Smite is awesome.Follow

I look forward to giving a try later.

It balances out in Cata, tbh. You just about break even there - I doubt it needs a nerf.

Let me preface this by saying that my experience has been very very limited; I am a level 44 Priestess and I only got through 15 minutes of the dungeon before the server restarted.

I don't really like the whole smite mechanic from what i've seen. It was tough for me to target a mob and watch the healthbars and switch back and forth between friendlies and non-friendlies, and I'm not quite sure how to set up my "rotation" (although healing is less rotation heavy per se).

I LOVE that Penance is available at low-levels now. It is a wonderful utility.

So basically I'm looking for recommendations on how to use the smite mechanic (keep in mind my level) or an alternative Disc spec that doesn't rely on smite. Is that even viable now?

While I have thrown my hands up in disgust over the UI issues and thus haven't gotten close to trying these things... can't you just use mouseover macros for all the normal stuff and keep the hostiles targeted by hitting Tab every time a mob dies? I can't recall having had to use focus targets since the shackling of adds in early TBC raids, nor actually targeting a raid/party member from start to finish. Everything I can do to them I've got on mouseover macros, and it's generally faster to just mouse over the Grid/partyframes than actually having to click any of them.

I'm beginning to believe that the Smite glyph isn't really going to be worth it for PvE. It'll be nice while soloing high health mobs, but for a healer, keep this in mind;

A) You lose a glyph slot.

B) Your rotation changes, and as we're not trying to be a DPS here, this might not always optimal. Currently, we ideally Smite five times and then pop Archangel. Sometimes we might end up only having two or three GCDs to spare, and while throwing in a Holy Fire instead of that first Smite should be a slight DPS increase there, you'll have one less stack of Evangelism to use Archangel with. The thing is that your 'optimal rotation' becomes longer, and as a primary healer you might not be always able to get it in there. Especially not since you replace your first Smite with a Holy Fire, which means you don't get Atonement's heal in.

C) For a second, lets just imagine that grabbing the Smite glyph and going HF>SmiteX5>Archangel bumps our DPS by, lets grab an absurd number and say 50% over the SmiteX5>Archangel rotation. Instead of 5K DPS we're doing 7500 DPS. That's pretty cool but we are still playing a freaking healer. We should focus on keeping folks alive - DPS is what you do in your spare time, and I can guarantee that adding in that Holy Fire will at least once per fight impede your ability to heal.

Also, like I said, I became more interested in trying a Borrowed Time-less build. Result of these two considerations is that I might give this spec a whirl at 80, with those glyphs. Depending on how stuff looks like in Cataclysm, I might actually sod Inspiration and fill up Veiled Shadows while grabbing Desperate Prayer. I'm feeling radical!

Thank you! All very helpful. However, I am a bit macro-retarded. Any specific advice on how to set these macros you guys were talking about?

My Smite macro looks like this:

#showtooltip Smite 
/cast [exists,harm,nodead] Smite; [target=targettarget,exists,harm,nodead] Smite; 

If you copy and paste that into a macro (type /macro if you've never made one before), then drag that to your toolbar and bind it to a key, then every time you hit that key it will check both Target and ToT and cast Smite at whichever is the bad guy.

I find it's easiest to keep the tank targeted, although in situations where damage may vary widely (such as PVP bosses), I keep the boss targeted and use similar macros to heal whoever he's hitting at the moment.

Also, Healing UI like Vuhdo and other addons may have the option to indicate what spell to cast on mouseclick for a hostile target. I simply went to Vuhdo's spell definitions for hostile and entered Left click - Smite, Right click - Archangel, then show targets. No macro needed. But macros are cool too, and I certainly use my fair share of them.

Holy Fire doesn't take much time, and I often can squeeze in 5 smites before holy fire is off cooldown. The increase in dps equates to more healing. I have yet to try it in a raid though, and I am certainly open to change.

Sadly, Satrina Buff Frames hasn't been updated in a year, so I am focused on using Power Auras instead.

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 9:59pm by dadanox

Well. Smite was awesome. Until they just shut off Atonement and took my toy away without warning or explanation. Wah.

Edit:


I dowloaded a mod called Raven from WoW Interface. It does buffs/debuffs, cooldowns, and notifications, and seems to have some promise. The only glitch I'm having so far is that I can't right click buffs to remove them.

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 10:28pm by teacake

That's what I did. I set PowerAuras to have Evangalism using it's own graphic with a huge stack count that takes up the entire icon, which is displayed near mid screen. I am also watching the availability of Holy Fire and ArchAngel, so that they pop up when ready.

I ran a quick guild run of a 5 man to find what keybinds / spells I was missing, and other than bosses not working as scripted and us getting booted out of the dungeon, it was all good.

Some time last night I noted that Smite wasn't making my health bar go up at all, so I Googled "Atonement not working" and found a big ol' pig pile of whiny priests. I don't know how these things work, if it could be working on some realms and not others? Anyway if it's working for you consider yourself lucky. :)

Yes I do know. I can actually read, yay me! It was working as intended one minute and then not the next, despite me doing nothing differently. And I'm far from the only one having the problem.




Stop trying to tempt me, devil man!

;)

Fine. I'll put it on my second spec. BUT I WON'T LIKE IT.

It may actually be a while before I try it because I haven't even gotten a good chance to play with Disc yet and I'm not sure I can learn 2 things at once. :D