Here is my question. I'm a Holy Paladin that is about to get into Hyjal/Temple with my guild. I've been doing a LOT of research about other pallys from BT/MH guilds and most of them have decided to not even bother with stacking a higher than 100Mp5 while casting unbuffed of course and just stack all +healing and crit. Now from all the theory crafting I've seen its shown Mp5 to be better for overall endurance than spell crit. So is there something I'm missing here? Is +healing and +spell crit better for MH/BT for some reason? Or is it really just a personal preference?

Thanks for any light you can shed on the subject for me.

I don't see how the nerf affects the value of crit for low ranks of holy light though, crit's mana regen scales up when you use more mana aka high ranks of holy light consistently. If you use a low rank of holy light or a max rank flash of light I really don't see much difference in the effect of crit.
Bottom line is I don't see why the patch nerfing low rank HL would make you change anything regarding how you look at crit.

Because crit is best when you are spamming a spell, hence get more crits/time and then more mana returned. Being forced to use higher ranks means more canceling, and a diminished value of crit as compared to +healing (and if you don't have a shadow priest, mp5). For those using FoL, I agree entirely on the nerf not affecting crits, but I doubt anyone will regularly use low ranks of HL after this nerf.

Hypothetically, wouldn't more canceling simply reduce the effectiveness of all healing-specific stats equally, i.e. you cast less thus you crit less and heal less? It seems to me like reducing the number of casts you make wouldn't necessarily reduce the effectiveness of one healing-specific bonus more than another healing-specific bonus (forgive my naivete should it end up being as such, I'm relatively new to the "making-my-own-theorycrafting" scene.)

The balance in terms of crit versus mp5 would shift in mp5's favor, I would think, but by just casting less, one's simply lowering the overall effectiveness of both healing and crit while keeping mp5 the same (however, it could be argued that fewer casts renders mp5 less useful due to less mana consumption dependent on the situation, I suppose.)

I think I can see where you're coming from though, you want the few heals you do to hit harder and the less reliability from crit makes crit less appealing, right?

The thing is crit doesn't return X mana per cast, it returns X mana per mana used. If you cast a lot of cheap heals (low rank HL or FoL) or a few expensive heals (high rank HL), your benefit from crit is the same, or at least similar.

The less mana you spend the less mp5 equivalent you get from crit, yes, but I don't see the huge difference in mana spending between spamming FoL, spamming low rank HL, and cast-cancel high rank HL. Granted it's probably not the *same* mana useage, but I really don't see a difference that would make or break the usefullness of crit.

IMO it's not that 2.3 makes crits less useful - it's that crits were never that useful. For HP/s you get much greater benefits from pure +healing, for efficiency you get bigger benefits from mp5, and for mixing hp/s and efficiency you get bigger benefits from mixing mp5/+healing (like using items that lose a little healing but gain a lot of mp5 while keeping those that don't have such alternatives) than from stacking crit.

The only benefit I see from crit is when the item is just that much better due to its Ilvl, or when you want to max HP/s and get a socket bonus with a yellow socket using a crit gem from BT/hyjal and even then you're probably much better off using a heal/int gem. And of course fights where you just spam max rank HL where crit obviously scales by quite a bit, but that didn't change in 2.3 either.

Actually Galz, my view on crit has been that it was a secondary stat, parallel to mp5. Those of us who are lucky enough to consistantly have a shadow priest would hold little value to mp5, when you could simply get much higher throughput with crit. As such, HL spamming would be more tailored to this kind of setup. A shadow priest is around, I don't know, at least 200 mp5. Once you have one, there is really no need to get mp5 in gear. And lets face it, its not really possible to just stack +healing, you really do need SOME secondary stat with which to pick gear. For those of us (such as me) who rarely get a shadow priest, mp5 holds much greater value as we are forced to use more efficient heals to extend our output over the course of a long fight (along with chain-chugging of mana pots).

But you are right, crit hasn't really changed at all in value. However, the spells it affected the most have diminished in value (to me, at least) and hence the stat has lost some of its appeal to me. That being said, I'm still a firm supporter of at least a somewhat balanced stat setup, and I still feel that crit has its purpose in any gear or heal style setup.

Two things:
1) Part of the reason you see lots of crit and less mp5 on T6 paladins has to do with the items that are available. There is *tons* of crit on all of the non-haste items. The spreadhseet I made with my upgrades from T6 have me adding 52 crit rating to my gear and losing 5 mp5-and that is with using no crit gems and actively looking for Mp5 pieces. It's not finalized etc-but by and large T6 gear forces you to add crit and makes you work for any Mp5 gains.

2) The other reason 2.3 impacts the valuation between Crit and Mp5 is because we have 6 additional percent chance to crit from HL through talents. We can all agree that the days of a paladin using HL all the time through downranking (and thus taking full advantage of that additional 6% [or roughly 122 spell crit rating] crit) are over. So all of that wonderful, essentially free bonus just got significantly diluted with lower critting Flash of Lights. Cast/Cancelling rank 10/11 HL (and using zero flash) is a viable option on very few fights and something I'd argue one should not base thier entire build around.

Mana return through Illumination or Mp5 is only valuable if it allows you to cast *more* spells. There is no benefit for maintaining 90% mana at the end of the fight. So if the fight is X length, you can only cast y spells. After you have enough mana to do so, the only stats that matter are +healing and to a lesser extent crit. If you're using flash*, the mana overhead is pretty low and allows for a nonspriest softcap around 120 mp5 or so (unbuffed). After that, pile on the crit and +heal to your hearts content and bring plenty of mana pots.


*"Using flash" from my perspective is around an 80/20 split of Flash to high rank HL. ymmv

Which spreadsheet are you using? Are you using the gear sheet that I've been working on, and honestly been slacking due to RL issues coming up..., cause I'm trying to redo half of it and make more of it correct.

Edit--No, the one from the OP. - I didn't see yours in this thread, unless it was hidden? Which post # is it from, if I may ask?

The reason I mention it is that shorter fights would favor HL's total healed amount versus FoL, wouldn't it?

The gear sheet is on the Healadin thread. I told Zurm that I would have it finished by yesterday, but between leading raids and going over our WWS with a fine-tooth comb, it's been leaving me little time.

This week Zurm, I promise!!!