chance to increase the Shadow damage you deal by 2% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

Tier 3 (Left to Right)

Improved Psychic Scream (2 ranks available) - Reduces the cooldown of your Psychic Scream spell by 2/4 seconds.
Improved Mind Blast (5 ranks available) - Reduces the cooldown of your Mind Blast spell by 0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5 seconds, and while in Shadowform your Mind Blast also has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to reduce all healing done to the target by 25% for 10 seconds.
Mind Flay (1 rank available) - 1853 Mana - 30 yd range - Channeled - Assault the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing 501 Shadow damage over 3 seconds and slowing their movement speed by 50%.

Tier 4 (Left to Right)

Veiled Shadows (2 ranks available) - Decreases the cooldown of your Fade ability by 3/6 seconds and reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend ability by 1/2 minutes.
Shadow Reach (2 ranks available) - Increase the range of your offensive Shadow spells by 10/20%.
Empowered Shadow Orbs [PH] [NYI] (3 ranks available) - Increases the damage done by your Shadow Orbs by 2/4/6%, and you have a h/h/h% chance to gain a Shadow Orb when critically hit by any attack. **PH & NYI. Will likely need to be replaced or updated**

Tier 5 (Left to Right)

Silence (1 rank available) - Requires 2 points in Improved Psychic Scream - 225 Mana - 33 yd range - Instant cast - 45 sec cooldown - Silences the target, preventing them from casting spells for 5 seconds. Non-player victim spellcasting is also interrupted for 3 seconds.
Vampiric Embrace (1 rank available) - Instant - Fills you with the embrace of Shadow energy, causing you to be healed for 15% and other party members to be healed for 3% for any single-target Shadow spell damage you deal for 30 minutes.
Improved Vampiric Embrace (2 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Vampiric Embrace - Increase the healing received from Vampiric Embrace by 33/67%.
Focused Mind (3 ranks available) - Reduces the mana cost of your Mind Blast, Mind Control, Mind Flay and Mind Sear spells by 5/10/15%.

Tier 6 (Left to Right)

Mind Melt [NYI] (2 ranks available) - Increases the additional damage done with your Shadow Word: Death by 5/10% on targets at or below 25% health, and and when you deal damage with Mind Spike, the cast time of your next Mind Blast is reduced by 11/33% lasting 6 seconds. Mind Melt can stack up to 3 times. **NYI. Will likely need to be replaced or updated. Also removed duplicate word**
Improved Devouring Plague (3 ranks available) - Increase the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect.

Tier 7 (Left to Right)

Shadowform (1 rank available) - 2676 Mana - Instant cast - 1.5 sec cooldown -Assume a Shadowform, increasing your Shadow damage by 15%, reducing all damage done to you by 15%. However, you may not cast Holy spells while in this form.
Shadow Power (5 ranks available) - Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Mind Blast, Mind Flay, and Shadow Word: Death spells by 20/40/60/80/100%.

Tier 8 (Left to Right)

Improved Shadowform (2 ranks available) - Requires 1 point in Shadowform - Your Fade ability now has a 50/100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects when used while in Shadowform, and reduces casting or channeling time lost when damaged by 35/70% when casting any Shadow spell while in Shadowform. In addition, spell haste for all nearby party and raid members is increased by 5%.
Shadowy Apparition [PH] [NYI] (3 ranks available) - While moving or dealing damage with your Shadow Word: Pain, you will sometimes summon a Shadow version of yourself which will slowly move towards a target which is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain. Once reaching that target, it will instantly deal damage equal to 15/30/45% of your Mind Blastâ€™s damage. **PH & NYI. Will likely need to be replaced or updated**

Tier 9 (Left to Right)

Psychic Horror (1 rank available) - 3294 Mana - 33 yd range - Instant cast - 2 min cooldown - You terrify the target, causing them to tremble in horror for 3 seconds and drop their main hand and ranged weapons for 10 seconds.
Vampiric Touch (1 rank available) - Requires 1 point in Shadowform - 3294 Mana - 33 yd range - 1.5 sec cast - Causes 1000 Shadow damage over 15 seconds to your target and causes up to 10 party or raid members to gain 1% of their maximum mana per 5 seconds when you deal damage from Mind Blast. In addition, if the Vampiric Touch is dispelled it will cause 1600 damage to the afflicted target.
Pain and Suffering (3 ranks available) - Your Mind Flay has a 33/66/100% chance to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain on the target, and reduces the damage you take from your own Shadow Word: Death by 10/20/30%.

Tier 10

Twisted Faith (5 ranks available) - Your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 2/4/6/8/10% if your target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain, and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of your spirit.

Tier 11

Dispersion (1 rank available) - Requires 1 point in Vampiric Touch - Instant - 2 min cooldown - You disperse into pure Shadow energy, reducing all damage taken by 90%. You are unable to attack or cast spells, but you regenerate 6% mana every 1 second for 6 seconds. Dispersion can be cast while stunned, feared or silenced and clears all snare and movement impairing effects when cast, and makes you immune to them while dispersed.

The first build I came up with after seeing the talent trees is this: 35/41/0

The idea here is that you are a primary damage dealer but has the ability to immediately switch to healing when entering a particular damage heavy boss phase or some unfortunate nuke phase where healers suddenly drop dead, I call it the First-Aid spec.

The tools you have are:

PW: Barrier, No-cooldown PW: Shield, Circle of Healing, Power Infusion, Light Well, Chakra, and Archangel.

You need 3/3 in Divine Aegis because your smite will crit a lot when you deal damage. If 45% of your damage is converted to healing, that healing will similarly be critical hits, you will have tons of DA stacking on multiple targets when you deal damage, further enhancing your "healing on damage" utility.

Archangel from a smite perspective is very interesting. It's similar to a spirit tap button when you dps. You do not use it when you dps, only after everything's dead, then you "tap" it and get some mana back, as re-stacking the mana reduction buff is inefficient. It is also the first button you press when you go into first aid mode. You lose your dps buff, but gains a healing buff and some mana back, very useful.

I could just imagine this spec go insane in a raid situation. Oh shit moment? No worries, just drop PW: Barrier, activate power infusion, CoH + PoH spam, after PI finish, you use your no-cooldown PW: Shield and bubble everyone up. If there's AOE opportunity, you start spamming holy nova, not only does it do damage with 50% more crit, but it also heals AND proc divine aegis. O__O

Random Post

2010-05-17T10:02:00.017-04:00

Cataclysm Alpha talent trees were leaked, but much of it are still not confirmed so I will wait to do my "deep analysis on smite viability" post until more information are present. Also, there is a NDA put in place regarding Alpha information, so respecting Blizzard's decision, I will not discuss Alpha information here until the agreement is lifted. But for now, I just want to say that I like the changes I see so far, very complementary to holy dps, thank you Blizzard.

As for what I'm up to, it's a long story. Circumstances dictate that I continue my break from WoW. But just when I thought that summer might be alright without it, someone decides to hack my account and put a lovely one month subscription on it, with a bonus authenticator that I cannot remove. I spend a week contacting the account/billing unit but they are quite busy so my form was processed very very slowly. In the end, they only recovered linen (...no comment) and some herbs for my level 31 mage, the authenticator was not removed, I was slightly annoyed by the event. Why? The problem with the authenticator is that it blocks your access to battle.net, where I store other Blizzard games too, such as Diablo 2. I don't have a habit of copying down registration keys, so if my battle.net is blocked, I lose a lot more than just my WoW stuff.

The solution? Pay a visit to the Technical Support forum, make a post named "Unauthorized Authenticator, Please Remove" and bump away. With that, the authenticator was removed and my problem solved in less than a day, talk about variation in speed based on method of communication.

Anyway, as some folks might know, I do chicken scratches once in a while. Here's my latest work, completed over the weekend after two weeks of drag. My goal is to draw every priest tier armor in the game. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version. ^^"

Human Priest by ~overwritten on deviant ART

Blue Cata Post: Smite got a cookie!

2010-04-08T12:03:00.007-04:00

04/08/2010 12:30:48 AM PDT

The idea behind the Holy "cast three in a row" talent (it's called "Chakra") is that we've always positioned Holy as a versatile healer. This talent lets you shift into different modes. If you need to be a tank healer, cast three single target heals and your single-target healing is now better. Cast three area heals, and you can be a temporarily specialized group healer. We're going to try to play this mechanic up with a cool UI to try to get that "I'm almost in the zone" feel. We'll let it apply to as many types of spells as we can, perhaps even Smite for those times when nobody's taking damage

__________________
Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

Source: WoW US Forum

Of course, nothing is confirmed yet, but I'm just thankful that at least they are thinking about it. It's probably done to ease up leveling as well as those i'm-bored-while-healing moments, but regardless, it's a cookie.

Q & A: Gearing for Haste and the 1 Sec GCD

2010-03-07T12:44:00.077-05:00

I received a comment recently from an anonymous reader. In the process of answering his/her question, I realize my reply was a little too long to fit into the comment section. Thus, I have decided to post it as my first Q & A entry.

Anonymous said...: In BC content I did a lot of raiding with my smite priest, I was in full t6 minus belt, gemmed haste, and crit. I was on average back in BC pulling about 1.1-1.3k dps on single target,... and with mobbs,... well holy nova ftw!

With LK out, I leveled my priest smite, and did a similar build as was stated here in the blog. Though right now, Smite doesn't seem to be a viable raiding spec at all anymore. It is great for dailies, and other things, but unfortunately in the content I am in now, being able to only push 4k dps in a 25 man ICC isn't good enough to keep me in there as dps over say a hunter, lock, mage or other dps specific classes.

What gems are you using to overcome this, if you are. I have thought of using my shadow gear, and gemming haste/crit, and SP, but again I can only get my smite down to 1.5 seconds, and my holy fire/MB down to about 1.22. I think in order to get my smite to a 1.3 sec and my holy fire to a 1 sec or 1.1 I need to be capped at 750 haste, which is unfortunately impossible, or pretty damn near close.

Enlighten me on how to do this so I can resurrect my beloved smite spec, and show people that smite is in fact a kick ass spec again.; March 6, 2010 2:30 PM

Yes, you should use your shadow gear for Smite dps. As much as I'd like to see Smite viable in raids, it's current damage numbers are simply not on par with all the other dps specs to even be remotely considered competitive. It is a fun spec for enjoyment when conditions are favourable such that you will not burden your raid members with lower than usual dps numbers. Thus, if situation requires, your gear should allow you to switch to Shadow at anytime for more serious/tougher encounters.

Aside from that, I have browsed through the current Tier 10 Shadow gear. Ignoring the set bonuses, the Haste/Crit/Hit stats on those tier pieces are quite nice for Smite priests. The lack of Spirit on those pieces is most unfortunate. But overall, they are definitely worth the badges.

As for Haste, here are the numbers:

32.79 Haste Rating = 1% Haste

You are required to have 50.00% Haste to get your GCD to 1 sec. (1 sec Holy Fire) That's 1638.84 Haste Rating...which is a lot, BUT -

Priest Talent:

Enlightenment - 6% Haste

Buff:

Wrath of Air (Shaman) - 5% Haste
Improved Moonkin Aura (Druid) / Swift Retribution (Paladin) - 3% Haste

Druid and Paladin buff do not stack with each other, so in total, including talents, you should have 14.64% Haste by default in a 25 man raid environment.
(1.06 x 1.05 x 1.03 = 1.1464)

The remaining 30.84% must be obtained from gear, that's 1011 Haste Ratings.

Chardev gives a pretty good idea about gear stats. At 10-man top tier non-heroic level, if you gem for pure Haste, you can reach approximately 800 Haste Ratings. But this will gimp your crit and spellpower, not to mention massive regen. Using 25-man gear, you can reach 1011 Haste Ratings, but again, at the cost of other stats (most specifically, spellpower), so it doesn't really translate into better dps output.

So what Haste Rating should we aim for? To be perfectly honest, the more the better, but there really isn't a solid cap to reach besides 214 Haste Rating + 3/3 Enlightnment for Holy Fire -> Smite x 4 Rotation. Holy Fire cooldown really messes up the Smite rotation. You are quite right about reaching the 1 sec GCD been impossible at this point. Sadly, the Haste Rating required is a little higher than 750. 946 Haste Rating will get your Smite casting time to 1.3 sec and Holy Fire to 1.04 sec. It's just about enough to fit SW: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Mind Blast into the 3 sec during in between Holy Fire cooldowns. If you raid 25-man as shadow, 946 might be obtainable. Play around with Chardev to set up your gear wishlist and see which setup is right for you.

Gem Choice Overview:

Meta Socket:

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
+21 Critical Strike Rating and 3% Increased Critical Damage

Insightful Earthsiege Diamond*
+21 Intellect and Chance to Restore Mana on Spellcast

Red Socket:

Runed Cardinal Ruby [Red]
+23 Spell Power

Blue Socket:

Purified Dreadstone [Purple]*
+12 Spell Power and +10 Spirit

Seer's Eye of Zul [Green]*
+10 Intellect and +10 Spirit

Intricate Eye of Zul [Green]
+10 Haste Rating and +10 Spirit

Misty Eye of Zul [Green]
+10 Critical Strike Rating and +10 Spirit

Yellow Socket:

Reckless Ametrine [Orange]
+12 Spell Power and +10 Haste Rating

Luminous Ametrine [Orange]*
+12 Spell Power and +10 Intellect

Potent Ametrine [Orange]
+12 Spell Power and +10 Critical Strike Rating

Veiled Ametrine [Orange]
+12 Spell Power and +10 Hit Rating

Quick King's Amber [Yellow]
+20 Haste Rating

Bold gems are my personal preference. Non-essential gems are not listed. Gems marked with [*] are alternatives if you have mana sustainability issues.

Of all the stats, spellpower will give you the most increase in DPS. Therefore, you should always socket spellpower wherever possible. This means gemming for raw stats such as + 20 crit/haste/intel/spirit are not recommended. Do not gem for spell hit rating, that should be obtained from gear.

Crit stats are usually coupled with hit on most dps gear, therefore they are quite easy to obtain at this point in the game. Armor enchants involving spellpower also comes with crit. Therefore, you shouldn't need to gem specifically for crit if you surpass 30% Holy Crit unbuffed.

12sp/10 spirit gem will give you the highest spellpower boost besides 23sp runed ruby. You need at least two of these in your gear to fulfill meta requirement. 10 spirit might seem trivial, but 25% of your spirit are converted into spellpower via talent. The status is also buffed by Mark of the Wild and Blessing of Kings, not to mention giving you more mana regen.

12sp/10 intel is your prime regen gem. Intel is the king stats for Wotlk regen. It works insanely well with Replenishment. Furthermore, Intel gives you a little bit of crit, a bigger mana pool (more pew pew time), and is boosted by Priest's talent and raid buffs.

Going back to the topic of Haste, 12sp/10 haste is the gem to use for all your yellow sockets if you crave Haste. Besides that, it should be obtained from gear once you reach the hit cap and has a healthy amount of crit.

To conclude, there are always other ways to boost your dps. I use the trinket trick.

Priests are equipped with their own heroism cooldown ie Power Infusion. Smite rotation also contains a nuke period. When Holy Fire DoT is running, our dps is at its peak. When the DoT drops our damage is reduced for a short 3 seconds. Therefore, if you were to use trinkets that are of the type "You have a chance to increase your spellpower by xx for xx sec" on a 45 sec RNG cooldown, it might not be used efficiently.

The trinkets that are ideal for Smite priests are of the kind that says "Use: Increase your spellpower by xx for xx sec". We can control how we use these trinkets. Power Infusion has a very short cooldown, so by using PI, Holy Fire DoT and the trinket at the same time, we can increase our damage output by a mile. No other class has this flexibility, so try this out.

Wtf...Really Late

2009-12-26T11:01:00.028-05:00

Reflective Shield Proc Surge of Light!

If you don't have this talent in your Smite leveling/solo/farming spec, go to your nearest trainer and learn it asap. And yes, I just found out about this today while farming */facepalm*, it's late but as Ensidia say, "better late than never".

In other news, I'm currently farming for dual spec on my main account using the seven day anniversary subscription given by Blizzard. The new looking for group system is...interesting. In general, the folks from the other servers are skilled. As for my "wtf we got two healer" spec, I received mixed reviews. Some embraced it, claiming they have no problem carrying me with their leet 5k dps. Others...well, let just say the name calling doesn't really stop. "Yo gimp dps, click on Arthus" "L2 queue noob" "Shaman, switch to element, let the disc heal" "I HATE slow runs, WTF?" "/leaveparty" etc etc etc. Surprisingly, most angry comments came from people from my own server...

I can understand the hostility, but those who are often hostile does do pretty good dps so no complains there. I haven't had a party break up so far so the badges are coming in slowly. Nor have I ever gotten kicked via vote...at least not for 5 man. The new Gear Score system pugs use to select players make it pretty hard for me to join any 10/25 at the moment. I think my GS's seating at 4400, maybe less.

Dummy DPS:
Peak: 2300
Avg: 2150

Base Stats:
25.39% Holy Crit
2081 Spellpower
8.14% Haste
(1.75 sec Smite)

Armory Link

Leveling Oom

2009-12-21T21:20:00.024-05:00

My school session finished last Friday, so now I have two weeks of free time to do whatever I please...at least to a certain extent, my work schedule changed from one day to six days a week after my boss found out about my holiday schedule (ops...), but at least I don't have to puzzle through problem sets or write lab reports so no complains there.

I figure it's not really worth the money to resubscribe again only to play for maybe a few hours a week for the next two weeks before completely locking my account until the summer. So instead, I opened up a trial account to test out my leveling theory crafting. With no gold, no party invite privileges, no glyphs, and battling server lag due to streaming, I managed to get to level 10 on Day One. Many will do better than that, since I spend half the time enjoying the scenery. Indeed, I miss Azeroth very much.

So enter Falaris, Night Elf priest on Illidan (US, PVP).

The first 3 levels are relatively easy to get through. Smite casting time is only 1.5 seconds, and it does good damage, so a mob is usually dead within 3-4 casts. Mana and health regeneration is insane, between looking at quest logs and finding the next mushroom, an empty mana bar is usually restored back to full. No drinking required.

At level 4, Shadow Word: Pain is learned. Although it costs a good chunk of mana, this spell does do good damage. At this point, my mana regeneration can still sustain casting this spell, so I went ahead and used the following cast sequence:

Smite -> SW:P -> Smite until 5% -> Weapon damage until dead

The trick so far (due to lack of wand), is to grab a fast weapon, rather than a high damage one. This means that if a quest offers you a mace and a staff, you take the mace unless there are green stats offered by the staff. My reasoning is this: when you attack a mob a level above you (most of the times), you will miss sometimes due to lack of hit rating. It's better to fail at a short small damage then to miss on a big hit that takes forever to execute.

At level 6, Power Word: Shield is learned. This spell is expensive, and with rank 2 Smite coming to the picture, your damage spells are no longer cheap, so you need to save mana as much as possible. Comparing with Lesser Heal, PW: Shield recovers less hp but it does prevent spell pushbacks so it's worth the mana. Rank 2 Smite surpasses SW: P in damage while costing less mana. So what I recommend from here on is to stop casting SW: P and simply go with the following rotation:

PW: Shield -> Smite until 5% -> Weapon damage until dead

Note: If the mob runs, Smite it down before it aggros another mob. Weapon damage only when you feel it's safe to do so.

At around level 8 ~ 9, you will reach a point where if you fight mob one on one, there is no chance of dying from their damage. To save mana, stop casting PW: Shield and simply Smite (yes single button faceroll) until the mob is dead.

Some quests will require you to fight an Elite. In that case, your goal is to bring down the mob before it kills you, so bubble up, dot up, and Smite away.

I think I'm fuzzing too much over the early levels, but I think 1-20 is probably the most painful period in any priest's leveling experience, so I hope this helps.

Edit: Don't forget to buff Power Word: Fortitude.

The Path of Light: 1 - 80 Smite Leveling Guide [3.3]

2009-11-14T11:04:00.139-05:00

A priest's offensive arsenal is made up of two school of spells: Holy and Shadow. This guide explores the talent build followed by those who wishes to level using the Holy school of spells. It focuses primarily on talents in the Discipline and Holy tree.

Before we get started, here are some helpful tips

Always make sure you have the most updated wand possible. Wanding costs no mana, so it's great for finishing a mob off when it's at 10% health.
Level first aid as you go. Bandages cost no mana and the profession is great for getting rid of those cloth scraps stuffed in your bags.
Save up gold for glyphs.
Carry a few stacks of food and water, a few mana and health potions for emergency.
When you see another class on the road, cast Power Word: Fortitude and Divine Spirit on them. They will most likely return the favour and give you Mark of the Wild, Arcane Brilliance or Blessing of Wisdom. These short buffs will improve your stats temporarily, making you level faster at least for a little while.
Make friends, party up, drop a heal on someone in danger. You are a priest, play as one.

The build we are aiming for looks like this: 41/27/3 Holy DPS Farming Build

Spell Rotation

Level 1 to 3: Smite until dead
Smite is your only offensive spell besides melee, there aren't a lot of options here.

Level 4 to 9: Smite -> SW:Pain -> Smite until dead
For in depth breakdown, please visit my Leveling Oom post

Level 10 to 19: Mind Blast -> SW:Pain -> PW: Shield -> Smite until 5% -> Wand until dead
Mind Blast does a lot more damage than Smite at this point because of rank differences. It also takes a lot less time to cast. Use this as an opener so that it will be available again for the next mob.

Level 20 to 61: PW: Shield -> Holy Fire -> Smite x 3 -> Mind Blast or Wand
You will learn Holy Fire at level 20. From now on, it is important to pre-shield to avoid interruptions when Glyph of Smite is in effect. Wand until Holy Fire cooldown is finished, then move onto the next mob.

Level 62 to 80: PW: Shield -> Holy Fire -> Smite x 3 -> SW:Death
Use Power Infusion and Inner Focus every cooldown. Don't forget to cast PW:Shield because you now have the reflective shield talent.

Fighting Elites: SW:Pain -> Devouring Plague -> PW:Shield -> Holy Fire -> Smite x3 -> Mind Blast.
Keep DoTs up, refresh shield. Rinse and Repeat.

Shadow

Level 10: 1/3 Spirit Tap
Level 11: 2/3 Spirit Tap
Level 12: 3/3 Spirit Tap Maxed Out!

Holy

Level 13: 1/5 Holy Specialization
Level 14: 2/5 Holy Specialization
Level 15: 3/5 Holy Specialization

Major Glyph I: Glyph of Inner Fire or Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain or Glyph of Power Word: Shield.

At level 15, you will unlock your first major glyph slot. Since Smite damage at early levels are not that high until you reach Searing Light, you will need to cast Shadow Word: Pain as part of your rotation. Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain will give you some mana back. However, depending on your server's economy, this glyph might be priced higher than usual depending on player demand, so an alternative is to grab Glyph of Inner Fire instead.

Glyph of Inner Fire will reduce the physical damage taken by your priest by approximately 8%. Less damage taken means higher survivability and less downtime spent on casting healing spells.

Edit: A third alternative is to take Glyph of Power Word: Shield. The 20% healing from PW: Shield can save you a cast of healing spells here and there, thus saving mana and helping you survive better. It should also be noted that Glyph of PW: Shield can proc Surge of Light at later levels! (Courtesy of Luthvian)

Level 16: 4/5 Holy Specialization
Level 17: 5/5 Holy Specialization Maxed Out!
Level 18: 1/5 Divine Fury
Level 19: 2/5 Divine Fury
Level 20: 3/5 Divine Fury

Major Glyph I: Replace with Glyph of Smite

At level 20, you will learn a new spell called Holy Fire. Glyph of Smite will now come into effect so purchase it as soon as possible from your closest Auction House. Unfortunately, you will not get another major glyph slot until level 30 so you must destroy whatever glyph you have in your slot for now to make space for the Smite glyph.

Level 21: 4/5 Divine Fury
Level 22: 5/5 Divine Fury Maxed Out!
Level 23: 1/1 Desperate Prayer
Level 24: 1/3 Blessed Recovery
Level 25: 2/3 Blessed Recovery
Level 26: 3/3 Blessed Recovery Maxed Out!

Blessed Recovery doesn't heal for all that much but the keyword here is that it doesn't cost any mana at all. It works regardless of whether the damage you take is absorbed or not. So a small ticks here and there might just save a few casts of heals from time to time.

An alternative to Blessed Recovery is to take 3/3 in Improved Renew. Renew is instant and can be used on the run or in between pulls to fill your health up. It might be a slow heal but when you are in no danger of dying, it is your most efficient heal.

Level 27: 1/2 Healing Focus
Level 28: 1/2 Searing Light
Level 29: 2/2 Searing Light Maxed Out!
Level 30: 1/2 Holy Reach

Major Glyph II: Glyph of Holy Nova or Glyph of Inner Fire or Glyph of Power Word: Shield

At level 30, you unlock your second major glyph slot. If you are feeling a bit daredevil-ish, grab Glyph of Holy Nova and try out some aoe grinding. Cast SW:Pain and Devoured Plague on the first mob, and SW:Pain on all other consecutive mob you pull. PW: Shield yourself, and wait until all the mobs are gathered neatly around you. Holy Nova spam until everything is dead. Cast a Renew on yourself to even out some of the damage. If you accidentally pulled too many, drop a fear bomb (Psychic Scream) and heal up. Make sure you are at full health and mana before every pull. Don't try pulling too many at a time or else you will certainly die. Five is usually a nice number, but you can pull more if you think your mana pool can sustain it.

If you prefer single target steady leveling, grab Glyph of Inner Fire or Glyph of Power Word: Shield.

Level 31: 2/2 Holy Reach Maxed Out!
Level 32: 2/2 Healing Focus Maxed Out!
Level 33: 1/5 Spiritual Guidance
Level 34: 2/5 Spiritual Guidance
Level 35: 3/5 Spiritual Guidance
Level 36: 4/5 Spiritual Guidance
Level 37: 5/5 Spiritual Guidance Maxed Out!
Level 38: 1/2 Surge of Light
Level 39: 2/2 Surge of Light Maxed Out!

Discipline

Level 40: 1/5 Twin Disciplines
Level 41: 2/5 Twin Disciplines
Level 42: 3/5 Twin Disciplines
Level 43: 4/5 Twin Disciplines
Level 44: 5/5 Twin Disciplines Maxed Out!
Level 45: 1/3 Improved Inner Fire
Level 46: 2/3 Improved Inner Fire
Level 47: 3/3 Improved Inner Fire Maxed Out!
Level 48: 1/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude
Level 49: 2/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude Maxed Out!
Level 50: 1/1 Inner Focus

Level 51: 1/3 Meditation
Level 52: 2/3 Meditation
Level 53: 3/3 Meditation Maxed Out!
Level 54: 1/3 Improved Power Word: Shield
Level 55: 2/3 Improved Power Word: Shield
Level 56: 3/3 Improved Power Word: Shield Maxed Out!
Level 57: 1/3 Mental Agility
Level 58: 2/3 Mental Agility
Level 59: 3/3 Mental Agility Maxed Out!
Level 60: 1/1 Soul Warding

Level 61: 1/2 Reflective Shield
Level 62: 2/2 Reflective Shield Maxed Out!

At level 62, you learn a new spell called Shadow Word: Death. This spell makes a nice finishing move and it is instant. If you like using this spell, replace Glyph of Holy Nova with Glyph of Shadow Word: Death. This will increase the damage done by SW:D by 10% for mobs under 35% health.

Level 63: 1/5 Mental Strength
Level 64: 2/5 Mental Strength
Level 65: 1/2 Focused Power
Level 66: 2/2 Focused Power Maxed Out
Level 67: 3/5 Mental Strength
Level 68: 4/5 Mental Strength
Level 69: 5/5 Mental Strength Maxed Out!
Level 70: 1/1 Power Infusion

Congratulations on reaching level 70. From here on out, you have two options. If you wish to continue the path of solo leveling, follow this guide. If you are more interested in healing instances, try reading my other 70 to 80 wrath leveling guide which further breaks down the talents and explains some of logic behind it.

Level 71: 1/3 Focused Will
Level 72: 2/3 Focused Will
Level 73: 3/3 Focused Will Maxed Out!

The reason I'm recommending Focused Will before anything else here is to give you the option to start some serious aoe leveling via Holy Nova. Focused Will not only gives you extra crit, but also significantly reduce the amount of physical damage taken when you are beating on by a train of mobs.

As for pulling style, the generic is quite simple. PW:Shield yourself, gather up the mobs, activate Power Infusion and do Holy Nova spam until everything is dead. Use the Surge of Light proc to kill off the lowest health mob to proc Spirit Tap. Also, use Surge of Light to heal yourself if your health drops too low.

An alternative is the following:

Grind Holy Fire/Smite style until 25% mana (but 100% health)
Send out Shadowfiend (Offensive) on target A, activate Shadowcrawl.
PW: Shield yourself and pull target B,C,D,E,F,G etc.(as many as you can handle, but no more than 10) do this quickly.
Gather B,C,D,E,F,G neatly around you and run to Target A.
Shadowfiend will now expire, you should now have 90% mana. Target A should be at near death.
Activate Power Infusion and start casting Holy Nova.
The first few casts will kill Target A, its death will grant you Spirit Tap.
Use Surge of Light Smite to kill off fleeing mobs or use Surge of Light Flash Heal to heal yourself
Spirit Tap from target A will now expire, target B,C,D,E,F,G etc will drop dead soon after, and a second Spirit Tap will kick in while you loot the bodies

Sounds complicated? Perhaps, but the whole point of this is to make sure you have Spirit Tap up for the whole duration of your Holy Nova aoe, as it will boost your in combat mana regeneration significantly.

Shadowfiend has a long 5 minutes cooldown, so you need to make sure that you take full advantage of it when it's up. For this reason, it is not recommended that you use it on the same target you are smiting, as the target will likely die before your Shadowfiend expires.

Level 74: 1/3 Enlightenment
Level 75: 1/3 Rapture

Rank 1 Rapture will essential reduce the mana cost of your PW:Shield by 50%

Level 76: 1/2 Aspiration
Level 77: 2/2 Aspiration Maxed Out!
Level 78: 2/3 Enlightenment
Level 79: 3/3 Enlightenment Maxed Out!
Level 80: 1/1 Pain Suppression

At level 80, you will unlock your final major glyph slot.

Congratulations on reaching level 80. I hope you have enjoyed Smite leveling so far, but the fun has just started.

The 41/27/3 build you now have at level 80 is actually a farming build designed specifically for doing daily quests. So use it as a dual-spec option for saving up that epic flyer or other things required for the many gold sinks Blizzard have made for us.

Major Glyphs: Glyph of Smite, Glyph of Holy Nova, and Glyph of Shadow Word: Death (single target heavy)/Glyph of Inner Fire (aoe heavy)

Minor Glyphs: Glyph of Levitate (for fun). The other two slots are completely up to you.

Designing My Own Priest Talents/Glyphs for the Next Expansion

2009-10-16T23:08:00.016-04:00

With the announcement of the new expansion, I'm quite excited to see what the class designers have in mind for the priest class. Well...actually I just have nothing to write at the moment so I thought I'll make up my own. The idea here is to favour Holy DPS but not to the point of destroying class balance - ie. nothing too overpowered.

Glyph of Holy Fire - Reduce the cooldown of Holy Fire by 3 seconds and increase its damage over time component by 15%.

Holy Fire cooldown ruins smite rotation, so remove it.

Glyph of Surge of Light - Your Surge of Light will automatically fire a non-critical Smite at the enemy when triggered. This effect costs no mana and does not consume a global cooldown. However, your Surge of Light no longer affects your Flash Heal spell.

GCD of Surge of Light ruins smite rotation, remove it, but not let it affect Flash Heal so that healing priest won't go into god mode.
Talent Fix:

Searing Light 3/3 - Increase the damage of your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova, and Penance spell by 5/10/15%

10% damage increase is not enough, let's increase it slightly.

Holy Precision 3/3 - Increase your chance to hit with offensive holy spells by 1/2/3% and reduce the mana cost of your Smite, Holy Fire, and Holy Nova spell by 5/10/15%

No one wants to carry 600 spell hit rating on their gear at level 85, don't leave us out with the heavy duty gear please.

Improved Spirit Tap 2/2 - Your harmful spells have a 3/5 % chance to grand you the effect of Spirit Tap during combat.

This will benefit our mana regeneration. It's also great for leveling and the talent is still beneficial to shadow priests. I see this as a build in mana trinket.

NEW* Martyrdom 1/1 (Replacing Lightwell) - Activate Spirit of Redemption at will. When the effect ends, the priest's health is reduced by 50%. 3 minutes cooldown.

Lightwell sucks, no one knows how to use it. Priests have been crying about it for years now. I figure it's only logical to have a talent related to Spirit of Redemption, why would you set it as the prerequisite otherwise? I added in the side effect because the talent is overpowered in pvp otherwise. But it is still useful in pvp, just pop guardian spirit after this, heal up and your guardian spirit will reset to 1 minute cooldown.

So what do you think? Feel free to post ideas on your own blog. Let me know and I will link your post back to here.

Response Posts:
Smite Priests and the Mastery System by Kourtnie McKenzie

Surge of Light vs. Non-SoL: Not So Serious Version

2009-10-10T17:45:00.007-04:00

This is my most recent attempt at number crunching Surge of Light vs. non Surge of Light. And no this is not a well planned "serious" post, I'm doing this for two simple reasons: 1. To show that this blog is not dead, and 2. To hope that I can attract a wow math wizard somewhere to verify my calculation. (I'm very unsure about my method of calculating this) I'm incapable of developing a straightforward formulas for every possible variable combination (lack of brain I apologize) so I'm using an excel sheet to help me generalizing numbers, just so I can see the range of things.

So let's get down to business, what we are looking for is whether Surge of Light actually improves the dps output of a 37/27/7 Holy Fire Spec (I say Holy Fire because without it, Smite nuke numbers are low).

Assumptions:

You have enough haste to enable 1.33 global cooldown and 4 x smite in every holy fire DoT duration.
Cast duration is 272 seconds (4 and half minutes non stop approximately)
24 cycles: 24 Holy Fire, 96 Smite, so we have a total of 120 casts.
Ignoring damage done by other spells
Hit capped, 2000 spellpower, 37/27/7 pure holy dps build

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/2585/screenshotlc.png

Top table is with SoL, bottom table is not. Blue represents "real time", orange represents "ideal time or pure dps"

The Smite glyph has a lot of limitations, the fact that holy fire DoT runs shorter than Holy Fire cooldown creates "gaps" in between casting. During these gaps, casting Smite un-glyphed is inefficient, it also reduces the effectiveness of haste, since the primary advantage of a SoL smite is that you spend only 1.33 seconds casting it instead of 1.74.

As you can see, in "Real Time", SoL dps is lower than non SoL dps, but that is perhaps compensated with filler spells such as SW:Death or Mind Blast, since 1.74 seconds normal smite won't allow you to squeeze those spells into your rotation (at least not as many).

However, if you were to assume "pure dps" calculated ignoring spell cooldown and waiting times, SoL spec will have higher dps output than non SoL build up to and until 80% critical strike rating.

Note: spreadsheet not done with easy understanding in mind, it's just a quick sum up of what I imagine the calculation should be, some columns should be ignored as they are used to check formulas and consistency.

Serious Blow to Holy DPS: Heartcrashing Statement from Blizzard

2009-08-05T12:59:00.004-04:00

08/04/2009 12:17:15 AM PDT

We have no intention of majorly supporting a Smite-centric, Holy-damage-focused priest build.

Smite is there to give you something to hit at low level and give you some ability to do damage in a Holy or Disc build. But we don't expect it to do competitive dps with a Shadow build. Shadow is your dps spec.
_____________________
Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

Source: WoW US Forum

The statement is harsh but never the least unexpected. *goes back to target dummy* No I am not closing this blog. I have had too much fun frying hordes with 6k smite crit to quit at this point.

Holy Fire Damage Calculation

2009-08-05T05:36:00.000-04:00

DD - Direct Damage
DoT - Damage over Time

DD Tooltip Dmg = (Tooltip Maximum Dmg + Tooltip Minimum Dmg)/2
Holy Fire DD Tooltip Dmg = (890 + 1130)/2 =1010

DD Base Dmg = Tooltip Dmg + (Spell Power x Spell Power Coefficient)
@ 2000 Spell Power
Holy Fire DD Base Dmg = 1010 + (2000 x 0.5711) = 2152.20

DD Total Dmg = Base Dmg x % Modifier A x % Modifier B x ... % Modifier Z
@ 2000 Spell Power w/ Talents: Searing Light (10%), Focused Power (4%)
Holy Fire DD Total Dmg = 2152.20 x 1.10 x 1.04 = 2462.12

DoT Base Dmg = Tooltip Dmg + (Spell Power x Spell Power Coefficient)
@ 2000 Spell Power
Holy Fire DoT Base Tick Dmg = 50 + (2000 x 0.024) = 98

DoT Total Dmg = Base Tick Dmg x Number of Ticks x % Modifier A x % Modifier B x ... % Modifier Z
@ 2000 Spell Power w/ Talents: Searing Light (10%), Focused Power (4%)
Holy Fire DoT Total Dmg = 98 x 7 x 1.10 x 1.04 = 784.78

Total Dmg = DD Total + DoT Total
Holy Fire Total Dmg = 2462.12 + 784.78 = 3246.89

Crit Dmg = DD Total x Crit Modifier* + DoT Total
Holy Fire Crit Dmg = 2462.12 x 1.5 + 784.78 = 4477.96

* Crit Modifier is 150% or 1.5. Only Holy Fire's direct damage (DD) component can crit. Damage done by DoT component will remain the same.

Side Post: Check Out My Chick Scratch on Deviantart

2009-07-28T09:41:00.006-04:00

I picked up my paint brush again after so long. This is my latest piece, not the best but it's good for a laugh.

Tier II Transcendence by ~overwritten on deviant ART

I think I will be drawing Faith next, probably on a Dwarf priest :D

Side Post: Thank you for your support!

2009-07-02T17:50:00.007-04:00

I just want to take a moment to thank all my visitors for visiting my blog. Holy Fire Spec reached 10000 hits today :)

I know it seems that I went MIA for the month. The truth is I was a little busy IRL. As for the lack of posts, yes it's my fault. A good blogger can manage blog and IRL together, I guess I failed that horribly. -__-

In other news, I sort of quit wow...*pause*. Well, if you ever checked my armory profiles, I haven't logged on since March 2009. That wasn't originally my intentions, but after some careful consideration, I decided that it is for the best. Will this affect my blog? In a way yes.

You see, I feel less credible for the information I post when I don't play the game on a regular bases. I'm a theorycrafting addict, but it's rather hard to justify my opinions to my readers when my toons are all inactive. Even if I have tonnes of numbers and math of back up my claims, there will be doubts. I feel that I don't have rights to instruct people in their style of playing when I'm not subscribed myself. /mumbling

But I like venting about numbers, so I will continue to post even though I no longer play. For all the time I spend on wow forums and such, I should get something right.

And no, I'm not quitting wow permanently, it's just a temporary thing. I'm working to save up tuition and other little things, hopefully I will have a few dollars left for multi-boxing eventually.

Smite Leveling Build Lvl 70 to 80 [3.1 Edition]

2009-05-11T14:23:00.017-04:00

If you are looking for an alternative leveling spec other than shadow to do your Wotlk grind from level 70 to 80, consider the following Smite build:

Discipline & Holy Hybrid: 31/27/3

Discipline (31 points)
5/5 Twin Disciplines damage & healing
3/3 Improved Inner Fire damage & healing via spellpower gained from buff
2/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude survivability
3/3 Meditation mana conservation
1/1 Inner Focus mana conservation
3/3 Improved Power Word: Shield survivability
3/3 Mental Agility mana conservation
2/2 Reflective Shield damage
5/5 Mental Strength mana conservation
1/1 Soul Warding survivability & mana conservation
2/2 Focused Power damage & healing
1/1 Power Infusion damage & healing

Holy (27 points)
3/3 Improved Renew healing
5/5 Holy Specialization damage & healing
5/5 Divine Fury damage & healing
1/1 Desperate Prayer survivability
1/3 Inspiration filler
3/3 Improved Healing healing
2/2 Searing Light damage
5/5 Spiritual Guidance damage & healing
2/2 Surge of Light damage & healing

Shadow (3 points)
3/3 Spirit Tap mana conservation

With this build, you gain the best of both worlds. You can deal descent damage using your holy offensive spells for solo leveling or dpsing in instances. As well, you still retain your full ability to heal if you wish to take on such role.

As you level up, addition talent points can be placed to improve your leveling experience in the following order:

Level 71: 1/1 Spirit of Redemption
Level 72: 1/3 Enlightenment
Level 73: 2/3 Enlightenment
Level 74: 3/3 Enlightenment
Level 75: 1/3 Focused Will
Level 76: 2/3 Focused Will
Level 77: 3/3 Focused Will
Level 78: 1/2 Aspiration
Level 79: 2/2 Aspiration

If you prefer offensive damage dealing rather than healing, you can choose to max out Focused Will before Enlightenment for the extra critical strike ratings.

At level 79, your build should look like this: 39/28/3

A holy dps hybrid build is about maximizing your attributes and using them to your advantage. Talents are there to increase your intellect, stamina, spirit, and spellpower so that no attribute is wasted. I shall be bold and say that a holy dps hybrid build gives you the mana regeneration of a discipline priest, the healing capability of a holy priest, and damage numbers that can match a shadow priest when it comes to burst.

Typical Spell Rotation for Soloing
PW: Shield -> Holy Fire -> Smite x 2 or 3 -> SW: Death

Use Power Infusion and Inner Focus every cooldown. For Elites, apply Devouring Plague and SW: Pain after PW: Shield but before Holy Fire.

Typical Healing Strategy (Similar to Holy Priests)

Keep Renew on tank at all time.
Keep Prayer of Mending on bounce.
Use Greater Heal for large damage.
Use Surge of Light triggered Flash Heal to patch up small damage. Use Renew on Life Taping warlocks or those needing patch up in between pulls.
Cast Fade if you pull aggro. Use Binding Heal if your Fade is on cooldown and your PW: Shield broke leaving you with the Weakened Soul effect.
Use Desperate Prayer on yourself when you take heavy damage. Keep yourself alive.
Use Inner Focus with high mana costing spells such as Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing.
For heavy aoe damage, use Power Infusion coupled with Prayer of Healing.
Activate Power Infusion when healing heavy spike damage to increase your casting speed.
Use PW:Shield on squishy mages or other dps who pulls aggro. Shield tank if you think he is in danger of dying before your Greater Heal lands. Your PW: Shield is cheap enough to be used when you need it but not cheap enough to spam like discipline priests.

Glyphs Choices
Before reaching level 80, you only have two major glyph slots and three minor glyph slots. For your major glyphs, Glyph of Smite is a must, followed by Glyph of Shadow Word: Death is what I personally recommend. For minor glyphs, take Glyph of Levitate (for laughs), Shadowfiend, and Fade.

What Do You Remember About Being A Newbie?

2009-05-06T20:40:00.052-04:00

I got tagged by Luthvian over at Polymorph: Pwny on an interesting topic regarding "noobish mistakes" from when we were newbies, so here goes nothing.

The first toon I created in WoW was a mage. Been a long time Diablo II player I thought the talent trees mechanics work the same way in WoW as that in Diablo II. That is, you can't respec after you have inputted the points. The only way to respec was to make a new toon, at least that's what I thought. Heh guess what I did when I accidentally screwed up the talent points? Let's just say I know the human starting area very well, perhaps more so than I wished.
My first Deadmine trip was fantastic. I think I spend a good four hours in that place? Never really finished in the end.
During my second Deadmine trip, I noticed the druid in my group not doing anything but following me around. As both a clicker and a newbie, I guess I had some heavy tunnel vision. Been the aggro monster mage that I was, I didn't realize the druid was a healer until he offered to battle rez me after a wipe. Good thing I kept my mouth shut about him not doing any dps. "Ah so the green ribbon stuff you put on me were heals?" /facepalm
I didn't know what a wand does until well into my late 20 levels.
I thought you have to empty a bag completely in order to replace it with a bigger bag, so I vendored all my stuff every time I got a new bag.
In my early levels, I avoided duals because I thought I'll lose all my equipment and gold. (I blame Diablo II)
I didn't know about rest experience until I entered Outland.
I thought getting killed by opposite faction members will destroy your experience points and turn your armor all red.
As a priest, I healed by clicking on my party's portrait then click on the spell in my cast bar. I healed like this from level 1 to 60 as shadow. It was not until I entered level 70 heroic dungeons did I start to remotely use keybinding. I suppose all that mouse exercise from Diablo II made me a really fast clicker, as no one ever really complained about my healing. Think back, I don't really understand how I managed that. /finger flex
I didn't know what a Battleground is until level 30 something.
I thought you can only play on one realm with a single account.
I rolled a Night Elf priest before making my current one which is a human. I think I spend a good half hour searching for the "Star Shard" spell in my spell book. I died a little inside when I found out that I was not suppose to have it due to priest racials. I always loved Desperate Prayer though.
Going into battleground in a wedding dress and a white staff. I figure I won't be targeted as much...
I had Warlock phobia for the longest time. See?
I didn't know what DPS means, I thought it was another code name for mage.
I didn't know what QQ means for the longest time.
I once vowed I would always stay shadow on my priest...thought it was authentic or something.
I'm a slacker when it comes to dailies, so saving gold for flying mounts is very difficult for me. I didn't have enough gold to buy cold weather flight skill for Woltk for the longest time. The first time I went to Naxx was with a pug. Someone was looking for one more dps in the trade channel. I offered my shadow priest, joined the raid, then realized that I only had 6oo gold in my bag. I told them "brb", and went off to all my alts, shipped all the gold from my bank mule, vendored all items I can find on my alts, and mailed everything to my priest. After 15 minutes, after clearing out half of my bank and vendoring all my TBC epics, I managed to gather 1000 gold with a few extra copper for repair. It was very silly. I was going to keep my TBC stuff for nostalgic reasons, but after a smooth Naxx clear in less than four hours, I guess my last minute effort at gathering gold was not in vain after all. Although I did feel like a newbie all over again, I still am.

Obvious Things to Know When Playing A Priest

2009-05-05T14:41:00.023-04:00

Haste effect from Power Infusion does not stack with Heroism / Bloodlust.
Power Infusion can be used on others.
Twin Discipline affects Smite and Flash Heal triggered by Surge of Light. It also affects Mind Flay and Penance as an exception. It also increases Power Word: Shield (PW:S) absorption amount as well as healing done from Glyph of PW:S
Inner Focus + Divine Hymn = ZOMG!
Improved Inner Fire not only increases armor value granted by Inner Fire (IF), it also increases the total spellpower gained from IF by 54, giving you a total of 174 spellpower from the IF buff.
Aspiration reduces the cooldown of your Power Infusion, Pain Suppression, Inner Focus, and Penance spells on a percentage base. This means the shorter the cooldown, the smaller the reduction. For example, if Penance has a 10 secs cooldown, it will be reduced to 8 secs by Aspiration. If Penance has a 8 secs cooldown from Glyph of Penance, it will be reduced to 6.4 secs, -1.6 secs by Aspiration.
Pain Suppression is not bullet proof. It only reduces damage taken by 40%. You can still die when under the effect of PS so heal yourself!
Spell Warding reduces all magical damage taken. This includes curses, spells, fire/frost/nature/arcane/holy/shadow boss damage.
Desperate Prayer can saves raids. Dead priests can't heal. So spend a point for your own good.
Spirit of Redemption doesn't last that long. Evil GCD! You can cancel the effect by right click on the SoR icon on your buff bar.
Warlocks love Lightwell, doesn't mean you will spec into it, but still, warlocks love it so spread some love.
Guardian Spirit + Your Faction Leader = Angry Opposite Faction Raiders
Power Infusion + Prayer of Healing = ZOMG! And you think discipline sucks at aoe healing? (well, they do comparing with holy, but they don't suck as much as you think they do)
Dispersion is not bullet proof if you cast it at 5% health
You have a buff called Shadow Protection. It's one of those things you can use to not die on a certain Voidwalker in Violet Hold.
You have a spell called Power Word: Shield. It prevents spell pushbacks, it can be cast on others. It doesn't matter if you are discipline, holy, or shadow. Use it, love it, it saves lives.
Mind Control + Opposite Faction Players + Arathi Basin Lumber Mill = Death
Levitate + High Grounds = Soft Landing
Levitate can be used on others
Spirit Tap and Improved Spirit Tap do not stack
Spirit Tap is great for leveling.
Cure Disease, Abolish Disease, Fear Ward, Shackle Undead are all castable in Shadowform
First Aid does not cost mana, so learn it, use it, and love it. Especially if you play shadow.
You have a spell called Mind Vision. It can be used on friends or foes. It cannot be dispelled. Rank two does not require Line of Sight. Cast Mind Vision on rogue or druid before a duel will prevent them from going into stealth. You can also target flag carriers using Mind Vision, a wonderful spy glass. (Just keep an eye on your own health, while your mind is away in another's, your body is still in a war zone.)
You can break Polymorph by timing your Shadow Word: Death to land at the same time as Polymorph to break cc.
You can Dispel.
You have a spell called Binding Heal, it heals both yourself and your target for an amount equal to a Flash Heal. Consider it as a double Flash Heal that takes less time to cast and cost less mana with a lot less threat.
You have a spell called Mind Soothe, it's great to use on targets before Mind Controlling them. But be careful as it can be resisted. When that happens, be prepared to run as you will pull a whole pack of mobs. Also, Mind Soothe animation look exactly like Sap, so toss this around in battleground to cause some serious confusion, enough to keep your target starring at the screen for a fraction of a second or so. It might just be enough to get you out of a tough spot.
As a priest, half of your spellbook is filled with healing spells, so use them. Even if you are shadow, you can still heal in emergency situations.
If you apply Shadow Word: Pain before x5 stacks of Shadow Weaving, you need to reapply it yourself after reaching the 5 stacks. SW:P refreshed by Mind Flay will not carry on the characteristics of the new 5 stack SW, causing you to lose a good chunk of your dps.
Glyph of Smite is excellent for leveling.

The list goes on and on, there's probably a lot more obvious things but I just cannot remember them at the moment. o.O"

Holy DPS Talent Builds 3.1

2009-04-15T14:52:00.037-04:00

version 3 - updated to include a solo farming build

Smite 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.

I. Raid DPS - Maximum Damage Build (37/27/7)

This build is designed for 10/25 man raid instances. It is designed to maximize your damage output.

2/2 Aspiration
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.

5/5 Darkness
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%.

2/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
Increases the damage of your SW:Pain by 6%.

5/5 Spell Warding
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.

1/1 Soul Warding
Inexpensive shield is useful because it prevents spell pushbacks.

0/1 Spirit of Redemption
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.

II. Raid DPS - Mana Craving Build (34/27/10)

An alternative of I, this build contains mana conservation talents that will improve your dps longevity.

3/3 Spirit Tap
A prerequisite for Improved Spirit Tap. This talent will benefit you during trash pulls.

2/2 Improved Spirit Tap
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.

0/2 Improved Shadow Word: Pain
0/2 Aspiration

III. Solo Farming Build (41/27/3)

This build is designed for solo farming. It contains talents that will increase your solo survivability, longevity, and efficiency.

3/3 Spirit Tap
This will improve your mana regeneration significantly.

1/1 Soul Warding
Reduces the cost of your PW: Shield by 15%.

2/2 Reflective Shield
At 2000 spell power, this talent will do approximately 2250 damage per shield on average, enough to save you a cast of SW: Death.

1/3 Rapture
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.

1/1 Pain Supression
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.

Smite: Nuke Damage Numbers

2009-04-03T02:58:00.082-04:00

Q. How much damage does Smite do?
A. Enough to nuke your face off.

/end late crappy April Fools' attempt, I don't have the gene sorry.

However, to properly answer the above question, I did prepare a data table for easy understanding. Here's the math:

Sample Calculations

Tooltip Dmg = (Tooltip Maximum Dmg + Tooltip Minimum Dmg)/2
Smite Tooltip Dmg = (707 + 793)/2 = 750

Base Dmg = Tooltip Dmg + (Spell Power x Spell Power Coefficient)
@ 500 Spell Power
Smite Base Dmg = 750 + (500 x 0.7143) = 1107.15

Total Dmg = Base Dmg x % Modifier A x % Modifier B x ... % Modifier Z
@ 500 Spell Power w/ Talents: Searing Light (10%), Focused Power (4%)
Smite Total Dmg = 1107.15 x 1.10 x 1.04 = 1266.58

% Modifiers

Searing Light: 10%, 1.10
Focused Power: 4%, 1.04
Twin Discipline (Surge of Light Only): 5%, 1.05
Glyph of Smite: 20%, 1.20
Critical: 150%, 1.50

Note: Critical Sum is the sum of SoL Smite and Critical Smite. However, because SoL Smite uses up an additional Global Cooldown, it should not be compared with other spell criticals.

Although Smite damage numbers are not in the "omfg nukage ownz" category, the introduction of the new Glyph of Smite is a much welcomed improvement of what we had before. I'm glad we are finally reaching the 6k critical mark, now is the moment to wish for more Sundial proc :)

Upcoming:
- Holy DPS spell comparison

Smite 101: Spell Hit Cap

2009-03-27T23:45:00.146-04:00

Spell hit ratings increase your chance to hit with your spells and reduces the chance your spells will be missed by a mob. At level 80, you have a 100% chance to hit mobs that are four levels lower than you (level 76) and a 83% chance to hit mobs that are three levels higher than you (level 83 = raid boss).

As of Patch 3.0, it is possible to stack spell hit ratings to a certain point to obtain 100% chance to hit on a level 83 raid boss. This point is known as the "hit cap". To reach the hit cap, you are required to have 17% hit. Every 26.23 spell hit ratings will grand you 1% hit. In other word, you will need a total of 446 spell hit ratings to reach the hit cap (17% hit). That's a lot of spell hit ratings to stack, but -

Almost all offensive caster classes have + 3 % hit talents in their talent trees. Shadow priests gain 6% hit with Misery and Shadow Focus so they only need 289 spell hit rating to reach hit cap. Moonkins gain 7% hit with Balance of Power and Improved Faerie Fire so they only need 263 spell hit rating to reach hit cap. Shamans, mages, and warlocks all have basic +3% hit talents in their respective talent trees (+6% for certain schools of spells) so they only need at most 368 spell hit ratings to reach hit cap.

Overall, reaching the hit cap is not difficult with talent specializations, except for Smite priests.

The priest talent trees do not have talents that increase your chance to hit with holy spells, so by default, you are required to have 446 spell hit ratings to reach hit cap for wotlk raids.

446 SPELL HIT RATINGS?!

Unfortunately, this is the sad dilemma that every wotlk smite priest have to deal with today. The rule of thumb for every offensive caster is to honor the hit cap beyond all other stats. But the game's itemization at this point is not designed to provide a caster with this much spell hit ratings while still support all other stats the caster needs. Stacking spell hit rating to 446 will almost certainly force you to neglecting other important attributes needed for a smite priest to be successful. What you can do however is to find the right balance based on your raid make up. So just how much spell hit rating do you really need to play a smite priest?

25 Man Raids - Alliance: 341 , Horde: 368

A shadow priest's Misery debuff (+3% hit) or a moonkin's Improved Faerie Fire debuff (+3% hit) can increase your chance to hit on the debuffed target by 3%. If you have a draenei in your group, you gain an additional 1% to hit. Since Misery and IFF do not stack, in a perfect raid setting, the most hit you will gain from raid buff is 4%. This means you still need 13% hit or 341 spell hit rating to reach hit cap. 14% or 368 spell hit rating if you are horde due to lack of Heroic Presence.

The chance of not having a draenei in your raid is non-existent on the alliance side. So be sure to kindly ask your raid leader to place you in a draenei's group so you can get Heroic Presences. If you do not a shadow priest or moonkin in a 25 men raid group, you are in the wrong raid. :/

Note: Draenei's Heroic Presence is a group only buff and has a limited 30 yard range. So during raids, you do need to pay attention to the distance between you and your draenei buddy. Unless of course you are draenei yourself. Happy stalking. (Courtesy of Luthvian)

10 Man Raid - 401 spell hit rating

It is recommended that you carry two sets of gear for 10 man raids. One set with a total of 401 spell hit ratings and another with 368 spell hit ratings. If you have a shadow priest or moonkin in your raid, switch to use the 368 set. If you don't have neither of them in your raid, switch to your 401 set and just use Elixir of Accuracy (45) every hour for the duration of your raid.

5 Man Heroics - 158 spell hit rating

Bosses in 5 man heroics are level capped at 82, so you only need 6% hit rating to reach the 5 man hit cap. 6 x 26.23 = 158 spell hit rating.

List of Pre-Raid Spell Hit Gear

Staves

Chilly Slobberknocker - Quest: The Champion of Anguish, Zul'Drak
Stave of Youthful Sorrow - Quest: Tirion's Gambit, Icecrown
Zebra's Misplaced Staff - BOE Drop
Frostbite Warstaff - Quest: Conversing With the Depths, Dragonblight

Dagger

Flameheart Spell Scalpel - Kirin Tor - Revered, Alvareaux, Dalaran
Ritualist's Bloodletter - Quest: Time to Hide, Icecrown

Wand

Ancient Measuring Rod - Loken, Halls of Lightning (Normal)
Wand of the San'layn - Prince Keleseth, Utgarde Keep (Heroic)
Frail Bone Wand - Quest: The Rider of the Unholy, Icecrown
Wand of Blinding Light - Quest: The Cleansing of Jintha'kalar, Dragonblight

Off Hand

Ward of the Violet Citadel - 25 Emblem of Heroism
Telestra's Journal - Grand Magus Telestra, The Nexus (Heroic)

Chest

Ebonweave Robe - BOE Tailoring
Heroes' Raiments of Faith - 80 Emblem of Heroism
Water-Drenched Robe - Ichoron, The Violet Hold (Heroic)
Robes of Lightning - Quest: Whatever It Takes!, Halls of Lightning
Turtle-Minders Robe - The Kalu'ak - Honored, Sairuk (Dragonblight) or Tanaika (Howling Fjord)
Wastewind Garments - Quest: The Noble's Crypt (A)/Torture the Torturer (H), Dragonblight

Foot

Titan-forged Slippers of Dominance - 15 Wintergrasp Mark of Honour
Leiah's Footpads - Quest: The Air Stands Still, Icecrown

Hands

Ebonweave Gloves - BOE tailoring
Lava Burn Gloves - Lavanthor, The Violet Hold (Normal)

Head

Titan-forged Hood of Dominance - 40 Wintergrasp Mark of Honor
Hate of Wintry Doom - BOE tailoring
The Argent Skullcap - Quest: The Crusader's Pinnacle, Icecrown
Chitin-Reinforced Hood - Quest: The Sapphire Queen, Sholazar Basin
Mildred's Cowl - Quest: Discipline, The Storm Peaks

Leg

none :(

Shoulder
Mantle of the Underhalls - Quest: Revenge for the Vargul, Icecrown
Spaulders of the Runeseeker - Quest: The Activation Rune, Un'Goro Crater
Bell-Ringer's Shoulderpads - Quest: Drak'aguul's Mallet, Grizzly Hills

Waist

Girdle of Bane - King Ymiron, Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic)
Plush Sash of Guzbah - 40 Emblem of Heroism, Dalaran
Belt of Unified Souls - Meathook, The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic)
Flowing Sash of Order - Loken, Halls of Lightning (Heroic)
Sash of the Wizened Wyrm - The Wyrmrest Accord - Honored, Cielstrasza, Dragonblight
Lithe Stalker's Cord - Quest: The Vile Hold, Icecrown
Braided Bat Sinew - Quest: Clipping Their Wings, Zul'Drak

Wrist

Fleshwerk Shackles - Quest: Killing Two Scourge With One Skeleton, Icecrown
Southsayer's Wristwrap - Quest: Hell Hath a Fury, Zul'Drak
Highseas Wristwrap - Quest: A Righteous Sermon (A)/Fire Upon the Waters (H), Dragonblight

Cloaks

Hateful Gladiator's Cloak of Ascendancy - PVP reward: 38000 honor
Cape of Seething Steam - Volkhan, Halls of Lightning (Normal)
Dark Soldier Cape - Knights of the Ebon Blade - Honored, Duchess Mynx, Icecrown
Shroud of Akali - Gal'darah, Gundrak (Normal)

Neck

Encircling Burnished Gold Chains - 25 Emblem of Heroism, Dalaran
Hateful Gladiator's Pendant of Ascendancy - PVP reward: 38000 honor
Necklace of Taldaram - Prince Taldaram, Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic)
Emeline's Locket - Quest: The Admiral Revealed, Icecrown
Amulet of the Malefic Necromancer - Quest: Poke and Prod, Icecrown

Rings

Amberglow Signet - Quest: The Brothers Bronzebeard (A)/Forging the Keystone (H), The Storm Peaks
Bat-Wool Signet - Quest: Basic Chemistry, Icecrown
Ring of Northern Tears - BOE Jewelcrafting
The Prospector's Prize - Krystallus, Halls of Stone (Heroic)
Voodoo Signet - Quest: For Posterity, Gundrak
Brunnhildar Runed Ring - Quest: Making a Harness, The Storm Peaks
Rancid Signet - Quest: Doing Your Duty, Grizzly Hills
Ring of Devoted Promises - Quest: It Could Be Anywhere!, Sholazar Basin
Oath Signet - Quest: Leaving Nothing to Chance (A) / All Hail Roanauk! (H), Dragonblight

Trinket

Figurine - Twilight Serpent - BOP Requires Jewelcrafting (400)
Mark of the War Prisoner - Cyanigosa, The Violet Hold (Heroic)
Rune of Infinite Power - Quest: Mystery of the Infinite, Redux, Dragonblight

Consumables: Food/Pots

Snapper Extreme - Cooking
Worg Tartare - Cooking
Spicy Hot Talbuk - Cooking
Elixir of Accuracy - Alchemy, Battle Elixir

Armor/Weapon Enhancement

Scroll of Enchant Boots - Icewalker, Boot
Scroll of enchant Boots - Surefooted, Boot
Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Precision, Gloves
Scroll of Enchant Gloves - Precision Strikes, Gloves
Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Accuracy, Weapon
Arcanum of Power - The Sha'tar - Revered, Almaador, Shattrath City

Note: As of Patch 3.01, hit rating on all consumables and item enhancement applies to Spell Hit Rating, Hit Rating (Melee), and Ranged Hit Rating.

Upcoming:
- Gems
- Raiding Spell Hit Gear

Welcome

2009-03-07T00:58:00.041-05:00

Holy Fire Spec is a World of Warcraft blog dedicated to the fine art of Holy Priest Dps. While some folks in the priest community consider this spec as a joke, I believe it is important to keep an open mind in the subject and have fun.

Content Highlights

Guides
Holy DPS Talent Builds
Holy DPS Spell Hit Cap
Smite Leveling Build [1-80]
Smite Leveling Build Alternative [70-80]
Obvious Things to Know When Playing A Priest

Number Crunching & Theorycrafting
Smite Damage Numbers Calculation
Holy Fire Damage Numbers Calculation
Surge of Light vs. Non Surge of Light

Randomness
My Chicken Scratch: Tier II Transcendence
Designing My Own Priest Talent/Glyphs for the Next Expansion

Layout Version II: Dawn

Version II of Holy Fire Spec features classic Blizzard wallpaper "Dawn" as its header image. Designed and coded by me. Header editing done in Photoshop 8.0 and Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.0. Image slicing done in Image Ready. Coding done in Notepad. CSS coding based on Blogger layout "Minima Dark" by Douglas Bowman.

About Me

My name is Xel (pronounced "Zel"), I'm a casual wow addict. I was introduced to World of Warcraft in December of 2007 and have been hopelessly addicted to it ever since. However, due to school and various other factors, I find myself spending more time theorycrafting than actually playing the game itself. My main is a human priest on the US PVP server called Stormreaver, alliance side. I enjoy priesting as a whole because of the flexibility of my class. I like playing with all the priest specs - discipline, holy, shadow, and of course smite. A downside to this is that I tend to respec 24/7, with all my gold going down the drain. When not on my priest, I enjoy pvping with my mage and tanking ogres with my deathknight.

Main

In Real Life

I'm just your average twenty years old college student. I'm currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in engineering, while trying to balance life, school, and wow. I'm not doing a very good job at it but I am trying :)

PS. I'm a grammar disaster, even though I do proofread my writing, I'm still terrible. I apologize for the mistakes. Please feel free to point out any errors. As this is the best way for me to learn. Thanks in advance.

Contact

If you have any questions, suggestions, or is interested in link exchange please do not hesitate to contact me at
You can also reach my by simply commenting on one of my posts.