Smite priest versus shadow priest
Do you roll with light or shadow?
“Why are you even playing a smite priest? Shouldn’t you be shadow?”
Ooooh, boy, does Johannah know this lolsmite question all too well.
Everything I’m about to present is theory. Later next month, I’m hoping to divulge some DPS charts to further address this question.
Your first answer: “I has raid utility!”
Trienish the Shadow Priest Friend helps with the preliminary thing that must be addressed to respond to this: What does a shadow priest bring to the raid? Shadow priests are no longer the mana battery of Burning Crusade and Vanilla days; instead, a shadow priest brings a +3% hit rating buff that happens to overlap with the boomkins. If your raid uses a boomer the way mine does, the shadow priest transforms into a literal battering ram of DPS on the boss, ranged style.
There’s also replenishment, but if you don’t have a ret paladin or a hunter in your raids, I’m extremely confused. It’s, like, what 50% of the WoW populace plays.
What about the smite priest? If you’re using my holy/discipline hybrid spec that I go over in the Lvl 80 Smite Priest Raiding Guide, you’ll have the talent Renewed Hope. Two points will give you a 100% chance to reduce the damage the raid is taking by 3% so long as you cast Power Word: Shield every 20 seconds. Granted, casting PW:S is also going to reduce your DPS slightly, but you think the main tank’s going to complain about a shield? Probably not.
Another discipline priest could neutralize this raid viability in the same way the boomkin’s neutralizing the shadow priest. Beware.
Your second answer: “I has backup heal skillz!”
Now that you’ve figured out what 3% a smite priest gets and a shadow priest gets, all you need to do is churn out as much DPS on your smite priest as your fellow Shadow Priest Friend does. Right? Right?
Realistically, it’s probably not going to happen. This is when you start screaming things like, “I have Pain Suppression! I can Renew idiots that stand in fires!”
A shadow priest is capable of off-healing–and in the same gear, mind you, since you’re both going to have hit rating all over–but you’re not going to have to worry about dropping Shadowform, and if you followed my spec, you’re also going to have a sexier Renew and holy spell crit rating than your shadow priest friend. You’re also going to have the 0.5 casting time reduction that an elemental shaman would only get if they went into the restoration tree (which is unlikely, considering how much enhancement helps elemental spec.) In short, you’re a better off-healer than the shadow priest–or the non-form elemental shaman–and thus this acts as an argument for your inferior DPS presence, so to speak.
If you want to pew for lots as a priest, go shadow–but if you want to help the raid in other ways, smite spec may be just the thing for you.
Thanks to ToniVC for Creative Commons photography on Flickr.
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By Fuyuko, November 15, 2009 @ 6:48 am
I know those questions only too well…..