• Nemesis

Years ago I believe it was on this forum that I saw a comparison between raw Mana / 5 and Spell Crit for paladins. I've been looking for it but was unable to dig it up, too bad.

Now first off, some observations:
Mana per 5 always regens, five second rule or not
Spell Crit regen thru Illumination by its very nature only works INSIDE the five second rule: your heals need to crit in order to regen mana.
As for some numbers; mana per 5 while casting is 54, spell crit rating on holy light is roughly 25% (11 from talents).
You can tell that even tho I'm still running around in a bunch of shitty blues and greens from leveling up I've been focusing mostly on spellcrit.
What does this mean in combat: with about 9k mana i can in theory cast the highest rank of holy light 10 times (spell costs 840 mana). Thanks to lights grace I can do this in as few as 20,5 seconds, providing no casting lag.
Assuming every 4th spell crits I'm 'guaranteed' 2 crits, or 840x2 mana back. Thats 1680 mana regenned after casting for 20,5 seconds.


Here's my questions (because i'm to stupid to figure it out myself):
1) how much mana/5 would I need to have similar mana regen, it seriously cannot be 409 mana /5, thats virtually impossible maintaining the same level of gear.
2) and this is the most important one: how much mana /5 would equate to 1% spell crit (at 70)


disclaimer: all of the above obviously only applies to paladins, and only those with Illumination and Sanctified Light, and yes, there may be serious flaws in the logic :p

 

Fiola

This is pretty difficult to come up with a concrete "answer/solution" for, as Illumination's mana regen is proportional to the amount of healing you're doing. (ie: If you spend more mana, you gain more mana from illumination . .. but you're spending more mana overall, barring ridiculous levels of spell crit)

 

Necrotoid

This belongs best in the class specific forums.

EDIT: Well holy shit, in the time it took me to write this, it was moved. Ignore the now-useless post please.

DOT and rot.
Travian: Phased Weasel, -144 | 61, Damascus.

 

Juli

You can think of the mana gained as a percentage increase in your total mana. This includes all mana regenned or gained from potions. Mana per 5 is static regen. Also keep in mind there are other benefits and disadvantages to gearing for spellcrit, such as improved healing throughput, chances for strings of crits or strings of noncrits, and often increased overheal. When you take all of those things into consideration you can see the picture gets fairly complicated. I've been too lazy to attempt to create a model for stat comparison with all those aspects taken into consideration; maybe someone else is more motivated.

 

Shallistra

There's a discussion about this going on in the Paladin thread at the moment.

On another note, I'm not sure if "overheal" really applies to Paladin crits. Overhealing is a measure of mana efficiency, and when the heal is free, that measure is not valid.

 

Fjord

Use +healing and flash of light :D

I'd get 1000 +healing before I worried about the other two at all. Healing per second is our main problem in my opinion.

 

Ragnor

Spell crit, + heal and mana/5sec are all valuable you want to hit a solid minimum value for all 3 if you want a well rounded set of gear useful on all encounters.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

• Nemesis

Considering my flash of light right now lands for about 1.5k non crit im not worried about my HPS, that isnt the issue here, what I am asking for is basicly if someone can provide me/us with a good way to compare static regen (mp/5) and active regen (spell crit). Simply so I have some sort of basic guideline to go by when it comes to gear selection.
Which is better over a 2 minute fight: a ring with 18sta/18int/45 healing/20 spell crit rating or one with 18sta/18int/45 healing/6 mp5 ? And over a 5 minute one? Thats the question I want to be able to answer.

Sooo, if we could get back on topic, instead of turning this into a 'basic healing guide for paladins', I'm sure that will be stickied sometime on the wow forums.


Agreed, alot of it is encounter dependant, long drawn out fights benefit more from static regen, spike damage fights from high spell crit, we know that, where is the breakpoint tho, is what I want to find out (and lack the math skills to do so).

 

Nite_Moogle

1% spell crit is easily worth 10 MP/5 in the most generous situations, and in extreme spamming situations it's worth over 20 MP/5. Your initial calculation of needing several hundred MP/5 to equal a reasonable crit rate is actually quite correct.

 

Nadagast

It's easy to parametrize the mana saving potential of spell crit as [(%crit * (mps*5)) = mp5]
Where mps = mana used healing per second
mps*5 = mana used healing per 5 seconds

So in a 2 minute fight, assuming you're in the 5SR the entire fight, with a 9k initial mana pool and 54 mp5 while casting, you have a total mana pool of
9000 + (24 * 54) = 10296 mana
Let's assume you use your entire mana bar and end the fight at 0 mana.
mps*5 = (10296/120)*5 = 10296/24 = 429
So 1% spell crit is equal to (.01 * 429) = 4.29 mp5

For a 5 minute fight, same assumptions
9000 + (60 * 54) = 12240 mana
mps*5 = 204
1% spell crit is equal to (.01 * 204) = 2.04 mp5

Spell crit really sucks for saving mana, it seems, for Paladins. mp5 is much better.

How fast would you have to spend your mana for spell crit to be equal to mp5 in terms of item budget cost?
22 spell crit rating = 1% crit = 22 item budget points
22 item budget points = ~9.2 mp5
You'd have to be using =>
9.2/.01 = 920 mana per 5 seconds or more for crit to be better in terms of item budget points. (this is the breakpoint Nemesis was asking about)

Of course this is a pretty coarse analysis but I think it's pretty accurate. Some interesting mechanics might fall out as crit increases, but this should be reasonably accurate for a first pass.
I might make a spreadsheet tomorrow on my desktop, but I'm on my laptop now with no MS Office, so...

 

Trepidati0n

Question: if the spell is cast and it crits, does it put you in the FSR since all mana is returned?

 

rei

You actually have to pay normal manacost to cast the spell and gain it back later, so my guess is that you'd be still in the fsr.

 

Vitae

Nadagast, you're ignoring blessing of wisdom, shadow priests in the group, and all forms of consumables in that analysis. Leaving out other forms of mana regen will naturally reduce the total amount of heals cast, and make spell crit look less valuable than it is. You also left out (of the math, though you alluded to it later) the fact that the more you crit, the more mana you have, the more you can cast - the more you can crit. Take those into account and you'll see a very different picture.

I admit I can't be hassled to do the thorough math, but with full consumables (the other extreme) + a shadow priest (I always have one), my mana regen in 2 minutes is more like...

11k base manapool.
50 mana/5 from gear, 49 from BoW, 70 from flask, 16 from mageblood, shadow priest does about 800 dps which is transmuted into 64 mana/second for paladin, or 324 mana/5 (huge). My crit rate with holy light is about 29%.

So 509 mana/5. In a 2 minute fight, I'll regen 12216 mana. That's 23216 mana to work with. Try your math with that number, and try increasing crit from 29% to 30% instead of from 0% to 1% or whatnot. It's a more realistic analysis really, given how much base crit on holy light is floating around. 24% -> 25% might be more fair though.

Oh, and if we really wanna push it overboard, a fel mana potion every 2 minutes is an extra 3200 mana, or 133 mana/5. So 642 mana/5 is quite realizable - and when you factor in crits increasing your effective mana/5 as well, you start hovering around the break point for even that first point of crit according to your post.

 

• Nemesis

Thanks alot, that is exactly what i was looking for, and it's quite good news too, because while chaincasting holy light i easily spend 840x5 mana every 10 seconds, or 2100 mana per 5
So if that equation is linear? spell crit right now is more than twice as good as mana per 5, in terms of item budget.
sounds good to me

Also thanks for your view Vitae, right now I'm not very often in the position to go to the extra but its good to know what the other side of the picture looks like.

 

Nadagast

Well think about how much of the time you'll be chaincasting top rank Holy Light. What you need to put in for mps is your average mana used per second over the course of the fight. The fight wouldn't be very long if you're using 2.1k mana per 5 seconds. But yeah spell crit is better in that circumstance.

The same holds true for mp5. There is an increasing value of crit as your crit % increases, but not for the exact reason you mention.
Each % of crit gives you a larger reduction in average mana cost as your crit% goes up. My formula assumed you have 0% crit, it calculated the mana saved from that point of view. But think about if you had 98% crit. If you add 1% crit to that, your mana cost reduction is 50%. It goes from 2% per heal to 1% per heal.
The 2nd revision can include this:
[((%crit/(1-crit%)) * (mps*5)) = mp5]

Ok so total mp5 = 509 mp5
5 minute fight:
11000 + 30540 = 41540
mps = 41540 / 300 = 138
mps*5 = 692
1% crit in terms of mp5 for this:
[((.01/(1-.29)) * 692)] = 9.7 mp5
So crit is just slightly better than mp5.

Didn't see this til after I did the above ^.
Lets try 2 minutes.
23216 mana
mps*5 = 967
[((.01/(1-.24)) * 967)] = 12.7 mp5
But how many times are you going to be fully flasked, etc, for a 2 minute fight?

Yes but this is pretty much the ideal situation for crit. If you remove even just the shadow priest, mp5 would probably win in most reasonable situations.

Lets find the mps rate you need for crit to be better than mp5... with a 24% -> 25% critrate
[((.01/(1-.24)) * x)]

[top] 9.2 mp5
x

about 700 mps*5
or about 140 mana per second, average over the course of the whole fight.

 

Ragnor

Out of interest with your current gear what's your mana/5sec and spell crit rate for heals anyway?

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Nadagast

Mine? I don't play a Paladin, I play a Warlock :)

So in the infinite duration fight, you need a total of 700 mp5 from gear/buffs/whatever to make crit worth more than mp5. (if you have a ~25% crit rate)

As the fights come down in length, because your base mana pool adds more "effective mp5" the shorter the fight is, the easier it is to achieve this.

 

Aramul

When casting Flash of Light r7, 1% crit is worth 1.8 mana per cast, or 5.4 mp5 assuming some lag, 3 casts per 5 seconds.
When casting Holy Light r11, 1% crit is worth 8.4 mana per cast, or 16.8 mp5 assuming some lag and not always having Light's Grace up, 2 casts per 5 seconds. In optimal circumstances, (low lag, always having Light's Grace) this goes up.

Itemization-wise, as per earlier in the post, 1% crit = 22 crit rating = 9.2 mp5. Thus spell crit outperforms mp5 with Holy Light, and mp5 outperforms spell crit with Flash of Light. When actually healing, and mixing spells, I would imagine they perform similarly. Since Flash of Light really isn't that consuming anyway, I prefer spell crit to bolster my HL mana refunds, but mp5 is more reliable and actually does something at 0 mana.

 

• Nemesis

The reason I value spell crit slightly higher is the interaction with Divine Illumination (spend 420 mana, get 840 back) and various casting cost reduction trinkets. Also heroic instances (at least at the gear level me and my friends are at) pretty much require me to chaincast holy light alot.
To give you an idea of my current gear: 979 healing, 54mp5, 167mp5 when not casting, 14.29% spell crit (+11 from talents on holy light), 8k mana, 7k hp and 9k armor.
It's changing daily tho, so I havent bothered with a ctprofile yet.

 

Vitae

Yeah, I was aware of the increasing effectiveness ala armor mitigation % (as a rough analogy), but in my initial post I came across as really patronizing when I was going over it, so just edited it out since it was obvious you were familiar with it too. The other relationship I mentioned was in addition to that - with 50% crit for math's sake, casting 10 holy lights, you get 5 crits, then have the mana for 5 more holy lights yielding 2.5 crits, then 1.25 crits, then .6275 crits, etc. It's an additional self synergy that increases the mana available in the first place. So you'd have to say in my 23216 example that with my 29% crit I'd restore 6732 mana in the first wave, 1952 with that, 566 with that, 164 with that, etc. for an effective manapool for those two minutes of 32446. It's not just the 29% reduction, it's the 29% reduction on the 29% reduction on the 29% reduction etc. 29% actually gives back nearly 40% of your initial 23216 "stake".

As for how often I'm going full consumables? Granted, not often. There are a whole bunch of fights even in karazhan and heroics (not so much in gruul's!) that I end full mana without using any consumables. But the scenario I'm most concerned with gearing towards is increasing my absolute healing capacity - that is, my potential healing when using every available consumable. Because it's not overkill for every encounter, and the encounters in which it's most needed are the ones I most care about, really, because they're typically the encounters needed for progression. It's rarely overkill on raids, really - you can just bring less healers and more dps if your healers are accomplishing more individually. Now, is it practical logistically to do that? Perhaps not.

I literally always have a shadow priest, so I'm a bit spoiled in that regards. My heroic group has one, my kara group has one I'm always grouped with, I'm always grouped with one on raids, etc. Paladins benefit the most from having a shadow priest of all of the healers (love you spiritual attunement), so our paladins get priority on the shadow priest group slots.

 

Fiola

Funnily enough, that's exactly what thinking of Illumination as a -%cost reduction gives you.

ie: 50% crit -> 50% mana cost. You can now cast 1/.5 = 2 times the number of heals on the same amount of mana. (Compared to without Illumination)
39% crit -> 71% mana cost. You can now cast 1/.71 = 1.41 times the number of heals on the same amount of mana.


Yields the same numbers, but you don't have to do recursive calculations or think too hard about how the mana savings work.

 

Vitae

So it does. That'll learn me to do math right after waking up.

 

◊ Wraithlin

A point usually overlooked is that spell crit also operates equivalent to an amount of +healing; a crit is an 150% heal, and this scales with your +healing on gear. Is there a break even point where spell crit actually gives a bigger effect that +healing itemization for the same itemization cost ? (Similar to spell crit and +damage for mages/moonkin/destro locks).

 

Kink

Don't forget how much mp/5 a super mana potion is (on average the equivalent of 100mana/5sec.) And that is a buff you will almost definately be using in every fight.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
The only problem is, it's often an incoming train.

 

Zhorx

Sticky post on the EU-paladin forums as of yesterday. I made some calculations regarding this.

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....518804&sid=1#0