I think you're overreacting a bit to what I said in the post. I specifically said that I don't recommend because of it's low throughput, but that it does have a place on certain fights. You even echo this general sentiment in the third paragraph of your own comment.

Sigh, I'll admit I sometimes feel like no matter what I say, anything other than the highest praise and admiration is met with scrutiny. It's very frustrating for me because my job is to give you guys what I feel is the best advice, and despite the fact that I incorporate when to use Atonement in all of my boss guides, or even in this stat guide, I'm still denounced as a hater of holy priests, atonement healing, and then some. The simple fact is, I try my hardest to look at the big picture and see both the strengths and weaknesses of all the facets of our class. I don't want to be blind to this, and I honestly think I'd be doing a terrible job if I made you guys blind to it to. So I tell you guys "this isn't really that great." I then usually immediately turn around and say "but you can probably still make it work, and here's how." I don't mean for you guys to think I hate this stuff, I just want to be as honest about some of it as I can. Sometimes honesty isn't always positive.

So, to reply to some of your fine points… yes, I do know that Atonement priests cast more than just Smite. I've used Atonement healing plenty in raiding (which you'll see in my boss guides) and all the time in 5-mans. I'd describe it as a sort of on and off again type of utility. You don't use it all the time, you find spare moments in fights to use it. Sometimes those moments are only enough to get off 1 or 2 casts, sometimes it's a minute long phase of downtime. The reason I even suggested not picking up Grace or Inspiration is because raid healing disc priests switch targets so frequently that neither would be useful. Don't forget I said that it really depends on what you're doing -- obviously if you're a tank healing atonement priest, you'll want both. I'm not sure why you think mastery in particularly is valued by Atonement in particular. It might benefit your particular playstyle of always keeping shields out (which sounds more like a general style with Atonement worked in) but if you have a theory let me know. I'd actually really recommend examining your individual rotation on the spreadsheet to see how it performs in the mathematical vacuum. You might find you can make little tweaks here or there to optimize it.

Anyway, if you want to know why I don't recommend smite, please allow me to explain. First it's a utility that cannot be used all the time but to use it at all you have to dedicate 5 talent points to it. Think about other utilities like Spirit of Redemption, Lightwell -- They're great when a fight calls for them, but are only used occasionally. As a result, they only cost 1 talent point. Okay, so let's say Smite has more usage than those two abilities… does it really have 5 points worth? I don't think so. You compare it to something like a Shaman's Telluric Currents, which allows shaman to restore mana by casting Lightning Bolt. TC costs 2 talents and does two things… extra damage and mana restoration. Atonement healing only offers extra damage and extra healing, but you have to consider what the actual value of extra healing is. The healing you do with Atonement healing is no where close in HPS or HPM to the healing you can do with normal spells (unless there is a damage gimmick like what we saw on Halfus.) So if you need healing, it's actually better to just heal with a normal heal. You could justify that Smite is a good way to fill the downtime, but you can also argue that the extra healing you're doing isn't even necessary and it might be better to just do nothing and restore your mana so you can go all out when things get hairy again.

Moving on to the damage perspective and Atonement looks even worse, since a disc priest can't even do half of what a normal DPS does. Atonement damage is what, 5-8k dps without a damage gimmick? Compare that to the average DPS doing 20k-25k, if not more, and you can't begin to justify a priest's contribution over an additional DPS. It's great in a 5-man to help speed stuff up, I'll agree to that, but in a raid if you're really hurting for DPS, it's usually better to just drop that healer in exchange for another DPS. After all, if you're spending time using atonement, how hard could the healing situation actually be?

Going back to the 5 talent point issue, there are a lot of better talents you can get if you don't pick up Atonement healing. Surge of Light, for example, is one of the most underrated disc tank healing talents available. Desperate Prayer is another underrated self heal that costs no mana and can be cast on the move. Darkness, to increase your casting. Veiled Shadows to reduce Shadowfiend's cd. The list goes on. Why give that up for less throughput than a normal heal, and mediocre damage? The only answer is personal preference, and that's fine, but that's really the only reason to take it. It's definitely not better than anything we have from an objective standpoint, and I'd struggle to say it was on truly on par with our other healing and talent choices as well.

And you want to know what? This isn't the way I want it to be. I wanted Smite to be something worth using and I have repeatedly lamented that Blizzard has not given us a good reason to use it other than novelty and some gimmick fights. I was devastated when they changed it in the beta to stop being a mana restoration mechanic and just made it this weird little alternative to casting Heal. Like you said, it makes things feel more interactive and that IS fun, but the fun comes at a price and it's not one I can say is worth pay for any objective reason. If you think Atonement healing is the red head stepchild, blame Blizzard. =/ I'd embrace it if I could.

Lots of typos in there x-x sorry. I can't see them after a while sometimes.

Hey Jhealy, don't worry that part of the comment wasn't directed at you, but the bulk of the comment was stuff I wanted to address to your original comment on page 1. Basically just explaining my gripe with smite healing and so forth. Now you know =)

As for the rest of your comment - I should probably stress where I'm coming from a bit because I think you're absolutely right. Without question, Smite healing works. It works in all raid comps, it works in 25 and 10. The thing is, I write from a very worst case scenario perspective. On most days I don't actually expect people to really -need- my articles... On most days I expect you guys to read this and say "I know that already, I know that already, I know that already, I do it like this and what she just suggested seems like overkill, I know that already."

The simple fact is, you guys know a ton of stuff about the game and about playing your own class that you don't give yourselves credit for. You don't need me to tell you what to do because what you're doing probably already works. You only need me when you hit a wall, and I'll be here when you do. When you hit a wall that's when most of this advice actually applies... when non-optimized talents need to get cut, when you need to adjust your stat weights to the best possible setup.

But I can't judge at what point an individual reader is going to need help versus another so I write stuff for the worst case scenario. I write from the perspective of little Annie the disc priest is in a raid that can't clear the first boss and she needs helping making her contribution the best it can possibly be so she can provide the best chances to kill that boss. In Annie's situation, she doesn't need Smite heals draining her mana during downtime because she's already starving for it healing Hotshot the hunter who stands in pools of poison sludge because he plays at 2 FPS and can't see them until he's been in them for 8 seconds.

So if you're not hitting a wall, feel free to ignore me most of the time. Sounds terrible, I know, but if something works for your needs then it does and you don't need me to tell you that for you to know it works. You have the empirical evidence already. =D

Oh and I agree with you on Maloriak. Atonement was an integral part of my personal healing strategy for the heroic version prior to patch 4.0.6, and 100% of my healing strategy on the normal mode. It really shines there, during and after progression.