Smite Priest 101

a.k.a. Holy Priest DPSing: What is it an how does it work?

This spec relies on two key spells to dish out damage: Smite and Holy Fire. Smite is a simple nuke with a 2-second cast time (talented); what makes Smite so powerful is that it gets 43% of the caster's spellpower, as well as talents that boost its crit chance by an additional 5% and damage by 15%. Surge of Light, the quintessential Smite Priest talent, gives you a free, instant-cast Smite when you crit with the ability (similar to, but not the same as, Lightning Overload and Sudden Doom).

Holy fire is your other nuke, with a 10-second second cooldown that applies a 7-second holy DoT ('Damage Over Time') on the target. With Glyph of Smite, the two spells interact to give Smite a 20% damage boost when the DoT is on the target (nifty!). For AOE situations, Holy Nova is available.

Most of the rest of the Smite Priest's talents will be spent in the Discipline tree, to pick up Inner Focus and Power Infusion, which add to your arsenal of cooldowns to use when you need that extra bit of damage.

From the Shadow School, we may be able to weave in Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague and Shadowfiend if we can spare the Global Cooldown (GCD) to cast them.

The final build should look something like this: 34/30/7

Until next time