Fisher

He's talking about Vampiric Touch from The Burning Crusade.

Grazie. I haven't gone through the effort to level a priest of every race, so I was actually unaware that was the case. Finding accurate information regarding vanilla is difficult. I've updated the guide to reflect this finding.

Nor is there a single resource stating that it didn't lower your miss chance. Something, by the way, we've been asking for you to provide. Saying the "EJ's research" over and over doesn't prove shit. Show us some links to that information and maybe we'll believe you. Until then, you're just a random noob whom has no idea of what they're talking about.

Please don't lie and misinform up-and-coming hunters with your garbage. http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Hit Learn to read: "Racial bonuses provided +Weapon Skill, and thus turned out to be pretty valuable for improving your +hit capability. For Humans, Dwarves, Orcs and Trolls their racial bonuses increased their Weapon Skill at Level 60 from 300 to 305. With a 305 Weapon Skill, your base miss rate against a Level 63 mob (or skull boss) was only 6% instead of 9%." Nowhere on that page does it say anything about it being capped by your level. What it says is that your base weapon skill maximum is determined by your level, which is where you get the Level*5 thing. However, weapon skill can be raised above that, and higher weapon skill will reduce your miss chance. Provide some links, please? Everything I've found (literally everything) shows that weapon skill affects hit cap. It was that way in vanilla (when I played); it has been that way in every private server I've ever played on; everyone (except you) agrees that's how it works; that's how it works here (have tested it with my troll hunter; can confirm); you can't provide any evidence to support your claim, and I refuse to believe some random noob whose first post was disagreeing with a well-established fact. Also, read up on this page: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Weapon_skill "Patch 1.4.0 (2005-05-05): Fixed a bug where weapon skills were inappropriately capped at 5 times level. Characters should now gain benefit from weapon skill bonuses beyond their normal cap." "Prior to patch 2.0, some items granted extra Weapon Skill directly, making it possible to have a weapon skill in excess of your level * 5." So please stop spreading your lies and misinformation. It has the very serious potential to turn future hunters into the dreaded "huntard."

If you have to fear someone to kill them, you're probably not doing enough DPS. Cast more Mind Blasts and wand. Power Word: Shield yourself on cooldown and just do as much DPS as possible. Even while leveling my priest (as Horde), I almost never encountered someone who didn't break out of my fear immediately. I began to focus more on killing the enemy instead of trying to survive. If it's not efficient, you're not doing it right. As for being lame, welcome to vanilla. Enjoy your 3 button rotation, at best. No, there isn't. If you level as anything other than shadow, you are screwing yourself. There will be a plethora of people who will say "I leveled as disc/holy and it was fine," but they forget to mention that fine is slow as a snail. You won't have issues (because honestly, leveling is stupidly easy; it's just tedious), but your DPS will suck, your healing will hardly be any better, your survivability will be in the toilet, and your CC will be weakened. It is objectively worse. If you're getting bored of leveling, I recommend taking a break. Getting burned out might not be the result of the spec, but the general grind that is vanilla. Take some time away from Nostalrius/Elysium. Play another game for a few days. Give yourself time to want to play it again, then come back. Alternatively, level an alt. Perhaps priest simply isn't for you.

You said spirit regeneration never stops. That's wrong. It only "never stops" if you have effects that allow a percentage of your mana regeneration to continue while casting. Downranking has absolutely nothing to do with mana regeneration. If you cast a spell, regardless of its rank, mana regeneration from spirit is interrupted. But you specifically stated that both Martyrdom and Meditation are mandatory talents for you in any spec, so I don't care if you didn't link shadow builds; you were also talking about mana regeneration for shadow builds: Good thing I didn't mention PvP then, huh? The troll racial is not a talent, and it doesn't affect mana regeneration. It affects health regeneration. While spirit does affect health regeneration, it's not relevant to the discussion of mana regeneration, nor does it pertain to the talent Martyrdom or Meditation.

Assuming you are attacking a boss (level 63), their defense level will be 315. If the difference between your weapon skill and the target's defense is greater than 10, the formula for calculating miss chance is this: 7% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill - 10)*.4%. If your weapon skill is 300, the formula is this: 7% + (315-300-10)*.4% = 9%. So the hit cap is 9%. Whether or not it's 8.6% or 9% isn't really relevant, since "never missing" would imply >= 8.6% hit, and as you mention, since hit chance in vanilla only increases in increments of 1%, the effective cap is 9%. Wasting .4% hit (even if the hit cap were 8.6%) is not nearly as big of a DPS loss as missing .6% of the time. If the difference between your weapon skill and their defense is less than or equal to 10, the formula for calculating miss chance is this: 5% + (Defense Skill - Weapon Skill)*.1% If your weapon skill is 305 (from a racial bonus, for example), the formula is this: 5% + (315-305)*.1% = 6%. So the hit cap for trolls with bows or dwarves with guns is 6%. This means going from 300 weapon skill to 301 weapon skill is effectively lowering your miss chance by 2.6%. However, each point after that has a very lessened effect. 301 to 302 weapon skill only decreases miss chance by .1%. Tranquilizing Shot always has a 1% chance to miss, regardless of your + hit, if I'm not mistaken. Not sure about Arcane Shot.

Never had that issue. Mind Flay will do only 2 ticks if I take damage, but if uninterrupted, always do 3 ticks. Granted, I play late at night (and have decent internet), so the server is rarely ever laggy and I'm almost never laggy. I have no idea why it's happening, but the spell sometimes only ticking twice sounds very fishy to me.

Statements like this make me immediately think "user error." If it works sometimes, then sometimes you're doing something different. What is your connection like? Try waiting a little longer in between casts. Give yourself sufficient time to ensure no casts are being clipped be a second cast. It is entirely possible even a second or two delay is not enough. Also, are you being damaged and having the cast knocked back? Are you testing this on mobs (that will hit you back) or players (who won't hit back)? There's a good reason people will ask that question first. The addon / macro (which is it? They're very different things) is actually exactly why I assume you're clipping the cast. People who rely on those things tend to be... not good, and those things tend not to work. Your willingness to trust the addon/macro will work is foolish. The first thing you should expect is that it isn't working. Again with the "sometimes" bit. What is different? There's absolutely zero reason it would sometimes do 3 ticks and other times only do 2 ticks without some variables not being accounted for. Never heard of such a bug. It might be well known on garbage-tier servers run by 12 year olds, but Nostalrius/Elysium is a little better than those kinds of servers. Lumping it in with all private servers is asinine.

You're using an addon to allow you to spam Mind Flay, and you immediately dismiss the notion that the casts are too frequent and the duration is being cut short? Have you tried casting Mind Flay without the addon? Does this happen when you leave a second delay between casts, or only when cast in rapid succession?

Both Purge and Earth Shock are in vanilla. This is also technically incorrect. http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Spirit and http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Mana_Regeneration. It's important to note that, while spirit regeneration actually does continue ticking, for 5 seconds after casting, the value of said regeneration is 0%. For all intents and purposes, regeneration stops. All spirit-based regeneration is halted for 5 seconds after casting. Mp5 is the type of mana regeneration that is never interrupted. The only thing that allows your spirit-based mana regeneration to continue ticking after casting is talents, set bonuses, and other similar effects that say "Allows x% of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting." That would depend on what percentage of the fight you spend in the 5 second rule. If you are good at regenerating mana and casting only every 5-7 seconds, then spirit is good, but mp5 tends to be better for all casters and healers, including priests. If you are shadow, spirit is near worthless (except while leveling and soloing). If you are holy, you're not going to be making choices between spirit vs mp5 very often. More likely, you'll be picking up the items with the most spell power to get the most out of your casts. Because of Spiritual Guidance, it's likely most spirit items will be better than mp5 items, but if the spell power after Spiritual Guidance comes out to the same value, then the mp5 will usually be better. This only applies to Alliance, though.

I'm actually not sure about Improved Counterspell. I'm fairly certain it will resist the interrupt portion of the spell, but not the debuff that is applied, meaning the spell will not be locked out for 10 seconds like normal, but only for the 4 second duration of the silence. I'm not 100% certain on that, though. I think it's possible the debuff is not applied if the interrupt is resisted. Would need someone to test and confirm either way. A shadow priest's silence is not resisted. It is a debuff that silences. It isn't an interrupt. Purge makes absolutely no sense. Purge removes debuffs. It isn't an interrupt. Mana can only regenerate if you have not cast a spell for 5 seconds. This includes the duration of a channeled spell, which means that the timer is started at the initial cast of a channeled spell, such as Mind Flay or Starshards. In the case of Mind Flay, because of its 3 second duration, you will only have to wait 2 seconds after it has finished casting to start regeneration mana. In the case of Starshards, you actually begin to regenerate mana before its channel is completed. By "breaking the 5 sec rule," he means that Meditation allows your mana to partially continue regenerating even while casting. Using the previous examples, with 1/3 Meditation, you'd keep at least 5% of your mana regeneration even while channeling Mind Flay, and the remaining 95% of your mana regeneration would continue 2 seconds after you finished channeling Mind Flay.

It is referring to abilities that are interrupts. This includes Kick, Pummel, Spell Lock, Feral Charge, Earth Shock, and Counterspell. Silence is a debuff that is placed on the target. It doesn't "interrupt" the target, it prevents them from casting, the application of which interrupts the cast. Technically, this talent does not resist Silence. Gouge is an incapacitate. Similarly, although it will interrupt a cast, it is not considered an interrupt; it is simply a debuff, the application of which interrupts the cast. This talent does not resist incapacitate effects. If he tries to kick, yes. If he stuns, disorients, incapacitates, or uses any item that impedes control of your character beyond an interrupt, no.

My point is that things aren't always the same across servers. I even specifically stated that Kronos is not one of the garbage tier random servers, implying that it was likely not as buggy as some servers can be. However, the point still stands: test it here, or it means nothing -- or, at the very least, not as much. And therein lies my point. It is different, so what you find there does not matter here. Test it here, where everything is the same, not nearly the same. Who knows what else is different? So anyone who disagrees with you has no room in the discussion, or are you saying that I'm being bigoted against priests and refuse to acknowledge any of your points? Just from my quick reread of the entire thread, seems to me like you're the one who's been failing to read closely enough. In fact, several of your posts include something along the lines of "X thing you said is dumb, so I didn't bother to read the rest of it." Like so: You say things like this... ... then later say things like this: Not to mention, you've still not proven this claim: Is the DPS provided in logs and screenshots impressive? Absolutely. I applaud the priest(s) and paladins involved. You managed to make disc/holy priests do... okay damage. In a couple of the fights, the burst is quite high, but the sustained DPS is not. Now if you wanted to argue "I meant at a brief moment during the opening cooldowns and burst a holy/disc priest can easily get 700 DPS," fine. Well played. I just assumed you meant sustained DPS throughout an entire fight. Well, I've yet to see it. You've provided zero evidence to support your claim. I haven't ignored the math at all. In fact I've been arguing the math with you. When I win with the math, you instead resort to ad hominems. I've acknowledged your arguments. I have also debated/refuted most of them. I'm not being toxic. You are. Do another read through all your posts. You're right. I don't like the idea of priests throwing their time and gold in the trash by respeccing, gearing, and enchanting to play a spec that I think is not good enough to warrant bringing to a raid, but it's your character; it's your time; it's your gold. I'm going to try my best to convince you (and any priests reading) that the answer to "Is it viable to play disc/holy as DPS?" is "No."

Classic tactic. "I didn't even bother to read what you said, so you must be wrong." So convincing. You really make everyone believe you are correct when you outright refuse to address any points I make. LOL I know exactly how it works, and how it's worked for pretty much every version of WoW. I also know that higher crit chance means less chance of Ignite falling off, so how you could possibly argue that 4 of the mages having 3% more crit would ever possibly be a bad thing. Or just have 5 mages, and 4 of them go in the group with the boomkin. We were talking about replacing rets with boomkins and ferals, not mages. I love that you call it "nonsense BS," yet you honestly think it's a choice between 5 mages or 4 mages and 1 boomkin. How about 5 mages and 1 boomkin? Then 4 of them have the extra 3% crit, and you keep the fifth. Since you're our math wizard, go ahead and crunch the numbers. Tell me the chance to keep Ignite rolling with that. Spoiler alert: It's fucking higher. OH! And don't forget that mages have higher DPS anyway as a result of more frequent crits. A 1.6% lower chance to keep Ignite rolling is probably worth 4 mages have 3% crit and however much more DPS that would grant them, so even in your example, it's definitely worth taking the boomkin. I know you'll say "if Ignite falls off, that's a massive DPS loss," and I'd agree, but we're talking very slim chances here. Now, I'll admit... I actually don't know exactly how Combustion works. Nowhere I am looking shows its cooldown, and I don't actually have a mage. I was under the impression it was 10 minutes. It lasts 3 crits. 10% more crit chance for 3 crits, then it's gone for (probably) the rest of the fight. Is that not how it works in this patch/on this server? ... But go ahead... continue to pick out one tiny, insignificant point and continue to change the conversation from disc/holy DPS to something else to continue avoiding the fact you still have not proven a priest can do 700 DPS as disc/holy "easily" without sacrificing your raid's overall DPS (Yeah, I'm waiting on that, still). The whole point of me bringing up the raid comp was to discuss how going so far to boost the damage of a priest is ridiculous because of what you sacrifice to get what you want.

Have you actually read the tooltip for Ignite? "Your critical strikes from Fire damage spells..." Sounds to me like critical strike chance is fairly relevant. Just because there are several mages doesn't change the fact those mages need the crit to maintain Ignite. Not to mention having more crit means more DPS in the first, and since, unlike holy DPS priests (lol), they crit for a lot more (and more often), I'd say it's worth putting them in a group with a balance druid. I never said to bring multiple. I can understand an argument being made to bring a single retribution paladin (Nightfall), but multiple is silly. Similarly, bringing multiple balance druids is a waste of raid slots. You stick your best 4 casters (warlocks, or mages if you're doing content where Fire is viable) in the group, and the rest can deal with it. Honestly, I don't know why you're in this thread. It's about disc/holy DPS, not retribution paladins and Nightfall. Oh wait, I think I understand: you've taken every opportunity to hijack the thread and make it all about how you can keep your raid slot. If you hype up smite priests, you make yourself (a retribution paladin) useful to them, and by going a step further and saying you need 4-6 retribution paladins, you're also guaranteeing they'll take even the shittiest of retribution paladins just to have the debuff on the boss. You can have a slot for SW:P if you're not wasting it on Judgment of the Crusader, but it isn't necessary to maintain Shadow Weaving. Mind Flay doesn't take up a debuff slot; it has a very low priority on the debuff priority list, so if you apply it, it will simply fail to apply the slow (which is the debuff part of the spell), but it will still deal its damage. Shadow Weaving is 15% damage; it's not insignificant. Also... 3 warlocks? Why so few? No wonder you have this warped misunderstanding of the various classes and specs' usefulness; you've got a terrible raid composition. Your hunters would greatly appreciate 126 more attack power for literally all their attacks. It's certainly more DPS than another lower ranked Judgement of the Crusader. Considering they'll be attacking the entire fight, there's no reason for it not to be present, especially if you free up the half dozen debuffs reserved for boosting a smite priest. Also helps if you have more hunters, but that varies from raid to raid, I suppose. Useless. This isn't Kronos. How things work on other servers is almost completely irrelevant to how they work here. Kronos isn't some garbage tier random server with 20 people, but the point still stands. Test it here, where it matters, or your results mean nothing. Short answer, yes and no. A good player (as good as one could be while playing disc/holy DPS) would be buffing the best caster in the raid, which probably would not be themselves... unless the entire raid would built around them doing high DPS. It basically boils down to who is the best geared and who is the best DPS in the raid. If that happens to be the priest, then there's no reason not to buff themselves. Yes. Its uptime with even a single retribution paladin is quite high. More Nightfalls obviously means higher uptime, but it has diminishing returns (not built-in game mechanics), in the sense that the first one will obviously be providing the most uptime per weapon. At that point, every extra Nightfall is just shrinking the amount of time remaining where Nightfall is not present. You'd have to figure out if it's worth it for your raid to have two or more melee sacrificing their damage by using an inferior weapon to buff the damage of the rest of the raid. Then they shouldn't be playing paladins. That's sort of how the class was designed; even retribution. That's also retribution's only viable role in a raid. They'll always be the best spec in the Alliance for using Nightfall, and their personal DPS is going to be subpar at best, so having them use Nightfall is sort of an inevitability. I'd say the only reason a retribution paladin shouldn't be using Nightfall in a raid is that they don't have it. Reducing armor so the real DPS can do more damage. You're making an argument for ret paladins wielding Nightfall, and you want to say that the guaranteed damage bonus is a possibility? I think you got things reversed. Nightfall is what potentially provides the raid with more DPS; Shadow Weaving, Moonkin Aura, and Leader of the Pack are what guaranteed provides the raid with more DPS, of course assuming that the players filling those roles aren't terrible. I guess the argument you're making is that Nightfall potentially has the chance to give more DPS than the guaranteed buffs would? I'm not sure I follow. Where is everyone getting this idea that Mind Flay takes up a debuff slot? It will literally fail to apply the debuff if there's no room for it, but it will still deal its damage. Even if it applies the debuff and another debuff overwrites it, the channel will continue. I do agree with the sentiment of having priests not use SW:P if you need room for other debuffs, though.

That would depend largely on the DPS you'd be replacing the boomkin with, and how well your raid's groups are set up. For example, a balance druid in a group with four warlocks will provide a significant amount of DPS to the raid from the increased up time of Improved Shadow Bolt, or four fire mages stacking Ignite. Also, if I'm not mistaken, the Moonkin Aura affects healers' chance to heal, which would be useful for dedicated tank healers stacking Inspiration/Ancestral Healing. Perhaps I overstated their usefulness, but my point was that they simply provide far more to a raid than a retribution paladin does. Unless the raid group is designed around half the raid doing holy damage, they don't bring anything useful. Ram argues about Nightfall, but forgets that shamans can use Nightfall, as well, and actually provide buffs to the group that is useful to more than just themselves. Now, that's a discussion about horde/alliance, and doesn't really apply to priests, but yeah. The extra tank avoidance seems like it would save a lot of healers' mana over the course of a fight, and higher avoidance means less chance of being globaled. Perhaps I'm thinking more along the lines of progression where every little bit helps. When the content is on farm, you'd care more about killing the boss 30 seconds faster than you would about keeping your tanks from dying, so you could refrain from using it. And the retribution paladin with likely do <400 dps and won't buff the other four players' damage at all... unless they're other retribution paladins and weird smite priests. At least someone gets it. At the expense of Shadow Weaving, Hunter's Mark, other procs, and a great deal of raid-wide DPS by stacking that many retribution paladins and smite priests. You're basically balancing the entire raid around making you and other holy damage dealers look good (and by good, I mean still pretty bad, but good for your spec), when a real raid comp would be giving the other classes more damage and there'd be more 'real' DPS. Anyway, I'm done arguing about it. In a lot of cases, I'd be concerned with telling people how to play so they don't make the rest of us priests look bad by doing things like playing smite DPS, but honestly, you're all Alliance anyway, so I kind of hope you do stupid things.

Boomkins are essential to any raid, though. Retribution paladins are not. Boomkins bring crit chance to other casters and a reduced chance for the boss to hit tanks. The only thing a retribution paladin brings is a debuff that oddly enough boosts the damage of no one but themselves and weird priests who try to DPS as disc/holy. Everything else they bring, a holy paladin is also capable of bringing (and does, if they're not noobs). The issue is not "this class is a hybrid, therefore it is bad," it's simply that retribution in particular is bad. Arguably, the thing it's most useful for is applying Nightfall, so if you're willing to accept that a ret's DPS will not be the best but will have a relatively high up-time on Nightfall, then they're okay.

Good points. I suppose you are correct. Like I said, I don't know one way or the other, and I like to think about the possibilities. Only way to know for sure is to test it, and it's difficult to accurately assess whether the raid lost or gained DPS as a result of Lupos being used because of how much numbers can vary even when controlling for all controllable variables. Is there a SimulationCraft for vanilla? Haha. Seems like it would be far more important in vanilla than it would be in retail.

If the warlock crits on the first stack, he gains 400 damage, but the stacks remain at 4. Effectively, if we assume Lupos had consumed the remaining charges, that's 120 damage that didn't happen. I'm just saying that if the warlock is critting and wasting stacks by resetting them to 4 each time, then it doesn't matter if there's a Lupos consuming the rest. Obviously warlocks aren't going to crit with every Shadow Bolt, but with several warlocks, it's bound to happen enough to justify bringing Lupos. Ideally, you'd want to balance the frequency of Shadow Bolt crits with the number of Lupos attacks going out. If every hunter had Lupos, it might be too frequent, such that no warlock would ever get a Shadow Bolt boosted by the debuff. That's obviously bad. It's a bit like energy capping, in a sense. If you aren't using your abilities, every time your energy regens, it's "wasted." That energy could have been spent and then regenerated. Similarly, those stacks of Improved Shadow Bolt could have been consumed, but they were not. And to be perfectly honest, I have no idea if it's a raid-wide DPS loss or gain either way. There are some folks -- *cough* Guybrush *cough* -- who just want to assume that the bigger number is obviously better for the raid without considering the complexities of the situation.

Yeah, because aside from Judgments, Blessings, and Sanctity Aura, your group has nothing else to give you. You already have Arcane Brilliance/Intelligence and Gift/Mark of the Wild, and every buff you can give yourself. You're not Alliance, so you don't get any of the good stuff you care about. Nothing else is of value to you. You mentioned three things they could have given you to help, but... I'm not sure what good a shaman would do you, really. Mana Spring Totem? Woohoo. Better spent on healers, I'd say. The boomkin's group should be full of crit-dependent casters like... well, warlocks and mages, because your crits are less valuable than a mage's/warlock's crits. You could even put a DS/SH Priest or Restoration Shaman to maintain the armor buff on tanks from crit heals. You could argue that it would be worthwhile to give you Innervate, since you're so horribly mana-inefficient, but at the same time, I'd rather gave it to a healer. Who gets Innervate varies from group to group. It doesn't surprise me that they wouldn't give you Innervate. Yeah, no kidding, but the whole point of being a DPS spec is to do damage, not to heal. If your shadow priest is off-healing, it's probably a wipe anyway, so it doesn't matter if you're better at it than them; they're not healers. And if you mean your off-healing is better than the healing gained from Vampiric Embrace, short version is no it isn't. They can do damage and heal at the same time. You have to choose which you want to do. On trash, maybe not. Holy Nova is great for AoE. It's a good mix of healing and damage. Okay, so you found your niche: BWL trash! Yay! Uhh... if you're "often" that far ahead of everyone, you should be dedicating yourself fully to DPS. To do otherwise is a disservice to your raid. So far we've seen screenshots of your damage on Twins and Ebonroc. You were top damage done on Twins (understandably), but not top damage done/DPS on Ebonroc. You certainly weren't doing 700+ DPS. If you're a filler role, I'd rather just have you be primarily a healer who tosses out smites during downtime. In fact, we call them "normal" priests. They do their job (heal), and on fights where not as much healing is needed, they Smite. What this thread is about is a dedicated DPS role for a discipline/holy priest. If you're a "filler role," then you've not made any case that such a thing is viable, or even feasible. Thanks for arguing my point for me. This could be said of every caster. That's what vanilla is like for most raiders: no-life farming in between raids. The fact doing so is what is necessary to make holy DPS even comparable to casters who don't do any such thing is what makes the spec so bad. A mage/warlock could just show up, give buffs, then pewpew as normal and do just as much damage. Now when you start tossing in crazy things like Judgment stacking, which were rightfully fixed at one point and then unfixed for vanilla authenticity, you might start to see holy become more powerful. It was never intended that those things stacked, and it was never intended for holy to do competitive DPS. I don't see what is particularly challenging about playing a spec that presses one button (just like every other caster, essentially) for the entirety of the fight, using runes and potions as needed. Clearly. I specifically said: Every frost mage will have these talents. Every mage will have Curse of Elements on the target. I was commenting on how it was misleading to present the base damage of the spell assuming some talents, but not all talents, and by not assuming the spells that would also be there in the first place. Not every priest will have Sanctity Aura. Every mage will have Curse of Elements. Even if you include the talents every priest would have (Divine Fury and Searing Light), the base DPS of Frostbolt is higher than Smite. You said in your spreadsheet that Smite is better. It isn't. But, okay, not every mage will have the highest rank. Fair enough. However, the crit multiplier of Frostbolt, higher crit chance, and better spell power ratio all make up for that in spades. I did look at the screenshots. I did look at the spreadsheet. I did look at the logs. What I saw was a seemingly well geared priest doing okay DPS. I saw a niche fight where holy damage is very valuable. What I didn't see (and what I've been asking for over and over and over and over and over and over and over...) is proof that you can do 700+ DPS as a holy priest without sacrificing your raid's overall DPS. No, theorycrafting and spreadsheets are not proof. Great points. I hadn't considered that. "Anyone who disagrees with me is a child and isn't worth talking with." Sorry, but I'm not interested in buying your salt.

Fair enough. That depends on the boss, though, doesn't it? I agree. People (warlocks) are going to see their DPS going down because Improved Shadow Bolt is consumed by Lupos and think it's bad for the raid without ever considering the possibility of Lupos being a raid-wide DPS gain. Same thing that happens normally. The stacks get consumed faster. I imagine the debuff wouldn't last more than a second if you had more than one Lupos in the raid. At the very least, you'd ensure none of those stacks are wasted. Every Shadow Bolt crit would provide the full benefit of Improved Shadow Bolt.

To be more open minded? I'm saying (and others have been saying) PROVE IT TO ME. That means I'm totally open to the idea. I'm not going to just take your word for it. Show me some evidence it works. Show me a holy priest doing 700 DPS without ruining the raid's overall DPS, and I'll do this: Doesn't sound like I'm being close-minded, does it? It sounds to me like you just want me to believe whatever you say without ever having to prove it. I've listened plenty. You've done none of the same, apparently. I'm willing to discuss the theory with you, as I have, but nothing either of us says is going to make any difference when neither of us provide logs. Seeing as how you (and others) are the ones making statements like "holy DPS priests are viable," the burden of proof falls on your shoulders. Prove it, or I won't believe you. I understand that theory crafting wasn't as prevalent in vanilla as it is now, but doesn't it stand to reason that at least one of the top raiding guilds in the world throughout vanilla would have figured out that holy priests are one of the best DPS specs in the game, and would have based their raid compositions around that? Doesn't it stand to reason that, throughout more than a decade, people might have figured that out and started making use of it? Do you know why they don't bring holy DPS priests? It's not because they're close minded and don't want to try new things; it's because it doesn't work. Even if you're capable of reaching the numbers you claim, you sacrifice so much to get it. You're cutting 10%, maybe more, of your raid's DPS to boost the damage of one person. Even if you brought several holy priests to make up for the loss, it's simply not worth it, because... And that is another of the downsides to holy DPS. They bring nothing. Sure, you could off-heal, but that defeats the purpose of being there and stacking retribution paladins to boost your damage, doesn't it? So no healing, no buffs (except the same buff every priest will bring and the group would have anyway), no debuffs, and competitive DPS at best. Now stack on top of all that the fact you're sacrificing so much raid DPS and utility in order to make the spec even remotely worthwhile. Do the numbers in your spreadsheet account for things like Improved Shadow Bolt, Shadow Weaving, Winter's Chill, Curse of Elements/Shadow? Do they account for talents? I'm looking at the base DPS of Frostbolt (rank 11), for example. The actual base DPS of the spell is 178.33. I figured that means you went ahead and accounted for the reduced cast-time, which is good, except you forgot to account for other talents a mage would pick up, like Piercing Ice. 515 to 555 damage (if I'm not mistaken), averaging 535 damage. 535 * 1.06 (Piercing Ice, not all mages will have Arcane Instability) = 567.1 average damage 567.1 divided by 2.5 cast speed (Improved Frostbolt talent) = 226.84 average DPS 226.84 multiplied by 1.1 (Curse of Elements) = 249.52 average DPS It's a little more complicated to show how much DPS would be gained by Winter's Chill and other crit modifiers, but I think it's safe to assume that mages will simply crit more often, and thus their average DPS will actually be higher than that (even before gear). It has better spellpower scaling than Smite, as you mention, it crits for more, it crits more often, it has a higher DPM, and it doesn't require 6 retribution paladins to be useful; only one other mage for Winter's Chill and one warlock for Curse of Elements, which you don't have to go out of your way to get. Your spreadsheet and the information within it (specifically in the second tab) is deliberately misleading. It's incredibly unfair to start your assessment of the spells by assuming some talents but not others, and without assuming any of the relevant (and always present) raid debuffs. Before you say "I didn't account for Curse of Elements because I didn't account for Sanctity Aura and Judgement stacking," keep in mind that I said always present. Every mage gets these. Not every priest is Alliance, and not every Alliance raid group will have Judgement stacking. I'm happy to allow you Sanctity Aura, since it isn't that uncommon, but even then, it's for Alliance only, meaning it doesn't apply to every priest. It also ignores the fact warlocks can Life Tap, effectively meaning they have endless mana and can DPS indefinitely, whereas a priest cannot. Mages also have mana gems, Evocation, and talents that reduce the mana cost of their spells. Priests have none of these things. They are far more likely to run out of mana than their fellow casters. Honestly, I appreciate the effort you went through to describe the inner workings of the class. It's more effort than most in this thread have put forth. However, it simply ignores every single request to prove it works. You can show me the numbers in a spreadsheet all day long, but until you show me it working in a practical situation, I don't care how good you make it look.

Uh... you're in the wrong thread, or you don't know how to read. This isn't about shadow priests. Thus why I said to get a group together. Find a "holy DPS priest" and give them that sweet, sweet judgment stacking. It's called logs, bro. Maybe provide some, which is what everyone so far has been saying? Before you say "Oh, but tippsarve topped DPS meters, blah blah blah," no, he did not. He didn't top DPS. He didn't top damage dealt. He didn't get 700 DPS. Show some logs proving you can get 700 DPS as a holy priest.

Why are they trying to prove it, or why are we trying to prove otherwise? I can only speak for myself, but there's nothing else I'm interested in replying to on any of the sub-forums I frequent. So get a group together and try it on alliance, proving your theory. Get it now? As the rest of us have been saying again and again... prove it. Don't just give us napkin math. If you can prove it works (700+ DPS and no overal loss of raid DPS), I'll gladly rescind my statements about it not being viable.