While the changes to shadow priests in 3.3 are catastrophically orgasmic, we smite priests still aren’t wiped entirely away from the picture. (Not any more than they were already wiped since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, anyway.) There are priests that, regardless of the differences in DPS, will always prefer the play mechanics of smiting over shadowing; if you stuck us in pure DPS classes, you’d have an epic mage vs. warlock showdown. Because of this, while I strongly recommend any priest that wants to do l33t DPS should switch shadow, I also advise that the priests that love smite stick with the spec that’s faithful to them and deal with the ridicule. After all, you’ve already listened to it for years; for expansions.

And to really understand just how much you’ve screwed yourself, I’d like to turn to the the bread and butter of smite spec: Surge of Light.

Why is Surge of Light screwing me?

Surge of Light is located in the dead center of the Holy tree, deep enough that Penance is not possible but early enough that Power Infusion is capable of taunting you. It’s strategic placement in the Holy tree (along with Power Infusion’s placement in the Discipline tree) forces the real smite priest to abandon the notion that they can just “cast Smite while healing” and design a real Holy DPS spec that falls short of the pure Discipline and pure Holy healing counterparts. Surge of Light is your lifesaver and your doomsday bringer.

I REPEAT:

There are priests that have tried to Holy DPS with Penance; forget it. You need Surge of Light and it needs you.

There are priests that have tried to Holy DPS with the Holy tree alone; forget that, too. Surge of Light leaves you room for critical things like Power Infusion and Focused Power.

Surge of Light makes sure that you design a smite spec that gimps your healing, but still makes you a better healer than the shadow priest. You’re a schmuck middle man. But it gives you free Smite procs, so you can’t judge it too terribly!

Does Surge of Light have an internal cooldown?

According to Sinespe on WoWHead, yes. Granted, it’s mighty difficult to test something that only procs 50% of the time to begin with, but he managed to grab a piece of his combat log over 7.28 seconds that showed the internal cooldown:

0.00: Sinetest gains Sinetest's Surge of Light.
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Holy Concentration.
      Sinetest's Inspiration is refreshed on Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(4985 Overhealed)
1.38: Sinetest's Surge of Light fades from Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Serendipity is refreshed on Sinetest.
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Inner Focus.
3.14: Sinetest's Prayer of Healing heals Sinetest for 0.(6381 Overhealed) (Critical)
      Sinetest's Serendipity fades from Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Inner Focus fades from Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Inspiration is refreshed on Sinetest.
4.52: Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(7644 Overhealed) (Critical)
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Serendipity.
      Sinetest's Holy Concentration is refreshed on Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Inspiration is refreshed on Sinetest.
5.90: Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(5032 Overhealed)
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Serendipity (2).
7.28: Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(7306 Overhealed) (Critical)
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Serendipity (3).
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Surge of Light.

Sinepse believed, from this data, that Surge of Light has a roundabouts ICD of 5 seconds. Pretty fast, but still there. You’re more than likely not going to push it unless your critical strike rating is out of hand. (And if that’s the case, I recommend Haste to get an extra Smite in during Holy Fire; see my Lvl 80 Smite Priest Guide for more tips there.)

How much mp5 does Surge of Light generate?

If you get a Surge of Light proc every 8 seconds (which is feasible with around 25% crit rating), you’re looking at 390.625 Mp5. This is also derived by Sinepse from the above combat log. One of the flaws to his research is that it’s taking Circle of Healing into account (which has the chance to proc on multiple targets), but I do not feel this should differ much given the fast-paced casting time of Smite with the appropriate Haste gear. I, for one, have no problems getting a Surge of Light every 8 seconds.

And what with mana being one of the key issues of smiting, you once again see how Surge of Light has destroyed your chance for Penance and yet taken over your smiting world.

Interested in reading about priests trying to find their way to smite spec? Then check out Surge of Light on WoWHead. You’d be amazed how many people know, either from reading or simple deduction, that this is the backbone of Holy DPS; the discussion of smite spec is always centered around these 2 talent points in the middle of the Holy tree bedlam.

Your PvP dual spec might benefit from holy damage

Holy damage is considered useful for a wide variety of reasons, and yet is only available to smite priests and paladins. Here’s eight reasons you might’ve heard why Holy damage is considered a great asset in any DPS situation–and whether it’s true or not!

1. There’s no resistance to Holy damage. This is true. Races and classes reliant on resistance as part of their makeup will find no solace against Holy damage, making it ideal in PvP.
2. Holy damage bypasses resistance. I’ve yet to be able to confirm this, but rumors still float around about how Holy is unaffected by Resilience. I intend on testing this tomorrow. I know for quite some time in Burning Crusade, this rumor had a ring of truth to it.
3. Holy damage hits undead  creatures harder. While some paladin Holy spells are designed specifically to thwart demons and undead, it’s not a general rule that Holy hits an undead mob any harder than anything else. You’re thinking too much like Final Fantasy here.
4. A Retribution paladin can boost a Holy priest’s damage. In Burning Crusade, Retribution paladins could use Seal of Righteousness to improve Holy damage. Unfortunately, this mechanic was changed in Wrath of the Lich King and no longer benefits Holy priests.
5. There are no abilities that reduce Holy damage. Mages have the means to reduce/absorb Fire and Frost damage; mobs everywhere can avoid Nature and Shadow. But are there any that spite Holy? Believe it or not, a few mobs in World of Warcraft have Damage Reduction: Holy; check out which ones are able to thwart your spells!
6. There are mobs that are vulnerable to Holy damage. Just like how there are a few random mobs that reduce Holy damage, there’s a few that take increased Holy damage–and they’re not necessarily undead! A good example is Vek’nilash. Nice and random.
7. There will be a Holy form released some day that benefits Holy as much as Shadow benefits from Shadowform. In Sunwell Plateau, there were priests that could use Holyform and started a speculation pre-WotLK. Talk about the new expansion seems to stir this up here-and-there again. Unfortunately, even if Holyform was released, it would more than likely only affect healing spells. Holy damage isn’t going to see anything useful here.
8. There’s only one wand in the game that does Holy damage. In vanilla WoW, this was true, and it was the Wand of Eternal Light specifically. You can find all kinds of random forum posts from the ancient days about it. Now, there are six of them, including Nurturing Touch from 10M Auriaya and Fading Glow from 25M Loatheb.

Do you know any random trivia that may be a real benefit–or a debunked myth?–to Holy damage? Feel free to share!

"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.