Post by xoxinx
I've recently started a priest for the sole purpose of specing smite in addition to my 70 holy priest and I don't know why it gets so much hate. I mean, it obviously isn't a godly dps build or anything but I think it gets smacked down in situations where it shouldn't. There's a lot of emphasis on end game raiding here but a lot of people aren't there yet. If you look at Raezahl's posts, you can see that he only recently started playing so he's probably not considering specing it for a MT guild run...
To answer the original question:
Smite spec, often referred to as lolsmite, is a holy dps build. It primarily relies on
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=33154 as its damage source. In pvp, it can be combined with a downranked
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=25331 to help proc Surge of Light and allow you to kill with all insta-casts. It's a lot of fun in BGs but it won't get you on top of any damage meters. As far as PvE goes, I believe it will be viable up to a full Kara clear and I don't expect much more than that. There is a few youtube videos of a T5 smite priest in SSC although I'm not sure if it was before or after the bug.
The reason I'm using it is because I don't like shadow and I wanted a dps priest. Shadow bugs me because there's quite a few priests that are shadow from 1-69 and "good" holy priests 70, which seems to be more of an insult to our class than playing an unpopular spec. For the record, I'm not serious about end game raiding, especially with my smite priest.
Post by murakaz
I joined a guild recently, and has quite a few priests, and i hear alot about how good the Smite Spec is, and i was wondering what it looks like.
To answer the topic's actual question instead of mindlessly flaming him:
The smite spec tends to be some variation of
this build, where you get PI in the discipline tree and Surge of Light in the holy tree. Now obviously it has its pros and cons, I'll start with the cons that most people point out about the spec.
Cons:
No utility outside of Imp. Divine Spirit.
Mana Issues.
It's harder to reach the hit cap than shadow.
Smite doesn't scale well enough, and Holy Fire scales worse.
Pros:
It's more fun than shadow in PvE and especially PvP.
36 yard range on your main nuke as opposed to 24.
Better survivability in PvP due to being able to effectively heal yourself.
There are no partial resists for holy damage.
The smite priest tends to grab gear with spirit and crit, but hit and damage still come first (just like every other caster). You still use Mind Blast, and often save your Inner Focus for it... save Death and Pain for when you're required to move.
Also the build looks to get a lot more interesting in Lich King, through changes to the usefulness of spirit and buffs to Holy Fire and the addition of more spell power talents in the discipline tree.