Paladin healing in 2.1, theorycraft - Page 11

Wraithlin · 04/25/07, 8:54 AM

+mp5s is a reduction of spell cost, that also returns mana when you are not healing. All the discussion of illumination misses this point that mp5s does the same thing as spell crit; you can consider it a flat reduction to the mana cost of your spells during the time you are casting, and additionally mana rgeneration when you are not casting.

The illumination nerf makes other specs look viable, but is pretty much returning us to the point we stood at over a year ago before 1.9; now all our specs are equally bad beyond 20 points in holy. Im really very ambiviolent about the changes.

Deris · 04/25/07, 9:17 AM

Originally Posted by Aeriel

Conclusion:
-Spellcrit with illumination is overpowered for Holy Light, but fairly weighted for Flash of Light right now.
-When casting FoL-Fol-HL in 2.1 you get with illumination the same effect from spellcrit as
without illumination and mp5/+heal gear instead.
Illumination only helps if you cast more than 1 HL for every 2 FoL and cast constantly without breaks, for everything else illumination is worthless.
-Because paladins cant sustain FoL-FoL-HL11 over a full bossfight its better to focus on
+heal/mp5. For that 13 talent points in holy is enough.

Suggestions:
1.) Change illumination to 50% return on HL and 100% return on FoL, spellcrit for FoL is ok as it is.
2.) Add a talent to reduce manacost of Holy Light by 15%, maybe change sanctified light for that. That would fix the value of spellcrit, but still give paladins an useful efficiency talent in holytree.

Some of the best information I've seen come out of this post yet, explains exactly why spellcrit is no longer viable, in terms everyone can see and understand, and gives real suggestions that hadn't been wholly made before. The only thing missing is the suggestion for an additional heal that actually works instead of HS

.

Cathela · 04/25/07, 2:39 PM

Originally Posted by Aeriel

Suggestions:
1.) Change illumination to 50% return on HL and 100% return on FoL, spellcrit for FoL is ok as it is.
2.) Add a talent to reduce manacost of Holy Light by 15%, maybe change sanctified light for that. That would fix the value of spellcrit, but still give paladins an useful efficiency talent in holytree.

This is certainly far more sensible than the careless job they're actually doing.

levk · 04/25/07, 4:38 PM

You guys keep bringing up efficiency of FoL spam which is great and all, but going back to prehistorical way of paladin healing simply isn't an option, the mobs hit three times as hard now, and you have less raidspots to spare.

Anyway you put it nobody will want paladins if they're not the best - there's little in the way of synergy with other classes. What will two paladins bring to the raid? Two blessings: basically a little more survivability via kings and more DPS via salv given the mechanics of the fight make it an issue; two efficient heals with throughput too low to be viable and good throughput at horrible efficiency. Well at least it's good for trash. Now compare a feral druid with an innervate plus a priest - far better efficiency, throughput, sustainability, and even DPS.

e: Adding more healing spells will undoubtedly have impact on pvp, I specifically don't see anything like renew or earthshield happening for those reasons. Shadowpriest/paladin synergy is a very one way thing, and we don't get any more out of it than anyone else, at least as of the patch. I can't take an innervate, it doesn't do anything for me.

The inherent problem with illumination is it keeps scaling up as you keep wasting mana, very different from (example) mediation and spirit which is a set amount given the gear and that gear synergises with not wasting resources - you get out of FSR and regen gets better.

TheOnly · 04/25/07, 5:41 PM

Originally Posted by Aeriel

Conclusion:
-Spellcrit with illumination is overpowered for Holy Light, but fairly weighted for Flash of Light right now.
-When casting FoL-Fol-HL in 2.1 you get with illumination the same effect from spellcrit as
without illumination and mp5/+heal gear instead.
Illumination only helps if you cast more than 1 HL for every 2 FoL and cast constantly without breaks, for everything else illumination is worthless.
-Because paladins cant sustain FoL-FoL-HL11 over a full bossfight its better to focus on
+heal/mp5. For that 13 talent points in holy is enough.

Suggestions:
1.) Change illumination to 50% return on HL and 100% return on FoL, spellcrit for FoL is ok as it is.
2.) Add a talent to reduce manacost of Holy Light by 15%, maybe change sanctified light for that. That would fix the value of spellcrit, but still give paladins an useful efficiency talent in holytree.

A poor conclusion itemization wise.

As said earlier:

Stats on items do not scale linearly when in combination.

1. Yes, if your choice is equal stat value items where item A has only MP/5 and no spell crit, and item B has only spell crit and no MP/5, then for regenration purposes MP/5 is better.

But the above is rare. The IDEAL after the patch is to have BOTH MP/5 and spell crit on an item for regen.

7 MP/5 and 15 spell crit is better than either 10 MP/5 or 24 spell crit. When you split a stat "in two" you get about 2/3 the value of the two stats.

Example: 30 Agi -- or --- 20 STR + 20 AGI. Both have about the same item budget. For example with melee classes usually either agi or str is 'better' but the combo of both is superior to either. THe same is true of any pair of stats, including the two paladin regen stats.

In the current patch, spell crit is better than a split stat, in the next patch a split is the most optimal.

Lastly, crit increases throughpt somewhat, MP/5 doesn't. Yes it is overheal sometimes, but it is there.

The conclusion that it is worthless for the cases above is not a good one if you consider the itemizatin effects. Spell crit is very worthwhile on an item that also has MP/5. And it has a side bonus of increased throughput.

Just throwing a more concrete example out there:

10 MP/5 = 24 spell crit in the item budget.

if 10 MP/5 is slightly better than 24 spell crit, you can think of three choices on an item (there is a spectrum, but this is the example):

10 MP/5
or
24 spell crit rating
or
7 MP/5 + 15 spell crit rating.

The bottom one is best, the top is second best (in 2.1 at least, in 2.0.x the middle and bottom are almost identical and the top is the worst)

Liand · 04/25/07, 7:22 PM

Originally Posted by Noules

It seems like an Illumination change, one way or another, is necessary.

Personally, I don't disagree with the notion that Illumination needed to be changed. I just think they went about it the wrong way.

Originally Posted by Noules

A better solution would have been to adjust the amount of mana returned downwards by the spell crit rate so that the net healing endurance from Illumination is linear, rather than asymptotic. Of course, that probably would have been a (further) PR nightmare as a casual glance could interpret the talent as becoming less useful with improved gear.

I don't think this would've been too difficult actually. The biggest problem with Illumination is chain-casting HL with high spell crit rate, so why not limit that specifically? Just put a cooldown on the mana regen proc from HL (like Earth Shield and its heal proc on damage).

Originally Posted by TheOnly

Lastly, crit increases throughpt somewhat, MP/5 doesn't. Yes it is overheal sometimes, but it is there.

So? Spell crit increases throughput for EVERY healing class.

Originally Posted by TheOnly

10 MP/5
or
24 spell crit rating
or
7 MP/5 + 15 spell crit rating.

The bottom one is best, the top is second best (in 2.1 at least, in 2.0.x the middle and bottom are almost identical and the top is the worst)

You're assuming it'd be better, because there are more stats, but it doesn't actually work that way regen-wise:

92 MP5 = 221 Spell crit rating (10%) = 58 MP5 + 139 Spell crit rating (6.29%)

Effective MP5 while spamming FoL:

Live: 92/45/86.3
PTR: 92/22.5/72.2

Effective MP5 with FoL/FoL/HL rotation:

Live: 92/111/127.8
PTR: 92/55.5/92.9

Why would I want to mix MP5 and spell crit when MP5 alone offers pretty much the same amount of regen? Especially since MP5 gives back mana even when I'm not casting whereas spell crit depends on it.

levk · 04/25/07, 8:39 PM

Illumination is now upto 60% on the PTR

e: ooooh I really like this:

Originally Posted by Liand

I don't think this would've been too difficult actually. The biggest problem with Illumination is chain-casting HL with high spell crit rate, so why not limit that specifically? Just put a cooldown on the mana regen proc from HL (like Earth Shield and its heal proc on damage).

Ragnor · 04/25/07, 9:52 PM

You can see they have done a proper job on T6 splitting the item budget between mana/5 and spell crit instead of just dumping it all on spell crit only
http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=681

Lightbringer Chestpiece
1692 Armor
+36 Stamina
+29 Intellect
Blue Socket
Yellow Socket
Yellow Socket
Socket Bonus: +9 Healing
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 24.
Equip: Increases healing done by spells and effects by up to 108.
Equip: Restores 10 mana per 5 sec.

Aeriel · 04/25/07, 10:12 PM

TheOnly, youre right on that two-stat items are better than one-stat items.

But please dont compare 2 stat vs 1 stat item with numbers, thats totally useless for this discussion,
if you ever find an item with mp/5 and spellcrit or mp/5 alone please disenchant it.

If you compare items the 5 stats to 4 items with 4 stats the difference is much smaller,
but an item with evenly spread points in int, sta, +heal, mp/5 and spellcrit is still
better than an item with only sta, int, +heal and mp/5 even for FoL only.

The Formula is ItemValue = [(StatValue[1]*StatMod[1])^3/2 + (StatValue[2]*StatMod[2])^3/2 + ...]^2/3
the effect with 5 stats is much smaller than with 2 stats compared to one, but still significant.

An item with 5*25 rating points is equal to an item with 4*29 rating points,
for further discussion that would be
10.4 mp/5 + 25 spellcritrating
or 12 mp/5 + 4 int + 6 sta + 64 +heal.

Even with 60% illumation nothing much changes, spellcrit for FoL is worth 16.6 ratingpoints instead of 15 with 50% illumination in my examples instead of 22.1 in itemization.
Even in 2.0.x spellcrit is only worth 21 ratingpoints instead of 22.1 in itemization, but the advantages for Holy Light outweight it easily.

Holy Light is the most inefficient great heal of all healing classes and only illumination with lots of spellcrits makes it viable.
With any nerf to illumination paladins have to use more FoL than HL just to get more heal out of the manapool,
and if on top of that mp/5 is much better than spellcrit for FoL. Holy Light will be reduced to an "oh shit" spell.
A complete rework of the holy tree would be necessary, for spamming FoL only 13 talent points are needed.

TheOnly · 04/25/07, 10:43 PM

Originally Posted by Liand

So? Spell crit increases throughput for EVERY healing class.

You're assuming it'd be better, because there are more stats, but it doesn't actually work that way regen-wise:

92 MP5 = 221 Spell crit rating (10%) = 58 MP5 + 139 Spell crit rating (6.29%)

Effective MP5 while spamming FoL:

Live: 92/45/86.3
PTR: 92/22.5/72.2

Effective MP5 with FoL/FoL/HL rotation:

Live: 92/111/127.8
PTR: 92/55.5/92.9

Why would I want to mix MP5 and spell crit when MP5 alone offers pretty much the same amount of regen? Especially since MP5 gives back mana even when I'm not casting whereas spell crit depends on it.

To answer your last question, its because if it gives the same MP/5 overall but also increases throughput, its better. Its a tradeoff -- increased throughput and regen when chain casting (which is WHEN you need more throughput) for less regen when you aren't chain casting (which is when throughput doesn't matter). Yeah, if your objective is to emulate a HoT by chain casting low rank FoL for 15 minutes, don't go for crit. If you want to be better than any other class at keeping a tank up with huge throughput (at the expense of maybe going OOM eventually like any other healer), mix stats.

Zeku · 04/26/07, 5:59 AM

aya · 04/26/07, 6:15 AM

Lootzor.com might be what you're looking for Zeku.
Input in the statvalues your paladins prefer (http://www.lootzor.com/index.php?c=4...u2heau3habeu14 for example, just slamming in some numbers) and generate lists of "best" gear.

I found this little tool to be quite invaluable when digging out new possible gear for 2.1. Although personally I decided to go with leveling my priest back up, not because pallies are useless or anything, but because they leave me with a bad aftertaste.

• moz · 04/26/07, 11:15 AM

So Illumination is now back up to a 60% mana return. Any bets as to whether it stays this way or moves up some more?

Nefasti · 04/26/07, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by moz

So Illumination is now back up to a 60% mana return. Any bets as to whether it stays this way or moves up some more?

imo, if they are stepping this talent up 10% at a time they are kind of missing the point

DarKNecross · 04/26/07, 4:13 PM

Classic strategy by Blizzard. From a hopeful standpoint, I would love to see Illumination settle around 75%.