The whole crit vs MP5 discussion is being drawn a bit out of it's context. In your specific case, you'll be hard pressed to find an actual choice between 2 items where the stats are split exactly like this where you have piece A with X amount of crit and piece B with 2*X amount of crit and everything else being exactly the same.

I.m.o. it really boils down to this:
If you gear up, you try to maximise a specific type of focus/direction matching your gameplay. The time of hybrid specs is sort of over, as they tend to be subpar: excellent at none of the things you try to do. So you make a choice and go "all in" with that playstyle.

If you are gemming Int, because of the mana pool it provides, and the regen it provides via replenishment, DP (and the small amount of crit). Then it makes sense you continue that trend, MP5 is thus more valuable than crit. You're focussing on being a paladin that spams holy light as much as possible, only using FoL's when the fight enters a slow fase.
It's not that crit is bad or should be avoided at all costs. But per point of item budget Crit provides less regen than MP5 willn even in the scenario favouring crit. And those are hardly there. You have to run around a lot, you have to cast other spells like BoL, judgement, DP, and each GCD spent on not casting HL's diminishes the regen value of crit.

There's the argument that Crit increases throughput. Fine, it does, nobody's claiming it doesn't, just be aware that some of that extra throughput will end up being overhealed, and if you value the troughput part that much... Then why not socket red sockets with SP and get the socket bonus to boot and get more throughput also? Even MP5 is a throughput stat of sorts since it means you can spam more HL's over FOL/HS.


And that brings us back to the start. Which piece is better, crit or mp5 ? If you're a HL paladin, MP5. If you're a FOL paladin, Crit. But the choice is rarely this black and white. You may end up taking a less than ideal item for various reasons however. Loot is still RNG and the ideal item you want may not ever drop in your raids. Just because an item isn't in your BiS list, doesn't mean it can't be a good upgrade over what you have. Pick up upgrades along the way, a minor upgrade is still better than an abyss crystal in your guild bank.


Haste gives you a means to cast more... It doesn't mean you HAVE TO cast more all the time. Part of being a good healer is still about keeping an eye on your manabar. Lots of haste means that when in a pinch you can spam that bit harder, and when the fight's in a low damage fase, you can slow down as well.

I need help with my Warlock. My GS addon has me at like 5445 but i'm doing less dps. I'm destro spec raiding but tried affliction today. I just need to find out what spec to use for the gear I have. I dont know how to do the spreadsheet and cant read it either lol. I did 7k on Deathbringer Saurfang a few weeks ago and now I cant even get 6k with BL. Can someone help? His name is Lockonya from Bloodhoof US server.

I'd plug them into the spreadsheet both ways and see which one comes out ahead. That's why we have a spreadsheet, to answer these questions.

Warrior DPS Calculation Spreadsheet

Which strategy would be more efficient, yet as effective? The only other efficient strategy that I can think of, and as mentioned by Vantheman above, is spam-chaining knockbacks from moonkins and ele shams. However, most of the time there is usually only one of the knockback-er class in our regular raid, and it is a bit difficult to catch five (or even four) of the beasts within 1 knockback.

Also, I do have the macros to keep my instants on Saurfang, and I can use them effectively. However, my resentment (especially with MM) is that if I want to pull aggro on the 2nd Beast, many times I won't have the instants off-CD to deal burst damage on them because both CS and AiS will potentially be on cooldown. This problem isn't as detrimental as SV, due to almost guaranteed LnL proc during Beast spawn, and 2 or 3 ES burst is more than enough to pull the 2nd Beast. Arcane Shot alone is sometimes not enough to pull off the 2nd Beast (1st Beast pulled with Distracting), and Steady is of course not very viable due to the cast.

I will usually got hit by Vile Gas 4 times on average during the fight, sometimes more sometimes less. It is just bothering me that during melee-favored boss fights in the past (XT normal, XT hard on spark duty, Gormok phase of NB heroic, etc), I have been able to compete almost equally with the melee, but I kinda lag behind during this fight.
Also, the "beacon" for our spore meeting points are usually reserved for the less-mobile casters (i.e. ele shams, boomkins) and as such I have to do some movement, but with stutter-stepping I don't see that being the cause of the DPS lag.

Yes, with 2 shamans and no Frost DK, Windfury and WoA totems will usually take priority. I was just wondering if the DPS increase potential is worth the dropping of the Nature resist.


Edit : Added "1st Beast pulled with Distracting" to Saurfang's comment. Was in my original post, but isn't in this one.