I have 1200 +dmg/healing and 20% crit (much higher with talents added in) in my smite gear. I've tested it out a couple times, and it can't compete with shadow. Smite doesn't scale well, just like mind blast. My dots tick for half of what a Smite hits for.

And theorycraft doesn't prove anything, so not going to bother with it. If you want to say smite if viable, go for it. Have fun digging your own grave

Smite is nothing more than a toy, and a very interesting pvp spec. It is not yet suited for a raiding environment.

Don't doubt that smite spec can do DPS but that would make you just another caster dps class.

Now if i compare you to other caster dps class lets say mage/lock/ele shammy

Mage: No way in hell are you going to out dps a mage with similar gear setup
Warlock: They provide more raid utility than you and there's also no way in hell you're going to dps a lock
Elemental Shammy: TOTEMS!!! but you might do able to do better than an ele shammy but they'll provide alot more dps to the group + mana.


with all the
haste/spellhit/crit gear you'll be very good if you push 1.2k dps in a non movement fight.

First of all thank you for all the comments, it's nice to see that there are some players thinking about the spec.

Well, for sure the smiter doesn't bring that much synergy effects to the raid. But keep in mind, as I mentioned in my first post: If we compare our raidprogress to other guilds, we are a casual raid. We haven't killed Illidan yet, but I'm sure we will, as sure as I will stand right in front of the betrayer himself smiting holy light in his face
I know, at the moment the smiter is a simple DPS class, but you all read the posts about shadowpriest-scaling ( http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?t=11053 ) and what do you expect from a game?

Play it like you want it or play it like Blizzard / the game mechanic forces you to do?

Well, we had Moonkins in our raid at a time where all other raids laughed about them. We had tanking Feral Druids in WoW Classic, when every protection warrior told you they are the one and only tanking class in this game. We love to cross the boarders of mainstream raiding and we try out a lot. Our Realm (75% alliance, 25% horde) has 6 raids who killed Illidan, 4 alliance raids and 2 horde raids. Our raid is number three in raid progress on horde site. Well, among the blind the one-eyed is king
So, if you say, a smiter is a "wasted" slot in a raid, other classes bring more utility then keep in mind that we don't mind. We will manage the encounters, though we will progress a little bit slower.

So, let's go back to the smiter. Today we had another day in Black Temple. I joined later tonight, so I haven't seen Najentus.

Trash 867 DPS (Raid-DPS: 9690)
Supremus 773 DPS (Raid-DPS: 7372)
Akama 1611 DPS (Raid-DPS: 20.940)
Teron 919 DPS (Raid-DPS: 19.150)

5 Trashmobs before Teron we had the first drop of Ring of Ancient Knowledge and I got it (finally, yay!). I didn't use any destruction potions, so there could be more possible dps.
Buffs: food, oil, flask of supreme power, only 1 paladin buff (blessing of salvation), 1 shaman in group, 2 mages and a hunter.

Glasswizard asked why I didn'd spec Focused Power. Well, almost all people say that you have to play hit-capped while raiding. Okay, I'm not hitcapped (12,45% hit), so I should have 3,55% missrate. Let's have a look in WWS:

Smite - 2.4% Miss (3.2% Mitigated)
Holy Fire - 5.5% Miss (3.8% Mitigated)
Shadow Word Pain - 0.4% Miss (2.9% Mitigated)
Mind Blast - 2.2% Miss (2.5% Mitigated)
Shadow Word Death - 1.7% Miss (2.7% Mitigated)

Well, except for Holy Fire, which is my spellrotation opener, I don't see why I should play hitcapped. I will test it again when patch 2.4 is out and the new alchemist stone will hitcap me. I don't have the theorycraft, but I have the feeling, that haste will become more important than hitrating (the fights will be faster).

My intention is to play at 1200 spelldamage, 12% hitcap, 20% crit and the rest of the gear will be focused on spellhaste to breakdown GCD as much as possible. Who can to the math for this goal?

Another ~3% +Hit and your miss rate would be reduced by about 1.5-2% which is well worth doing. Especially with a talent as easy as focused power being available.

not enough talents for the hit talent,

that is if you want PI and SoL.

do you happen to have a retri paladin as crazy as you with sanctity aura? can't seem to find it here. It might increase your dps significantly

and I think you are absolutely right. Everyone in the mainstream view of things plays his class at full potential. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't try out different specs when given the chance! I know some priests in my guild who would love to try out smiting in raid.
Remember when shadow priests were a rare commodity in raids pre-tbc? On my server there were 3 raiding spriests...
And who knows, maybe the new discipline build Blizz keeps talking about for WOTLK is a lolsmite build!!! Holy CoH would be pure healing, discipline would be utility+dmg, as well as shadow. Makes sense to me =P Hell, looking at current things, i think it would make sense to blizz developpers as well ;o)

Either they put more Smite based talents on the way towards SoL so most of the stuff you pick up in Holy arent wasted (or make the few so/so talents a bit more offensively smite based if possible)

Or simply move things to disc as a whole. Although id not quite want that. I wish Enlightenment wasnt just 5% Sta/Int/Spi but also increases your +damage and healing stat by 5%. (+100 healing for t6 healing priests that would spec that deep?)

I hadn't even looked at the spec the first time. Now that I have, it is a seriously gimped spec.

Why spec focused power? Well its 4% extra damage - currently 3.55% for you but it would allow you to regear to reduce your hit rating a bit - come sunwell you will certainly be needing it.

What is that single point floating around in spirit tap doing? You laughably attempt to justify it because of the benefits of extra damage when you get a killing blow. Killing blows on raids are pretty rare, your comments about Hyjal notwithstanding, but you need to get 5 of them for every spirit tap proc! Why not put that point somewhere useful, like inner focus?

A smite build without surge of light? Lol.

Basically you are turning up to your raids in a terrible spec and relying on the rest of your guild to carry you through. If you are genuine about wanting to try a smite build, then at least do it properly.

It looks to me as if you are trying to justify a way to turn up to your raids with what pretty much amounts to a PvP spec. If your guild is fine with people raiding that way then that's their business, but at least have the balls to admit it.

I appreciate any comments, including hard critics like you did

Well, let's see what we have.
@Nerthal & Karnor:
Focused Power is 3% Hit for Smite and MB. As you can see in WWS stats and as I already mentioned I'm just testing playing not hitcapped.
I tried http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxg00hxtrxoZ0Exh0bV and had less dps, so this is why I'm not playing hitcapped.

Remember: When 2.4 goes live, my alchemist stone will be pimped (mats are ready to go) and then hitcap is right there, which means gear will make Focused Power useless.

So, a smite build without Surge of Ligtht?
Well yes. Again, GCD and latency are a big foe of SoL. Using the spellrotation I mentioned above you will lose DPS when playing will SoL. But I will test the following thing:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxg00hxtrxoZ0Exh0bV

For this spec the focus is pure smiting, Holy Fire is your opener and maybe flask will be Flask of Blinding Light instead of Supreme Power. So, you go like:
Holy Fire, SWPain, Smite, Smite, Smite, Smite...
Now, if SoL procs, your spellrotation will be gimped. Therefore you don't play with a spellrotation, you play with spell priorities.
Holy Fire = Opening
SWD = Keep it up 100%
Rest of time: smite!

I will test all the stuff and give you reports here.
Another idea I had is how Holy Fire scales with spelldamage + haste. It is a 3.5 cast (skilled 3s), and with 10% haste my holy fire goes down to 2,7s.
So, how about spamming holy fire (keeping SWD up) and smite for free for every SoL proc? Hm.. more things need to be tested

Adding:
http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.php? ... efficients
and
http://www.shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?t=10886 Diskussion

So, this is what DrDamage has to say about the hole thing:

Holy Fire in 2,71s

+Dmg (eff.): +1373,1
Coeffs: 1,155/1,024/1161
Crit: 24,27%
Hit: 95,45%
Avg: 1705 (1641-1770)
Avg Crit: 2668 (2462-2655)
Ticks: 5x ~82,8
DoT: 414
Avg Total: 2327
+1%/22,08 Crit: +8,5 (6,5 +DMG)
+1%/12,62 Hit: +21,2 (16,3 +DMG)
+10 Dmg: +13
1% Total (Crit/Hit/Dmg): 60,4/13,8/17,9
DPS/DPSC: 232,7/857,1
DPS (spam): 735,1
DPM: 8
DPM (spam): 6,9
Damage until OOM: 91262
Casts (rgn) 34+4 (103,1s)



Smiting in 1,81s

+Dmg (eff.): +957,4
Coeffs: 1,155/0,714/1161
Crit: 24,27%
Hit: 95,45%
Avg: 1631 (1591-1670)
Avg Crit: 2446 (2387-2504)
Avg Total: 1828
+1%/22,08 Crit: +8,2 (8,8 +DMG)
+1%/12,62 Hit: +16,3 (17,5 +DMG)
+10 Dmg: +9,3
1% Total (Crit/Hit/Dmg): 49,2/14,1/19,7
DPS (spam): 1010,5
DPM: 4,7
Damage until OOM: 50213
Casts (rgn) 26+1 (48,9)


Everything unbuffed, no trinkets, no PI.

Now, this means:
Long fights -> Spamming Holy Nova, getting free smites with SoL
Short fights (like trash) -> Opening with Holy Nova/SWD, spamming smite

Hm.. I will test it

The tooltip says 4% hit, so unless there is some bug that I'm unaware of I'm going to believe that it really is 4%.

Playing without reaching the hitcap is just throwing away dps. Your WWS figures are lower than 5% miss, but I'm assuming that you include the trash in these? The trash isn't level 73 so you will have a much easier time hitting these.

But who really cares how good you are at clearing the trash? It's the boss encounters that make or break raids. And on the boss encounters you will be missing a lot more than you need to, thus costing a lot of dps.



You need to take a serious look at your gear, and particularly the gear in Sunwell. There isn't a lot of hit in sunwell, so it isn't possible to get to 16% hit (even with an alchemist stone) without sacrificing a serious amount of damage. Even the alchemist stone sacrifices quite a lot of damage for that amount of hit.

So focused power is far from useless.



Unless you have 66% crit rating (which you don't), surge of light adds dps because it turns a 2 second smite into a 1.5 second smite which outweights the loss of crit possibility on the free spell.

And as a nice side benefit the 1.5 second smite is mana free.



Testing is always very good, but it takes a lot of testing to separate genuine differences from spec/gear from random differences due to luck on a particular fight.

Holy fire dps doesn't scale any better than smite, in fact it scales worse because the 0.5 second talent reduction to cast time is a bigger percentage of the smite cast time. That said, I think holy fire does get some extra benefit due to the smallish dot it leaves behind, but this benefit would be lost if the spell is chain casted.

When i tried the spec at new years eve when my guild was taking a holiday break,it was fun as hell.
Very low on hit as i was i was unable to test the spec although i did some karazhan runs for fun my resists was a lot of dps loss,
Now i have 11% hit from gear so with that talent i will be hit capped at least,
The problem is i dont see what im suppose to drop to get it,propably the 5% damage 5% crit talent.
The only way u can make this viable is :
Your guild has more than 1 shadowpriest showing up for raids(check)
You have an active full time retri paladin(check)
You have 2 healing priests on your raid,so having both of them spec back to CoH instead of imp spirit cause u will have it seems nice

Im gonna give it a try maaaybe but if i break 1k dps i would be happy as i do around 1100-1300 with my shadowspec atm

Hi Belegur,

since Mr. Qobble & me are sticked to the same raid, I'd like to supply some additional information.

I'm new to "full" spriesting, since I started playing on european realms in December '07. To the suprise of many I got my character "raid-ready" after playing 9 days which got me quite some respect and I'm quite happy that I hit a raid group, where some new ideas are not simply "bashed" by the authorities. The idea behind making Mr. Qobble play a smiter was to test PS within the Bloodboil encounter, since we have a few players that are quite... slow, when it comes to moving.

To answer your questions:

Well, we have 2. No, not yet. But we have a candidate for retri.
We have two regular "healing" priests so far, where 1 is specc'ed to DS with 2/2 IDS. I guess, she is thinking about respecc'ing to add some more within holy tree as well, when we have a regular 40/21-smiter in the raid group.



/sign'ed

Regs
Syler

So yeah, reading all this I'm kinda wondering: why are you doing this?