This is perhaps really aimed at Cepheus, as he's the only one I'm aware of who's already trodden this path, but if anyone else has any ideas I'm all ears!

I'm having another go with a priest team, exclusively for PvP. I'm going with 3 rather than a full team of 5, so I can fit them in with my wife's shammy twins when we feel like it.

I like to do things a bit off-beat, so I'm really curious about how a holy DPS build stands up against a shadow DPS build.

I had a quick search, and this was touched upon before, but I couldn't find any compelling evidence that holy DPS is actually *better* than shadow. The big gain, perhaps, is Holy Nova which looks rather nice with a group of Priests.

But by not going shadow, I would miss out on VE, improved Psychic Scream, Silence and Shadow Form (-15% physical damage taken, +15% shadow damage dealt) - all very nice talents indeed.

On the face of it, there also seems to be far more damage improvement abilities in the shadow tree compared to the disc / holy trees.

I had a look at the builds Cepheus posted some time ago, and also had a fiddle around with some of my own (such as this one but I don't see anything in a holy build that comes close to replacing what I lose by not having a Shadow build.

The big plusses for me are: no shape-shifting for healing (simplicity is good!), PBAoE damage that I wouldn't otherwise have, lack of holy resist items in the game and... erm... well, novelty value!

The other big down-side I see is gearing them up as holy DPSers. If I go shadow, I can just stick the FSW set on all of them at 70, but there's no easily-accessible equivalent for holy DPSers.

So, much as I love the idea of... a) doing something different, and... b) being able to heal without having to worry about shape-shifting, I've pretty much talked myself out of a holy DPS build.

Does anybody have any thoughts / opinions / experiences to add?

Cheers.