How will the Mastery system affect smite priests?

Xel’s latest post over at Holy Fire Spec was on theoretical changes to smite priests in the upcoming Cataclysm expansion. I don’t agree with some of the hypothetical changes; for example, Xel suggests removing Holy Fire’s cooldown because it ruins smite’s rotation, but I love how Holy Fire’s new cooldown really plays a role with our glyphs and haste. On the other hand, Xel’s suggestion about the Surge of Light glyph is awesome, and the suggested talent called “Holy Precision” is stellar what with hit capping a smite priest being a smidgeon ridiculous.

Xel asked other smite priests to blog about their own thoughts on theoretical smite priest changes in Cataclysm, so I thought I’d take some time to give my own perspective on this expansion that is still many months away and talk about the new Mastery system.

I’m using WoW Insider as a guide because my memories of BlizzCon 2009 are fuzzy and mostly comprise thoughts something like, “it’s too crowded,” “those speakers going going to blow up at that giant CATACLYSM logo,” and my favorite, “EEEEK!” The Mastery system is basically going to take talents that offer flat healing and damage boosts and throw them all out the window in favor of offering these bonuses as a perk for going a certain distance down a talent tree. The example given by WoW Insider:

A Combat Rogue might see his Mastery bonuses include passive increases to melee damage, hit chance, and armor penetration as he moves down the tree, whereas a Subtlety Rogue might see increases to melee damage, melee haste, and energy regen.

Since smite priests are a clear hybrid class last in the abysmal void between the Discipline and Holy trees, the Mastery system might be detrimental to us; our Discipline healers are going to have a lot more [insert Discipline mastery here], and our Holy healers are going to have a lot of [insert Holy mastery here], but we smite priests are going to have a halfwit middle ground.

So let’s pretend it looks like this:

A Holy Priest’s Mastery increases healing done, holy critical strike rating, and mana regeneration.

A Discipline Priest’s Mastery increases damage absorbtion effects, holy damage, and mana regeneration.

I put holy damage in the Discipline tree because Blizzard is still pushing for Discipline to be the PvP tree–and you got to Smite when you’re PvPing whether you’re smite spec or not–big heals generally fit within the perimeters of Holy, whereas absorbtion is Discipline. Holy critical rating is there because of Holy Specialization’s current location in the Holy tree.

Now, theoretically, we’d be in a bind here because if we went deep into Discipline, we’d do more damage–but we’d probably lose Surge of Light, not to mention precious critical strike rating. I realize this could go an infinite number of ways because, well, we have no idea what the priest Mastery looks like, but you could see how this would put any hybrid class in a bind. On the other hand, if hybrid specing just let’s us dip out hands halfway into cookie jars, that might not be so bad if we like Oreos and Milanos.

But then, Mastery is also supposed to lower the cooldown of abilities–what if it lowers the casting time of spells?–are smite priests then condemned to the Holy tree?–is that how Holy will be pushed more into PvP?–only time will tell.

What are your thoughts on smite priests and Cataclysm?