I’m a month late on this, but I wanted to give a heads up to other smite priests that Fuyuko over at the Unconventional Priest has switched to a smite priest blog. Yay for another smite priest blogger! I’m hoping between Fuyuko and Xelaeno at Holy Fire Spec, we can overthrow that ridiculous Elitist Jerks thread on smite priesting at the top of Google’s “smite priest” search provide a wealth of resources for priests interested in smite spec in Wrath of the Lich King.

Fuyuko brought up an excellent point in the last post about how difficult it can be for priests to make the switch over to smite spec. (Oh, but we’ll convert you all yet…) For priests that are stumbling upon one or more of our blogs in search of the how’s and what’s of Holy DPS, here are three recommendations I can make:

1. Don’t just respec and jump into a group! There’s a reason I call the Lvl 80 Smite Priest Raiding Guide a raiding guide, not an instance guide. Trust me, it works dandy for instances (there’s no way I’m paying respec fees between 5-mans, 10-mans, and 25-mans on top of the respecs I do anyway to randomly dabble in Discipline and Shadow), but you should be ready and equipped for raids before you even think about smiting. Fuyuko and my hit post make it clear on how difficult it is to put this gear together. I highly recommend either a) healing and collecting emblems [assuming Shadow makes your skin crawl like me] or b) doing what Fuyuko mentioned and just specing Shadow until you get your gear together. Easier to roll on hit gear when you’re the well-known priest DPS tree.
2. Try it out in the security of your own guild first. The new dungeon randomizer makes it so easy for you to just leap into the fray of a bunch of people you don’t know, but people are going to criticize/mock you. It’s best to at least learn the ropes of smite in the comfort of people that you know won’t “WTF” you for it before going out into the harsh and judgment land of random queue. That said, the randomizer is amazing for getting all the hit gear you need really fast.
3. Have dual spec. There are going to be times when you just can’t smite, especially if you’re currently doing ICC. It has it’s moments, and I’m a big fan for it (*looks around at the blog*), but you should always have a healing spec–or, if you simply have to DPS, a Shadow spec–to fall back on when smite’s weaknesses (like Saurfang’s enrage timer + a learning raid) are bringing you down.

Welcome, Fuyuko, to the… smite priest blogging… land… place. Make sure to go visit Fuyuko’s blog to read more about WotLK smite priesting!

I’ve looked at smite priest PvP before, but I thought I’d touch back on this topic since smite is more attractive to PvP’ers than PvE’ers. Last time I focused more on battleground PvP; let’s take a look at smiting in arenas!

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

Like every November Monday (that was fouly demised by a delayed auto-Wordpress schedule), Johannah the Smite Priest has a smite priest trick in store! Use these macros to help improve your Holy DPS role. If you’ve missed previous entries, they’re listed at the end.

For this entry, it’s time to correct your smiting. Taken from Borkweb, this macro will have you cast Smite on a harmful target or cast Smite on your target’s target if you have them selected for healing/buffing purposes.

/cast [harm] Smite; [target=targettarget, harm] Smite

I tried this macro out and found it was rather useful. The benefit to this really shines when you’re healing in Smite spec and want to synchronize a Surge of Light with a tank that you have targeted. I personally have my Smite macro’d into Flash Heal for mouse-over heals with Grid, which looks like this:

/cast [harm] Smite; [target=mouseover,exists,nodead,help][] Flash Heal

…but to each their own! Now you have two different perspectives on how to cast an effective Smite. The first macro works dandy if you heal with Healbot or a different method. I used it for awhile before switching over to Grid/mouseovers. Admittedly, I am still trying to figure out a way to improve upon this still because mouseover keeps hitting bear ass when I’m trying to Smite a target.

Do you have a Smite macro? What does it look like? Feel free to comment and discuss / share!

Interested in other smite priest tricks? Check out the previous entries:

• Smite priest trick #1: Prayer of Mending
• Smite priest trick #2: Divine Hymn
• Smite priest trick #3: Free Flash Heal