A Dwarf Priest

Holy priest DPS builds have been around since Holy Nova was the 31 talent in the holy tree. Oddly, in the past two days, I have seen more posts the the WoW official priest forum asking about the raid viability of these “lolsmite” talent builds than ever before. As I stated in a previous post, it is theoretically possible with the presence of a delicate class set up, and some fairly high stats (over 1k +damage, 30% crit., etc.).

Well, Soulcorruptr of Laughing Skull gave it a go. He “Smite DPSed a full Karazhan run.“

I had previously postulated that the hidden utility that may make attempting such a thing worth it is the ability to heal without switching form. Soulcorruptr had a better thought about how this build best helped his raid:

One thing that Smite Priests definitely bring to a raid: embarassment. By the end of this Kara run, people were really starting to pop consumables and play a more alert game to avoid being “that guy who got out DPSed by a Smite Priest”.

I would never have guessed that by raiding as a holy smiter, you could increase a raid’s DPS a noticeable percent from risk of embarrassment alone.

Soulcorruptr says he hovered in the 2-3 spot on the DPS chart for the first few bosses. Given that:

• His spec was non-optimal
• He was working with the still broken (hopefully fixed with the patch tomorrow!) Surge of Light talent
• He lacked the proper class balance to fully buff his DPS
• He hit the threat ceiling

… There is a chance that this might be more viable than previously predicted.

I doubt it will ever become common, given its high dependence on other classes in order to perform, and the high amount of +crit needed from gear to optimize its DPS. However, I do think there is much more discussion and theorycrafting to come on this.