Johannah the Smite Priest received the first real flaming comment today and it inspired me for this afternoon’s “best”  NaBloPoMo post. The continuation of priest talent entries will have to wait for this upcoming weekend of fantastic California sunshine.

Here are five pointers on the best ways to properly flame people:

1. In a researched manner. Check out Wikipedia and familiarize yourself with the fine art of flaming and its history. American colleges teach us that well-rounded, intellectual actions lead to better results.
2. In a passive aggressive manner. Passive aggressiveness is the language of angry World of Warcraft players. It’s really easy. Instead of asking why a priest using DM:G is writing a blog and defaulting on the age-old, bad-tasting voice called “sarcasm,” you could write a reply on how a priest equipped with DM:G wiped your raid. See what I did there?
3. In a YouTube manner. This is my favorite random comment and forum video.
4. In a “your mom” manner. What video gamer gets mad at a “your mom” joke?
5. In an ASCII manner. When you write in awesome ASCII illustrations, your flaming will get more lol’s.

I could be totally wrong here, but this is what tickles me whenever I dare to trek the official WoW forums. What do you think? Are there other ways people can act like five-year-olds and amuse us all? My interpretation could be perverted after so many years of playing a spec that most of the WoW community finds embarrassing.

Flamers, if you happenstance on my blog, I’d like to direct you over to the corners of the Interwebs intended for you: The Angry Forum.

TGIF, everyone! ICC-10 day for me!

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!