I'm trying to maximize my healing efficiency in raids. But I'm having trouble understanding the mechanics behind which spells are considered to be the most "mana efficient" and how +healing, MP/5, and other stats affect it.

First of all, I think it would be more important to get +healing than MP/5 or Int. The way I figure, if you're using low level spells, you're using much less mana and less likey to go OoM. And with BoW, Illumination and Divine Favor, it would be hard to go OoM unless you've chain pulled or it's a really long boss fight. Is my thinking correct?

+Healing. I've been told that FoL is affected by 43% of your total +healing, and HL 71%. And even with little +Healing from gear, BoL would make these spells very powerful. And with a lot of +healing, you can downgrade your spells, since +healing is giving you a more powerful heal for the same amount of mana. But what I'm wondering is how much +healing I would need to downgrade my spells, and to which spell I should downgrade to. I've heard that HL4 and FoL6 were the best choices, but why is that? I've also heard that HL3 is more efficient that HL4 after a certain amount of +healing, but does anybody know how much +healing that would be?

Also, how much +healing and mana do you have? Are you geared out in epics? Do you have 1 +healing set and 1 Int set? I guess druids and priests would be another story (Since their spells are affected differently by +healing), but how much does an average druid or priest have?

Oh, and one last thing. Which stat would be the best in short fights like trash mobs? And which would be better for those long boss fights?

Thanks.

Keep in mind paladins get very little regen from spirit since we have no passive regeneration talents. No "15% of mana regeneration while casting" type things. Thus, mp5 is the only way to get back mana, which makes it very powerful. Also, every piece of crit gear is basically like saying "1% chance to get a free heal" assuming you have illumination.

As for +heal, personally I value it highly for all healing classes. As I posted on another thread recently, there are many ways to extend your healing stamina through consumables, buffs, etc, but there are far less to extend your Hit-Points-per-Second (HPS). Sometimes you need the juice, sometimes you need the stamina...+heal can let you have both by deranking spells or by improving your best ones.

Also, if you have mana problems, with enough +heal you can basically cast FoL ranks 1-3, never run out of mana, and channel 43% of your healing bonus straight into spells. It can be very powerful on marathon fights.

I could see a paladin carrying a +heal and a +mp/5 set. I don't see the point of a straight +Int set.

It's all tradeoffs.

If you think about it though, more mp/5 means you can spam higher ranks of heals, which is equivalent to a lot of + healing (being able to up-rank is worth a fair bit of healing). Also, sometimes you can't just sit there spamming your most mana-efficient heal and expect to be useful. You have to be able/willing to use higher rank heals occasionally as needed, and effectively recover from them and continue to be an effective healer. A pure + healing gear-out won't give you meaningful recovery/regen abilities since paladins don't regen shit in combat, and even out of the FSR we have like 130-140 spirit fully raid buffed.

Yeah, spamming super-low rank heals makes it almost impossible to go OOM, but that's never the full story.

Those percentages are correct. Do remember that BoL does not have full effect on ranks of Holy Light below 4. How much +healing you need to downgrade a spell hinges on how much effective healing you need to be doing. If you're a decorative buff-bot, spam FoL2 or FoL3 (depending on gear, these tend to be the highest rank spells that you can chain indefinitely). What are you downranking to accomplish? Are you trying to heal for as much as a higher rank, to say you can, are you trying to maximise HP healed per point of mana? Are you trying to be useful? Asking how much healing do I need to downrank my heals is kind of like asking "how much water do I need to fill my pool."

I'm fairly undergeared, but unbuffed I have 668 healing, 96 mana/5 seconds, and 5447 mana.

In a short fight, 2 things matter. + healing and mana pool. In long fights, regen matters a lot. I'd think this is kind of an obvious answer . . .

Let's take a fight where you want to just sit there and spam a heal over and over for about 10 minutes. There aren't actually that many of these fights, but it does serve to illustrate a point.

I can spam rank 4 FoL for a long time. Base heal is 210 hp for 90 mana. Now rank 5 FoL heals 283 for 115 mana. We would need about 170 +healing to make that rank 4 equivalent to rank 5 FoL. On the other hand you would need about 60 mana per 5 to make up the extra mana spent spamming rank5 FoL to last as long as you could with rank 4 FoL.

Basically in the above situation 3 healing = 1 mp5.

Of course that isn't how most fights go. YOu could also say you cast a Holy Light every 10 seconds. So rank 8 is 1215 hp for 580 mana. Rank 9 is 1680 for 660 mana. To make rank 8 heal for the same amount as rank 9 you would need 655 + healing. Or to make up the mana lost for ranking up to 9 you would need 40 mp5.

In this situation 16 healing = 1 mp5.

So which situation do you find yourself in more?

For myself I tend to be in the second more often. I typically value 8-10 healing at 1 mp5. However, it usually doesn't matter. I will always use the plate set items over any cloth. The only time it really matters is choosing cloaks and jewelry for the most part.

Basically if you find yourself spam healing all the time, then +healing is the way to go. If you find yourself using large heals infrequently mp5 is what you want.

You could try my addon: http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/a...ealpoints.html
I made it to get answers to pretty much the same questsions you are asking.

While paladin gear tends to have low spirit, understanding what your spirit does for you is still important. I can push 100 mp5 buffed, after doing much questing and raiding to pick up mp5 gear. Raid buffed, I have roughly 140 spirit, which gives 40 mana per tick when out of the 5second rule. Back when I had a spirit vs. Mp5 mod, it would track the amount of time I spent in the 5 second rule for each fight. It was generally around 50~60%, so spirit provided a good portion of mana that I regenned during the fight. (The rest coming from mp5)


While it's great that MP5 allows for continuous casting, casting in a way that you get a few extra ticks of spirit regen can help extend your mana pool.
(How you need to heal will be fight dependent, of course)


I think a better way to understand +heal is that it gives a static HPS bonus. 35 +heal will add 35 hp healed to a 3.5 sec heal; 25 hp to a 2.5 sec heal; 15 hp to a 1.5 sec heal. In all 3 cases, the HPS added is the same - 10 extra HPs healed per second. And, because the mana costs for heals are fixed, the efficiency gain from +heal is constant, with lower rank heals with low mana costs gaining more efficiency per point of +heal.

So if you were to crunch the numbers, you would find that for paladins, no matter what level of +heal you use, the mana efficiency vs. healing power rankings of all of your heals are fixed. I won't bore you with the math, but FoL R1, FoL R6, HL R4, are some of the sweet spots for mana efficient healing. (R6 FoL and R4 HL are very close in terms of healing power vs. efficiency when BoL is on the target being healed)


Short summary of paladin healing stats: +heal boosts heal efficiency, Int/Spi/Mp5 boosts endurance. I personally aim for a healthy mix of the +heal and mp5, since a paladin's niche is in endurance healing, and those two stats augment that role the most.

Something I typed up a while ago to measure how the heals I was using were affected by our talents and Blessing of Light. It's all about healing power and doesn't begin to analyze healing efficiency.

As gear gets much better, our healing light talent becomes less and less useful. Unfortunately with healing talents, the increase is taken into account before your +healing gear. It does make a significant difference on our highest ranks of Holy light, but how often are we truly spamming it in raid situation. I actually use rank 9 far more often in PvP then I ever do in raids.

Rank 9 Holy Light
Heals for 1590-1770 Avg: 1680 With talents: 1882 Difference of: 202 +Heal equ: 280

Rank 4 Holy Light
Heals for 310-356 Avg: 333 With talents: 373 Difference of 40 +heal Equivalent: 56

Rank 6 Flash of Light
Heals for 343-383 Avg: 363 With talents: 407 Difference of 44 +heal equivalent: 98

Rand 1 Flash of Light
Heals 62-72 Avg: 67 With talents 75 Difference of 8 +heal equivalent: 19


And now, our only other healing increasing talent/skill, blessing of light. The returns on blessing of light work in the opposite direction than our healing light talent. As you drop down in rank, blessing of light increases the power of our heal by a much greater percentage.

Blessing of light adds 400 to Holy light, and 115 to flash of light. For these tests, I’m using the assumption that BoL adds all of healing to all ranks of our healing spells, which at the lowest, Flash of Light rank 1 is a level 20 spell, and Holy Light rank 4 is a level 22 spell. This also means that both of these spells receive the full benefit of +healing relative to their casting speed.

For a 2.5 second cast, Holy Light, in which BoL adds 400, BoL becomes the equivalent of 563 +healing. For flash of light, the 115 is the equivalent of 267 +healing. This is the reason that rank 4 Holy Light is such a good healing spell. It is one of the most efficient healing spells in the game, while still retaining a very respectable amount of heals per second.


Rank 9 Holy Light
Heals for 1590-1770 Avg: 1680 With talents: 1882
W/BoL 2080 24% Increase
w/BoL and Talents 2282 21% Increase

Rank 4 Holy Light
Heals for 310-356 Avg: 333 With talents: 373
w/BoL 733 120% Increase
w/BoL and Talents 773 107% Increase


Rank 6 Flash of Light
Heals for 343-383 Avg: 363 With talents: 407
w/BoL 478 32% Increase
w/BoL and Talents 522 28% Increase

Rank 1 Flash of Light
Heals 62-72 Avg: 67 With talents 75
w/BoL 182 172% Increase
w/BoL and Talents 190 160% Increase



The Math: So someone can make sure I have the right equations.

Heal Avg = (Lowest Heal + Highest Heal ) / 2
Heal with Talents = Heal Avg * 1.12 1.12 means 12% greater
Heal with BoL = Heal Avg + BoL Coefficient BoL = 400 for Holy Light, 115 for Flash of Light
Heal w/BoL and Talents = (Heal Avg *1.12) + BoL Coefficient

Difference = Heal with Talents - Heal Avg
+heal equivalent = Difference / (cast time/3.5)
%Increase = BoL Coefficient / Heal Avg(Or Heal with Talents if it applies)