I know I’m a little late on this post; many guilds have gotten the first four bosses of ICC down several times now! My guild isn’t one of those though (that first boss and his [insert several curses here] Bladestorm is the only one Momentum-conquered), so I’ve gotten so ninja-focused in the conundrum of it [and finals--my last college semester!] that I’ve neglected the smite priest blogging world. This entry is a documentary of my insanity more than theorycraft; stay tuned for some substantial ICC content next week!

I’ve Converted to Shadow Pew and Discipline Healing!

Hold on a sec. I realize I have guides for the total opposite experiences hovering in that menu above: my Lvl 80 Smite Priest Raiding Guide and my Lvl 80 Holy Priest Raiding Guide. I pew and heal quite the contrary to what ICC has done to me. There’s an explanation!

With the new changes to Shadowform, I decided to try out Shadow spec to familiarize myself with how Haste + Shadow Word: Pain feels. This is an important experience that all of us Smite priests should endure, in the most painful and un-liberating way. The reasoning? If you don’t know how to talk Shadow to people, you can’t really hold a candle when you’re trying to defend your “inferior” spec. Trust me! Shadow has undergone some drastic changes and so it warrants all priests get some hands-on experience so they don’t sound like numskulls when XYZ asks, “How’s that new patch treatin’ ya?”

But the real WTF ICC’s patch did to me is this horrible conversion from Holy healer to Discipline healer, complete with that nose-wrinkling spell called Penance. It reminds me of the time that one of my distant relatives brought me into [keeping religious location anonymous to avoid insulting said religious members] to part take in [unfamiliar religious practices that naturally make me claw for a different kind of salvation than what the location attempted to give me.] But Discipline didn’t undergo such drastic changes to demand a hand-wetting experience like Shadow did, so… “WTF?”

The answer is mana. I stacked my spirit high, I really did. I even invested in a Darkmoon Card: Greatness recently to further help my spirit out. When Marrowgar makes me OOM though, complete with blown potion and no fiend, and he’s still at well over 70% health–there be a problem! I blame this on three exterior facts that many of you might be experiencing:

1. A raid leader that thinks 2 healers is peachy. (Mind you, we’re not ToGC-25 geared. Try like some ToC-10 and ToC-25 items mishmashed together.)
2. DPS that think it’s okay to stick their finger up their nose for 1~5 extra seconds before removing a victim off a spike.
3. I switched from Healbot to Grid recently and it’s like switching from diet soda to regular; SUGAR RUSH!

Okay, maybe most people aren’t dumb enough to switch from Healbot to Grid healing on the crest of a new raid. That would be my bad. I heal a hell of a lot faster and, well, that means I drain mana faster.

Discipline priests, so the rumor says, don’t OOM as fast as Holy priests. Johannah the Smite Priest is here to tell you the myth is true. For as long as it takes for me to stop peeing through mana like a drunken psychotic, I’ll be healing ICC Discipline in the safety net of mana-forever-land. This will likely last a couple weeks, so expect me to provide at least one “This is how I heal Disc” post in the near future along with my Shadow experiences.

Then we’ll dissolve back to normal and I’ll write a Holy and Smite perspective on ICC.

…also, if you’re a Holy priest frantically switching to Discipline, make sure to buy the Penance ranks. Trying to heal ICC with a rank 2 of anything is pretty much fail. True story.

"Moar DoTs! ZOMG, stop the DoTs!"

What does “clipping” mean?

When a spell is ticking, whether it’s a HoT or DoT, it’s going to have a final tick on that last moment before it expires. If you fresh it, you’re denying your spell that last tick and starting it’s ticking all over, which means you’re essentially “clipping” off that last tick.

Give me an example.

Let’s say you have a spellpower of 2500. You cast Renew. Given Renew’s 188% spellpower modifier, divided over 5 ticks, your spell will look like this untalented:

(1400+2500[1.88]) / 5

This gives you 6100 healing over 5 ticks of 1220. Your Renew heals every 3 seconds, so you will tick 1220 on your target at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 seconds.

But you panic and decide to refresh Renew early; you cast it when it’s only ticked 14 out of its 15 second duration. Now your tank is being healed as follows: 3, 6, 9, 12, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29.

Wait, how’d I get that?

If you Renew at 14 seconds instead of the full 15 second duration, you “clip” your 15-second tick. 17 is the number the next tick will occur at from the second Renew; 14 + 3 seconds = 17. You can imagine how frustrating this could be for a healing class that’s HoTing up a storm, like a tree!

Why is clipping bad?

There’s two reasons to avoid clipping your HoTs and DoTs:

1. You lose the last tick, thereby less HPS or DPS.
2. You go through mana faster. If you wait the full duration, not only is your HPS/DPS going to increase, you’re going to refresh the spell less often.

How do I avoid clipping?

It’s better to let a DoT / HoT expire while spending an extra second casting a different spell than to refresh it early.

Let’s go back to the example above. The “clipped” Renew resulted in 3, 6, 9, 12, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29. Had the priest used Flash Heal (or any other spell) to occupy that one second of tick left, then even though Renew would’ve been delayed by 1.5 seconds (assuming no haste, the 1 second GCD, and Flash Heal’s 1.5 second cast), it still would’ve ticked better: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 19.5, 22.5, 25.5, 28.5, 31.5.

Half a second faster, one extra tick, and an extra Flash Heal slipped in. The win-win situation is clear.

This applies just as much while smiting and trying to figure out whether to cast that extra Smite while Shadow Word: Pain expires or refresh SW:P early. The Smite should always be the decision.

Clipping channeled spells.

Channeled spells like Penance, Divine Hymn, and Hymn of Hope can also be “clipped” if another spell is cast before the channel is complete. Since all of these have cooldowns, they’d only be clipped if you cast another spell; but on the DPS side, a prime example of channeled clipping is when Mind Sear or Mind Flay is cast again before the full channel expires. Make sure if you’re going to cast the same spell back-to-back that you give the first spell its due course.

How did you come across “HoT Clipping”?

Trienish the Shadow Priest was teaching me how to Shadow the other day so that I could become more familiarized in all three of my trees. During our raiding lessons, he brought up the idea of “DoT clipping” and how I should always let a DoT tick its full duration. Since I think like a healer all the time in WoW, pewing or not, the first thing that came to my mind was, “This must apply to Renew too!”

Monkey wrenches involved in clipping.

Haste rating will always affect your cast times and GCD, so make sure you’re aware of what your toon’s capable of when figuring out when to refresh your DoT/HoT–just don’t ever do it early! Also, there are mechanics that will throw the idea of clipping off, like Empowered Renew’s “insta-tick” effect. Make sure to use your judgment.

Interested in how clipping affects non-mana classes? Read on Feral druids and DoT clipping.

Thanks to Lucky7s76 for the share-friendly image on Deviant Art.

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.