Shadow/Holy infoFollow

Hit 70 with my Lock last night...woot.....so I'm gonna role my second toon. I wanna do a Priest for a couple reasons, #1...Guilt....I've melted so many, and #2....respect.... they've always been my best friend in parties.......I'm so confused! lol My question is double edged....kinda. Is the Shadow priest better at healing than a Holy priest is at damage? I know the question kinda goes against each specs purpose, but perhaps you can see the reasoning for my question.

Edited, Nov 26th 2007 10:59pm by Hips

Its a properly tough one mate. What I think you're trying to ask is which one is more capable wrt their secondary aspect. In which case I would say that a holy priest is better at damage than a shadow priest is at healing. Its a bit of a generalisation but with the correct spec its probably the right answer.

I currently have a 41 priest that is holy specced for healing and smiting with surge of light (just left the 39 BGs). I'm able to heal very effectively, but I'm also able to dish out some punishment in short order. With +200 spell dmg/healing on my gear, smite crits for over 600 and if it procs surge of light that is another 400 instantly. With 5/5 holy specialization, I have a total of about 13% crit rate with holy spells.

By running down the holy tree you can get some strong offensive capabilities while keeping to a basic core of healing spells.

Agreed ... if you spec mostly holy/disc and just take a few talents in smite and surge of light, you benefit from the same other talents that affect your healing. Like the percentage of your spirit going to +healing also does +damage. When I was specced with smite talents, I had about 870 +spell damage without really trying to collect special gear for it. I was a full healer for the raids, but could switch to dps in 5 mans if needed. Throwing smites, I could out-damage most 5-man toons (unless they were geared out DPSers from raiding). The problem becomes mana efficiency. You can do great burst damage, but you will go OOM much faster than a shadow specced priest. I did try smiting in kara once and I was about 3-4 on the damage meter some fights, higher or lower on others, but I was drinking a lot more than the other casters. It really is not for raiding at all. If you like to do battlegrounds/arena though, I highly recommend it. You can deal out some good damage and still be ready to provide the heals with no switching down time.

Ah, good to know, thanks. Yeah, that is handy.