Smite priest is a glorious build and it only becomes better in TBC. It fits a unique role of class flavor by providing damage as a ranged holy based spell caster. With the addition of TBC, the talent surge of light allows for a 50% after critical hit with spells to cause the next smite to be instant and free of mana, but it can not critically strike.
It is a unique different approach to strengthening the power of smite priest critical strikes versus just giving them 200% critical strike damage. When the expansion first landed, it was able to critically strike occasionally and effectively critically strike off itself - leading to scenarios of chains of instant smites. With TBC classic starting on 2.4 class balance, the experience is taken away and hurts the smite priests.
Patch 2.1.0 [Smite] spells triggered by this talent will no longer sometimes critically strike.
Possible solutions?
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The most balanced approach I believe that would help the smite priest is to allow the surge of light proc to allow the instant smite to critically strike, but not allow it to proc off itself. This allows priests to scale off of critical strike better and makes it so the talent does not scale worse with higher levels of crit. This would stop the situation that had to be fixed of priests getting spammable smite crits. This would effectively help with mana, damage, and scaling while keeping a unique approach to improving critical strike when compared to 200% critical strike damage.
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Allow the surge of light to critical strike and possibly chain off itself, but reduce the proc rate to 25% to reduce instants of long chains of instant smite. This would also help with scaling, mana, and damage with smite priests and promote a similar experience to the start of TBC, filling the classic experience we all want to enjoy.
Please share your thoughts and other suggestions to powering up the smite priest to where it truly belongs.