PvE healing - raw +healing vs regen?

Kriegar · 06/21/07, 7:22 AM

Just a general question for SSC/TK+ healers out there - how do you generally like to gear/gem?

It really doesn't feel like healers running out of mana is ever the cause of a wipe, but rather healers not being able to put out enough heals per second. Our guild's healers tend to run very low +healing (1500-1700) and high regen generally.

Opinions from both sides of the fence would be appreciated.

DrunkenDruid · 06/21/07, 8:31 AM

I gear my enchants, gems, and trinkets towards mana regen. We get enough +heal on our gear and in my opinion a tank dies a lot less due to a 200 point smaller heal as opposed to his healers running out of mana.

tiberion02 · 06/21/07, 9:08 AM

I also very much doubt that any healer in the raid is using a top rank heal (other then Flash of Light), so scaling a heal up is very easy to do, therefor increasing your HPS.

I personally gem up with 9heal/2mana5 and 4int/2mana5 (keep 2 for Meta gem bonus)

CasT · 06/21/07, 9:49 AM

Mana regen would be better for healers who overheal alot, which in certain encounters is a needed.

Shan · 06/21/07, 11:28 AM

It's hard to quantify this. Healing is as much about skill and playstyle as it is about gear.

It really doesn't feel like healers running out of mana is ever the cause of a wipe, but rather healers not being able to put out enough heals per second.

I honestly doubt that the problem here is a matter of gear selection. Can you elaborate a little here?

Some questions:
- Who are they healing, and who is dying? To what?
- How were the healers assigned, and what classes were they?

CheshireCat · 06/21/07, 11:38 AM

A lack of (sustained) HPS is generally not the cause of a wipe, either, really. Very rarely is there an extended time period in which the boss simply puts out more damage on the tank than the healer corp can heal.

By far the most common cause of tank death is spike damage. The counter to that isn't really sustained HPS; it's timing. A single 2k heal landing in a nasty hit-special-hit sequence can save the tank-- but a second too early or too late and he's dead.

(Whether this is actually now the most common cause of wipes in general is debatable. There are now a lot more ways to lose a fight than having your tank die. But let's assume we're gearing to prevent tank death.)

The only way to combat spike damage is proactive healing, specifically pre-healing with occasional cancels. Stacked HoTs and low-rank spam counteract spike damage, and big heals recover from it in time to survive the next one.

Your role within a fight and within your healing corps should determine your gearing priorities. In any case, though, balance is crucial. Sustainability and throughput scale each other-- the more of one you have, the more valuable the other becomes.

castille · 06/21/07, 11:38 AM

Zen healing:

In this, as in all things, balance must be found.

Different encounters require different things. You have to be able to adjust accordingly. When I was a healer, I was a bit of a spirit whore, because I like to predict damage, land big heals, and then sit outside of the FSR when I can and come back. That's not becoming as needed these days as chaincasting is. So, I'd gear a bit towards +heal, and weight mp5 and spirit close together for recovering mana I'm spending. But, you have to find a balance unless you're going to be keeping 2 or 3 sets of gear around.

Erongg · 06/21/07, 12:43 PM

The fact that chain potting gives me 140 mp5 (as an alchemist, or 100mp5 without), plus the use of a flask, food, oil and if all else fails a shadow priest, has made me devalue mp5 of late. As someone said in another thread, it's a bit of a joke that mp5 costs as much as it does in itemization, since mana pots provide *so much*. That 6 mp5 from your shoulder upgrade just pales in comparison to the amount of regen gained from chugging mana potions.

Then I take the fact that Chain Heal makes overly-efficient use of +heal, and I lean more towards +heal than ever before. Bigger Earth Shields and Healing Streams are a perk. Mp5 to me has become a stat that I like on farm encounters because it means I don't have to pot.

Jawbone · 06/21/07, 1:04 PM

I think it depends very heavily on the class you are using to heal, too.

A paladin is going to prefer a mix of everything but spirit, while a priest or druid may suck up spirit gear like rogues suck up +hit and AP. I watch a few other healers running very high +heal and very minimal regen stats (for me those are scrit and mp5) and being able to burst heal for fairly good amounts, but sitting on a potion cooldown and manaless while I’m just spamming Holy Lights without a care in the world. Highest HPS among them, no less.

Balance has always served me best, and swapping out a few pieces for specific fights that offer me more of one stat or another.

constantius · 06/21/07, 1:41 PM

Realistically, there's only so many options for gearing at the moment.

Now, you're a rogue (not sure which class in particular you were looking for), but each of the respondents so far has unconsciously biased their response toward their own class. It's what we do - remember, healers are Tiny Gods, bow down to us.

What I found, as a priest, is that it's largely a moot point. Take your best piece of gear for each slot, put it all on, and check your stats. Take a look at things like set bonuses, and try to get the most optimum setup you can. Then take a look at rings, trinkets, and weapons, along with neck/cloak. That's where the real difference lies.

If I wanted to, I could stack 'regen' simply by choosing neck, cloak, rings, trinkets, weapon, and wand, along with selective enchants (shoulder, chest, bracer, and weapon). I have done so.

If I decide I want to have more +heal instead of regen, I can easily switch my neck, my cloak, my bracer enchant, my second ring, and my second trinket, and hit 2k+ raid-buffed.

There are at most 3 or 4 options for each slot, and I have to say (rare for me) Blizzard has done a good job at providing innate +heal along with solid regen. Without even trying, in my full regen gear (245 Mp5 self-buffed; 343 Mp5 raid-buffed, II5SR) I also have 1850 +heal. O.o If I scale my set back and focus more on OO5SR regen, I end up with about the same +heal, and well over 600 Mp5 OO5SR. And it only requires 3 or 4 pieces changed.

Your question really only has significant relevance pre-SSC, before we all start to get items for each slot that are unquestionably the best for that slot, so there's no "thinking" involved in gear choices beyond gems and enchants (which you can easily pick which way to go -- 18 heal, or 9 heal, 2 Mp5, etc, etc).

Hope this helped.

Sunchips · 06/23/07, 6:00 PM

Originally Posted by Kriegar

Just a general question for SSC/TK+ healers out there - how do you generally like to gear/gem?

It really doesn't feel like healers running out of mana is ever the cause of a wipe, but rather healers not being able to put out enough heals per second. Our guild's healers tend to run very low +healing (1500-1700) and high regen generally.

Opinions from both sides of the fence would be appreciated.

There's nothing wrong with running low +heal.

The problem lies when healers stack high regen......but then continue to use downranked heals.

That's where the output will begin to suffer; the point of stacking regen isn't so that you can sit at 80% mana the whole fight. Likewise, you don't stack +healing so that you can land 8k bomb gheals that overheal for 60% (even though I tend to try and do this when I have lots of free mana).

If the healers play towards their gear selection, it shouldn't matter whether they choose raw +heal vs regen.

The debate however is a little bit more class dependent than just, "Which is better +heal or mp5."

galzohar · 06/23/07, 6:40 PM

It's an argument that will never end.
1. If mana isn't an issue, +healing is infinitely better.
2. If people are dying because you can't heal them fast enough, +healing is quite more important. What good is mana when people are dead?
3. If you're going oom, more +heal you might still go oom. In this case it's a matter of figuring out how many HPs you can give out with a set amount of spi VS mp5 VS int VS +heal. But the +heal also helps in situation #1 and #2.

At the end it depends on the fight, your class and your stats... Not to mention what kind of raid/party buffs you have and the likes (shadow priest, pots, wisdom, time out of 5SR, totems...).

Lazare · 06/23/07, 8:06 PM

Regen and healing are, to some extent, interchangable. Imagine that your goal was to heal 1.5k HP/s for 5 minutes (note: arbitrary example). It's probably obvious that:

If you stack +healing you could hit that HP/s target with lower ranked heals. Since lower ranks are cheaper, you can keep this up for 5 minutes despite having little regen.
If you stack regen you would need higher ranked heals to hit that HP/S target. The high cost of the heals is negated by the regen on your gear, which keeps you from going OOM.

The key point is that enough of either stat will let you accomplish your goals. Given that, the only really interesting question that remains is "what stat mix allows me to accomplish my goals with the smallest item budget?" Or to put it another way "what stat mix allows me to accomplish the most with a given item budget?"

Some number crunching leads me to think that in general you need to strike a balance, and that as a priest with my healing style the optimal balance point is 1 mp5 = 3 points of +healing. That's highly class/fight/style/raid dependent though, of course. Something as simple as assuming that you will/will not be grouped with a shadow priest changes the balance point by quite a lot.

(Oh, actually, there is a case when only +healing will helps - if you find yourself in a position where chain casting your highest HP/s heal just isn't enough. In that case, you have to stack +healing; no amount of additional regen helps. However, I think you'd have to work quite hard to run into this problem in an actual encounter.)

Playered · 06/23/07, 9:38 PM

After being somewhat of a regen-junky, I finally looked around at our other healers and noticed how much more healing they have compared to me, and it wasnt as little as I thought.

In almost every fight I dont need to use any mana potions (assuming the more intense fights having oil/flask) or occasionally 1.
My spec is focused on MP5 (Dreamstate), and to a degree my gear choice is too and now its reached the point where im having much more mana than I need, and as a result im going to start dropping it in favor of healing.

Not to mention if im given a SP the mana issue is even more invalid than it is now, and even without one I can always take an extra potion or so.

I would say to just find a balance between MP5/Heal/Spi and then adjust them depending on your playstyle, I dont spend that much time outside the FSR nor do I use HT that often, so Spi is only worthwhile for me in terms of innervate potential and I try to keep it around 350-400 unbuffed. MP5 is sitting at 200~ unbuffed and thats really more than I need, as a result I know that aslong as my Spi doesn't go below 350, and my MP5 isnt below 180, then everything else can go on +healing.

BByte · 06/24/07, 7:13 AM

One good thing to remember is that apart from gems the choice isn’t usually between stats but between items. Because the stats are somewhat interchangeable, choosing an item that provides as many of the needed stats as possible is often the best way to go.

For priests and druids it usually makes sense to use items that have all 5 of the basic healing gear stats: stamina, intellect, spirit, healing and mp5. Many items that lack either spirit or mp5 are usually overall worse than those that have both (assuming equal iLvl). And of course everyone should be picking up pieces that have no stamina, they provide the best healing output in those fights you really don’t have to worry about your HP.

I ignored spell haste here, it’s relatively new and hard to compare, but it should also be massively useful to some healing classes / specs.

For gems, a Royal Nightseye (9 healing, 2 mp5) seems too good to not put in any blue / red socket basically. For getting the socket bonus from an item with a yellow socket a Dazzling Talasite (4 intellect, 2mp5) or a Luminous Noble Topaz (9 healing, 4 intellect) can be a good choices, especially if you have some talents that benefit from extra intellect.