Smite priests are not an idea exclusively reserved to World of Warcraft; in fact, in most other MMORPGs, smite priests are considered rather viable! Here’s some other reads you can look at concerning the smite priests of the MMORPG WoW competitors.

• Guild Wars. Forum thread, Smite priest good?
• Aion. Priest class guide with Smite as an integral strategy
• Warhammer. About the Warrior-Priest.
• Dungeons and Dragons Online. Read about the Cleric class, the arguable tabletop RPG predecessor to the WoW smite priest (though the spell of choice in that case would be Flame Strike)

Cheers to our fellow smite priests in other games!–sometimes I consider trying Aion out just to see what a flying, smite-viable character would be like.

Yesterday I looked at some Holy damage myths, including the rumor that Holy damage bypasses Resilience. This is not the case in Wrath of the Lich King. I went ahead and beat the ever-loving crap out of Elowyn in his uber Resilience gear and his uber PvE gear did some personal tests and came up with the following results:

PvE gear results

Non-crit Smite: ~2471

Crit Smite: ~3579

Crit chance: 40%

I did this in my healing gear–lackluster Critical and lower spellpower in exchange for Spirit and Haste–so the numbers are a bit fudgy, but they still illustrate well enough what my healing gear would pew as in a PvE situation. Now we look at the same target in his PvP gear…

1000+ Resilience results

Non-crit Smite: ~2213

Crit Smite: ~2533

Crit chance: 9%

Huge difference, especially in the Crit chance! It might have increased a little with a larger sampling of Smite casts, but it wasn’t going to come close to the numbers derived from the same target without the Resilience.

This means that Smite priests suffer an extraordinary setback in PvP situations; not so much in the reduction of damage, but in the lowered Crit chance, translating into less Surge of Light procs. Lower damage is always a minus, but if you take away Critical strike, you’ve taken away the bread-and-butter of smite spec; Penance does more damage than Smite when Surge of Light and other Holy DPS talents are yanked from the picture.

But don’t despair! Even if the damage is thwarted significantly, a PvP smite spec still has the advantage of Blessed Resilience. Read more about how to PvP with smite spec, whether Resilience is thwarting you or not!–or check out a deeper Holy tree PvP build!

Your PvP dual spec might benefit from holy damage

Holy damage is considered useful for a wide variety of reasons, and yet is only available to smite priests and paladins. Here’s eight reasons you might’ve heard why Holy damage is considered a great asset in any DPS situation–and whether it’s true or not!

1. There’s no resistance to Holy damage. This is true. Races and classes reliant on resistance as part of their makeup will find no solace against Holy damage, making it ideal in PvP.
2. Holy damage bypasses resistance. I’ve yet to be able to confirm this, but rumors still float around about how Holy is unaffected by Resilience. I intend on testing this tomorrow. I know for quite some time in Burning Crusade, this rumor had a ring of truth to it.
3. Holy damage hits undead  creatures harder. While some paladin Holy spells are designed specifically to thwart demons and undead, it’s not a general rule that Holy hits an undead mob any harder than anything else. You’re thinking too much like Final Fantasy here.
4. A Retribution paladin can boost a Holy priest’s damage. In Burning Crusade, Retribution paladins could use Seal of Righteousness to improve Holy damage. Unfortunately, this mechanic was changed in Wrath of the Lich King and no longer benefits Holy priests.
5. There are no abilities that reduce Holy damage. Mages have the means to reduce/absorb Fire and Frost damage; mobs everywhere can avoid Nature and Shadow. But are there any that spite Holy? Believe it or not, a few mobs in World of Warcraft have Damage Reduction: Holy; check out which ones are able to thwart your spells!
6. There are mobs that are vulnerable to Holy damage. Just like how there are a few random mobs that reduce Holy damage, there’s a few that take increased Holy damage–and they’re not necessarily undead! A good example is Vek’nilash. Nice and random.
7. There will be a Holy form released some day that benefits Holy as much as Shadow benefits from Shadowform. In Sunwell Plateau, there were priests that could use Holyform and started a speculation pre-WotLK. Talk about the new expansion seems to stir this up here-and-there again. Unfortunately, even if Holyform was released, it would more than likely only affect healing spells. Holy damage isn’t going to see anything useful here.
8. There’s only one wand in the game that does Holy damage. In vanilla WoW, this was true, and it was the Wand of Eternal Light specifically. You can find all kinds of random forum posts from the ancient days about it. Now, there are six of them, including Nurturing Touch from 10M Auriaya and Fading Glow from 25M Loatheb.

Do you know any random trivia that may be a real benefit–or a debunked myth?–to Holy damage? Feel free to share!