Stefan

Ok, so I was having a debate earlier with a paladin of wether paladins could spam holy light for a good amount of time so I did some quick sketchy research and found this thread in class mechanics forums.

Paladin healing in 2.1, theorycraft

so here's what im thinking. Could a paladin spam holy light if he was completely buffed, with a flask / elixir's / food with a shadow priest and a shaman for mana tide/mana spring in his group maintain 588 mp/5. The paladin would also have to chain mana pots, and use his trinkets on CD.

any idea's on this?

 

Fjord

Not in 2.1 but yes we can basically do that right now.

whether

 

Stefan

Thats what i thought, but this paladin just kept calling me a idiot and roll a paladin and l2p..

 

Stefan

Cove how long is it possible for a paladin to do holy light spam given all the factors? like pretty much for any boss fight (15-20 min) ?

 

Fjord

Well if you're actually firing off a holy light every two seconds you'd be hard pressed to sustain that for more than a minute but illumination and SA are worth ~250mp5 with a shadowpriest. On our last Hydross kill, Neux, one of our paladins gained a staggering 74198 mana on top of his mp5.

 

Stefan

Was he just spamming FoL for patch heals? Or just bombing the MT?

Also I am confused, earlier you said you could sustain a holy light spam but then in your last post you said it would be hard to sustain it for longer than a minute.

 

Ragnor

Rank 11 Holy Light is overkill for most encounters you wouldn't spam it every 2sec... Most of the time you don't need more than Rank 7, 8 or 9 if you are chain casting and the other heals are doing a decent job (hot's, earthshield etc). R11 is like double the mana cost of R7.

However, with high enough spell crit you could probably cast R11 near infinitely (which is why they are nerfing us in 2.1). Sadly they are nerfing the wrong thing imo, instead of changing the scaling of crit rating and the amount of crit rating on gear (ratings were supposed to stop crit %'s getting out of control) they are nerfing a core talent that's been in the game for 2 years. The change will hurt all paladins with 20 points holy instead of the problem high crit % paladins.

w/ 50% spell crit rate which is possible in the game if you stack crit to the extreme at the expense of all other stats and after/with all buffs (boomkin, flasks/etc) it would take a very very long time to go oom, give a paladin with 50% crit a shadow priest and mana tide and I can see them not running out at all.

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

www.retpaladin.com

 

Darkmantle

So your suggestion is to nerf spell crit rating for mages, priests, warlocks, elemental shamans because a paladin talent is out of whack?

The purpose of rating was too enable more sensible items to be designed without having to do parry for example in 20 item point chunks, as well as scaling % abilities with level.

 

doogless

The purpose of the change to rating was so that you wouldn't eventually end up with 100% crit due to continually increasing item budget, not to stop you from stacking a given stat.

 

Elindra

At the moment, with some decent gear and buffs, it's totally possible to spam at least HL R9 without ever going oom. I am doing it myself and have to admit that it seems to be ab bit op, most of the times i don't even have to drink a manapot or use a flask in order to spam for 10 minutes on a Hydross fight, a decent Shadowpriest and some elixirs is all it takes.
With the upcoming nerfs ( Illumination only returning 60%, Spiritual attunement not giving mana on overheals, Shadowpriest DPS nerf, and all elixirs and flasks nerfed to a level where it's questionable if the use of those makes any sense at all) this will probably no longer be the case.
Nevertheless I think healing as a pally will be much more fun after the patch, no longer being able and forced ( since it's saver to do so ) to just mindlessly spam heals, I will once again have to put some effort into it (watching for overheals etc.) and healing will be much more demanding as it is now.
I'm not happy having the healing capability of my character nerfed, , but I think it will be very possible to live with it. Pallys will remain the best single target healers even after the upcoming nerf.

 

beann

Please Ignore.

 

Stoical

The paladin is right, according to both my experience and the spreadsheet numbers.

According to the pally spreadsheet from these forums, which has seemed fairly accurate to me since I started using it, a pally with a 10k mana pool, effectively 588 mp/5, and around 20% crit to Holy Light is going to run oom spamming Holy Light Rank 11 in 65 seconds. That's PRE-nerf. Post-nerf he will last 55 seconds.

Downranking to rank 9 and still spamming, that same pally would last 1.8 minutes pre-nerf, and 1.4 minutes post-nerf.

Post-nerf, with those stats, FoL rank 7 could be spammed indefinitely, as could Holy Light rank 5. Rank 6 is pretty close, and would last 15.6 minutes. Even these are pretty extreme numbers, though; I really doubt most pallies are going to have a sustained 588 mp/5 in most raid encounters.

That's not to say pallies with good gear and some great regen sources can't use Holy Light, even quite a bit, especially with downranking. But you can't truly spam it for a long period of time in the vast majority of raid situations.

I remember having a similar kind of discussion with someone in my guild on our first couple of Prince attempts, when they wanted me to just spam Holy Light for the entire 60%-30% burn phase and ignore overhealing, figuring I would never run oom because there was a shadowpriest there. I humored them to show them that, in fact, pallies do run oom even with a shadowpriest if they sit there and spam HL.

 

◊ Belac_K

Spellcheck is your friend.

 

Aditu

You can and will run out of mana by spamming Holy Light max rank (and even lower ranks) unless you have a pretty impressive healing kit and lots of restorative abilities present on you and your group. Even then, I wouldn't call the spam period indefinite but rather prolonged.

Flash of Light, on the other hand, can be spammed indefinitely and even mixing FoL with downranked holy light and some HoT's thrown on the target by other classes can be sustained for a very long time and probably net the same amount of healing.

 

Deris

I don't see how this change promotes any thinking involved on our part anyways - all it does is force you to equip exclusively MP5, and spam FOL with high amounts of +heal to make up for the lost HP/S. With how few healers (6, 7 max) most 25 mans have, cast/cancelling at the current end game WILL get your tank killed. The burst/crush damage is just too high in most situations. I end up usually at 40% or more overheal at the end of a fight, so post 2.1 I'll be forced to rotate FOL x 5 and R6 HL (to maintain LG incase of a burst) and since FOL has such low HP/S there is no point in cancelling, and downranking HL seems fruitless to me as well as FOL has MUCH better HP/M (the entire point of downranking yes?) than HL will ever come close to reaching.

I really think Paladin healing will be stagnant post 2.1, not that it is terribly exciting now, but at least at the moment I have the holy shock bug to take into account, but post 2.1 its going to take alot of empirical evidence which I have not seen yet presented in any form to convince me that anything over 25 points Holy is even worthwhile in any raiding environment considering the scope of our abilities and the new shift in itemization away from crit (sucks to be a resto shaman since they got all the MP5 gear, Paladins will be snagging that left and right.).

 

Fjord

I think most raiding paladins average closer to 30% holy light crit rate.

Too bad our other talent trees don't offer much for raiding either. Although the middle of the holy tree is much less desirable, the bottom remains solid. Lights Grace is still going to be important, I can think of quite a few situations where I simply couldn't keep a tank up without it.

 

levk

You need 840/0.4 = 2100 mp5 to spam HL11 indefinately (light's grace). You can prorate how much mp5 you would need for an encounter of set duration from here - for example 5 minute encounter (60 mp5 intervals) starting with 10.5k mana pool, you'll spend 2100X60 = 126000 mana minus 10.5k initial pool = 115500 you'll need to regen over 60 intervals = 1925 mp5. And you'll run out at exactly 5 minutes. Is this possible? Well manatide and divine illumination are each roughly 1k a minute ~ 170 mp5 for both, let's throw some stupid spellcrit like 40% at current illumination - you gain 40% of what you spend = 840 mp5, we get 7.5% of priest's damage in mana so let's take 1k dps from the priest for a nice round number that's 375 mp5, talented wisdom 50 mp5, total so far is 1435. With 500 short it's not looking good, flask = 70, food = 8, mageblood = 16, oil = 20 (forget) - all pennies and dimes - and say 300 (!!!) from gear you're still going to be short.

Personally I doubt I'd last more than minute and a half with full current buffs, 100% illumination, current SA and so on.

e: short, but, to me at least, surprisingly close.

e2: I forgot about chainchugging smps. With alch's stone it's 140 mp5, just consider it included in the 300 mp5 from gear, I don't think it's possible, not with 40% spellcrit anyway.

 

Ragnor

You realize different classes CAN get a different % amount from the same amount of a stat right? Take for example AGI where paladins, rogues, hunters, warriors all require a different amount of agi to get 1% crit. For a paladin it's ~22 agi for 1% crit, for warriors iirc it's near 30, for rogues/hunters over 40ish. Those values may not be 100% accurate but you get the idea.

I don't see why spell crit rating couldn't have worked like this.

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

www.retpaladin.com

 

Elindra

Ok, because many people said it's not possible to "spam" HL, although I'm doing it for most of the time atm, I tried to calculate wether it's possible or not.
I'm no math genius, so feel free to correct me if you find any errors (especially on the part factoring in the effect of divine illumination).
First of all, I 'd like to say the term of "spamming" probably is a bit misleading. Nearly every encounter does not allow you to stand in one place the whole time, mashing one button. So I've chosen three examples for calculations:

1) Casting one HL every 2 seconds (as an example of "pure" spamming)
2) Casting one HL every 2.5 seconds (as an example of spamming in consideration of lags and minor movement)
3) Casting one HL every 3 seconds (probably the most realistic example)

I'm using my stats for these calculations (129 mp5, 30% crit raid buffed, 11k mana raid buffed) and I'm assuming a fight length of ten minutes (600 seconds).

I also rather like to see illumination as a reduction for spell costs than a way to gain mana.
And I assume casting of HL R 9 (660 mana), which is the rank I personally use most of the time.

First I'll calculate the overall manacosts of casting HLR9 for 10 minutes and then subtract the mana saved through illumination:

1) Casting HL every 2 seconds -> 300 casts a 660 mana -> 198000 mana x 0.7 (30% cost reduction through illumination) -> 138600
2) Casting HL every 2.5 seconds -> 240 casts a 660 mana -> 158400 mana x 0.7 -> 110880
3) Casting HL every 3 seconds -> 200 casts a 660 mana -> 132000 mana x 0.7 -> 92400 mana
So these are the amounts of mana you'll need over the course of said 10 minutes, now let's look at the possibilities of gaining mana:

- 129 mp5 from gear -> 15480 mana over 10 minutes
- Talasite Owl assuming I'll use it two times thats -> 1800 mana
- Insightful Earthstorm Diamond (2% procchance, procs on everything, even buffs such as "light's grace" which results in an overall procchance of 4% for HL casting. Restores 300 mana/proc) will restore different ammonuts of mana for each example:
1) 12 procs a 300 mana -> 3600 mana
2) 8.8 procs a 300 mana -> 2880 mana
3) 8 procs 2 300 mana -> 2400 mana
- Major Mageblood -> 16 mp5 -> 1926 mana
- Brilliant Wizards Oil -> 14 mp5 -> 1680 mana
- Blackened Sporefish -> 8 mp5 -> 960 mana
- Manaspring Totem (skilled & tire 4 bonus) -> 45 mp5 -> 5400 mana
- Manatide (assuming the shaman has 10k man and will use it 2 times) -> 4800 mana
- BoW -> 49 mp5 -> 5880 mana
- Shadowpriest @ 1k dps -> 300 mp5 -> 36000 mana
- Spellsurge (approximately 10mp5 and 4 people in my group are using it, so 40 mp5) ->4800 mana
- base manapool -> 11000 mana

--------------------------------------------------------------
That's 93246 mana for example 1), 92526 mana for example 2) and 92046 mana for example 3 till here. Now you can still factor in manapots, demonic runes and maybe a flask of mighty restoration:

- Superior Manapotion restores 2400 mana on average, let's say i'll use 4 -> 9600 mana
- Demonic Rune 4 times, 1200 mana on average -> 4800 mana
- Flask of Mighty Restoration -> 60 mp5 -> 7200 mana
-> 21600 mana in addition to above numbers

Divine Illumination:
Usable 3 times in 10 minutes so the effect of it will last for 45 seconds overall, crits during DI will let you actually gain mana:
Example 1) 22.5 casts under the effect of DI -> 7425 mana saved
6.75 crits during this time @ 30% critrate -> 2227 mana gained

[top]> 9652 mana for my overall manapool
Example 2) 18 casts -> 5944 mana saved
5.4 crits -> 1782 mana gained

> 7726 mana for my overall manapool
Example 3) 15 casts -> 4950 mana saved
4.5 crits -> 1485 mana gained

[top]> 6435 mana for my overall manapool

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion:
1) (casting HLR9 every 2 seconds)
138600 mana needed, 102178 mana available without, 123778 mana available with pots/runes/flask

> not possible

2) (casting HLR9 every 2.5 seconds)
110880 mana needed, 100252 mana available without, 121852 mana available with pots/runes/flasks => possible

2) (casting HLR9 every 3 seconds)
92400 mana needed, 98481 mana available without, 120081 mana available with pots/runes/flasks => very possible



So overall: If your thinking about "spamming" in the way of just chaincasting every 2 seconds, it's not really possible to do so over 10 minutes. On the other hand, if your thinking about "spamming" in the way of casting as much as possible tanking into account lag and that nearly every encounter forces you to move sometimes, it's very possible.