That particular quote was in reply to hacp comparing SPs without mana regeneration to the "relative obscurity of a ret paladin", before SW and Misery were cited as a reason to take the class on raids. I pointed out that if that were to happen we'd be rolling back to pre 2.0 again, taking the class for passive debuffs, easily applied by one SP.

As for objecting to stacking, I personally encourage variety, however there will always be certain classes/specs which are more 'desirable' than others for certain raid roles, rightly or wrongly.

Because that's not how encounters are designed. How many of those 27 specs can heal, at least in a non-trivial way?

Priests: All 3 specs can do a modicum of healing, and I personally think I'm being generous in including Shadow Priests there (to be clear, I'm thinking of VE).
Paladins: 1 spec
Druids: 1 spec
Shamans: 1 spec

And that's it. If we expected 1 of each spec in a raid, that's 6 healers, and 2 of them are extremely gimped and probably shouldn't be considered "healers" (Discipline and Shadow Priests).

So while it is nice in a theoretical way to think of it as you have, it's not feasible and likely never will be.

Well, what's wrong with Disc/Holy and "HT" Balance/Resto dr00ds? And if you are going to be generous and include shadow priests, why not say, include Elemental shamans wearing restoration gear? or protection paladins wearing holy gear?

IIRC several of the mid-level Balance talents are actually fairly good for healing... for example.

First off you edited my quote to misquote me, I'm not sure why. Second off the problems will have to be addressed one way or another eventually if blizzard doesn't want the game to completely tip over the edge of the "shadow-priest event horizon". (okay, maybe that's a humorous exaggeration)

If you can bring 5 or more shadow priests and remove mana limitations from the fight blizzard will end up with shadow priests being the new alchemy.

As a shadow priest, I really do fear a nerf is incoming. I've seen the effect, and it is almost absurd. I ran in a group last night with an ele shammy, a warlock, and two mages. Between the shammy's mana stream totem and my own regen (<3 WoA), we had almost absurd amounts of mana. All of us were able to keep up a full nuke rotation for several minutes without even slowing down due to the raw regen available. One of the mages said he was getting so much mana that he took to spamming Arcane Blast for a bit just to see if he could use some up. It really is trivializing certain situations.

Another potential problem with the way Shadow Priests are set up is that they are a sort of infinite feedback loop. You do more damage, you get more mana back, that lets you do more damage, that lets you get more mana back, etc. The effect of each point of +damage is thus magnified for a shadow priest, meaning that if you gear a shadow priest up at a rate similar to what other caster DPS classes need to stay competitive, the shadow priest's mana regeneration rate is enough that, with smart use of cooldowns and potions, the shadow priest soon becomes functionally mana infinite, even with a full burn DPS cycle. Such is already nearly the case for most well-geared shadow priests on a lesser cycle.

However, an outright nerf of shadow priests in general to accommodate the top end would absolutely kill those not in that top bracket - in a mirror of the way the feedback cycle becomes so effective at the high end, it means that those below a certain threshold have to struggle just to keep up at the most basic level. Lower geared shadow priests lack the damage to feed themselves back sufficient mana to have any endurance whatsoever, let alone using the high mana cost burn DPS cycles the higher end shadow priests use.

It can be thought of similarly to warriors with top end equipment, and the nerf cycle they have had to endure - Warriors have a similar feedback mechanic in the form of that they get rage from damage, to do more damage, to get more rage, etc. Hence, as warrior weapon DPS increases, the warrior's effectiveness increases at a disproportionate rate. This results in the class as a whole getting nerfed to accomodate the top end, leaving those not on the cutting edge in a lurch as a result.

Balancing these feedback loops is difficult, to say the least. One idea I've been pondering has to do with Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch not returning equal mana to all effected - specifically, modify Shadow Form to act as a multiplier for the abilities, and then tone them down, so that the SPriest gets the same effect they are currently set up to, without the party members getting the sometimes absurd amount of mana they are currently getting. Hence, they can be throttled down to a more reasonable level without destroying the class' ability to function, and its PvP functionality. It would leave the feedback loop, but I see the SPriest feedback loop as less serious than the warrior one - the warrior issue caused an increase in DPS, where the priest feedback loop just causes an endurance increase, which is easily enough countered with encounter enrage mechanics.

Because that's not what Balance Druids are supposed to do (the spec is not about healing). And that's not what Elemental Shaman are supposed to do (same here). And Protection Paladins...you get the picture.

Also, my generosity with Shadow Priests is that they can heal through VE while doing what the spec is all about - dealing damage with some utility. However, I'm not generous enough to include Ferals with Imp LotP.

The best fix is just to combine spirit and intellect into one stat. Aside from arcane mages with arcane mind and mind mastery, intellect is also a pretty lackluster stat. There's a reason most raiding mages forgo stats. Right now, as a 10/48/3 spec, I value 1 point of intellect to be worth 20% of 1 point of +damage.

To be pedantically clear, I refer the reader to the reason I posted at the top of this page - Songster's post about 27 specs being in the game and 25 raid spots being available leading to the expectation of 1 spec per raid (or slightly less). I just showed that this wasn't feasible. I'm not arguing against the viability of an Elemental Shaman's healing potential (or Balance Druids or Protection Paladins), but if the expectation is to heal, he's under-specced to do so given the number of actual "healing specs" there are in that hodge-podge of 27.

Incidentally, I value int slightly lowher than you, because I've theorycrafted its value in reference to it's addition to crit %. Without going through long, tedious Math (the Mage Theorycraft thread is best for that), with straight Fireball spam [and my level of gear], 1 int is roughly equal to 0.159 spell damage.

Did you mean something other than 0.159? It sounds like the original poster (andastra) values int as 0.2 spell damage. You say you value it more highly but list it as 0.159.

Absolutely, you're right. Edited my comment.

I said that's the expectation unless raiding demands are so skewed as to force stacking. Current raids force you to stack healers and tanks, at the very least. Asking for them also to force stacking of your own pet spec (i.e. insisting that there should be a reason to take more than one of $insert-spec-here) is plain silly. You can't stack every spec, for the same reason you can't fit a quart in a pint pot.

If the buffs you bring are good enough to make sure you include at least one $insert-spec-here, then that is good. Demanding more than that is pure greed.

Dreamstate druids are pretty much Paladins with curse of tongues on.

I must say I've found this thread (the OP actually..the last few pages have bogged down to class balance) completely fascinating.

First of all, I think we can all agree that Spirit is pretty much a broken stat. For classes that should value Spirit, they don't, and it's considered to be a "trash" stat.

Second, I rather like the idea of a better balanced mana pool/mana regen system - with a smaller pool but better regen.

Third, intellect is also a rather weak stat - and I like some of the suggestions I've seen regarding the rebalancing of both of these stats to make them appropriately desirable.

The best thing about the WoW devs is that they have shown in the past that they are not afraid to completely rework things that need to be reworked.

I think mana regen takes a complete shift in ideology for what type of gearing healers/casters go after. Our primary resto druid could have easily had +1700 or more healing by the time he got out of karazhan. Instead he had 1200, but his mana regen was so high he rarely had to pot and a single innervate would completely refill his mana bar (I beleive he was rocking 600+ spirit and well over 200 mp5 fully buffed when we started in on 25man content). He focused entirely on spirit and MP5, and with 2/3's as much +healing as anyone else on our raids he would destroy the healing charts (effective and total) by more than any of our healers could possibly match. We don't even group him with our 1-2 raiding shadow priests, while the rest of the healers get put in with them and he still beats them out.

If you look at Hunters based on Arcazua's AEP sheet for MP5/int values, those stats are worth more to us than anything we can possibly get. When you run out of mana as a Hunter, your DPS is effectively cut in half. I usually run with a lot more mana regen than I actually need simply because I can still stay in the top 3 for DPS and use far fewer consumables.

People are still stuck in the mindset of downranking and getting tons of +healing to gain efficiency, when they could focus on actual efficiency/regen stats instead and gain a whole lot more in the end.

I fully agree with you. This, what you've described, is exactly how I've done my stats. I'm currently in my damage gear so my sig & Armory page wouldn't be accurate; however, I went into SSC with 500 Spirit, 1300 Healing, and 115 mp5 (Buffed and with new gear, currently I have 678, approx 1400, and 212 respectively) or thereabouts; originally so that my guild could use my aura. After all, there is no point in the guild putting me in with the MT group if i wasn't going to stack spirit. I'm never in the Shadow Priest's groups and I still top the meters almost every time. I usually cycle between #1, #2, and #3 with whichever two holy pallys make it into the shadow priest's group.

We are starting Vashj this week. When I get my T5 helm, I will be switching out my meta gem and will up my unbuffed spirit by around 75 and my +healing by about 100 or so. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how it changes my healing numbers. Right now, I've had to put the gems in that help me meet meta requirements. So they aren't my ideal gems.

If there are no healers in the shadow priest's group, I destroy everyone else on the meters. It's not even a contest. I consistently get crapped on by many healers (not from the ones in my guild, obviously) for having such a low +healing but what most people don't understand is that it works really well for me. Every other healer in my guild, and most outside, has tunnel vision when it comes to +healing. They measure a healer's worth solely by how much their +healing is. What is +healing going to do for you if you don't have any mana?


And what about the pallys & priests that rock 1900+ healing but get outhealed by a druid with 1368 +healing?

Very commonly I find the gear options are so limited anyways that your choice between +heal and regen stats mostly only exists in sockets. As a priest anyways (so only cloth gear available to me) I find it pretty common that there's only one item for a slot available to me at my level of progression, so I'm going to be using that item even if it's heavy on +heal and I would rather have mp5 or whatever.

Ya, you're right. A paladin couldn't get away with the same stats; nor really could a priest exactly. And I did not mention the fact that I pretty much spend all my time inside the FSR, as opposed to most priests and possibly some pallys. I also completely suck at fights like Leotheras and to a lesser extent, Hydross, where there are multiple aggro wipes during the course of the fight. Pallys and priests don't have nearly as much of an issue with these fights.

Rgirty, do you use mana regen trinkets or are you a fan of healing on use trinkets?


I'm currently sporting Essence and Eye of Gruul til August 6th when I will replace my Essence with a Blue Dragon card.

You are way more advanced than I am with trinkets. I use the scarab and the LCPB. I have tried to replace the book, but haven't found anything that suits me. I've tried to get the bangle a few times to try it out but haven't had any luck with the drop (i raid mostly, no time for 5 mans really).

I'd like to ask why you are replacing the essence w/the blue dragon? Not a fan of use trinkets?

I typically key my lcpb right before the first battle PrOM and renew. That saves me 44 mana, if I happen to cast again in the time frame it is good for 66. Not too shabby really. I also spam it during heal intensive fights, 1 minute cd really isn't that bad.

There are a few trinkets that I'd love to have but haven't been able to pick up yet.

I was really looking at the essence, i'm very curious as to why you are going blue dragon...I heard the proc rate on it was good what made you want to switch?

I wanted to switch for a couple reasons. One is that I'm lazy and most of the time I can't be bothered with remembering to use an 'on use' trinket; usually what i'm doing is more important than wasting a GCD on it.

The other reason is that I'm just a big fan of mana regen. I have an alchemist stone; and I still go through almost 20 pots a night on learning encounters. I chug them without regard to anything. Although I last way longer than most of the priests in my guild, and any pallys who aren't in the SP group, after 10-11 minutes of constant casting (within FSR), I'm waiting on innervate/pot timers to be able to heal.

I'm hoping that the regen trinket will lift some of that stress off of me. Ideally I'd like to be able to last 15 minutes or more without running into the waiting game. My +healing seems to be working for me just fine; so by using it I'm hoping to pad the part of my stats that I am not happy with.


Essentially, as far as I can see, it's like an improved Eye of Gruul without the +healing; which is excellent, moreso because it's a level 60 trinket.

To respond to post 155, I do not feel a shadow priest nerf is incoming. After seeing WWS from guilds completing BT I feel our class/spec is very near balanced. I've yet to see a report where a shadow priest breaks 1100 dps, yet mages can hit 1300 and some rogues are closing in on 2000 dps. So we're safe in that we're a hybrid class that isn't going to nearly out-dps the true dps classes, but we're not doing trivial dps and being useless versus an enrage timer.

With regards to an "infinite loop" of more dps = more mana regen = more dps, I feel this will be solved by Blizzards itemization and class development teams. There will be a cap on max DPS (spell damage + crit). When a new expansion comes out, spells will cost more. It's a fine line to balance, but so far Blizzard seems to be keeping things in check.

I'm not exactly sure if someone mentioned this previously, but all I see are ways of fixing regeneration but nothing possibly just lowering the cost of spells. What if the simple solution is to lower mana cost of all spells by a certain percentage? If you say having an extra 100/mp5 through chugging pots is necessary for each fight, and that give you 1200 mana per minute, some spells cost 1/4 of that but some cost upwards of 1200 mana. So, if in a minute you're able to cast 2 or 3 more spells, why not just reduce the cost of spellcasting to allow for 2 or 3 more casts per minute to begin with?

Perhaps my math is a little off, but it doesn't sound substantially different from my experiences. I have a 70 Holy Pally that I raid heal with on occasion, and reducing the cost of Holy Light would be awesome (though Flash of Light is already insanely cheap). But mana hasn't been too much of an issue with me since I really haven't done much past Gruul's with him. The key part of being a Paladin is that we get mana/5 gear and mana back from crits (which is put into our gear).

I think, also, that removing Spirit and just having mana/5 and another form of Spiritual Attunement for other mana-based classes (only on a smaller scale so as not to encroach on the Paladin's 'thing') would possibly be a better option. I like mp/5 and crit as mana-efficiency/longevity mechanics (but, then again, this is coming from the viewpoint of a Paladin where this works beautifully).

Major changes with how mana regeneration works will inevitably require major changes to many pieces of gear: for instance, if Spirit became the de facto regen stat, then plate healing gear would have to include Spirit for once. (Ick!)

Lower spell cost affects everyone fairly equally, perhaps with a non-linear percentage-based reduction (FoL getting a smaller percentage reduced, but Holy Light being reduced much more). The various forms of regen are kinda what adds a good deal of flavor and mechanical interest in individual classes.