Back in May 2008, WoW Insider featured an article in 15 Minutes of Fame about how “Arena team Smites its way to the top.” The team ranked 7th in the Ruin battle group back in the day.

In order to achieve this success, the 5’s team claims they rolled with four healer-type classes: Ental the elemental shaman; Iashu the holy paladin; Vorgestellt the frost mage; Molimo the balance druid; and Grackel the smite priest. They named their team MLH, after “Moonkins Love Heroism.”

Grackel mentions that as a shadow priest, he was always the first kill on the arena teams; the switch made all the difference. If you’re a shadow priest that is pewed into nothingness in arenas, smite spec may just be the thing for you!

“But this team was back in the Burning Crusade days!” you say; that’s why Johannah the Smite Priest is here to provide some PvP arena advice for Wrath of the Lich King.

What smite spec do you use in PvPing in arenas?

When I take the time to spec switch, I use one that is much more holy-based than the PvE spec I suggest for raiding. By moving deeper into the holy tree, I can acquire Blessed Resilience, which I find infinitely useful in my survival.

But most priests seem to be married to this idea of using Pain Suppression, so I’ll go with describing that one first.

THE PAIN SUPPRESSION APPROACH.

Most non-shadow priests that PvP do it with Discipline because of Pain Suppression. If this is your play style, you could roll with a discipline-heavy spec for Pain Suppression while still keeping the Surge of Light for Smite, kind of like this one (44/27/0):

With this spec, you’ll want to have the following glyphs:

• Glyph of Pain Suppression
• Glyph of Power Word: Shield
• Glyph of Smite

But then, Pain Suppression has a cooldown and is just another facet to add to your “stay alive” routine. If you’re like me and it’s just not working out for you, consider the Blessed Resilience smite spec below instead.

BLESSED RESILIENCE APPROACH.

I personally find that Blessed Resilience gives me more survivability than Pain Suppression. You can find Blessed Resilience incorporated into smite spec with a setup similar to this one:

With this spec, use the following glyphs:

• Glyph of Renew
• Glyph of Power Word: Shield
• Glyph of Smite

So why am I so in love with Blessed Resilience?

In addition to the obvious–3% more healing done–a holy priest can proc Blessed Resilience when they’re not crit. They’re going to need a substantial amount of resilience though before they start seeing this effect. The way it works: resilience is taken into account last, so that if your resilience prevents a critical hit, it will still be registered as a critial hit for purposes of Blessed Resilience, but your holy priest will not take the extra critial damage. Again,

1. Rogue crits you hard.
2. You proc Blessed Resilience. Now you can’t be crit again for 6 seconds.
3. Your resilience prevents the crit, so you actually just got the Blessed Resilience proc for free.

Blessed Resilience receives it’s maximum effects when it is stacked with Martyrdom and Blessed Recovery, for obvious reasons.

What does a smite priest cast in arenas?

Just like in raids, your viability does not come from being the max DPS’er or the max healer, but the fact that you can switch off instantly and perform better in both than other hybrids. You will want to keep up Prayer of Mending up and Power Word: Shield, and you will want to do your best to keep Holy Fire on your primary target you are Smiting.

Thanks to your investment in the Discipline tree (with either aforementioned spec), you will also be in charge of Mana Burn and Mass Dispel. Don’t let those pallies get away with bubbles!

Lastly, remember that holy damage currently has no resistance (although Resilience does affect it)–so the more pews you can get off without anyone dying, the better! And if your Surge of Light procs, that could be that extra damage or heals that you need in order to push someone over/away from the edge.

Any additional advice?

Taken straight from Grackel’s interview in 2008:

Ok, lots of readers want to hear it straight from a successful team: can keyboard turners survive in Arena?
Vorgestellt: NO.
Ental: No, LOL.
Iashu: NO.
Molimo: No, LOL.
Grackel: Wuts a keyboard turn?

Ages ago, I used to use the arrow keys. Stop.

Enjoy your smite arenas!

Further Reading:

• Resilience affects Holy damage
• Smite priest PvP spec
• Holy priest PvP spec

But what if you want to heal exclusively in PvP situations?

I’ve always been Holy > Discipline, regardless of the situation; because of that, I’m going to review a strong, deep Holy tree build for PvP. If you’re looking for a Discipline build–admittedly more common in PvP situations–then try the Cookie Cutter Discipline Priest PvP Build or the Alternative Discipline Priest PvP Build from WoWWiki.

Holy priest PvP spec (14/57/0)

This spec involves the following talents:

• Unbreakable Will (5/5): Replaces the Twin Disciplines taken in a PvE spec.
• Improved Inner Fire (3/3): Increase armor and spellpower.
• Improved Fortitude (2/2): Improved hit points for yourself and your group / raid / team.
• Meditation (3/3): You’re going to build a Spirit PvP set for this spec, so start investing in those Spirit-friendly talents!
• Inner Focus (1/1)
• Why’d I skip Martyrdom? I honestly do not feel this is as useful as some other Holy talents available. I only take this in my Smite PvP build because it’s on the way to Power Infusion.

HOLY

• Holy Specialization (5/5): If you decide to swap Surge of Light (see below), swap this with Blessed Recovery and Healing Prayers for survivability and greater Prayer of Mending spam / mana sustainability.
• Improved Renew (3/3): See strat below.
• Healing Focus (2/2): Pushback resistance for when the Horde (or Alliance?) are pounding on you.
• Spell Warding (5/5): 10% reduction to spell damage in PvP? Yes, please!
• Divine Fury (5/5): For obvious reasons.
• Holy Reach (2/2): This will let you hide in the battleground bushes (or whatever) and do your damage/heals from a ninja position.
• Desperate Prayer (1/1): Will save your life.
• Spirit of Redemption (1/1): Will save someone else’s life.
• Surge of Light (2/2): Only take this if Holy Specialization and your gear brings you to a 25% crit rating. The free Flash Heals will be beneficial in sticky situations, but it’s useless if you don’t crit enough to take advantage of the talent often. If you decide to skip Surge of Light, you can invest into Martyrdom in Discipline instead, or 2/3 Holy Concentration.
• Spiritual Guidance (5/5): Since you’ll be investing into the Spirit-based PvP gear, this is the way to go for your extra spellpower.
• Spiritual Healing (4/5): I only invested 4/5 into this because I was straining on points. If you opt out with some of the optional talents mentioned, you can drop an additional point in here.
• Blessed Resilience (3/3): This is the most important PvP talent to any priest that has points invested into the Holy tree. You will notice a drastic improvement in classes that thrive off of critical strikes to blow you up. Also note that Blessed Resilience can proc off of crits that never actually landed due to Resilience; the talent is taken into consideration before Resilience is.
• Body and Soul (2/2): This talent is almost as important as Blessed Resilience. See below for more.
• Serendipity (3/3): This is key for getting off quick, powerful heals in PvP situations. It’s also one of the most enjoyable factors in Holy healing.
• Circle of Healing (1/1): Is win.
• Empowered Renew (3/3): See strat below.
• Divine Providence (5/5): Give your healing spells an oomph and make your instant casts more frequent.
• Guardian Spirit (1/1): In PvE, I encourage priests to use this to bolster heals rather than actually sacrifice the spell; in PvP, it’s the exact opposite. Use this when you know you or a teammate is about to die.

Here’s a visual of the tree:

When PvPing this way, some points to keep in mind:

• Instant casts are your friend. The more you refrain from a casting bar, the more you save yourself from interrupts. If you went ahead and followed my preference of taking Holy Specialization and Surge of Light, this will be easier for you. I operate with this kind of spell priority:
  • Keep Prayer of Mending up on yourself, but try to refrain from PW:S. You’re a pin cushion, but you don’t want to lose your sprint when it’s time to run.
  • Renew anyone taking damage or about to take damage. Empowered Renew and Improved Renew really help with this. If you’re in a situation where you know you’re about to get mauled, Renew yourself ahead of time.
  • The moment more than one person in the area has damage–even if it’s just two–Circle of Healing. This will likely proc a Surge of Light and you can insta-Flash Heal the person lowest in health. If it’s you, consider Desperate Prayer instead and Flash Heal the next most wounded target. Always think of CoH as your SoL-proc-button.
  • PW:S is your insta-cast sprint button. Don’t be afraid to give a flag carrier or a near-death ally sprint. If you get really good, you can recognize when someone’s trying to kite a melee and PW:S the melee to catch up with the kiter.
  • Dispel, Dispel, DISPEL!
• Gear for Spirit. There is Spirit PvP gear, and my goodness, it’s meant for you! Also, make sure you have 5% hit rating to get rid of paladin bubbles and other nifty offensive dispel duties.
• Use Serendipity to try to ninja in a PoH or GrH whenever a kicker isn’t in range of you.
• If someone interrupts you, don’t be afraid to use Shadow spells; fear is the most ideal. (Did I mention that 5% hit is helping you scream?)
• Resilience = better Blessed Resilience.
• I personally save Inner Focus for my “Oh crap!” moments where I realize I’m out of mana and need to pop my fiend.
• Glyphs vary, but I like the FH and Renew ones. CoH glyph is great for big battlegrounds.

Any questions, thoughts, concerns? Feel free to ask / share!

Once upon a time, one of the quickest ways to send me into a WoW frenzy was to put me in a PvP situation with my priest. I would sooner pick wiping on a raid boss 100 times then stepping foot into a battleground. But don’t get me wrong: Discipline priests are a very strong member in an arena team with Mana Burn, Pain Suppression, and other utility; and Shadow priests have melted my face more than once. The priest class is capable of being among the best PvPers and the flaw rested entirely with my play style.

The other two options left–both which did wonders for my patience–are Holy priest PvP and smite priest PvP. I’ll take a look at Holy priest PvP in a future post (as well as arena strategies), but for now, let’s focus on the smite priest PvP build!

Smite priest PvP spec (34/37/0)

This spec involves the following talents:

DISCIPLINE

• Unbreakable Will (5/5): This replaces the Twin Disciplines taken for PvE.
• Improved Inner Fire (3/3): Increase armor and spellpower.
• Improved Fortitude (2/2): Improved hit points for yourself and others is nom nom nom.
• Martyrdom (2/2): This isn’t required to get to the next tier of the tree and if you find that interrupts are mostly solved by Unbreakable Will, you could opt to invest into Mental Agility instead.
• Improved Mana Burn (2/2): This destroys.
• Improved Shields (3/3), Inner Focus (1/1), Meditation (3/3): All staples.
• Mental Strength (5/5): Good talent, but you’re mostly investing into it to get to Power Infusion.
• Focused Power (2/2): Say good-bye to ice blocks and pally bubbles.
• Enlightenment (3/3): Haste is great for PvP, not to mention the additional Spirit to counteract it. Consider investing in Reflective Shields and the remaining point of Mental Agility (if you opted out of Martyrdom) instead as an alternative.
• Power Infusion (1/1): Great with Surge of Light for a quick nuke.
• Focused Will (2/3): Excellent talent. If you’re going for Body and Soul, you will unfortunately have to stop at 2/3.

HOLY

• Holy Specialization (5/5): Bread and butter for Surge of Light procs.
• Healing Focus (2/2): Pushback resistance for when the Horde (or Alliance?) are pounding on you.
• Spell Warding (5/5): 10% reduction to spell damage in PvP? Yes, please!
• Divine Fury (5/5): For obvious reasons.
• Blessed Recovery (3/3): This is debatably swappable with Inspiration.
• Holy Reach (2/2): This will let you hide in the battleground bushes (or whatever) and do your damage/heals from a ninja position.
• Searing Light (2/2): If you’re going to be smiting things, this makes sense.
• Healing Prayers (2/2): I take this because I have Prayer of Mending going constantly, but if you are not one to use PoM whenever it’s off cooldown, it might not be necessary.
• Desperate Prayer (1/1): Will save your life.
• Spirit of Redemption (1/1): Will save someone else’s life.
• Surge of Light (2/2): What smite spec is all about!
• Blessed Resilience (3/3): This is the most important PvP talent to any priest that has points invested into the Holy tree. You will notice a drastic improvement in classes that thrive off of critical strikes to blow you up. Also note that Blessed Resilience can proc off of crits that never actually landed due to Resilience; the talent is taken into consideration before Resilience is.
• Holy Concentration (2/3): Great for the mana. You won’t be able to get 3/3 if you’re going after Body and Soul.
• Body and Soul (2/2): This talent is almost as important as Blessed Resilience. Whenever you need to get away from another player, this will give you a short sprint; it will also let you combat a rogue’s poisons. I love using Power Word: Shield on my allies and watching them flee from certain death–not to mention the boon this gives to flag and bomb carriers!

Here’s a visual of the tree:

When PvPing this way, some pointers to keep in mind:

• Surge of Light + Power Infusion = nuke.
• Use Power Word: Shield to get away.
• Don’t panic when you get crit; it won’t happen again for awhile. I err on the side of suicide against fast crit classes like rogues because I know once they crit me, the worst is over (but I could potentially nuke them if I focus more on getting them dead then healing myself.)
• Remember to use Desperate Prayer.
• Remember you get rid of poisons on yourself now in additional to diseases.
• If a class that can interrupt you (kick, shield bash, etc.) is on top of you, stick to your insta-casts. PoM can crit and proc Surge of Light, which will get you a Smite without having to risk interruption.
• Don’t be afraid to DoT things. Just because you’re not Shadow spec doesn’t mean you can’t put stress on your target’s healer (and they’re insta-casts!)

Any additional pointers, questions, or concerns? Feel free to comment!