A fine point conical bit has very poor thermal transfer compared to a small bevel (hoof) bit, because there is very little copper inside it right at the tip. Its also much more difficult to keep wetted with solder. It does have its uses, e.g clearing shorts between pins of fine pitch ICs or soldering 0402 and smaller 'flyshit', but for most SMD work you are better off with a small bevel bit with a face comparable to the pad size. The poorer heat transfer and sharp tip of a fine conical bit vastly increases the risk of lifting pads as you will have to dwell longer and run the bit hotter to get enough heat into the joint and there is a greater risk due to the small contact area of applying excessive lateral force to the pad.
Fine solder helps tremendously, especially if you don't have a lot of SMD experience, but with a lot of practice and sufficient extra flux one can do a good job even with 1.2mm solder if your hands are steady enough and quick enough to properly control the amount that melts to form each joint. Soldering large pads with very fine solder is an exercise in frustration due to the length one has to feed into the joint and the floppyness of very fine solder. I prefer to have both >1mm and <0.5mm dia solders of the same alloy available, but if you don't have >1mm solder available twist up three strands of the fine stuff to get thicker stiffer solder for doing large pads.
Don't use any sort of water washable or acid flux, it *WILL* destroy your board if not properly cleaned, and I doubt you've got a set of ultrasonic cleaning and rinse tanks! Personally I prefer liquid flux to gel flux as I hate the gel flux cleanup, but tacky gel flux does have its place to aid component positioning. Use enough flux to have a slight excess, but not too much - if it isn't on the pad or directly between adjacent pads it isn't doing anything for you except make a mess.
Drag soldering really is the easiest way of soldering any SMD package of over eight pins, with accessible pins. For drag soldering you want a somewhat larger bevel bit to transfer enough heat quickly enough and also to move the solder pool effectively.
You'll need good lighting - high intensity well diffused ambient to prevent any shadowing + bright task lighting directly illuminating the area you are working on.
Finally, avoid caffeine for 24H before your first board assembly - if your hands have got the caffeine shakes or even just micro-tremors it wont go well. With experience you'll soon learn how much coffee or energy drinks you can get away with before doing SMD work.